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Naked Vegas: Kelly Garni’s Images of the Showgirls, Strippers & Sex Workers of Las Vegas


A photograph by Kelly Garni that graces the cover of his new book, ‘Naked Vegas: The Highs and Lows of A Photographers Journey’ (2022).
 

Kelly Garni has led a pretty storied life, his entire life. As a young teen, he became best friends with another teen, as kids do. Except Garni’s friend happened to be Randy Rhoads—a then budding guitar prodigy who would define the ultimate heavy metal sound with his instrument. Garni, who played bass, and Rhoads would go on to form Quiet Riot in the mid-70s along with vocalist Kevin Dubrow and drummer Drew Forsyth. The music put out by this original configuration of Quiet Riot is foundational, not just to heavy metal, but to glam and punk not just musically, but also in the way they dressed. Bow ties, polka dots, spandex and leather, with lots of the outfits coming from the ladies department. Their appearance created a stir at Garni and Rhoads’ high school, so much so they would routinely leave school quickly to avoid getting beat up by students who just didn’t get it. This changed once Quiet Riot started getting the attention they had worked so hard for and deserved. They were so popular, they were invited to play their high school prom even though Garni and Rhoads were barely attending classes anymore. Their classmates were no longer lining up to give them a beatdown, they were cheering for them in a swanky ballroom in Burbank. They would open for Van Halen who was coming up at the same time in Southern California. Garni’s time in Quiet Riot came to an abrupt end after an incident involving a gun and a drunken threat to kill Kevin Dubrow.
 

An early photo of Quiet Riot (Kelly Garni is on the left) and a ticket stub from their gig with rivals Van Halen, April 23rd, 1977. Photo by Rob Sobol. Source.
 
In a transitional move not unlike David Lee Roth’s in the same decade, Garni became an EMT in Los Angeles in the early 90s. As detailed in his wonderfully conversational new book Naked Vegas: The Highs and Lows of a Photographer’s Journey, he recalls the day his ambulance driver brought a 35mm camera along with her. Garni had never really used a camera and after getting some tips from his driver, he was hooked. At least until the demands of his job saving lives in LA became too time consuming, and his infatuation with photography waned. Thankfully that wouldn’t last and in the early 90s after going through what Garni describes as a very “painful divorce” he would rediscover his love of the lens. He spent time studying in the library and would chat up employees at camera stores. He built his own darkroom. Garni has never had a lack of self-confidence, and this of course worked to his advantage as he was embarking on what would become decades of photographing beautiful women merely by approaching them offering to take their photo and give it to them for free in order to hone his craft. So enthralled with the idea of photography becoming a legitimate career move, he quickly went into a bit of debt building a photography studio in his home in Las Vegas. Then Garni got the call that started it all from a modeling agency in Las Vegas that had seen some of his images. In a stroke of luck (or more likely Garni’s eye for a pretty girl), several of the girls he had recently photographed were actually working models. He would spend the next two decades taking photos of Vegas showgirls, strippers, models and sex workers, mostly in the setting of the Nevada desert. Here’s Garni on what he calls his favorite part of his life thus far:

“The next 20 years of my life (beginning in 1993) were by far my favorite. It was everything I loved. I made good money, was constantly around beautiful women, it was a non-stop party, and I was only in my early 40s. All that works for me. I had timing on my side when I started this. Timing and luck, the single greatest pairing in the history of the world for anything good that can happen to you.”

 

Garni getting artistic in the desert. All photos courtesy of Kelly Garni.
 
Garni’s assertion about this being the favorite part of his life makes sense, especially given the fact that he was living in Las Vegas during the 90s when “mega-resorts” were being built as quickly as possible. In ten years time Vegas would build massive themed “family style” resorts such as Bellagio, MGM Grand, the Luxor, Treasure Island, Mandalay Bay, the Venetian, Paris and Excalibur. Along with this, the resorts featured enormous convention facilities to help accommodate the 900 or so conventions held in the city each year. At the time, modeling agencies were making a ton of money by deploying “booth babes” to hand out company-specific merch to attendees in an effort to lure them into the all-important sales pitch from the staff inside. Garni would end up creating something called a “Zed Card” for loads of booth babes, which naturally got his images more lip-service within the Las Vegas photography industry. Though he also did other kinds of photography, demand for his nude photography soon took up 50% of his overall business. Interestingly, in his book, Garni makes it very clear that while he loves photographing women (as one should), he does not derive any kind of “enjoyment” in full-frontal nude photography as he feels it is “demeaning” to women. However, prides himself in not turning any client down, regardless of the nature of the request. Garni is a lot of things, has seen a lot of things, and has done a lot of things. Sometimes bad things (remember his desire to kill Kevin Dubrow?). But that does not make him a bad guy, and his catalog of photos in Naked Vegas convey a deep sense of admiration and respect for his subjects, even if they are buck naked. Now you might be wondering, did anything the level of “what happened in Vegas, stays in Vegas” happen to Garni during one or more of his shoots? You better believe it. And just like the debaucherous stories intertwined within the world of rock and roll, Kelly has a few shady stories about some of his clients which also reinforce his work ethic—never turn a client down. Here’s a doozy:

“Some people made this business down right creepy. This middle-aged couple came to me for pictures of a worship service at their church. They were both pastors. I guess they did alright, they had about a hundred people there donating right and left. They first asked me to do family pictures, and later, some senior pictures of their two sons. Finally, they asked about the wife doing some nudes. I thought the request was a little strange, I mean, these two were preachers. But I suppose there’s nothing wrong with a married pair of people of the fi=aith wanting some spicy pictures. Except they wanted shots that were VERY spicy. The creepy part was that during the entire shoot, the husband stood behind me. Watching. Breathing heavily. It made my skin crawl. The guy was really getting off on this. My mantra is to turn down no work no matter the nature, they became good customers in that they did these shoots several times with the husband getting more excited each time, which was always uncomfortable for me. I heard they got divorced. I don’t miss them though—they were icky to work with.”

 

A few call girl cards featurning Garni’s photographs.
 
In addition to the women who worked in Vegas, Garni also did quite a lot of photography for aspiring Playboy models. And many of the images in his 153 page book are of women projecting that image. His photographs were also widely used by Vegas call girls for their business cards. If you visited Vegas during the 90s, you will remember being bombarded by people, sometimes kids, aggressively handing out fliers and cards on the strip. Most of these handouts ended up on the sidewalks of the strip itself (something I can attest to as well), creating a sidewalk plastered in photos of half-naked women with red dots on their nippples (or not). As Garni never turned any work down, he would joke that when people asked him where they could see his photographs, he said just go to the strip and “look down.” Garni spent quite a while photographing Vegas sex workers and to say he’s seen it all is an understatement. He formed friendships with many of the women he photographed and would always ask them this question; ” What’s the weirdest thing you ever had to do for a client?” As you might imagine, Garni has an arsenal of sordid tales, including one wild one about a customer the girls called “The Balloon Guy.”

“Given the number of girls who have told me about ‘the balloon guy,’ he must have spent quite a bit of time doing ‘his thing’ around Vegas. And he must also be very rich, and very old. Balloon guy would book a large suite in a major hotel. Then he would make some calls. He’d order close to a thousand balloons, small, medium and large, but not filled with helium as he wanted balloons laid on the floor. He had ‘balloon people’ spread the balloons all over the suite, covering every inch of the floor, carpet, or tile. The bathtub would be filled with water and then covered in balloons. Then the girls would arrive, strip naked and remove all their jewelry. Balloon guy was naked too, Viagra-fueled and ready to go. It was showtime. The girls were then told to sit hard on the balloons and pop them using only their bare bottoms. Hence no jewelry. Apparently, that’s cheating. Pop! Pop! Pop! He would follow them around whacking off, and then, only when the last balloon left this Earth, did he himself pop so to speak. The girls said this all took about an hour.”

The Balloon Guy sounds like he belongs somewhere in Quentin Tarantino’s character lexicon, as do some of the other stories in Naked Vegas. In it, Garni takes us along with him on his journey through Las Vegas with his eyes and lens pointed squarely on the women of Las Vegas—models, sex workers, strippers, and exotic performers, you name it. Through his photos and experience, he illuminates the some of the underbelly Vegas is known for, by navigating it himself for the first time as a self-taught photographer. Naked Vegas: The Highs and Lows of a Photographer’s Journey, is available now via Garni’s soon-to-be-redesigned website or here. Like the other images in in this post, most are NSFW. But you didn’t like that job anyway.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
With many thanks to Kelly Garni and Marcy Johnson.

 

Posted by Cherrybomb
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10.24.2022
02:52 pm
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Michael Jackson vs Donny Osmond, the KKK and space aliens in insane new cult musical!!


 
Julien Nitzberg. Shit-stirrer, rebel director, artist, punk rocker and genius are some titles bestowed on this forward-thinking, back-slapping smart-ass. You might know him from his earliest documentary on Hasil Adkins—lunatic rockabilly one man band-he thought the guy in the radio made the music that way. Hasil sang about beheading his girlfriend so she “can eat no more hot dogs.” At that time he met Adkins’ neighbors the White family, who were the focus of his next documentary, the VHS cult sensation The Dancing Outlaw, about Jesco White, hillbilly clog dancer and Elvis impersonator. If you added up all the views just on YouTube of the different clips of this film alone it adds up into the millions.

Fast forward to 2009, Johnny Knoxville and Nitzberg make the cult hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. In between these Nitzberg did many other projects Like Mike Judge presents: Tales From the Tour Bus and the controversial The Beastly Bombing operetta, an equal opportunity love/hatefest about, well…the subtitle of the operetta is “A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love,” if that helps. You can read about it here.
 
All I knew about For the Love of a Glove going in was Julien’s history and sense of humor and that it was about Michael Jackson. That alone is at least a Godzilla’s worth of possible satiric destruction in the hands of Nitzberg, and that’s putting it mildly! It seems all of MJ’s bad behavior is blamed on aliens that look like glittery gloves who come to take over humanity. Oh did I mention it’s also a musical? And a puppet show? With life-sized puppets? The main one being Donny Osmond, Michael’s mortal enemy? There’s even one of Corey Feldman! And Emmanuel Lewis!!

The show is a non-stop comedy clobbering of the senses, with a very small, very talented cast, great original music, cool effects, etc. Most of the actors play as many as four roles, and being that much of the cast is African American it was odd/funny and visibly uncomfortable (to some) when these actors donned white hoods for the big Ku Klux Klan musical show stopper! But if you know Julien…
 
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In these days of modern mass paranoia and casual racism, over-sensitivity and dumbing down of all things, even I had a flash of looking behind me (as I saw others do) and wondering if this was cool to like, who was getting offended, who was laughing, and right then at that moment I realized I have been way more affected by all this modern bullshit than I thought. We need people like Julien Nitzberg to remind and instill in us that it is not only okay, but quite necessary to think, laugh (at ourselves AND at others) and learn.
 
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I spoke to Julien Nitzberg and cast member Pip Lilly about all of this.
 
Howie Pyro: Okay so why now? When did the idea come to you & what brought MJ to the top of your creative lunacy? 

Julien Nitzberg: The initial idea for this show came to me almost seventeen years ago. I was approached by a major cable TV network to write a Michael Jackson biopic. I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was a little kid and watched the Jackson 5 cartoon on Saturday mornings. I tried to find an interesting way to tell Michael’s story, but the later years were just too bizarre and I couldn’t find a normal way to tell it. How could anyone explain Bubbles the chimp, trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones or sleepovers with kids. It was all too bizarre. I decided that the only way to tell it was to find a surreal way into the story. I pitched them the idea that all the boys and things in Michael’s life weren’t his choices. Instead his glove was an evil alien trying to take over the world who forced Michael to do all the bizarre things in his life. The alien gave him his talent so Michael was forced into doing things that he was severely embarrassed by.

The execs laughed at this idea but then asked me to do the normal version.  I knew it would turn out terribly, so I said no. Over the years my mind kept returning to Michael’s life and finally I decided to write my version of his life as a musical with all original music.

I spent a couple of years researching Michael’s life trying to find the most interesting obscure parts to talk about. I decided to have it focus on his religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness.  Jehovah’s Witnesses have a really fucked up attitude toward sexuality. They teach that masturbating can turn you gay because as a man you get used to a man’s hand on your penis and want other mens’ hands on your penis. I thought this was hilarious. How did MJ get raised in the religion and then his most famous dance move winds up being him grabbing his own crotch?  I then realized he didn’t do the crotch grab, his alien glove forced him to do it!

I also found out more about his rivalry with Donny Osmond. The Osmonds were clearly patterned to be the white version of the Jackson 5. Five brothers singing, dressing similarly. It was creepy.  The Osmonds first big hit was “One Bad Apple.” It sounded so much like the Jackson 5 that Michael’s mom thought it was the Jackson 5 when she heard it on the radio.

The Osmonds clearly ripped off the Jackson 5 and what was worse they were Mormons which at the time taught that all black people were cursed with the “Mark of Cain” and were not allowed in their temples. They even taught that if you were black and converted to Mormonism you could go to Heaven but would be a servant to white people in Heaven. It’s some of the most fucked up religious shit you can dream of.  They also taught that at the end of days when Christ returns all black people will have the curse of the “Mark of Cain” removed and turn white. Of course, Michael did this in his life so that became a big part of the story.  We even have a song that Donny sings to Michael called “What a Delight When You Turn White.”

I felt like now was a great time to do the show. Everyone is talking about how our country has been ruined by fucked up racist and homophobic religions. We deal with one of the clearest cases of cultural appropriation that ever existed - people who belonged to an openly racist church going out and trying to sound like the biggest black music act of the day. It all felt like things that are in our country’s cultural conversation right now.

For those who don’t know you or your sense of humor…there’s quite a few things that many different types of people would/could find offensive…do you think this is a help or a hindrance to the success of the play?

Julien Nitzberg: I have no idea. I love super offensive humor. I was raised on John Waters, Mel Brooks, the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Tom Lehrer and Monty Python and think those influences pervade For the Love of a Glove. I hope our culture has matured enough that people can enjoy my fucked-up punk rock humor. And who wants to see a non-offensive Michael Jackson musical?

In the play most of the cast is African American and all the cast members play multiple roles. The Ku Klux Klan musical number was hysterical (and obviously not pro KKK) but was it odd to ask the African American actors to don KKK hoods?

Pip Lilly: I think donning the hoods is hysterical. I never felt weird about it. I’m an actor and it’s a costume. Plus, I have  the power here. Just wearing it is a radical act that would have gotten me killed 70 years ago. Also, real talk, the Klan deserves to be besmirched and clowned over and over again. Julien does a great job of setting up the racial issues that were the foundation of 1960s black folks. 

Julien Nitzberg: Since the Jackson 5 were from Gary, Indiana, I did a lot of research into the history of Indiana.  I discovered that in the 1920’s, one third of the white citizens of Indiana belonged to the KKK. The KKK in Indiana had 250,000 fucking members! How crazy is that? 250,000 KKK members just in Indiana!  I decided we needed a song about that called “What Is It About Indiana?”  Most people think of Indiana being part of the North so that shows how fucking racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and crazy our country’s always been.  I wondered how that would have affected people growing up there so I thought we needed a song about that, contextualizing the fucked up state where the Jackson 5 grew up. It’s a very Mel Brooks number with dancing KKK members.  I feel like if you laugh at horrible people you make them into a joke and take away their power.  The show only has ten actors. Eight are black and two are white so we ended up needing some of the black actors to play KKK members. I asked the actors if they were comfortable with it and they all laughed. They thought it was hilarious. It was a lot like when Mel Brooks plays a Nazi.  You feel a certain power over the oppressors putting their clothes on and mocking them. We had the actors strolling in laughing saying “I finally joined the KKK.”  Cris Judd, our choreographer, gave the KKK members in the song all these Bob Fosse-style dance moves so it’s extra ridiculous. They are always rubbing their robes sensually, like it’s a big turn on.

It’s really funny yet disturbing.  But it lets the audience know early on this show is going to dive deep into American racism but by laughing at the horribleness of our history we are stealing their power.

My mom was a Holocaust survivor. I lived as a kid in Austria where I went to 5th and 6th grade and got  called “a dirty Jew” by one kid there.  There was swastika graffiti everywhere in Vienna. For me as a kid discovering Mel Brooks and seeing The Producers was life changing. Instead of being scared of Nazis, it was much more fun to laugh at them. This comic attitude is what I tried to bring to this show with the KKK. I don’t think there is anything that would piss off KKK members more than knowing we have black people wearing their robes, dancing like they are in a Fosse musical.

Any other major influences?

Julien Nitzberg: Another big influence was the Rutles.  When I was looking for clever musical parodies to inspire the project there was only one that really stood the test of time and that was Eric Idle’s genius Beatles parody All You Need is Cash starring the Rutles. My two favorite bands as a kid were the Beatles and the Jackson 5. I saw the Rutles movie when it debuted on TV and immediately went and bought the record. In the years since, I almost never listen to the Beatles. But oddly, I still listen to the Rutles record all the time and love them more than the Beatles. When my composing team—Nicole Morier, Drew Erickson and Max Townsley—started working together, we spent a ton of time listening to the Rutles. The Rutles’ songs were as good as the Beatles. They are great pop songs. I wanted our show to do the same thing. I didn’t want the songs to sound like musical theater songs. Nicole said she wanted the songs to sound like they were lost R&B/soul music classics that never got discovered at that time. The composers worked really hard to get that right feel of the times and I think they did it majestically.

Weirdly, a good friend of mine Rita D’Albert (who created Lucha Vavoom) is friends with Eric Idle and I met him at her birthday party. He’d heard of the musical from Rita. He came up to me and said he had a new title idea for the show. I asked him what it was. He dryly said “Rhapsody in a Minor.” I looked at him totally confused and then suddenly I got the joke. It was embarrassing how long it took me. What a genius!

So you’re at this point—and this could be more than enough for what you were going for—and then you introduce a mirror image villain!! So now MJ has aliens and uptight white nerds grinding away at him! What brought the Osmonds up and were you worried Donny might upstage Michael? 

Julien Nitzberg:  As a kid, I was a giant Jackson 5 fan and  every time I heard “One Bad Apple” I was always confused thinking “This sounds too much like a Jackson 5 song.” If you google it, you’ll even see that many people thought it was a Jackson 5 song.  So when I started writing the show, I decided to research this. I soon discovered that the Osmonds were consciously created as the white equivalent to the Jackson 5. They were five brothers like the Jackson 5.  They’d been a barber shop quartet who sang minstrel songs and then later were the blandest band ever to appear on the Andy Williams show. Suddenly they start sounding like the Jackson 5 and doing Motown songs. They start dancing like the Jackson 5. It’s extra fucked because they belong to a church that teaches the most racist ideology and won’t let black people into their temples.  Then I discovered that their transition to being Jackson 5 imitators happened just after they toured opening for Pat Boone! Fuck, that showed me what exactly was happening.  In the show we call the process of a white artist ripping off a black artist “Pat Booning” and that’s what they did.

For the more conspiracy-minded, people should note that Mike Curb was involved in the Osmonds’ career producing records by Donny. Mike Curb was a producer who was super right wing and got elected Lieutenant Governor of California with the support of his mentor Ronald Reagan. He’d dated Karen Carpenter. At one point, he was head of MGM records and kicked the Velvet Underground off the label because he considered them too pro-drugs.  It would make sense that a right winger would push back against any great black artist by helping create a pale white imitation.

Let’s discuss the second act.

Julien Nitzberg: The second act has Michael as a grown-up. Then he discovers that Berry Gordy has signed Pat Boone. Then Michael and his glove have sex for the first time. Then he gets inspired by that to write “Beat It” and record Thriller. The glove suggests that Michael should be a reverse Pat Boone and play with Toto and Eddie Van Halen.

Then he can’t take feeding the gloves anymore. He invites kids over for a sleepover party. He doesn’t like it and it ends up going on a date with Brooke Shields. His glove gets jealous and starts grabbing his crotch on TV. They have a fight. The gloves decide to kill Michael. The plan is thwarted. The glove gets burnt trying to kill himself so Michael has to masturbate with the audience to save his life. The glove and Michael realize they are in love.

The second act has demented fantasy, but also a ton of history. People don’t realize that Michael only became as big as he did because CBS Records blackmailed MTV into showing Michael’s videos. MTV did not show “Urban Music.”  That of course was just a euphemism for any music by black artists. They didn’t want to show “Beat It.” CBS told MTV they wouldn’t let them show any videos by Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel or the Rolling Stones if they didn’t show Michael’s videos. It’s a really shocking take on how American racism was still awful in the 1980’s.

And so how’s the reaction been (In a literal sense)? Not live, but reviews. Misunderstandings from simple minded types that can’t get past the sight of seeing a hood stuck on a black person by a white guy etc…

Pip Lilly: My friends like the show. They seem to love the music, the comedy, and the spectacle. People are genuinely entertained, which can only help people appreciate the satire.

Julien Nitzberg:  All our write ups have been great. The reaction has been great. We’ve had nights where it was all UCLA students who had not grown up with Michael Jackson. They were gasping and laughing the whole time. Despite the rumors about millennials being easily offended, the people who seemed most offended were in their 30s and 40s. But it’s been 95% positive and 5% super disgusted which I think is a great ratio.

 
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Great news! For the Love of a Glove has now been extended until the end of March! Get tickets and info here.
 

Posted by Howie Pyro
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03.11.2020
07:04 am
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That Time They Opened Lord Byron’s Coffin and Found He had a Humongous Schlong

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At two o’clock on June 15th, 1938, a truck pulled-up outside the church hall at St. Mary Magdalene, Hucknall Torkard, England. The vehicle was packed with planks of wood, picks, shovels, crowbars and other assorted tools. The Reverend Canon Thomas Gerrard Barber watched from a side window as a small group of workmen unloaded the vehicle. The driver leaned against the truck smoking a cigarette. His questions to the men removing the tools went unanswered. Barber had ensured all those involved in his plans were pledged to secrecy. No one had thought it possible, but somehow Barber had managed it. This was the day the reverend would oversee the opening of Lord Byron’s coffin situated in a vault beneath the church. Once the men were finished, the driver stubbed his cigarette, returned to his cab, and drove back to the depot in Nottingham.

Over the next two hours, “the Antiquary, the Surveyor, and the Doctor arrived” followed by “the Mason.” It was all rather like the appearance of suspects in a game of Clue. Their arrival was staggered so as not to attract any unwanted attention. Barber was concerned that if the public knew of his intentions there would be an outcry, or at worst a queue around the church longer than the one for his Sunday service.

Near four o’clock, the “workmen” returned. Interesting to note that Barber in his book on the events of this day, Byron and Where He is Buried, used the lower case to name these men rather the capitalization preferred for The Architect, the Mason, and those other professionals. Even in text the working class must be shown their place. Inside the church Barber discussed with the Architect and the Mason the best way to gain access to Byron’s family crypt.

An old print of the interior of the Church shows two large flagstones covering the entrance to the Vault. One of these stones can be seen at the foot of the Chancel steps. It is six feet long, two feet four inches wide, and six inches thick. It was conjectured that the other large stone was covered by the Chancel steps, and that it would be necessary first of all to remove the steps on the south side of the Chancel in order to obtain an entrance to the Vault. Before the work started it was impossible to obtain any information whatever as to the size of the Vault, and to its actual position relatively to the Chancel floor.

Barber was a strange man, an odd mix of contrary passions.. He was as the Fortean Times noted, “a passionate admirer of Byron and a determined controversialist: a dangerous combination, it transpired, in a man placed in charge of the church where the poet had been buried.” For whatever reason, Barber believed he had some connection with the great poet. He never quite made this connection clear but alluded to it like Madame Arcati waffling on about her “vibrations” claiming he had “a personal appointment with Byron.” He was proud the poet had been buried at his church but was deeply concerned that Byron’s body might not actually reside there.
 
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Between 1887 and 1888, there had been restoration work at St. Mary Magdalene “to allow for the addition of transepts.” This meant digging into the foundation. Though promises were made (by the architects and builders) that there would be no damage or alterations to Lord Byron’s vault, Barber feared that this was exactly what had happened. This thought dripped, dripped, dripped, and made Barber anxious about the whereabouts of the dead poet.

Early in 1938, he confided his fears to the church warden A. E. Houldsworth. Barber expressed his intention to examine the Byron vault and “clear up all doubts as to the Poet’s burial place and compile a record of the contents of the vault.”

He wrote to his local Member of Parliament requesting permission from the Home Office to open the crypt. He also wrote to the surviving Lord Byron, who was then Vicar of Thrumpton, asking for his permission to enter the family vault. The vicar gave his agreement and “expressed his fervent hope that great family treasure would be discovered with his ancestors and returned to him.”
 
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At four o’clock, the doors to the church were locked. Inside, around forty (where the fuck did they come from?) invited guests (er…okay….) waited expectantly for the opening of Byron’s vault (what else where they expecting…vespers?). According to notes written by Houldsworth, among those in attendance was one name that Bart Simpson would surely appreciate:

Rev. Canon Barber & his wife
Mr Seymour Cocks MP [lol]
N. M. Lane, diocesan surveyor
Mr Holland Walker
Capt & Mrs McCraith
Dr Llewellyn
Mr & Mrs G. L. Willis (vicar’s warden)
Mr & Mrs c. G. Campbell banker
Mr Claude Bullock, photographer
Mr Geoffrey Johnstone
Mr Jim Bettridge (church fireman)

Of the rest in attendance, Houldsworth hadn’t a Scooby, other than he was surprised that so many had been invited by the good Reverend. As the workmen opened the vault, the guests discussed curtains, mortgages, flower-arranging, and the possibility of war.

At six-thirty, the masons finally removed the slab. A breath of cool, dank air rose into the warm church. Doctor Llewellyn lowered a miner’s safety lamp into the opening to test the air. It was fine. Barber then became (as he described it) “the first to make the descent” into the vault.

His first impression was “one of disappointment.”

It was totally different from what I had imagined. I had seen in my imagination a large sepulchral chamber with shelves inserted in the walls and arranged above one another, and on each shelf a coffin. To find myself in a Vault of the smallest dimensions, and coffins at my feet stacked one upon another with no apparent attempt at arrangement, giving the impression that they had almost been thrown into position, was at first an outrage to my sense of reverence and decency. I descended the steps with very mixed feelings. I could not bring myself to believe that this was the Vault as it had been originally built, nor yet could I could I allow myself to think that the coffins were in their original positions. Had the size of the Vault been reduced and the coffins moved at the time of the 1887-1888 restoration, to allow for the building of the two foot wall on the north of the Vault as an additional support for the Chancel floor?

Pondering these questions, Barber returned to the church. He then invited his guests to retire to the Church House for some tea and refreshments while he considered what to do next. The three workmen were left behind.
 
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With their appetites sated, the Reverend and his guests returned to the church and the freshly opened vault.

From a distant view the two coffins appeared to be in excellent condition. They were each surmounted by a coronet… The coronet on the centre coffin bore six orbs on long stems, but the other coronet had apparently been robbed of the silver orbs which had originally been fixed on short stems close to the rim.

The coffins were covered with purple velvet, now much faded, and some of the handles removed. A closer examination revealed the centre coffin to be that of Byron’s daughter Augusta Ada, Lady Lovelace.

At the foot of the staircase, resting on a child’s lead coffin was a casket which, according to the inscription on the wooden lid and on the casket inside, contained the heart and brains of Lord Noel Byron. The vault also contained six other lead shells all in a considerable state of dissolution–the bottom coffins in the tiers being crushed almost flat by the immense weight above them.

Then Barber noticed that “there were evident signs that the Vault had been disturbed, and the poet’s coffin opened.” He called upon Mr. Claude Bullock to take photographs of the coffin. With the knowledge that someone had opened Byron’s coffin, Barber began to worry about what lay inside.

Someone had deliberately opened the coffin. A horrible fear came over me that souvenirs might have been taken from within the coffin. The idea was revolting, but I could not dismiss it. Had the body itself been removed? Horrible thought!

Eventually after much dithering, Barber opened the casket to find another coffin inside.

Dare I look within? Yes, the world should know the truth—that the body of the great poet was there—or that the coffin was empty. Reverently, very reverently, I raised the lid, and before my eyes there lay the embalmed body of Byron in as perfect a condition as when it was placed in the coffin one hundred and fourteen years ago. His features and hair easily recognisable from the portraits with which I was so familiar. The serene, almost happy expression on his face made a profound impression on me. The feet and ankles were uncovered., and I was able to establish the fact that his lameness had been that of his right foot. But enough—I gently lowered the lid of the coffin—and as I did so, breathed a prayer for the peace of his soul.

 
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His fears were quashed, Barber was happy with what he had done. Basically dug up a grave for reasons of personal vanity. The Reverend Barber does come across as a bit of a pompous git. He was also disingenuous as the one thing he failed to mention about Byron’s corpse was the very attribute that shocked some and titillated others.

Barber was correct someone had already opened Byron’s coffin. But this did not happen during the church’s restoration in 1887-88 but less than an hour prior to his examination of Byron’s corpse. Houldsworth and his hired workmen had entered the crypt while Barber and his pals had tea.

Houldsworth went down into the crypt where he saw that Byron’s coffin was missing its nameplate, brass ornaments, and velvet covering. Though it looked solid it was soft and spongy to the touch. He called upon two workmen (Johnstone and Bettridge) to help raise the lid. Inside was a lead shell. When this was removed, another wooden coffin was visible inside.

After raising this we were able to see Lord Byron’s body which was in an excellent state of preservation. No decomposition had taken place and the head, torso and limbs were quite solid. The only parts skeletonised were the forearms, hands, lower shins, ankles and feet, though his right foot was not seen in the coffin. The hair on his head, body and limbs was intact, though grey. His sexual organ shewed quite abnormal development. There was a hole in his breast and at the back of his head, where his heart and brains had been removed. These are placed in a large urn near the coffin. The manufacture, ornaments and furnishings of the urn is identical with that of the coffin. The sculptured medallion on the church chancel wall is an excellent representation of Lord Byron as he still appeared in 1938.

There was a rumor long shared that Byron lay in his coffin with a humongous erection. This, of course, is just a myth. As Houldsworth later told journalist Byron Rogers of the Sheffield Star newspaper the idea came to the three workmen to open the poet’s coffin when Barber and co. had disappeared for tea:

“We didn’t take too kindly to that,” said Arnold Houldsworth. “I mean, we’d done the work. And Jim Bettridge suddenly says, ‘Let’s have a look on him.’ ‘You can’t do that,’ I says. ‘Just you watch me,’ says Jim. He put his spade in, there was a layer of wood, then one of lead, and I think another one of wood. And there he was, old Byron.”
“Good God, what did he look like?” I said.
“Just like in the portraits. He was bone from the elbows to his hands and from the knees down, but the rest was perfect. Good-looking man putting on a bit of weight, he’d gone bald. He was quite naked, you know,” and then he stopped, listening for something that must have been a clatter of china in the kitchen, where his wife was making tea for us, for he went on very quickly,  “Look, I’ve been in the Army, I’ve been in bathhouses, I’ve seen men. But I never saw nothing like him.” He stopped again, and nodding his head, meaningfully, as novelists say, began to tap a spot just above his knee. “He was built like a pony.”
“How many of you take sugar?” said Mrs Houldsworth, coming with the tea.

Whether any of the Reverend Barber’s guests saw Lord Byron’s corpse in the flesh (so to speak) and what they made of it, has never been recorded, other than some of the women felt faint when leaving the crypt, but there may have a light of admiration dancing in their eyes. Barber later returned to the vault on his own at midnight to keep his “personal appointment with Byron” and to most likely to ogle at the size of the great poet’s knob.

Lord Byron—poet, adventurer, rebel, adulterer, and a man hung like a horse.
 
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H/T Flashbak and Fortean Times.
 

 

Posted by Paul Gallagher
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02.20.2020
08:25 am
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Satan is back! With boobs, pubes and rock and roll

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In the world of adult magazines, the devil girl has always been one of the standby icons. And not just there, but in comic books, film, art, tattooing and just about anywhere else you might look. Almost always a positive thing and a fantasy bigger than all the Bettie Pages, Marilyn Monroes and Jayne Mansfields combined. By the 1950s fantasy and reality started having blurred lines. Oh it always existed, but in the late 1940s when John Willie created the first full on fetish magazine, Bizarre, the devil girl was made flesh. This magazine influenced Irving Klaw and all the publishers of the now beloved “vintage smut” (a major hashtag on Instagram and other hashtaggy photo display sites). Magazines like Exotique, the art of Eric Stanton, Gene Bilbrew (Eneg), and others became a long running mainstay. Many of these magazines existed to display personal ads for things, even now, that many people just couldn’t come out and say they were into. Even today, the bizarre content of these 50, 60 and 70-year-old magazines is truly BIZARRE! These are the most collected adult magazines the world over.
 
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When the 60s rolled around and free love, paganism, communal living, more open nudism and—furthest from center, Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan—split the population in two as far as people interested in these activities. In pre X-rated adult films, adult magazines were approaching porno rapidly. There were the people that actually lived this stuff and even more people who wanted to know about it, but couldn’t possibly do it! This audience created the massive business we are about to discuss.

The slightly older suburban set (not the wife swappers and swingers, but the lonely uptight fellas) really wanted a glimpse into this other world, and there became the essence of adult and underground film and publications, especially the kind you could secretly take home. This audience is what is known in the adult film world as “the raincoat crowd”—horny guys who went alone to the theaters in Times Square and other places like it around the country. Many of these films are so insane they must be seen to be believed and most of them, literally thousands of them, can be bought or downloaded from Something Weird Video.

There was a great interest in the Church of Satan as they used nudity and sex magick and weren’t just some stuffy new religion, but seemed like the ultimate party! LaVey and his church got so much magazine play (they’re in movies as well including a documentary on them, Satanis The Devil’s Mass, just reissued on Blu-ray). This subject proved so popular that a cottage industry of Satanic porn magazines, some lighthearted, some very dark popped up. As innocence ended with the advent of mass-produced, readily available porn, everything rushed out the door as fast as it could be printed. These particular magazines are just about the rarest, most collectible and most expensive porn mags on the collectors market.
 
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I had heard about an underground cult of collectors putting out a compendium of these almost secret magazines and set out my feelers to find and talk to them. When I found them I had to agree to their terms and be put in a car, blindfolded, and driven to an amazing space where I sat with a man in a leather mask. Offered a drink, I steadfastly refused. Here’s the interview…
 
So…do you represent some newfangled vintage smut collecting anonymous devil cult?

Vintage smut collecting is a solitary path. There is no unity or group activities that we promote. While we often encourage collectors to communicate with others regarding the titles they are actively hunting since this sort of networking may aid the buyer in searches, our sense of community does not proceed much further than communication among peers to meet collecting milestones. Sharing this material with others, is often beneficial for amorous rituals. So, it is advisable to view with one or more partners in a sensual setting to facilitate sexual rites. Publishing this book allows us to share our unholy sacrament with the chosen few. So, these interested individuals can finally obtain the hidden knowledge and elusive ritual tools that will allow them to explore this realm for themselves.

I hear just a lucky few get the wild evil record made in conjunction with this book. What does one have to do to get it and what’s on it?

To spice up this already mega tasty publication we wanted to include one of our favorite bands; the mysterious slime hard rock psycho band Ball. In the past Ball has really managed to summon the crazy satanic and murky occult vibe of these mags, in their song and video “Satanas” for example. So, we bribed them with smut and asked if they to record a new song that could be featured on an exclusive flexi-disc single for a few select copies of the book and they came up with the crazed “Horny Highlights from Debauched”. The ways to actually procure a copy are most mysterious but probably includes a solemn request directly to Ball.

How long did it take to amass this incredible collection & what else do you collect? Are there more volumes in store?

The collection has been growing in size for roughly seven years. Satanic Mojo Comix and Jason Atomic was the catalyst that first awakened our interest in these devilish artifacts. Collecting vintage magazines currently consumes most of our waking hours. All other pursuits have been obliterated to focus on “adult slicks.” The records, jukeboxes, Italian horror fumetti, and original art acquisitions are all currently sidelined and paused. Magazines reign supreme in the top collecting spot, draining bank accounts and sending us scrambling like rabid addicts to our local post office whenever a delivery is missed. There are more volumes currently in the works, and we are more than excited to continue sharing the wealth with open minded adults over the age of 18, seeking to learn more about vintage smut. There have been numerous recent 60s and 70s magazine discoveries by our acquisition team that will blow minds and leave the reader breathless and begging for more. At this precise moment we look forward to continuing and enhancing our current exploration of witchery and devilry in the next volume, being assembled in our labs.

 
Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Howie Pyro
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12.26.2019
09:27 am
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‘Anyone here tonight ever had gonorrhea?”: AC/DC’s dirty autobiographical version of ‘The Jack’
08.19.2019
12:50 pm
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The front of AC/DC’s 1977 tour book featuring both Bon Scott and Angus Young’s crotches. The program, signed by the band, and for some reason multiple times by Bon Scott, sold in an auction for $5,000.
 
AC/DC’s second album T.N.T. is pretty much the perfect rock record from start to finish—bagpipes and all. One song on the album, “The Jack,” was reworked lyrically after getting the thumbs down because it was considered too lurid. You don’t say? A song about contracting a sexually transmitted disease is tastelessness personified and expecting anything else from a song covering such a topic seems kinda misguided if you ask me. In an interview with Angus Young in 1998, the guitarist spoke about their lyrics and how with the help of Bon Scott, they would tweak them to avoid being labeled “sexist”:

“Bon was an extremely gifted lyricist. Did he often fine-tune and rework lyrics? It’s difficult to be simultaneously clever and smutty, which was his trademark. I don’t think that “smutty” is exactly the right choice of words. I believe that the politically correct term is “sexist.” Intellectuals like to put a tag on it and say, “these guys are out-and-out sexist.“I’ve always found there’s a two-sided thing when it comes to lyrics: someone can call a song “Sexy Motherfucker,” and be accepted, and yet we’ve been writing all songs all these years, and while there may be the rare “fuck” in the lyrics there somewhere, it’s all been quite clean cut. Still, people just make the assumption that we’re five guys who’ve just got our dicks in mind.”

While I was under the distinct impression pretty much every song has “dicks in mind,” of all the Prince songs to call out for its content, why 1992’s “Sexy MF”? I can’t be the only one who can think of at least five other Prince songs far smuttier than this one but regardless, the iconic Angus makes a good point. The original version of “The Jack” did not appear on T.N.T. (released in Australia in 1975) or 1976’s High Voltage, but it did not stop the band from performing it in all its raunchy glory live. Bon would begin “The Jack” by dramatically asking the crowd if they had ever had “gonorrhea.” In the case of the recording in this post (which is over ten minutes long), Bon eggs the audience on by asking a spotlight be turned on them so he could see who else in the crowd had “the jack” which is Aussie slang used to describe a venereal disease. Through the years there have been several versions about who in the band actually got the jack and how. The general perception is that the song, conceived mostly by Scott, was the vocalist’s autobiographical account of acquiring the jack from one of his female fuck partners. However, in one account attributed to Bon, he confesses it was he who gave the jack to one of the chicks hanging around the band’s house. Scott said he wasn’t worried about the girl spreading it around because she was unattractive. Now there’s some rock star logic for you.

But Bon turned out to be wrong.

After having sex with Scott, she stopped by drummer Phil Rudd’s room for a quickie before leaving. A short time later Rudd got a letter from the girl which included a 35 dollar doctor’s bill to cover her penicillin treatment. Scott has also presented other scenarios about the inspiration for the song, including one in which he confessed every member of AC/DC was at one point passing around the penicillin after also passing around the same female sexual partners. 
 

Another page from the 1977 tour program.
 
In the 2006 book AC/DC: Maximum Rock & Roll, it is noted Bon wrote “The Jack” after guitarist Malcolm Young received a letter from a woman claiming Young had given her gonorrhea, but he allegedly received a clean crotch bill of health from the band’s doctor who at this point (according to Angus) was giving the band “group rates” due to their frequent office visits. Lastly, there is also another version of AC/DC’s gonorrhea woes in which Bon recounts a show where all their collective (and seemingly interchangeable) girlfriends were up in the front row, so Scott decided to point them out one by one every time he sang the lyrics “She’s got the jack.” What a charmer

This version of AC/DC’s dirty confessional was fittingly recorded in the band’s birthplace of Sydney, Australia. The band would continue to keep the “GONORRHEA!” version of the song a part of their setlist until Bon passed away in February of 1980. Audio of Bon oversharing while performing the original version of “The Jack” in 1977 follows.  
 

The original NSFW version of “The Jack” recorded in Sydney in 1977.

Posted by Cherrybomb
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08.19.2019
12:50 pm
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Battle of the Bulge: Classic rock stars and their packages

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

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Posted by Paul Gallagher
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08.02.2019
08:51 am
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Well that sucks: That time Lemmy passed out after getting too many blowjobs in 1980
07.30.2019
11:19 am
Topics:
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A show poster for Motörhead’s headlining gig at Bingley Hall in Stafford, England on July 26th, 1980.
 
At the age of sixteen, Lemmy Kilmister saw the Beatles perform in Liverpool. This event would play a considerable role in Kilmister’s desire to pursue a career in music. Of course, the image of girls frantically throwing themselves at John, Paul, George, and Ringo (as young Lemmy undoubtedly witnessed firsthand) probably didn’t hurt either. While I’d like nothing better than to keep talking about Lemmy’s early days, nobody has done that better than Lemmy himself in his 2002 autobiography White Line Fever. Let’s jump forward to the glorious year of 1980, so we might pinpoint the reason Lemmy passed out backstage at Bingley Hall in Stafford, England on July 26th, 1980—allegedly for receiving one too many blowjobs from amorous female fans before the show.

During 1980, Motörhead would, among other things, become known for trashing their hotel rooms. Drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor enjoyed a good hotel room thrashing and broke his hand on more than one occasion teaching random hotel rooms a lesson. In fact, Taylor’s time with Motörhead was full of broken bones. On another occasion that same year (following a show in Belfast, Ireland), an obliterated Phil was hoisted into the air by an equally obliterated, and very large, Irish fan. Taylor’s new pal was so drunk that after he lifted Taylor into the air, he moved back to see how high he had lifted the Motörhead drummer. Gravity did its thing, and Phil ended up with a broken neck. Just before the release of their fourth album, Ace of Spades, Motörhead headlined a gig at Bingley Hall with Angel Witch, Mythra, Vardis, White Spirit and approximately 10,000 highly intoxicated fans. At this point, Lemmy had been on a strict 72-hour regimen of sex, drugs, booze, and no sleep. When it was time to play Bingley Hall Lemmy was such a mess that guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke, an epic connoisseur of vice in his own right, told Kilmister that he was “drinking too much.”
 

The cover of the very rare collectible “The Overwhelming Motörhead in Rock Commando” written by Klaus Blum and distributed at the Bingley Hall gig.
 
After going full-gonzo for three days, Lemmy made it to the stage and, for a change, Clark and Taylor were relatively sober despite the excessive amount of cocaine blowing around backstage. According to Lemmy, after leaving the stage prior to the band’s encore, he collapsed and had to be revived. Clark and Phil were pissed at the seemingly indestructible Kilmister calling him a “motherfucker” because they were suddenly concerned about how the incident would affect their careers. Ultimately, (and since this is Lemmy Kilmister), he would return to the stage and finish the encore. Though it remains somewhat unclear how many people witnessed Lemmy’s collapse, the band was concerned enough about the incident that Lemmy chose to downplay his unplanned backstage nap, blaming it instead on three blowjobs he received prior to the show.

Here’s more from Lemmy on that (from White Line Fever):

“After the gig, I told the papers that I’d collapsed because I’d had three blow jobs that afternoon. The part about getting the blowjobs was true, actually. There were chicks all over the place, and there was this really cute Indian bird—she was two of them. There was this room in the hall that was full of cushions and shawls hanging down. It was like some Maltese fucking dream. So I locked myself in there with her and wouldn’t come out.”

So, according to Lemmy, it wasn’t three days’ worth of Lemmy-sized booze, drugs, and sex that caused his collapse at Bingley Hall, it was too many blowjobs! So my friends, the next time “Steak and a Blowjob Day” rolls around, don’t be like Lemmy (it’s impossible anyway) and know your fellatio limits. Footage of Motörhead performing their 1977 jam “Motorhead” live on German television in 1980 follows.
 

Motörhead live on German television performing “Motorhead” from their debut album of the same name. Kind of like Lemmy’s three-day binge, the band recorded the record in two-days fueled by speed and no sleep.

Posted by Cherrybomb
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07.30.2019
11:19 am
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Rob Halford, Trent Reznor & the porn-star studded video for ‘I Am A Pig’


Rob Halford pictured on the front cover of the single for Two’s “I Am A Pig.”
 
In 1996, after calling it quits with his excellent post-Priest project Fight, Rob Halford had a conversation with a rock journalist friend while attending Foundations Forum—a heavy metal convention held in Los Angeles from 1988-1997. At this point, Halford was looking to start up something new and his pal suggested he get ahold of Marilyn Manson guitarist John 5 (John Lowery). Halford and Lowery hooked up for several days in LA collaborating on riffs, melodies, and lyrics. According to Halford it was a case of “synchronicity at work”.

His meeting with Trent Reznor, which led to Reznor’s participation in Two, came much later in the band’s development and most of the music Halford, Lowery, Bob Marlette, Phil Western and Anthony “Fu” Valcic had already been recorded and were “well past the demo stage,” per Halford. While visiting New Orleans during Mardi Gras, Halford simply walked up to Reznor’s former funeral home, Nothing Studios and knocked on the door. (Of interest is the door itself, taken from Reznor’s former residence—the Manson Family murder house once occupied by Sharon Tate and her husband, Roman Polanski.) The door was answered by another inhabitant of Nothing Studios, former Skinny Puppy member and producer, Rave Ogilvie. Ogilvie and Halford had never met, but when Rob Halford knocks on your door, the only right thing to do is to let him the fuck in—which Ogilvie did without hesitation.

A short time later as Ogilvie and Rob were hanging out listening to a cassette with some of the music from Two’s album, Voyeurs Reznor showed up, and Trent asked Halford if he could listen to his new tunes. He and Reznor hung out for a few more days in New Orleans, as Reznor was scheduled to appear in a few Mardi Gras parades. Halford returned to his home in Phoenix and a few months later Reznor called Rob and offered Two a record contract which, though Reznor and Rob had vibed musically, still caught the metal god off guard. Here’s more from Halford on that:

“When he called me up after listening to the album, a few months later, he said, ‘Do you want a record deal?’ I was like, ‘Ahhh… yeah… that would be great.’ But I couldn’t understand why? And then he told me that he had been listening to the music and he had a vision. He could hear them (the songs) in a different way. And could we take them and break them down and build them up again, with his interpretation.”

Reznor would take Two’s recordings and re-engineer them, though Halford had “no idea” what Trent had planned and was just really excited at the prospect of Reznor’s (as well as Ogilvie’s) participation in the project, and how his influence would impact the sound of Voyeurs. The album was already a diverse piece of work, and once Reznor was finished applying his sonic touches, it was released on March 10th, 1998, though the first single, “I am A Pig” started circulating late in February. And this is where we finally get to talk about one of the best things to come out of Rob and Reznor’s collaboration—the porn-star studded video for “I am a Pig” directed by Chi Chi LaRue, a prominent porn director and drag queen based in Los Angeles.
 

Two.
 
As it turns out, some of Halford’s friends had recently worked with LaRue, and this got Rob thinking that a video visualized and directed by LaRue would be just what Two needed for the “I Am A Pig” video. According to the story told by Halford, he really clicked with LaRue, who was also a massive metal fan. LaRue was totally into the idea of shooting a video for Two featuring all kinds of S&M action, a litany of adult actors of various sexual orientations, and, of course, a shirtless Rob Halford suspended from the ceiling with a gag in his mouth. While this sounds like a slice of fucking heaven to yours truly, it also went over big with Nothing Records and Interscope which supported the concept of the video completely. Before you take a look at the very NSFW video below, here’s the infinitely wise Halford breaking down the porntastic video for “I Am A Pig”:

“The song itself lyrically contains the idea that what we see as we are now is something different from the potential to be. Like whatever skeletons you have in the closet or whatever. We all carry two sides to our personality, one where we’re in the public domain, a really different person from what we are in private. So that’s the element of what the song is about. The video is just taking sexuality, physical sexuality, and using that as a metaphor to describe the feelings of the song. So we have all these different scenes going on in the video, of different people doing different things with each other. And collectively, it comes up as the boundary lying between being a pig and being a voyeur.”

If you’ve never heard anything by Two, I’m here to tell you “I Am A Pig” sounds just like you’d likely expect—kind of like NIN but with a metal edge and Rob Halford on vocals. Even with Reznor’s industrial influence, the song still reflects Halford’s style. That said, it is very hooky, and at this stage of Halford’s style evolution, he was cultivating a major goth vibe with a jet-black goatee and outfits that looked like they were ripped off from the future set of The Matrix. So yeah, the album might not have been well received initially, but as it has aged, opinion on the merit of Voyeurs has changed drastically, and now it resides somewhere in the realm of cult classics.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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05.24.2019
10:08 am
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Of Coneheads, Plaster Casters and turds in jars: Frank Zappa’s wild interview with Cheri magazine
04.02.2019
08:21 am
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A photo from Cheri magazine of Frank Zappa and adult film star Cherry Bomb (sadly, no relation) from the March 1979 issue.
 

“Here comes CHERI! A star-spangled, Yankee-doodling dingdong of a magazine! A motherfucker of a book! Bid farewell to commercialized cunt-mongering. We’re free-swinging, free-thinking family, larynx for the morals revolution, an arsenal for all liberationist movements. We’re out to shatter all the old sexual formulas.”

—Cheri Magazine’s Peter Wolff announcing the arrival of the first issue of Cheri magazine in 1976.

In addition to an interview and photo spread with the great Annie Sprinkle (who was also a contributor to the magazine at the time), the first issue of Cheri magazine also included a $1,000 “Blow Job Contest.” All contestants were required to submit a 150-word essay on “the superlative cock-sucking abilities” of a woman you knew like your wife, girlfriend, secretary, friend, sister(!), or roommate to the magazine for review. All essays went to Cheri’s “jury” comprised of two adult film stars, Gloria Leonard (the future publisher of High Society magazine), Kim Pope and, of course, Wolff. Over time the magazine would do its best to bring riveting features to its “readers” such as Sprinkle’s consumer guide to selecting the best massage parlor, and an in-depth article on the art of fisting written by Screw magazine contributor Bob Amsel, who was also the president of The New York Mattachine Society—a pioneering gay rights group. Cheri would also feature music-adjacent articles such as an interview and pictorial with Elda Stiletto (of the band The Stilettos, which included Debbie Harry and Chris Stein), and contributions from adult star Cherry Bomb about hanging out with Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd.

In 1979, Cherry Bomb scored an interview with Frank Zappa. Zappa was in town for a series of shows at the Palladium, including the famous one on Halloween which Cherry attended.

The interview was conducted at Zappa’s room at the historic St. Regis Hotel. Here’s Cherry on her first impressions of a man she had a “near reverence” for:

“And there he was (Zappa), crouched and glowering on the couch. I’ll tell ya, I was just stunned. Forget your Mick Jaggers and your Robert Plants—this guy is gorgeous up close! Frank Zappa radiates an animal magnetism, a bumpy allure his photos have never approached, and I’ll play Suzy Creamcheese to his Uncle Meat any day.”

With her photographer Eileen along for the ride, Cherry fearfully started her line of questioning for Zappa, and it’s full of all kinds of interesting tidbits that Zappa might not have discussed had Cheri not been an adult magazine. Issues from 1979 haven’t been digitized yet, but a Frank Zappa site dedicated to collecting and cataloging articles and written material about Frank, afka.net, published the entire article. Without further adieu, here’s Uncle Frank and Cherry Bomb (again, sadly not me), chatting about SNL characters the Coneheads, Cynthia “Plaster Caster” Albritton, and the time a fan gifted him with an actual turd in a jar.

Cherry Bomb: I saw you on Saturday Night Live, and you were just FABULOUS! How did you get on the program—I mean, are you good friends with the cast?

Zappa: First off—I have no friends. (LONG PAUSE)

Cherry Bomb: You wrote that song about the Coneheads.

Zappa: Yeah. The Conehead is a way of life. I think Americans are beginning to realize it means something important. Unfortunately, TV hasn’t taken the big step to capitalize on it. They should have a Conehead series on NBC—a situation comedy every week. That would be great! Only the Coneheads, though.

Cherry Bomb: Do things ever get too wild in scenes like this?

Zappa: Well, you know, I was knocked off that stage in London in 1971—I spent a year in a wheelchair. Prior to that, I’d never carried a bodyguard with me, but now I always do. He’s in the next room right now—so don’t you girls try any funny stuff!

Cherry Bomb: I never realized rock could be so ... hazardous. I guess a lot of your fans really like to get physical.

Frank: Oh yeah. They wanna touch—remember the Plaster Casters? We were opening for Cream at the International Amphitheater in Chicago. I was friends with Eric Clapton from before, and we were talking in the dressing room, and he said, “This chick’s been trying to get in touch with me. You won’t believe what she does. You’ve gotta come back to the hotel and meet her.” After the show, right, there she was, sitting in the lobby, carrying a big briefcase with the insignia “Plaster Casters of Chicago” on the side. Eric gave her the nod—I think her name was Cynthia—and she got into the elevator with us, with her friend. The friend had a paper bag full of statuettes of dicks they’d made. They were after Eric’s wienie, but he wasn’t going for it, so they figured maybe Frank would. I wasn’t interested, either, but I did spend two hours talking to them about their project. Yeah, actually it started off as a school project assignment, making casts of whatever they wanted with the stuff dentists use—alginate. One girl was supposed to give you a blowjob to get your weenie standing up, while the other mixed the chemicals. So, every time a new group came to Chicago, they’d make history.

Cherry Bomb: Do you think your type of show might have encouraged them? I mean, one critic called you “pornographically delightful.” Did you ever set out to, um, gross out your audience?

Zappa: No! I’ve never done anything like that! That’s the fantasy of some drug-crazed hippie’s imagination. It has nothing to do with my music or the real world. But my fans do some weird things, I’ll admit. There was this girl from Chicago, Laurel, who won a contest. And I was the first prize—I mean, she could come backstage and meet me. And she gave me a present—a Mason jar with one of her turds in it, rolled up into the shape of a cannonball. I didn’t know what to do. I just said, “Thank you,” and put it down on the dressing- room table. That was when I had the Mothers with Flo and Eddie, and Jim Pons was playing bass. I’d planned to just leave it in the dressing room—but no, Jim got curious to see if it was real. Was it or was it not a piece of poop? He carried it around for a while and finally took one whiff—and yecchh! It was real.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Cherrybomb
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04.02.2019
08:21 am
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Kembra Pfahler on 30 years of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, with exclusive Richard Kern pix!


Photo by Richard Kern, courtesy of Kembra Pfahler

On February 15, Marc Almond, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Sateen, Hercules & Love Affair, and DJs Matthew Pernicano and Danny Lethal will perform at the Globe Theatre in downtown Los Angeles. This absolutely mental, once-in-a-lifetime bill will celebrate the second anniversary of Sex Cells, the LA club run by Danny Fuentes of Lethal Amounts.

Because I am so eager to see this show, and because the life of a Dangerous Minds contributor is high adventure, last Sunday I found myself speaking with Karen Black’s leader, the formidable interdisciplinary artist Kembra Pfahler, by phone, after she got out of band rehearsal in NYC. My condensed and edited take on our wide-ranging conversation follows. If I’d noted every time Kembra made me laugh with a deadpan line, the transcript would be twice as long.

Kembra Pfahler: My guitarist is Samoa, he founded the band with me; he’s the original Karen Black guitarist, Samoa from Hiroshima, Japan. And then Michael Wildwood is our drummer, and he played with D Generation and Chrome Locust, and Gyda Gash is our bass player, she plays with Judas Priestess and Sabbathwitch. I just came from band practice, and I am one of those folks that really enjoys going to band practice. Doing artwork and music isn’t like work, and being busy is just such a luxury. It’s been very pleasant preparing for this show we get to honorably do with Marc Almond. We’re so excited!

We played with Marc Almond at the Meltdown Festival that was curated by Ahnoni in 2011. That was a great show with Marc Almond and a lot of other incredible artists. And I have an art gallery that represents me in London now, which is called Emalin, and I had an art exhibit there, and Marc Almond, thankfully, came to it. He’s friends with one of my collaborators called Scott Ewalt.

I’m not a religious person, but I did think I had died and gone to heaven. When artists that you have loved your whole life come to, for some strange reason, see the work that you’re doing, it’s one of the truly best things about doing artwork. I’m very much looking forward to this concert.

Can you tell me what you have planned for the show? I’m sure you want to keep some stuff a surprise, but is the disco dick in the pictures going to be part of the set?

You know, the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black has always made a lot of props and costumes, and I never really just buy things. I’m not much of a consumer. I’m an availabilist, so I usually make the best use of what’s available, and we are going to have a lot of props and costumes in this show that I make myself, and I have art partners in Los Angeles, collaborators. We’re going to have a big grand finale sculpture that’s going to be my Black Statue of Liberty holding the pentagram. That’s a huge pentagram sculpture. I made that with a friend of mine called Brandon Micah Rowe.

That sculpture lives on the West Coast, and it comes out when I go to the beach and go surfing. I usually take the Black Statue of Liberty with me, ‘cause it’s a great photo opportunity on the beach. And the last time I was photographing the Black Statue of Liberty—‘cause of course I have several—I took this Black Statue of Liberty in a truck and drove down to Sunset Beach, right at the end of Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway, and I just have a great memory of almost drowning with the Black Statue of Liberty. It was very much like reenacting Planet of the Apes. That was the impetus for the Statue of Liberty; I’ve always loved the last scene in Planet of the Apes where Charlton Heston realizes that the future is just a disastrous, anti-utopian, dead planet. Kind of similar to what’s happening to us now.
 

Photo by Brandon Micah Rowe
 
[laughs] Yeah, it’s uncomfortably close to the present situation.

To me, it’s very close. I mean, film has always been very prophetic, to me. Orson Welles always talks about magic, and historical revisionism, and truth, and the ways that film can actually inform you of the truth in politics, mythological truth, cultural truths. And I’ve always learned the most just by watching films. That’s why I named the band Karen Black, because I was so educated by the films of Karen Black. I know that sounds sort of wonky, but what I’m getting at is I love listening to Orson Welles speak about magic and truth and film as a way to articulate that truth.

Are you thinking about F for Fake?

I’m thinking about the little tricks and happy accidents that occur in film that are what Orson Welles spoke to. I mean, Kenneth Anger talked about magic and film constantly, and light, and Orson Welles just had a different articulation of the same side of the coin.

I grew up in Santa Monica, so I always loved Kenneth Anger; I was always happy that I lived near the Camera Obscura on Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard. I thought, I don’t fit in with any of these other Californians, but Kenneth Anger was here at the Camera Obscura. I can’t be doing everything wrong.

I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and my family was in the film business, and I left for New York because I wasn’t accepted by my family and the community, because I was interested in music, and it wasn’t fashionable to be a goth or be into punk when I was in high school. So I moved to New York. But no one was going to New York when I first moved there. I really just moved to New York to be as contrary as possible, and I knew no one would follow me at the time.

You moved to New York in ‘79 or thereabouts, right?

Yeah, I did.

I think the LA, probably, that you were leaving was more, I don’t know, provincial. . . I can imagine the appeal that New York would have had in 1979.

Well, also, the thing was that I really wanted to be an artist, and I got accepted to School of Visual Arts when I was in 11th grade at Santa Monica High School. That’s why, really. The Los Angeles that I was familiar with wasn’t provincial at all. I mean, there’s been generations and generations of weird Los Angeles. My grandparents met on the baseball field: my grandmother was playing softball, my grandfather played baseball, and my father ended up being a surfer, and I’ve always had exposure to a really incredible kind of lifestyle that I think people mostly just dream about. Like, Beach Boys songs at Hollywood Park race track in the morning and surfing in the afternoon. If you think about being born into this time when the Beach Boys and the Stones and the Beatles are playing, and then Parliament-Funkadelic’s playing, and then. . . just the most incredible exposure to music and art and nature, surfing even, surf culture. I mean, when most people are born in countries where they can’t even eat dirt for breakfast, I was born in the most incredible place, that I’ll never forget.

It’s such a huge part of my work, I named my interdisciplinary music and art class at Columbia University “The Queen’s Necklace.” Because when I was a child, I used to meditate on all the beach cities. Starting from Zuma Beach, I would meditate on the cities by saying: [chants] “Zuma, Malibu, Topanga, Pacific Palisades, Santa Monica, Venice, Torrance, Palos Verdes”. . . I’d say all of the cities that represented the Santa Monica Bay area. That was in my field of vision, that was what I saw every day. All those piers, all those waves, and all of the mythology that I grew up with was all about beach culture.

So Los Angeles, I feel closer to writers like John Fante than anyone else. Do you have books in your library that you’ve had your entire adult life that you would say represent your thinking, more so than any other books? Do you have your favorite, favorite books? One or two books that always are with you.

Oh my God, I’d have to think about it. 

I do. I mention that because one of them is Ask the Dust. Another one is David J. Skal’s Cultural History of Horror.

What’s that?

It’s a great book that talks about the horror film genre being quite prophetic, and it’s kind of what I was trying to speak about, as far as how film and horror kind of teach us about the future. That’s one book, and also Klaus Theweleit’s Male Fantasies, Volume 1 and 2 is important to me. Do you know that book?

I do not. Is it like a case study?

It’s a case study of men’s relationship to women during World War II and pre-World War II. It’s about men’s relationships to the women in their lives, in Germany, particularly.

Continues after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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02.07.2019
01:18 pm
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