July 14, 1978 Lobotomy Weekend at the Whisky

The Summer of 1978 was a pretty spectacular one for LA Punk, and by extension for "our thing," Lobotomy. We had had Lobotomy Night Benefits at the Whisky earlier in the year. But in the middle of the summer, we had Lobotomy Magazine Weekend with all our friends playing, naturally.

Pleasant really knew how to work a phone, write a column and convince people to do the right thing. In one of his earliest performances ever, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and his band the Red Lights took the Whisky stage, as did the Middle Class, Germs, and Marbles.


This thing of ours -- Lobotomy, the Brainless Magazine -- was something completely fun and for a lark and at the same time, something we all took pretty seriously. It was one of the first entries into Pleasant's long, steady and successful career as a writer and go-to girl for things LA Punk. Our fabulous (and of course, unpaid but never uncompensated) Art Director was Brad Dunning, who has since become an interior designer of great acclaim, and now when he writes, he writes for the likes of the New York Times.

In addition to Brad, Lobotomy's crew included a young man Brian Tristan. He was the head of the Ramones Fan Club in LA. You know him now as Kid Congo Powers, but back then, he was just Brian. Whenever I think about the Gun Club and the Cramps, I still marvel that Brian jettisoned from being the guy who Jeff had to cajole into playing guitar and performing into this international cult artist of great acclaim. And it was Jeff who cajoled Pleasant on to the stage as well. So whenever I can put these three pals together on one page in this blog, I do.



The other ventricle in the heart of Lobotomy was Randy Kaye, aka Randy Detroit, pictured below in two photos from Lobotomy road trips to San Francisco.





Randy Kaye aka Randy Detroit, much loved, sorely missed




I have only these Germs photos from a Lobotomy Night to share with you. There's a really annoying story about what happened to the rolls of film I shot of the Red Lights, but its a complaining one about sibling spats. You know what those are like. Let's just leave it that the rolls of Red Lights photos paid the price.



But back to July 14, 1978. That's Bastille Day - vive la revolution, liberte, egalite et fraternite! There is a part of me that's quite proud of this night coinciding with the celebration of the French Revolution, if for no other reason than being able to invoke any and all correspondences of revolutions in one place. Thankfully, we had no severed heads in punk rock, but like rock n roll, we have untimely deaths, and three of them are on this page. So as you enjoy your baguettes and brie this weekend, spin some Germs and some Gun Club, or bust out any of your LA punk rock and if your friends don't like it, let them eat cake.