THOROUGHLY MODERN HELEN: A TRIBUTE TO THE ANTI CLUB

Anti Club calendar, 1985: art bands,  also-rans, poetry readings, The Minutemen, Mark Pauline of Survival Research Laboratories, and Psi Com, which was  Perry Farrell's pre-Jane's Addiction band

(Written with Iris Berry at Disgraceland,3:30 a.m. 2/10/89)

Helen, the proprietor of The Anti-Club

has been around since Day One of punk

She’s The Club Owner That Time Forgot

stuck in a land of acrylic sweaters, J.C. Penney’s bras

and seventeen-year-olds smuggling vodka into the men’s john

If you lifted up the tips of her bleached-blond pixie-cut

you’d probably see Black Flag bars tattooed across her matron’s hump

and “Search And Destroy” in Gothic letters just below her midriff bulge

She’s the only one that could ever get away with

charging a performer who wasn’t even getting paid

twenty-five cents for a cup of water…

Nobody playing there gets guest-list privileges, either

Helen has no interest in music, art, poetry or culture in any form

 unless, of course, it has to do with making money

or her daughter, a former disco-singer

 who is now an actress in Pee Wee’s Big Adventure

Yet Helen will die with the place

Helen’s idea of Hell would be

twelve performance artists showing up

with various vats of unidentifiable substances

two country and western bands with drunk lead vocalists

and an all-girl politically correct San Francisco art band

who, for an encore, insist on simultaneously showing their tits

Helen’s been living her own personal Hell every night for the past ten years

…with no end in sight

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If you’ve enjoyed this post and would like to read of my memoirs from the 1980’s punk scene and beyond,  my latest book “Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage And On The Road”( Punk Hostage Press) is available here:http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm