Whoa dude! This is part III of the legendary documentary series on the L.A. music scene. It never got a commercial release and is really hard to find. Part I was on punk rock circa ’79, part II on hair bands circa ’88, part III deals with the gutterpunk scene circa ’97.
I remember going to Hollywood during high school and seeing these guys scare the tourists. One of the girls works (works!) at a clothing shop on Melrose (she’s the kinda-cute girl) but I’m guessing most of these guys are dead or in prison or something. Its shocking and kind of sad, but still a very good documentary.
The rumor was that Penelope Spheeris bowed to pressure from civic leaders and didn’t release this commercially. It would have come out during the whole Rampart scandal, and it would have painted a very negative image of the city. We used to give these guys money and offer them rides to Covenant House (homeless shelter for kids) and wonder why they never took us up on the offer.
When I was sixteen I guess it was kind of secretly appealing to think that someone could just drop out, quit it all, and live with nothing but their wits and some raggedy clothes, maybe have a 40 to look forward to at night.
After watching the doc and learning that most of these kids were horribly abused and drunk 99% of the time, I feel sorry for them. $5 isn’t a lot of money to you or me, but its a fortune to them. Maybe I’m just a sucker, but I think I’ll always give these kinds of people a couple bucks. Anyway, here’s the doc, its pretty good, just lower the volume when the bands are playing and watch it as high-brow social commentary.
The Decline Of The Western Civilization: Part 3 – Gutter Punk (1998) Musidocs.com from documentaries on Veehd.
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