Early Life
Jennifer Precious Finch was born August 5, 1966 in the Salvation Army Home for Unwed Mothers. In 1967 she was adopted by an Aeoronautics Engineer named Robert Edward Finch and his wife Sandra Jacobson. She was raised in Los Angeles and public school educated. Finch and Jacobson divorced in 1974, and Robert was awarded custody.
When Jennifer was nine she met Paul. Paul, a sixteen-year-old in the neighborhood would often get stuck watching all the kids on the block. Trying to avoid having to interact with the children and accept his unfortunate circumstances, Paul listened to The Ramones, Devo, and Elvis Costello to pass the time. He fed all the kids, including Finch, candy while they bounced around his home. Finch danced to his Blondie and Clash records and became engulfed in the music, so much so that she felt as if she were a part of it. This was her first introduction to punk music, or as she would refer to it, her “Get-Out-Of-Van-Halen Free Card”. Because of her newly sparked interest, when her father took her to the book store, she started buying books about punk music. She began taking guitar lessons and at age 11 her father bought her tickets to a Ramones concert where she went accompanied by her guitar teacher, Mark Salerno.
At around thirteen years old, Finch, for no other reason than the fact that she wanted some adventure, became a chronic runaway. She started staying in hotels with older kids in the punk scene and was introduced to IV drugs at 14. She began to photograph punk and hardcore bands around Los Angeles, earlier ones being the Cramps and The Dead Kennedys.
Finch began to resent institutionalized learning and was home-schooled from grades 9 to 11. During this time she was encouraged by her father, who was unaware of her drug use, to pursue her photography, which is exactly what she did. She went back to high school in the 12th grade and graduated a semester early, finishing the year while attending community college at the same time. She went on to San Francisco State University for Computer Science and left after 2 years to pursue her music career.
