Punk rock takes on the Sunset Strip

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Over at Cuepoint, Greg Renoff tells how Hollywood's iconic 1960s rock club the Whisky a Go Go was revived in the 1970s by punk and New Wave.

From "Riot on Sunset:"

By early February, the Whisky featured its highest profile act to date when rising new wave stars Blondie, with a young Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers in support, performed a multi-day stand at the club. Photographer Jenny Lens, whose work vividly documented the LA scene, wrote in Punk Pioneers, "Debbie [Harry] walked onto the stage wearing a Humphrey Bogart beige trenchcoat, black beret, and holding a New York paper announcing freezing weather." As the set continued, she unbuttoned the coat to reveal an outrageously tiny black dress and thigh-high black leather boots.

Out in the crowd, Dee Dee Ramone, whose band was scheduled to play the club the following week with Blondie, watched the show. "Blondie was really good that night," he recalled in his autobiography. "Deborah Harry was smashing… all the boys were crowding the front of the stage, trying to get a look up her skirt at her white bikini briefs."


"Riot on Sunset" (Cuepoint)