, PA and raised in Harrisburg

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Harrisburg is the capital of Pennsylvania. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 49,528, making it the ninth largest city in Pennsylvania...

, PA) is an American writer, mostly known as songwriter, guitarist and singer for the proto-punk band Crime

Crime (band)

Crime was an early American punk band from San Francisco. The band was formed in 1976 by Johnny Strike , Frankie Fix , Ron "The Ripper" Greco , and Ricky Tractor...

 based in San Francisco.

Songwriter and Musician

In 1973 Strike approached high school pal Marc D'Agostino aka Frankie Fix and sold him on forming a rock 'n roll band. They learned a few chords and began rehearsing together with cheap guitars. In 1976 going by the name Crime their self-produced single became the West Coast's first punk record: "Hot Wire My Heart" / "Baby You're So Repulsive". The following year they self-released "Murder by Guitar" / "Frustration".

In 1977 they began wearing police uniforms and putting on their own shows at a Filipino supper club in North Beach called the Mabuhay Gardens

Mabuhay Gardens

The Mabuhay Gardens was a San Francisco nightclub located at , on the Broadway strip of North Beach, an area best known for its strip clubs....

 prompting mentions in Herb Caen's column. The band ended this period in 1979 with a show inside San Quentin Prison

San Quentin State Prison

San Quentin State Prison is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men in unincorporated San Quentin, Marin County, California, United States. Opened in July 1852, it is the oldest prison in the state. California's only death row for male inmates, the largest...

. A bootleg was later released by Target Video

Target Video

Target Video is a San Francisco-based studio, founded by artist Joe Rees, who collaborating with Jackie Sharp, Jill Hoffman, Sam Edwards and others, archived early art performance, punk and hardcore bands on video and film. Performers and artists as diverse as the Sex Pistols, the Dead Kennedys,...

, and a final single in 1980 "Maserati" / "Gangster Funk" was released by Berkeley Square Records. In 1983, Strike was experimenting with Joey D'Kaye aka Joey Swails in a synthesizer project called Vector Command. In 1987 Sonic Youth covered "Hot Wire My Heart" on their LP Sister

Sister (Sonic Youth album)

Sister is the fourth album by alternative rock band Sonic Youth, released in 1987 on SST Records. It was re-released in late 1994 on DGC.The album furthers the band's move away from noise rock towards more traditional pop structures, while maintaining an aggressively experimental approach. It...

. Spirit Records reissued the first single with liner notes by Thurston Moore in 1991 and Solar Lodge released an LP/CD, San Francisco's Doomed from demo recordings from 1979.

In 2003, Strike recorded with Jimmy Crucifix and Biff O'Hara in a group called TVH and a CD was released by Flapping Jet Records.

San Francisco's Still Doomed was a re-mastered version of the Crime album and released by Swami Records

Swami Records

Swami Records is a San Diego based independent record label specializing in punk rock, indie rock and garage rock that was founded in 2000 by John Reis...

 in 2004. In 2005, Crime reformed in time to headline the Road to Ruin punk festival in Rome.

Johnny Strike, Hank Rank aka Henry Rosenthal, Count Fink aka Brett Stillos and Mickey Tractor aka Michael Lucas went on to record an LP, Exalted Masters in 2007, and three years later F.Y.B.S. Records released their 7", "Extortion".

Writer

Headpress published Strike's first novel in 2004, Ports of Hell, with a blurb by 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...

.

Strike also interviewed Paul Bowles

Paul Bowles

Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...

, Mohamed Choukri

Mohamed Choukri

Mohamed Choukri , born on July 15, 1935 and died on November 15, 2003, was a Moroccan author and novelist who is best known for his internationally acclaimed autobiography For Bread Alone , which was described by the American playwright Tennessee Williams as 'A true document of human desperation,...

, Herbert Huncke

Herbert Huncke

Herbert Edwin Huncke was a writer and poet, and active participant in a number of emerging cultural, social and aesthetic movements of the 20th century in America...

 and traveled, with extended stays in Morocco, Mexico, and Thailand where he set his fiction.

His writing has appeared in Ambit

Ambit (magazine)

Ambit is a literary periodical published in the United Kingdom. It was founded in 1959 by Dr Martin Bax, a London paediatrician.Uniting art, prose, poetry and reviews, the magazine appears quarterly and is distributed internationally. Notable Ambit contributors have included J. G. Ballard, Eduardo...

magazine and Headpress Journal, and in 2008, with artist Richard Sala

Richard Sala

Richard Sala is an American cartoonist, illustrator, and comic book creator with a unique expressionistic style whose books often combine elements of mystery, horror and whimsy.-Biography:...

providing illustrations, Rudos and Rubes published his short story collection: A Loud Humming Sound Came From Above.

The prose and music came together in Remote Viewer, a splinter group featuring members of Crime backing Strike in what is sometimes called lit punk.

External links

• Rudos and Rubes
• An oral history of Crime
• Crime Radio
• Amoeblog
•  Murder by Guitar