Growing up as a rebellious teenager in the suburbs of Los Angeles, hanging out at gigs and gaining access to the now-legendary bands of the era, Marla Watson is now unleashing her rarely seen hardcore punk photography from the early 1980’s in this new book entitled ‘My Punk Rock Life’.
With over 300 high quality and rarely seen images from the infancy of the hardcore punk scene featuring seminal acts such Black Flag, Minor Threat, The Dead Kennedys, The Misfits, The Damned, Circle Jerks, Bad Religion, The Vandals, Channel 3, The Adicts, Stiff Little Fingers, Shattered Faith, Fear, White Flag, Youth Brigade, Social Distortion, The Angry Samoans, Battalion of Saints, Redd Kross, 7 Seconds, Suicidal Tendencies, Descendents, Bad Brains, Discharge, UK Subs, The Clash, The Varukers, The English Dogs, T.S.O.L, The Lewd, Subhumans, Red Scare, Ill Repute, The Pandoras, The Blades, The Bangs, The Toy Dolls, Sin 34, GBH, The Dickies, DOA, and the list goes on!
These photos have sat in a box, untouched for forty years. Now Marla is sharing her photography with the world in her first book; ‘My Punk Rock Life’.
“A crucial document on the early days of US hardcore!”
“A great archive of that time period. The bands, the people, the venues... everything is so well documented.”
“Marla paints an excellent picture of the SoCal punk scene during the 80s with her photography and anecdotes.”
In the early ‘80s Marla was a journalism major in college, when she met a punk boy on the school paper and the two decided to start a fanzine. Marla owned a camera, so she became the photographer. The pair managed to put out one issue of the Skank Magazine before breaking up, but Marla kept on going to shows and taking pictures.
Marla’s photos have been used on LPs by Minor Threat and Channel 3.