Punk

Billy Eye covered the Punk, New Wave and East L.A. underground music scene in Los Angeles for Data-Boy magazine, a Los Angeles gay publication that began in 1968. These rock columns appeared between 1980 and 1983, detailing a tumultuous environment where Fear, Black Flag, Red Wedding, Missing Persons, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Los Illegals, and The Stains banged away in smoky clubs like The Starwood, Brave Dog, Al's Bar, Vex and Cathay De Grande. It was a world almost no one else was writing about at the time. Take a close look at two bands that were popular in Los Angeles in the early 1980s-the city's first openly gay group, underground post-punkers Red Wedding, and Missing Persons, the first superstars of a newly launched MTV. This book explores what it was like to live openly gay in the 1970s and early 1980s, the parallax between brutal police suppression, rampant gay bashing, the widening acceptance of queer culture, and the discovery of AIDS. And then there's the sorted sordid world of pornography and prostitution the author finds himself confronted with. When one of your clients is accused of bludgeoning four people to death in one of the bloodiest crime scenes history maybe it's time to reassess your life. You would think... It's a filthy, sordid tale the whole family can enjoy