JLP House

Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Kid Congo Powers (1981), The Gun Club Pt. 1: "Preachin' the Blues" Creeping Ritual and the Genesis of The Gun Club (1979-1980) from New York Night Train.

Punk served as a vehicle for the political, social, and cultural expression of L.A. and SGV youth in a counterculture art form. Punk icon, Jeffrey Lee Pierce moved his way from his SGV punk upbringing into the bigger LA punk scene with friends like Kid Congo Powers from La Puente. Both made serious waves among punk musicians in the 1980s.

There was a certain level of cliquishness in the punk scene, not to mention the racial tension that often permeated the scene in its various waves and expressions. Still, there was a general notion of punk as a creative force among teens and young adults through the many manifestations of music that fall under the umbrella of punk.

JLP died from a medical crisis in 1996 at the age of 37. Here is his obituary from the New York Times:

"Mr. Pierce, a singer and guitarist, began his career in music as a fan and critic. When he was a teen-ager, he was president of the Blondie fan club. He went on to work in a Los Angeles record store and to write about music for punk-oriented newspapers like Slash.

He formed the Gun Club, originally named Creeping Ritual, in 1979 and developed a reputation for flamboyant performances. The band's first album, "Fire of Love" (1981), remains its most admired, with a fast-paced, irreverent version of the Mississippi blues song "Preachin' the Blues" and Mr. Pierce's warbling voice wailing about dark themes like drugs and death.

The Gun Club went on to release 11 other live and studio albums, and Mr. Pierce recorded two relatively straightforward solo albums."

The early 1980s era of punk, specifically in the Greater El Monte area began a surge in punk kids trying their hand at the genre and produced a rich Backyard DIY gig scene and many punk bands of many varieties to fill the bills.

Eventually, the scene drew crowds of fans but also bands that in the 21st century could be considered more generally rock, like the flyer below indicates. This period also produced a couple of well-known local SGV punk bands like YAPO and Tangwich.

One Greater El Monte punk, Fernando Landeros, from the short-lived SGV punk band, Asinine, remembered punk, and bands like YAPO and Tangwich--bands that came to scene after The Gun Club as a useful counterculture. “[Rebellion] was part of the allure. It’s like check this out [parents]; I’m going to do something that you’re gonna hate, ya know, you’re probably gonna have to put up with it for a while.”

Punk provided a place to “experiment with anything I could have control over,” as Landeros said, as a way to “blow off steam, ya know, even though I didn’t know at the time, that’s what I was doing.” While, he was talking, specifically, about clothing, it was part of the broader punk culture to challenge boundaries and express themselves.

“I thought when you were punk, you were just gonna be punk forever.”

With the early and sudden passing of JLP, his punk was forever.

Punk served as a vehicle for the political, social, and cultural expression of L.A. and SGV youth in a counterculture art form. JLP moved his way from his SGV punk upbringing into the bigger LA punk scene with friends like Kid Congo Powers from La Puente. Both made serious waves among punk musicians.

Punk was also an escape from suburban living. The punk sound and aesthetic went against anything that could pass as “normal” in suburbia which allowed teens to find their identities outside the sometimes ridged expectations of their families and neighbors. A theme that permeated the chicano punk ethos is the notion of tercermundismo which Troy Andreas Araiza Kokinis contextualized in East of East as “a shared historical experience among racialized peoples globally” (237).

“Tercermundismo was a political ideaology that embraced nonaligned socialism, anti-imperialism, and Third World solidarity. If gained popularity in Latin America throughout the 1950s and continues to be a mobilizing political force in certain countries today” (241).

In the case of JLP and other Greater El Monte punks, rearticulating notions of tercermundismo as part of their ethnic, political, and social identities provided for them a way to self-identify in ways that others may not have ascribed to them otherwise, particularly for JLP who was contending with his white-passing biracial social position.

JLP and Kid Congo Powers both held the communities where they grew up close to their hearts despite the cultural and political tensions the experiences and the broader local, national, and global realities they and other punks railed against.