Most journalists, bloggers, writers, and what-have-yous hope to find that one special thing very few people know about and get the opportunity to bring it out to the attention of a wider audience. It’s the one big story most hope to get at some point in their careers. Rarely do stories fall into laps, they have to be earned, written, shaped and created. But then again, sometimes you get lucky.

A couple of weeks ago, I was friended-up on social media by a guy called Immanuel Martin. I had no idea who he was or why he’d think I’d ever be fun to know. A day or so later, a message popped up in my in-tray. It was from Martin. He sent me an email detailing the life and work of a photographer he knew called Mary Lou Fulton. She was now in her eighties and living with her family in California. Martin explained how he had met Fulton when she worked as a photo-journalist back in the 1980s. He said that she had documented the punks, the mods and rockabilly gangs who hung around Los Angeles. Her work had been published in L.A. Weekly. Martin was one of the young teenage punks Fulton had photographed. He first met her and journalist Patrick McCartney at a Social Distortion and Redd Kross gig in January 1983.

“Like many punk shows in LA,” wrote Martin, “that particular night ended up with the LAPD arriving to shut the show down and then ensuing chaos as the LAPD overreacted and the punks rioted. It was across the street on Sunset Blvd where Mary Lou and Pat McCartney caught up with my friends and I for an interview. Mary Lou snapped several photographs and we chatted. Though Mary Lou and Pat were in their 40s, my friends and I were impressed with their genuine interest in our subculture and non-judgmental attitude. They seemed to have real empathy and understanding for us as kids just trying to be who we were but facing constant harassment by the LAPD and media seeking to paint punks in the worst possible light.”

In Reagan’s America there was no place for disaffected youth. Punk was seen as the lowest of the low and considered by some as a genuine threat to the stability of honest, decent, hard-working Americans, kinda thing. It was the same old BS that’s been spun since Cain and Abel.

A month or so later, Martin caught up with Fulton and McCartney again, this time at an Exploited gig at Huntington Park’s Mendiola’s Ballroom.

“It was an epic bill that night,’ said Martin. “with local LA punk bands, CH3, Youth Brigade, Aggression and Suicidal Tendencies. However only Suicidal Tendencies got to play before the LAPD showed up to shut the show down. They arrived in massive force with it seemed only one intention; to beat anyone they came across without regard for their affiliation to the event. The events that night are well documented so I won’t give a play-by-play here. However it was that night, that Mary Lou and Pat McCartney, journalists, faced the same LAPD violence that we faced. Both were viciously struck by the cops with their batons. Mary Lou ended up in the hospital with a broken rib.”

That night was later documented in an article written by McCartney with Bob Rivkin called “Cops and Punks: Report from the War Zone on the Destruction of a Subculture” in October 1983. The article was illustrated by a choice selection of Fulton’s photographs.

Mary Lou Fulton started her career working in advertising before she moved to Hollywood to work on commercials and documentaries. She showed considerable talent and a strong artistic flair. Fulton started taking more and more photographs which led her to becoming a photo-journalist traveling the world and working for various magazines and newspapers.

Sometime in the late-seventies/early-eighties she became fascinated by the punk rockers she met and photographed on London’s King’s Road. She liked their style, their vibrancy, and gallus attitude towards life. Back in L.A. she started documenting the local punks and all the other different youth cultures which were then flourishing in the city and becoming more prominent with the rise of MTV.

Martin and Fulton lost contact. He began his own career while Fulton continued with hers. Years passed, until one day around 2006/7, Martin rekindled his friendship with McCartney. They exchanged emails and kept in touch. It was after McCartney’s death that Martin contacted Fulton. They discussed her photographs and the hundreds of pictures she had taken of youth gangs during the eighties. Martin thought it was imperative that Fulton’s work was brought to a wider audience. He tried various sources but none, sadly, showed much interest. That’s when he contacted me. Like Martin, I think Fulton’s work brilliantly captured the energy and camaraderie of the various youth subcultures in London and Los Angeles during the 1980s. Her work deserves recognition for its artistry and cultural importance. Fulton’s work deserves to be seen by as many people as possible. And I hope this little blog here can start something happening.
 

 

 

 
More of Mary Lou Fulton’s photographs, after the jump…
 

A coat with an image of Malcom McDowell as Alex DeLarge in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ (a bargain at $1,380).
 
Recently we shared with you the wildly overpriced, hideous Captain Beefheart designer silk shirt that nobody asked for. Now, direct from the “nobody asked for this shit” department comes a line of high-priced coats containing disturbing visuals from Stanley Kubrick’s 1971 film, A Clockwork Orange.

Because nothing says high fashion like a giant tormented image of Alex DeLarge (played by Malcolm McDowell) with his eyes being held open by sharp metal clamps on a coat, here’s a little background. In the scene, DeLarge is going through the horrific, but fictional Ludovico’s Technique, a kind of aversion therapy during which he was forced to watch extremely graphic Nazi imagery. But wait! It gets worse. Kubrick was well known for getting his actors to push themselves to the point of no return. For instance, actress Shelly Duvall shared in an interview in 1980 with Roger Ebert that her character in The Shining, Wendy Torrance, “cried twelve hours a day, all day long,” concluding she spent thirteen months on location essentially in tears. And that’s just one account of Duvall’s difficult experience with Stanley Kubrick. Getting back to the image on the jacket above, the shocking scene was shot in ten excruciating minutes during which McDowell’s corneas were repeatedly scratched. McDowell broke it down in an interview in 2014 like this:

“I didn’t feel at the time, my eyes were anesthetized. In the car going home, I don’t know if you’ve ever scratched your corneas, but you don’t want to do it. I don’t think I’ve ever experienced pain like that before. It was horrible. Like being cut with razor blades.”

Before I go any further, I should say the coat in question is 100% polyester, and it’s the least expensive of the four coats being sold by Moscow-based conceptual clothier (?) SVMOSCOW. If tortured Alex DeLarge isn’t your bag, SVMOSCOW also has a coat featuring an aggressive-looking DeLarge in his Droogs getup, including his massive white codpiece. But honestly, aside from the price tag aligning with a specific demographic, I’m pretty sure if I spotted someone sporting one, they would likely know fuck nor all about what it was based on. To be fair, lots of heavy metal fans can’t name more than one song by the band whose t-shirt they are currently wearing. So the next time you see someone wearing an Iron Maiden shirt, ask them to name their favorite Maiden jam. If they tell you it’s “Run to the Hills,” its a lie. Of course, if these spendy duds are your thing, you can break payments into monthly installments that look like a car payment. See the rest of the worst of the collection below.
 

A variant of the jacket at the top of the post which retails for $2,775.
 

A long coat featuring McDowell as Alex in his Droogs gear, $1,955.
 

Another long coat with an image of Alex DeLarge, $2,135.
 

The official NSFW trailer for ‘A Clockwork Orange.’

‘Crepe and Black Lamp,’ by Don Van Vliet, 1986 oil on canvas, 148 x 122 cm / 58.25 x 48 inches
 
And here it is, the thing you never thought you’d see, a $1285 silk designer shirt emblazoned with a painting by Don Van Vliet, the artist formerly known as Captain Beefheart. I did a search on Beefheart this morning and soon afterwards I was served up a banner ad by Google advertising this shirt.

Produced by the label Enfants Riches Deprimes (“Depressed Rich Kids”), this horrible garment can be pre-ordered directly from the label.

Christ this is hideous. I don’t know what else to say. At least I hope his widow is being compensated for this shit. The rest of this label’s gear is equally heinous, like Ed Hardy on steroids. Most of it looks like it was designed by—and FOR—Jared Leto.
 

 

 

 

The good Captain makes an appearance on ‘Late Night with David Letterman’ on November 11, 1982.

Marc Bolan dressed to the left.
 
Sometime in the 1970s, an intrepid BBC reporter posited the question What is it about today’s pop stars that appealed so much to young girls and boys? After talking to a small selection of very emotional and breathy fans, he soon discovered the answer was music. This didn’t quite satisfy our keen reporter who seemed to be hoping for an answer more akin to that given by Mrs. Iris Mountbatten’s when she revealed her son “Leggy” had first appreciated the large talents of the Rutles after seeing their tight trousers.

It’s well known that tight trousers have a long history in rock and pop music stretching all the way back and front to the 1950s when Elvis Presley first unleashed his “Hound Dog” on national television. Within weeks, it seemed as if every singer was wearing a pair of strides one size too small leaving many broadcasters to shoot these performers from the waist up so as not to offend the less fashionable viewers at home. But with the arrival of four well-endowed young men from Liverpool, trousers which revealed everything and left nothing to the imagination quickly became the focal point of the sixties’ “British Invasion” and the inspiration for many bands over the following decade.

For some, what God had provided wasn’t enough and their trousers were often padded with socks, lead pipes, cucumbers, shuttlecocks, “armadillos,” and the massed pipe bands of a well-known Highland regiment. However, having spent minutes if not hours poring over rock stars crotches I have got to the nuts and bolts of this subject and cobbled together a small (or should that be large?) selection of classic rock stars and their unfeasibly large talents…
 

Mick Jagger packed his own lunch.
 

Robert Plant’s noticeable onstage ‘presence.’
 
More rock stars and their lunch boxes, after the jump…
 

Freddie Mercury in a white satin outfit designed by Zandra Rhodes in 1974.
 
Sometime in 1974, fashion designer Zandra Rhodes received a phone call from Freddie Mercury asking if he could meet with the designer to discuss the possibility of Rhodes creating some stage clothing for Queen. Rhodes wasn’t aware of Queen at the time so to help her understand what the band was all about Mercury told her they were “the most absurd (or ridiculous) band ever.” Rhodes was intrigued and invited Mercury and Brian May to visit her small studio located in an attic at her home. Until her meeting with Mercury and May, Rhodes had not expanded her clothing designs to menswear, though she had made some tops for Marc Boan, who had a penchant for flamboyant fashion.

In 2018 Rhodes spoke to Vogue about her first meeting with Mercury and May when they arrived at her studio after hours:

“Queen came one early evening, and I told them to just pick things off the rails and to try it on. I wanted them to run around the room and jump around and just see how it felt, how it would feel onstage. Mercury went straight for a cape shirt in heavy ivory silk that had an embroidered bodice and giant pleated butterfly sleeves. It was the top of a wedding dress idea I had. It came with a matching skirt, and I’d designed both pieces during what I like to call my ‘Field of Lilies’ period.”

Rhodes then made some sketches for Mercury based on the wedding dress cape shirt which he and the band dug, and Rhodes whipped up Freddie’s white satin stagewear (and other garments) which Mercury first wore at a sold-out show at the Earl’s Court Olympia. The band invited Rhodes to the show which she attended with her artist friend (and Syd Barrett’s former roomie, Duggie Fields) where she witnessed her clothing become intertwined with Mercury’s persona. If you have seen the recent biopic Bohemian Rhapsody, then you have seen the white satin ensemble Rhodes made for Mercury over forty years ago. The costume designs in the film are reproductions made by Rhodes herself based on her original designs. During her interview with Vogue, Rhodes was photographed wearing her original wedding top which would become one of Freddie Mercury’s most memorable fashion statements—and clearly, that’s saying something, given Freddie’s ever-evolving, shape-shifting looks throughout his all-too-short career. Below are images of Mercury, Queen, Marc Bolan, and Rhodes herself dressed to the nines in her designs.
 

A photo published in The Daily Telegraph of Freddie Mercury modeling the pleated batwing tunic made by Zandra Rhodes with models Marianne (left), and Louise (right), June 7th, 1974.
 

A photo of Queen with Brian May and Mercury wearing clothing designed by Rhodes.
 

Mercury pictured in Rhodes design sans the flouncy satin top.
 

A magazine clipping of Mercury wearing Rhodes’ famous design.
 

Marc Bolan wearing a top designed by Rhodes. The purple top (which you can see here) apparently sold at auction in 2013 for $5,000.
 

Actress Natalie Wood modeling some of Rhodes exquisite textiles in American Vogue in1969.
 

Designer Zandra Rhodes modeling the original wedding top which inspired Mercury’s look. Photo by Dafy Hagai.
 
HT: Vogue

A stunning image of David Bowie as Pierrot with makeup by Australian artist Richard Sharah.
 
There are few images in rock and roll as recognizable as David Bowie’s Aladdin Sane look. With his hair quaffed in a red mullet and a lightning bolt slashed across his face, it is hard to conceive how anyone would not be at least somewhat aware of Bowie in this context. Bowie’s constantly changing personae are, of course, some of his crowning achievements but as we all know, even the greatest artists didn’t become great without a little help from their friends. David Bowie had many incredible collaborators. Here are two which had the great honor of using his face as a canvas.

Bowie’s secret weapons in the makeup department during the 70s were Algerian-born Pierre La Roche, and legendary Australian makeup artist Richard Sharah. La Roche is the man responsible for creating Bowie’s iconic lightning bolt, and the far-out gold sphere Bowie sported on his forehead as Ziggy. Sharah gets the credit for bringing the Pierrot look used for the cover of Scary Monsters and the “Ashes to Ashes” video to life. However, both men have made other impactful contributions to the world of makeup. Let’s start with the late Richard Sharah.

Richard Sharah’s unique makeup style helped inspire the looks of the New Romantic movement. Sharah’s working relationship with designer Zandra Rhodes (who dressed Freddie Mercury and Queen during the 1970s) lasted for decades. Sharah was slightly color blind—something his fans and students believed only enhanced his artistic ability. Taking things a step further, Sharah also made his own products, therefore, creating truly singular work for his clients which in addition to Bowie included Visage’s Steve Strange and a makeup icon in his own right, Divine (pictured below).
 

Divine (Harris Glenn Milstead) in makeup done by Richard Sharah.
 
Pierre La Roche left his native Algiers and made his way to France while still in his teens, though he wouldn’t stay long. His next move was to England, where he worked for cosmetics giant Elizabeth Arden. While with EA, David Bowie would hire La Roche to do his makeup for his 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, keeping him around to take care of business for the 1973 live concert film where Bowie retired Ziggy. Here’s more from LaRoche on Bowie’s “perfect” face:

He had the perfect face for makeup, even features, high cheekbones, and a very good mouth.

And boy, the man should know, as he spent the better part of the 1970s working on Bowie’s beloved mug. In 1971, he painted Bowie’s eyelids blue to compliment the famous turquoise suit worn in the “Life on Mars” video. In 1973 for the album Pin Ups, La Roche made both Bowie and supermodel Twiggy look gorgeously futuristic. In 1975 La Roche would work on the influential cult film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where he was given the opportunity to create Dr. Frank N. Furter’s diabolical, sweet transvestite face, famous tattoos, as well as other characters for the film. As history has proven, this and the other images he concocted for RHPS are indelible, as are his other contributions, which strongly influenced the look of glam rock.
 
Much more make-up, after the jump…

Fee Waybill on stage with The Tubes as his stage alter-ego Quay Lewd in 1975. His platform boots are eighteen inches high.
 
If the title of this post and affirmation of the importance of vocalist Fee Waybill (born John Waldo Waybill in 1950) of The Tubes sounds at all familiar, it is because this is precisely how Fee Waybill was addressed in the 1989 film, Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Since I know you’re curious, the other two people included in this very important trio were Martha Davis of The Motels (because of course, she was) and the big man himself, saxophone player and long-running member of Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, Clarence Clemons. Bill and Ted might not have been the brightest bulbs, but they were right to call Fee Waybill important. Because god dammit he was and still is and I’ve got pictures and live footage to prove it. Excellent.

Anyone growing up on MTV remembers The Tubes. “Talk to you Later” was in such heavy rotation it would have been impossible not to absorb the lyrics without even wanting to. Their early, proto-punk records were popular in the UK but didn’t really break through in the U.S., so as far as most MTV kids were concerned, The Tubes they saw on television didn’t exist before “Talk to You Later.” They had likely never heard of the band’s 1975 debut, White Punks on Dope. During their time in the 70s, they became known for their elaborate stage productions which stepped far beyond merely going to see a band, and more like live, interactive, improvisational theater with sick jams.

Then, you have Fee Waybill, taking it a leap beyond the beyond appearing in characters he created for the stage such as a BDSM fan, and a glam rocker called Quay Lewd. Waybill also dressed up like a crazed astronaut from time to time and a masked bad-dude. Others would follow, and Waybill’s revolving cast of characters would make regular appearances during Tubes’ shows for years and years. According to Waybill, Quay Lewd was an “amalgam” of “Rod Stewart, David Bowie, David Johansen, Robert Plant and all the quasi-homosexual glam-rock gay lead singers with platform shoes in the 1970s.”

In 1977 The Tubes played two highly praised totally gonzo sold-out shows at the Hammersmith Odeon with Wire. Both performances were recorded and released in 1978 as What Do You Want from Live. In addition to wanton appearances by Waybill dressed in bondage gear, Quay Lewd also came out to taunt the crowd. Journalist Paul Rambali reviewed the gigs for NME, including the following assessment which I think sums up what the fuck happened at the Odeon: 

“They (The Tubes) are not strictly a rock band, neither are they a show, a satire, nor a marriage of rock and theatre, (although they do admit early inspiration from the original Rocky Horror Picture Show). The Tubes are a spectacle like no other. They present a relentless two-hour onslaught of humor, outrage, parody, idiocy, music, and costume—a feast for the senses.”

 

Paul Rambali’s review of The Tubes gigs at the Odeon in 1977.
 
After the release of What Do You Want from Live, The Tubes returned to California to play a series of shows in San Fran and Los Angeles. After their crazed shows in London, Waybill decided to get even nastier on stage and added a large dildo to his Quay Lewd costume, which has always kind of reminded me of a cross between Wayne Country and Hedwig. Apparently, Cher was in the crowd and would later ask the band to play her Cher…Special (1978), which they did in the most bonkers way possible. The Tubes performed a medley of songs including 1975’s “Mondo Bondage” with Waybill and in bondage gear trying to get Cher to embrace her dark side. During the skit/musical number, another guest on the one-off special, Dolly Parton and her gang of gospel singers roll on in to save Cher’s soul, presumably from rock and roll. Also, since Rambali was kind enough to mention the link between The Tubes and Rocky Horror Picture Show, it seems like a good time to note Waybill took on the role of the deranged Dr. Frank N. Furter for a stage production of RHPS at the Barn Theater in Augusta, Michigan in 1999. Pictures or it didn’t happen? I got you covered, pals.

Classic images of Fee Waybill doing what he does best—you know, being one of the three most important people in the world, follow. Some are NSFW (which does not mean Not Safe for Fee Waybill). Lastly, if you happen to be in Irwin, Pennsylvania or Akron, Ohio, you can see the band live later this month.
 

Waybill on stage in BDSM leather. Fuck YES.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
The Louvin Brothers are everyone’s favorite Appalachian close-harmony brother duet (there are plenty of them). Born with the surname Loudermilk, the two brothers, Charlie and Ira, used to perform on a local radio station in Chattanooga as teenagers; in the 1950s they drew the attention of Acuff-Rose Music and eventually signed with MGM. In short order the Louvin Brothers released records such as Tragic Songs of Life (1956), Nearer My God to Thee (1957), and The Family Who Prays (1958). In 1960 the brothers released a gospel album called Satan Is Real, which has long since become a favorite of collectors because it’s an excellent album but also because the cover is just so interesting and odd. In 2012 Charlie Louvin published an entertaining memoir with the same title and cover motifs.
 

 
Last year two country-music-playing brothers named Malpass reached out to a talented bootmaker named Lisa Sorrell for some extra-special custom-made cowboy boots. Christopher Malpass chose to get a pair of nice light-brown boots with his name on them, but Taylor Malpass decided to recreate the cover of one of his favorite albums—you guessed it, Satan Is Real.
 

Sorrell’s initial sketch for the boot tops
 
As she neared completion, Sorrell made the interesting comment that “often with a non-traditional design such as this one, I feel it’s most attractive when it’s flat and putting it on a cowboy boot makes me like it less. I’m liking this design more and more though.”
 

As Sorrell put it, “Satan has tiny hands and protruding front teeth.”
 
If you’d like custom cowboy boots of your very own with the cover of My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless or Slint’s Spiderland on them, you can reach out to Sorrell and maybe you can figure something out. According to her website, prices start at $5,000.
 
Here’s a video of Sorrell working on the Louvin Brothers boots:

Actress Markie Post and Gil Gerard getting their leather and spandex look on in a still from ‘Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.’
 
If my homage to adorable robot Twiki—one of the stars of the sci-fi television show Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979-1981), went above your head, I’m sorry. But I’m only sorry because this means that you maybe never watched the show which ran for two seasons on NBC. At the time, I was just a kid and never missed an episode as it was a continuation of its predecessor, Battlestar Galactica (1978-1979). I was such a big fan of BG and was obsessed with actor Dirk Benedict and his character Lieutenant Starbuck. The show was full of nutty plotlines and came complete with a disco soundtrack from the masterful Giorgio Moroder, which I am sure I was not able to appreciate at the time. There was even a fictional alien girl group featured on the show called the Space Angels who had the voices of singers Carolyn Willis, Marti McCall, and Myrna Matthews, a long-time collaborator with Steely Dan. Now that you can see I’m in full-on sci-fi nerd mode let’s move on to the actual point of this post, the far-out females of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Buck Rogers cast of female characters in the first season alone included Jamie Lee Curtis, Catwoman Julie Newmar, Pamela Hensley, and Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratten. The show was a departure from Battlestar Galactica when it came to many things including the appearance of their female cast being more akin to the women William Shatner encountered on Star Trek. In fact, Gil Gerard’s character on Buck Rogers mirrors Captain Kirk’s when it pertains to his ability to become lip-locked with pretty much every female woman or alien he comes into contact with. Even Buck Rogers co-star the beautiful Erin Gray wasn’t immune to Rogers’ outer-space swagger. Like Battlestar, the plotlines were pushed to the edge of reason including battles with space vampires and an episode where the gang spends time on an intergalactic cruise ship filled with chicks in bikinis.

I’ve posted some great stills from the show to help illustrate my point about what a treat to the eyes this show was. And though we are technically not discussing Battlestar Galactica, I’ve posted a video of shirtless Dirk Benedict showing you how to get a “steel stomach” in an old-school workout video because it’s too awesome to keep to myself.
 

The super cool, completely hot Erin Gray as Colonel Wilma Deering.
 

Erin Gray all dolled up in the episode “Cruise Ship to the Stars” (season one, episode eleven).
 

 
More after the jump…

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If you’re ever invited to a “surrealist ball,” my advice is definitely to go. This advice is a hundred times as pertinent if the hosts are among the wealthiest people on the planet.

On December 12, 1972, Baroness Marie-Hélène de Rothschild and her husband Guy threw a lush “Diner de Têtes Surrealistes” at the enormous Château de Ferrières, the house in which Marie-Hélène and her sisters had been raised, located outside of Paris. The Château de Ferrières had been seized by the Nazis during World War II and reminded empty for several years until Marie-Hélène and her new husband decided to reopen the property in 1959. During the 1960s the palace became one of the regular hotspots for extravagant parties in France for movie stars, fashion designers, and socialites.

The invitation, inspired by René Magritte, instructed guests to wear black tie and long gowns—the only other directive was to arrive bearing “Surrealist heads.” Adding to the perversity, the invitation was printed in reverse, such that a mirror was required to decipher it. Here it is:
 

 
The Château de Ferrières was bathed in orange by moving floodlights—the intended impression being that the palace was on fire:
 

 
Upon entering, guests encountered on the main staircase a series of footmen dressed as cats who had “fallen asleep” in a variety of staged poses. As described in the New York Times, Marie-Hélène was dressed as “a stag at the kill, with a mask of towering antlers and pear-shaped diamond ‘tears’ on her face.”

Salvador Dalí himself was there, as well as Brigitte Bardot, Audrey Hepburn, and Marisa Berenson. Baron Alexis de Redé wore a complex hat with multiple faces designed by Dalí.

There’s little doubt that Stanley Kubrick was aware of the Surrealist Ball and drew on it as a resource for the extended party scene in Eyes Wide Shut, which was based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 work Traumnovelle. During the inquisitor sequence, when Tom Cruise’s character Bill Harford is being asked to produce a password to verify his identity, the proceedings are interrupted by a naked lady wearing a mask who seeks to “redeem” Harford. There’s a lovely shot of the gathered masked guests gazing up at her that looks for all the world like the still photos taken at the Surrealist Ball.
 

The hosts, Guy de Rothschild and Marie-Hélène de Rothschild
 
So much more after the jump….....