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Joseph Brooks and his boyfriend Henry moved to Northern California in the mids in search of new music and a gay. San Francisco had become a mecca for underground queer performance groups like The Cockettes and Angels of Light. Artists were starting bands, musicians were doing performance art, and gender was fluid.

It all fit loosely under the umbrella of punk. Joseph and Henry bonded that weekend with a group of fans from Los Angeles, who were starting bands, organizing shows, bar up, and opening up shops on a small strip of Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. It was the beginnings of the California punk scene.

I first learned about los Melrose scene while making my Pee-wee Herman documentary which is coming out next angeles. Paul Reubens conceived of his alter ego at The Groundlings improv comedy workshop next door to the iconic punk record store Vinyl Fetish. Today Joseph Brooks is an accomplished jeweler and an avid bird watcher.

When we spoke on the phone recently, I learned how instrumental he and his then boyfriend Henry Peck were in bringing groundbreaking English music to the States. Back inwhen Joseph and Henry were getting into punk, they took a trip to London to meet their favorite musicians— it was as simple as that.

When they returned hustler with a haul of English records, they decided the best way to channel their anglophilia was to open a record store in Los Angeles where the punk scene was taking off. Joseph and Henry couldn't afford a storefront on Melrose, but they found a modest space around the corner on La Brea. In the center of the space, Joseph and Henry hung large plexiglass panels to exhibit the fronts and backs of the handful of rarefied LPs they carried home from England.

They were fittingly fetishized like works of art. At night, Joseph and Henry took down their floating plexiglass displays to make room for film screenings and performances. One notable act was Johanna Went. She would create tableau set pieces with found objects, murmur or scream incomprehensible lyrics, and spout fake blood.

A year after opening Vinyl Fetish, Joseph and Henry still only stocked 50 import records. But when the premiere punk band of the LA scene, Xhad their first record release signing at the store, it became a destination.

The Numbers

Joseph and Henry started inviting then unknown bands from the UK like Cabaret Voltaire and the Psychedelic Furs to do record release events at the store. Eventually English record distributors asked them to host new bands coming through town. When U2 had their record signing at Vinyl Fetish, twenty people showed up.

The owner of an English import clothing shop on Melrose told Joseph and Henry about a vacant storefront across the street, and they signed a lease. Vinyl Fetish finally had enough inventory to be on Melrose, and in the early s, a crop of other punk and new wave businesses started opening on what became a subcultural strip.

Eyeworksand eventually many more. Between classes and performances at The Groundlings, Paul Reubens would wander around Melrose and peruse retro toys at Wacko, hangout with the cool lesbian owners Barbara and Gai of l. Eyeworks, and take stock of the new album art at Vinyl Fetish.

He started to notice record covers and posters that he loved behind the plexiglass displays, all by the same artist named Gary Panter.