The scene was the Hi Hat. One of the most vibrant venues during its short life on York, a must attend space on Highland Park art-walk nights. I don’t remember who was playing, just that it was a punk show because Blaque Chris was DJ’ing between the bands that night. During his set, Blaque Chris spun a track that stood out to me as especially vibrant and danceable, but in that street punk way, like kicking up dirt in the discotheque. I didn’t know the song at the time and went on a long journey trying to find it. Before seeing GBH at Ventura Music Hall though, the planets aligned to tell me the song was Big Women by GBH off their “Leather, Bristles, Studs, and Acne” album.
GBH is quintessential street punk- the exact sound and spirit of the punk genre and look. Songs like Big Women are exemplary of that vibe. Comical, crass, gritty, simple, rhythmic, and too much fun to stop your body from hopping up and down. It took me far too long to see them perform, but finally, I had my punk rock rite of passage on October 17, 2025 by seeing them with Slaughterhouse and Knuckleheadz at Ventura Music Hall.
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Blasting the aforementioned GBH album every minute before the show, I was revved up to see a different side of Ventura County than I was used to. I had attended punk and metal shows in the area before, but GBH brings out a different sort of crowd. One that gravitates toward leather, spikes, mohawks, gender bending, transgression, disruption, and grime. The metalheads that might attend a Cannibal Corpse or Rich Kids on LSD show probably shower and probably don’t have the sort of street glam sensibility that “authentic” punks ought to.
Those sorts of fans were present, and getting to know them throughout the down periods of the show, I came to understand it was their intellect and love of art that separated them from the harder headed hardcore or metal fans. Together, we gathered around the stage of Ventura Music Hall to enjoy the evening’s first band, Knuckleheadz.
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Knuckleheadz are slowly but surely becoming institutional Los Angeles punk rock. Hailing from Whittier, this gang in green balances the brute strength and masculinity that might come with street fighting with the femininity and erasure of roles that are essential to true punk’s DNA.
With dueling vocalists, they shriek and chug their way through heavy punk rock sounds that get fans to mosh with violent abandon. Some notable moments of their set included one fan crowdsurfing through the venue on a boogie board, their rendition of Punks Don’t Cry, a cover of The Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry, and Fuck McDonald’s, a song they wrote to destroy a McDonald’s they stormed and played at a few months prior. Knuckleheadz lived up to the hype. Much of my experience with them was seeing the singer, Knucklehead Tom’s antics on social media. Now though, I wholeheartedly approve of him as a spokesperson for Los Angeles punk rock.
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Slaughterhouse was direct support for GBH on this tour, and on this show, their regular singer was absent and had a pretty decent fill in who knew all the songs and knew her way around a punk stage with the proper frontwoman moves. Still, I could sense some kind of missing essence and couldn’t connect with the songs, so I used their set to mingle with the punks and get the scoop on their tastes in Ventura rock music. They noted the last time GBH came to town the crowd was much bigger, even though The Exploited were playing at The Majestic on the same night.
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Trying to find my friends throughout the show, I wound up side by side with Adicts-singer Monkey, discussing up and coming international punk bands like cumbia punks Son Rompe Pera. Punks never fail to blend sophistication with rawness, seeking the most niche musical subgenres around the world while desiring those artists to tear shit up like they were playing a hometown basement show.
The moment GBH hit the stage, they put on a clinic of what it means to be street punk. Raw, fast, simple, speedy, and real. The guitars, bass, and drums blazed through every song without a second’s hesitation. The music just kept pushing the audience to the end of the night, pogoing all the way as the crudely written lyrics and arrangements tickled every punk’s nervous need for easy entertainment.
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Hailing from Birmingham, England, just like Black Sabbath, the same sort of grit that carried the original heavy metal band through four decades of music did just the same for GBH. The lasting ability of punk isn’t just a product of their music’s catchiness or accessibility. It also has everything to do with the resilience of artists that lived on the rough side of the tracks, fighting every day to survive by playing shows for little money. The music of GBH doesn’t just embody that spirit, it keeps it living on, giving punks music that could bring a smile to their faces no matter how rotten their lives have gotten.
GBH’s resilience is something Ventura can align and connect with. As the world changes, Ventura retains its identity against the hipsterizing forces seeking to make anything too weird obsolete. Its small businesses and rows of antique stores may not be for everyone, but fuck everyone. Ventura is for its community. We don’t need change. We need the courage to be punk.
Words by Rob Shepyer
Photos by Jessica Moncrief
