Decoupage! was a fever dream of a public access show cooked up in 1989 by visionary amateur producer Kathe Duba and drag queen Summer Caprice (Craig Roose, if you want to get technical). Envisioning a kitschy 70’s variety show aesthetic, Craig and Kathe scoured thrift stores to furnish elaborate sets—an episode could take as many as twelve hours to set-up, videotape and break-down (those are Cecil B. DeMille terms for public access). The show attracted counterculture legends like “all-American Jewish lesbian folksinger” Phranc and Vaginal Creme Davis (appearing with her “mother,” Susan Tyrrell). Caprice exuded a fun atmosphere of irreverent, arty, DIY weirdness, and the guests really seemed to enjoy themselves. 

I’d argue the “jewel” of the Decoupage series was actually Decoupage 2000: Return of the Goddess—a 1999 retro-futurist sci-fi version of the original show coordinated after a five-year hiatus. Check out cult queen Karen Black singing Sonny Bono’s “Bang Bang,” with grunge goddesses L7 for her band! If you didn’t know, Karen Black has a fucking amazing voice, and her chemistry with L7 is golden.
 

 
The most compelling segment though, is Exene Cervenka (using her actual surname, “Cervenkova” here) performing a spoken-word piece, “They Must Be Angels.” Themes of alien visitation and abduction, psychic abilities and metaphysical spirituality make the monologue a perfect fit for Decoupage‘s retro-futurism, but as Exene expounds, her tangents become more conspiratorial, and you’re left wondering if work like this was the germ of her eventual Alex Jones-levels of delusion. You can never be sure how someone got from Point A to Point Raving, Vicious Crackpot, but man does this piece feel like a red flag; and still, Exene is magnetic, and the performance is mesmerizing.

I’m unsure of exactly how many episodes of Decoupage! were made in total, but there is a Decoupage! YouTube channel with some great clips.
 

 
More after the jump…

Jello Biafra at Mabuhay Gardens, SF 1978
 
Jim Jocoy and his family left their home in South Korea and arrived in the town of Sunnyvale, California, when Jocoy was only 17. He enrolled at UC Santa Cruz, but later dropped out once he discovered the burgeoning punk scene that was exploding all around him. Jocoy got a gig at a Xerox store, hung out at punk clubs by night and started up a punk zine with his friends called Widows and Orphans. That’s when Jocoy decided to pick up a camera and started shooting photos of his friends and bands whenever he happened to find himself someplace interesting. Jocoy found himself in lots of interesting places.
 

Olga de Volga of the San Francisco band VS., Geary Street Theatre, SF 1980
 
Jocoy’s remarkable photos ended up in a book in 2002 called We’re Desperate. I reached out to Jocoy in an email, and the photographer graciously agreed to answer a few of my questions about his days growing up as a young punk in California.
 

Sid Vicious, San Francisco, January 14th, 1978
 
Tell me about your now infamous photo of Sid Vicious.

Jim Jocoy: The photo of Sid was taken after the last Sex Pistols show in SF. They performed at Winterland on Jan. 14, 1978. He took a cab to my friend Lamar St John’s apartment in the Haight-Ashbury district. I was outside as the cab pulled up. He was alone and got out and pissed in the middle of the street before going into the apartment. I ran into him in the hallway and asked if I could take a Polaroid photo. He nodded yes and that was it. He spent most of the evening in the bathroom with a couple of “fans”.
 

William Burroughs at his 70th birthday party in San Francisco, 1984

I understand that you presented a slide show of your photos to William Burroughs in honor of his 70th birthday. How did that go?

Jim Jocoy: The party was held at a warehouse in the Mission district belonging to the artist Mark McCloud. He was known for his (real) LSD postage stamp art. Burroughs allowed me to take a photo of him that evening. He wore an nice blue suit and had his briefcase in hand.

What’s your favorite memory of a show you saw back in the day that really blew your mind?

Jim Jocoy: I would have to say it was the first Ramones’ show in SF at the Savoy Tivoli on August 19th, 1976. It lasted about 30 minutes without a break, only “one, two, three, four!” between songs by Dee Dee. It was such a sonic boom of pure rock energy as I had never heard before. It was in the tiny back room of the bar/restaurant. It was like ground zero for launching the punk rock scene in San Francisco. A few weeks later, many of the seminal SF punk bands started performing regularly at the Mabuhay Gardens, the first main punk rock venue in the city.
 

Punk girl in leather skirt, SF 1978
 
Jocoy’s photos were only shown in public twice (one of those times was at Burroughs’ birthday party), and then were stored away for almost two-decades before seeing the light of day once again between the covers of We’re Desperate. So here’s a glimpse of what punk rock looked like back in the late 70s and early 80s, through the lens of a simple 35mm camera with an oversized flash taken by a guy who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Many thanks to Jim Jocoy for the use of his photos and captions (written by Jim) in this post.
 

John Waters at the Deaf Club in SF, 1980
 

Johnny Genocide, Geary Street Theatre in SF, 1980
 

Poison Ivy of the Cramps in the dressing room of Mabuhay Gardens, SF 1979
 
More young punks after the jump…

What the fuck happened to this woman?

X’s Exene Cervenka seems more than a tad confused these days, based on the evidence of her rambling, paranoiac and just plain stupid YouTube channel and the fact that she’s now referring to the killings in Santa Barbara over the weekend as being a “hoax” on her Twitter feed—it’s a “gun control” ruse, don’tcha know?

Cervenka’s First Amendment right to make a complete and utter fucking laughingstock out of herself is indisputable—last time I checked, this was still America—but I can’t imagine that the other members of X think this is all that hilariously funny. (Consider what having to tour with this hillbilly nincompoop must be like, always wanting to listen to Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage on the radio).

Some of her fans seem unwilling to believe Cervenka could be this big of a fuckwit and are sticking up for her, saying this must be some kind of Andy Kaufman-esque “performance art.” Bullshit, she’s just an ugly human being. Fuck you, Exene. People died and you’re spreading batshit crazy conspiracy theories on the level of Alex Jones. You should be ashamed of yourself, lady, but these days, you don’t even seem acquainted enough with reality itself to fully comprehend why.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
X marks the Conspiracy Theory: Exene Cervenka, the new Alex Jones?

Thank you Rich Lindsay!

Hi. Let me introduce myself. My name is Christine Notmyrealname, and I am a completely unlicensed for-amusement-and-entertainment-purposes-only uncertified conspiracy therapist. My job in life—self-appointed—is to bring conspiracy theorists, and those who aren’t, together, so that we can all unite and fix what’s wrong with society, the world, et cetera.

With those words, we are ushered into the over-the-rainbow, everything-you-know-is-fucking-WRONG-maaaaan world of Christine Notmyrealname, whom you surely know better as Exene Cervenka, singer of the seminal L.A. punk/roots rock band X. When DM last checked in on her, she was holding the punkest garage sale ever, in preparation for a move from L.A. to Texas, which, it turns out, may be in preparation for SHTF. But don’t worry, ladies, you can survive the coming apocalyptic nastiness if you just land the right man! Forget about that metrosexual Beverly Hills pantywaiste in his BMW, you want a redneck with a front porch, a pickup truck with a gun rack and the manly ability to put food on the table that he has killed himself. Just make sure you have skills to offer, and try not to be a tarted up, fake-tits whore.

Exene, she calls it as she sees it…
 

 
WATCH OUT FOR ALLIGATOOOORRRRRS!
 
Cervenka has a kooky YouTube channel full-to-burstin’ with bonkers shit. Samples from her playlists called “Liked videos,” “Favorite videos,” and “random greatness” include “exposés” of Reptilian shape-shifters, “proof” that the tragedy at Sandy Hook elementary was fake, and the Internet paranoiac’s usual array of 9/11-OMG-the-currency-is-about-to-crash-wake-up-sheeple-everything’s-a-false-flag crap. It’s useful to have this background to her proclivities, because she steers clear of explicitly pushing those buttons in her own videos, which give them a kind of inchoate vagueness that actually augments their unhinged appeal.
 

 
Look, we can surely all agree that consensus reality absolutely does not always match up with what’s actually happening, and that information gleaned from corporate media invariably comes with a heapin’ helpin’ of veiled agenda. But there’s a whole lot of excluded middle between sensible advice to question the information that’s fed you and “The End-Time Adventures of Lucifer and His Illuminati Gang.”
 
Some of Exene’s favorite “informations,” after the jump…

 
Donnaland Vintage Variety has announced that an “ECLECTIC 4-day VINTAGE & ANTIQUE sale” will be held in Santa Ana, CA this week. Among the items offered include some fantastic vintage jewelry, a really, really cool old Dutch bicycle, and, interestingly, set lists and posters from the legendary and seminal L.A. punk band X, original artwork by that band’s co-lead singer Exene Cervenka, and even some guitars of hers. And indeed, though this is a multi-family sale, it turns out the majority of the items are Cervenka’s. The sale’s inventory page features this quote from the woman herself:

Calling all Betty Crocker Punk Rockers!!! 100 years of Americana needs good home. Treasured memories of the past can live on in your hands! Like a small inheritance, but without the squabbling with siblings!

I got a good chuckle out of “Betty Crocker Punk Rockers.”

The address of the sale will be made public on Wednesday, February 12, 2014, and the sale itself begins on Thursday the 13th at noon. This Rickenbacker guitar shown below is really making me wish I was in the Santa Ana area. The bike’s not too shabby, either.
 

1955 Rickenbacker Combo 600
 

Electra bicycle, made in Amsterdam
 

Early ‘60s amp-in-case Sivertone guitar. RIDICULOUSLY cool.
 

Assorted posters, many for X, plus an X set list
 

 

 

A ton of cool vintage jewelry
 

”Greek Tragedy,” original artwork by Exene Cervenka
 

A metric shitload of knives. Um, OK.
 
A brief and far from complete primer for those who don’t know: X were by far one of the greatest bands to emerge from L.A.’s early punk scene. Their first three LPs, the independent Los Angeles and Wild Gift, plus the major label debut Under the Big Black Sun, all remain essential. Cervenka and the band’s bassist (also her then-husband) John Doe sang gripping harmonic dual leads that are still capable of haunting the dreams of the unsuspecting. The band later took a rootsward turn that, in addition to being pretty damn good musically (see especially See How We Are and its single “4th of July”), foreshadowed the emergence of Alt-Country. They’ve periodically reunited, and continue to tour. The anthemic “Los Angeles,” from their debut LP, is exemplary of their early sound.
 

 
And just because it’s just too damn fun, here’s a 1983 Letterman appearance, wherein they sing Jerry Lee Lewis’ “Breathless,” from the Richard Gere remake of the 1960 Jean-Luc Godard film by that title. The interview segment is great, don’t skip ahead to the song!
 

 
A mighty grateful tip of the hat to Swag for alerting me to this.

 
John Doe and Exene Cervenka shilling for their latest album, 1987’s “See How We Are,” on syndicated TV show The Record Guide. This almost looks like a SCTV parody.

John and Exene were divorced in 1985 but seem to have maintained a great working relationship over the years. In this clip, they are clearly still quite fond of each other even as they are assaulted by cheesy video effects and a dumb as fuck off-screen interviewer.

“See How We Are” was their first album without the beatific Billy Zoom.
 

 
Exene Cervenka, the director of photography and co-writer on Modi Frank’s 1986 silent western Bad Day, is making the film available on her website to help raise money for Gulf Coast residents.

Shot at a secret location near Chatsworth, California, the short film features an inspired cast of irregulars playing the residents of a small town on a bad day. Call it what you will: a cow-punk time capsule, a mock-Western, a guerrilla film forerunner – or just plain proof of a time when everyone didn’t take themselves so seriously.

“Bad Day” has a cool cast that includes, John Doe (X), Dave Alvin (Blasters), Kevin Costner, Michael Blake and Chris Desjardin (The Flesheaters).

A portion of the proceeds from “Bad Day” are going to the Gulf Coast aid organization the Committee for Plaquemines Recovery that helps the people affected in the Gulf region.

Now available for the first time as a digital download Viewers will be able to “pay” whatever they choose for the download.  Please view at www.baddaymovie.com