While Los Angeles bands like The Germs, The Go-Go’s, X, and Bad Religion drew the spotlight to Southern California’s punk rock scene, their iconic larger-than-life presence may have inadvertently cast a shadow on the suburbs of Orange County, whose teens were ready to prove that rebellion thrived outside of La La Land.
In “Tearing Down The Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World,” journalists and authors Nate Jackson and Daniel Kohn lay out how the OC became a powerhouse for punk rock leading to the rise of acts like T.S.O.L., Adolescents, The Vandals, Social Distortion, The Offspring, No Doubt, Sublime, and others.
The book also features interviews with other vital pillars of the scene, including a range of past and present punk club owners, such as Jerry Roach, the owner of the shuttered Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa. It also helps illustrate how the youth, just 40 miles north of Los Angeles, forged their own scene that took the pogo dance to a slam-dance-filled mosh pit…