Departures is KCET's hyper-local web documentary, community engagement tool and digital literacy program about the cultural history of Los Angeles' neighborhoods.

ANN SUMMA & JEFF SPURRIER - Journalists

Jeff Spurrier and Ann Summa
Jeff Spurrier and Ann Summa
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1/3: The Roots of L.A. Punk
2/3: The Chinatown Music Wars
3/3: The Punk Ethos

When photographer Ann Summa and journalist Jeff Spurrier arrived in Los Angeles via Tokyo in the early 1980s, they hadn't yet heard of the punk or British invasion trends. Having been covering the music scene for Rolling Stone in Asia, they were ready for a change. They found it in Chinatown's Main Plaza.

What they discovered was "trans-formative" because punk captured the essence of L.A.'s disenfranchised (and ethnic) youth. As Jeff told us during our interview both he and Summa covered the scene - of mostly unsigned bands - for the Los Angeles Times music column for a couple of years, becoming the public eyes and ears of an era and a movement that only now is getting credit. Ann Summa's book on the history of Los Angeles punk, The Beautiful & The Damned , was published in the fall of 2010, and guess who owns the first copy? No other than fashion designer Marc Jacobs.

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