Taquila Mockingbird: The Queen Behind the Scene

A young Taquila Mockingbird

This is the only interview I've ever done that left me wanting to ask so many more questions. Taquila Mockingbird is a Rennaissance woman of sorts and when I found out about her for the first time last year, I'd never felt so excited and so annoyed at the same time. I was elated to find out about a black rocker from the early days of LA punk who had done so much for the scene but also pissed because she's been obscured by history, the way that many women and people of color often are. Taquila's earliest involvement with punk was as a scenester, befriending the New York Dolls and The Sex Pistols during the 1970s. She later worked as the music supervisor for New Wave Theater, a late-night punk variety show that aired in LA in the 1980s and was later nationally syndicated, featuring bands like The Circle Jerks, Black Flag, The Go-Gos, Fear, 45 Grave, Suburban Lawns and many, many more. Taquila booked live shows, worked as Nina Hagen's backup singer and manager, continues to write for various publication, ran her own magazine, has a background as an actress and model, and is a singer/performer who continues to gig weekly at various locations in LA. The list goes on & on. She started The Punk Museum in Hollywood a year ago in keeping with her promise to Darby Crash before he died to keep punk alive. I relate to Taquila as a busybody and a black punk and felt lucky to have the chance to sit down and talk to her for this interview.

Note: I've gotten feedback more than once that Brendan Mullen's portrayal in this interview is grossly inaccurate. See Shotgun Seamstress zine #8 (available in print April 2015) for clarification.

(Published MRR #363 in August, and Fix My Head #4)

[We were chatting a bit before the recorder was going. This is where the interview begins on the tape...]

TM: I started with New Wave Theater, so that was 1980-1983.

MRR: Was that your first punk related thing that you did?
TM: No, I was actually friends with the New York Dolls back in 1973-74, so by then I was already on the path to hell. [laughs]

MRR: So, I read We've Got the Neutron Bomb a while back and don't remember you being mentioned.

TM: Well, I was Brendan Mullen's [founder of punk club The Masque] direct competition and he just decided that black people had no place in punk.

MRR: Did he ever say that to you explicitly or was it just his attitude?

Taquila Mockingbird and Ger-I Lewis

TM: Um, at the end of his life, he said to me, “Why did you do it?” and I said, “Do what?” and he said, “Why did you have to book punk acts? I could've been all by myself. I could've been the only one.” See, he did The Masque. I was at King's Palace. That was my first night club. Brendan booked for the place once and they didn't like it and they put him out. It was a black guy who owned the place and he wanted me to do the same thing, which I was already doing, but he wanted to make it more concentrated, so that it would be our people, not their people. So, it became exclusively white.

 MRR: Well, first of all, what do you mean by our people instead of their people? Black people instead of white people?

TM: When I say my people, I don't mean black people, I mean people that are outsiders. I don't subscribe to the whole “We're all black, we're all in one club together” mentality.

MRR: Okay, so tell me more about how and why the scenes got segregated and Brendan's role in that.

TM: The owner of King's Palace was a black pimp. Before punk, they mostly booked disco acts. Brendan was the first to bring punks to that club and then I came in and he moved over to The Masque. But The Masque was like... I didn't wanna go in because a friend of mine was The Masque's janitor and we would go in there the morning after shows and find syringes and puke everywhere. Brendan denied it, but I saw it. It was just a place I never wanted to go to. Carla [Maddog, drummer for The Controllers] was the only black person who ever went in there.

MRR: So, the atmosphere of The Masque was alienating?

TM: Yes, but also because Brendan Mullen was only interested in exploiting punk for profit. The Masque was initially a practice space and he started having punk shows there when he realized he could make money off of it. See, the first five years [of punk] we were united. Then came people like Brendan who wanted to make punk an exclusive club. The best part of punk was hanging out and finding other outsiders. The worst part of punk was “Who is punker than who?” And racism definitely was a part of that because people became concerned with presenting a marketable image of punk. I don't think Johnny Rotten thought about [punk] that way. He thought punk should be open to all outsiders. But people like Brendan changed that. They got what they wanted, they capitalized on it and also made it an exclusive club.

MRR: What about the Latino punk scene in East LA?

TM: Everybody was a clique. I mean, you had to be with your own gang, wherever it was.

MRR: What was the name of that one club, in East LA where a lot of the Latino punk bands played?

TM: The Vex?

MRR: Yeah.

TM: Yeah, I'm not really associated, but we're all friends. It's not a beauty contest or a competition, but everyone seems to treat it that way in this town. Everybody's punker than thou and I don't really go for that sort of thing. So, I just ignore everybody and do my own thing.

MRR: Do you want to talk to me more about what you've done over the years, because I'm pretty impressed with the scope of it.

TM: Well, I'm an actress so I've been in tons of movies. I was an extra. Lots of us underground kids didn't have any other way to make a living so we were extras in movies playing punkers. That was kind of how I made my living most of the time. I wrote for a lot of magazines. I was a high fashion model in Boston and I ran away from all of that to be a punk rocker.

MRR: When I found out about you, it was because you were credited as a writer for Flipside magazine.

TM: Really? Well, they only ever got two articles out of me. At this point, I've done so many things, I could be known for just about any of them.

MRR: So, you run the Punk Rock Museum, and I've heard you talk about how that came to be, but for the purposes of this interview, do you want to say why you did it?

TM: I did it because I totally loved all of my friends and I watched them, you know, grow up in this culture and I thought the culture would get lost if we didn't preserve it and start talking about it, and make an attempt to nail down locations where it could be seen and shown and appreciated. I think people ignore their youths. They try to put it away in a box and forget about it, but I think punk rock should still be talked about.

Taquila has always been a performer,
as well as a show booker.

MRR: With the way you're talking about punk, do you see it as this thing that existed at a certain time in the past, or do you see it as this thing that still exists?

TM: I see it everyday. I know there's a future of thought where you're still rebellious against the plastic bullshit they're trying to shove down your throat in America. Because basically, all they want you to do is consume, consume, consume and they want you to buy their clothes and their cars and they don't care about the music, they just use it as commercials. And they'll squash anyone who doesn't want to be a part of their commercials. That's how I see American culture.

MRR: So, if you see punk as this thing that's still happening, then why did you feel the need to preserve it in museum form? Is it that you just want to preserve the earlier days of punk?

TM: Well, now it's being done to death. It's a formula and everyone's just using the formula. I like looking for new things. I think what we did in the beginning was really strong and we meant every word we said and we had a good time doing it. But I think now, pretty much, people are complaining about their cell phone bills and gasoline prices and it really doesn't apply to what punk actually is. Punk is about being an individual and an individual who's against the system. Anything less, like trying to buy in and get a record deal means you're not fucking punk. That's it.

MRR: So, you see people using the aesthetic of it but not representing punk values?

TM: I'm glad that they know how to go to the store and shop at Hot Topic. We made everything ourselves.

MRR: The Punk Rock Museum has hosted various exhibits & performances by folks like Alice Bag, Rick Agnew, and Lydia Lunch. What's happening at the Punk Museum now?

TM: There's nothing on the walls right now because we're putting up a big show on March 1^st of Miripolsky. His work is all really whimsical and happy. I've known him for thirty years... Well, I met him in '79 when I was working at another art gallery called The Zero, which was the first underground art gallery in LA, the first punk art gallery. I used to put him on New Wave Theater back in the early 80s.

MRR: And you're writing an autobiography?

TM: Yes, it's going to be five volumes, about 1500 pages, all about rock'n'roll, my life, the museum.... It'll be full of pictures, and writings. Out this summer on Transparency Press.

The Punk Museum
http://www.lapunkmuseum.com/

Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/tmockingbird