John Pertle, aka Johnny Love, fronted the Johnny Love Sound, who played their first live gig in September of 2002 at Zodiak Café in La Mesa. Their debut album, Sushi Girl, was released the following year on the Luminosity Music label. Pertle's blog at myspace.com has an entry that reads in part: "I am a Force of Nature and I will turn the entire Earth on its Ear. It is my destiny."
The band ended when Love pled guilty in November 2005 to five felony counts of distributing child pornography and four felony counts of possession of child porn with intent to distribute. He was sentenced to four years in a state penitentiary in early 2006.
“I am not the monster that the prosecution has made me out to be,” he told the Reader at the time via email. “I was sexually abused as a child and addicted to pornography from a very young age; that had a lot to do with how I eventually looked at sex. I'm in therapy now and working on dealing with those issues and with the things I did as a result of what happened to me.”
He didn't give up on music while incarcerated. “The corrections officers would take me around to play guitar for the administrative and nursing staffs. There were also event days when they would bring out a whole line of amps and drums and electric instruments with a P.A., and I played a Johnny Love set for all the inmates on the yard. Plus innumerable acoustic jams in the dorms and on the lawn.”
He was released in 2011. Almost three years later, he says “Michael Staples [longtime friend and former bandmate] rolled into town with his drums and his dog, CJ, with the sole intention of playing music with me and trying to make a success out of it.”