Lobotomy Goes to San Francisco

Randy Kaye - aka Randy Detroit, and Pleasant on the street in San Francisco on one of the many Lobotomy road trips.

This trip was made in April 1978 to see Blondie at the Greek Theatre at UC Berkeley.

No one knew it at the time, but within six months, Blondie would become worldwide pop stars with their album Parallel Lines and its single, "Heart of Glass." That album has a long long shelf life --- I hear "One Way or Another" as a television commercial now --- and even back then, it was used in advertising. Well... catchy song and hook...

Here's a strip from a contact sheet of photos taken on that trip... melancholy memories... Randy passed away in October and it is still devastating to think that he is gone... I'm so happy that I have these photos to remind us all of the good times we had.

(Click on the image strip on the left to see a bigger version)

Lobotomy, the Brainless Magazine was Pleasant's brainchild, and Randy was her right-hand man in the operation. Kid Congo and I were along for the ride and so were various other friends such as Brad Dunning, who at the time wrote about pop culture and was Lobotomy's art director (he is now an interior designer to the stars; seriously - google him!) and a heretofore unmentioned name in this blog -- Nancy "Nitro" Nagler.

Who's who in this strip --- Randy is checking out magazines with punk content at a new stand, and in the second frame, a little old lady is checking Randy out. Randy took my picture at the newstand... and the next frame is of Nancy making a grand descent down the stairway of the Hotel Californian in San Francisco.

The last frame is Blondie's Clem Burke, who I snapped going to their soundcheck at the venue on UC Berkeley's campus.

These adventures provided material for our fanzine - both editorial and photographic. San Francisco and some burned out neon gave birth to the Lobotomy in-joke..."edgevate." Well... you had to be there for that one...

Comments

Popular Posts