Mark Vallen's Art For A Change website has a great collection of xeroxed punk flyers from LA circa 1977. The flyer on the left was designed by my old mate, X-8, who got his start doing the promo for our band Low Budget back in high school, then went on to become a founding father of the LA punk 'zine, Flipside.

That's Trudy, a Masque groupie, holding a copy of Flipside on the flyer. I think I made out with her in the alley in front of the club one night, but that may be false memories created by sniffing glue and drinking a few too many bottles of Annie Green Springs Strawberry Hill wine.

By the way, the other band on that Vietnamesebabycafe bill was an Alice-Cooperish outfit called Jekyll and Hyde fronted by another school chum named, Paul Amiel Stewart, who until recently was one-half of a Seattle art-rock (mostly sans-rock) duo called Fishmagic. I haven't heard from him for a year or more, so I googled on him today to see if I could discover his current whereabouts; I found him teaching English on the faculty of a Turkish University.

Ain't search engines wonderful?

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:05 PM | Permalink

The art of Dee Dee Ramone

And now Johnny Ramone's got cancer. Merde.

links via X-8 and Exclamation Mark

Posted by MrBaliHai at 11:01 PM | Permalink

The Mod Pop Punk Archives: a most excellent collection of bios, covers, discographies, and links that showcases bands from 1977 through 1985, including a couple of somewhat obscure LA ensembles that I fondly recall from my days punking around in Hollywood.

Speaking of ancient musical history, read this interesting article by Robert Hilburn about of two of Kim Fowley's acts: The Quick, a Sparks-like band that should've been big but never made it, and the Runaways, a band that should've been much bigger, but was sabotaged by Fowley's inept management.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 6:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

As usual, I spent a lot of time in museums this trip. I made pilgrimages to the Tate Britain, the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, and most memorably, the Vivienne Westwood exhibition at the V&A, and the wonderfully goofy, pop-inspired architectural creations of the 1960's design group, ARCHIGRAM at the always brilliant Design Museum.

For the uninitiated, Vivienne designed much of the groundbreaking original couture sold by punk empresario, Malcolm McLaren, at London's notorious bondage boutique, Sex.

As for the ARCHIGRAM group, you can read their story in cartoon form here.

Posted by MrBaliHai at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)