Punkast

“Because it was a do-it-yourself thing where we just rejected the norm and did our own thing.” In Part 2 of the Women in Punk panel, recorded live at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles as part of Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50, Jessica Schwartz continues the conversation with Pleasant Gehman, Jula Bell Liebi, and Tequila Mockingbird, with additional contributions from Cloudia Wintermute of Die Schlaflosen (Sleepless) and Stella Stray Pop of KXLU. Moving through stories of music, friendship, touring, and artistic influences, the participants reflect on the relationships and creative encounters that shaped their experiences of punk.The conversation turns toward women’s experiences in bands, the artists who inspired them, and the ongoing work of making things. From Bowie, Exene Cervenka, Chrissie Hynde, Nina Hagen, and Lydia Lunch to stories of touring, performing, writing, dancing, and recording, the panelists consider what punk made possible and how those experiences continue to inform their creative lives. Tequila discusses Punk School and her work preserving punk histories, while the conversation opens onto the possibilities of contemporary tools for independent music-making.As the discussion moves toward archives, ephemera, and intergenerational exchange, the panelists reflect on what they saved, what they learned, and what younger artists are making possible today. Stella Stray Pop joins the conversation near its conclusion, sharing memories of KXLU, independent radio, and the freedom to play music outside commercial formats. Collectively, these stories return to punk as an ongoing practice of creativity, community, and doing things for oneself—together.“Women in Punk” is part of Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50, a project of the Goethe-Institutes in the United States and Mexico marking the 50th anniversary of punk through a series of exhibitions, concerts, film screenings, and discussions that focus on punk as a subculture, protest movement, and catalyst for self-determination.Featuring:Tequila MockingbirdJula Bell LiebiPleasant GehmanAdditional participants:Cloudia Wintermute — Die Schlaflosen / Sleepless Stella Stray Pop — KXLU 88.9 FM Los AngelesModerated by Jessica Schwartz.Introduced by Luisa Rath-John, Director, Goethe-Institut Los Angeles (Part 1).Recorded live at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles, September 2026.Links + References:Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50Women in Punk — Goethe-Institut Los AngelesStray Pop — KXLU / SpinitronDie Schlaflosen / Sleepless — Official WebsiteCredits:Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.Editorial support: Arrow Menendez– audio editing and audio-synced transcript.Panel photograph by Gary Leonard @tmpgaryleonard.Transcript:Audio-synced transcriptTheme Music:Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.Related:Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast. About Punkast:Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.Connect with Punkast:SpotifyInstagram: punkastuclaEmail: punkastucla@gmail.comStay tapped in. New episodes every Friday.

“It changed everything. All sorts of different art came out of it—the people that made the flyers, the people that wrote the fanzines, not just the bands.”Recorded live at the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles as part of Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50, Jessica Schwartz moderates a Women in Punk conversation with Jula Bell Liebi, Pleasant Gehman, and Tequila Mockingbird. Following an introduction by Goethe-Institut Los Angeles director Luisa Rath-John and an archival clip from Tequila's collection, the panel begins with memory: what remains when the people, places, images, and absurdities of an earlier punk scene are encountered decades later.Moving through freedom, surveillance, silliness, anger, friendship, nightlife, touring, fashion, film, clubs, shared houses, and the informal networks through which people found one another, the panelists remember punk less as a fixed genre than as a social world. Their stories foreground the creative practices surrounding bands—from flyers and fanzines to performance, writing, casting, clothing, and art—and the forms of mutual recognition and support through which scenes traveled well beyond Los Angeles.The conversation repeatedly returns to women’s experiences within those worlds: what early punk made possible, what remained difficult, and how women built friendships and creative lives alongside one another. Rather than offering a tidy history of “women in punk,” Part 1 unfolds through stories—ridiculous, intimate, sometimes unruly accounts of finding one another, making things, getting by, and learning how to become comfortable in one’s own skin.“Women in Punk” is part of Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50, a project of the Goethe-Institutes in the United States and Mexico marking the 50th anniversary of punk through a series of exhibitions, concerts, film screenings, and discussions that focus on punk as a subculture, protest movement, and catalyst for self-determination. Featuring:Tequila MockingbirdJula Bell LiebiPleasant GehmanModerated by Jessica Schwartz.Introduced by Luisa Rath-John, Director, Goethe-Institut Los Angeles.Recorded September 2026.Archival media:Excerpts from Tequila TV, courtesy of the Tequila Mockingbird L.A. Punk Museum Collection, UCLA Library Special Collections Punk Archive.Links + References:Discussion : Women in Punk @ Tequila Mockingbird's Punk Museum - Goethe-Institut USAGoethe-Institut USA | Credits:Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.Editorial support: Arrow Menendez– audio editing and audio-synced transcript.Panel photograph by Gary Leonard @tmpgaryleonard.Transcript:Audio-synced transcriptTheme Music:Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.Related:Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast.About Punkast:Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.Connect with Punkast:SpotifyInstagram: punkastuclaEmail: punkastucla@gmail.comStay tapped in. New episodes every Friday.

“Sometimes it’s actually quite okay to let go of this control … and to trust in the process and to trust in the people that you’re working with.”Jessica Schwartz speaks with Goethe-Institut Los Angeles director Luisa Rath-John and Ilka Erren Pardiñas about the making of Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50, a transatlantic collaborative project exploring punk’s continuing relationships to subculture, protest, and self-determination through locally rooted programs across the United States and Mexico.The conversation moves across the project’s transatlantic structure: Berlin band CAVA’s tour through the United States and Mexico, different regional approaches to punk history and contemporary practice, DIY as a connective principle, multilingual exchange, and the challenge of recognizing punk’s history without falling into what Jessica calls a “nostalgia trap.” Luisa and Ilka describe the deliberate effort to bring younger artists, women, queer communities, and contemporary creative practices into a project concerned not simply with where punk has been, but with what punk can mean now.Turning to Los Angeles and Tequila Mockingbird’s Punk Museum, Luisa and Ilka reflect on what the institution itself learned through the collaboration. As objects and contributors continued to arrive during installation, a planned exhibition became more fluid and community-built: walls filled through collective participation, and institutional expectations around advance planning and curatorial control gave way to trust in Tequila’s process and the people who brought the museum into being. The conversation closes by considering the relationships, collaborations, and possibilities that might continue beyond Punk@50 itself. Luisa Rath-John is Director of the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles. She joined the Goethe-Institut in 2017 and previously served as Regional Director for Cultural Programming at the Goethe-Institut Prague before taking up her Los Angeles directorship in 2024. Growing up in East Germany, she encountered punk as part of the youth culture around her and describes her connection to punk as personal.Ilka Erren Pardiñas is a Los Angeles–based publicist, music-industry professional, and founder of the independent publicity firm Fly PR. Her work spans music and entertainment, books and publishing, tour promotion, community organizations and events, and industry mentoring and consulting. For Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50, she brings more than three decades of music-industry experience and her longstanding involvement in punk to the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles project. Recorded September 2026.Links + References:Main Alle gegenAlles. Punk@50 project pageGoethe on Demand — Gegenüber - Alle gegen Alles: Punk@50Punk@50 Everyone against everything - Gegenüber - Goethe-InstitutNeighborhood Interpretive Center – entire project plus short info on Survive, Thrive or Die: LA Punk and The Poor Kids on LSD Goethe-Institut USA | Los AngelesTequila Mockingbird's Punk MuseumGerman Currents Film FestivalIG: Goethe Institut LACredits:Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.Editorial support: Arrow Menendez– audio-synced transcript.Transcript:Audio-synced transcriptTheme Music:Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.Related:Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast. About Punkast:Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.Connect with Punkast:SpotifyInstagram: punkastuclaEmail: punkastucla@gmail.comStay tapped in. New episodes every Friday.

“For me, it’s always going to be about making sure that our legacies are honored and protected.”Tequila Mockingbird joins Jessica Schwartz for a conversation about bringing her Punk Museum into the Goethe-Institut Los Angeles as part of Alle gegen Alles. Punk@50. Tequila traces the relationships that brought the collaboration into being and reflects on what institutional recognition means for a project she continues to describe not as her museum but as “our punk museum”—a community-built space shaped through the objects, artworks, memories, and stories people entrust to one another.Moving through art, ephemera, music, friendship, Punk School, and her own approach to historical preservation, Tequila considers what happens when punk’s DIY practices enter institutional spaces. Rather than treating punk as a fixed collection of relics, she describes the museum as a living “show and tell”: artists and friends bring their own materials, tell the histories attached to them, and collectively build a record of a scene that was never made by one person alone. The conversation also turns toward punk as a way of thinking—one grounded, for Tequila, in learning to say no, thinking for oneself, and preserving histories for future generations. Looking beyond the current exhibition, she reflects on Punk School, books and film projects, archives, and her commitment to building a “time capsule” whose materials can remain accessible and cared for long after the present moment.Tequila Mockingbird is an artist, journalist, producer, curator, and cultural archivist whose work has documented and preserved Los Angeles underground music and art for decades. A seminal figure in the Los Angeles punk scene, she is the founder of the Punk Museum, an immersive, community-centered project dedicated to punk history, and Punk School, an educational platform focused on punk’s histories, practices, and values. Her work across television, music, journalism, visual art, archives, and public pedagogy connects the lived histories of early Los Angeles punk with contemporary approaches to preservation and scholarship.Recorded September 2026.Links + References:Tequila Mockingbird's Punk Museum (at the Goethe Institut)Punk SchoolTequila Mockingbird L.A. Punk Museum Collection — UCLA Library Special CollectionsMain Alle gegenAlles. Punk@50 project pageThe Year Was: 1982 — Tequila Mockingbird + Annett Scheffel / dublabIG: Tequila MockingbirdIG: Goethe Institut LACredits:Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.Editorial support: Arrow Menedez - audio-synced transcript.Transcript:Audio-synced transcriptTheme Music:Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.Related:Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast. About Punkast:Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.Connect with Punkast:SpotifyInstagram: punkastuclaEmail: punkastucla@gmail.comStay tapped in. New episodes every Friday.

In this episode:“Radio…really is a labor of love.”Jessica Schwartz and Tequila Mockingbird sit down with Stella of KXLU’s Stray Pop for a conversation spanning nearly five decades of independent radio, punk, and underground music in Los Angeles. Stella traces her beginnings at Loyola Marymount University in 1977 and the launch of Stray Pop in 1980, when playing punk and new wave on KXLU could still get her in trouble. From D. Boon singing an impromptu fundraiser song in the studio to the changing cultural status of music once treated as threatening or disposable, Stella reflects on what it means to remain behind the same microphone while both punk and Los Angeles change around her.The conversation moves through radio as vocation and “punk rock salvation,” the mainstreaming and commercialization of punk, Janet Cunningham’s punk casting archive, and the musicians, artists, DJs, record stores, clubs, and neighborhoods that formed Stella’s Los Angeles. Along the way, Stella considers what the city has forgotten, how underground culture moves into institutions and everyday life, and why punk remains less a fixed musical genre than an attitude—something she recognizes through a visceral response to music rather than a formula for what it should sound like.At the center of the episode is Stella’s practice of radio itself: hauling physical music into the station, annotating CDs and playlists, improvising connections live on air, and navigating the increasingly elaborate relationship between analog collections and digital systems. From reel-to-reel tapes and paper playlists to smartphones, streaming, automation, and algorithms, Stella reflects on the labor, accidents, memory, and intuition behind Stray Pop’s “eclectic disarray”—and on what live radio can still offer that an algorithmically generated playlist cannot.Stella has been part of KXLU 88.9 FM since 1977 and has hosted Stray Pop since February 5, 1980. Her decades in Los Angeles underground music also include work as an L.A. correspondent for ZigZag magazine and as a senior editor at RIP magazine. Drawing on a vast personal collection and archive, Stella continues to broadcast Stray Pop live from KXLU, where her self-described “eclectic disarray” moves across punk and far beyond it. Recorded September 2026.Links + References:Stray PopFridays 11 PM–3 AM (Pacific Time) – LIVEMondays 2–6 AM (Pacific Time) – encores from the Stray Pop archivesKXLU 88.9 FM Los AngelesLive stream: https://www.KXLU.comSpinitron playlists: https://spinitron.com/KXLU/show/190234/Stray-PopListen to recent Stray Pop broadcasts:Recent episodes remain available to stream for two weeks after broadcast. Select a playlist with the speaker icon. Because the show crosses midnight, the first hour appears under Friday’s date and the remaining three hours under Saturday’s date.Social MediaFacebook: http://www.facebook.com/stella.kxluInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/stella_kxlu/ Threads: https://www.threads.net/@stella_kxluX (Twitter): https://twitter.com/StellaKXLU TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@stella_kxluBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/stellakxlu.bsky.socialCredits:Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.Co-hosted and guest produced by Tequila Mockingbird.Photo Credit: Cathy MetcalfTranscript:Audio-synced transcriptTheme Music:Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.Related:Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast. About Punkast:Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.Connect with Punkast:SpotifyInstagram: punkastuclaEmail: punkastucla@gmail.comStay tapped in. New episodes every Friday.

In this episode:We need to respect the scene and shine a spotlight on folks who were, in fact, laying the foundation.Jessica Schwartz speaks with art historians Marie Arleth Skov and Maria Buszek about Unruly: The Body in Punk, curated by Marie and currently on view at ARoS in Aarhus, Denmark. Taking the exhibition and its catalogue as a starting point, they ask what becomes visible when the body moves to the center of punk history—exploring unruliness, feminism, sexuality, beauty and ugliness, movement, vulnerability, and the many ways bodies refuse expectations about how they should look, behave, and belong.The conversation considers women’s often-marginalized contributions to punk histories and moves beyond familiar musicians and canonical figures toward what Maria describes through Brian Eno’s concept of “scenius”: the collective creativity of scenes, including fans, artists, photographers, designers, organizers, and others whose everyday practices helped make punk possible. Marie and Maria also reflect on the productive tensions involved in bringing punk into museums and art history without freezing, sanitizing, or separating it from the communities and forms of resistance from which it emerged.Moving through sexuality, feminist histories, disability, institutionalization, collective spaces, and embodied forms of resistance and care, the conversation ultimately turns toward vulnerability and joy. Marie and Maria consider how punk bodies can be aggressive, sexual, ugly, intimate, soft, frightened, joyful, or deliberately difficult—and how showing vulnerability itself can become an unruly act, sustained through communities in which people protect and create alongside one another. Marie Arleth Skov is a Danish art historian, curator, and author based in Berlin. She is the author of Punk Art History: Artworks from the European No Future Generation (Intellect Books, 2023) and has curated several exhibitions, most recently Unruly: The Body in Punk at ARoS Art Museum in Aarhus, Denmark. The accompanying catalogue was published by Marrow Press in 2026.Maria Buszek is Professor of Art History at the University of Colorado Denver and an independent curator whose research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary art and design. She is the author of Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture and has written extensively on feminism, craft, art, and punk, including contributions to Punkademics and Punk & Post-Punk Journal, where she is an Associate Editor. Her current book project, Punk Feminisms: No Style But Strength, explores the relationships among feminist art, activism, and punk scenes in the 1970s and early 1980s.Recorded September 2026.Links + References:MarieUnruly - The Body in Punk Marrow Press – UNRULY. The Body in Punk – Marie Arleth Skov Instagram Mariamariabuszek.com InstagramFurther links/collabs: Punk Scholars Network International: Instagram Marrow Press: Instagram Credits:Punkast is hosted and produced by Jessica Schwartz.Editorial support: Arrow Menendez - audio editing and audio-synced transcript.Transcript:Audio-synced transcriptTheme Music:Lady Bits, "Bitch-a-thon," Lady Bits.Related:Jessica Schwartz co-hosts the Punk Scholars Podcast. About Punkast:Punkast is a weekly podcast exploring punk in the historical present through critical conversations, inquiry, and collaboration.Connect with Punkast:SpotifyInstagram: punkastuclaStay tapped in. New episodes every Friday.