Halloween Lobotomy Room Dance Party DJ Set List 26 October 2018

From the Facebook event page:

It’s creepy and it’s kooky … mysterious and spooky … it’s all together ooky … it’s the Lobotomy Room Halloween dance party! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll on Friday 26 October at the punkiest, Cramps-iest, kitschiest low-brow Halloween bash this accursed month! Downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!). 

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Campy 1950s and 60s Halloween novelty songs played LOUD, with added Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Punk cretin hops! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities! Think John Waters soundtracks and Songs The Cramps Taught Us! Vintage horror films played on the big screen all night!

Featuring special guests:

Hailing from New Zealand, instrumental electric guitar duo SPARKLING DUET (the Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of Stoke Newington!) will be playing a special Halloween preternatural edition of their show, covering classic and obscure 50’s and 60’s surf, psych, exotica and rockabilly tunes with a haunted twist! 

AND burlesque showgirls deluxe TRIXIE MALICIOUS and MYSTI VINE!

Fontaine’s special Halloween-themed cocktail menu available on the night!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

The Halloween Lobotomy Room club at Fontaine’s was insane!  This was by far our biggest Lobotomy Room crowd ever. (“Maximum capacity” for Fontaine's basement Bamboo Lounge is meant to be sixty people. I’m pretty sure we wildly exceeded that at various points!). In fact, both upstairs and downstairs were crammed, and the queues for both bars were about four or five people deep. How did all these new people hear about our event?! And it was hip, gorgeous people. I hope some photos from the night surface!

/ I had no opportunity to take any photos myself – but I seem to recall the crowd looking a lot like this /

(In fact, I put out an appeal on Facebook and some of the attendees kindly posted some pics from the night. If more photos surface I will add them)

/ Sparkling Duet (with guest drummer Tina from Das Clamps) by Robin Shrubsole /

/ Mysti Vine by Nicky Barron-Orange / 

/ Glamorous attendee! Photo via Nicky Barron-Orange. Ruby (proprietoress of Fontaine's) really outdid herself with the Halloween-themed cocktail menu this year! /

/ In an ideal world, we would have had these vintage skull'n'bones highball stirrers! /

/ The sole photo of me all night! With mother and daughter duo Paula and Tara /

I won’t lie: there were some stressful meltdown moments where my blood pressure was pumping! To coordinate the acts, Fontaine’s boss lady Ruby and I were meant to liaise throughout the night, but we were overwhelmed by the crush of people and she was too harassed and busy behind the bar coping with the voracious demand for cocktails. Our first burlesque performer (effervescent Trixie Malicious, who evokes 1950s platinum blonde sex kittens in the tradition of Jayne Mansfield and Mamie Van Doren) had a lighting cue for me: I was meant to kill the stage lights when she made a certain gesture and then she’d switch-on her lit-up bra. But there was such a dense crowd I couldn’t properly see Trixie from the DJ booth. I had to stand on a step ladder! (Luckily her number went off without a hitch).

But the absolute nadir was the completely unanticipated projectile vomiting incident. There were three or four hetero “bro” types by the front who were clearly extremely drunk but digging the scene and seemingly harmless and friendly enough. Midway through Sparkling Duet’s set I glanced up to see these guys abruptly leaving. It soon became evident why. I started noticing that people were backing away from the centre and sort of plastering themselves against the DJ booth at the back of the room. Newcomers would arrive, walk forward, and then promptly step back! Then Trixie rushed over to me and gasped, “Someone has vomited up the wall! I better see if there’s a mop upstairs!” Sure enough, one of the bros hadn’t just spewed on the floor: he'd sprayed a full-on dramatic Linda-Blair-in-The Exorcist job up the wall! And it was copious and chunky-style, with that creamed corn / porridge consistency. Ruby quickly pole-vaulted over the bar and swung into action with a mop, bucket, disinfectant and paper towels. I have never seen her more livid! Anyway, can we just agree that the puke added to the night’s gritty punk rock authenticity? (In fact, the second time I ever The Cramps play in Montreal - at The Spectrum in 1992 - there was a pungent and lingering stench of vomit emanating from the mosh pit. It added to the ambiance! We all just embraced it and got on with it!).

Once Sparkling Duet finished, a big percentage of the crowd (traumatized by the vomit) beat a hasty retreat upstairs. The final performer of the night – the glamazonian Mysti Vine – was still due to perform, so I did my best to reassure everyone that the Bamboo Lounge was well and truly cleaned and coax them back down. That led to the next incident: the battery on the iPhone with Mysti’s music decided to sputter-out right at the beginning of her act! Mortifying! Many performers would have justifiably panicked. Mysti is such a seasoned and durable show business pro she just styled it out and the audience cheered and clapped her on until Ruby secured an iPhone charger and she was able to start over. Phew!

/ Fontaine's Halloween decor by florist-to-the-stars Pal Griffiths. Photo by Nicky Barron-Orange /

Special mention must be paid to the night’s onstage special guest stars (I don’t normally feature bands or burlesque acts at Lobotomy Room, but this was our deluxe Halloween spectacular).  Sparkling Duet is the side project of Clare and Shaun from the awesome Night Shades. They play ultra-minimalist, menacing and ghostly surf and rock’n’roll instrumentals (for some songs they were joined by guest drummer Tina from Das Clamps and Oh! Gunquit) and fit the Lobotomy Room aesthetic like a tight, wet t-shirt! And the audience worshiped them! Both Trixie Malicious (whose musical backing was classic Las Vegas Grind tittyshaker “It”by The Regal-aires) and Mysti Vine (who was swathed in a gold cape, doing a voodoo priestess number) also well and truly slayed.

/ Sparkling Duet (the Lux Interior and Poison Ivy of Stoke Newington!). Photo by Andreia Lemos /

/ Voodoo enchantress Mysti Vine /

Anyway, the night continued until almost 2 am. There was so much going on and so much rushing around, I couldn’t focus properly and wasn’t in as complete control of the music as I would have liked. In retrospect, there were so many songs I meant to play and forgot to (“Goo Goo Muck” by Ronnie and The Gaylads! "Rockin' in the Graveyard" by Jackie Morningstar! "Graveyard Rock" by Tarantula Ghoul! Or maybe I did play some of these: I did drink a lot and for a whole long section of the night I stopped jotting down my set list). As you can see, I emphasized campy 1950s and 60s Halloween novelty tunes for first half of the night (I saved “Monster Mash” until near the end as a climax!) and then – when the acts had finished, and people wanted to dance – switched to fast’n’dirty punk and rockabilly.  I suspect the last thing anyone wants to listen to in November is Halloween music (I could happily listen to vintage Halloween novelty tunes all year!), but here is my Halloween  Spotify playlist.

/ Illustration by Pippa Toole / 

Some final observations: 21 October represented the birthday of much-missed feral, foaming-at-the-mouth Cramps frontman Lux Interior (21 October 1946 – 4 February 2009). Night Shades re-interpreted multiple Cramps-related tunes in their set. Their guest drummer Tina’s band Das Clamps is a female duo Cramps tribute band. And I’ve never had so many requests Cramps songs! Lux’s ghost definitely haunted proceedings at the Halloween Lobotomy Room. 

Also: normally at Lobotomy Room club nights I project vintage homo porn or Bettie Page / Irving Klaw striptease films on the big screen for extra sleaze appeal. To add to the Halloween vibe, this time I screened Orgy of the Dead (1965) on an endless loop on the big screen instead as a backdrop – the Ed Wood Jr-scripted sexploitation / horror movie (filmed “in Gorgeous Astravision and Shocking Sexicolour!”) featuring a bevy of bouffant-haired topless go-go dancers shakin’ it in a mist-enshrouded graveyard. It made an impression! Several people came up and demanded, “What movie is this?!” So now I’m on a one-man mission to make Orgy of the Dead an official festive Halloween cult film! 

Here's what I played:

Night of The Vampire - The Moontrekkers
Do the Zombie - The Symbols
Monster in Black Tights - Screaming Lord Sutch

Drac's Back - Billy Demarco and Count Dracula#

I'd Rather Be Burned as a Witch - Eartha Kitt

I Was a Teenage Werewolf - The Cramps

Spooky - Lydia Lunch

She is My Witch - The Earls of Suave

Blood Shot - The String Kings

Midnight Stroll - The Revels

Sinners - Freddie and The Hitchhikers

Monster Surfing Time - The Deadly Ones

Nightmare Mash - Billy Lee Riley

King Kong - Tarantula Ghoul

Voodoo Walk - Sonny Richard's Panics with Cindy and Misty

Vampira - Bobby Bare

The Munsters' Theme - Milton DeLugg and Orchestra

Frankenstein's Den - The Hollywood Flames

Addams Family Theme - The Fiends

Creature from the Black Leather Lagoon - The Cramps

Bo Meets The Monster - Bo Diddley

Rigor Mortis - The Gravestone Four

Coolest Little Monster - Zacherley

Mau Mau - The Fabulous Wailers

Kismiaz - The Cramps

Katanga - Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm

Monkey Bird - The Revels

I Don't Need You No More - The Rumblers

Three Cool Chicks - The 5,6,7,8s

Bombora - The Original Surfaris

Your Phone's Off the Hook - X

Riding with a Movie Star - L7

Monster Mash - Bobby "Boris" Pickett

Batman - Link Wray 

Pedro Pistolas Twist - Los Twisters

Jukebox Babe - Alan Vega

Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch

Comin' Home - The Delmonas

Garbage Man - The Cramps

Ring of Fire - The Earls of Suave

Boss - The Rumblers

Wild, Wild Party - Charlie Feathers

Let's Have a Party - Wanda Jackson

Let's Go Baby - Billy Eldridge

Year 1 - X

I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramonetures

Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen

Go Wild in the Country - Bow Wow Wow

C'mon Everybody - The Sex Pistols

Tina's Dilemma - Ike and Tina Turner

The Swag - Link Wray

Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret

Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen

Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen

Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen

Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins

Upcoming dates for all your Lobotomy Room needs:

Next film club

This November, the Lobotomy Room film club turns three! (We debuted on 24 November 2015). To mark the occasion, we’re taking a sentimental journey and re-visiting the first film we ever screened: Seven Sinners (1940).

The seven films director Josef von Sternberg and his muse and leading lady Marlene Dietrich made together between 1930 and 1935 were dark, erotic, witty and sublime works of art. Together they honed Dietrich's complex, sultry and feline persona and brought a whiff of genuine Weimar decadence to mainstream Hollywood. By comparison Seven Sinners (made after Dietrich and von Sternberg’s personal and professional relationship imploded) is pure trash - but campy, enjoyable fun trash of the highest order! It’s a romantic comedy starring Dietrich as good time girl nightclub chanteuse Bijou Blanche, set adrift and stirring up trouble in a South Seas port, while pursuing a hunky naval officer (played by a young and still relatively unknown John Wayne). Just wait until you see perennial Lobotomy Room favourite Dietrich crooning “The Man’s in the Navy” in full butch military drag king mode!

Come sink a few cocktails, surrender to the allure of Marlene Dietrich and celebrate the cinema club’s third birthday on Wednesday 21 November!

Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s bar (Dalston’s most unique nite spot!) devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! Doors to the basement Bamboo Lounge open at 8 pm. Film starts at 8:30 pm prompt. We can accommodate thirty people maximum on film nights. Arrive early to grab a seat and order a drink!

Event page

Next dance party

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly bizarre dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s most unique nite spot Fontaine’s! Friday 30 November!

Lobotomy Room! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! Sensual and depraved! A spectacle of decadence! A Mondo Trasho evening of Beat, Beat Beatsville Beatnik Rock’n’Roll! Bad Music for Bad People! Rockabilly Psychosis! Wailing Rhythm and Blues! Twisted Tittyshakers! Punk cretin hops! White Trash Rockers! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and Other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs the Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell. Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Vintage erotica projected on the big screen all night for your adult viewing pleasure!

One FREE signature Lobotomy Room cocktail for the first twenty entrants!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Lobotomy Room: Faster. Further. Filthier.

It’s sleazy. It’s grubby. It’s trashy - you’ll love it!

A tawdry good time guaranteed!

Event page

Further reading:

In August 2018 I spoke my brains to To Do List magazine about the wild, wild world of Lobotomy Room, the monthly cinema club – and my lonely one-man mission to return a bit of raunch, sleaze and “adult situations” to London’s nightlife! Read it - if you must - 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!  

Dr Sketchy at Fontaine's DJ Set List 12 December 2015

/ Stripper, Miss Sata Lyte, in her dressing room, 1962. Photo by Diane Arbus /

After an ultra-lengthy absence, Saturday 12 December 2015 found me back behind the DJ decks for Dr Sketchy. Checking my records, the last time I DJ’d at a Dr Sketchy’s Anti-Art School (“where life drawing meets cabaret”) was May 2014. Since then, Dr Sketchy has continued at various venues after the residency at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern ended but none of them had DJ’ing facilities so my services weren’t required.  Now it looks like Dr Sketchy has re-located to the bijou Mondo Tiki basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine’s in Dalston (hopefully permanently!) so happily I was back on board.

To paraphrase my patron saint Jayne Mansfield, it felt divoon to be DJ’ing at Dr Sketchy’s again. For one thing, I had accumulated a backlog of bump’n’grind tittyshaker stripper music I was dying to play and I finally had a context for it! The plush and intimate Polynesian surroundings of the Bamboo Lounge provided the ideal setting for Dr Sketchy. Intoxicated by Fontaine’s potent cocktails, the enthusiastic sold-out crowd were ripe for an afternoon of adult "blue" humour, anything-goes drawing, cheeky onstage virtual nudity and daytime drinking.

Best of all was the glittering line-up of talent on the bill. Effervescent mistress of the ukulele Tricity Vogue was the tightly-corseted, blue-wigged mistress of ceremonies. A real trooper, Tricity battled-on despite being struck down with a cold and laryngitis. She told me at one point she had two more gigs later that day where she had to sing.  With her hoarse and raspy croak of a voice, I helpfully proposed Tricity change her act into a tribute to Marianne Faithfull.  

The two featured models and performers for this Dr Sketchy were Marianne Cheesecake and Trixie Malicious.  Two equally great burlesque artists with completely different contrasting personas and approaches,  which inspired the music I played for their poses. I’d never had the pleasure of working with Trixie – aka The Blonde Who Really Does Have More Fun – before. She evokes platinum blonde 1950s rock’n’roll bad girls (think bullet bra'd Russ Meyer starlets or the vixens from sordid pulp novel front covers come to life). Tracks by sex bombs like Mamie Van Doren, Jayne Mansfield and Brigitte Bardot, The Cramps and the opening theme tune from Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! therefore felt obligatory.

Dr Sketchy veteran Marianne Cheesecake, meanwhile, conjures a classical 1920s or 30s Folies Bergère / Art Deco vibe (think Josephine Baker-meets-Anna May Wong). One of the advantages of DJ’ing at Dr Sketchy as opposed to, say, Lobotomy Room or Cockabilly is that I can drop the volume and play quiet, eerie, delicate songs and create a whole different ambiance.  For Marianne’s poses, I went for a ghostly spine-tingling David Lynch-ian feel: multiple versions of “Blue Velvet” and ghostly, heartbroken torch ballads by the likes of long-forgotten 1950s cool jazz chanteuse Linda Lawson and the Nico-like strains of San Francisco punk band The Nuns’ icy front-woman Jennifer Miro. When Trixie and Marianne posed ensemble at the end, I cranked-up Little Richard’s “The Girl Can’t Help It” (a Dr Sketchy staple) and Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” (it was, after all, the lead-up to Christmas and it occurred to me I hadn’t packed any campy festive tunes! Luckily that song was already on one of Eartha’s greatest hits compilations in my bag).

/ Trixie Malicious and Marianne Cheesecake. Photo swiped from Facebook! /

Noteworthy date: 11 January 2016 represents the first anniversary of the death of the truly statuesque and Amazonian Swedish-Italian actress Anita Ekberg (29 September 1931 – 11 January 2015). In truth few of Ekberg’s 1950s Hollywood films are memorable (with the exception maybe of the lurid 1958 exploitation B-movie Screaming Mimi in which Ekberg plays a stripper menaced by a serial killer). Her appearance in Federico Fellini’s decadent masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960), though – frolicking in Rome’s Trevi fountain - ensured Ekberg immortality.  I wonder if this revealing glamour shot squeaked past the Hollywood censors in the 1950s? (It's got to be said - those are great raspberries!).

Love Song of the Nile - Korla Pandit
Wimoweh - Yma Sumac
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Quiet Village - Martin Denny
Monkey Bird - The Revels
La-bas c'est naturel - Serge Gainsbourg
Mau Mau - The Fabulous Wailers
Lust - Bas Sheva
Coconut Water - Robert Mitchum
Don' Wanna - Wanda Jackson
Go Calypso - Mamie Van Doren
Beatnik - The Champs
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Vesuvius - The Revels
One Monkey Don't Stop No Show - Big Maybelle
Honey Rock - Barney Kessel
Tonight You Belong to Me - Patience and Prudence
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Life is But a Dream - The Harptones
I Want Your Love - The Cruisers
Night Scene - The Rumblers
Bombora - The Original Surf-aris
Drive Daddy Drive - Little Sylvia
Sometimes I Wish I Had A Gun - Mink Stole
Tough Chick - The Rockbusters
Beat Girl - ZZ und der Maskers
What's Inside a Girl? The Cramps
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill! The Bossweeds
Ooh! Look-a There Ain't She Pretty? Bill Haley and His Comets
The Girl Who Invented Rock'n'Roll - Mamie Van Doren
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
No Good Lover - Mickey and Sylvia
Sheba - Johnny and The Hurricanes
The Flirt - Shirley and Lee
Sittin' in the Balcony - Masaaki Hirao
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
Boss - The Rumblers
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Night Flight - The Viscounts
Hiasmina - Jean Seberg
Blue Velvet - Isabella Rossellini
Where Flamingos Fly - Linda Lawson
Lazy - The Nuns
Blue Velvet - Lana Del Rey
Perdita - Rubber City
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Santa Baby - Eartha Kitt
Mack the Knife - Hildegard Knef
La Javanaise - Juliette Greco
Chattanooga Choo-Choo - Denise Darcel

Further reading:

The next Dr Sketchy at Fontaine's is likely to be circa Valentine's Day in February 2016. I'll post the details once they're confirmed.

Upcoming Lobotomy Room-related antics for your social calendar:

Hey! Did you know about Fontaine’s free weekly film club? As winter draws in, how better to break the monotony on a Wednesday night than watch a free film, drink cocktails and eat canapés in the plush and intimate environs of Fontaine’s basement Bamboo Lounge? As host and DJ of the regular monthly Mondo Trasho punkabilly club night Lobotomy Room (last Friday of every month downstairs in the Bamboo Lounge!), I – Graham Russell - will occasionally crash the proceedings and screen a rancid film of my choice!

The featured presentation this (Wednesday 27 January) month will be the ultra-lurid 1964 juvenile delinquent exploitation psychodrama Kitten with a Whip (1964) – starring quintessential atomic-era sex kitten-gone-berserk Ann-Margret. This sleazy little black and white B-movie urgently poses the question: why do the sweetest kittens have the sharpest claws?  Fresh from cavorting with Elvis in Viva Las Vegas, red-headed vixen Ann-Margret plays a vicious teenage sociopath escaped from her high-security juvenile detention centre – who then takes hostage and torments straight-laced local politician John Forsythe in his palatial suburban dream house. (Yes – a cardigan-wearing and still dark-haired John Forsythe as in Dynasty’s silver fox Blake Carrington). From there, Ann-Margret’s gang of thug friends turn up – and things just get wilder!

Don’t miss this rare opportunity to catch this should-be cult classick and genuine curiosity: Kitten with a Whip is not available on DVD in this country and never crops up on TV. It’s got it all: a genuinely feral wild child performance from Ann-Margret at the height of her bad girl beauty, dramatic shadowy film noir photography, a finger- snapping Henry Mancini-style cool jazz score and cringe-worthy faux beatnik hepcat dialogue galore. (Samples: “Ooh! Everything’s so creamy! Kill me quick, I never had it so good!” “How come you think you’re such a smoky something when you’re so nothing painted blue?” “Now cool it, you creep, and co-exist!” “Hands off, buster! Don’t you ever bruise me ... God knows what I might do to you if you ever bruise me.”).

Perhaps the highest compliment of all? Kitten with a Whip is a sentimental favourite of John Waters’. (In 2011 he introduced a screening of it at Anthology Film Archives in New York).  He’s described it as “almost like a Russ Meyer movie, an early one, only without as much tits” and reminisced, “Divine and I saw this movie together, definitely. Several times, actually. And he loved it, too. It was very much a big influence on us. And in 1964, I was a senior in high school, so on LSD, so angry, so insane, and so it came at one of the most insane periods of my life as far as being a disturbed teenager. I mean, we wanted to be Ann-Margret! Divine was my Kitten with a Whip, in a weird way.”

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/ Look deep into my eyes ... you will come to the next Lobotomy Room ... /

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when LOBOTOMY ROOM returns to the subterranean Bamboo Lounge of Art Deco vice palace Fontaine’s! Friday 29 January!

LOBOTOMY ROOM! Where sin lives! A punkabilly booze party! 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 Cretin Hops! Kitsch! Exotica! Curiosities and other Weird Shit! Think John Waters soundtracks, or Songs The Cramps Taught Us, hosted by Graham Russell (of Dr. Sketchy London and Cockabilly notoriety). Expect desperate stabs from the jukebox jungle! Savage rhythms to make you writhe and rock! Now with vintage erotica projected on the wall for your adult viewing pleasure!

Admission: gratuit - that’s French for FREE!

Lobotomy Room: Faster. Further. Filthier.
It’s sleazy. It’s grubby. It’s trashy - you’ll love it!
A tawdry good time guaranteed!

Facebook events page

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 and here.