Stage Diving into Sonoma County’s Early Punk Scene

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.2 • 726 Ratings

🗓️ 1 May 2026

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When punk rock thrashed through the Bay Area in the 70s and 80s, there were some venues that became iconic hubs, like Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco and Berkeley’s Gilman street. But in rural Sonoma country, the scene was cobbled together in backyards, barns, and from fields with very long extension cords. Growing up in Santa Rosa, KQED’s arts and culture editor Gabe Meline was both a part of the punk scene and an obsessive collector of its flyers, zines, cassettes and ephemera. He’s now guest curated a new exhibit at the Museum of Sonoma County, Disturbing the Peace: Sonoma County’s Early Punk Underground. We talk to Meline — and check in those in punk scenes of other Bay Area towns — about the music and ethos of punk and why this young DIY movement against authority is so relevant now. Guests: Gabe Meline, senior editor, KQED Arts & Culture Mike Park, owner, Asian Man Records - an independent label based in San Jose; member of the ska-punk band Skankin' Pickle in the 1980s and 90s Matthew Kadi, photographer and drummer. His band Monster Squad started in Vacaville in 1997 and is still playing shows. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:37.3	From KQED.
0:40.1	Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:43.1	Santa Rosa and many of the other towns of Sonoma County are just so pleasant and peaceful.
0:49.0	Beautiful gardens sit in front of cute little houses off quiet streets.
0:52.8	I'm not even talking legit wine country stuff,
0:54.9	just the basic feel of the place. The air is probably always 73 degrees, as it was yesterday,
1:01.2	the exact perfect temperature for a human body. But imagine being a 16-year-old kid in Reagan's
1:07.9	America on these quiet streets. Maybe you know not everything is as it seems behind the
1:13.5	cute doors of the single family homes. Maybe you're different and ostracized. Maybe all the quiet,
1:19.6	leafy cul-de-sacs make you want to play the loudest music you can possibly imagine and just scream.
1:25.0	It is the view through those eyes that we get at a new show at the Museum of
1:29.8	Sonoma County, disturbing the piece Sonoma County's early punk underground. Our own KQED
1:35.1	Arts and Culture editor, Game Balleen, was one of those kids in Santa Rosa, a musician, a zine maker,
	...

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