Reflections on ... Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern

 

/ Portrait of Leigh Bowery by Nick Knight, 1992 /

“In his brief life Bowery was described as many things. Among them: fashion designer, club monster, human sculpture, nude model, vaudeville drunkard, anarchic auteur, pop surrealist, clown without a circus, piece of moving furniture, modern art on legs. However, he declared if you label me, you negate me and always refused classification, commodification and conformity. Bowery was fascinated by the human form and interested in the tension between contradictions. He used makeup as a form of painting, clothing and flesh as sculpture and every environment as ready-made stage for his artistry. Bridging the gap between art and life, he took on different roles and then discarded them, presenting an understanding of identity that was never stable but always memorable. Bowery embraced difference, often using embarrassment as a tool both to release his own inhibitions and those of people around him. He wanted to shock with his looks and performances. At a time of increasing conservative values in Britain, Bowery refashioned ideas around identity, morality and culture. At times, this caused offence ...” 

This is the introductory text at the exhibit Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern. (Boy, is that exclamation point warranted!), which probes the life and times of debauched post-punk drag monster, performance artist, nightclub promoter, fashion designer, artist’s model, muse, musician, Australia’s twisted gift to the world and all-round visionary Leigh Bowery (1961 - 1994). I visited it on Sunday, and it scrambled my brains in the best possible way. I’m still processing it! The images Bowery created remain freaky, nightmarish and beautiful, un-mellowed by the passage of time. (Even “off-duty”, Bowery sought to freak out the squares, wanting to resemble “the weirdo on the street that you tell your mum about”). I was particularly struck by his collaborations with bad boy of dance Michael Clark and ferocious post-punk band The Fall and a video clip by Charles Atlas of Bowery miming to an old Aretha Franklin song, a pair of novelty red lips from a joke shop affixed to his face with safety pins. The exhibit is on until 31 August 2025. Here are my pics!

Joey Arias at Brasserie Zédel 12 February 2017

Any time Joey Arias – veteran performance art / cabaret legend, toast of Mondo New York and all-round fabulous creature – breezes into London, attendance is freaking obligatory! So, a big gang of us assembled to see his gig last night (Arias is doing a residency at Brasserie Zédel inSoho 11-14 February 2017).

Arias’ speciality is his evocation of doomed jazz diva Billie Holiday in all her earthy, ravaged foul-mouthed hedonistic glory. This isn’t a conventional “tribute act”, though – Arias is freakier, raunchier and far more original than that. And the Art Deco opulence of Brasserie Zédel provided the perfect backdrop, creating a sense of mid-century café society.

Arias himself was a compelling spectacle in fetish-y black Frederick's of Hollywood-style lingerie and full Vampira make-up. His voice is a soulful smoky, scratchy rasp alternately lewd and awash with heartbreak (my friend Louise admitted afterwards she cried several times during Arias’ set). As well as samplings from the Billie Holiday songbook ("You’ve Changed", "God Bless the Child"), Arias also answered the musical question: what would unlikely other songs by the likes of Cream or Bob Dylan sound like given the Holiday torch song treatment (with added Yma Sumac-like bird noises and punctuated by deep stripper squats)? The answer – hilarious, dramatic and exquisite!

Between songs, Arias gave a swear-y but elegant masterclass in audience participation, shuttling between seduction and aggression just because it amused him. Mingling through the crowd, flirting outrageously, he stopped and asked a woman’s name. “Ann-Marie? That’s a whore’s name.” He implored two (platonic) female friends at another table to kiss on the lips. When they hesitated, Arias snapped, “I’m not saying eat her pussy! Just kiss her on the lips! It’s love!” More pointedly, he turned his full laser beams on a rude heterosexual couple who arrived late then proceed to check their mobile phones and talk amongst themselves. “Sarah! Look at me!” Joey hissed. “Focus!” (Who were those two and what were they doing there?)

For the night’s emotional high-point, Arias demanded all the venue’s lights be extinguished (even the neon sign behind the bar) so that he was illuminated by just a single blue spotlight. Then he crooned an eerie, spine-tingling “I Cover the Waterfront”, transforming the jazz standard into an anguished prostitute’s lament. Devastating!

/ Afterwards we ambushed Arias in the lobby for an impromptu red-hot camera session! L-R: (back row) Chris and Pal. Front: Louise, Joey Arias, Nell and me /

/ Above: (Back) Chris, Joey, Nell and Pal. (Front) Louise and Alex /

Further reading:

See the full set of photos from Joey Arias at Brasserie Zédel here

See my photos of Joey Arias performing at London's Institute of Contemporary Art in 2014 here

Read my account of seeing Arias perform in 2013 here

The intense off-and-on friendship between wild women Billie Holiday and Tallulah Bankhead

Canadian Freak Diva Peaches at Oval Space on 8 November 2016

Freaky Canadian raunch queen Peaches’ outrageous gig last year at The Electric Ballroom in London was one of my cultural highlights of 2015. So when the kinky ambisexual electro-punk diva returned to London (this time at the intimate Oval Space in East London) for a sold-out two-night engagement in November 2016, my ass was there! My boyfriend Pal and I went on the first night of her residency so we could be there for Peaches’ big opening (insert your own joke). 

How amazing to see Peaches in such a small venue: Pal, our friends and I were right up front, with Peaches and her two boy-girl backing dancers crotch-thrusting and gyrating right in our faces! It was a night of joyous, life-affirming sleaze, with Peaches performing her stark, grinding electronica (mostly drawn from her majestic 2015 comeback album Rub) in various stages of semi-nudity (loads of boobage and buttage was on display, both male and female. Peaches has always been an equal opportunities perv). Each song was a piece of wild performance art complete with multiple costume changes. Peaches was in fierce, belting voice throughout (in perfect tune even when crowd-surfing or cavorting in a giant inflatable penis suspended over the audience). At times, clad in her revealing leotard, the kinetic and impressively fit Peaches suggested a toilet-mouthed aerobics instructor gone berserk. (In September 2016 we’d all been to see swampy skank-goddess Christeene’s gutter revue at The Soho Theatre which revolved around similar minimalist overtly sexual / punk performance art aesthetic of skimpy costumes and slut-dropping backing dancers. We’re clearly living through a cultural age d’or at the moment!).



Seeing Peaches in concert is comparable to seeing fierce dominatrix-from-outer-space Grace Jones: afterwards you can’t stop babbling, “Wasn’t she amazing?!” Peaches apparently turned 50 years old on this UK tour. Suffice to say, present-day Peaches is filthy, fabulous and 50. She is an artist at the top of her game – and makes me burst with Canadian pride. Who else is flipping over the hidebound stale, pale and male world of rock with such élan and joie de vivre? Now sing along with me: “At the dawn of the Summer I give birth to a bad girl / without a motherfuckin' epidural …”

The beautiful crisp photos are by Pal. The rubbish ones are mine (my camera couldn’t cope with Peaches’ smoke machine!). See the full set on my flickr page.

/ Above: Jemimah, Tara, Pal and I in the front row, bitches! /

















Further reading: both The Observer and The Guardian gave Peaches' 2016 UK tour concerts five star reviews!



/ Play this LOUD! /



/ Modern queer performance art royalty: Peaches and Christeene dueting /

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

/ See the rest of my photos here /

Baby Lame's Shit Show at The Glory on 9 September 2016

I was recently honoured to guest DJ at Baby Lame's first anniversary Shit Show at The Glory in Haggerston. As I posted on Facebook:

Punky alt-cabaret doesn’t get more twisted than Baby Lame's Shit Show! On 9 September sewer-mouthed hog princess extraordinaire Baby Lame celebrates the first anniversary of her residency at The Glory with this birthday extravaganza! Won’t you come and join us? It promises to be a rancid cavalcade of perversion! There won’t be another Lobotomy Room club night at Fontaine’s now until Friday 30 September, so in the meantime come and catch me DJ’ing in The Glory’s basement “pit” / sex dungeon afterwards! I’ll be playing all your sentimental classicks! Autumn 2016 just suddenly got a lot more putrid!

In case you’re unfamiliar with the oeuvre of drag terrorist Baby Lame (darling, where have you been?), when I profiled her for Beige website in 2015 I described Baby’s act as “twisted black comedic punk-drag-horror performance art a-go go, marinated in the bad taste midnight movie sensibility of John Waters.” If anything, since then with her raunchy monthly Shit Show club night at The Glory (the reigning epicentre of gay Bohemia in London’s East End), Baby Lame has gotten even filthier.  And for this special first anniversary celebration, Baby assembled a glittering selection of perverted and exhibitionistic special guests. Pal and I arrived in time to see the big finale featuring the notorious Mouse. If you’ve never seen Mouse in action before (I’ve only ever seen her perform once before at The Amy Grimehouse’s John Waters Filth Fest in March 2014 but it’s scorched on my retinas), let’s just say her act involves total stark nudity, dog food, a birthday cake, an enema kit and that the front row needs to protect themselves by holding up a clear plastic tarpaulin. The spirit of Leigh Bowery and The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black lived in the basement of The Glory!

/ Tara and I at The Shit Show /

This is only the second time I’ve DJ’d at The Glory. The first time was at their Easter Sunday 2016 bank holiday Barn Dance. That time went down a storm, but I have to admit I was apprehensive wondering if a packed Friday night crowd at The Glory would respond favourably to what I was laying down. I am quite niche after all. People do dance to my music but it certainly doesn’t qualify as most peoples’ idea of “dance music.” What if I had a steady stream of people requesting Britney or Beyonce? Or worse – complaining to the management! I needn’t have worried: at various times I had a virtual mosh pit slamming by the DJ booth! People at gay venues are definitely hungry for more aggressive, punkier and confrontational music when they hear it – they maybe just don’t know it ‘til they encounter it. I pretty much played my standard abrasive Lobotomy Room set encompassing punk, rockabilly, surf, rhythm and blues and tittyshakers with maybe a campier emphasis on diva worship for The Glory. It’s just that my pantheon of queer icon divas includes the likes of Nina Hagen, Jayne Mansfield, Ann-Margret, Lydia Lunch, Edith Massey and Mrs Miller! (This may have been the only time anyone ever sequenced hi-NRG disco-era Eartha Kitt next to Fat White Family, or followed Tina Turner with The Germs).  Anyway, the night was a triumph for Baby Lame and I was glad to be a part of it. Long may her Shit Show reign!

/ The Shit Show in action at The Glory on 9 September 2016. Pic swiped from Facebook! /

Here's what I played:

Do You Remember Rock'n'Roll Radio? The Ramonetures
Universal Radio - Nina Hagen
Wipe-Out - The Surfaris
Blitzkreig Bop - The Ramonetures
I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
Hangin' On the Telephone - Blondie
Road Runner - The Fabulous Wailers
I Walk Like Jayne Mansfield - The 5,6,7,8s
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Year One - X
Peter Gunn Locomotion - The Delmonas
Peter Gunn Twist - The Jesters
Gunnin' for Peter - The Fabulous Wailers
Be Bop A Lula - Alan Vega
Viens danser le twist - Johnny Hallyday
Twistin' the Night Away - Divine
Cha Cha Heels - Eartha Kitt
Touch the Leather - Fat White Family
Harley Davidson - Brigitte Bardot
Batman theme - Link Wray and His Wraymen
Shortnin' Bread - The Readymen
Muleskinner Blues - The Fendermen
Human Fly - The Cramps
Little Girl - John and Jackie
Viva Las Vegas - Nina Hagen
C'mon Everybody - Sid Vicious
Breathless - X
Funnel of Love - Wanda Jackson
Rock Around the Clock - The Sex Pistols
Surfin' Bird - The Trashmen
Juke Box Babe - Alan Vega
Atomic Bongos - Lydia Lunch
Margaya - The Fender Four
Dance with Me Henry - Ann-Margret
Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad - Tammy Wynette
Lucille - Masaaki Hirao
Gostaria de saber (River Deep, Mountain High) - Wanderlea
Under My Thumb - Tina Turner
Forming - The Germs
Surf Rat - The Rumblers
Hanky Panky - Rita Chao and The Quests
Three Cool Chicks - The 5,6,7,8s
Jailhouse Rock - Masaaki Hirao
You Sure Know How to Hurt Someone - Ann-Margret
Johnny Are You Queer? Josie Cotton
Fuck Off - Wayne County and The Electric Chairs
Big Girls Don't Cry - Edith Massey
I'm a Woman - Peggy Lee
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Pass the Hatchet - Roger and The Gypsies
Vampira - The Misfits
Nausea - X
Intoxica - The Centurions
Aphrodisiac - Bow Wow Wow
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley
Shout - Johnny Hallyday
Contact - Brigitte Bardot
These Boots Are Made for Walkin' - Mrs Miller
Meu Bem Lollipop - Wanderlea
Fever - Nancy Sit
Somethin' Else - Sid Vicious
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Sweetie Pie - Eddie Cochran
The Swag - Link Wray
Jim Dandy - Sara Lee and The Spades
Whistle Bait - Larry Collins
Boss - The Rumblers
I Wish I Was a Princess - Little Peggy March
My Way - Sid Vicious

In related outsider art drag news: I touched visiting American skank goddess Christeene’s dick at The Soho Theatre on Saturday 17 September! It was a profound and religious moment! I was up-front with my friend Tara and her mother Paula. During one song early in her set Christeene made scary direct eye contact with me with those glowing ice-blue Children of the Damned contact lenses, reached out to me, I grabbed her hand – and she guided my hand straight to her crotch and squeezed. The whole night (the culmination of Christeene’s glorious two-week residency at The Soho Theatre) was pretty damn spectacular – grubby, sleazy, freaky and punky. It opened with him jumping up and dangling from a ceiling pipe above the stage doing flawless pole dancer moves and ended with the sentimental favourite “African Mayonnaise”, punctuated with deep stripper squats, crotch-thrusting dance routines, glimpses of genitalia, multiple costume changes, copious spitting and onstage rimming. And as an added bonus, doyenne of punk fashion Dame Vivienne Westwood was in attendance! (Westwood looked great: very chic with platinum blonde hair, approachable and friendly; Tara and Paula had their photo taken with her). Afterwards we were all standing around outside and Christeene was circulating through the crowd talking to people. I managed to tell him: I’m old enough to have seen artists like Lux Interior of The Cramps, Iggy Pop, Grace Jones and Jayne County perform multiple times and you are carrying on in their tradition. He replied, “Everyone you just mentioned is like family to me” - and kissed me on the lips. In fact Tara, her mother and I all got kisses on the lips from Christeene. Swoon!

/ Sadly, none of the photos taken Saturday night turned out terribly well. This shot of the radiant Christeene and I was snapped in summer 2014 the legendary night he and David Hoyle performed together at Vogue Fabrics in Dalston.  Please don’t judge me for the unsightly sweat patches on my t-shirt: it was packed in that basement and hotter than hell! Condensation was dripping from the ceiling! /

And finally: my next Lobotomy Room club night is coming up soon!

Wilder than you can imagine! Explicit beyond belief! 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 30 September! With sensational special offer cocktails on the night!

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 wall for your adult viewing pleasure! Come for the £6 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!

Event page

Joey Arias: Once, Twice, Three Times A Motherfucking Lady in Satin

“The look is Jane Russell crossed with Morticia Addams, the sound is pure Billie Holiday ...” Time Out

In the 1950s Sarah Vaughan's admirers nicknamed her “The Divine One”. But she’s been dead for years – it’s surely overdue that the sublime Joey Arias inherit that title. A group of friends and I saw him perform at London’s Soho Theatre on 5 October. Arias is old school bohemian Mondo New York royalty, an ageless enigma, an alien, an apparition (he’s rumoured to be 64 in human years, not that you’d guess). He’s been performing and honing his night club act for over three decades, whipping together jazz and cabaret torch songs, performance art, drag and comedy (of the blue variety - Arias has the toilet mouth of a truck stop whore) into a purring consistency.  Mainly he evokes the essence of doomed jazz chanteuse Billie Holiday in a manner that’s simultaneously eerie, haunting, filthy and hilarious  ... while chewing gum and doing deep stripper squats, frequently stripped-down to nothing but fetish-y Bettie Page black lingerie.

I hadn't seen La Arias perform since 1996 – the memory of that was spine-tingling. It was at the tiny Freedom Theatre space in the basement of the Freedom bar on Wardour Street. In those days they regularly hosted outré avant garde performance stuff by the likes of Leigh Bowery (I also saw The Lady Bunny there). I was there with a female friend called Wendy. We were awe-struck by Arias. He opened with a wrenching version of Holiday’s “You've Changed.” His face was like a Kabuki mask; his sleek black patent leather hair was twisted into a Joan Crawford-in-Mildred Pierce 1940s pompadour. His stark monochromatic make-up made Arias look like an escapee from some 1940s black and white film noir B-movie. Later, Arias was prowling through the crowd singing, spotted Wendy, dramatically stopped and stared as if transfixed by her - and leaned down and kissed her on the lips (you know that scene in Morocco where Marlene Dietrich in full butch top-hat-and-tuxedo-male drag kisses a woman in the audience on the mouth? It was an exact re-enactment of that!). Post-kiss Wendy was blushing, flushed and dazzled – with a perfect jet black lip imprint smack on the side of her mouth!

Flash forward to present-day Soho Theatre: taking the stage in a sensational nude-look, tightly-corseted Thierry Mugler gown and backed by piano virtuoso Jeremy Brennan, Arias mixed jazz standards (“I Hear Music”, “All of Me”, “Them There Eyes”, “Why Don’t You Do Right?”) with a wild mix of rock and pop songs (imagine Billie Holiday tackling The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night”, Led Zepplin, Cream and “Be My Baby” by The Ronettes). Cavorting in lingerie and stockings, a down-and-dirty Arias reveled in rancid behavior. Beckoning a boy from the front row onstage, Arias unbuttoned his jeans, shoved his microphone down the front of his boxers and proceeded to serenade his crotch. Then, for his encore Arias transformed into a tragedienne, singing two of Holiday’s most exquisite heartbreak ballads (“Don’t Explain” and “You've Changed”) back-to-back in a heart-tugging smoky-voiced rasp so beautifully awash with sadness and anguish it made my friend Alison cry – which then made me cry.

/ Two shots of Arias channeling Billie Holiday and casting a spell onstage, snatched by my friend Alison /

Onstage Arias suggests not just Lady Day, but a whole lost tradition of fierce, commanding divas of a certain vintage: think boozy Tallulah Bankhead or scary late-period, taut-faced Marlene Dietrich. I've seen the likes of Eartha Kitt and Juliette Greco perform – maybe it sounds perverse, but Arias is their post-punk equal in artistry and charisma.  When I got home I immediately put on Billie Holiday's 1958 masterpiece Lady in Satin and swooned.

/ My favourite shot of the night. I call it "Two Fierce Bitches": after the concert, I glanced up to see my friend Alison and Joey deep in conversation, hugging. I rummaged through Alison's handbag, found her digital camera and caught this historic encounter for posterity. I treasure this photo! /

/ Stunning portrait of Joey Arias backstage at The Soho Theatre on the final night of his residency by the ultra-talented photographer Adrian Lourie /

/ From the same session: another intimate backstage shot of Arias in his dressing room at The Soho Theatre, this time by the very talented Fannar Gudmundsson. The form-fitting black gown he’s slithering into was astonishing: you catch a glimpse of the architectural corsetry going on inside it here /

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Meltdown Festival 10 August 2012

Kembra Pfahler of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black onstage at The Queen Elizabeth Hall during Meltdown Festival. All live photos by me

New York glitter-punk outfit The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black began life as a near-death experience. Shortly before forming the band in 1990, front woman Kembra Pfahler was strangled in a brutal mugging and almost died. While recovering, battered and zonked on painkillers, she watched the 1975 horror movie Trilogy of Terror on television. The film stars Karen Black, the quirky cross-eyed actress whose wildly erratic career encompasses everything from some of the key American films of the 1970s (Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, Nashville, Day of the Locust) to mainstream Hollywood schmaltz (Airport 1975) to obscure straight-to-VHS exploitation/horror dreck. In Trilogy of Terror’s best known segment, Black is stalked by and eventually possessed by a cursed malevolent Zuni fetish doll which has come to life.

* SPOILER ALERT * It concludes with a final jolting image of the now-crazed and murderous, knife-wielding Black grinning blank-eyed and maniacal to the camera to reveal a mouthful of razor sharp teeth identical to the Zuni doll’s.

Karen Black in Trilogy of Terror (1975). You can watch Trilogy of Terror in its entirety on Youtube here

(Later, when asked about the significance of Karen Black Pfahler would reply, “She’s a very compelling cinematic figure,” keen to emphasise the name is an homage and not intended as satirical or ironic. Karen Black herself is ambivalent about the band).

In her traumatised state, that savage and disturbing image -- combined with almost dying-- made a powerful impression on Pfahler. Inspired, she would blacken-out her teeth, conceal her natural fine-featured beauty under cadaverous make-up and take to the stage clad in little more than a pair of thigh boots and a coat of body paint. Pfahler’s look can suggest a character from a John Waters film given an “ugly make-over”: think of Divine as the acid-scarred Dawn Davenport in Female Trouble (1974), an image which seems to anticipate TVHKB’s twisted glamour. Like Divine before her, Pfahler shaves off her eyebrows and shaves back her hairline to accommodate her extreme eye make-up. “I want to be both very beautiful and very repulsive,” Pfahler would explain to The Toronto Star in 1994.

Pretty, pretty? Divine as Dawn Davenport in the 1974 John Waters film Female Trouble

Pfahler’s minimalist dress code would appear to be informed by LeRoy Neiman’s Femlin cartoons from 1950s Playboy magazines

In the great tradition of husband and wife-fronted punk bands like Lux Interior and Poison Ivy (The Cramps), John Doe and Exene Cervenka (X) and Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez (Boss Hog), Pfahler formed TVHKB with her then-husband and artistic collaborator Samoa Moriki (who’s from Hiroshima; he invested his knowledge of Noh and Kabuki theatre into TVHKB). Before forming TVHKB the duo had concentrated on performance art and making their own no-budget Super 8 experimental films together (described as “surrealistic fetish films”). Pfahler also appeared in films by key Cinema of Transgression auteurs Nick Zedd(War is Menstrual Envy, 1992) and Richard Kern (Sewing Circle, 1992). Like Catherine Ringer of French art-punk band Les Rita Mitsouko, Pfahler dabbled in specialist hardcore porn, playing dominatrixes in wrestling-themed fetish films. Legendary underground filmmaker George Kuchar (or his brother Mike Kuchar, depending which account you read) had already described Pfahler and Samoa’s art work as “voluptuously horrific” – hence the name.

This may all sound quite macabre or Goth, but TVHKB is in fact a scream: think of them as in the tradition of bands for which every day is Halloween (Alice Cooper, The Cramps, Siouxsie and the Banshees) crossed with a theatrical troupe / carnival freak show. Their songs are joyously trashy and campy, powered by the towering, ominous hard rock riffs of virtuoso guitarist Samoa (who’d previously played in a Japanese rockabilly band and sometimes cross dresses), over which Pfahler belts out her mordant lyrics (about subjects like alien abduction and plastic surgery) in a grating, bratty sneer (like all the best punk vocalists, she sings just well enough).

TVHKB’s cheap’n’cheerful infamous live shows, with each song a performance piece involving kitsch no-budget cardboard props and loadsa nudity, recall everything from The Addams Family and The Munsters to the cinematic oeuvre of Ed Wood Jr (a relevant comparison, considering Pfahler is surely the spiritual daughter of his Plan 9 from Outer Space leading lady Vampira). “It’s a demented school play,” is how Pfahler defined their stage shows to The Chicago Tribune in 1994.


"Mr Twilight" video from TVHKB's debut album A National Healthcare (1993). Who could resist that black-toothed smile?

Commanding attention at the centre (flanked by her semi-naked, body-painted showgirls, the Blackettes) is Pfahler, whose decaying glamour ghoul image is incredibly vivid. Her signature look – simultaneously seductive but repellent - is timelessly weird and alluring. It can evoke everything from killer zombie, to Linda Blair in The Exorcist, to voodoo doll or devil girl, to one of LeRoy Neiman’s Femlin cartoons, to horror movie scream queens (not just Karen Black, but Barbara Steele), to the sexy blue or green-skinned alien chicks that Captain Kirk used to make out with in 1960s episodes of Star Trek. “We try to concentrate on fun – the glamour, the pageantry. We like to think of ourselves as Ann-Margret, the glamour, the simplicity,” Pfahler told The Chicago Tribune in 1994. Indeed Rolling Stone would call Pfahler “a cross between Ann-Margret and Elvira.” Certainly Pfahler’s daintily mincing sex kitten-gone-berserk / go-go dancer stage moves recall camp icon/sex symbol Ann-Margret at her most wigged-out in the 1975 Ken Russell film Tommy.


TVHKB performing "Underwear Drawer" and "Sick Bed" in New York, circa 1996. They played both of these songs at Meltdown. Note Samoa's pristine platinum blond quiff worthy of Billy Fury

Unlikely as it sounds, long before this, Pfahler (born in 1961 in Hermosa Beach) had been a sun-kissed California girl. Her father was celebrity surfer Freddy Pfahler (he’d appeared in the 1958 surfing film Slippery When Wet) and her family had show business connections. Growing up in Malibu close to the beach, Pfahler’s neighbours included Shelley Winters and Barbara Streisand. As a child Pfahler was a gymnast, modelled and acted in some TV commercials (like Jody Foster before her, she once appeared in a Coppertone suntan lotion ad).

A conventional acting career seemed like a certainty for Pfahler. As an alienated and rebellious teen, though, Pfahler felt stifled by Californian conformity, in particular the narrow conceptions of physical beauty for women. She found solace in the feral Los Angeles punk subculture, then at its height. When she ran away to New York in 1979 aged 17, her imagination was already fired by LA punk (especially Exene Cervenka of X), Diamanda Galas, The Cramps, Lydia Lunch and the No Wave movement. Upon arriving, Pfahler befriended and sang with doomed scatological punker GG Allin. She also had a brief stint of heroin addiction, which she quickly got out of her system.

In the ensuing years after forming TVHKB, Pfhaler established herself as an iconic downtown New York art and music scene figure and a paragon of alternative glamour. The latter was made official in the mid-90s when she was photographed by Steven Meisel for an ultra-hip “heroin chic” Calvin Klein ad campaign, which also featured quintessential rock chick Anita Pallenberg, former Warhol star Joe Dallesandro, Jennifer Herrema of Royal Trux and Theo Kogan of The Lunachicks.


The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black 'Bring Back The Night' from Bijoux Altamirano on Vimeo.

"Bring Back the Night" from the 2010 album Home of the Brave. The song is not particularly representative of TVHKB’s sound but the video – filmed in Claude Monet's Gardens in Giverny, France – is exquisite. (If you get an error message, refresh the page. The video does work)

(As a side note: TVHKB used to perform regularly at the outrageous, now sadly defunct nightclub Squeezebox!; my old friend Jayne County used to urge me to go to Squeezebox! if I was ever in New York, that I would love it. She almost certainly said it was “faaabulous.” I only managed to make it to Squeezebox! once, in 1999 and it more than lived up to Jayne’s claims. Pride of place on one of the walls was a giant framed photo of Kembra and Marilyn Manson embracing).


TVHKB performing “Shopping Spree” at a gig promoting the documentary Squeezebox! The Movie in 2008

In recent years, though, TVHKB appeared to grind to a halt. I remember reading about Pfahler and Samoa breaking up. (There would be a line-up of TVHKB with Adam Cardone of The Toilet Boys replacing Samoa). Their website is now yanked down and TVHKB’s Myspace page – remember Myspace? – has not been updated since 2010. All three of their CDs are now long out of print and virtually unobtainable. A new CD called Home of the Brave apparently came out in 2010 but seemed to promptly vanish without a trace (just try to order it online!). As a long-term fan (I'd written to TVHKB directly to order their self-released debut CD in 1995, and Samoa wrote back. I still have his letter), I’d always hoped TVHKB would come to London, but it was clearly never to be.

Or was it? Flash-forward to 2012 with the announcement that Antony Hegarty would be the curator of the 2012 Meltdown Festival. His line-up of concerts was bound to be interesting, with the promise of the elite of NYC’s downtown avant-garde (the milieu Hegarty himself had emerged from) coming to London. Sure enough, when Hegarty’s roster of acts was unveiled it included maverick extreme talents like Diamanda Galas, Joey Arias, Marc Almond ... and TVHKB! It looked like they temporarily re-formed just for Meltdown (with Samoa back in the band). My friend Christopher Raymond and I snapped up tickets as fast as we could. I’d given up on ever seeing TVHKB – and now I was!


The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black at Meltdown

The gig on 10 August 2012 was a blast: good-natured, raunchy fun and everything I could have hoped for. Stalking to the stage, Pfahler and her lookalike Blackettes were like walking pieces of freaky art come to life. The band (a stripped-down trio) was awesomely tight, but the show itself was appealingly loose without being shambolic. (Most of the Blackettes were actually local London girls recruited for the gig; the budget obviously didn’t stretch to TVHKB bringing over their regular NYC-based dancers. You could sometimes sense they hadn’t rehearsed quite enough. It only added to the fun). It’s tempting to say they blasted through a 90-minute set of their greatest hits, but TVHKB never actually had any hits, so let’s say their “essential statements” instead: “Am I Blue?” “Neighbourachie”, “I Believe In Halloween”, “Water Coffin”, “Sick Bed”, “Shopping Spree”. Pfahler dedicated “Honky Tonk Biscuit Queen” to Antony Hegarty. For big finale “Alaska” one of the Blackettes pelted Pfahler with white feathers to simulate snow (the feathers stuck to her sweat and body paint; it looked like she’d been tarred and feathered).

The show felt wonderfully like a freaked-out soul revue: think of a perverse, Satanic nightmare inversion of the Ike and Tina Turner Revue in Las Vegas, with Pfahler and Samoa as Tina and Ike, and the Blackettes as the equivalent of their Ikettes. Pfahler’s fright wig (a massive jet black matted punk-bouffant haystack dusted with red glitter) started malfunctioning almost from the start, wobbling and threatening to fall off. Unperturbed, she began tearing clumps of hair from it and hurling it into the audience (Christopher caught a hank of it; bobby pins were still attached to it. Handling it, we both got covered in red glitter). Finally she asked, “Is this really necessary anymore? It’s really hot up here” and continued the rest of the concert wig-less.


Kembra's malfunctioning wig


Kembra and Samoa: The Ike and Tina Turner of punk performance art

The climactic moment was indisputably when Pfahler stood on her head, spread her legs and one of the Blackettes cracked paint-filled Easter eggs onto her vulva. It was a surprisingly solemn moment; it felt primal and timeless, like watching the re-enactment of an ancient Pagan or Mayan fertility ritual. I’d been waiting breathlessly for the egg-cracking segment and it didn’t disappoint. My friend Julian was seated in row B (Christopher and I were in row D) and I told him his view would be gynaecological (it was; and also proctological). Even before TVHKB took the stage, Julian turned to me to point out there was a carton of eggs in the corner of the stage. (Alongside Edith Massey in Pink Flamingos, Kembra Pfahler’s name should forever be associated with the word “eggs”). When one of the Blackettes emerged with a clear plastic tarpaulin and spread it centre stage, Christopher elbowed me in the ribs. It was time...







I could kiss whoever filmed this clip and posted it on Youtube. Experience it for yourself!



Christopher, Pfahler and I post-show. She was sweetness personified and twined her arms around us for the photo. I told her I’d loved TVHKB since their first CD in the early 1990s and she said, “Yes! We’re still alive.” I told her to come back again to London sometime soon, don’t leave it so long and she replied, “Oh, probably not ...” I think they re-formed just for Meltdown


My friend Emma (aka DJ Elma Wolf of Twat Boutique, Club Lesley and Saturday Night Fish Fry) and Pfahler

(It’s essential I mention TVHKB’s opening act, a band called Tenderloin from Berlin. I’d never heard of them before. My friends were indifferent about even checking them out, but I figure we’d paid to see them and they were bound to be interesting at least if they were chosen by Antony Hegarty. We took our seats a few songs into their set, and I was awe-struck to see their lead singer was Vaginal Davis! I’ve long been an admirer of Ms Davis (I swear she used to be called Vaginal Crème Davis, but she must have lost the “Crème” at some point). Alongside Canadian filmmaker Bruce LaBruce, Davis virtually invented the Queer-core (or Homo-core, if you prefer) punk movement in the early 90s and therefore made life one helluva lot more interesting. For anyone unfamiliar with Davis, the self-described "controversial black woman" is a towering African-American drag queen (seriously: he’s built like a brick shithouse), zine writer, punk musician, nightclub promoter and all-round provocateur. Like Pfahler, he emerged from the fertile Los Angeles punk scene (they’ve been friends since the 1970s); in recent years he’s re-located to bohemian Berlin. Anyway, Tenderloin was brilliant: minimalist, strange, stark but danceable, with Davis declaiming lyrics seemingly inspired by the film Christiane F – often in German – in a high-pitched voice, channelling Tina Turner and Whitney Houston in a tousled auburn wig, billowing white mini-dress and killer heels. Mindblowing! And in a foreshadowing of TVHKB, when they left the stage we realised Tenderloin’s fit hottie of a drummer had been playing stark naked the whole time; we’d just assumed he was shirtless! Read an interview with Tenderloin drummer Joel Gibb on the Butt website. Tenderloin is definitely divisive - I loved them, but most of my friends didn’t. But that’s probably true of all interesting bands and artists).


Tenderloin (feat. Vaginal Davis) from Earl Dax on Vimeo.

Brief fragment of Tenderloin performing in Berlin. This gives you a pretty good flavour of their Meltdown performance (Davis is even wearing the same wig and dress combo)

The following day, my friend Emma and I returned to the Southbank to see Pfahler give an intimate, low-key onstage lecture about the concepts and manifestos behind her work, chiefly availabism, anti-naturalism and future feminism. It was pretty sparsely attended (just a handful of devotees). Pfahler was endearingly nervous, she complained of jetlag and her lecture was a bit rambling: “slick” is not in her vocabulary, but slick is overrated. Out of her stage drag and close-up Pfahler is stunningly beautiful with a delicate face, tiny (5’2) and (at 51 years old) eerily ageless. She wore a floor-length white crocheted dress through which was visible her black bra and panties underneath. Her daytime look isn’t exactly neutral or low-key: her heavy black eye make-up was pure Bride of Dracula.

Some of the highlights of Pfahler’s lecture: she discussed onstage nudity and explained she carefully advises her dancers about it first (wearing a g-string is definitely optional). “Going bottomless will ruin your life; no one will ever take you seriously again. You will never get a job,” she cautions them. Asked about her most notorious film Sewing Circle directed by sleaze-meister Richard Kern, in which Pfahler temporarily sews her vagina shut, she explained she was making a statement about re-claiming herself after an abusive relationship. (Funnily enough, in the 1990s I interviewed Richard Kern and we talked about Sewing Circle). An audience member asked her about taking risks and Pfahler replied, “Risk is all I had.”

(As a nice postscript, Vaginal Davis was sitting directly behind me during Pfahler’s lecture, and afterwards we spoke briefly. I told him how much I loved Tenderloin and that I’d been following his work since the 1990s. In fact, at one point in the 90s I wrote to him requesting one of his zines and he wrote back. Davis exuded warmth and sweetness. My next art project is conniving how to get Tenderloin to return to London for another show).

(This nice anecdote from a Guardian article about Hegarty’s Meltdown line-up concisely illustrates Pfhaler’s theory of availabism – using whatever comes to hand for your art: “One day in 1979, a few weeks after her arrival in New York City, artist and musician Kembra Pfahler was invited to perform in a club on the Lower East Side. "I decided I would stand on my head and crack an egg on my vagina," she says with disarming matter-of-factness. "Just because my body was available and I had eggs in the refrigerator.")

"I wanted to be as unpopular as possible ... and that happened." This brief clip (just over three minutes long) offers a great summary of Pfahler’s philosophies and inspirations. It’s also fascinating to see her interviewed in her stark, compact New York apartment (I can’t tell whether it’s a studio or a one bedroom). Every surface is painted the colour of dried blood.


Bonus track! Sadly they didn't perform this at Meltdown, but it's too good not to include. TVHKB give "My Heart Will Go On" (the love theme from Titanic) a savage mauling. It's enough to give a Celine Dion fan a coronary.



Further reading:

See the rest of my photos from the Meltdown gig on my flickr page

At Home with Kembra Pfahler!

Nice thoughtful interview with Pfahler in The NY Times from June 2012

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black discography:

A National Healthcare (1993)
The Anti-Naturalists (1995)
Black Date (1998)
The Home of the Brave (2010)