L.A. vs. N.Y. vs. UK punks and so much more at a sprawling new Skirball exhibit

The best way to incite a riot at a rock club? Start talking about when — exactly — the style of music was born. The same holds doubly true for punk. The hectic, electrified, primal scream of a genre can be traced to the 1960s, but really came alive in the ‘70s.

Some fans say the music exploded in ’77 with the release of “Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” — the first and only album by London’s de facto face of punk.

According to the Skirball Cultural Center’s new exhibition, “Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976-86,” which opens Wednesday, punk’s year zero was 1976, when the Ramones debuted their self-titled record. That same year, the Sex Pistols cursed on live TV, John Holmstrom and Legs McNeil co-founded Punk magazine, and the Damned released the first British punk single, “New Rose.”

The Skirball’s exhibit arrives as punk commemoration is in the air, with 50th anniversary celebrations and tie-ins happening across the country, including the Sex Pistols’ upcoming tour.

“Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos” doesn’t dwell on who invented what and when. Instead, its collection of photographs, fliers, posters, clothing and pins explore how punk evolved over a decade, spreading from New York to the UK, and then on to the West Coast, with an emphasis on L.A.’s contributions. It also explores the little-known history of the genre’s Jewish musicians and icons.

“It’s hard to create a periodization in a cultural moment,” says museum chief curator Cate Thurston. “It’s always gonna be messy and we’re gonna miss things. But what we liked about 1976 is that it coincides with the release of the Ramones’ first album. And it’s a moment when punk gains broader attention.”

“We use the name ‘punk’ and attach it to expression and rebellion,” adds co-curator Michael Worthington, a graphic design professor at CalArts. “But it shifts through time and locations. It means different things to different people. We’re interested in that rolling trajectory, rather than trying to pin it down in a definitive way.”

London-based photographer Sheila Rock’s life-size image of the Ramones at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1978 is the first to greet visitors. From there, nearly 400 fliers and posters guide guests both geographically and chronologically, beginning with punk’s pre-1976 years. Before it had a name, punk was influenced by glam rock singers and experimental garage rock bands like David Bowie, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, the MC5, the New York Dolls, and Iggy Pop and the Stooges.

Even traditional wall text has been replaced by informational sheets resembling fliers that visitors can grab from dispensers throughout the galleries.

“The show is primarily communicated through fliers,” says Thurston. “There are no reproductions. So you’ll see ripped corners and tape here and there.”

The idea is to show ephemera that is beaten and weathered, says Worthington. “Things that really look like they’re of that period. We like that authenticity. We’re not trying to show perfect pieces.”

Many of the artists featured in the show appear on the illustrated covers of Punk, which are part of N.Y.-based collector Andrew Krivine’s massive trove of music memorabilia. Other bands like the Talking Heads, the Weirdos, the Heartbreakers, Television, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids appear on ads for gigs at legendary venues including CBGB and Max’s Kansas City.

While N.Y. punk was inspired by Beat writers and intellectuals, its British counterpart was more sociopolitical, aggressive and nihilistic, addressing concerns about the government, the monarchy and unemployment. Band members were art school students and dropouts, like Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols and Joe Strummer and Mick Jones from the Clash.

Punk shirts from various designers are displayed on a wall at the Skirball exhibition “Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976-86.” The popularity of punk fashion contributed to the global rise of the punk movement.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Punk fashion played a dominant role on both scenes and is an exhibition highlight. Some showstopping pieces were sold at Vivienne Westwood’s London shop Seditionaries, which revolutionized a rough-and-ready pop-culture style that still resonates to this day. Other pieces are on loan from British graphic designer Malcolm Garrett’s collection at Manchester Metropolitan University. Tattered sweaters, linen T-shirts, parachute shirts and “bondage suits” are printed with slogans that read “Only anarchists are pretty” and “Anarchist punk gang.”

The global power of UK fashion helped turn punk into a commercial movement, but by the late 1970s the scene had moved to L.A. where it looked much different. Here, punk bands truly espoused the music’s DIY ethos, and were more culturally diverse.

“In L.A., nobody had record deals,” says Worthington. “Nobody had any money. People are finding these crazy venues to play. So we see this shift in DIY and homemade, and often the deliberate non-adoption of the mainstream. These people had no rules. They’re making their own records. They’re making their own clothing.”

This was in stark contrast to the immediate commodification of the London scene, he said, noting that in L.A. artists were working in their own way, and on their own terms. If you weren’t part of the scene, you probably didn’t know about it. There was no internet, no press coverage. Bands had to create their own vehicles of dissemination.

A map of L.A. punk clubs is displayed at the Skirball exhibition “Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976-86.” Clubs, including the Masque, played a huge role in the scene during the late 1970s.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Another exhibit standout is a wall that maps L.A.’s bygone punk clubs like the Starwood, the Masque, Club Lingerie and Madame Wong’s, which stretched from Hollywood to Beverly Hills to East L.A. and Chinatown.

Within the geographical and chronological categories are thematic sections dedicated to punk’s fight against fascism and racism, punk art and punk photography. One section is devoted to L.A.’s artists Gary Panter and Raymond Pettibon, who created logos for the Screamers and Black Flag, respectively. Pettibon’s stark four-bar design for the latter is one of punk’s most iconic images, as recognizable as the Ramones’ presidential seal and the Misfits’ skeleton face.

L.A. photographers are also featured, including Slash magazine co-founder Melanie Nissen and Ann Summa, whose archive is housed at UC Riverside’s California Museum of Photography. Summa’s 1982 snapshot of a stage diver at a Circle Jerks concert in Reseda is among the best examples of punk’s live and chaotic energy.

Jewish identity and culture are examined at length in the show, but were never overtly expressed in punk, the curators note. This is perhaps best exemplified by a quote from Tommy Ramone, whose parents survived the Holocaust and left Hungary after the Soviet invasion in the 1950s: “People don’t associate punk and Jews.”

The exhibition still ably singles out punk artists and groups with Jewish heritage like the Patti Smith Group, Blondie, Richard Hell, the Dictators and Suicide, as well as band managers, label executives, club owners and photographers who were part of the scene.

These include Clash guitarist Jones, whose Jewish grandmother fled Russian pogroms; Clash manager Bernie Rhodes; music executive Seymour Stein, who signed the Ramones to Sire Records; photographer Bob Gruen; CBGB owner Hilly Kristal, who put punk on the American map and whose Jewish father also escaped Russian pogroms; and Sex Pistols’ manager Malcolm McLaren, who was the grandson of Jewish diamond dealers.

A photo of two punks is displayed at the “Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976-86” exhibition at the Skirball Cultural Center. The outsider movement was welcoming to all kinds of people from all walks of life.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“We’re not talking about Judaism, the religion, being punk,” says Thurston. “We’re talking about how Jews were drawn to punk. It’s a story that people really don’t think about. People don’t think of themselves as Jewish punks at this time. They think of themselves as just punks.”

As a result, these artists were outsiders within an outsider community, Thurston explained, people who didn’t quite fit into mainstream American culture or traditional Jewish life in America.

“It’s sort of a neon razor blade story of the American dream — we didn’t fit in anywhere, so we made a place for ourselves where we did fit in,” she said.

The curators’ 10-year timeline also embraces punk offshoots and subgenres, including post-punk, new wave and hardcore — particularly in Washington, D.C. — in addition to later bands like NOFX and Bad Religion, whose Jewish members picked up the baton after punk’s first wave.

Michael Worthington, co-curator of the exhibition “Outsiders, Outcasts, Rebels + Weirdos: Punk Culture 1976-86,” stands in front of West Coast punk posters.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

“There’s so much stuff in the show, so many different bands represented, so much breadth of works,” says Worthington. “Even people who know a lot about this genre will discover something they didn’t know. There’s joy in that.”

There is also joy in reliving the past, Worthington said, and “having some kind of trigger to remembering your younger, more energetic, more rebellious, more idealistic self that I think we all lose as we get older.”

The connection between punk and the past is important, he said, because it takes people back to their formative years — to a time when they were still figuring out who they were and what they believed in.

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