Sunday 27 November 2016

Christmas - at Lobotomy Room! Friday 2 December 2016



























Inaugurate the 2016 Christmas party season on a note of sweaty desperation on Friday 2 December – at Lobotomy Room! When we transform the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s into Santa’s grotto!




































For the final festive and boozy Lobotomy Room of 2016, we’re combining the film club AND the dance party into one night! COME for the free screening of the most kitschy and campy of all seasonal TV specials – Pee-Wee Herman’s 1988 Playhouse Christmas Special! Watch agog as bow-tied perverse brat Pee-Wee welcomes a mind-boggling cavalcade of super star special guests to his playhouse - including queer favourites Grace Jones, Little Richard, Cher, Joan Rivers, Charo, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Oprah Winfrey and kd lang!



















































































Afterwards, STAY for Christmas cocktail capers at free incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room! Wilder than you can imagine! Explicit beyond belief! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll at Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly beer blast! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! Bad Music for Bad People! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr Sketchy and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock – with some abrasive atomic-era Christmas tunes thrown in! Vintage erotica projected on the big screen all nigh for your adult viewing pleasure!



































/ Because nothing says "Christmas" like vintage gay porn and snarling punk music! Celebrate Christmas with a twist - at Lobotomy Room! /

Putrid music! “Adult” movies! Won’t you join me for a snowball or eggnog and learn the true meaning of Christmas with Pee-Wee Herman? Whether you’re naughty or nice, a tawdry good time is guaranteed!






























Doors to The Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm

/ Below: Christmas pin-ups via John Waters' favourites Edith Massey and Jean Hill /






































Further reading:

Read about all the previous antics at Lobotomy Rooms to date hereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehere , hereherehere, hereherehere, herehere and here

Follow me on tumblr for all your kitsch, camp, retro vintage sleaze and fifties homoerotica needs!


Follow me on twitter!

"Like" and follow the official Lobotomy Room page on Facebook if you dare!

Thursday 17 November 2016

When Leonard Cohen Met Nico
























Let’s reflect on ineffably suave Canadian poet, novelist and singer Leonard Cohen - an artist synonymous with bohemian integrity and dignity – who died on 7 November 2016 aged 82. In particular, his relationship with inscrutable German chanteuse Nico (1938 - 1988). They first met in 1966 in New York before Cohen was famous. Nico had just left The Velvet Underground and was striking out on her own. He called her "The most beautiful woman I'd ever seen." But then he also added, “Nico was very strange.”











































As Cohen himself recalled: “When I first came to New York - I guess it was around 1966 - Nico was singing at The Dom, which was an Andy Warhol club at the time on 8th Street. I just stumbled in there one night and I didn't know any of these people. I saw this girl singing behind the bar. She was a sight to behold. I suppose the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen up to that moment. I just walked up and stood in front of her until people pushed me aside. I started writing songs for her then. She introduced me to Lou Reed at that time."

The song Cohen wrote for Nico was “Take This Longing.” Cohen claims she used serenade him with it, but Nico never recorded it or added it to her repertoire. Can you imagine: Nico singing the words of Leonard Cohen in that sibilant vampire priestess voice? (Instant goose bumps). He would later compose another melancholy ballad inspired by Nico, “Joan of Arc.” The lyrics certainly evoke Nico: “And something in me yearns to win / such a cold and lonesome heroine / And who are you? she sternly spoke …” (The enigmatic Nico was one of the great rock muses. Musicians like Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, Jackson Browne, Iggy Pop, Marianne Faithfull and others would all go on to write songs about her).

In some accounts, Cohen and Nico were lovers. They certainly would have made for an exquisitely gloomy, romantically-despairing deep-voiced couple. It was not to be. In truth, she rebuffed his overtures. “Somehow I managed to meet her. And within five minutes of our conversation she told me to forget it, because she was only interested in young men. But she said, I'd love to be a friend of yours - and we became friends". Nico’s preferences for ‘em young and pretty are well documented: her boyfriend at the time was doe-eyed 18-year old musician Jackson Browne (who wrote the song “These Days” for her). A few years later she would turn her cougar-ish attention to nubile punk Iggy Pop. Bear in mind “older man” Cohen was 33 at the time – a grand total of four years Nico’s senior!










































“I was madly in love with her. I was lighting candles and praying and performing incantations and wearing amulets, anything to have her fall in love with me, but she never did …,” Cohen would ruefully confess. “The years went by and we became quite tender with each other, but nothing romantic ever came of it.”




































Cohen’s first album The Songs of Leonard Cohen (released December 1967) owed a significant debt to Nico’s solo debut Chelsea Girl (released October 1967). Think plaintive urban-beatnik folk music with coolly compassionate deep sonorous vocals, sparse musical accompaniment and downbeat glass-half-empty lyrics. The poet who’d not yet sung in public had learned, observed and absorbed while watching Nico perform at The Dom. Andy Warhol perceptively noted of Cohen’s album “it’s like Nico with whiskers.” In his 1980 memoir POPism: The Warhol Sixties, Warhol went further, recalling: “Leonard Cohen the Canadian poet was there (The Dom) quite a few nights in the audience down at the bar, just staring at her. Later on when he cut a record album I read a review that said his singing was like he was “dragging one note over the entire chromatic scale,” and I couldn’t help thinking of all those hours he’d spent listening to Nico …” . The Songs of Leonard Cohen created a sensation and launched him on his path. Although recognised as a classic today, Nico’s Chelsea Girl met with indifference at the time. It proved prophetic: cult diva Nico was destined to toil in obscurity during her lifetime.

For Cohen, his liaison with Nico would shape his musical direction and lead to an enduring (if sometimes stormy) friendship. (Nico had a penchant for violence in her volatile later years: during a misunderstanding, Cohen says Nico once “hauled off and hit me so hard it lifted me clean off the bed”). For Nico, the legacy would be more prosaic: in the sixties, Cohen turned her onto macrobiotic food, a diet she would stick with for the rest of her life. Over the years they would occasionally reunite when they both found themselves staying at The Chelsea Hotel in New York.  "She's a great singer and a great songwriter,” Cohen said of Nico. “Completely disregarded from what I can see. I mean, I don't think she sells fifty records, but she's I think one of the really original talents in the whole racket.”






















I’ve blogged about the Nico - the chain-smoking, heroin-ravaged Marlene Dietrich of punk / Edith Piaf of the Blank Generation and “possessor of the most haunting wraith cheekbones of the 20th century” (thank you, James Wolcott of Vanity Fair) many times: her contemporary Marianne Faithfull reflects on Nico; the historic encounter When John Waters Met Nico; Nico’s 1960s modelling days; how the old jazz standard “My Funny Valentine” (and heroin) connects Nico with Chet Baker; and When Patti Smith Met Nico.

Sources:

This website devoted to Nico. The 1993 biography Nico: The Life and Lies of An Icon by Richard Witts. POPism: The Warhol Sixties by Andy Warhol and Pat Hackett

Kembra Pfahler's Capital Improvements at Emalin Gallery 15 November 2016

Voluptuos Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery

Tuesday night (15 November) was the private view of “Capital Improvements”, a solo art exhibit by provocative New York performance artist and punk front-woman Kembra Pfahler at Emalin gallery in Shoreditch at Emalin gallery in Shoreditch (from 16 November – 21 December 2016).

The Facebook event page promised the private view would incorporate a live performance by the perennially-fierce Pfahler’s theatrical glitter-punk revue The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. I’ve been a hardcore fan of VHKB since the nineties, have all their CDs and often a drop a song of theirs into my sets when I DJ at Lobotomy Room. What an exciting development! VHKB almost never perform in London. The last time was their triumphant appearance at The Meltdown Festival in 2012 – an unforgettable shimmering spectacle of decadence! (Read about it here). Would this little independent gallery in East London have the budget to fly over the whole band and backing dancers that make up VHKB for a free one-off performance?

The private view party was meant to last 6 pm – 9 pm. Pal and I rocked up shortly past six to get a look around and scope a good spot to watch the performance. The exhibit itself is fascinating: Pfahler has lived in the same tiny rent-controlled studio apartment in New York for many years and the gallery has faithfully recreated her living space. (Pfahler’s life is her art statement: she’s one of those people who looks like a walking piece of art. Her idiosyncratic apartment and its artefacts is part of her performance). It’s a beautiful, compact space with every surface painted the deep shade of dried blood, surrounded by eerie dolls and multiple portraits of Pfahler in all her ghastly, macabre beauty.

Promisingly, the makeshift performance space in the corner was a decent set-up: a tiny high stage with the official VHKB logo (Batman with a pendulous pair of female tits) emblazoned on a flag behind it. (You must exclaim, “A little stage!” like Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble at this point). There was three microphone stands lined up and no musical equipment, so clearly the actual band wasn’t there and Pfahler would be singing to taped musical accompaniment, which was fine by me.

My friend Emma and her girlfriend Pippa joined us. Princess Julia and Marc Almond were both there too. Time started to drag. And then drag some more. There was no sign of the artist herself. The venue started seriously filling up with a nice mix of freaky club kids, punks, Goths, androgynes and the kind of weirdos who only emerge by night you hope to encounter at events like this. Talking amongst ourselves we started speculating, “I wonder when this thing is actually going to start?”

Finally, a glimpse of a huge exploding haystack of black bouffant hair emerged from around the corner. It wasn’t Pfahler – it was one of her troupe of backing dancers. (Pfahler always performs accompanied by a gang of identical semi-naked dancing girls styled to look just like her – the VHKB equivalent of Ike and Tina Turner Revue’s Ikettes). She came out and cavorted a bit wielding one of the VHKB dolls. I think this one was called Phoebe. Grateful for the spectacle, everyone cheered when she announced the show would begin shortly. People snapped her photo. Phoebe grinned with blacked-out teeth. But time stretched on with nothing happening. There wasn’t even music playing to create a bit of atmosphere. Occasionally another VHKB dancer would appear, introduce themselves and promise the show would start imminently.

Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery

By now we were getting seriously impatient and pissed-off and the gallery was growing hotter and more claustrophobic. Eventually another VHKB dancer came onstage (this time, a guy in drag. The troupe was mixed gender), introduced himself and announced the show would begin shortly but first – some go-go dancing! This is what I can piece together in retrospect: Pfahler herself was missing in action and not even on the premises at this point. The go-go dancing was intended to pad things out while they tracked down Pfahler. Her “backing dancers” were local London-based people assembled at the last minute (apparently) for this performance. (There wouldn’t have been the budget to fly over Pfahler’s regular New York girls). I suspect the auditioning process for them wasn’t terribly rigorous. The first glimpse of them in their identical virtually-naked, body-painted and bewigged get-ups was genuinely dazzling. That image – sexy alien, zombie woman, devil doll, voodoo dolly – is powerful and alluring.  But it got tired fast with no substance or action behind it. For what seemed like an eternity, we were subjected to a cavalcade of onstage exhibitionists not exactly burdened with talent, charisma or even basic dancing ability listlessly jiggle around a bit (you wouldn’t call it “go-go dancing”) to whatever Pfahler’s agent or manager or whoever it was happened to have on the iTunes library on his iPad (“Paranoia” by Black Sabbath. “You Really Got Me” by the Kinks. Loads of terrible seventies stadium cock rock). They fanned each other with feathers, yawned, lit candles, sat on each other. More frequently, they just stood around onstage talking amongst themselves, slack-jawed and gormless. Up close you could see where their body paint had worn off in patches. It was frankly embarrassing.

Things felt increasingly shambolic and inept. The gallery had zero control over the event and seemed out of their depth. The night began with such optimism but all good will was evaporating fast. I had visions of it descending into a club kid equivalent of Day of the Locust-style chaos. I assured Pal (a VHKB virgin), “This will be over by 9 pm! Something must be happening soon!” But he left and I couldn’t blame him. You know that sense of blind rage you feel when you’re trapped on a train platform and the indicator shows “cancelled” and “delayed” but you get no other updates or useful information and you get so furious you want to strangle someone? I can only compare it to that.

The nadir was when another dancer took the mic to promise, “Kembra is on her way! She should be here in at least thirty minutes!” That’s when we realized she wasn’t even there.  A fed-up Emma and Pippa left, certain Pfahler probably wouldn’t even turn up at this stage. Luckily I found another friend to hang out with – Nicole. By now, all the complimentary booze had long since run out. The door to the sole toilet had a sign announcing it was out of order. Nicole and I were bursting for a slash. We left the gallery and found a pub around the corner where we could go for a piss and drink a half pint killing time.  Before we split, we cornered one of Pfahler’s dancers in the crowd and asked for any kind of update. She confessed she had no clue what was going on or where Kembra Pfahler was. No one was telling her anything either.

There was still no change when Nicole and I got back to the gallery but we both decided to stick it out a bit longer to see what might happen. Finally, there was a ripple of excitement: Kembra had arrived! Another sighting of a jet-black, glitter-dusted wig slicing through the crowd. After so many false starts, this time it was attached to Pfhaler herself. She finally took the stage at 9:15 pm. Her set was short (maybe 25-30 minutes), but mercifully it was good and did compensate for the preceding fiasco up to a point. On the downside, Pfahler seemed distracted and scatter-brained (perhaps her default setting?) and apologised they’d done no rehearsals. (By this point she’d been in London for about a week to prepare for the show. I wonder how she spent her time?). Pfahler admitted they were “unprepared” and encouraged people to return the following night and she’d do a few more performance pieces to compensate.


Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery

Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery

Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery


Pfahler sang maybe four songs, focusing on new (unreleased) material. The song where she enthused about her favourite scenes from Blade Runner while hobbling around with her feet duct-taped to bowling balls was genuinely weird and funny. She did some onstage butt-printing (where Pfahler smeared finger paint on her ass and pressed it onto paper). I forgave Pfahler almost everything for her inspired screeching death metal version of Celine Dion’s love theme from Titanic. It culminated with Pfahler standing on her head with legs spread and genitalia exposed. One of her dancers stood over her threateningly wielding a white wooden crucifix whittled into a sharp point at the end. We all gasped – and sure enough, she abruptly spiked it hard downwards directly into Pfahler’s anus! It was genuinely shocking, like something out of the Ken Russell film The Devils. (Afterwards the crucifix got flung into the audience – someone claimed the crucifix that had been jabbed into Pfahler’s ass hole). They all filed offstage to Benny Hill’s theme tune.


Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery

So … Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black. In the past year Pal and I have seen topnotch queer-punk performance art by the likes of Christeene and Peaches in London. Like VHKB, they all incorporate various degrees of onstage nudity, mixed-gender scantily-clad backing dancers and confrontational punk minimalism.  Pfahler is an undisputed doyenne or godmother of this whole genre or approach - in fact maybe she invented it! Peaches and Christeene came in her wake - and have now raised the standard and overtaken her with tighter, slicker and frankly better shows. Most importantly – they turn up on time! In New York Pfahler is justly regarded as performance art royalty. But her lateness at Emalin was borderline contemptuous. Judging by Tuesday night, in 2016, Kembra Pfahler needs to significantly raise her game.

Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Emalin Gallery

/ See the rest of my photos here /

Sunday 13 November 2016

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies presents ... Sextette!






















Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the film club devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), with an emphasis on the cult, the queer and the kitsch. This month we’re really scraping the barrel with perhaps the worst film we’ve screened to date – Mae West’s infamous final film Sextette (1978)! Wednesday 23 November in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's! Think of it as an unintended camp classick – or a freaky Diane Arbus photograph come to life!

Full respect to screen legend Mae West (1893 – 1980): in her thirties heyday, she was a gleeful pioneer of sexual liberation and a true original who wrote all her own wisecracking material. West was also one hip cosmopolitan sister, drawing on African-American and queer subcultures for inspiration. By 1978 though the desiccated 84-year old diva was living in a seriously self-enchanted bubble (think Nora Desmond in Sunset Boulevard) with a seemingly shaky grasp on reality. 

Persuaded to make one last film, the geriatric sex kitten made zero concessions to her advanced age and cast herself as a much-lusted after bombshell surrounded by besotted male admirers (in some cases young enough to be her grandsons). Leading man is 34-year old Timothy Dalton as her husband -  50 years her junior.  (Presumably the future James Bond would love to burn every last negative of Sextette in existence! The truly oddball cast also includes Ringo Starr, Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, Tony Curtis and George Hamilton).





























/ “She won’t be satisfied until she’s loved by all mankind - one man at a time!”/

Bewigged, carefully shot in ultra-soft-focus, virtually immobile and never making eye contact with any of her co-stars, West frequently looks like she has been mummified or taxidermied. Just how nuts was West? When West and Dalton duet on the Captain and Tennille soft rock hit “Love Will Keep Us Together” (did I mention Sextette is a musical?), West insisted the original lyric “young and beautiful / someday your looks will be gone” be changed to “young and beautiful / your looks will never be gone!” 






















/ Any gerontophiles out there? /

Fun facts: Sextette is directed by Ken Hughes – who also directed sixties children’s classic Chitty Chitty Bang Bang! The awful musical numbers are choreographed by the same guy who did The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins! West’s gowns are by legendary Hollywood costume designer Edith Head! In the segment where West serenades a gang of semi-naked bodybuilders, some of the baby-oiled muscle men are alumni from the world of seventies gay porn! For everyone involved, Sextette represents the nadir of their careers!






























/ Who's up for an evening of old-school muscle worship, Mae West style? /

Gasp in astonishment at the mind-boggling Sextette – one of the most wildly misjudged films ever made! See the movie that made The New York Times declare, “Granny should have her mouth washed out with soap, along with her teeth!"

Wednesday 23 November at Fontaine's. Admission: Free! Doors to the Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm. Arrive early, order your cockails and venture downstairs: I'll be projecting grainy black and white vintage homo porn and playing punk music before the film starts.

Events page

The trailer for Sextette:




Read more about celluloid atrocity Sextette here



Tuesday 1 November 2016

Halloween Lobotomy Room at Fontaine's 28 October 2016 DJ Set List


From the Facebook events page:

Raise the ghosts of Lux Interior and Jayne Mansfield Friday 28 October when Lobotomy Room presents a special putrid Halloween spectacular in the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s bar in Dalston!

COME for the film club! Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club with an emphasis on the cult, the kitsch and the queer. Embracing the spirit of Halloween, the October presentation is … Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)! A gleefully low-brow, raunchy broad comedy starring buxom, beehive-haired horror movie hostess Elvira, the beloved cult figure for generations of punks, psychobillies, Goths and misfits of all description. In the film Elvira inherits a haunted house en route to making her Las Vegas debut – but really, it’s all mainly an excuse for endless boob jokes. If you’re a fan of trashy eighties cinema or the humour of Pee-Wee Herman and John Waters, this is the Halloween movie of your (wet) dreams! Doors to the Bamboo Lounge will open by 8 pm for the film to start at 8:30 pm.

STAY for the FREE dance party afterwards! Once the film finishes, we’ll quickly shove the seating out of the way in time for the Lobotomy Room club night! Wilder than you can imagine! Explicit beyond belief! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll! Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! Bad Music for Bad People! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr Sketchy and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock – with an added macabre twist for Halloween (think “Goo Goo Muck”, 1950s Halloween novelty tracks like “Graveyard Rock” by Tarantula Ghoul, The Munsters' surf instrumental theme tune. And yes I will play "Monster Mash"). With vintage erotica projected on the wall all night long for your adult viewing pleasure!

A tawdry good time guaranteed! Fancy dress is encouraged but entirely optional!



Calling all crypt-kickers, coffin cuties, glamour ghouls and creatures from the (black leather) lagoon!

This was the second time I’ve thrown a Halloween Lobotomy Room club at Fontaine’s. Halloween is of course “gay Christmas” so I decided to go full bat shit and embrace it by combining the monthly Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film club (usually last Wednesday of every month) with the actual incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room on the same night as one Halloween spectacular – and it worked reasonably well! It could have done with even more people rocking up (that’s the mantra of all club promoters). There was a lot of good stuff happening that Halloween weekend in London to compete with. But the attendees who did show up were certainly hip and enthusiastic. And most importantly – they danced! Right up until 1:30 am!


I may have over-estimated the allure of Elvira! For me, Elvira (the inspired comedic creation of erstwhile Las Vegas showgirl turned actress Cassandra Peterson) is one of the great pop culture cult figures du nos jours, belonging to the same punky, deliberately-bad-taste pantheon as Pee-Wee Herman, Divine, Lux and Ivy of The Cramps and Vampira. (Yes, I know you’re not meant to mention Elvira and Vampira in the same breath! Let’s not open that whole can of worms – I revere them both). But then I’m also North American and of a certain generation: I used to love Elvira’s TV show as a kid in the eighties and my friends and I eagerly embraced her deliciously crude 1988 film Elvira: Mistress of the Dark as a trashy camp classic (there are whole stretches of dialogue I can recite from memory! Q: “How’s your head?” A: “Well I’ve never had any complaints!” “Grab a tool and start banging!” “When I want your opinion I’ll beat it out of you!”). The movie is so brazenly boob-fixated it rivals anything from the filmography of Russ Meyer! (And it’s also tighter and funnier than most late-period efforts by John Waters).  


But I got the impression that for Brits as a whole and millennials in particular, Elvira’s oeuvre is pretty much an unknown commodity. There was nowhere near the fervour for this screening as there was for Blonde Venus the month before. And perhaps the humour of Mistress of the Dark is an acquired taste. The film is intentionally bad: it takes seriously smart people to make a film this enjoyably dumb. Midway through my friend Eric whispered to me, “This is the worst film ever made!” Shortly after he left. Ah, well. To me, Elvira’s persona (equal parts Morticia Addams and Mae West) and her flippant, wise-cracking comedy stylings are like catnip. I’m still glad I picked it for the Halloween Lobotomy Room! There’s so much comedy mileage in the preternaturally ageless Elvira’s image, it’s a shame she didn’t make more films. After Mistress of the Dark, there was only one more – the little-seen belated sequel Elvira’s Haunted Hills in 2001. (Tag line: “Evil. Terror. Lust. Some girls really know how to party!” It’s worth seeking out).



/ Above: Elvira's climactic Las Vegas spectacular /



/ Below: historic encounter - when I met Elvira at Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekender in 2011! /


Viva Las Vegas 2011 093

Once the film credits rolled, I leapt into action, quickly replacing the DVD with some grainy black-and-white vintage homo porn and stacking the chairs to make space for dancing. My musical policy for the night was to mix some abrasively kitsch Halloween novelty songs from the fifties and sixties with the customary Lobotomy Room rancid cocktail of punk, rockabilly, rhythm and blues and surf. (I know "Hard Magic" by Divine doesn't qualify as a "Halloween tune", but it does have those howling werewolf sound effects so it fit!). Obviously, a generous sprinkling of tracks by The Cramps – the much-missed archetypal voodoobilly band for whom every day was Halloween - felt de rigueur. It was especially gratifying to look out and see everyone jump up and dance to “Monster Mash” by Bobby “Boris” Pickett. I knew they would!




Night of The Vampire - The Moontrekkers
Graveyard Rock - Tarantula Ghoul
Monster in Black Tights - Screaming Lord Sutch and The Savages
Bloodshot - The String Kings
She's My Witch - The Earls of Suave
Rigor Mortis - The Gravestone Four
Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon - The Cramps
Rockin' in the Graveyard - Jackie Morningstar
The Munster's Theme - Milton DeLugg and The All-Stars
Spooky - Lydia Lunch
Vampira - Bobby Bare
Theme from The Addams Family - The Fiends
King Kong - Tarantula Ghoul
Feast of the Mau Mau - Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Alligator Wine - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Midnight Stroll - The Revels
Anastasia - Bill Smith Combo
Monster Surfing Time - The Deadly Ones
Scream - The 5,6,7,8s
Sunglasses After Dark - The Cramps
Vampira - The Misfits
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Monster's Party - Bill Doggett
Hard Magic - Divine
Forming - The Germs
The Way I Walk - The Cramps
Your Phone's Off the Hook - X
Jukebox Babe - Alan Vega
Rock'n'Roll High School - The Ramonetures
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley
You Sure Know How to Hurt Someone - Ann-Margret
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
Boss - The Rumblers
He's the One - Ike and Tina Turner
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Breathless - X
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Touch the Leather - Fat White Family
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Monster Mash - Bobby "Boris" Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers
Do the Zombie - The Symbols
Teenage Lobotomy - The Ramones
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
Peter Gunn Twist - The Jesters
Peter Gunn Locomotion - The Delmonas
Gunnin' for Peter - The Fabulous Wailers
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
Hipsville 29 BC - The Sparkles
Gostaria de saber (River Deep Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Shout - Johnny Hallyday
Bombora - The Original Surf-aris
Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?  The Cramps
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Mills
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Hanky Panky - Nancy Sit
Viva Las Vegas - Elvis Presley
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
[Illegible]
Big Bounce - Shirley Caddell
Blitzkreig Bop - The Ramonetures
Let's Go - Billy Eldridge
My Way - Nina Hagen
Downtown - Mrs Mills


Halloween_Lobotomy_Room_28Oct16_1

/ Everything tastes better drunk out of a skull. Your intoxicated host and DJ at Lobotomy Room on 28 October at Fontaine's! How could I not wear my Vampira t-shirt for Halloween (the same one Lux Interior of The Cramps used to wear)? Note that I happen to be holding the soundtrack to Pink Flamingos in my hand! /

Halloween Lobotomy Room at Fontaine's 28 October 2016

/ Below: I was too busy behind the DJ booth to take many shots on the night, but I had to take a pic of these two. They managed to come to Lobotomy Room in spite of clearly life-threatening bloody injuries! Such commitment! /

Halloween Lobotomy Room at Fontaine's 28 October 2016

Further reading:

Read about all the previous antics at Lobotomy Rooms to date hereherehereherehereherehereherehereherehere , hereherehere, hereherehere, here, here and here

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