The Brat backstage at the Starwood in Hollywood in 1981
The Brat backstage at the Starwood, 1981. Photo courtesy of Eddie Gonzalez, via the Claremont Courier.

Before social media, a handmade flyer could carry an entire music scene. The “Rudy Brat Archive” brought those pieces of East Los Angeles punk history into Pitzer College’s Kallick Family Gallery, giving materials once treated as disposable a place in the cultural record.

In the Claremont Courier, writer Mick Rhodes reported on more than 40 flyers, photographs and other items preserved by Rudy Medina, a founding member of The Brat. The band formed in East L.A. in 1978 and released its five-song “Attitudes” EP in 1980.

Medina’s collection connects the performances to the people and places that made them possible. Alongside the music, these objects preserve the scene’s homemade visual language and its community networks.

The exhibition was advertised through October 17 and has ended. Its larger story remains relevant: saving a flyer or photograph can help keep a community’s creative history from disappearing.

Read the original article: “Seminal Chicano punk rock art, ephemera on view at Pitzer,” by Mick Rhodes, Claremont Courier. Additional source: Pitzer College’s exhibition listing. See the Courier’s original Instagram post.

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