I’m here to punk you in this Year of Punk Turning 50. So, I am reprising a recent post where I try to put a bow around my own trajectory with this music and illustrate how everything has more in common with punk or leads to / from punk than you think.

Today, the English newspaper, The Guardian, had a feature on Graham Parker, and I was inspired to dig this up, update it, and present it to you. It’s NEW for the new readers, after all!

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Without Nick Lowe, we would not have some of our favorite punk records.

The three artists pictured above are some of England’s finest songwriters - clever wordsmiths who do not soften the blows. Both Elvis Costello and Graham Parker are known for their biting, acerbic lyrics delivered in song with the mellifluous beauty of their R&B and soul influences; each of them can also conjure acoustic Dylan and Springsteen in poetry and singing style. And their love songs? They are as tender as their “angry young man” songs are sharp. They are in the pantheon of songwriters. Count Nick Lowe in their league as a wizard of words.

Nick Lowe produced The Damned - the first UK punk single. But his body of work is voluminous, including production of both Elvis Costello (first 5 albums) and Graham Parker, pictured above. Other production credits: Dr. Feelgood, Wreckless Eric, Pretenders, Johnny Cash, Carlene Carter (to whom he was married for 11 years), Paul Carrack, John Hiatt, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and a track for The Mavericks.

The Nick Lowe-penned song you might know best is “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding,” which is an anthem for any time, but made famous by Elvis. Nick’s delivery isn’t as driving or dramatic, but it is moving just the same.

I went to see Nick Lowe perform a free concert with Los Straitjackets (his current backing band) at the Pittsburgh Cultural Festival in June of 2022. It was a last minute trip and due to that, kind of costly, but free Nick Lowe concert? I absolutely went! That’s my own cel phone video up there, but if you want to see and hear a professionally recorded performance, the Mountain Stage YouTube channel has a clip here.

As a songwriter, Lowe has a limitless facility and craft across genres ranging from pub (r&b influenced and roots rock), punk, power pop, pop, novelty songs, and songs that could be considered classics - you know - just like Willie Nelson does.

As a player, Nick was normally on bass for Brinsley Schwarz, Rockpile, and Little Village.

I remember him from 1976 as the soundman for Dr. Feelgood. All us punk girls met the entire Stiff Records gang back then - Jake Riviera, Dave Robinson, and the artists - when Dr. Feelgood played at the Roxy in the spring of 1976. (Did I tell you before that all us punk girls all really really liked Wilko Johnson, the guitar player in Dr. Feelgood? His style and energy were so appealing; he was the player who influenced so very many LA punk guitarists.)

I found these mid-1970s artifacts over the holidays when I was organizing my closet (I don’t fit into them anymore but I am not getting rid of them! I’m taking them with me on my traveling photo exhibition as artifacts).

If you recall, Stiff Records did modify their public slogan for the punk better. The shirt with the more polite slogan was a shirt for Stiff Records staff.

This music scene started in the pubs, and Nick Lowe, Graham Parker, Brinsley Schwarz, Dr. Feelgood, and the Stiff founders were foundational in London’s version of indie DIY before it was a punk thing. The values and sentiments aligned and the overall indie DIY scene organically grew.

Graham Parker does not receive as much love (at least in the United States) as Elvis Costello, but he is on par. I, for one, am as much of a GP fan as I am an EC fan, and I saw Graham Parker and the Rumour every time they toured. Tours also included appearances on television programs.

I was one of the set photographers for an ABC-TV show called FRIDAYS, which was that network’s version of Saturday Night Live. I had to turn in my film to ABC, but invariably at the end of the day, there was always a half a roll of film in my camera and I kept that.

I wanted to explain that as a set photographer, my job was to provide my employer - ABC-TV - with all the good shots. Most of the shots I kept for myself from FRIDAYS were just tail ends which was just general coverage. I grabbed all the money shots first, because I knew I would be handing over that first roll (notice that Elvis and Nick in the triptych at the head of this post are snapped in real ACTION, as opposed to GP). GP does not look incendiary at all in either of my photos I posted here, BUT you can watch his FRIDAYS performance below. He’s powerful and animated, and I hope you can understand why I put him and EC on the same page:

(I am thrilled my old pals Harold Bronson and Richard Foos founded Shout Factory on the Rhino ethic - they founded Rhino too - to preserve these incredible music performances.)

In today’s edition of The Guardian, there’s a feature about Graham Parker. He’s about to do a tour of England - after all, it has been 50 years since the release of his first album, Howlin’ Wind.

Released in April 1976 (as was the Ramones’ eponymous debut), it was easy to include Parker as a punk - he had the pedigree, the attitude, and just as the Ramones were girl groups meet garage with a chainsaw, Graham Parker was spitting out R&B and soul music with the same direct, efficient verve as those who self-identified as punk. And like bona fide English punk, Parker’s music didn’t just acknowledge reggae, he infused many of his songs with it.

While punk likes to brag they learned how to play in public and musical prowess wasn’t a prerequisite for forming or joining a band, Parker’s band was white hot and beyond capable. For my peer group of record collectors (so many snobs among them; sorry not sorry), the measure of your worth was whether or not you knew about Dr. Feelgood and Brinsley Schwartz, the man and the band bearing his name. Schwartz was a member of Parker’s band The Rumour. This band was flawless.

Graham Parker remains the perfect conundrum and it really is no wonder he’s one of my favorite artists of all time. When I read the Guardian feature today, so many things stood out to me, and reminded me of the time 50 years ago when my friend, the late Gary Stewart, then a Rhino Records store clerk told me, “you’re gonna LOVE Graham Parker” as he unilaterally added it to my purchases that day.

Musically and temperamentally, Graham Parker is just my musical man.

From The Guardian piece:

His commercial stock rising in the 80s US, thanks to 1979’s superb Squeezing Out Sparks album, he signed a deal with Atlantic Records, whose chair Ahmet Ertegun suggested he make his next album sound “like Phil Collins”. Parker proceeded to make the deliberately rough-hewn The Mona Lisa’s Sister: a wonderful collection of songs utterly out of step with mainstream 80s rock trends, that, one can’t help but notice, has aged rather better than most mainstream 80s rock.

That passage stood out for two reasons. First, it was SUCH a punk move. (I am doing a similar thing on a fellowship application because you can age up and be pushing 70 but you’re still full of your 18-year-old piss and vinegar), and second, because The Mona Lisa’s Sister 1 was released as I was moving to New York in 1988. It’s one of my favorite records in my collection. I agree with the Guardian’s writer, Alexis Petridis that the album has aged better than its contemporaries. I would add it has simply stood the test of time, full stop. I’m grateful that when I moved to New York, there were a few Parker gigs upon my June arrival and I enjoyed most of them in venues small and large.

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Elvis brings all the strands together and ties a big bow around it with Nick Lowe’s help to make a punk statement. Remember his stunts - busking in front of a record company’s office? Remember how once he did get signed and was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live pulled a switcheroo and launched into “Radio Radio” and then was banned from the show? Enjoy this goofy music video for his cover of “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding.”

Punk was dangerous and political. The goofiness of the band in this clip partially offsets the gravitas of the lyrics. A question such as “What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?” shouldn’t rankle - but authoritarians lack these traits and the song’s message rankles them. I remember seeing Elvis perform in Nashville at the Ascend Amphitheater in 2015, when the current occupant of the Oval Office announced his first campaign. As a former NYC resident of 20-years standing, I knew all about that guy. Elvis’s performances brought a tear to my eye. I knew there would be a tumultuous road ahead, whether that candidate was elected or not, and Elvis singing Nick’s words with passion and hope was a balm.

The last couple times I saw Elvis at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, where I live, I had a photo pass, and same deal - had to provide the good shots to management should they choose to use - and that old concert photographer rule - three songs from the pit and then you’re out. But thanks to Pete Thomas, I had a seat in the first row of the balcony, dead center, AND a photo pass, so the camera could stay and work. Let me share some latter day EC ephemera and memories with you.

I love Elvis’s sense of humor as he introduced Charlie Sexton.

I wanted to show you with the video I shot of their performance of “Every Day I Write the Book” so you could hear the reggae-tinged song AND see the artful rear projections2 that Elvis created himself!

I asked him who did those projections and he admitted it was him. “Damn McManus! video was my career, why are you so good at that too??” And then I had to break it to him that in response to his clever HOW TO PLAY GUITAR AND Y, I launched an art project called HOW TO WRITE SONGS…. and asked if he needed any advice.

Punky Reggae is absolutely a thing - culturally and musically. Back in the 1970s, when I would visit London on my semesters abroad and also on holiday, I would make sure to spend time in Ladbroke Grove (I was specifically told NOT to… what did anyone expect? of COURSE I went. I even lived there one summer, in a flat next door to the Tube station). It’s more than I want to go into here… but soon come! Anyway, DJs would play reggae in clubs, and in between sets at punk shows. Nothing like a bunch of punks skanking. Forget that England colonized Jamaica and that Chris Blackwell’s posh family3 were part of that England/Jamaica class inequality, Chris did so much to get reggae on mainstream radar and give Caribbean musicians an industry structure to support themselves within. There IS love in that music community.

It was a BIG DEAL when Dennis Bovel produced The Slits albums, and Ari Up was a walking Punky Reggae avatar. I promise more Punky Reggae down the road.

The Jamaican music influence in England was big and beautiful and I love the way Nick Lowe, Elvis Costello, and Graham Parker utilize it in their music. I love the way these pub rockers paved the way to punk for us so seamlessly. The Clash is in this movement too, and we’ll get to it soon enough because they’re also reggae aficionados, protest music purveyors, and American roots music fans - at least Strummer was.

I see it as a parallel to how Appalachian / hillbilly music is an ancestor of American punk rock. It’s the DIY aspect. Hillbillies and punks are outsiders; if no one will help them, they will help themselves. Neither cares if they are adept at an instrument, if they have something to say, they’re saying it and playing it. It’s protest music. And then: murder ballads. That’s a different tangent but one I happily want to illustrate.

Going to leave you with this Elvis Costello medley/mashup that is precisely the musical journey from pub → punk across three songs - from R&B/soul → punk in one fell swoop. Listen to the end - it’s nearly 7 minutes long but makes a point.

Enjoy !

Big public thanks to Pete Thomas, who has, for decades, taken care of us attending Elvis concerts. I love these guys so much, I don’t care how stupid I look in photos with them. Spock, in the center between Pete and me, worked at Columbia Records in the 1970s and took care of EC and the Attractions - they’re a loyal bunch. The 777 Tour in January of 2024 was the last concert Spock saw before she passed away in May. Ironically, this image is a still from a video message we sent to Clem Burke…

In closing, I just really like being able to write, “Elvis and me,” because Priscilla Presley should not be the only person who can!

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PUNK turning 50 is the cultural moment of 2026–2028

This 3-year period recognizes the rolling 50th anniversaries of punk’s birth and early milestones across cities, scenes, and landmark releases. This anniversary has already created a global spike in media coverage, institutional programming, and multi-generational audience engagement with originators as well as for consumer brands trying to get on the radar with as relevant an association as possible. They want this association to give their brands the benefit of cultural authenticity with the nostalgic Gen-X ers and pop-culture curious Millennials (and beyond). [file under “Postmodernism and its discontents.”]1

We won’t get fooled again, though.

If like me, you’ve been turned off by the very existence of Hot Topic, you are applauding that our punk ancestors - The Damned, Sex Pistols, Sham 69 and others are on the road celebrating their Golden Anniversaries.

Australia’s leading edge early adopters, The Saints were ahead of the game in 2024 with their comprehensive In the Red Records box set (it’s sold out. But read → this ← anyway, and weep). I’m sad that Chris Bailey passed away before he could learn just how appreciated his prescience was.

In 2005, I was privileged to have co-presented a Saints gig at the erstwhile and only uptown Manhattan punk rock bar, The Ding Dong Lounge. The band was in NYC to play the annual Joey Ramone Birthday Bash at the Ritz on the 19th (Joey’s birthdate), and added this bar gig.

Both The Sex Pistols (OGs Jones, Cook, Matlock plus Frank Carter on vocals) and Rotten John Lydon (with PIL) are touring this year (and next). I don’t care if you like them or not. Of all the artists who have a right to celebrate the Golden Anniversary of Punk, it’s Jones, Cook, Matlock, and Lydon.

I saw the Pistols with Rotten/Lydon on their Filthy Lucre tour in 1996, and again on their North American Tour of 2003. I remember watching the 2003 show (at Jones Beach Amphitheater on Long Island, a fine venue even though the mosquitoes there are the size of vampire bats) from the side of the stage in the “friends and family” bleachers and was a bit astounded by the crowd from the stage vantage point. Having seen them (with Sid Vicious) in smaller venues on their brief tour of the USA in 1978, it did blow my mind that punk rock had tripled its ticket-selling power in the intervening years. (Winterland’s capacity was 5,400 and the show was sold out. Jones Beach Amphitheater’s capacity is 15,000 +/-)

I, too, am celebrating 50 years.

50 Years of PHOTOS - not all of them punk even though PUNK is a big part of the past 50 years. ^{(I’m 68 years old - I’ve photographed Fleetwood Mac, ELO, Taj Mahal, etc)}

When two of my musical heroes - Graham Parker, and Steve Earle - each mounted a “50 Years of…” tour within the past year, I embraced that and followed suit.

And I am showing 50 Years of Photos. A retrospective. In 2023, I put together a career-spanning set as a retrospective anticipating 50 Years of Punk BUT at the same time, noticed that the word “respect” is contained within “retrospective.” Also, it was my own postmodern nod to the Bard of the Late 20th Century, Bob Dylan, who had an exhibition called RETROSPECTRUM.

What can I say? I steal from the best!

My twist on this is focusing on the word within the word: RESPECT.

I have respect and reverence for history and truth - not nostalgia and myths - but events and recollections. Throughout this burgeoning scene was a participant, an architect, a witness; I AM a reliable narrator because every pictures tells a story.

My REtroSPECT is a hybrid mobile experience that brings the work directly to live audiences rather than anchoring it to a single museum or destination. The exhibition is an immersive, interactive multimedia presentation drawn from the portfolio of rock & roll historian and pioneering punk rock documentarian: ME. I have a subset of this exhibit I am boldly calling Punk Rock’s Greatest Hits.

REtroSPECT isn’t a response to the analog revival; it’s proof of it.

REtroSPECT brings together punk’s 50th anniversary, the current analog revival, and a pioneering creator whose DIY aesthetic shaped the original movement with her similarly ne’er do well peers.

I have been presenting REtroSPECT virtually quite a bit - there are innovative exhibitions that are projections and slide shows and I’m excited to do them. I’ll be in one such exhibition in Florence, Italy this November !

I’m showing a distressed image of Stiv Bators in the city that is renown for the Uffizi Gallery and Renaissance classics. I LOVE THAT.

REtroSPECT presents hundreds of my images as a slide show. We also have a 10-minute film that is a narrative of my story so far told in photos and captions and it has the very best soundtrack.

I started my Capital Campaign earlier this year to get to a position to maximize what could be done and scaled to any venue. I now have three flat screen televisions monitors and there’s a separate slide show that will play on each one. There is a dazzling display of original music magazines and advertisements from the 70s we call Out Of Print. We’ve tested the Out of Print waters in Nashville this year at the RAMONES 50th celebration at the Basement in April, and in June at radio station WXNA’s 10th Anniversary celebration - watch my collaborator, Nathan Webber build a display in no time! Here’s some → more behind the scenes imagery ←

When you come to a REtroSPECT Eroding Paper Inevitable (our postmodern punk moniker for Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable), you will see screens of still pictures presented kinetically, walls of vintage music magazines, posters and memorabilia, and also t-shirts that I don’t want to part with despite being unable to fit into them now. I guarantee you, I can name and sing three songs of all these artists!

It’s a LOT OF GROOVY STUFF.

I was most definitely inspired by Mick Jones’s Rock and Roll Public Library.

Just like Indiana Jones told a movie villain, “that belongs in a museum!” I believe artifacts must be preserved for a wide variety of reasons. But I want it to be fun, so I’m making a circus out of museum quality STUFF.

We, as a society, are so fortunate to have so many living storytellers around us - and storytellers with archives.

Come see REtroSPECT on the road - and if you can, help us with our Capital Campaign. When I have photos, photo books, and other merch to sell, the proceeds from those sales go towards making this touring exhibition happen. You can → buy a gift certificate ← for yourself or others!

You can also just donate if you wish!

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“Here You Come Again” is considered Dolly Parton’s first cross-over hit, making a dent in the pop music charts upon its release in September of 1977.

Punk rock and hillbilly music are kindred spirits - in the DIY approach to all we did, in our status as societal outsiders, and importantly in our “don’t give a fuck” attitudes.

We were primed for Dolly Parton in the Autumn after the Summer of Hate. Why? Part of it was kitsch, to be sure, BUT our hero, Iggy Pop was spotted at a Dolly Parton show at the Roxy on the Sunset Strip after his own Santa Monica Civic show on April 15, 1977. Word spread like wildfire that Dolly was endorsed by the Ig by virtue of him checking out her show. So we paid attention to her.

Lobotomy #2 was published at the very end of 1977, and featured everything that happened in the five months since our June debut. From the cover pictured above, you can see we featured our friends Joan Jett and Black Randy, plus NYC’s Talking Heads and a bunch of record reviews (including Billy Idol and Generation X, whom we tried to vaunt in every issue - we had an ulterior motive, of course !). It was in our second issue, with the most punk of all our covers, that one of Lobotomy’s co-founders, the late Randy Kaye, aka Randy Detroit wrote a snarky CREEM-magazine style rhyme of a review. People, we all owned that single!

Dolly was one of those artists everyone could agree on. Even if you didn’t like her music, you liked HER.

Ten years later, I had a job at the public relations firm Solters, Roskin, Friedman. Solters would be Lee Solters, renown for representing Frank Sinatra as well as his Rat Pack buddies, The Beverly Hills Hotel, the city of Aspen, CO, Van Halen, Michael Jackson, and Dolly Parton.

I worked on Dolly’s television variety show account. Yes, we had an auto-pen and sent every single kid who wrote in for one an autographed publicity still from her show. She rarely turned down a request, especially when it was from a parent of a child who was in the program created by the Make a Wish Foundation.

Despite her exaggerated self-identified “Backwoods Barbie” looks, Dolly Parton was a songwriter of great importance, to be ranked alongside the complicated esoteric lyricists because of the accessible simplicity of her music. Merle Haggard, whose crush on and professional admiration of Dolly is legend in Nashville storytelling, covered “In the Good Old Days (When Times Were Bad)” for his album MAMA TRIED, and it was released prior to Dolly’s own release of the album bearing the name of that very song. A standard, if you ask me, written in plain language, about the inexorable experience of poverty and the exercises and exorcism performed by memory (the definition of myth-making through the arts).

“9 to 5” is also another standard-bearer, again juxtaposing the serious message with a jaunty tune.

However, Dolly may always be remembered for her love songs. And perhaps many readers don’t realize she wrote the song “I Will Always Love You” that skyrocketed the charts when Whitney Houston covered it.

Well, Dolly, I will always love you, and I leave you all with the original (the superior rendition as far as I am concerned).

For you, I provide this gift link to the New York Times obituary on Dolly.

Well, I just took it offline.

I wanted it because doing the fulfillment was taking me away from everything else.

But the platform the store was on uses Stripe BUT it is configured so I have to ask the platform to release the funds instead of being able to use Stripe’s app to do so or to have it automated.

So, I’m cutting my losses. Once indie, always indie

As you were….

This photo of Belinda Carlisle with the cut-out of Elvis Costello is one of my “greatest hits.” Next to The Cramps band portrait in the Tropicana, this is the image viewers and readers of my blogs, and attendees of my exhibits like best.

While early punk wanted to have a dress code, those of us who got punked in Hollywood had a whole different approach to fashion - any fashion trend was based on what we could thrift around town. Hollywood’s and Beverly Hills’s cast-offs at the Goodwill and church rummage sales were designer clothes, gently worn by a population who didn’t want to be seen and photographed in the same outfit twice. And then in Hollywood itself, the center of the smoke & mirrors industry - there were places you could get discarded movie costumes - OH THE GLAMOUR! That and our built-in noir sensibility gave Hollywood punks their unique look, and Belinda was on the leading edge.

Belinda and our girl gang - which included Lorna Doom, Pleasant Gehman, and Wyline (Rosemarie Patronette) - were the Hollywood Punk It Girls. Whatever fashion move they made, everyone followed.

It was a regular thing for Belinda, Pleasant and me to hit the Strip and take pictures as if they were Hollywood ingenues posing for publicity stills. Better yet, if we found a dramatic or cinematic scene, we’d make an image for Fucked Up Film Stills. We were doing Cindy Sherman precisely concurrent to Cindy Sherman’s iconic Untitled Film Stills work featuring herself.

In a couple rolls of Fucked Up Film Stills, Belinda is wearing a Norma Kamali style tunic, leggings, kitten heel pumps, and carried a real Christian Dior logo handbag. That’s no knock-off and no Beverly Hills All Saints Church Rummage Sale find. That’s a real Dior Belinda worked hard to buy.

Belinda’s work ethic was as strong as her concert-going ethic. When Belinda and Lorna were camped out at the Famous Lobotomy apartment before they found a place at the Canterbury, I remember Belinda working an office job at the Beverly Hills Hilton Hotel. It’s at the intersection of Wilshire and Santa Monica Boulevards in Beverly Hills, and there was a short cut through the hotel entrance to Century City, which lead to the flats of Beverly Hills, which is where Pleasant lived with her mom, sisters and brother.

If you are a regular reader of this feed, you know how deeply devoted we all were to The Cramps. I found this picture of The Cramps performing at the Whisky a GoGo and noticed Belinda right up front. That was her usual spot. In fact, we traded messages on Instagram a few days ago when she reposted a picture of herself right up against the stage at a Weirdos show.

When rockabilly gained traction within the punk crowd, it was Belinda and Pleasant, Wyline and hairdresser-to-the-punk-stars, the late Connie Clarksville who led the charge. Both Belinda and Pleasant were dating guys who played in The Blasters. Pleasant eventually formed two rockabilly bands - The Screamin’ Sirens and the satirical Honk If Yer Horny.

What we all knew back then, in the clubs and on the streets was that punk and rockabilly were kindred spirits. Are The Stray Cats punk? Yes. Are they rockabilly? Yes. Same with The Blasters. Punk embraced them and their energy. X, the band, also had one foot firmly in each genre.

If you saw The GoGo’s documentary, directed by Allison Ellwood, you saw this image. (It was also part of their induction film at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony) I shot it from the balcony at the Starwood. The Dickies were performing, and Belinda was showing her support from the very front of the stage. At the time, she and Dickies drummer Karlos Kabbalero were a couple.

I could be writing this post for DAYS just telling the story behind each photo Belinda and I have made together - but I’m going to stop here, and leave you with one last image, which coincidentally is the final frame of a short film we’re working on. Belinda and Pleasant on camera and me behind it are a Girl Gang still. They are the face of a unique moment in time. And right now is the moment to wish Belinda a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY.

I have a spot in a group show in Florence, Italy in November of this year.

I can’t decide between which of these images it will be.

Can you vote in the poll? I’m not saying I’ll go with the majority vote, but I am curious as to what readers think and why.

STIV BATORS

Here’s why I think I want to exhibit it:

This is a scan of a transparency that survived the ravages of Hurricane Sandy. I kept slides in plastic protector pages in binders. Those binders, unfortunately were in corrugated cardboard boxes on the floor of my storage unit. I know now to store everything in water proof boxes and to store those boxes on racks at least six inches off the ground - just like in food service! Hurricane Sandy gave me this art.1

But, as reminded me, the image represents survival. The photo survived a hurricane’s flooding. I’ve survived a fire in my apartment complex (and also one in my 1979 apartment complex) and lived in the path of tornadoes that hit neighborhoods three streets away but missed me (three times!) I’ve survived cancer. Not exactly the four horsemen of the apocalypse but if you live long enough, you survive a bunch of ordeals. Stiv, the subject of the photo, died young at just 40. But his image, his music, his reputation, and his memory lives on.

And I think the further along I am in my chronological life, and in my so-called career as a photographer, I am ALL FOR showing mistakes, accidents, and imperfections. None of us were born fully formed, and we all make mistakes. That’s what makes us human, and now these imperfections also make a tacit statement against the aspects of AI that threaten human creativity.

THE CRAMPS

Like it or not, this image has become my signature. I ought to capitalize on that, eh?

This is for an immersive exhibition experience on the walls and ceiling of the Sottopassaggio, a 25-metre tunnel in Florence, Italy, and is expected to be seen by more than 50,000 people. My piece, together with other contemporary artists from around the world, will be seen alongside some of the greatest masterpieces in art history, because FLORENCE.

The reason I am choosing between punk images is that not only do I like juxtaposition - but punk is what I am known for2. I often write that Caravaggio - my favorite of all painters - was a punk - but he is not considered a Florentine painter. However, the Uffizi Gallery holds a few Caravaggios. (click on links to see them):

The Bacchus

Two Male Heads (self portrait?)

The Sacrifice of Isaac

Vote here. The poll runs for 7 days:

If you have an opinion or supporting arguments for your vote, please explain in the comments.

Thank you!

In 2012, my late roommate, Joanna Spock Dean, pictured above, and I were both working at Whole Foods Market in Green Hills. Because it was a big deal locally, and for ABC-TV, we knew about the forthcoming television series, NASHVILLE, a music-forward project by Callie Khouri (best known for having written Thelma and Louise, which won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar she absolutely deserved). Khouri coincidentally is married to musician and producer T. Bone Burnett, so no one here in town was worried that the series would get things wrong.

In the beginning, they got things so very right.

And that’s why you can’t get into the Bluebird Cafe now at all for any show - still, eight years after the series ended (with an unceremonious whimper). In true postmodern form, the visibility of a network television series eclipsed the imprimatur of a local (but internationally known) music room. Locals can’t gain entry with the same ease of walking up on the day of even the open-mic nights because it is a MUST-SEE for tourists. They visit the Bluebird (if only to buy the swag) without a preference as to who is playing.

While scenes were filmed in the Bluebird itself, it was meticulously duplicated inside and out on a soundstage. Local working musicians were always cast - including Nashville’s favorite son, Buddy Miller, who worked with Burnett on the music supervision and all other music-related efforts on the series. In the beginning, it was so exciting to watch this series to see your friends, your local musical heroes, and your local streets and neighborhoods on one of the BIG 3 broadcast television networks.

In the beginning, the production floated a lot of boats. Not only were local musicians and actors getting work, the ancillary business were booming: hotels, restaurants, night clubs, any place (restaurant, venue, tourist site) that ended up on the TV screen had its profile raised, and tourists came to look. The catering team for the series production engaged Whole Foods for catering their breakfasts. Every night, the catering department would receive a fax or email with the order and would set it up/prepare for the NASHVILLE series runner to pick it up in the morning, usually before the store opened to the public.

Back then, I was the overnight baker (I also taught in the cooking school, SALUD).

The catering order for NASHVILLE included almost all the same items I had to prepare for the morning rush. When things proceeded per plan, the team that received the order would set up the raw materials for the items I needed to make for NASHVILLE so they were ready for me to finish in the morning.

Now, here’s the secret behind volume bakeries such as the ones in grocery stores like Whole Foods, Publix, Sprouts or other full-service grocer…. There is a central or regional bake house. That bake house provides each store’s bakery with ready to heat or ready to finish food. All that bread in the photo above comes in as “par baked.” The loaves are flash frozen and each store must thaw the loaves overnight and then finish them to make them ready for the customer. This takes 5-6 minutes at 500 degrees. The oven is as big as a walk-in closet, and holds two baking racks that each have 20 shelves. These racks hang on a rotating hanging rack so the goods on the baking rack receive even heat and anything like cakes layers are even, because floors never are.

The store I worked in offered about 10 varieties of hearth bread1, and when the store opened, we had to have at minimum, 10 loaves of each variety ready to purchase, and had to have about 50 baguettes ready as well. And then there’s the pastry. The croissants and Danish came in raw and frozen. They absolutely had be thawed overnight, and when the morning baker came in (between midnight and 4 AM, depending on whether it was me, or Will, the punk/ska band trombonist who was the other morning baker), the pastries would be shaped and then put into the proofer and then baked. Whole Foods also sells about 25 varieties of cookies individually. I STILL have an aversion to chocolate chip cookies because I had to bake off 720 chocolate chip cookies throughout my shift every.single.day. The cookies came in frozen, in 2-ounce balls of dough, so you didn’t have to make the dough and scoop it. (I did that at another artisanal bakery, though. Also made croissants and bread from scratch at that place.). What you did have to scoop, however, were the muffins. Every morning, before 8 AM, the morning baker had to finish hundreds of pieces of bread and pastry. Once that was done, you had to prepare everything for your shift the next day. Oh, and we had an artisanal bread program - made from scratch artisanal loaves using sourdough starter - a different variety every day.

With that as an existing workload, it’s easy to see that any special order that came in for first-thing-in-the-morning pick up HAD to be prepped before the morning baker came in. Well, that almost NEVER happened.

NASHVILLE, the television series was the camel that broke my straw back! I left Whole Foods for a local artisanal bakery in 2016, which is when the show moved from ABC to cable’s CMT (Country Music Television). I didn’t plan it that way - it’s just how it happened. There was no way you could keep up when your work is only as efficient as the weakest link - and that link is a part-time employee who works til the store closing time and can’t wait to go home and doesn’t check for things like catering orders the morning crew needs to fulfill.

But I am a punk rock girl. I know how to put out fires!

Another annoying thing, and anyone reading this who has worked a job in retail knows this customer - the one who comes in 10-15 minutes before closing and wants to do. comprehensive shop. It’s WORSE when you know the customer.

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You know this delightfully bright, jaunty song - it was your introduction to ska and you probably didn’t realize that’s what this genre was called. It was just good - just GREAT- music.

“My Boy Lollipop” has been on my radar for as long as “Green Onions.” I heard them both on the car radio, in the 1960s when AM was king and formats were either music or all-news. The playlists were programmed by the DJs spinning that shift, and surely their station’s program director had some input too - it was the age of payola for a very long time and the program director probably had incentives (and payola is still here, by some other name or metric, but here). In the case of both these songs, I would not let my father turn the engine off until the song was finished - even if we had just parked and the song was starting. I am the same way today, even though I have these songs in multiple formats that I can dial up instantly for a listen. Nothing beats hearing a favorite tune in the wild.

I didn’t know it in 1964, but “My Boy Lollipop” was the first hit for Island Records.

As a teenager, Island was my favorite record label. Sure, Warner Bros. did have the FACES, Alice Cooper, Rufus (with Chaka Khan!), but Island… Island was quirky and progressive and daring. Sparks were on Island and then there was Nick Drake and then Free and all the reggae artists and then, Tom Waits, Robert Palmer, Steve Winwood from Traffic through solo; The Slits, Suicide, U2, Grace Jones, the NYC Peech Boys (Bernard Fowler’s band before he became a backing vocalist for the Rolling Stones - their 1983 album features a cover with art by Keith Haring)… the list goes on and on.

You could trust the Island label.

There is one album on Island that I’ve listened to almost every day since it was released:

HERE COME THE WARM JETS by Brian ENO is the album with “Baby’s On Fire,” which was a dance floor favorite in clubs like Rodney’s English Disco in Hollywood, where all the glam kids hung out as glam and glitter were morphing to punk. On the rare occasions I get to be a DJ, I close my set with this lovely and dark lullaby (and I think I might even be able to pull off playing it on the piano).

Imagine my absolute fan girl thrill and delight when in 1984, I walked up to the doors of Island’s London St Peters Square office and Brian Eno himself opened the door for me! I worked at Island in their Los Angeles office in the early 80s, and in 1984, when the Olympics came to LA, I made the executive decision (and I was NOT anywhere near executive1) to go to London and do my work from there.

Island Records had as much style in its physical presence as it did on its vinyl. The office where I worked in Los Angeles was not its first location (that would be a Tudor house on Sunset Blvd. near Gardner Ave. with a mural of the island palm tree in its front window), but it was one of the swankiest and storied buildings on that part of Sunset. It was called The Berwin Building in the 80s, but when it was built, it was built as the Hollywood Athletic Club.

It looks more posh in the pictures on its website, which DOES include Island’s time there as a tenant (Island also had a recording studio there on the same floor as the offices and the building had another full service studio that Island artists frequently used).

Oh what good times I had here!

On my first day in the Los Angeles office, I learned one of my responsibilities was to play the radio in our office and record one hour of various radio stations - both FM and AM. Robert Palmer, who was on the label and lived in the Bahamas, had requested this of us - his label and his music publisher. This is how he kept up with what was going on musically in the USA. He was particularly interested in what songs were played during drive time - and not just on rock radio, but Top 40 stations, and R&B stations. ESPECIALLY R&B stations. We would send him a stash of cassettes in every pouch2 we sent to Compass Point. Compass Point was Island’s Bahamas outpost, including the renown Compass Point Studios, and the most colorful and welcoming hotel with a world-class restaurant.

I never had the opportunity to visit Compass Point or The Bahamas whilst an Island employee, but I did visit and spend lots of time there in the winter of 2002. I was doing research for a now-shelved biopic about the legendary music agent, Frank Barsalona (RIP). He and Chris Blackwell were tight as could be and their businesses grew in tandem with one another. The Barsalonas invited me to spend the Christmas holidays with them at their place in exclusive Lyford Cay. The late Gary Kurfirst, whose career began under Frank’s wing also had a place there, and if you recognize his name - he’s the same Gary Kurfirst who managed The Ramones and Talking Heads. Gary drove me around the island and showed me the sights. I dined at the Compass Point restaurant with him and his wife Phyllis a few times, and I think the special every day the whole time I was there was grouper. The Bacardi Family have a bougainvillea covered house that’s probably been photographed for every posh-lifestyle magazine. It’s gorgeous and not garish at all. Sean Connery lived in the same gated community as the Barsalonas and Bacardis, and you could see him tooling around in a golf cart, waving like a monarch - because he knew you knew he was James Bond.3

We are a quarter of the way into a new century in a new millennium. I constantly read so much not just from my age peers, but from people born near this new century’s beginning that the old (analogue) days were a true golden age. I cannot disagree.

As I started putting together my own 50th anniversary tour - REtroSPECT, 50 Years of Photos, my market research (yes, I did that) supported my belief that Millennials and GenX are looking for cultural authenticity and that this interest my own generation’s Golden Age was proof of what ANALOGUE REVIVAL brands and focus groups were talking about.

It isn’t basking in past glories, what the ANALOGUE REVIVAL is about is a return to listening, reading, and experiencing culture - and life in general - WITH INTENT.

LOITERING WITH INTENT is the title of actor - MOVIE STAR4 - Peter O’Toole’s memoir, published in 1992. I always liked that title, because it embraces a certain ennui of youth, punk rock lyrics (especially DeeDee Ramone’s), and of literary archetypes.5 The loiterer means well, but there is a shadow of a doubt about the nature of his INTENT.

LOITERING WITH INTENT is also the title of a 1981 literary novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark. The book was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.

LOITERING WITH INTENT is additionally the title of a 2014 rom-com that I didn’t know about until today!

Lastly, LOITERING WITH INTENT is an outdated criminal charge. While not being a crime by itself, loitering has historically been treated as an inherent preceding offense to other forms of public crime and disorder, and in the last 40 years or so, has been used to thwart “gang” behavior, but thankfully these statutes have been struck down over the years, most recently in the case Chicago vs. Morales. Essentially, it is not illegal to hang around!

In all these instances, INTENT is doing the heavy lifting, even when it is slouching... when there’s ennui lurking in the background… inertia… The only way to get out of that rut is to do something - WITH INTENT. You could let the boredom or the impasse or the simple lack of action INSPIRE YOU.

And that is how people like Chris Blackwell and many other entrepreneurs were able to spring into action. Having spent some time with Rastas and Jamaicans, I appreciate the relaxed lack of urgency in their lifestyle. But the basic law of physics dictates that someone with an abundance of urgency exists in the same timeline. They hear and see and feel something that could be a unifying force and they start a record company or a magazine and take on all the roles themselves.

That’s where I come from - where punk zines came from (Sniffin’ Glue was a model; Lobotomy, my zine, like Sniffin’ Glue, was born because no one was covering an area of interest for my friends and me. It seemed like the obvious thing to do: just do it). Before it turned into a hyper commercial rag, Rolling Stone magazine was a beacon of the counter culture because there was a groundswell across regions to give a voice to the previously voiceless - or to create a widespread town square for those voices.

And so with independent record labels.

Island Records was born a year after I was. So by the time I was a teenaged record store clerk, setting aside for myself the cool Island releases customers came in to trade, Chris Blackwell had already provided a home for so much good music that I thought if I ever worked at a record label, it would be ISLAND OR BUST.

When I attended a Marianne Faithfull concert in Hollywood, I ran into Danny Holloway whom I knew as a DJ, record producer, and manager of The Plimsouls.

Danny told me he had a day job now - working with his old boss, Chris Blackwell, at Island.6 Because I was working at a law firm practicing insurance defense (you don’t want to do this, seriously!), I immediately piped up, “Do you have a job for me there?” And he said I could come work with him. In the 70s and 80s, getting a job was REALLY THAT EASY. It was a deep pay cut, but I had to do it.

We were “professional managers” of the music publishing catalogue, which is very much an A&R job. You work with the songwriters the company represents to secure covers of their songs; you look for songs for the artists on the label who don’t write their own songs; you try to get film and tv placements.

One of the songwriters Island represented then was Richard Thompson. He came into the office with regularity and Danny and I always took him to lunch (we always ate Thai because Richard is vegan) and I secured two covers from his HAND OF KINDNESS album for a Disney feature animation of their animal characters dancing - a Disney programming concept called D-TV - like MTV. “Two Left Feet” and “Tear Stained Letter” fit the bill for Goofy’s animated dancing.

Island also published the music of Free’s bassist Andy Fraser. Andy lived in Los Angeles and also came by the office frequently. He was the writer of “All Right Now,” and we got that song many covers in film, tv, and on other artists’ records. Andy was incredibly appreciative of everything we did, and he hung out in the office Danny and I shared and played darts.

I wanted to sign the 4AD label for a distribution deal, but one of our higher ups didn’t quite understand the new ambient movement, and all I could say was “WE GAVE THE WORLD ENO.”

The Cocteau Twins had a single called “Sugar Hiccup” that my coworker Mariska Leyssius and I LOVED. We wanted to be involved with the band, and with the label. This was a 12” single that played at 45 rpm. I will never forget Mariska and I bringing the disk in to the office of our fearless leader and despite Island releasing SO MANY 45 rpm 12” singles, he played this at 33 rpm, and further did not get it. Mariska and I met Ivo Watts-Russell, founder of 4AD anyway and offered our services as indie promoters, but they ended up getting US distribution and all the services that came with it. So we got to enjoy being just fans.

During the summer of 1984 when I avoided the LA Olympics to work from the London office, I took a day trip to Edinburgh to meet the band’s principals, Elizabeth Fraser and Robin Guthrie and I am still delighted by the shy young woman who was enjoying a soft serve ice cream that was dripping down over the cone on to her hand when we met.

Was Not Was were also Island songwriters, and while I only met Don Was once, David Was (Weiss) came by the office with new music, or to use the studio to make demos.

U2 - I know you are wondering. In the earliest days of their relationship with the label, they did come by the offices when they were in LA. They all flirted with the girls at the reception desk in the lobby of the building, and rather than take the elevator, they would climb up with grand staircase to our second floor offices.

I left the company in 1984. They had just finished recording THE UNFORGETTABLE FIRE when I was working out of the London office, and even though I wasn’t an Islander when they came to the US to tour in support of the record, they welcomed me with open arms when I came to the shows. They were generous and gracious to have me as their guest through the 1990s!

It’s easy to see how different things were in the 70s-90s. We wish for a simpler time when there was more independence and fewer conglomerates. Music isn’t a commodity- it IS an art, and people buy art. I firmly believe if you want to have a record label, it should be because you want that music to be able to reach as many listeners as possible. Whether or not you get a return on your investment should not be the first concern.

Chris Blackwell sold his stake in the company in 1989, and eventually resigning completely from it in 1997. Despite coming from enormous generational wealth and Old World social status, Blackwell was a scrappy DIY record man, and I think that the growing gulf between the artists and the purpose of being a record company failed to sit well with him. RESPECT.

Despite the crap wages and the general stress of being a girl in her 20s with the impatient goals of big dreams, I enjoyed being an Island Girl, and cherish the friendships I made there, both personally and professionally. The company was small enough where we could deliver real service to the artists and we got to know them, and that personal investment makes everyone work earnestly toward the same goal.

THAT’S really why it was better back then. We INTENDED to spread the word through music.

Do you have one of those days - or weeks or months or years - where there is so much to do, it doesn’t matter what you tackle, it needs to get done anyway, and by extension, all your motion is forward motion?

There’s a lot going on. Punk is 50. Lots of records (not just punk) and artists are celebrating 50th anniversaries in 2026, and I’m doing my part to observe and celebrate. No matter where you are in the world, you’ll get a chance to see my photos of the RAMONES in some manner - I’ve licensed them to various projects around the world acknowledging the 50th Anniversary of their debut album.

I made a 24-page photo book of every photo I shot of the RAMONES during an historic run of shows at the Whisky a Go Go in February 1977. It is still available if you would like to add to your RAMONES AT 50 collection. Just click → here ←.

A concert I attended in May of 1976 - Fleetwood Mac - is being released as a live album, and licensing inquiries have been coming in. If you’re a fan of the Buckingham-Nicks lineup, I have a photo gallery (with direct to consumer print on demand capability) just for you and you can click → here ← to see it and buy prints if you want them.

Acknowledging the Golden Anniversary of anything is a handful and is such a big deal that there’s a commonly agreed-upon crest for it!

My point is that sometimes this is all so overwhelming that I enjoy clicking on the dirty pixels to clean up the old slides and negatives. It’s a motor skill more than a mental skill and I listen to music and it’s the best job I can imagine.

Your naked eye will think that a piece of film is clean, but when you set the resolution to 9800 DPI as I do as a matter of course, everything shows up and looks huge. Pulling up a file covered in dust makes you think it will take forever to clean up. When it’s all done, I feel like I’ve made a major accomplishment for the ages.

This image of Darby Crash (he was still Bobby Pyn here) from a show at the Whisky a Go Go on June 23, 1977 is so dusty and scratched, it might need to be washed and oiled. OR, per the advice from legendary graphic designer (John) KOSH: add noise to it. It’s punk rock, after all. Scratched negatives with dust is an intentional aesthetic! I’ve linked his website because his homepage background is exactly this kind of visual noise.

I shot The Germs in their very first rehearsal early in 1977 in the garage at Pat Smear’s mom’s house, which was at the corner of Pico and Bundy in West Los Angeles. The whole neighborhood is gone now. This photo session was lit by a single overhead light bulb, for better or worse. It’s an avatar of the moment, to be sure.

I’ve worked on restoring this shot as much as I can - and I don’t know which of many boxes this negative is stored in - so until I can locate and re-scan, this restoration is the best I can ever offer to anyone, for personal use or commercial licensing. I have multiple sales sights, but if you ever want a print of this, it blows up only to 11x14. AND if you want it, you can ONLY get one → here ← as an 8x10 or 11x14, and in two finishes.

I spent the entire day yesterday clicking pixels on one of many color images of The Slits. I thought I would never finish, but I did! The band looks as exhausted as I am.

There are several shots of The Slits at the crosswalk in front of the Whisky, and their expressions go from bored to sassy to overjoyed to be in temperate Los Angeles in November.

Theirs was THE SHOW to be at that week in Los Angeles (November 1980). On the night these photos were snapped, Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols was in attendance, as was Robin Williams, who put his beret in front of his face when photographers noticed him backstage. The man hiding behind his hands in the photo below is Rory Johnston, who was the Sex Pistols’ tour manager and day-to-day manager based in Los Angeles.

The gallery where you can see all my recently restored punk images is → here ← and I boldly call the site Punk Rock’s Greatest Hits, because that’s what Muhammad Ali would’ve done!

And with so many things to do, including writing a new post for Substack AND continuing to restore old photos, I’ve done the Substack, and when I turn my attention back to Rod Stewart, I may find I’ve made more progress than I believed. That would be a delight!

It’s always exciting to see notices from Substack telling me I have new subscribers and followers. If you paused to read the welcome message, yes, it is true, this place rants, raves, and remembers a past you may have been part of or wished you could have lived through. I wasn't just a witness, I was a PARTICIPANT and INSTIGATOR with pictures to prove it!

I use Substack as a discipline, as I am putting together my memoir, which is a cross between a photo book and Andy Warhol’s Diaries. Because people subscribe, and some pay, I feel an obligation to regularly deliver something worth the time.

There are origin stories and all the stories behind the photos, including sometimes how much it cost to fill the gas tank (in 1977!) or how much a meal or plane ticket or concert ticket was.

As late as 1980, you only had to pay $5.50 to see Stiv Bators and the Latter Day Dead Boys. Jimmy Zero and Johnny Blitz were in this lineup, but Frank Secich, Stiv’s childhood friend, and founding member of Blue Ash (Northeastern Ohio power pop legends!), Frank Secich had taken over the bass duties as Jeff Magnum had left the band. George Cabaniss of Akron’s Hammer Damage was recruited to play lead guitar, as Cheetah Chrome had also left. The summer before, Stiv and Frank had recorded some power pop singles with Greg Shaw, who released them on his Bomp! label. Those singles were the harbinger of Stiv’s solo album, DISCONNECTED, which was recorded in the Summer of 1980, for by that time, The Dead Boys as we knew them called it quits. David Quinton Steinberg, the teenager from Toronto, and drummer for The Mods stepped in when Blitz left, and a power pop unit was born. Jimmy Zero stuck around for some tracks on that album, but he, too, went his own way.

One of the posts I created a year and a half ago explained how “back in the day,” you could buy tickets by mail order (and sometimes only by mail order). Here’s that read, where you can see from the advertisement for The Who’s 1976 stadium tour, the tickets were $10 !

So, my memoir is also an inadvertent contemporary history class. I’m old and I saw all the good bands (and didn’t have to pay a ransom for a ticket). It’s full of pictures, because I am a photographer.

If you are a paid subscriber, I want to remind you that one of the perqs you enjoy is a discount on the photos and merch I sell ! When I post a commerce-related story, the paid subscriber links will be below the paywall barrier. Otherwise, I will remind you to send me a message for your link to the discounted PayPal shopping cart.

Just this past weekend, I started using Zenfolio as a platform for people to order PRINTS ON DEMAND, which ship directly from a print vendor.

I have two galleries up there right now, and I am adding more images every day.

Punk Rock’s Greatest Hits (although I haven’t put that many Ramones shots up yet)

Rock and Roll (where else are you going to place Tom Petty?)

I still offer direct service on Fine Art Prints, photo books, and posters.

When you go to directly to my feed using punkturns30again.substack.com, you will see this header:

The drop-down menu under Buy Photos Here will take you to the various places where you can in fact Buy Photos.

In addition to the origin stories of the photos, I do in fact rant and rave about music and culture, two of the most subjective topics on which EVERYONE is correct in their conclusions about any given topic <sarcasm font>.

Recently, The Cramps announced new releases of old recordings that have been sonically cleaned up by Ian McKaye and Henry Rollins. They are featured in just about every magazine and newspaper right now, and one of my pictures, a signature piece of my work, is on the cover of England’s SHINDIG! this month.

I am also scanning every frame I’ve ever snapped of The Cramps because of this.

I made a nifty solarized photo from that photo session that I am selling and fulfilling on my own → here ← The technique is an homage to one of my favorite photographers, Lee Miller, and to Surrealism. Miller was an apprentice to, and consort of Man Ray, and a distinguished artist in her own right. It was Miller who pioneered this technique while she was working in Man Ray’s darkroom.

I have written about Lee Miller and other women artists here.

Welcome to Punk Turns 30 Again. I certainly am glad you are here!

This weekend - August 7 and 8 is the weekend of East Nashville’s annual Tomato Art Festival. Of its many components and festivities is an art show, and when I moved to East Nashville in 2008, I entered the most popular, iconic image I made, customized with a tomato theme plus my go-to: Andy Warhol.

The Cramps and I have served one another well over the decades, and it is sad that Ivy is the only one from these photos who is still with us.

If you are a fan of the Cramps, I highly recommend picking up the current issue of Shindig Magazine. They’re on the cover and that’s my photo. There is a robust feature inside the magazine, with four band portraits (my photos) as well as photos from my friend from NYC, David Godlis. You can’t take a bad photo of this band.

The Cramps are on the cover of Shindig and they’ve been featured in so many publications because there has been a reckoning - the bootlegged records and merchandise never benefitted the band, and ownership of their image and output is safely back in Ivy’s hands.

You can read about it in this New York Times feature - it’s a gift link. No paywall. The feature was written by Mark Yarm, who is on Substack, but he hasn’t posted in a while it appears.

If you weren’t reading this feed last year, this is new to you - if you have been, thanks for reading the re-run.

From August 8, 2025:

This image of The Cramps in their classic 1978 lineup has been one of my claims-to-fame since I shot it. Location? Lux and Ivy’s room at the Tropicana in West Hollywood.

Lux, on a recommendation from Mumps’ Kristian Hoffman, rang up Pleasant one day and said, “Kristian Hoffman gave me your phone number and said you were the coolest girl in LA and we should get together.” OF COURSE she was delighted and we immediately started to roll out the Lobotomy fanzine red carpet treatment for them. We took them thrift shopping and late night dining; we saw all their shows, AND we shot a lot of photos for the feature we’d been publishing in the next issue of Lobotomy.

Pleasant and I expected them to have a few cool outfits to wear, but wow, we were not expecting the depth and breadth of their props! Pleasant and Lux art-directed all the shots. This lighting was achieved by fashioning a spotlight out of a work lamp, like those found in the garage workshops in suburban homes.

I placed it on one of the beds in the room and it cast the shadows I wanted. I was able to take so many wonderful spooky pictures.

There were many group shots, and a portrait session with each band member. The band was generous with their time, and I think everyone was having a good time - especially Pleasant, as Lux and Ivy had so many props, toys, and trinkets for us to use in the pictures; their suitcases were like an evil carney’s candy store. And then Nick Knox mentioned oh so casually that the bedspread was on fire.

Ivy matter-of-factly went to the bathroom, ran water over some towels and then dropped them over the flaming bedspread. I think pyromania was not foreign to The Cramps - how else could they be so calm about FIRE? I certainly was embarrassed to have caused damage to the bedspread but then Pleasant reminded us all that it wasn’t so long ago that the Trop used to let rooms out by the hour, so what’s a little burn in the bedclothes ?

If you have been following along, yes, I finally unpacked a new scanner (purchased a year ago!) this summer and have been scanning all my work in 4K to make exhibition prints and to include in my memoir. I have so many Cramps Voodoo Lounge pictures that they are going to get their own volume! Until I make that book, I made a little 24-page softcover photozine featuring favorite and never-before-seen images that I am offering. The link is below the photo. (AND YES - as of 2026, STILL AVAILABLE)

Click here to purchase

On Monday, I posted a note that has received more views than almost any of my other posts (except for the one with the word “Sex” in the title). Of course, it involves sexy photos!

I really don’t intend to appeal to anyone’s prurient interests, but if sex sells, should I ?

As I wrote in the Note, when I selected Adobe Photoshop’s Generative AI tool to remove, en masse, the paper-covered wire hangers from a quadriptych of Voodoo Goddess shots, it sent me back a warning that I was risking my account by violating its TOS vis a vis nudity and p*rn.

Shouldn’t the tools be apolitical or neutral here? What if I were a graphic artist employed by a mammography clinic? If an artist was going to exploit the female form, there are others to appropriately “police” that, not the Photoshop bot!

Anyway, there are a few things I wanted to say about the Voodoo Goddess Sessions, and the difference in the cultural temperature between the 1980s and the 2020s - doesn’t it seem like we’re LESS progressive these days?

Freedom of Speech / First Amendment is a two-sided flag everyone wants to wave and it’s one with a fungible definition that these same everyones think leans to their way of thinking. It’s not like that.

Some of our greatest First Amendment Warriors have been the so-called pornographers - the Larry Flynts, Al Goldsteins, Hugh Hefners, Robyn Byrds, etc ad infinitum. They paved the way for everyone by taking the hits - legally as well as to their reputations.

At the same time, these so-called pornographers employed and empowered women journalists, editors, and photographers. They paid competitive or better rates, and they paid on time. There are so many of us in the punk population who did freelance, contract, or on-the-payroll work with them because they paid the bills.

In the late 1980s/early 1990s, I worked at the law firm then known as Frankfurt, Garbus, KIein and Selz (they are now Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein and Selz.) The iconic First Amendment lawyer and firm founder, Martin Garbus left the firm in 2002, but while I was there, I learned so much from him by being one of the many in that firm who worked on matters for his clients ranging from Daniel Ellsberg to the Estates of Abby Hoffman and of Lenny Bruce. It is not unusual for people such as Hoffman and Bruce (or their estates) to have multiple attorneys on retainer. Marty was one of them, and probably the most high profile.

I mention Garbus and the firm, for when I started there, my coworkers told me how Marty had represented Barney Rossett, founder of Grove Press, and the distributor of the Swedish film, I Am Curious (Yellow) in certain transactions and matters that enabled the film to be screened in the United States. Considered “hardcore p^rn” back in the 1960s (for depicting sexual acts), it was banned from exhibitions worldwide, but ingenious workarounds overcame that. That counterculture DIY attitude and work ethic is one I was and continue to be drawn to. The legal woes, First Amendment and other, of Marty Garbus’s clients could fill a book (and he’s written a few), and that’s not what I’m here to discuss.

While you may think that Larry Flynt and his Hustler magazine are First Amendment and p^rn heroes based on references to the landmark Supreme Court decision that bears his publication’s name (Hustler Magazine vs. Falwell) or the movie that bears his name (The People vs. Larry Flynt), that case wasn’t about pornography, it was about SATIRE. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that robust political debate and public satire, even when outrageous, abrasive, or intended to cause emotional pain, are fully protected by the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press. But because satire and snark and sarcasm are part and parcel of the language and visuals of all counter cultures1, we accept Larry Flynt as a social justice warrior.

In 2015, on the occasion of Hustler’s 41st anniversary, in his editor’s column, Flynt wrote, “We have regularly offended the high and mighty, the powerful and corrupt, the pompous and shameless with uncompromising investigations and unscathing satire. That’s what the First Amendment protects – speech that rocks the boat and rattles the complacent.”

He always considered himself a publisher first, not a pornographer.

As for pornography and obscenity, there is a legal standard that has evolved over several decades. Everyone has an opinion but children, it is agreed, must always be protected. There have been laws challenged, upheld, struck down and circled around again involving language, nudity, and the depiction of sexual acts. Lenny Bruce is not just the man’s name, it is a cipher and cultural shorthand for obscene language on trial.

What I’ve danced around here is the imbalance of determining obscenity via the human body - the apples and oranges (or bananas and melons, I guess) argument.

It’s about TITS.

Last year when I wrote about the volunteer stripper at The Strangler’s Whisky a GoGo show, the views were through the roof. Was it her breasts? Or was it the word “sex” ?

Hollywood really wants women to show you their tits. The amount of gratuitous nudity or at least toplessness is astounding. It’s not like that for the men. Unless the actor is Ewan McGregor2 or Harvey Keitel3, Hollywood doesn’t want to show you a naked penis in any state. (Rock and roll is different, and Iggy Pop is happy to show off.)

In the Autumn of 1980, Pleasant and I were doing a feature for Velvet, as mentioned up top and in Monday’s NOTE. The subject was The GoGo’s, “LA’s Hottest Punk Band” as they wrote in the table of contents. Our actual daily vibe was them posing and me shooting - we made Fucked Up Fake Film Stills, Fake Fashion Layouts - that kind of thing. We did it all the time. So, after getting Belinda to pose in her Disgraceland bedroom, she and Pleasant decided to pose for some “French Postcards.”

That photo session has become known as the Disgraceland Voodoo Goddess session and after 46 years, I made a Box Set of postcards! You’ll have to click on → this link ← to actually see them, because Substack censored a Note I made with one of the more benign (but sexy poses) and I am having fun with that anyway.

The Pre-Sale has ended but you can still buy these postcards. You’re getting a far better deal than the last person who bought these images.

They did, however, lend a print to the Museum of Sex:

COME HITHER!

When I took this photo way back in 1978, I KNEW it was magazine and record-cover worthy. I even told Miles Copeland (founder of IRS Records, and someone I have known since we were children) that The Cramps had staying power. I’m not sure he bought it at the time, but he did eventually release some records by them, namely: Gravest Hits (an EP, released nearly two years after they recorded it), Songs The Lord Taught Us (1980) [both these records were produced in Memphis by Alex Chilton. The lineup is Lux, Ivy, Nick Knox, and Bryan Gregory], and Psychedelic Jungle, released in 1981 on the 22nd birthday of their new guitarist, Kid Congo Powers, whose given name is Brian Tristan. The Cramps changed his name, and I think it quite suits him!

Before they even set foot on a Los Angeles nightclub stage, they were legendary to us. Their fans remain the most dedicated I’ve ever encountered.

The Cramps were more than a band, they were a lifestyle. They were not stuck in time, but rather completely ensconced in their own delicious world of B movies, go-go girls, fuzzy guitars, and supernatural strangeness. And slowly, we began to lose them. Although he had long been out of the band, guitarist Bryan Gregory was the first to shuffle off this mortal coil, in 2001. Lux passed in 2009, and drummer Nick Knox in 2018.

Issue 178 of Shindig! Magazine recounts the essentials of Cramps history and explains how the combination of In the Red Records’ Larry Hardy, Henry Rollins, and Ian McKaye joined forces with Poison Ivy to resurrect The Cramps in a way to bring their dedicated fans, both current and lifelong, bonafide recordings and merch of high and consistent quality produced with the approval of Ivy’s own meticulous eyes and ears. I won’t tell you the whole story because Shindig does, as do MOJO and multiple magazines. I’m pleased and honored to have my photos in these publications alongside those of my friends David Godlis and the late Stephanie Chernikowski.

You cannot take a bad photo of that band!

Last year, I posted the origin story of that photo, and it’s linked here - and below the story are links to buy that iconic photo. There is a link in the reposted story for the 8x10” softcover 24 page photo book (it’s → here too! ← if you aren’t clicking on the story but want the book)

Here are the links to buy CRAMPS photos.

If you are a paid subscriber, your links with discount are below the paywall divider (which you won’t see, cuz you’re not paywalled)

11 x 14 Open Edition (not signed) click → here ←

11 x 14 Fine Art Print (signed) click → here ←

Gift certificate if you want a photo but not sure what. Click → here ←

THANK YOU!

Paid subscribers, your links are below the “subscribe” pitch!

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Elton John performed at the Hollywood Bowl on September 7, 1973. His was not the first concert I attended, but it was the first legit rock and roll concert experience in my life.

I had seen The Lovin’ Spoonful and the Cowsills at Disneyland during Spring Break, April 1968. It was only a few days after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, and John Sebastian introduced “Did You Ever Have to Make Up Your Mind,” a single from 1965, with a political tone - reinforcing to my young but aware mind that the status quo was a choice between two evils.

In 1966, while on our annual family holiday in Tokyo, The Beatles performed at the Budokan. They were staying in the same hotel we were in - the Tokyo Hilton. However I didn’t learn about it until 1995, when The Beatles Anthology was broadcast on television and I saw the aerial shot of the Hilton and told the friends with whom I was watching, “That’s the Tokyo Hilton. We stayed there every June and July from 1966-1969.”

The captions proved me right, and my friends were impressed that I could recognize the hotel. What they didn’t know was that documentary told me about everything I missed about the Beatles in Tokyo. The Beatles who stayed in the very same hotel we did. Surely my dad would have known about it - he strangely knew so much about The Beatles1. He was the one who not just encouraged me to watch them on the Ed Sullivan Show, he made snacks for my sister and me so we would stay in front of the television set - a late night for us as we were 6 and 3 years old at the time. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

In January of 1972, my best friend and I rode a Greyhound bus from Santa Barbara to Orange County to see The Carpenters perform at Anaheim Convention Center. We spent the night with one of her relatives who lived in Buena Park and took the Greyhound back home the following morning. I think because it was The Carpenters, both our parents didn’t think anything could go wrong. And nothing did. AND concert fever gripped me. It was so EASY to do this on my own!

There was ONE fantastic thing about The Carpenters, apart from parents approving of them. Richard Carpenter played a Wurlitzer electric piano. So did Ian McLagan of Faces, and I wanted one. But when it came to asking my parents to buy one (we already had a piano), I stressed it was the kind of modern piano The Carpenters played. Done!

In the Summer of 1972, just as her single, “I Am Woman” was starting to get radio airplay, Helen Reddy played at a small outdoor annual festival in a community about 30 minutes away from my home and I saw that show - and the festival is one we all attended anyway as school marching bands from all over the State participated in the Parade of Flowers, and there was a majorette competition. Twirling a baton was a big deal for teenagers in the 1970s. Reddy played later that night at the high school, and I saw that as well. A local band called Antler opened. I remember nothing about them except their name. You can’t forget a band name like Antler!

A week later, I spent several days in Los Angeles with a group of friends from school to see JESUS CHRIST SUPERSTAR at the opening of a new venue, The Universal Amphitheater (it is not there anymore - replaced by a Harry Potter theme park attraction) on the lot of Universal Studios. Sure, this was a concert, but it was a theatrical performance, its advertisement stated, and since I went with 5 of my schoolmates, felt curiously like a field trip “to the theatre,” especially since ticketing for those shows was done by mail order only - it truly felt like school.

So, yes, I had already seen performers with national presence and radio hits, but in the smallest of venues with captive audiences who were there for the overall event. And I can’t really call any of those shows “rock and roll,” because even though the Lovin’ Spoonful rocked, they were kinda folky too. And it was Disneyland, so rocking out was seriously limited.

Elton John’s concert was the first concert I attended that was specifically about the concert and the artist and rock and roll, and it was at the venerable Hollywood Bowl, summer home of the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra! The Bowl’s posted capacity is 17,500 and the place was packed - sold out.

September 7 was six weeks before I would have my Learner’s Permit (meaning I could drive if a licensed adult driver was in the car with me). So my sister and I had to be driven to the concert. My dad won the award for Girl Dad of the Decade for his 1973 duties alone. He drove us to quite a few concerts before I had my license, and he did not embarrass us by being our “date,” or visible parental chaperone2. Sometimes he dropped us off and picked us up, and sometimes - such as in the case of this Elton John concert, waited for us in the car, parked in the venue’s parking lot. Surely he could hear the music. Granted, it was alone time for him… he could nap, smoke, listen to the radio or the ambient sounds of the concert. I never realized how incredibly cool it was of him to offer his teenaged daughters a semblance of independence by not attending a concert with them - and was content simply being their chauffeur.

My parents also were not too censorial about who I could see or not, but they were delighted when I wanted to see The Carpenters and Elton John because of the PIANO. I’d taken piano lessons since I was about 5 years old. I wanted to learn the organ, because I was obsessed with “Green Onions” and would refuse to let my father stop the car if it was on the radio when we were parking. I asked him what that glorious sound was, and he told me it was an organ and then I demanded one. He refused, saying “we have a piano you don’t play!” and then the piano lessons started.

When I started taking piano lessons, I just couldn’t get it. It took about 5 years before anything made sense to me, and then one day, I woke up and could play just like all the other 10 year olds. By 1972, I had mastered a Beethoven Sonata! Pathetique. The second movement, the adagio, is the one I played best. And I kind of can still play it today. This → link ← is to Rudolph Serkin’s recording of it. His is the interpretation I like best. Even Billy Joel3 (in the documentary directed by my former PBS colleague, Susan Lacy) said it was the most beautiful of Beethoven’s melodies, and I concur.

Ironically, once I became adept at a keyboard instrument, I stopped taking lessons because I was now driving and going to concerts to see keyboard players. In the last months of 1973, when I did have my Learner’s Permit but was still being driven to shows by my dad, I saw Elton John, Faces, and Electric Light Orchestra in rapid succession. And then I turned myself into an Apple Scruff for The Band (two keyboard players!) while they were in the studio with Bob Dylan making PLANET WAVES.

EVERYONE in my school loved Elton John. It seemed like he was a universally loved artist and when I told my friends that I had seen him at the Hollywood Bowl, no one believed me. I told them about new songs he debuted from a forthcoming album4 (and I still wonder if, in real time, they realized I had seen him and heard the new songs that I mentioned by title). I told them about how the t-shirts were being given away as you left the parking lot - one t-shirt per passenger in the car. But they cynically said I could have bought one on the street. The saying “pictures or it didn’t happen” wasn’t a turn of phrase in the 1970s, but people thought it and meant it.

I didn’t take any photos of Elton at the Hollywood Bowl. I didn’t think to!

I had been taking pictures since I was about 5 also. I just hijacked my parents’ camera and turned them into the subjects, when as their first-born, I was previously the main subject matter. I photographed the dog, street scenes, everything. I loved movies, so I also hijacked their Super 8 movie camera. I made little 1-cartridge movies. I made a 6-minute movie as a final project for Environmental Studies class. The other name for a contact sheet is proof sheet.

I would use the camera to prove I attended these concerts. Thanks Elton! You inspired me; you put me on this path and this is where I have arrived.

The next concert I saw was Faces. I shot Super 8 movies of them, and then lurked around the limo area at the stadium, met Ronnie Wood and Ian McLagan, got their autographs and told them I filmed a bit of the show. They asked when they could see the film. I got their itinerary and hotel fake names and met up with them a week later.

This could only have happened in the 70s. And it happened equally with boys and with girls (see Cameron Crowe and his whole career!).

I never underestimated or doubted the power I held simply by being a teenaged girl.

An Unchaperoned Teenaged Girl.

In a postmodern move, I designed the book cover long before I started figuring out the chapters - but this is what my Substack is for - to work out the kinks and to get feedback.

The rest of the Elton John and Faces stories are in the book.

It’s always exciting to open your email and see there are new subscribers, whether free or paid. Please keep reading because at the end of my introduction, I’ve posted a reminder of the PERQ1s you get as a paid subscriber, complete with links so you can enjoy them.

I’m glad you’re here to read the story of OG LA punk rock from an actual PARTICIPANT who has the pictures to prove all these tall tales are true.

When I started writing on Substack, it was to port over the text and pictures from my original Blogger blog, Punk Turns 30. I started to bring stories and photos over from that and other sites I maintained, but the writerly bent of Substack inspired me to use it as a discipline for working daily on my memoir, ADVENTURES OF AN UNCHAPERONED TEENAGED GIRL, which is a photo-forward account of how I got into taking concert and music photos, co-founded a fanzine, all during a pivotal point in the 1970s when DIY used punk rock as a sledgehammer to make things happen. The posts and pictures you see here are ideas and drafts of the stuff of the book.

I’m also working on a short film accompaniment to it, which is being directed and edited by - he’s nothing short of fabulous and market research confirms he is a member of the core audience who is into this stuff that I call my misspent youth. It’s a Win-Win! Actually, I became aware of him and his work through the documentary, ALL THINGS MUSIC PASS, which is the Tower Records story. It exists in its entirety on YouTube (for free). It is an excellent documentary. I cannot praise it enough, and I am proud and honored that Darrin is working on a film about me and my photography origin story. He GETS it.

Please explore my feed. I’ve been taking pictures of music subjects for more than 50 years, and I worked with musicians in my roles as a fanzine publisher, night club booker, tour manager, publicist, music publisher, indie label ombuds-chick, etc. I’ve got some stories to tell.

When you tell people you are writing your memoir about your life in the music business, they are salivating over the sex and drugs part, but I’m only going to tell you about the rock and roll. There was WAY MORE rock and roll than the other two elements put together. I was known as Punk Rock’s Designated Driver, so during that time, I was in a state to remember everything - and I wrote it down, and I took the pictures.

Moving to NYC in 1988 was GREAT. Because of the efficient public transportation and ubiquitous taxis, I could FINALLY have that 3-martini-lunch or whatever whenever I wanted.

I’m not going to tell you about my or anyone else’s sex life BUT I did give a lengthy interview with my memories about the 1970s Sunset Strip Groupie scene for a fabulous podcast series from KCRW, LOST NOTES: Groupies. → THIS ← is the Apple Music podcast link BUT you can find it wherever you get your podcasts. My interview appears in Episodes 7 and 8.

HERE ARE YOUR PERQ REMINDERS:

REMEMBER - paid subscribers enjoy a 10% discount on Punk Turns 30 Books and Fine Art Prints! (purchase links below)

A new support sector, FOUNDING MEMBER offers a high resolution download (prints to a minimum of 11x14) from a choice of one of my signature images quarterly. Once you sign up for this, I will send you a link!

Here’s the → Punk Turns 30 Books public site ← for ordering photo books (share this link with like-minded fans and collectors). These are open edition books and are not signed. They are dispatched directly from the printer, and the printer sets the shipping rate.

And I have made a new soft cover edition of a 2016 photo book - AMERICAN MUSIC - in honor of America turning 250. It is a sampling of American musical artists, including Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Willy DeVille, John Hiatt, Chrissie Hynde, Debbie Harry, Mr Airplane Man, Stevie Nicks and more.

The AMERICAN MUSIC book is $23 (free shipping to USA) and you can get it by clicking → here ←

BELOW the “subscribe” block are the links for PAID SUBSCRIBERS to order PHOTO BOOKS and PRINTS at their discount!

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I post this every year somewhere. It turns out to be one of the most fortuitous journeys, concerts, and meetings I have had in my lifetime. It’s not often you make a lifelong friend.

I can’t say it enough just how much I love this man - musician, songwriter, poet, girl-dad, and friend for the ages. There are some people who believe in you more than you believe in yourself, and Mike is one of those people.

In 1977, TALKING HEADS 77, the band’s aptly-named debut album was released. They were a CBGB band so we West Coast early adopters of punk already knew who they were, and we’d heard their quirky single, “Love —> Building On Fire” opening the Rodney on the ROQ radio show every Sunday night and LOVED IT.

Sire Records was hell-bent on calling this music “new wave.” Blame or credit Seymour Stein for that.

As a fan of the Nouvelle Vague movement in French cinema, I can understand why Seymour wanted to associate the music that he was signing and releasing with that label/genre. But it was PUNK.

Punk embraced nihilism, Surrealism, all of that Paris between the Wars and Weimar Berlin ARTY FACT.

I mean - Richard HELL. DEAD Boys. The Saints’ single was called I’M STRANDED. That’s all PUNK.

It WAS the wave of a new style. That wave was PUNK.

Despite that cheerful chirping single about love, Talking Heads’ album delivered to me a darkness under their clean cut Ivy League look. This is a juxtaposition I knew and loved so well. As an Angeleno, I embraced that one essential contribution Los Angeles gave to popular culture: NOIR. Darkness in the sunshine. Novelists, poets, songwriters, filmmakers, painters, and photographers embraced NOIR. Punk embraced its themes of existential dread.

In fact, one of my best known photographs is a portrait of Lux Interior of the Cramps shot in the high contrast black and white that is noir’s signature with the whole portrait presenting a quirky angle, which was a hallmark of film noir too, just as hard boiled detective protagonists were. I call this Lux Interior, Private Dick1

But let’s get back to Talking Heads and the juxtaposition between their clean cut look and the dark underbelly of their debut album. I’m not sure when references to psychoanalysis entered the songwriting canon - I always thought of poetry and songwriting as a way to work personal stuff out WITHOUT a psychologist or therapist or similar… catharsis and talking to yourself and presenting all sides of the argument via the poem or the song…. I’m probably wrong (and I know you’ll tell me if I am)… but I do remember more than one read-and-forgotten record review of TALKING HEADS 77 that referenced “No Compassion” for the line, Go talk to your analyst, isn’t that what they’re paid for?

In a world where people have problems
In this world where decisions are a way of life
Other people’s problems, they overwhelm my mind
They say compassion is a virtue, but I don’t have the time

What are you, in love with your problems?
I think you take it a little too far
It’s not so cool to have so many problems
But don’t expect me to explain your indecision
Go talk to your analyst, isn’t that what they’re paid for?
You walk your talk, you still function like you used to
It’s not a question of your personality or style
Be a little more selfish, it might do you some good

Dig it for postmodernism and its discontents!

The whole vibe and concept of “no compassion” has been orbiting my mind all month for reasons too mundane and ordinary but obnoxious just the same, so I won’t list them.

I’m trying to get into a different vibe right now though, and have time-traveled to 1971-1972, considering becoming a tax exile in France (or Spain), so EXILE ON MAIN STREET has been my soundtrack for a few days. It never gets old; like fine wine, it just gets better.

Long before the term “vintage” was applied to clothing and items found in thrift stores, charity shops (Good Will, Salvation Army, Oxfam, etc), and garage sales, people just THRIFTED.

I’m sure the Beverly Hills All Saints Church still holds their rummage sale; during Punk Rock, it was the very best of all thrifting opportunities. Pleasant and I never missed it. In 1978, Pleasant still lived with her mom in a duplex on Palm Drive in the flats of Beverly Hills (she and Kid Congo Powers not much later became roommates in an apartment located at 909 Palm Ave. in West Hollywood!)

The elegant civilian ladies and the movie stars, past and present, of Beverly Hills rarely wore the same outfit in public twice. In the 1970s, their luxe cast-offs could be had for student and working-class money. There was always the $1-per-bag sale on the final day. And that is when I stumbled upon a wonderful dress with enduring Pop cred.

The fabric of the polyester dress was an on-the-bias wide strip of hot pink and Day-Glo green. That green didn’t suit my or Pleasant’s olive complexion. But I bought the dress anyway - it was the equivalent of 25 cents. It had value to me if only as a Pop relic.

I have told the story of this dress before - and it’s right here if you want the deeper dive. The post below tells the story of how Blondie introduced me to one of my long-time idols, Ray Davies of The Kinks, and includes more of the origin story of the dress in the colors of the punk flag.

My July 1981 was spent in the company of all the people listed in the advert pictured above.

Stiv, Cynthia Ross, and I spent a portion of July 15 - Johnny’s birthday, with him. We were on our way (and very late) to a gig in Trenton, New Jersey, but had to pay our respects to the man at an Alphabet City party. Johnny’s mother, Josephine was there. She gave him socks and underwear (and probably other gifts, but I remember the socks and underwear. It was such a mom thing.).

I don’t know what it is about Johnny Thunders that makes everyone who ever knew him feel simultaneously close to him and oh so far away. There was so much more than met the eye. People seem to forget he was a dad, a brother, a husband.

But undisputedly, Johnny WAS rock and roll.

If the New York Dolls personified the “Trash” style of glitter becoming punk rock by combining all the best parts of all the rock and roll, glam, camp and R&B that came before, Johnny Thunders as a solo artist was probably the first Punk Dandy - absolutely no personality crisis at all!

I’m sure the younger readers here (Gen Xers, I’m looking at you) relate the phrase “elegantly wasted” with Michael Hutchence of INXS with his slithery snake-hipped moves copped from all the best front men who preceded him - but “elegantly wasted” is what I immediately thought when I held a copy of SO ALONE in my hands in the Licorice Pizza record store on the Sunset Strip in 1978.

Johnny always looked good. He could be dashing and colourful, he could be wildly Bohemian, and he could be rascally and sweaty. He was always rock and roll in style and in substance. If attitude was illustrated or personified, Johnny Thunders would be the poster boy for “louche insouciance.” Lower East Side Devil May Care. Or May Not Care. And beaming stylishly all the while on the cat walk of the nightclub stage.

Johnny always rocked hard too, with a panoply of references to so many favourite musical trends from surf guitar to girl groups and the decidedly NYC/LES intertwining twin guitars - it wasn't just Television that played that - the Voidoids and the Heartbreakers did too, and each of those bands spun it their way, and they’re all good. We must never forget that Johnny Thunders was a superb guitar player with a style both dirty and clean, rhythmic and sinewy - he always played the right stuff.

Aside from playing vicious guitar, Johnny had a tender side, a poetic and thoughtful side - and you know it.

And as a role model - or a rock and roll goal, I feel like there is a disproportionate cadre of voices that emphasizes and admires him for his drug abuse and the irresponsibility that accompanies it.

I don’t write about Johnny’s bad choices and his addictions because he wrote about them far better than any of his critics.

I celebrate Johnny as the embodiment of rock and roll. I’m so glad I saw him perform so many times.

Released earlier this year is a superb Johnny Thunders tribute album entitled I Only Wrote This Song for You ← listen to it there (Apple Music).

And you can listen to it on Spotify also.

You may have heard I enjoy a rant. I do, and this post has one right after this intro.

Punk Turns 30 Again is the spot where you read about the halcyon and chaotic free-for-all days of OG Los Angeles punk rock and how it formed. While I am happy to wear the “scholar” hat (I admit I have committed several acts of scholarship) the important - the most important qualification for my expertise is that I lived it.

I am a witness.

I took the pictures.

You will find my pictures and my memories on these pages. I use Substack as a writing discipline for my forthcoming memoir. Feedback is always appreciated. Writing about ones’ self is an exercise in developing critical distance about your own life events.

Way back in 2021, I had the idea to port the contents of my photo blog, Punk Turns 30 to Substack. Punk Turns 30 started up during the last quarter of 2004, anticipating the 30th Anniversary of punk rock - but I didn't move it all over -

and then COVID happened and then I had a two and half year medical experience. And whilst recovering from my third and final surgery of that episode, in March 2024, 20 years after figuring out I could use the blogosphere to celebrate the 30th anniversary of punk, I figured out the way to create my picture book.

It was going to be a photographic memoir - an analogue book you could touch and display. I was, after all, historically speaking, integral in taking audiences “behind the music,” so to speak, after decades as a television producer at USA Network, PBS, VH1, Food Network, and the regional MetroChannels (a James Dolan operation. Thanks to the Knicks’ recent victories, you all know what kind of guy he is.)

I post these unflattering MTV Networks ID badges to punctuate that I bring receipts!

In writing my memoir, just like a reliable journalist, I triple fact-check myself. I consult my day planners, ticket stubs, newspaper clippings (articles and concert reviews), advertisements, as well as online resources such as setlist dot fm (which has its fair share of inaccuracies and incompleteness). Sometimes I spend an inordinate time verifying my memory.

Speaking of incompleteness, a few weeks ago, SPIN Magazine published what it titled “An Oral History of VH1.” It covered the years when I worked there - when the channel relaunched and rebranded as “Music First” and ditched the hyphen between VH and the 1. (And they rebranded the Music First hyphen-free VH1 twice during my tenure - changing on-air fonts and the logo itself. Job and self-preservation for the graphic designers and on-air promo team? Am I cynical or observant?)

I found the oral history, which was told through the interviews of male executives - but no producers who were in the trenches actually creating the programming the B- and C-Suite took credit for - incomplete and as a result, inaccurate as a whole.

(the exception: a single female executive and two of her male direct reports; the channel had more than a few women at that level)

At the very least, SPIN did not do its due diligence or scratch below the surface of a media world Boys Club. In so doing, they also omitted a handful of important, lasting VH1 success stories which exist because of the women who developed them or the female on-air talent itself.

The late Sunset Strip svengali and self-prolaimed Lord of Garbage, Kim Fowley used to complain to me1 that the younger generation (he meant the youngest of Gen X and the entirety of the Millennials) operated “part time and incomplete.” As time passes, I don’t think he is wrong. I also don’t know anything about the writer of the SPIN piece, Charles Moss. But I did do my due diligence and found him on LinkedIn (I find it a hellsite, but it is a resource, just the same). My guess is that he may be a younger member of the Gen X cohort. In any event, his online CV indicates he was in college when I left VH1 to go to the Metro Channels (1998). Fowley would have barked, “If the shoe fits, wear it” and thrown in the word “dogshit” for good measure, but I shall give Mr. Moss some benefit of the doubt. He may not know what he does not know.

SPIN’s article opens as most stories about VH1 do - “When it first aired on January 1, 1985, however, VH1 was decidedly not cool. In fact, it was an amalgamation of soft rock and stand-up comedy with blurry brand identity.” This introductory salvo is illustrated with a photograph of the pre-rebrand on air talent, the late Bobby Rivers 2, Rosie O’Donnell, and Roger Rose.

A sentence or two could have depicted VH1 as a training ground for talent who found success as their careers progressed. Rosie O’Donnell was the host of the comedy series, Stand Up Spotlight. That series was produced by Sharon Kelly (a pre-rebrand producer who remained at VH1 throughout most of my tenure) and its executive producer was Jackie Sharp. You may or may not be a fan of Rosie O’Donnell, but you cannot deny the place she has in popular culture and comedy. She honed her ready-for-prime time skills under the wings of women producers at VH1 “before it was cool.”

If you read credits and you’re reading my ‘Stack, you may recognize the name Jackie Sharp. She was a principal in the punk-era San Francisco arts collective, Target Video. (Yes, the very same crew that brought you the infamous CRAMPS Live at Napa State Mental Hospital.) Target Video was the San Francisco punk version of Andy Warhol’s Factory. And that creative mind and force was creating and green-lighting projects for that “uncool VH1,” and was the same creative mind that proposed Fairway to Heaven that everyone else seems to take credit for. Jackie continues to nurture Target’s legacy and has contributed to all the punk retrospectives that have mattered since punk started having anniversaries.

Other VH1 alumni success stories neglected by SPIN include Ru-Paul and John Fugelsang.

John Fugelsang and I met after my first week at the channel, October 17, 1994. If you know anything about John Fugelsang, you know he is a huge fan of The Beatles and of Bob Dylan. We met over Wayne Isaak’s3 assistant’s desk from whom John was trying to score tickets to see Dylan at the Roseland Ballroom for any, and hopefully all three nights that week (October 18, 19, and 20). In 2021, I traveled to NYC from Nashville specifically for a run of Dylan shows at the Beacon Theatre and ran into John in the line waiting to get in! This shared love of Bob Dylan makes ours one of my most consistent friendships ever, in that I always know where to find him in a pinch!

As a Beatles fan born after they broke up, John is like no other Beatles fan in his generation - unless he is a secret Boomer (he is a Virgo, so his work ethic and research skills are top notch!). Paul McCartney told me4 that John knew more about Paul than Paul remembered about his own life! A VH1 credit John and I share centers around George Harrison. I wrote about it on the anniversary of George’s passing last year.

Please take note of that paragraph and every thought in it. It’s a template and the foundation of many of the incomplete stories VH1 encourages about their programs, those programs’ provenances, and the channel’s accomplishments that you will find in reporting such as in SPIN.

After VH1, John Fugelsang continued to perform his satirical, current-events stand-up, and most recently, he authored a book entitled The Separation of Church and Hate, a New York Times best seller. John is here on Substack, and you most definitely should subscribe !

I saved the elephant in the room for last.

RUPAUL. RuPaul needs no introduction. In 1996, however, he did. It was talent executive Barbara Barna-Abel who developed Ru’s talent for VH1. They created a talk show where Ru interviewed celebrities. Sounds like the old uncool VH1, doesn’t it? Somehow it seems to be inconvenient or unsexy that a hard-working female executive can make things happen… things that shake the world and maintain their relevance for decades after the fact.

When the SPIN piece first piqued my ire, the esteemed writer, Annie Zaleski surprised me with the greatest news of all! Alyx Vesey is working on a book about VH1.

Ladies, this inconvenient woman wants to have a tea party with you.