Kids of the Black Hole - by Dewar MacLeod (Paperback)

About the Book

Los Angeles rock generally conjures memories of surf music, The Doors, or Laurel Canyon folkies. But punk? L.A.'s punk scene, while not as notorious as that of New York City, emerged full-throated in 1977 and boasted bands like The Germs, X, and Black Flag. This book explores how, in the land of the Beach Boys, punk rock took hold. With an intimate knowledge of bands, venues, and zines, MacLeod cuts to the heart of L.A. punk as no one has before.

Book Synopsis

Los Angeles rock generally conjures memories of surf music, The Doors, or Laurel Canyon folkies. But punk? L.A.'s punk scene, while not as notorious as that of New York City, emerged full-throated in 1977 and boasted bands like The Germs, X, and Black Flag. This book explores how, in the land of the Beach Boys, punk rock took hold.

As a teenager, Dewar MacLeod witnessed firsthand the emergence of the punk subculture in Southern California. As a scholar, he reveals in this book the origins of an as-yet-uncharted revolution. Having combed countless fanzines and interviewed key participants, he shows how a marginal scene became a "mass subculture" that democratized performance art, and he captures the excitement and creativity of a neglected episode in rock history.

Kids of the Black Hole tells how L.A. punk developed, fueled by youth unemployment and alienation, social conservatism, and the spare landscape of suburban sprawl communities; how it responded to the wider cultural influences of Southern California life, from freeways to architecture to getting high; and how L.A. punks borrowed from their New York and London forebears to create their own distinctive subculture. Along the way, MacLeod not only teases out the differences between the New York and L.A. scenes but also distinguishes between local styles, from Hollywood's avant-garde to Orange County's hardcore.

With an intimate knowledge of bands, venues, and zines, MacLeod cuts to the heart of L.A. punk as no one has before. Told in lively prose that will satisfy fans, Kids of the Black Hole will also enlighten historians of American suburbia and of youth and popular culture.

Review Quotes

"Dewar MacLeod's Kids of the Black Hole is an authoritative, superbly researched account--right down to the illustrations--of the original punk scene in Los Angeles circa 1977 and its evolution into often brutal hardcore punk in the early 1980s."--American Historical Review


"In his brilliantly controlled intellectual rant/thesis, Dewar MacLeod proves beyond doubt that 'punk scholarship' is not an oxymoron. Kids of the Black Hole is simultaneously meticulous, drum-tight documentation and LOL fun. It's jammed with raw first-person club-scene anecdote as well as distanced but knowing cultural critique. Here is a timely study with an unerring sense of the weird zeitgeist of twenty-first-century America."--Neil Baldwin, author of The American Revelation: Ten Ideals That Shaped Our Country from the Puritans to the Cold War


"MacLeod provides a comprehensive and balanced history of a punk scene that has not received as much attention as its New York or British counterparts but still represents an important and influential moment for this music and subculture. His methodology includes interviews with some of the key participants in this scene and a seemingly exhaustive collection of local punk fanzines. MacLeod's writing style is accessible and lively, and it should satisfy fans who are looking for a book that captures the energy and fun of the scene instead of just another academic treatise. The key contribution of MacLeod's book is that it follows the migration of punk out of its regional origin in Hollywood and bohemian Los Angeles to the suburbs, where a "hardcore" subculture that was more violent and macho, and less artsy, took root in Huntington Beach, Fullerton, and other beach towns and suburbs across southern California. MacLeod's history of southern California punk illuminates the post suburban social conditions that spawned it, at least insofar as this environment provoked the negative point of departure for punk's symbolic practices and politics."--Southern California Quarterly


"Part historian and part music critic MacLeod charts the origins and transformations of Southern California's punk scene. He describes bands, fans, record stores, and underground magazines, and takes readers into the clubs and homes where Los Angeles punks lived out their rebellion against mainstream values, the record industry, and the false glamour of Hollywood. MacLeod nicely intertwines an emphasis on local conditions and expressions of punk with a theoretical exploration of the tensions and conflicts within all countercultural groups. He does an excellent job of capturing the lively debate within the punk scene - familiar within other outsider movements - about how to define authentic identity while the community and music evolved."--CHOICE


"Passionate and scholarly, this book will appeal to readers interested in punk rock and the history of music."--Book News