Keith Morris “My Damage”(Instore)

I’ve never seen Black Flag or The Circle Jerks…or OFF! even, but when I lived in LA I was lucky enough to run into Keith Morris a bunch of times. It was almost always in a record store, whether at Bleeker Bob’s on Melrose or when I worked at a small record store on Sunset Strip or at a Pasadena Swap meet and he was almost always with Bob Forrest (Thelonious Monster). We talked about all sorts of music and I was always impressed with his depth of knowledge about a wide variety of genres…Bob too! We never talked about any of his old bands or the short lived Hollywood punk scene heyday which centered around The Masque, a bomb shelter rehearsal space that had some legendary shows, the earliest punk shows, run by Brendan Mullen. I was just as lucky to get to meet Brendan as well at a Punk Rock Bar B Que I attended with Chris D. around 96 or so. Brendan did a dj set of old jazz 78’s! Spectacular! Anyway, Keith was always a blast to talk to, high energy and his enthusiasm for music always came through.

What I’m really happy to see is that these Hollywood OG punks are all releasing their perspectives on the scene in written form. Alice Bag’s Violence Girl,  John Doe’s Under The Big Black Sun and My Damage by Morris, all recently published, are welcome and much needed perspectives on such a short lived scene. A handful of these artists were able to maintain a prolonged ‘career’ of playing music after the initial wave imploded scattering most of these bands to the 4 winds. Keith’s perspective is unique also as Black Flag were from Hermosa Beach and pretty much considered outsiders in the Hollywood scene but the sheer rawness and purity of their music endeared them to Brendan Mullen who considered them his favorite band, so they were sort of honorary members and rightly so.

Following is a video of Keith reading from some of his book, which seemed like a bit of a task as he kept jumping from the page to a more natural telling of the story and it was cool to hear his voice and his perspective this way. I look forward to reading this one.

Available via Da Capo Press

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The video is by Louis Elovitz who has a ton of great LA/Hollywood Punk related videos on his vimeo channel. He has video he shot in the old days as well as new happenings by people from the original scene who are still active.

KEITH MORRIS

” My Damage ” release
skylight books hollywood
aug 26 2016
a PUNK SCENE film by
Video Louis Elovitz LApunk13.com
MY DAMAGE: THE STORY OF A PUNK ROCK SURVIVOR.
Keith Morris is a true punk icon. From Black Flag and the Circle Jerks to OFF! and FLAG no one else embodies the sound of Southern Californian hardcore. Over the course of his forty–year career, he’s battled diabetes, drug and alcohol addiction, and the record industry. MY DAMAGE is a look at rock ’n’ roll through the lens of someone who has shared the stage with just about every major figure in the music industry and appeared in cult films like The Decline of Western Civilization and Repo Man. It’s a Hollywood story from a native’s perspective. MY DAMAGE is Morris’s streets, his scene, his music—as only he can tell it.

Keith will be joined by his co-author Jim Ruland for a spirited conversation.

 

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