Claude Bessy also known as "Kickboy Face," was an iconic founder of the Los Angeles punk

Punk rock

Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...

 scene in the late 1970s.

Biography

Born in Normandy, France, Bessy moved to California in 1973 where he worked as a waiter and founded Angeleno Dread, L.A.'s first reggae

Reggae

Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...

 fanzine

Fanzine

A fanzine is a nonprofessional and nonofficial publication produced by fans of a particular cultural phenomenon for the pleasure of others who share their interest...

. In May 1977 he launched the monthly punk rock magazine Slash

Slash (fanzine)

Slash was a punk rock-related fanzine published in the United States from 1977 to 1980.The magazine was a large-format tabloid focused on the Los Angeles punk scene, though it did not restrict itself to local acts: its first cover featured Dave Vanian of The Damned. It regularly covered such L.A....

, which he edited until it ceased publication in 1980. As Kickboy Face (a pen name adopted from a Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

n dub

Dub music

Dub is a genre of music which grew out of reggae music in the 1960s, and is commonly considered a subgenre, though it has developed to extend beyond the scope of reggae...

 artist), Bessy was the lead singer for the band Catholic Discipline

Catholic Discipline

Catholic Discipline was a short lived Los Angeles punk rock band headed by Slash Fanzine editor Claude Bessy, nicknamed "Kickboy Face", on vocals. The band was started in 1979 and played a series of shows around the Los Angeles area before ultimately breaking up in 1980...

 and featured prominently in the film The Decline of Western Civilization

The Decline of Western Civilization

The soundtrack was released in December 1980 by Slash Records on LP. In the late 1990s it was released on CD as well. It is currently out of print. Germs singer Darby Crash appears on the soundtrack album cover. He died shortly before the film was released, though the promotional images for the...

. Bessy fled the United States in November 1980 because of the U.S. Presidency being awarded to Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....

. He then moved to England where he divided his time between London and Manchester, continuing his work as a music journalist and contributing sleeve notes for releases on the working for Rough Trade

Rough Trade Records

Rough Trade Records is an independent record label based in London. It was formed in 1978 by Geoff Travis who had opened a record store off Ladbroke Grove...

 record label. During his seven years in England, Bessy also worked as a club DJ and VJ

VJ

A video jockey is an announcer who introduces and plays videos on commercial music television such as the United States' MTV, VH1, Fuse TV, non-commercial TVU, Canada's MuchMusic, and Asia's Channel V...

 and produced music videos and films for The Virgin Prunes, The Fall and William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

. In 1987 Bessy moved to Barcelona, Spain where he took to painting and earned a living teaching English. He died of lung cancer in 1999.