Christmas Lobotomy Room 2 December 2016 DJ Set List

/  I call this “A sex kitten contemplates Christmas”: Ann-Margret, early sixties (presumably around the time she starred in Kitten with a Whip) / 

From the Facebook event page:

Christen Christmas party season 2016 on a sweaty, desperate note – 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! Friday 2 December!

For the final festive and boozy Lobotomy Room of 2016, we’re combining the film club AND the dance party! 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 night for your adult viewing pleasure!

Won’t you join me for a snowball or egg nog 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

Heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to the Christmas Lobotomy Room club in the Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's! The last Lobotomy Room of 2016! (Don’t worry – Lobotomy Room returns end of January 2017). Nothing says "Christmas" quite like Pee-Wee Herman, grainy black-and-white vintage homo porn and snarling punk music! It rocked until 1:30 am and things got messy towards the end (one of Fontaine’s trademark golden palm trees got knocked over! Very naughty!).

/ Rat-up your hair like a teenage Jezebel this Christmas! Merry Christmas to all the hair hoppers (via patron saint of the beehive, Ms Ronnie Spector) /

Embracing the festive spirit, I aimed to sprinkle the odd Christmas tune into my usual putrid selection in a typically half-assed way: think Elvis, Mae West’s ultra-camp 1966 Wild Christmas album, various rhythm & blues and rockabilly Christmas novelty stuff (i.e. “There's Trouble Brewin'” by Jack Scott) and plenty from the single greatest modern Christmas album – 'Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets! (2002), in which the savage Mexican wrestler-masked surf punks tear through twang-y surf instrumental interpretations of traditional Christmas music.  For a sampling, check out Los Straitjacket’s ominous rumbling rendition of “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen” here.

Otherwise, I kept things frantic and punk-y. I play at least a few tracks by X every time I DJ.  “Year 1” (from X’s 1981 album Wild Gift) is something of a Lobotomy Room staple: a one minute and thirty one second tantrum, with a jittery Exene Cervenka breathlessly exclaiming the lyrics like she’s introducing a new dance craze. Below is a ferocious clip of early, lacerating X in 1980 (the year they unleashed their debut album Los Angeles) performing “Your Phone’s Off the Hook”. The two iconic essential faces of early Los Angeles punk were Darby Crash of The Germs (the scene’s Sid Vicious, dead by 22) and Exene. The most vivid and accurate description of Exene’s voice I’ve ever read was in some Rolling Stone review from many years ago: “a flat kewpie doll shriek.” You wouldn’t call morbid death kitten Exene anything as conventional as the “singer” or “frontwoman” of X: she was their moll / twisted bride / voodoo dolly. Kill me and take me to Los Angeles!  

Another Lobotomy Room perpetual is Alan Vega (23 June 1938 – 16 July 2016), the debauched lounge lizard crooner-from-hell from New York electro-punk duo Suicide. I play his solo material rather than Suicide: I love his jagged, speed-freak twist on rockabilly (like his throbbing cover of Gene Vincent’s Be Bop A Lula spliced with the Peter Gunn theme ). Simply playing a track by Vega creates an instant ambiance of sleaze. Just witness this menacing and hostile 1981 performance of “Jukebox Babe”. Vega’s thousand-yard death glare! The disheveled hot mess of a female go-go dancer gyrating and jiggling behind him out of time to the music! The way, midway through, Vega starts wordlessly screeching! The moment he snarls, “C’mon! Move your asses, fuckfaces!” to the crowd. Ensure to watch it through until the end when he contemptuously flips the finger (double finger, in fact!) and spits at the audience before he stalks offstage. 

Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - Los Straitjackets
Santa Claus is Back in Town - Elvis Presley
Santa Don't Pass Me By - Jimmy Donley
Shanghaied - The Fabulous Wailers
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Three Cool Chicks - The 5,6,7,8s
Fever - Nancy Sit
Eight Ball - The Hustlers
Christmas in Jail - The Youngsters
Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me - Mae West
Dragon Walk - The Noblemen
Killer - Sparkle Moore
The Swag - Link Wray and His Ray Men
God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen - Los Straitjackets
Comin' Home, Baby - The Delmonas
Santa Claus is Back in Town - Elvis Presley
Adult Books - X
Hey Santa Claus - The Moonglows
Let's Have a Party - Wanda Jackson
Lou Lou - Darrell Rhodes
Beatnik - The Champs
Your Phone's Off the Hook - The Ramonetures
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Sweet Pussycat - Andre Williams
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Santa Baby - Mae West
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Mau Mau - The Fabulous Wailers
Taboo - The Shangaans
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Wimoweh - Yma Sumac
Go Calypso - Mamie Van Doren
Santa Bring My Baby Back to Me - Elvis Presley
Feliz Navidad - Los Straitjackets
Wipe Out - The Surfaris
There's Trouble Brewin' - Jack Scott
Let's Go Baby - Billy Eldridge
Bikini Girls with Machine Guns - The Cramps
Scorpion - The Carnations
Year One - X
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
You're the One for Me - Wanda Jackson
Wiped Out - The Escorts
Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio? The Ramonetures
Cretin Hop - The Ramones
Vampira - The Misfits
Nothing Means Nothing Anymore - The Alley Cats
Boss - The Rumblers
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Jukebox Baby - Alan Vega
Forming - The Germs
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Here Comes Santa Claus - Los Straitjackets
Breathless - X
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Woo Hoo - The Rock-A-Teens
He's The One - Ike and Tina Turner
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
Big Bad Boss Beat - Teen Beats
Touch the Leather - The Fat White Family
Contact - Brigitte Bardot
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
Khrushchev  Twist - Melvin Gayle
Twist Talk - Jack Hammer
Year One Twist - The Ramonetures
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Gostaria de saber - Wanderlea
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Blue Christmas - Elvis Presley
Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
Margaya - The Fender Four
Bombora - The Original Surf-aris
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Pass the Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies
Fist City - Loretta Lynn
Your Phone's Off the Hook - X
Ain't That Lovin' You Baby - The Earls of Suave
Frosty the Snowmen - Los Straitjackets
Two Headed Sex Change - The Cramps
It's A Gas - The Rumblers
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Intoxica - The Centurions
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
My Way - Nina Hagen
We're A Happy Family - The Ramones

/ Don’t you hate it when people say “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas”? Only kidding! /

One of the downsides of being stuck behind the DJ booth all night is I don't get much opportunity to take any photos of my gorgeous attendees! Here is a just a handful of glamour shots I managed to take! 












Bonus material:




/ The heavenly intonations of The Del Rubio Triplets! /

/ "Now the only thing missing is Charo!" /




Further reading:

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

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