This One's for Gail!

This evening I attended the book signing / launch party for Punk 365 by Holly George Warren at the La Luz de Jesus Gallery which simultaneously hosted the Creem book signing and launch party for Robert Matheu. Robert has photos in Punk 365, so its all tied up in a bow... in fact, the opening shot in the book of the Stooges is Robert's photo.

Anyway... this was an exciting event but very low-key in comparison to what I understand the Masque reunion of last weekend was... and that was, after all, a sold-out rock n roll show jam-packed with a paying audience clamoring to see the likes of The Eyes and Billy Bones... several Punk 365 contributing photographers were in attendance and there were old friends from back in the day coming to see the photos that La Luz de Jesus installed for the party (which will be hanging until the end of the year!), coming to get their copy of the book(s) signed and also to see Tony Kinman's new band, Los Trendy.

I saw a familiar face sitting on one of the benches, taking it all in... and we caught eyes. "You're Gail!" I exclaimed.

Gail is the lady in the photo above, on the far left of the frame, wearing the white t-shirt and saddle shoes. And today, 29 years later, she still looks just like Gail. I remember back during Lobotomy's heyday, Pleasant would often tease Gail in the pages of Lobotomy's gossip column of silly blind items about who she was dating... of course, in the pages of Lobotomy... no one was safe from taunting.

Jimmy Destri once told us that he would never again tell us his love life secrets for fear that we would taunt him on the back of envelopes (because no one did email back then... we used the postal mail and in fact, did taunt Jimmy about his love life on the back of envelopes.... however, we did not drive him to the noose...

Anyway, Gail and I had a chance to catch up on the past 29 years... and then along came Pooch from the venerable Flipside Fanzine, and he's all married now! Well, what do you expect after 30 years? There was a fantastic representation of people from way back when!

I have to say this publicly - Billy Shire at La Luz de Jesus did such a fantastic job of installing this Punk 365 photo exhibit in no time flat! Lots of the photos (including mine) are for sale... so if you are in LA, or coming to visit LA before the end of the year... you must stop by La Luz de Jesus Gallery at 4633 Hollywood Blvd and check it out. You can make it a punk rock Christmas! Well worth the visit... not to mention that there's a great show of paintings installed as well.

Below are scans of a couple small images I've put into this photo show.



Kristian Hoffman (Mumps) having lunch at Duke's at the Tropicana.



The exhibit has a black & white version of this: Paul Roessler and Black Randy - which I brought here directly from the Punk Rock Day of the Dead show - its two photos and some skeletons mounted on a 16 x16 woven twig thingie - meant to commemorate a real Oaxacan Day of the Dead shrine through my vision.

I hope you get a chance to check out this exhibit.