PUNK UNDER THE SUN
From a land that time forgot, to God’s waiting room, to the Cocaine Cowboys era, to the post-Mariel immigrant communities that have formed and shaped the region, South Florida in 2023 is almost impossible to conceive of from the vantage of the run-down Gold Coast of the 1970s
Casualties are guaranteed in a turbulent environment. But authors Joey Seeman and Chris Potash are survivors of the region’s scouring tides. Their book, “Punk Under the Sun: ’80s Punk and New Wave in South Florida,” is a record of what they witnessed from the trenches of a wild, creative and unique underground music scene.
“I have this constant sense of nostalgia for that period of my life,” Seeman tells PureHoney. “I was out four or five nights a week, either seeing shows, playing in a band, or going out to clubs like Fire & Ice, 1235, Club Nu. I’m also somewhat of a pack rat. I saved all my old flyers, press clippings and photos from back then.”
Conceived as a visual archive using those mementos, the book evolved into an oral history told by the folks who are still around. In a moment of serendipity, Seeman was tracking down a Miami News photo of himself exiting the old Cameo Theater in Miami Beach and he reached out to Potash, the author of the accompanying article. The two had never previously met.
Chris Potash by Tara Potash
As Potash tells PureHoney, “That photo was taken by a Miami News photographer for a story on the 50th anniversary of the Cameo, which opened in the late 1930s and was a vaudeville spot and grindhouse theater until promoter Richard Shelter revived it in 1985 as a venue for punk rock and progressive music.
“I always wondered who the person in the foreground of the photo was—a pale dude in heavy eye makeup, fly-away hair, and cutoff vest,” Seeman says. “Turns out it was Joey Seeman! We connected all these years later, and the collaboration just seemed destined.”
Seeman and Potash struck up an easy friendship through musical and cultural overlaps that also animate the book. Its 200+ pages track South Florida punk rock in the ’70s and ’80s as it filtered into other underground spaces and helped to birth a wider regional arts scene that is crowned today by the likes of Art Basel.
Joey Seeman
“There was a lot going on in addition to the music, a whole cultural revolution of art and dance and performance,” Potash says. “I would go to art openings almost as often as music shows. A typical night would see one of Davis Murphy’s mechanical sculptures, an engine-powered typewriter, propelling itself, spinning in a circle, before breaking down. Just as cool as a Jean Tinguely event at MOMA in New York, but here on the street in Miami Beach.”
Seeman credits Potash for weaving the arts into a local music narrative that echoed NYC’s Mudd Club era, wherein Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat mingled with Blondie and Madonna.
Music-wise, they’re all here: The Eat, The Drills, Charlie Pickett and the Eggs, D.T. Martyrs, Psycho Daisies, X-Conz, Toyz, The Front, The Spinouts, Screaming Sneakers, The Reactions, The Preachers, Whig Party, The Essentials, Gay Cowboys in Bondage, Crank, and so many more. Their stories take flight through interviews and visual material provided by an ad hoc army of people like Jill Kahn of the Psycho Daisies, Margaret O’Brien, DJ Mont Sherar, Jim Johnson, Kelly Christy of Vesper Sparrow, and Don Schrager, among others, who had the presence of mind to carry their cameras around back in the day.
The book does not romanticize what it relives. “Punk Under the Sun” presents a visceral account of how drugs dampened and, in a way, destroyed much of this scene.
“Many other scenes and bands around the country seemed to enjoy massive success despite the abundance of heavy drugs,” Seeman says. “In our case, it was just one more ingredient that compounded our isolated location, indifference of major record labels, and lack of support from national press and radio. Psycho Daisies were one of the most talented, unique, and influential bands, who consistently got national press, but couldn’t get out of their own way.”
It’s an observation made poignant by a candid photo of the late Psycho Daisies mastermind, Johnny Salton, with one bleeding, tourniquet-wrapped arm pierced by an extruding hypo. Available from HoZac Books, “Punk Under the Sun” is gorgeous and alive, a thorough resource for understanding an incredible era.
Purchase info at Hozacrecords.com ~ Abel Folgar
