Bob Lee

I remember getting really into Patti Smith in summer of 78, friends of my mom had Radio Ethiopia, and I’d get real into playing it. My first experience with punk up close was the band Regressive Aid who I encountered in spring 1983. They were unclassifiable but very punk in their energy and expression, and they played in my neighborhood. Seeing them with my own eyes was a formative experience. When I started playing, I got Roto toms and big oil cans as percussion, cuz they used them.  My band mates made me get rid of both.

The pursuit of playing music as a lifestyle only ever seemed possible because of punk rock, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to be part of it. And most grateful to the literally hundreds of musical partners I have found since I began that journey, some of whom I still play with today, thirty or more years later. A lot of us had an idea to do something, and this is how we found each other.

My first live punk show was the Patti Smith Group, Passaic NJ, May 1979. My first hardcore gig was Suicidal Tendencies/Ism in early 1985.

I have worked on a New Jersey fanzine Surplus Value in 1983 and Ben is Dead from 1990-91.  Later the online mag LAist and currently I serve as music editor of the Los Angeles Beat. I ran a series of free Sunday concerts for the Los Angeles Beat.

I helped my friends in the group Fearless Leader with their movie Graveyard Rot, but that guy in it isn’t me. He just kinda looks like me. I don’t know why I brought it up.

I was part of the punk rock pen-pal scene. My band once played with Truman’s Water.

These days I am married, living outside of L.A. and working in the medical device industry.