Martin Wong is one hell of an inspiring daddly dude ("daddly" is a new word and you know exactly what it means)! Martin is trying to save the music program at his daughter's elementary school with the help of downtown LA's punk scene. It's a wild idea, so we'll let Martin explain it:
"Save Music in Chinatown began when my daughter started attending kindergarten at Castelar Elementary in L.A.'s Chinatown. It's totally an inner city school that looks like a prison but we love the teachers, the kids, and the fact that Eloise can learn Mandarin in a dual-language program. In the first week, we received a flyer saying that the music program had been defunded, asking if parents could help foot the $50 thousand cost. Crap! The neighborhood is very blue collar and mostly immigrants. There's no way we could come up with that type of dough.
Then my wife and I thought about it. The neighborhood has a strong art gallery scene and history of punk rock that can't be beat. Those cultures don't intersect with the residents much, but of course they'd help the kids if they could. So we came up the idea of having DIY punk matinees in art galleries to raise money. In our first year, we had three shows with the likes of Bob Forrest from Thelonious Monster, Channel Three, Hector Penalosa from The Zeros, Money Mark, The Chuck Dukowski Sextet, California…
We're having our first show of the school year Sun Oct 19th here's the lineup:
The Bicycle Thief - Bob Forrest and Josh Klinghoffer from Dot Hacker and the Chili Peppers playing their first L.A. show in 13 years.
Evil Hearted You - Brand-new band with ties to Los Lobos. This is their second show after being invited to play X's Make The Music Go Bang! fest.
My Revenge - Hector Penalosa's new band all the way from San Diego with garage, power pop, and punk edges.
Did I mention there's a bake sale with cookies, cupcakes, and coffee? And a killer raffle with signed artwork, records, gift certificates, and more?"
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