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DJ Bonebrake

DJ BONEBRAKE
 
 
DJ Bonebrake  (born December 8, 1955) is an American musician from California who first emerged as the drummer of the punk rock band Eyes (also featuring Charlotte Caffey of The Go-Go’s).  He is best known as an original member of and drummer for punk rock band X, of which he is still an active member.  Bonebrake is the only founding member of X from California (whereas the other three are from Illinois, Baltimore, and Tampa), having grown up in the San Fernando Valley.  He has also performed with The Flesheaters, another early L.A. punk band, and was briefly the drummer for The Germs.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 
Drummer DJ Bonebrake also left the Eyes to become the last of the founding members of one of the biggest LA punk bands, X (having a rich sound that could almost be described as post-punk despite their 1977 founding date).  Exene Cervenka was previously a member of the Blackettes; her name – a riff on her real name Christene, with “Ex” replacing “Christ” (a la X-mas) – probably inspired the band’s name.
 
(July 2010)
 
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This is a first-wave punk rock band with an all-star line-up:  Bass player and vocalist Charlotte Caffey later was lead guitarist for the Go-Go’s, while DJ Bonebrake became the drummer for X.   My earlier article on the Eyes mentioned that members of the Go-Go’s had deep roots in the Los Angeles punk rock scene, but I didn’t know the half of it.  I recently picked up an LP called Germicide (oh, yes, they are still making new LP’s – I get them all the time) of the first live concert in June 1977 by the Germs (I also mentioned that band in the article); their first single on What Records?, “Forming” b/w “Sex Boy”  is regarded as the very first punk rock record that was released in LA.  The woman introducing the band at the beginning of the concert was “Belinda”; and sure enough, I was able to pin that down as being Belinda Carlisle, the lead singer of the Go-Go’s.  
 
There are some original singles by the Eyes on YouTube, but the real treat for me was a 2007 reunion at the Masque with a live performance of “Don’t Talk to Me” (though the vocals are not very clear) by the band’s original line-up:  Charlotte Caffey, DJ Bonebrake and Joe Ramirez:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6VYFCf54AA .  Their best known song, “Disneyland” can be heard at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOc2Q42t3k8 . 

(July 2012)
 
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I have written already of several of the first-wave punk rock bands that were formed in the wake of the proto-punk bands that I wrote about in my last post:  the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, the Modern Lovers, MC5, and others.  In fact, one of my early UARB’s was the Eyes; they were one of the first punk bands in Los Angeles and included in their line-up future stars Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s and DJ Bonebrake of X. 
 
(March 2017)