Madame Wong, RIP

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Esther Wong, Godmother of L.A. Punk, was born in Shanghai, fled the commies for Los Angeles, and started booking punk and new wave bands in her Chinatown club as a sixty-something grandmother. She once stopped a Ramones show mid-set to make them clean the graffiti in the club's bathroom. L.A. Times obit here.

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Matt Welch is an editor at large at Reason.

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  1. Nathan

    There’s just something about a 60+ year old woman taking no shit from both the audience and the artists a third her age that cracks me up / warms my heart. Stories of her tape flinging tirades are pretty damn funny, too. She would have made the perfect A&R label rep.

  2. Douglas Fletcher

    I love punk. All those great songs it’s given us, like…and…and…

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