Jeff Abarta

When I first moved to Los Angeles, punk rock photographer Lisa Johnson and Tim Armstrong from Rancid helped me to get a job. That job was at Epitaph Records where I worked everywhere from the marketing department aka "The Green Room" to the mail room and then finally ended up as the temp publicist for a bunch of the bands. This is where I met the fabulous Jeff Abarta -A&R at Epitaph / Anti / Hellcat. He's cool as shit, made me feel right at home and was always fun to talk to.


Here's his swell list

Hey, Cecil:

Good luck with your novel!

This is by no means definitive, but here ya go:

Adolescents - Amoeba
Bad Religion - I Want To Conquer The World
Black Flag - My War
Born Against - Mount The Pavement
Crass - Big Man, Big M.A.N.
Dead Kennedys - Nazi Punks Fuck Off
Misfits - Where Eagles Dare
NOFX - Linoleum
Subhumans - From The Cradle To The Grave
Rudimentary Peni - Blasphemy Squad



Jeff (photo from 1988)

Houston Sams - Stylist

Houston Sams is a stylist. She's dressed the best and is cool as pie. I've spent many a punk rock holiday with her (Thanksgiving, Christmas, 4th of July) and had lovely times at Spaceland with her back in the indie rock days.

I've added the songs to the iMix with my suggestions for songs (in parenthesis) from her "anything by them" bands, but she's right, pretty much, you can't go wrong by adding anything by them to your mixes.
 
Big Black - "Kerosene"
Sonic Youth - " Schizophrenia"
Pixies - "Bone Machine"
Transplants - "Tall cans in the Air"

and anything by:

Fugazi - (Suggestion)
Helmet -(Unsung)
Dinosaur, Jr. -(Freak Scene)
Flaming Lips -(She Don't Use Jelly)
Guided By Voices - (I am a Tree)
Bad Religion -(American Dream)

Rock on, y'all!

Welcome! And Bienvenue!

Hello! My name is Cecil and I write books. My third novel is called BEIGE (Candlewick May 2007).

Anyway, in it a girl named Katy has to live with her punk rock drummer dad in silverlake and she hates music. In the book, a boy named Garth gives her a mix CD (you know what that means!) of a punk primer.

Since the book is about discovering your voice and also finding your inner punk and whatever that means to you, I thought it would be cool to ask my most musically inclined and punk ass cool peeps from all walks of life to give me what their ten essential punk songs for a mix tape would be.

There are some really amazing people giving me lists.

Now we can see how varied and wonderful an essential punk list is! Look! It's different for everyone! And we can all discover (or rediscover) some great songs.

I'll be posting the lists up on this blog. And I'll start with mine.

Cecil's Essential Punk Ladies to Have on Your iPod iMix is here

Patti Smith - Gloria: In Excelsis Deo
X-Ray Spex - Germ Free Adolescents
The Go-Go's - We Got the Beat
The Slits - Shoplifting
Lunachicks - Binge and Purge
L7 - Pretend We're Dead
Laurie Anderson - Walking and Falling
Blondie - Hanging On the Telephone
Siouxsie and The Banshees - Christine
The Pretenders - Tattooed Love Boys
The Runaways - Cherry Bomb
The Velvet Underground & Nico - All Tomorrow's Parties



Cecil at 22