We’re catching up on the blur that was the past two weeks, and cut off from the company supply cabinet as we are, that means sorting the loose scraps and cocktail napkins accounting for our meandering across LA’s cityscape. Top of the pile here is a Miller coaster with notes from last night’s opening of LA punk photos circa 1978 at La Luz de Jesus Gallery which was nothing but brilliant boozy illuminating fun. That’s because of our chat with Ruby Ray, the co-founder of San Francisco based Re/Search Mag who captured an iconic image of William Burroughs back in the day. “I had to get a lawyer to file a cease and desist. I’m living in poverty and they’re using my work” Ray told the Legman, rankled about her pic of the Naked Lunch author wielding an automatic-Walther Polizeipistole Kriminellmodell?- being ubiquitously splattered on t-shirts. Filling in the back story to the shot Ray explained “the guys at Re/Search were into guns target shooting and so was Burroughs, and they got along and they gave him the gun.” After shooting the pieces in the show, aggressive photojournalist images of founding LA punks like Darby Crash, the Dales and an array tough looking babe bands( some surviving subjects making an appearance at the gallery looking like they’ve been blasted to hell and back) she moved on to NYC. “Punk was done here and in New York no one cared about those bands. I began shooting studio works based on Egyptian myths.” Now she doesn’t come to LA much, has no interest in the warbling alt bands of Echo Park. “Now I listen to Arabic, Indian sounds, World Music. But Patti Smith? That was so literate, free, sexy. She saved my life.” Ray’s photos remain up at La Luz through 28 February, 2010