OC SUPER SHOW Ska Drama from all this Punk in the Park Brew ha ha, Two Faces of Cameron Collins
Aquabats at Lucky Punks—all photos © dickslaughter.com
Well, it doesn’t seem to be getting any better for Brew Ha Ha founder Cameron Collins. The Punk in the Park shows have been canceled, and his ska-themed OC Super Show is still set to proceed as scheduled without its headliner, The Aquabats, who dropped out last week. Following that, Fenix TX also exited the lineup, and now there is allegedly a protest scheduled inside or at the entrance of the Great Park in Irvine, CA, during the OC Super Show festival on Saint Patrick’s Day. According to the flyer, which may or may not be real, it is a Trump/ICE protest, although I do not believe either of them are playing.
Could it get worse? Well, yes, of course it can—not just for Mr. Collins but for anyone remotely involved.
Why and how has this South Orange County, CA American success story gone from “Lucky Punk” to the Judas of live music? And why is everyone so pissed off at Mr. Collins? Those are complicated questions.
Start with the bands. This all sucks for them. There are, I think, three basic scenarios. The Brew Ha Ha shows were great for bands. They are big, fun events, and they paid well, which is extremely rare and important, especially for groups out on tour. The opportunities these shows created were also significant, because one show often leads to another.
But now, even bands that have never claimed any political affiliation, or who have their own views but prefer to keep them to themselves, have learned that the hassle of dealing with the blowback that comes with being associated with Mr. Collins is like throwing chum to sharks on their social media.
Take the headliner, The Aquabats. California ska legends They’re a really fun spectacle of a band that brings a lot of kids to the show. I think they are from outer space or something. I am not totally familiar with their dogma; they may possibly report to some sort of intergalactic coalition or are one themselves.
Both The Aquabats bowed out without talking shit, along with Fenix TX. Both bands probably lost money and certainly took on stress over something they most likely had little control over and very possibly had no idea of.
Some bands, like Orange County’s own Save Ferris (who had a hit here in the States with their cover of the Dexys Midnight Runners song “Come On Eileen” and who have made it clear in the past that they prefer to keep their politics out of the public eye), find themselves caught in the middle of it.
In a post to the Save Ferris Instagram before the current Punk in the Park OC Super Show Brew Ha Ha controversy shown above, Monique Powell stated, “I don’t take a political stance publicly. I am very self-aware and well-read when it comes to, you know, the state of politics, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, but I don’t take a public stance because I feel like music is one uniting force that can bring people together. Regardless of who you know we vote for or dot dot dot dot dot.” To hear the rest, the link is above.
But after confirming the band would play the festival and make a $1,000 donation to charity, the gesture did not seem to be appreciated by fans, or at least by commenters on the band’s social media pages, which blew up, with comments accusing the band of deleting comments and making unfounded claims that she or the band was supporting fascism. I feel bad for Monique. I remember her band Larry from their very early days when they played AAA Electra 99 art museum in the late 90s. They may have been in high school. They were young; they were a nice bunch of kids back then, which was not the case a lot of the time at our small venue, and I was glad when I heard later they had a little success.
Then there is another kind of band, the type willing to play just about any show to promote their wares and not worry too much about political correctness. They play if you pay and they don’t care what anybody has to say. Over the years perhaps they have dealt with scandals, legal headaches, and enough public criticism to learn to take it all with a grain of salt, just out there doing what bands do: trying to get paid and keep the wheels turning. That describes another Orange County band, LIT, the guys who wrote “My Own Worst Enemy" and probably still have not been paid for the streams—loved by some, hated by others, and having survived plenty of super nasty shit along the way, like when one of the employees at the band’s Slide bar once called the Fullerton PD and lied, saying a hobo was breaking into cars, because I guess, apparently, Kelly Thompson was harshing the vibe by standing outside and being alive. So FPD then came over and beat Kelly to death. (Kelly was picking up cigarette butts.) Brew Ha Ha oddly thought it would be a great idea to celebrate the Slide Bar anniversary at the OC Super Show as well. We don’t really have much love for Lit and the Slide bar in the OC. This is a band you don’t want near a fest; even if there isn’t any controversy, they will bring one. The only thing that would be worse is if they got on stage and endorsed the festival.
Lit has been a fixture in Orange County for a very long time, where I was born and raised (albeit on the other side of the tracks). I am not familiar with the band’s catalog and origin story, but I am familiar with them and their reputation. I was also the NOW-uncredited photographer on this award-nominated piece of journalism from May of 2016, written by a writer who I guess has since changed his name to D. Kelsen. But fuck that guy. He picked the worst photos of the band, took all the credit, went to the award show, and got the free dinner, and I was the one who got us kicked out of Disney’s House of Blues. I guess it’s OK. We both got paid; it was back in the old-timey days, before cell phones and AI stole our jobs and destroyed the alt weeklies.
You can read it next. It’s called The Weekly Gets Kicked Out of a Lit Concert by Douchebag House of Blues Anaheim Security.
So if you’re a band, you’re damned if you play and broke and possibly damned in the industry if you don’t play. And let’s be honest: is Live Nation or Goldenvoice a better or more ethical promoter? In my opinion, hell no. Both are worse. They have both contributed considerably to the party, or the great leader, and the amounts dwarf the less than $1,000 in total confirmed donations made by Mr. Collins. In my experience, their conditions and pay are also much worse for everyone involved, all the way down to the support staff.
But the issue punks have with the “whataboutism” about Live Nation and Goldenvoice is simple: those companies are scum to your face. And we hate them with every fiber of our being. The difference here is that punk is supposed to be family. Mr. Collins claimed to be one of us, and punks hate a snake in the grass.
In punk, like in family, if we don’t like what you said or did, we fight about it. We call you out, we argue, and maybe we even punch on it. we can still end up brothers for life. What punks don’t respect is someone pretending to be one of us while playing a different game the whole time. That’s the difference. It’s not just about how fucked the system is; it’s about how fucked up people feel.
More information seems to be coming, and it looks like Mr. Collins may drag others down with him. And maybe, just maybe, the kids and punks will realize they can do the same thing to Live Nation next.
People can say, “Just play smaller shows.” OK, sure. But a band can play ten shows at small venues or one show at a Brew Ha Ha event. For a touring band, that difference matters. And if the rumors of double pay are true, 20 small shows, and I have never played in a band for 10,000 people, but I have captured their looks on the artists' faces and shot from behind; it’s an amazing view. This is a pretty big loss.
Lucky Punks—all photos © dickslaughter.com
This is very much a developing story, and in some ways it has been unfolding since before the donations first came to light publicly in April 2025. In a post by Brandon Lewis of ISM favorite Punkerton Records, which included a screenshot of a $225 contribution from Brew Ha Ha and Mr. Collins himself to the Trump campaign, not even the $250 everyone on the internet thought and argued about and ISM named the collective article after. He didn’t even send the $250. What a cheapskate! The world has been busting his balls over it for a year; it was about this time I first pitched this story to ISM and a couple more reputable American outlets. Just after Lucky Punks’ ISM rejected the idea, they felt it was a negative story and might reflect on the other American writers badly and that no one would care overseas. The other outlets didn’t think anyone would care here.
Then later in October, a detailed media report published by L.A. TACO which included financial records, listed a total of $878.39 in contributions to the party, the great leader, and the kinds of causes that tend to make anti-authoritarian types go hmmm.
That’s when the fire started. Then Dropkick Murphys called out Mr. Collins from the stage in Denver and dropped off the tour. The fire quickly turned into a blaze, and many people thought Punk in the Park would end after the Los Angeles show, most likely turning into something else without Mr. Collins’s name at the top. Everyone would either forget or bury their heads in the sand and pretend it was a new thing.
But sources say contracts had been signed and advances paid. A tour had been booked, and the bands were left with a choice: give back the advance and drop off, play the show, or wait for it to be canceled and keep the money. When the tour date was announced, some rolled their eyes; others got angry.
THE Dead Kennedys ITCI Lucky Punks—all photos © dickslaughter.com
One band on the bill decided to claim they didn’t know what was going on or when they knew it. That band was already disliked by about 70 percent of its own fan base for a myriad of reasons, and that band was the current incarnation of the Dead Kennedys. For a lot of people in the punk community, that was the tipping point. Anger and disappointment mixed; the blaze had now become an inferno, and before you knew it, the tour was canceled.
THE Dead Kennedys ITCI Lucky Punks—all photos © dickslaughter.com
That brings us up to date. The OC Super Show is still set to proceed, and people are still mad, so much so that I and ISM received this protest flyer for the OC Super Show in our Instagram messages, one from an account with six followers and one from an account with two.
I tried to confirm its authenticity and who made it, but I could not find anyone willing to say they were an organizer. I did see it circulating in Facebook groups and in comment threads, so it may very well be real. That is why we held the article until Sunday. ISM didn’t feel it was our place to help promote the protest. But I might go check it out.
So why are people so angry about such a small donation?
For punks and ska folks, I think a big part of this comes from history. The scene has been infiltrated by ignorance and hate before. So much so that if you ask a random person on the street in the U.S., “What is a Skinhead?” they will, without a moment’s thought, tell you it means a racist and that they have always been racist. That is about as far from the truth as you can get. The Skinheads I know personally are openly anti fascist and have spent decades fighting to take their identity back.
But Trump aside, I think the bigger reason people are upset is that many felt Collins was one of the family, not like the corporate promoters at Goldenvoice. People loved Punk in the Park. And they still do. When they feel like someone they trusted lied or deceived them, people react. Punks hate a two-face.
I gave my advice to Mr. Collins through his crack crisis management team at BCC Communications, who contacted me. I told them that if we were going to do an interview with the more reputable outlet, he should do it quickly because this situation was only going to get worse and that he should just be honest.
They responded that it “wasn’t a time-sensitive story and that it was already out of the news because of the war, TBH.”
I am sure they are still willing to cash Mr. Collins’s checks as we wait for it to come back in the news cycle.
"TBH," they are right, but the kids and punks are angry about THE WARS, not the war, ICE, and a lot of other things they feel they cannot affect. But guess what they can affect with a post on their social media? Your client and a protest in front of his festival. (Mr Collins should send ISM BCC’s check for not putting this up until Sunday.)
Needless to say, it felt like they were mostly trying to gather information and stall. So I told them what I thought Mr. Collins should do: tell the truth. They thought I was insane and didn’t know how a more allegedly reputable publication works. I mean, they are half right.
Maybe he could say something like, “Look, during COVID I did not want to cover my awesome fuzzy beard. I got taken in by how handsome the great leader is. I think the pinkos stole the election, and now I am a Republican. I used to be into the punk rock. I tried to help the bands make money, and you punks are a bunch of dicks. Punk sucks. I am going to throw an awesome festival with Sublime. Me and Cypress Hill will take hits from the bong; Donny Jr. will show up. America is great, and fuck you.”
Who knows, punks might actually respect the honesty.
Punk in the Park San Pedro—all photos ©dickslaughter.com
Or he could just say, “Look, I’m a bro from South Orange County who moved to Texas. I have always been a rich Republican, and I was just donating to the party.” But he didn't; he gave to the great leader. I guess that won't work. Needless to say, they worked their way up the ladder to a more reputable journalist, but if it turns out Mr. Collins changes his mind. I am still down for the interview. But my first question is probably going to be
Do you wish you had taken that $225 and bought a fancy butt plug instead? Because you have been shitting money ever since.
Take your punk lumps, and the heathens might take you back.
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