Shawna’s Blog

I was very sad to hear of the passing of punk and fellow promoter/writer Brendan Mullen on Tuesday. He founded the Masque club in LA, spawning grounds for numerous bands; he also authored We Got the Neutron Bomb, Lexicon Devil and Live at the Masque. I grew up in DC, highly influenced by 80s hardcore, with my husband a few years younger and very involved in the 90s wave. Two decades older than us, Brendan never gave us any of that “older-school-than-you” attitude when we met him while living in LA. He always treated us as part of the tribe, despite our age and coast-affiliation. Curmudgeonly, funny, and bright, he was a punk rocker through and through. I last saw him in 2007, when I had a gig interviewing people on camera at the Masque reunion show in Los Angeles. His passing reminds me that we are the best documentarians of our own scene, and that we will not live forever. This inspires me to get to work on getting my own punk book out there. I think Brendan would dig that.