Tessa Hughes-Freeland’s ‘Baby Doll’ is a tiny slice of cinema-verite from 1982 about the girls working the now defunct Baby Doll Lounge on Church and White St. in downtown Manhattan. It captures a moment before NYC got sanitized.

A lot of the dancers working at the Baby Doll were the girlfriends of rock musicians, so it was a bit of a punk hangout. A red velvet curtain separated the Baby Doll Lounge into two sections; bikini and topless. I knew more than one young rock and roller who fell in love with a stripper at the Baby Doll. “Let me take you away from all of this. Escape with me to my 4th floor walk-up on Ave. B. You deserve better than this.” But the girls had the power, they were making good money, better than most musicians.

My preferred strip joint was Billy’s Topless where students from the Fashion Institute of Technology were known to dance on their lunch break. Billy’s is gone. In its place stands a bagel joint.

From Tessa’s website:

Tessa Hughes-Freeland’s films have been shown in a variety of venues, from international museums to seedy bars. The subject matter of her films is confrontational, transgressive, provocative and poetic.  She works in a wide variety of mediums and formats. The personality of her work makes it hard to categorize.

 
A Harry Smith double bill.

The first video is Harry smoking a joint while talking with Patrick Hulsey in New York City in 1999.

In the second video, East Village raconteur, animator, videographer and pop culture archivist M. Henry Jones of Snakemonkey TV recalls and recreates the initial thrill of discovering Harry Smith’s work.
 

 
Far better than average documentary on punk rock and the punk/reggae connection. Researched and written by the very fine rock journalist Robert Palmer (r.i.p.), this is smart and comprehensive. Broadcast on PBS in 1995 and currently unavailable on video or DVD. Enjoy.
 

 
Parts 3 - 6 after the jump…

 
Seldom heard early recording of a recently-out-of-college Lou Reed (with some uncredited musicians performing as “The Roughnecks”) during his pre-Velvet Underground days as a staff songwriter and performer at Pickwick International Records. This and three other tracks recorded in 1964, showed up on a 1979 Velvets bootleg called “the velvet underground, etc.” Obviously that’s his voice, and it most certainly sounds like Lou on guitar, too

This particular bootleg, which came from Australia, was once a record collector holy grail, along with its companion volume, “the velvet underground & so on.” Now you can easily find both of them on audio blogs.
 

 
Bob Dylan’s handwritten letter of support for John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their travails with the U.S. Immigration Dept.

JUSTICE for John & Yoko!

John and Yoko add a great voice and drive to this country’s so called ART INSTITUTION / They inspire and transcend and stimulate and by doing so, only can help others to see pure light and in doing that, put an end to this mild dull taste of petty commercialism which is being passed off as Artist Art by the overpowering mass-media. Hurray for John & Yoko. Let them stay and live here and breathe. The country’s got plenty of room and space. Let John and Yoko stay!

Bob Dylan

Via Letters of Note

 
Here’s the classic Bad Brains video culled from 4 hours of footage shot over the course of 3 nights of performances at CBGB in December of 1982. Hardcore rock/reggae doesn’t get any better than this. While most of this footage has been available in bits and pieces of varying quality on Youtube, here’s the entire video with superb sound and visuals.

You can buy this on DVD from MVD Visual here.
 

 
More badness from Bad Brains after the jump…

 
These amazing color photographs were taken by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii between 1909-1912, as part of a photographic survey of the Russian Empire, sponsored by Tsar Nicholas II. To achieve these color photos, Prokudin-Gorskii used a specialized camera, which captured three black and white images in quick succession, each with a different filter - red, green and blue. These images were then combined and projected with filtered lanterns to show almost true color images.

More of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii’s beautiful photographs can be viewed here.
 

 

 
The Ramones rehearsing in the loft of their artistic director Arturo Vega in 1975. Vega created The Ramones’ logo, one of the most enduring images in rock and roll history.

Man, this is thrilling!
 

Photo of Quentin Crisp by Martin Fishman

Wise. witty and wonderful, England’s “stately homo,” Quentin Crisp was a familiar—and always delightful—figure seen frequently around New York’s East Village during the latter part of the author’s life (1981-1999). Crisp famously made sure his phone number was listed and would accept nearly every dinner invitation that came his way, with the understanding that the tab would be picked up and Mr. Crisp would basically do an up-close version of his famous one-man show. On two occasions I dined with Mr. Crisp at the Odessa Diner on Avenue A and these are memories that I will always treasure.

For the majority of his life, Crisp lived in two small apartments. One, a bedsit in London where he lived for 41 years and steadfastly refused to clean, and one on Third St. in Manhattan that I doubt was ever cleaned, either. (In his autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant, Crisp quipped. “After the first four years the dirt doesn’t get any worse.” He says the line about 2 minutes in).
 

 
The London apartment can be seen in the above clip from Denis Mitchell’s fascinating 1970 Granada TV documentary, and visitors to the MIX Festival in NYC this past weekend could see a recreation of Crisp’s small New York flat, lovingly recreated by Philip Ward, curator of The Quentin Crisp Archives. More photos at Butt Magazine’s website.
 

 
Via World of Wonder

 
Heartbreaking images of children as young as four-years-old employed in production factories during the Industrial Revolution. Their faces, prematurely aged by hazardous working conditions, tell a truly sad story of a childhood lost forever.

 

 
More photos after the jump…