Punk Turns 30

The installation of Punk Turns 30's traveling photo exhibit, Unguarded Moments: Backstage and Beyond that will hang at Mac's Bar in East Lansing, MI this Friday, March 28 is dedicated to the punk rock girls who carry the Girl Group torch... And also because The Gore Gore Girls are rocking the house, it seemed like a no-brainer to salute the Ladies of Punk Rock. I don't think that will bother the gentlemen of Chrome Spiders too much... they will be there to rock you too! What can you expect? How about seeing the visual transformation of Belinda Carlisle ? How about stylish It Girls like Pleasant and Pat Bag ? Or ground-breaking punk icons like Debbie Harry and Lorna Doom ? And of course there's superstar Chrissie Hynde and Los Angeles's favorite punk queen, Alley Cat Dianne Chai. If you're anywhere near East Lansing, Michigan, you will not want to miss this. There's such a great surprise.... Just some of the Los Angeles punk rock ladies you wil...

Jack Oblivian's porch, rock n roll guys assembled... that's what I had in my head last night, so I thought I would share it with you today. This group of well respected men about town, in this line-up, are known as Brand New Love Affairs. They're an international supergroup, and last time I checked my site statistics, people from all over the world are Googling this particular photo. So I'm bringing it front and center today. Each of the members of Brand New Love Affairs is a great singer and songwriter in his own right. And that's why it is a rare and momentous occasion when they are actually assembled. While three of these guys are within the Memphis/Oxford environs, one of them is way over in Europe. Is this the face of punk rock today? I think so. You know what I always found interesting about the old punk rockers from LA's Golden Age? Some of the people who have become the most iconic representations of punk rock dressed like regular people. They ...

Patricia Morrison has a long list of punk rock band credits... she's played bass for The Bags, Gun Club, Sisters of Mercy, Fur Bible, and now plays alongside her husband, Dave Vanian in The Damned. Ironic that the Bags had an anthem called "We Don't Need the English." The English have certainly needed LA's Patrician Morrison. If you are not familiar with Fur Bible, they are essentially The Gun Club line-up from the Las Vegas Story tour after Terry Graham left and after they abandoned Jeffrey Lee Pierce in London – Kid Congo, Patricia Morrison, and drummer Desperate. Kid sings and you can hear a couple of the tracks on Kid’s compilation Solo Cholo. These inadvertent portraits of Patricia were taken in the parking lot behind Licorice Pizza in 1977 or 1978. Like I told you yesterday, this hang was the hang out of all hang outs in West Hollywood. While I've seen the Bags dozens of times, these photos of Patricia represent the whole of my Bags images. ...

Lobotomy the brainless magazine was put together in Pleasant's bedroom, and photocopied at Charlie Chan in Gower Gulch. The "camera-ready" magazine was held together by tape and none of the photos were half-toned, and we manually staped it together. Its cover price went from 75 cents to a dollar and Pleasant distributed it herself, with either Randy or me driving to those stores that sold it, from the long gone Licorice Pizza (conveniently across the street from the Whisky) and the indie record and boutique stores on Melrose. We felt the need to do benefits for the zine - since the cover price couldn't exactly support the cost of printing it - and it was just the right thing to do -- and we did so at the Whisky. Pleasant and I both worked there (though at different times doing different things) and Elmer Valentine, the Whisky's owner was game, so Lobotomy hosted a couple nights at the Whisky during its sporadic lifetime (the zine's sporadic lifetime...