Remembering Jackie Curtis (19 February 1947 – 15 May 1985)

 

/ Above: portrait of Jackie Curtis by the late, great Leee Black Childers /

“The first time I ever really spoke to Jackie, I saw her walking along Christopher Street, this bizarre creature with frizzy red hair, a ripped dress, no eyebrows, bee-stung lips. A Puerto Rican queen yelled out, “Girl, I could read you from blocks away!” The other drag queens didn’t really understand Jackie. She wasn’t trying to be a woman; she had this totally individual freaky style … She walked around in ripped stockings and big tears in her dresses with threads hanging off but, in her mind, she thought she was Greta Garbo. She knew she was eccentric, a freak, but in some weird way she visualised herself as Garbo or Marlene Dietrich. She had that combination of trash and glamour, and it made a really big impression on me. A lot of her dresses were from the 30s and 40s, things that she’d pick up from thrift stores for 25 cents, and most of them had big BO stains under the arms, because Miss Curtis was not renowned for her personal hygiene. She wore old lady shoes that she sprayed silver, and her tights were always ripped … nobody else was dressing like this at the time. Jackie was a total innovator. She wasn’t trying to pass as a woman; she developed her extreme style as a direct result of the way she lived. I took that idea from her; my whole attitude towards clothes and make-up and everything changed. Everyone started to deck themselves more and more. But it all started with Jackie, really.” 

/ Jayne County reflecting on the influence of her friend Jackie Curtis in her 1995 memoirs Man Enough to Be a Woman, co-written by Rupert Smith / 

To paraphrase the Ramones: Jackie Curtis was a punk rocker! The pioneering, visionary and outrageous gender-bending underground actor, playwright, Warhol superstar, amphetamine enthusiast and Max’s Kansas City habitué (19 February 1947 – 15 May 1985) died on this day 40 years ago. Search out the 2004 documentary Superstar in a Housedress. 

Cockabilly at The George & Dragon DJ Set List 25 April 2014

/ Below: In an ideal world, when I look down from the George and Dragon DJ booth at Cockabilly, the scene at the bar would look like this / 

I’d like to dedicate this Cockabilly to the great New York-based punk-era photographer, scene-maker, raconteur and connoisseur of firm male flesh Leee Black Childers (24 July 1945 – 16 April 2014). As pop culture theorist Paul Gorman beautifully and succinctly summarizes in his online tribute: “no one was embedded in and simultaneously chronicling the demi-monde of glitter, glam and punk, of Warhol’s Manhattan, Iggy’s LA and McLaren’s London, in the manner of this charismatic soul.” I will always appreciate the sweetness, generosity and encouragement Leee unfailingly showed me over the years and miss his stories and old-style Southern good manners. His 2012 book Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rock Stars and Punks (the title perfectly reflects the milieu Leee moved in) is a wonderful testament to his talents. He will be sorely missed. Read Christopher Raymond's obituary for Leee Black Childers here. 

/ Leee was an early supporter of Cockabilly. The above photo of he and I was taken at one of the first Cockabilly club nights in 2008 when it was still at The Moustache Bar in Dalston. (As the former manager of Levi and The Rockats, Leee knew a thing or two about cute rockabilly boys) /

/ Raw beauty: sexily disheveled 1950s B-movie bad girl Mamie Van Doren demonstrating how to fill out how a tight sweater. It just wouldn't be a Cockabilly without a track by La Mamie / 

Deuces Wild - Link Wray
Woodpecker Rock - Nat County and The Braves
Jailhouse Rock - Masaaki  Hirao
Heartbreak Hotel - Buddy Love
I Want Your Love - The Cruisers
That's Why I'm Asking - Carl Dobkins Jr
Salamander - Mamie Van Doren
Church Key - The Revels
Killer - Sparkle Moore
One Hand Loose - Charlie Feathers
Poor Little Critter on the Road - The Knitters
I Stubbed My Toe - Bryan "Legs" Walker
Jim Dandy - LaVerne Baker
What Do You Think I Am? Ike and Tina Turner
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Crawfish - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
Pass the Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Rock'n'Roll Waltz - Ann-Margret
Wipe-Out - The Surfaris
Devil in Disguise - Elvis Presley
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
The Big Bounce - Shirley Caddell
Fools Rush In - Ricky Nelson
Breathless - X

/ As usual, if you've made it this far down you get rewarded with some bonus / gratuitous vintage beefcake male nudity / 

In other news: the international sin set has been waiting - and the first Lobotomy Room of 2014 is Saturday 31 May 2014 in the subterranean basement lair of Ryan's Bar in Stoke Newington (or "outer Dalston", as I prefer).

LOBOTOMY ROOM – cram a lifetime of thrills into one squalid night! A FREE putrid punkabilly booze party for sullen and defiant rebel rousers! Juvenile delinquents of all ages!

The Facebook events page

Further reading:

Read about previous Cockabilly nights (London's only regular queer rockabilly night!) here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here

If you don't already, follow my sensual and depraved tumblr page - for all your kitsch, retro and homoerotic needs! NSFW and never will be!

Mixed Bag O' Shite Updates: Part Two! Last Blog Before Christmas

Tom of Finland Christmas

Things have felt rushed and chaotic since Autumn 2012. First DJ’ing at Bestival, followed by a long weekend in Paris in September 2012, then two weeks in Canada (I got back 2 November). A couple of draining weeks of jetlag and cold ensued after that.  Next thing I know, we're hurtling towards Christmas!

My mind has felt fogged-over and distracted lately, but there is a backlog of stuff I want to blog about. So this entry will be a bit of an epic catch-up about various random (schizophrenic?) things that have preoccupied me over the past few months.

/ Gee: Do you think he dresses to the left? /

Friday 19 October 2012 was the opening night launch party for an exhibition of the red-hot 1950s beefcake / physique pin-up photography of John Palatinus at the Space Station Sixty Five gallery in London. Needless to say my friends and I were there. I’ve long been an admirer of Palatinus’s work, and photos of naked men and free booze are two of my favourite things in life. As a bonus, Palatinus (now an impressively dapper 83-year old) and his curator and archivist Alan Harmon were there in person (and very articulate and affable they were, too). Anyway, the party was a blast.

/ Photographer John Palatinus and curator Alan Harmon /



/ Christopher and I in front of one our favourite shots /

Palatinus’s 1950s bodybuilder rockabilly pin-ups may be slathered in baby oil and virtually naked except for engineer boots or a sailor's cap, often with ropes or chains coiled around them, but they still retain a sweetness and naivety which would be impossible to capture today.  (This is the same quality that also makes mid-century female cheesecake photos of, say, Bettie Page or Jayne Mansfield so beguiling. It’s hard to define: an un-ironic lack of self-consciousness?).

More examples of Palatinus at his best, all taken circa the late 1950s

I find this model (apparently named Bob Ireland) particularly heart-melting. He looks so au courant with his sexy, scruffy little beard. If he rocked up to The Joiner’s Arms or The George & Dragon in Shoreditch looking like that, he wouldn’t be buying his own drinks all night

Palatinus was arrested on obscenity charges in 1959 at the height of the McCarthy witch hunt era. Most of his work was seized and destroyed. What was especially fascinating about the exhibit (which closed on 18 November 2012) was its inclusion of contemporary newspaper articles covering Palatinus’s arrest: the press didn’t just publish his name and home address – it also detailed the full names, addresses and occupations of his mail order clientele! It makes you shudder thinking about the shame and destroyed lives of these presumably closeted men all over the US in the repressed 1950s, for something so innocuous. We’ve come a long way, baby!

Afterward, my friends and I continued the party at ultra rough, old-school boozer The Little Apple nearby in Kennington. Christopher embraced the spirit of things by donning a sailor cap. (The cap is actually mine! I lent it to him; Christopher was going to be playing a sailor in a pop video).

 

Read more about John Palatinus on his official website. Alan Harmon's V-M-P Vintage Male Physique blog is a real treasure trove; I highly encourage you to check it out. You can see more of my photos from the night on my flickr page.

I avidly follow Decaying Hollywood Mansions  in all its manifestations (it's a Facebook group, a tumblr page and a blog). Think of it as a guide to the haunted, eerie and crepuscular subterranean underbelly of Old Hollywood, in the vein of Kenneth Anger’s Hollywood Babylon. A few months ago they posted some intriguing photos of the actress Merle Oberon in the long-forgotten, very kitsch-looking 1946 Technicolour exotica oddity A Night in Paradise. (It looks like the cinematic equivalent of Yma Sumac's delirious music). 

Merle Oberon in A Night in Paradise (1946)

I hadn’t thought of Oberon in ages and it reminded me of her strange, secretive life story. Her exact origins will always be clouded in mystery, but it appears the Anglo-Indian Oberon was born in 1911 in Bombay of mixed race heritage (her mother was Indian, her father British). For the entirety of her life (she died aged 68 in 1979) Oberon denied her biracial background and “passed herself off” as white. When her dark-skinned and sari-clad mother eventually moved with Oberon to her Hollywood mansion, Oberon told everyone she was her maid! Oberon was widely regarded as one of the great beauties of her era; apparently even Marlene Dietrich was jealous of her. To modern eyes, she certainly looks like an exquisite Asian woman (film historian John Kobal would accurately describe her exotic beauty as “jasmine scented”).

Nonetheless, it wasn’t until years after Oberon’s death that her secret was unmasked in a biography I remember reading as a teenager. (In this regard, her story echoes that of musician Korla Pandit's).

An almost scary 1930s portrait of Merle Oberon. The lighting makes her look like an escapee from a Josef Von Sternberg film

Who are we to judge? In the 1930s miscegenation was strictly taboo; a biracial race actress could never have become a mainstream star. Oberon emerged from an impoverished background and apparently had a steely determination to succeed. It could be that Oberon was a far better actress in real life than she ever was onscreen. The great irony is that if Oberon is remembered at all today (she’s mostly not, except for playing Cathy opposite Laurence Olivier’s Heathcliff in the 1939 adaptation of Wuthering Heights), it’s not for any of her film performances but for being the half-Indian actress who painstakingly concealed her ethnicity – the one thing she didn’t want anyone to know about!

The great Self-Styled Siren film blog devoted a whole entry to Oberon’s story a while back, comparing her to the doomed and conflicted mixed race character Sarah Jane in the 1959 Douglas Sirk melodrama Imitation of Life. It’s the balanced and ultimately sympathetic account that Oberon deserves.

Coco and I at my mother's place. Re her green-ish paws: my brother-in-law had just mowed the lawn, the grass was damp and Coco ran through it

Since moving to London twenty years ago now, I make an annual trip back to visit my family in Canada. I usually aim to get there around the beginning of September when "peak season" is over but the weather is still relatively summer-y and I can swim (my mother lives walking distance from the beach). This year the airfare was so prohibitive I had to wait until late October (I was there 22 October – 1 November), which meant I was home for Halloween. I divided my time between my mother’s place in Norway Bay, Quebec and my sister’s in the suburbs outside Ottawa, and spent most of it sleeping (averaging 11 hours a night), eating (I’ve gained about ten pounds), playing with my nieces (Maya, 10 and Miranda, 8) and getting to know their new dog – an adorable Shih Tzu called Coco.

My mother and I

I’d forgotten what a big deal Halloween is in North America. Check out my flickr page for how elaborately the people of suburban Ottawa decorate their houses for Halloween (and loads of shots of the many moods of Coco).

Vampire princess Miranda in her front yard on Halloween night



Miranda and I




Maya and I. (Her costume was "bloody nurse")



Portrait of Warhol drag queen Jackie Curtis by Leee Black Childers. No one documented the iconic Warhol drag Superstars (Curtis, Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling) better than Leee

On 5 December 2012 my friends Christopher, Mari and I went to the launch party for Leee Black Childer’s book Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rockstars and Punks at The Vinyl Factory (a chi chi art gallery in South Kensington). In case Leee needs any introduction: In the 1960s he was one of Andy Warhol’s assistants; later on he was involved in the management of the music careers of the likes of David Bowie, Iggy and The Stooges, The Heartbreakers and Levi and The Rockcats. Throughout, he was photographing everything: the Warhol Superstars, the whole decadent Max’s Kansas City and Chelsea Hotel milieu, glam rock, and the emergence of punk on both sides of the Atlantic. A natural raconteur, in the essential oral histories of punk (like England's Dreaming and Please Kill Me), Leee is always interviewed as one of the key witnesses and scene makers. His wonderfully grainy, gritty and evocative portraits of the Sex Pistols and Warhol drag queen Superstars in particular are like cat nip for me.  (Obviously there were other photographers documenting the Warhol scene at the time, but Leee’s photos of Curtis, Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn have a real intimacy and rapport). I’ve known Leee for several years now via mutual friends and usually wind up seeing him when he comes to London (he’s based in New York). It was really gratifying to finally see his work get the deluxe coffee table book treatment (and accompanying exhibit) it merits.

Needless to say, I snapped a few shots on the night.Before heading to Leee’s party, we assembled for Happy Hour drinks at Simmons Bar in Kings Cross (great place; I highly recommend it. It has a skull-shaped disco ball!). They had a lurid hot pink (or should that be fuchsia?) acrylic Christmas tree in the corner that transfixed us. So artificial! So Jayne Mansfield! And so futuristic: it was like a Space Age Barbarella Christmas.  



Christopher and the glamorous Mari

Christopher and I



Mari and Leee




Leee, Mari and novelist / journalist Rupert Smith




Leee and I way back in September 2008 at Cockabilly at The Moustache Bar in Dalston




I can claim to actually have been photographed by the great Leee Black Childers myself, once! He took this shot at the club night Polari at the sadly now defunct Trash Palace bar on Wardour Street. This was also taken in September 2008. Left to right: Rupert Smith, Christian Rodrigues and me

Check out photos from the last time Leee Black Childers was in town on my flickr page

I held my annual Christmas cocktail party on 5 December. As promised (threatened?) on the Facebook events page:

Right: Am thinking of having another intimate Christmas cocktail party chez moi again this year. For those of you who came last year, you know what to expect: I live in a shoe box! Seating is minimal, so you will have no choice but to stand and mingle for the most part (or sit on the floor). The couch represents the elite VIP area. Kitsch and abrasive 1950s and 60s Christmas music will be cranked up LOUD (my CD player is fixed!). I don't "do" food, so eat beforehand, although there will be olives and crisps! (I make these things sound so tempting, don't I?). I will be making snowballs, but I only have one bottle of Advocaat and I ain't buying another one, so if you want snowballs, arrive early to avoid disappointment. After the snowballs, am thinking oceans of icy Cava and maybe Prosecco!

Anyway, the party really swung. In fact it rocked! A week later I was still finding stray bits of broken glass, wasabi peas and roasted peanuts under the sofa bed. Here are a few shots from the night (there’s loads more on my flickr page). Look at these and try to imagine how hung-over I felt that Sunday. Then multiply that by ten.


Paul smoking his head off




Sally and Paddy



Lauren and I, Part 1



Lauren and I, Part 2




Marlene Dietrich, Eric and Divine: all in one shot




Eric and Sally




Christopher and Lauren. They are in a band together called Spanking Machine, by the way, destined to be big in 2013. (Don't you love how the red dumb bells in the corner match Lauren's dress perfectly? What's that about?!)




Dez and Paul. I love this shot of Paul: at his most louche, gesticulating wildly, smouldering cigarette on the go

Right: I’ve pretty much brought things up to date. There was no Dr Sketchy at all this month, so I didn’t DJ any Christmas music which felt a bit sad. The most exciting but nerve-wracking bit of upcoming news is that I’m launching my club night Lobotomy Room on Saturday 29 December 2012! It’s happening at Paper Dress Vintage in Shoreditch. The organiser / promoter Steve is going to be away that weekend, he had nothing scheduled for that night and offered it to me, to launch my night in a low-key, no pressure way. (I know it’s very likely loads of people will be away for the holidays. London can be quiet the week between Christmas and New Years). Fingers crossed, if this goes well Lobotomy Room will become a regular monthly occurrence in 2013. Wish me luck: I’m shitting bricks / sweating bullets / having kittens trouble-shooting all the things that could go wrong! Hopefully my next blog will be posting the set list from the first night of Lobotomy Room.

Lobotomy Room ... it's coming!

Anyway, this is almost certainly my last blog before 25 December, so Merry Christmas to everyone! I know I post this pic of Jayne Mansfield every year but it never gets tired.

I Get Around

I’ve been pretty damn privileged to have met many of my favourite artists over the years. If only digital cameras or camera phones had existed in the late 1980s/1990s, as that was when I did most of my freelance music journalism: I look back and wince at the lost opportunity to have photographed the likes of Poison Ivy of The Cramps, Lydia Lunch, Exene Cervenka (X), Henry Rollins, the Divinyls and Chris Isaak when I interviewed them and had the chance! Ah, well. Let’s take a sentimental journey. Note: These photos are arranged in strict chronological order, so as an added bonus you can monitor my ageing process while you look at them.


Rhythm and blues legend Ruth Brown (aka Motormouth Maybelle in the 1988 John Waters film Hairspray). Viva Las Vegas April 2006


Eartha-quake! Quintessential sex kitten chanteuse Eartha Kitt and I. Valentine's Day 2007


Undisputed First Lady of Rockabilly (and former girlfriend of Elvis) Wanda Jackson. July 2007


Vivacious Warhol Superstar Holly Woodlawn in London. September 2007


Ai chihuahua! With musician Robert Lopez (off-duty El Vez - the Mexican Elvis). May 2008


Punk photographer, raconteur and scene-maker Leee Black Childers at Cockabilly club night in Dalston. September 2008


Punk poetess Patti Smith at book signing for her memoirs Just Kids in London. March 2010


Burlesque Royalty: with the outrageous veteran stripper Satan's Angel (The Devil's Own Mistress!) at Viva Las Vegas 2010. (She's got some stories to tell! Oh, yeah).


One hot tamale: The mighty El Vez and I. (No wonder I'm slack-jawed). The 100 Club in London. June 2010


No, it's not Lemmy from Motorhead: Me with my old friend / petit frere Cyril Roy when he was in London for the premiere of the Gaspar Noe film he starred in, Enter the Void. September 2010


The King of Sleaze. And John Waters! Only kidding. Brutal close-up of the Pope of Trash (the Maestro!) and I. Book launch of the hard cover edition of his book Role Models. While he was in London I interviewed him for Nude magazine. November 2010


Unforgettable concert by beatnik / existentialist French chanteuse Juliette Greco at The Royal Festival Hall. November 2010


Eerily ageless Mistress of the Dark Elvira (Cassandra Peterson) and I at the Viva Las Vegas car show. April 2011


A Reunion with the Prince of Puke: John Waters when he was back in London to launch the paperback edition of his book Role Models. May 2011


With adult film performer Damon Dogg at The Hole in the Wall Saloon in San Francisco. April 2012


Christopher Raymond, Kembra Pfahler of New York glam-punk band Voluptous Horror of Karen Black and I. Meltdown Festival in London. August 2012