DESPERATE TIMES CALL for desperate measures and, you might imagine, equally anxious imagery. So there's a palpable irony in the fact that Sunnyvale photographer Jim Jocoy – who parlayed his long-standing fascination with late-'70s San Francisco and Los Angeles punk into a new book, We're Desperate (powerHouse) – has gone from shooting underground scenesters to snapping the King of Pop.

In the southland last month for the walloping Book Expo, Jocoy – a humble physical therapist assistant by day – found himself at an archetypal Hollywood party held at well-bronzed producer Robert Evans's opulent abode. While pressing the flesh with the likes of P. Diddy and brand-new best friend Ashton Kutcher, Paris Hilton, Joel Grey, and Jeff Bridges, Jocoy caught sight of Michael Jackson. Naturally, the shutterbug asked for a shot.

"Unanimously, we were like, 'Omigod, he looks so much better in person.' He photographs so awful, but in person he looked radiant and actually beautiful. Glowing and almost like a cartoon," Jocoy said last week over tea in Potrero Hill. "I was celebrating prematurely, and I drank too many martinis, and I just kind of became incapacitated!"

Jocoy, 50, has every right to curl up in a corner and savor his success. Including an introduction by Marc Jacobs, writing by Exene Cervenka, and an interview with Thurston Moore, We're Desperate is a best-seller for powerHouse and Ecstatic Peace, Moore's imprint. Chockablock with eye-catching unknowns, flamboyant coulda-beens, and full-fledged icons who frequented punk venues like the Deaf Club, Mabuhay Gardens, and the Masque, We're Desperate reflects the years the self-taught Jocoy spent during the Ford and Carter administrations shuttling between S.F. and L.A., while attending UC Santa Cruz. For the frustrated documentarian, We're Desperate's uncaptioned snapshots serves as a visual diary of a time, a place, and thrift-shop scores.

Some faces are familiar: X's Cervenka and John Doe; the Germs' Darby Crash; Flipper's Will Shatter and Bruce Lose; DNA's Ikue Mori and Arto Lindsay; Lydia Lunch; Jello Biafra; Penelope Houston in a mousy brown Dorothy Hamill wig; as well as punk legends like Johnny Thunders, Sid Vicious, and Iggy Pop; artist Bruce Conner; and filmmaker John Waters.

Even more obscure personalities turn up, such as Jocoy's friend Lamar St. John, who was responsible for Vicious's bloody nose in all of those shots of the Sex Pistols' 1978 stand in Texas. "It was her head that he accidentally bumped his nose on," Jocoy said.

This journey into punk-celeb publishing started when Jocoy dug up the photos, which had been in storage for more than 20 years. He put together a spiral-bound vanity book at his local copy shop and eventually sent it to photographer Cynthia Connelly. By chance, Moore was in her office when Jocoy's homemade volume arrived.

The rest was a whirlwind of attention and reconnections. In his quest to give a copy of We're Desperate to everyone in the book, Jocoy has learned the identities of about 80 percent of his subjects – all after he confessed to Moore that he didn't even know the name of his fierce cover girl (she's J.J. LaRue, a Tuxedomoon associate).

"I lost a lot of friends through AIDS and O.D.'s," Jocoy said. "I lost so many friends that I started feeling depressed. But now I'm finding friends, meeting new friends, and connecting with people, and feeling like, oh, there's other people still around who survived. And it's a great feeling." He expects to see many of the book's subjects at a signing and opening of an exhibit of We're Desperate photos and other Jocoy images at Aquarius Records in S.F. June 19 at 6:30 p.m. The show runs through Aug. 19.

Fire walk with me Smoking rumors have been a-swirling lately that organ madman and Drum Buddy pal Mr. Quintron suffered the wrath of the grand ole venue, the Fillmore, after a recent appearance there opening for the Cramps. At one point toward the end of the performance, Quintron set his Drum Buddy on fire. A flame shot up above his head – no harm done.

But everyone looks at onstage pyro with doubt since the tragic Great White fire. Quintron said he was alarmed to get a call from an infuriated, unnamed Fillmore employee after his show who told him he was banned from the venue and Clear Channel halls around the country, as well as other Bay Area clubs.

No such thing, says Fillmore booker Michael Bailey. "I'm not sure anyone threatened anyone. There is a possibility that if anyone does anything irresponsible and puts the public in danger, we'd want to choose not to hire that person again," he said on the phone this week.

For his part, on the cell and on tour, Quintron waxed both contrite and defiant. "It was probably a misjudgment on my part because it's the Fillmore and it's a small thing that I do at the end of every show," he told me. "Real rock 'n' roll places don't really care – we know we have it under control."

Trail of tears, broken glass And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead are known for driving a ferocious show, and much has been made of their bloodied, instrument-bashing high jinks. But guitarist-vocalist Conrad Keely attributes it to sheer klutziness. "We're clumsy people. Even the things that break around us aren't necessarily broken deliberately," he said recently on the phone from Austin, Texas, where he was painting a portrait of a favorite impassioned violinist, Nadja Solerno-Sonnenberg.

Of course, that might all change – And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead have been working on their next album between shows (their next is at the Fillmore June 22) and staving off the dogs of industry by releasing outtakes and random tunes on EPs like the recent Secret of Elena's Tomb (named after the bizarre case of the Florida doctor who kept up a longtime romance with a woman's corpse). The band members are evolving – they may even get tired of cuts and scrapes.

"I don't know if we can play well into our 40s and 50s, constantly hurting ourselves. We reserve the right to get old," said Keely, a wisenheimer who says he's 47 or 19, depending on his mood.

Get down, tiger You'd be forgiven for considering Le Tigre the mothers of the indie punk remix. After all, the NYC trio trotted out minimalist electro years before electroclash got off the ground. They play at Slim's June 23 and 24.

Even Kathleen Hanna, J.D. Samson, and Johanna Fateman's last release, the EP Remix (Mr. Lady, 2002), came out ahead of the curve, weighing in with mixes by friends like DFA producers Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy, and Analog Tara, who runs an online resource for female electronic musicians at www.pinknoises.com. The recording turned out to be a good way to learn how other artists and producers would approach deconstructing their music and making "honest-to-God dance tracks that would get played in clubs – because that's always what the band was about," Fateman, 29, said earlier this month from NYC. "We wanted to make danceable music with feminist content."

That's been a task, she added, because the work of female electronic artists has often been marginalized. "I think that women are generally excluded from electronic music production and made to feel like using computers and electronic instruments is too complicated or involves too much math or something," she offered. She name-checks inspirations like Wendy Carlos, Laurie Anderson, and Yoko Ono, particularly Felix da Housecat's remix of "Walking on Thin Ice."