Cockabilly at The Queen Adelaide DJ Set List 18 May 2017

From the Facebook events page:

Drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock – for the return of COCKABILLY! Thursday 18 May 2017 in the louche surroundings of The Queen Adelaide!

Leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages are welcome at Cockabilly - London’s only regular queer rockabilly night! With DJ Mal Nicholson and Graham Russell spinning all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers! Daring and virile! Chains, whips, knives and leather belts all swished around together in bone-jarring rock and roll! Way-out sex and sin for those who like it that way!

The Queen Adelaide
483 Hackney Road London E2 9ED
10 - late
FREE

Yes! You heard right! Cockabilly – the intermittent queer rockabilly club night that’s had more comebacks than Cher, flying the freak flag since 2008 – is back! Well, let’s not get carried away. So far it was back for one night at The Queen Adelaide of Cambridge Heath on 18 May. But - fingers crossed – it will become a new regular monthly gig.

I am whoppingly behind with my blog posts (or my “art projects” as I call them). I still need to obsessively-compulsively document my sentimental journey to Viva Las Vegas Rockabilly Weekend in April 2017 (the first one I’d been to since 2015) and do “scene reports” for my monthly Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies film club (specialising in the kitsch, the cult and the queer!). To recap: so far this year we’ve screened Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (January), Sid and Nancy (February – for Valentine’s Day!), Mommie Dearest (March – for Mother’s Day!), Female Trouble (April) and Mahogany (May).

But anyway, back to Cockabilly. When DJ Mal Practice (the founder / big boss man / brains behind Cockabilly) contacted me to say The Queen Adelaide in Bethnal Green had invited us to do Cockabilly there and asked if I’d be interested – I freaking jumped at the chance! Aside from a one-off Cockabilly at The Glory in Haggerston in February 2017, the whole Cockabilly concept had been on mothballs for what felt like ages.

Some context. As some regular readers may know, one of Cockabilly’s previous homes was the truly great bohemian queer boozer The George and Dragon in Shoreditch. After thirteen glorious years at 2 Hackney Road, it permanently shut its doors in December 2015 (another casualty of London’s ruthless gentrification and rising property prices). But there’s a happy ending: rather than mope, the sassy and defiant team behind The George & Dragon re-located to a new venue further up Hackney Road and opened The Queen Adelaide (or The Queen Adelaide of Cambridge Heath to give its fancy full name) later that same year. It’s really gratifying to see all my favourite objets d’art and bric-à-brac from The George & Dragon (like the huge gilt-framed portrait of Divine in Pink Flamingos and the straw-chewing horse head) intact at the new venue.

Mal and I DJ’d in the basement. In a previous incarnation, The Queen Adelaide was a lap dancing club called Images and – thankfully – they’ve pretty much left that vibe and décor untouched. It still feels like a sleazy old-school East End lap-dancing venue down there. In fact, the basement suggests a low-ceilinged concrete sex dungeon. In other words - heaven! Needless to say Mal and I felt instantly at home!

This Cockabilly was fairly last minute and we didn’t get chance to do much promotion. We had a handful of peeps there to see us, but it mainly wasn’t our own crowd. Looking out from the DJ booth, there were a few stonily indifferent faces but I never mind that – in fact, I like a challenge! It motivated me to get confrontational. When I took over from Mal for my guest spot, I endeavoured to take things in a punky and freaky direction.  

/ View from the DJ booth at The Queen Adelaide for the return of Cockabilly. I had these two punk bitches thrashing and pogoing right in front of me! My friends Christopher (aka Christophina) and Chris. That's Mal at the bar /

Your Phone's Off the Hook - The Ramonetures
Let's Go - Billy Eldridge
Tough Bounce - The Fabulous Wailers
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Woo-Hoo - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Wipe-Out - The Surfaris
Vampira - The Misfits
Media Blitz - The Germs
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Scorpion - The Carnations
Tina's Dilemma - Ike and Tina Turner
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
Gostaria de Saber - Wanderlea
Year 1 -  X
Deuces Wild - Link Wray
Do The Clam - Elvis Presley
Fools Rush In - Ricky Nelson
Chicken - The Cramps
Johnny Are You Queer? Josie Cotton
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
Margaya - The Fender Four
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
What's Wrong with Me? X
Hot Pearl Snatch - The Cramps
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
Boss - The Rumblers
Fuck Off - Jayne County and The Electric Chairs

Postscript: apparently the management of The Queen Adelaide does want us back! I'll post the next date for Cockabilly as soon as it's confirmed!

As usual: your reward for reading down this far is a slab of stark naked vintage beefcake homo porn!

Further reading:

Cockabilly has its own Facebook page

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!

The incredibly strange Lobotomy Room booze party downstairs at Fontaine’s returns on Friday 30 June! 

Cockabilly at The Glory DJ Set List 4 February 2017

As I posted on Facebook on Saturday 4 February:

I know it’s ultra-short notice, but … calling all leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages! We’re having a mini Cockabilly reunion TONIGHT at the fabulous Glory! Saturday 4 February! Mal Nicholson is DJ’ing upstairs and I will be joining him for a guest slot!   Expect all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers! Daring and virile! Chains, whips, knives and leather belts all swished around together in bone-jarring rock and roll! Way-out sex and sin for those who like it that way! Why not drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock? Tonight!

The Glory 281 Kingsland Road E2 8AS
10 – 2 (Free before 10 pm!) 

/ Classic beefcake model Cherokee (aka Everett Lee Jackson) photographed by Kris Studio circa 1955 /

I’d love to announce “Cockabilly is back!” In fact London’s only regular queer rockabilly club night (freaking out the squares since 2008!) is still on hiatus ever since we got unceremoniously turfed from our last venue (which shall remain nameless!). But for now at least, Saturday 4 February was a bit of a one-off Cockabilly reunion when Mal and I guest DJ’d at Haggerston’s epicentre of happiness and gay bohemia The Glory! 

It’s virtually impossible to not have a blast at The Glory (their generosity with the drinks tickets certainly helps) and I grab every opportunity to DJ there that I can. (In an ideal world, Cockabilly would re-launch in 2017 with The Glory as its new permanent base – hint, hint!).

/ Mal and I sweating to the oldies /

Anyway, I did a guest spot of about 90-minutes. Here’s what I was laying down: 

Rip it Up - Little Richard
Let's Have a Party - Wanda Jackson
Three Cool Cats - The 5,6,7,8s
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramonetures
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Margaya - The Fender Four
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Bombora - The Original Surf-aris
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Gostaria de Saber (River Deep Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Party Lights - Claudine Clark
He's the One - Ike and Tina Turner
Year 1 - X
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Boss - The Rumblers
The Swag - Link Wray
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
Ultra Twist - The Cramps
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Roll with Me Henry - Etta James
Ring of Fire - The Earls of Suave
Road Runner - The Fabulous Wailers
Cry-baby - The Honey Sisters
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Mills
My Way - Nina Hagen

Updated news for all your Lobotomy Room-related needs: there are two upcoming opportunities to get down and dirty later this month at Dalston sin bin Fontaine’s! Jump on them!

Wednesday 22 February is this month’s film club. Lobotomy Room Goes to the Movies is, of course, the FREE monthly film club downstairs at Fontaine’s devoted to Bad Movies We Love (our motto: Bad Movies for Bad People), specializing in the kitsch, the cult and the queer! (The January presentation of Russ Meyer's magnum opus Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was triumphant!).

Considering February is the month of Valentine’s, we’ll be embracing a romantic theme with … Sid and Nancy (1986)! Hey! It’s a love story! (Well, director Alex Cox himself describes the film as “a horrific love story”. Its original title was going to be Love Kills). It outlines the doomed tragicomic “amour fou” between punk’s Romeo and Juliet: Sex Pistols’ bassist Sid Vicious and his heroin-addicted groupie girlfriend Nancy Spungen … and let’s just say it all ends messily.

So – why not throw on a black leather jacket, stick a safety pin through your nostril and join us on 22 February for a quiet night with Sid and Nancy?

Added incentive: in honour of Valentine’s Day, Fontaine’s is being sponsored all month by the fancy French raspberry liqueur Chambord! So there will be special offer cocktails on the night – and they will be pink! Full details on the Facebook events page. Read more about my sin-sational monthly film club here. 

Friday 24 February 2017

“It’s just what you need when you’re down in the dumps / One half hillbilly and one half punk …”

It’s back! The first Lobotomy Room of 2017!

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - when incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room returns to the Polynesian-style basement Bamboo Lounge of Dalston’s premiere Art Deco vice den Fontaine’s! Friday 24 February!

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! Now with vintage erotica projected on the big screen all night for your adult viewing pleasure! Come for the special offer cocktails - stay for the putrid music and dirty movies!

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!

Full sordid details on the Facebook events page

/ As ever, if you've read this far you get rewarded! /

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, here 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!

Lobotomy Room at Fontaine's DJ Set List 29 January 2016

/ Lobotomy Room - it leaves a taste of evil in your mouth! Seriously - who is this woman? What film is this from? Anyone who knows, get in touch! /

From the Facebook events page for the 29 January 2016 Lobotomy Room:

Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll - at LOBOTOMY ROOM!

Yes! Leave all sense of shame and propriety at the door - 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 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!

/ Ai chihuahua! Flyer (of Jayne Mansfield and canine companion) by Ego Rodriguez Illustration /

Yikes! I’m catastrophically behind with my “art projects”. I’m only getting around to posting about the January 2016 Lobotomy Room now. This one was actually pretty successful! Not thanks to any of my friends turning up or any promotion on my part – a girl opted to have her birthday party downstairs on a night that coincided with Lobotomy Room and her friends packed The Bamboo Lounge out! I asked beforehand, Will she be cool with the music I play? What if she requests stuff I don’t have? I’m pretty “niche” after all! Fontaine’s ultra glam boss lady Ruby assured me she already told the girl what to expect from Lobotomy Room – but perhaps I shouldn’t play any of my vintage fifties and sixties homo porn on the big screen this time! In fact, I needn’t have worried. As the night wore on and they consumed more and more cocktails, the crowd really loosened-up and they began to thrash, flail and contort themselves to some of my more hardcore and outré selections (they seemed to particularly love Edith Massey and The Germs!). 

As you may have gathered from my posts, endeavouring to do your own regular club night requires advanced masochism. I’m currently embroiled in an epic ongoing battle with faceless corporate behemoths Facebook. If you want your event to reach a wider audience (as in outside of your own circle of friends), it’s pretty much compulsory to pay capricious internet overlords Facebook to “boost” it (something I can ill afford to do!). Before your proposed ad goes “live” online, you submit it to Facebook for their approval. For my March Lobotomy Room (Friday 25 March! Downstairs at Fontaine’s!) I’ve so far submitted about six potential ad campaigns now - and each one has been rejected for the following official reason: “Your ad wasn't approved because it doesn't follow Facebook's Advertising Guidelines for language that is profane, vulgar, threatening or generates high negative feedback. Ads can't use language that insults, harasses or demeans people, or addresses their age, gender, name, race, physical condition or sexual preference.”

Now pretty much everything connected to my club nights like Lobotomy Room and Cockabilly is vulgar, “blue”, adult and overtly sexual by nature. That’s just how my mind and guiding aesthetic works – but I’m no moron! I ensure the ads are relatively tame while also giving a titillating flavour of what to expect.  In February I tried to use this striking portrait of a (clothed) bouffant-haired 1960s stripper. Facebook vetoed this image as being too “sexually explicit”. Bear in mind I cropped the picture so tight in landscape rather than portrait format it was essentially an extreme close-up of her beautiful face (not even a glimpse of her cleavage). It was essentially an examination of her thick liquid eyeliner and false lashes. But apparently her lolling tongue alone was so lewd it violated Facebook guidelines! So I withdrew that photo, substituted it with a brutally-cropped close-up of Divine’s acid-scarred screaming face as Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble – and that did get approved.

/ Unsafe for Facebook! Apparently her name was Aminta. I'd love to know more about her! Hopefully this image will wind up being a Lobotomy Room flyer at some point /

My initial attempt for the March club was this photo with the strap line:

“Lobotomy Room! Come for the cocktails, stay for the putrid music and dirty movies!”

That was instantly rejected. I suspected Facebook didn’t appreciate me flagging up that I show raunchy films in the ad. I re-submitted it again with the wording changed to: “Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock’n’roll at Lobotomy Room!” Once again it was vetoed.

Next I tried again with this shot of a hillbilly offering beer to a chicken with the same wording. It was declined for language violations, too. (I thought maybe Facebook would reject the photo it for “animal cruelty”!). It dawned on me including the word “sleaze” in my blurb is potentially problematic for Facebook. So I kept the shot of the hillbilly and beer-drinking chicken, but changed the wording to just “Incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room! Downstairs at Fontaine’s! Free!” Unbelievably, that got refused for language violations. This time I’ve officially appealed their decision and asked Facebook to report back to me about what precisely is offensive about the wording “Incredibly strange dance party Lobotomy Room! Downstairs at Fontaine’s! Free!” Whose feelings could that possibly hurt?! I’ve had no response and I suspect won’t be getting one any time soon. Facebook is quick to reject, but not to actually respond! I also don’t know whether these decisions are made by an actual human individual or algorithm-based software.

/ Unsafe for Facebook! Beer-drinking chicken. Surely to reject this shows discrimination against hillbillies? /

Since then, I've experimented with a few more combinations of words and images and each one has been refused. Now what I’m increasingly thinking is the very fact my club night is called “Lobotomy Room” is the issue for Facebook. Does the word “lobotomy” breach their taste guidelines? (If so, this is a new development as previous ads for Lobotomy Room have been approved and I’ve stayed entirely consistent in my wording). In which case, any ad I possibly submit for Lobotomy Room will be refused – and a forum for reaching a new audience for my club will be closed to me.  It's scary how powerful Facebook is in 2016. For me to even attempt to promote Lobotomy Room there is no other equivalent to Facebook!  

Anyway - this is what I played at the January 2016 Lobotomy Room:

Night Scene - The Rumblers
Dangerous Lips - The Drivers
Beatnik - The Champs
Beat Generation - Mamie Van Doren
Monkey Bird - The Revels
Taboo - The Shangaans
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
Bohemian - The Twilights
Little Queenie - Bill Black's Combo
Sheba - Johnny and The Hurricanes
Point of No Return - Gene McDaniels
Jungle Drums - Earl Bostic
Slow Walk - Sil Austin
Mambo Baby - Ruth Brown
She Wants to Mambo - Johnny Thunders and Patti Palladin
Babalu - Yma Sumac
Misirlou - Bob Kames
Kismiaz - The Cramps
Mau Mau - The Wailers
Bossa Nova - Elvis Presley
Dona Wana - Wanda Jackson
I Learn a Merengue Mama - Robert Mitchum
Go Calypso - Mamie Van Doren
The Flirt - Shirley and Lee
Wiped Out - The Escorts
Bombora - The Original Surfaris
Dance with Me Henry - Ann-Margret
Black Tarantula - Jody Reynolds
The Coo - Wayne Cochran
Mama's Place - Bing Day
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Mills
Yummy Yummy Yummy - Rita Chao
I Wish I Were a Princess - Little Peggy March
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Meu Bem Lollipop - Wandrelea
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Lee Hazlewood
How Does That Grab You Darlin'? Nancy Sinatra
Wailin' - The Wailers
Let's Go - Billy Eldridge
Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio? The Ramonetures
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
He's The One - Ike and Tina Turner
Dragon Walk - The Noblemen
I Live the Life I Love - Esquerita
Drummin' Up a Storm - Sandy Nelson
Booze Party - Three Aces and a Joker
Here Comes The Bug - The Rumblers
Heartbreak Hotel - Buddy Love
Jailhouse Rock - Masaaki Hirao
Love Me - The Phantom
Raging Sea - Gene Maltais
Wiped Out - The Escorts
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Beat Party - Ritchie and The Squires
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Batman - Link Wray
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Little Girl - John and Jackie
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Breathless - X
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Chicken Walk - Hasil Adkins
Jukebox Baby - Alan Vega
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Howling at The Moon - The Ramones
Science Fiction - Divinyls
Contact - Brigitte Bardot
Your Phone's Off The Hook - The Ramonetures
Year One - X
Whistle Bait - The Collins Kids
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Beat Girl - ZZ und der Maskers
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Gostaria de saber (River Deep Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Boss - The Rumblers
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
Ah Poor Little Baby - Billy "Crash" Craddock
Lover Boy - Gene Wyatt
Ring of Fire - The Earls of Suave
Deuces Wild - Link Wray
Bottle to The Baby - Charlie Feathers
How Much Love Can One Heart Hold? Joe Perkins and The Rookies
You're Driving Me Crazy - Dorothy Berry
Krushchev Twist - Melvin Gayle
Twist Talk - Jack Hammer
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Pass The Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Forming - The Germs
Margaya - The Fender Four
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
Intoxica - The Centurions
Twistin' The Night Away - Divine
Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey
Can't Stop Thinkin' About It - The Dirtbombs
Johnny Are You Queer? Josie Cotton
Cry-baby - The Honey Sisters
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
Blitzkreig Bop - The Ramonetures
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
Action Packed - Ronnie Dee
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Can Your Pussy Do The Dog? The Cramps
My Way - Nina Hagen

Further reading:

Dates for your social calendar!

Time to start contemplating your Spring / Summer 2016 wardrobe?

In the meantime ... drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock – at COCKABILLY!

COCKABILLY is triumphantly returning to a new venue on Wednesday 9 March 2016: the louche surroundings of The Bloc Bar in Camden! And every second Wednesday night of the month henceforth!

Leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages are welcome at Cockabilly - London’s only regular queer rockabilly night! With DJ Mal Nicholson and I (Graham Russell) spinning all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers! Daring and virile! Chains, whips, knives and leather belts all swished around together in bone-jarring rock and roll! Way-out sex and sin for those who like it that way!

The Bloc Bar: 18 Kentish Town Road London NW1
8-midnight
FREE

The featured presentation of the next Lobotomy Room Goes to The Movies film club downstairs at Fontaine's is Wednesday 23 March. The featured presentation this month will be John Water’s ultra-twisted punk-y black comedy Desperate Living (1977). It's one of his relatively lesser known gems (probably because his usual muse and leading lady - three hundred pound drag queen Divine - isn't in it). The genuinely nasty Desperate Living has something to offend everyone! See the film that Variety lambasted as “amateur night on the psycho ward” and that Waters himself has called “the worst of all my films. And it’s the grimmest!” The events page.

/ Pictured: the fabulous Liz Renay (1926 - 2007) as Muffy St Jacques in Desperate Living /

The next Lobotomy Room club night in The Bamboo Lounge is Friday 25 March. Events page.

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

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

Cockabilly 28 July 2015 DJ Set List

/ Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die. Photo via /

From the Cockabilly Facebook group:

Drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock – at COCKABILLY!

COCKABILLY returns to the louche surroundings of The George & Dragon in Shoreditch on Tuesday 28 July 2015! Leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages are welcome at Cockabilly - London’s only regular queer rockabilly night! With DJ Mal Nicholson and I spinning all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers!

The George & Dragon: 2-4 Hackney Road London E2 7NS

8-midnight

FREE

In his definitive literary statement, 1981’s Shock Value: A Tasteful Book about Bad Taste (which I revere as a sacred text), cult cinema’s Pope of Trash John Waters describes his early film Mondo Trasho (1969) as “a gutter film. “ (“It was filmed in alleys, gutters, Laundromats and deserted areas around Baltimore…”).

/ Embryonic young starlet Divine in her first starring role in Mondo Trasho (1969) /

In a similar vein, when I DJ at either Cockabilly or my own punkabilly booze party club night Lobotomy Room I endeavour to exhume and play the most rancid “gutter music” possible. Hopefully in my hour-long set at the July 2015 Cockabilly I succeeded.

As a friend of mine present pointed out (not entirely approvingly, I suspect!) “Your set got quite Country in the middle!” I've indeed recently re-visited and incorporated some old-school Country and Western tracks that I vividly remember from my seventies rural Quebec childhood. A particular strain of white trash / trailer park hillbilly Country music – the kind that conjures images of women with teased hair and frosted lipstick (think Karen Black as Rayette in Five Easy Pieces) lamenting about adultery, men with werewolf sideburns and big cowboy belt buckles crying into their beers at neon-lit honky tonks – is part of my musical DNA. I definitely recall my mother singing along to Loretta Lynn’s tough-talking 1968 single “Fist City”, in which the earthy no-nonsense coalminers daughter threatens some tramp to steer clear of her man. “If you don’t want to go to Fist City / You’d better detour around my town / ‘Cause I’ll grab you by the hair of the head and I’ll lift you offa the ground!” Lynn warns her would-be rival.

/ There's an even better clip of Tammy Wynette belting out "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad" (sporting a beehive wig, sequinned mini-dress and go-go boots) on Youtube, but whoever posted it disabled embedding, damn it! So watch it here instead /

“Your Good Girl’s Gonna Go Bad”, meanwhile, is the title track of the 1967 début album of Lynn’s contemporary Tammy Wynette. In a variation of the Kitty Wells Country & Western standard “It Wasn't Go Who Made Honky Tonk Angels”, the bouffant-haired First Lady of Country casts herself as a virtuous Christian housewife who’s “never seen the inside of a barroom / Or listened to a jukebox all night long” vowing to become a hardened bar stool mama if it wins back her straying husband. “I'll even learn to like the taste of whiskey,” Wynette wails over rousing quasi-rocabilly guitar twangs (there's a sob trapped in her voice, even on a defiant and sassy number like this). “In fact, you'll hardly recognize your wife / I'll buy some brand new clothes and dress up fancy /For my journey to the wilder side of life.”

A journey to the wilder side of life – that’s the Cockabilly way.

Your Phone's off the Hook - The Ramonetures
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
Goodbye So Long - Ike and Tina Turner
Money, Money - Big John Taylor
Where's My Money? Willie Jones
Wiped-Out - The Escorts
Love Potion # 9 - Nancy Sit
Jailhouse Rock - Judy Nylon
Little Darlin' - Masaaki Hirao
Big Bad Boss Beat - The Teen Beats
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
Vesuvius - The Revels
Fist City - Loretta Lynn
Year 1 - X
Rock the Hula - Elvis Presley
Honolulu Rock'n'Roll - Eartha Kitt
Here Comes the Bug - The Rumblers
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
I Wish I Were a Princess - Little Peggy March
Somethin' Else - The Sex Pistols
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Cretin Hop - The Ramonetures



/ The twisted minds behind Cockabilly: Mal (on the right) and I at my Lobotomy Room club night at Fontaine's on Friday 31 July 2015 /

Further reading:

Read all about the sordid antics at previous Cockabillies here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here, here and here. 

Follow my tumblr blog (also called Bitterness Personified) for all your retro, kitsch and vintage homo porn needs!

A nice appreciation of the irresistibly kitsch vintage homoerotic art of illustrator George Quaintance (1902-1957) cropped up on the Dangerous Minds blog today. Read it here. Quaintance is definitely a precursor of Tom of Finland and would appear to be an influence on the campy queer vision of French artists Pierre et Gilles. One of the most popular pics I’ve ever posted on tumblr is Quaintance’s painting “Shore Leave.”

I'm next guest DJ'ing on Sunday 16 August 2015 at the free all-day Elvis-o-Rama tribute event A Date with Elvis in Shoreditch. See the Facebook events page for details. If you're London-based, why not come and wriggle and cavort like Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas?

And finally: my next putrid punkabilly booze party Lobotomy Room club night in the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's is Friday 28 August 2015! Revel in sleaze, voodoo and rock'n'roll at Lobotomy Room! In the meantime, read about the June 2015 one here.

/ Lobotomy Room flyer (of Jayne Mansfield and chihuahua) by Ego Rodriguez Illustrations /

Cockabilly DJ Set List 10 June 2015

/ The human face of Cockabilly: Marlon Brando in The Wild One (1953). Brando and his biker gang The Black Rebel Motorcycle Club in juvenile delinquent flick The Wild One remain the absolute visual / sartorial ideal for male rockabillies today in the way that, say, Bettie Page or Mamie Van Doren do for female rockabilly kittens. Considering the film dates from 1953, it’s actually pre-rock’n’roll (in the cafe where the bikers hang out, the jukebox blares loud, frantic bebop jazz). Brando in this film anticipates punk, when it still meant someone who was raped in prison. Plus: for me surly young Brando in his biker cap and leather jacket is one of the most (homo) erotic images of all time / 

As promised / threatened on Cockabilly’s Facebook group page:

Drag a comb through your quiff, swallow a fistful of bop pills and rock around the cock – at COCKABILLY!

COCKABILLY returns to the louche surroundings of The George & Dragon in Shoreditch on Wednesday 10 June 2015! Leather boys, gay greasers, cry-babies, prison wives and juvenile delinquents of all ages are welcome at Cockabilly - London’s only regular queer rockabilly night! With DJ Mal Practice (aka Mal Nicholson) and I spinning all your favourite rancid vintage sleaze classicks! Think rockabilly, rhythm and blues, surf, punk and tittyshakers!

The George & Dragon: 2-4 Hackney Road London E2 7NS

8-midnight

FREE

This was the first Cockabilly since April (right after I got back from the annual Viva Las Vegas rockabilly weekender). It felt great to be back behind the decks at The George & Dragon. Here’s what I played in my hour-long set:

Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio? The Ramonetures
Wailin' - The Fabulous Wailers
Killer - Sparkle Moore
Beat Girl - ZZ en de Maskers
Money Money - Big John Taylor
Woo-Hoo - The Rock-A-Teens
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
It's a Gas - The Rumblers
Jailhouse Rock - Masaaki Hirao
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Let's Go, Baby - Billy Eldridge
Poor Little Baby - Billy "Crash" Craddock
C'mon Everybody - The Sex Pistols
Deuces Wild - Link Wray
Johnny Hit and Run Pauline - X
Your Phone's off the Hook - The Ramonetures
Ring of Fire - The Earls of Suave
Lucille - Little Richard
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Fools Rush In - Ricky Nelson
Wipe Out - The Surfaris
Tina's Dilemma - Ike and Tina Turner

Further reading:

Read all about the sordid antics at previous Cockabillies here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here,  here, here, here, here, here and here.

Follow me on tumblr for all your retro, kitsch and homoerotic vintage sleaze needs! 

Most urgently: scrawl the date Friday 26 June 2015 in blood! It's when LOBOTOMY ROOM (my semi regular Mondo Trasho punkabilly booze party club night) returns - at its new home, the basement Bamboo Lounge of Fontaine's in Dalston!