Dianne Chai is an American bass player. She was one of the founders of the L.A. punk rock band The Alley Cats. The original line-up from 1977, featuring Randy Stodola (guitar and vocals), Dianne Chai (bass and vocals) and John McCarthy (drums), was a fixture of the early L.A. punk rock scene.
Signed to Dangerhouse Records alongside other seminal California-based punk bands including the Bags, Black Randy and the Metro Squad, and X, they released their first single "Nothing Means Nothing Anymore" backed with "Give Me a Little Pain" on March 30, 1978.
They are among the six bands featured on the 1979 compilation album Yes L.A. and appear in the 1982 film Urgh! A Music War. The Alley Cats were regular performers at such Los Angeles venues as Club 88, Hong Kong Café, The Masque, and the Whisky a Go Go. Chris Morris (former senior writer at Billboard, music editor at The Hollywood Reporter and critic at The Los Angeles Reader), writing in John Doe's book Under the Big Black Sun: A Personal History of L.A. Punk, said "they made some of the toughest, most nihilistic music on the scene." Violence at shows featuring bands such as the Bags and The Alley Cats caused Madame Wong's restaurant to stop featuring punk bands and switch to slower tempo new wave acts.
The band released a second 7" in 1980 called Too Much Junk, followed by two albums, "Nightmare City" (Time Coast Records) in 1981 and "Escape from The Planet Earth" (MCA Records) in 1982. Reformed as The Zarkons, they released two albums, "Riders In The Long Black Parade" (1985) and "Between the Idea & the Reality…Falls the Shadow" (1988), before disbanding in 1988.
