Dead City Punx

Born in the rage-fuelled streets of LA, punk band Dead City gained notoriety during COVID for their guerrilla gigs and massive, anarchic audiences. 

The band’s members, Meka, Grumpy, Mike, and Adrian, are on hand to explore the origins of their outfit, from stealing a drum kit from a local church to facing off with the LAPD. 

It’s as unapologetically punk as it comes, and a welcome antidote to the state of the modern music scene.

With any roc-doc, there’s usually a degree of ego-stroking, and Dead City is completely aware of their cult status in LA as a catalyst for stoking the flames of frustration, particularly amongst younger audiences who saw their illegal gigs as a place to vent frustration. Whether that meant lighting a fire in the pit, setting off fireworks, lobbing bottles at the cops, or attacking a U-Haul with a hammer, nothing was off the table, and audience members took their own safety into their own hands by attending. 

The violence and chaos would escalate, as it always does, with a heavy police presence, which became a foregone conclusion for any Dead City gig. Once the rubber bullets started flying and the news footage provided the perfect PR, infamy was inevitable.

The journey of the band highlights some fascinating aspects of the modern cultural state of live music. This is a DIY band, with no label, putting on huge, free shows with nothing but stolen concrete and word-of-mouth. They used Instagram to drop last-minute location flyers, and suddenly thousands of eager locals would turn up, set shit on fire, and become hardened devotees to the group. Tapping into this electric hunger has to be one of the band’s most important achievements and something other artists should take note of.

As viewers, we learn of the band members’ childhoods, most of which are pretty rough. Abandonment, drugs, and homelessness are just some of their shared experiences, all of which pour into both their music and their potent onstage presence. 

It may be hard for some audiences watching the Dead City Punx documentary to connect with these guys, especially the criminal activities they openly regale us with, which range from graffiti to selling drugs (with worse being hinted at), but to eschew their realities for something more PG-13 would have been disingenuous and an affront to the scene they have become such a historic element within. 

Director Roger Gastman, whose previous films Rolling Like Thunder (2021) and Wall Writers (2016) also have strong explorations of graffiti, here manages to capture the dynamic appeal of the band and the commanding drive they have to ignite a forceful LA music scene even during a pandemic.

Much like their shows, you may not like this, but it is exactly what it needs to be.

The documentary premieres on April 16 in Los Angeles, CA, at The Regent Theater. There will be two screenings: 7:30 PM and 9:30 PM. The next day, April 17, there is a gallery opening at BEYOND THE STREETS. DEAD CITY PUNX is executive produced by Roger Gastman, Joseph Pattisall, and Zack de la Rocha.