Love hearing everyone's stories of what got them into this "other' realm of music that was pretty much invisible to so many others.
@ Kopper - Radio! That's what was instrumental for me too. Now I guess it's Youtube & things like Pandora for the kids. Love the tape you digitized. I've only scanned through it, but it reminds me how much I miss good radio, and how important it was. Made me sad when the DJ referred to John Mayall as being old, mid forties (my age) to early fifties. I have several of my old tapes of stuff off the radio that I've slowly been digitizing too.
Most of my friends from back then got into punk through skating and people they met at the skate spots and parks. I was never a skater. I owe my "awakening" as you can call it to two people. Rodney Bingenheimer and Lisa Guerrero. Lisa was my girlfriend for a few key months there in 1980. She was 18 and I was jailbait, 14. (I now understand why my mom hated her) She was into "new" music I guess you could say, not really punk, but not full on "New Wave" as we would have probably called others. She turned me onto alot of stuff like the Clash, 999, Go-Go's, Selector, Specials, Modettes, others I forget. She didn't get to much into the current stuff I was finding on my own, Black Flag, Germs, DOA etc etc. She would go see the likes of the Ramones and Holly and the Italians and go to the dance clubs here in LA like the Odessy, Casa Blanca etc. as opposed to the small clubs. Rodney Bingenheimer as most know, was and still is a DJ here in Los Angeles. His show on KROQ ran from 8pm to midnight Saturday and Sunday back then. As the Angry Samoans said "4 hours of Phil Spectre rock". But in reality it was much more than that. Rodney was playing everything from the Ronettes to the latest Black Flag demo. In fact much of the music he was playing was unreleased. Bands would send him stuff or hand deliver it to him at the station and he would play it. And of course he would have most anybody who was anybody come through and do an interview with him. The Surfaries and Ventures, would drop in, as would Wendy O, Keith Morris of the Circle jerks or Levi Dexter.
I should also mention fanzines too. They were instrumental in finding out about bands and records (and often cassete releases) that were out there. Flipside was the bible for me. The last issue of Slash was still on the stands when I started discovering punk, but it was Flipside that seemed more immediate for my era of punk. You could find out about the latest Fullerton or Huntington Beach bands that hadn't recorded anything yet, or learn where to send away for the Heart Attack 7" in New York or the Fix 7" in Michigan. It was also through Flipside that I started trading tapes and records with people from across the country and overseas too, who opened my ears to many bands I had missed up to that point like the Eater and the Rezillos to name a few. Although it should also be noted that Zed records was an hour's bicycle ride away, and me and my friends discovered many new bands by perusing the inventory there.
As I said I was young, so living in the suburbs of LA made it hard to get out to proper gigs. I'd maybe sneak out to a show once a month, (and then spend a few weeks in trouble from mom). I was halfway between the Vex in east LA and the Cuckoo's nest in southern Orange County. But there was also an active party circuit in the suburbs for the newer bands. We saw Social Distortion, TSOL, the Vandals, Adolescents, Channel 3 and many more in living rooms and backyards all across the suburbs.
As far as 60's punk, outside of what I'd heard on Rodney and KRLA like the Seeds, Music Machine etc, I was somewhat oblivious, until one of my older punk friends turned me onto a cassette of what was most likely the Nuggets comp. It was an eye opener, but outside of some of the Paisley Underground type bands, I didn't really dig a whole lot deeper till much later. I was still chasing the diminishing returns of punk leftovers in thelate 80's into the early 90's when an old friend who worked for Flipside and then later a new friend who had a lo-fi noisy garage band opened my eyes to what I was missing like everything on Estrus, Sympathy etc etc.. I found it exciting because for me, it was back to the clubs and one off venues as opposed to the more established bigger places that I seemed to be going to a lot of shows at. It was now all about the Mummies, Gories, Lazy Cowgirls, Devil Dogs etc etc.