One Reporter’s Opinion—named after Chris Ziegler’s L.A. RECORD review column—is part lesson in lost history and part celebration of the new and the now in the city of Los Angeles, California, where everything happened at least once and anything could happen tomorrow. From demos to dead stock to new releases and the never-released—all genres and generations of musicians from the greater L.A. area are welcome.

Chris Ziegler is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of L.A. RECORD, Los Angeles’ only dedicated music magazine. L.A. RECORD was founded in 2005 on Ziegler’s bedroom floor and has grown into a colossal bimonthly print magazine dedicated to documenting music—in any form—across the greater Los Angeles area. Each issue is a smash-cut collection of famously in-depth interviews with music-makers of all kinds—from Kendrick Lamar to Cherry Glazerr, or Flying Lotus to Foxygen to Les McCann—put together by a team of local writers, illustrators and photographers, with guest contributors like Ty Segall, Kutmah, Tim Presley of White Fence and Nick Waterhouse. Ziegler is also a contributor to MOJO magazine and the local OC and LA Weeklys, as well as a resident DJ at the Ace Hotel’s The Times of L.A. every Friday with dublab’s Frosty and more.

This program focused on the release of the book Slash: A Punk Magazine from Los Angeles, 1977–80.

The legendary punk and new wave alternative weekly magazine Slash was founded in Los Angeles in 1977 by Steve Samiof, and published a total of 29 print issues before its demise in 1980 (though it had a second life as the punk label Slash Records, which was eventually bought by Warner Bros. Records in 1999). In its brief run, Slash defined the punk subculture in Los Angeles and beyond with the comic strip Jimbo by Gary Panter and photographs by Melanie Nissen, the co-founding publisher and longtime photo editor. Writing by Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Chris D., Pleasant Gehman and Claude “Kickboy Face” Bessy explored reggae, blues and rockabilly in addition to punk and new wave.
Slash diagnosed the nascent punk scene’s challenge to the music industry and established its own oppositional voice in the editorial of its very first issue, staking a position against disco, Elvis and concept albums, and declaring: “Enough is enough, partner! About time we squeezed the pus out and sent the filthy rich old farts of rock ’n’ roll to retirement homes in Florida where they belong.”
Slash: A Punk Magazine From Los Angeles, 1977–80 pays homage to the magazine’s legacy with facsimile reproductions of every cover from the publication’s run and reprints of some of the magazine’s best articles and interviews. These are interspersed with new essays, reportage and oral histories from Exene Cervenka, KK Barrett, Gary Panter, Vivien Goldman, Richard Meltzer, Cali Thornhill DeWitt, Chris D., Bryan Ray Turcotte, Chris Morris, Ann Summa and Allan MacDowell, among others, telling the story of this critical chapter in the history of American media.