In 2008 the author co-curated (with Pilar Tompkins Rivas) the art exhibition "Vexing: Female Voices from East LA Punk" at the Claremont Museum of Art in Claremont, California. Part of his motivation, as a scholar, was to generate discourse about the punk scene in East Los Angeles from 1979 to 1984 and to stimulate further research in this area, particularly as Chicano punk in general has received relatively little scholarly attention. However, he was completely unprepared for the level of response the show generated. New interviews were conducted and published, participants in the scene emerged from apparent obscurity, bands reunited (and often broke up all over again), panel discussions were held, and arguments unfolded in the print media and the blogosphere. Much of the post-exhibition debate concerned disagreements over historical detail: who started which club, why certain bands imploded, and so on. In a larger sense, however, all this discourse reveals a continuing dissatisfaction with the way this history has been written--with the frameworks that have structured its writing and the kinds of exclusions that have been perpetuated as a result. In this article, the author would like to propose several frameworks through which the East LA music scene of the late 1970s and early 1980s might be historicized and understood: the broader LA music scene, the transformation of Chicano art, and related structural and aesthetic changes in the Los Angeles art world. (Contains 5 figures and 11 notes.)