A NONSTOP CRAZY PARTY: THE LATE 1970'S PUNK SCENE IN LOS ANGELES, PART 2

At the  Hollywood Boulevard  Woolworth's photo booth, around the corner from The Masque 1977

 The story you are about to read is the second half of the chapter I wrote for Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History Of L.A. Punk by John Doe, Tom De Savia and friends. If you'd like to read the first half or my chapter, it's the post just before this one.

 The book  is all first-person essay accounts of what the 1970’s Los Angeles punk scene was truly like. Along with me, the afore-mentioned friends include Exene Cervenka,  Henry Rollins,  Jane Wiedlin and Charlotte Caffey of the Go-Go’s,  Robert “El Vez” Lopez, Chris D., Mike Watt and many more.  It’s a fantastic piece of written  musical and socio-cultural  history, unadulterated by the assumptions of people who weren’t there…enjoy!

On April 18th and 19^th, 1977, The Damned played The Starwood. It was a pure revelation and also sort of “legitimized” the LA punk scene. Local power-pop faves The Quick opened for them, which might seem odd now but wasn’t at the time, though it did explicitly illustrate the difference in what was actually punk and what would soon be called new wave. The Damned  played at lightning speed with violent energy. Dave Vanian was  fierce and scary/sexy onstage, Captain Sensible dropped trou and Rat Scabies stood up behind his drum kit spitting beer and flipping the audience off.

It the first time I stayed out all night, blowing off my curfew and my ride home.  In anticipation of a wild night, I’d taken my schoolbooks to the Starwood, parking them upstairs at the VIP bar while I watched the show. I went to Cantor’s with the Damned afterwards, engaging in a food fight before going to party at the infamous Tropicana Motel. The next morning at Duke’s Café, Tom Wait’s took in my hungover appearance- whipped cream and maple syrup congealed in my hair and staining my homemade Damned shirt- and admonished me in his gravelly voice,

“Pleasant, for God’s sake, stay in school!”

I assured him I would, and looking like  a hot drunk mess, was chauffeured down Santa Monica Boulevard to school in the back of Rodney Bingenheimer’s vintage black Caddy, the envy of Randy Kaye, Dennis Crosby and Lisa Curland, who’d  made the mistake of adhering to their curfews.

 After that, there was a summer-long string of benchmark events and uproarious gigs, all with a full attendance roster of those who’d eventually become celebrated as “LA’s First Hundred Punks”. The Germs had their first official gig at Kim Fowley’s punk series at the Whisky, which resulted once again in a huge mess of food, this time because they’d requested their fans to bring condiments, and everyone obliged. They’d moved into a nearby apartment on Holloway Drive, Joan and Lisa had rented an apartment on San Vicente, across the street from both Licorice Pizza and The Whisky, and Brian/ Kid Congo, Ann Mclean, Dennis Crosby and I moved into 909 Palm- all our pads were within walking distance of each other. Our 909  parties were epic and never-ending. At the end of the night, no matter where we were, there was always a standing invitation for everyone to come over, and they did.

Slash Magazine held a coming-out bash at a ballroom at the Santa Monica Ramada Inn, because their offices were nearby. Hotel guests were staring at us in sheer terror. I was in disbelief that such a cool punk magazine had an “old” publisher- Steve Samioff – who also had a beard! Nevertheless, I knew a good thing when I saw it, hitting him up for a staff writing position, which he agreed to. My name appeared on the masthead in the next issue, and my first piece was The Germs interview I did, though to my chagrin, the story went uncredited. When Slash moved to a loft on Pico and Redondo in LA, they had many insane parties there, not the least of which was The May ‘77 Screamers’ debut, and a party for Devo in July, after which I slipped on a puddle of spilled Mickey’s Big Mouth fell over the Germ’s second story balcony. Phast Phreddie and KK rushed me to the hospital, where I got five stitches in my chin… and stole a plastic “Patient Belongings” bag to use as a purse.

Soon, two events occurred spawning a party of mythical proportions at my place: my mom left to work out of town for a week, and Hellin and Trudi got a settlement for their car accident. Because I’d let them stay at my house for so long and they were now rollin’ in dough, we went on a shopping trip to The Pleasure Chest. We bought matching black leather spiked slave collars and more cockrings, a cat o’ nine tails, various bullwhips, paddles, and an authentic, regulation canvas straightjacket with leather straps. Because my mom was gone, in order to show off our kinky loot, we decided to have a party. 

We got cases of beer, lots of vodka, and avocados to make guacamole; we spent the afternoon calling everyone to invite them. Among the first to show up were Joan Jett and Lisa Curland, already many sheets to the wind on Quaaludes and vodka. Our other  guests all arrived in various states of inebriation, too. By the time Cherie The Penguin, Tony The Hustler, John Doe and Exene and everyone from Dangerhouse and The Wilton Hilton showed up toting six packs of Mickey’s Big Mouth beer, we’d run out of chips. I dared Tomato to try the guacamole with a dog biscuit, and he did, declaring it “fabulous”. Suddenly, everyone had to do it. The downstairs bathroom was commandeered as a dungeon, with Joan, Lisa, Hellin, Trudi, Gear and I taking turns bending anyone who was willing over the rim of the bathtub, whipping them as hard as we could.

We started a game with the straight jacket and a stopwatch, having a contest to see who could last the longest amount of minutes; some people took dares to escape but couldn’t. When KK emerged from a really long bathroom session with Trudi and Joan Jett, I convinced him to try it.  He was drunk and obliged, but none of us- even KK- realized he was claustrophobic! Once the buckles were in place, he flipped out and made a dash for the open front door, running down the street screaming and body slamming against the palm trees in an attempt to escape. Of course a neighbor called the cops, and the party was busted immediately. The clean up was challenging; there was blood on the bathroom walls, guacamole and crushed dog biscuits everywhere, and for months, any time a piece of furniture was moved, a booze bottle or beer can rolled out.

 When the Masque opened in August, it became our amazing secret clubhouse.  The steep concrete stairway –which, in hindsight,  I’m shocked no one ever tumbled down and died on- lead to a warren of subterranean rooms, the walls already covered in punk graffiti from the bands who practiced there.  The stage was small and low, and the sound system sucked but we were in heaven!  It was also conveniently located within crawling distance of The Canterbury and the Hollywood Boulevard Jack In The Box, where you could buy pills.

 The vast public parking lots behind The Masque functioned as a free motel- the ‘Ludes-fueled make-out sessions that started in the Masque bathrooms would inevitably be consummated there. We’d select the nicest cars we could find, try the doors-which were mostly left unlocked- and climb in the backseat for some lovin’, leaving the windows fogged up as we made a hasty exit to catch the next band. 

Sex in those extremely pre-AIDS days was louche and fun, and the hook-ups weren’t always heterosexual.  One night at Larchmont Hall, during an X show, Alice Bag and I got very cozy while guzzling Southern Comfort on the fainting couch in the Ladies Room. Her boyfriend Nicki Beat of The Weirdos burst in and a huge brawl ensued.   My other constant make-out companions- all on a friend-with-benefits basis, with no strings attached- were Joan Jett and Lisa Curland (who were in a relationship at the time) Bobby/ Darby, and Go-Go’s Jane and Belinda. My affair with Jane, which had started at The Masque, spanned years, continuing into our respective relationships with Levi Dexter of The Rockats and his drummer, Dean Thomas…though neither of the guys ever knew about it!

1978 started off with January 14^th Sex Pistols gig at The Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Tickets were a whopping three dollars and the migration from LA was massive. Brad Dunning, Randy Kaye, Brian/ Kid Congo, Nancy Nagler and I all crammed into Theresa Kereakes’ tiny Honda to make the pilgrimage. But a few others got a head start: Hellin, Trudi, and a bunch other chicks from the Canterbury had gone to Texas to catch the shows there. It was rumored that Hellin lost her virginity to Sid, and that Alice Bag and Pat Bag had followed suit with Paul Cook and Steve Jones. I reported on this salaciously in my fanzine Lobotomy (which I started with Randy Kaye in 1978) though now I’m not entirely sure if these rumors were actually true and who did what to whom! A few days after Winterland, the Sex Pistols broke up and the Masque was shut down by the LA fire marshals. The huge Save The Masque benefit took place at The Elk’s Lodge, with   The Dickies, Black Randy, The Avengers, Dils, Weirdos, X, Bags, Screamers, Randoms and many others and many others taking the stage.

Things rolled along with events happening thick and fast- there were now so many local bands, plus New York and English bands touring, there were multiple choices of things to do on any given night.

In 1979, with the release of GI, produced by Joan Jett, The Germs morphed from a semi-novelty band into a serious force to be reckoned with.  Their legions of slavish followers, fresh Germs Burns blistering their hands, were sort of annoying and cult-ish to me, and quite a few of the other original punks. Also, beach punks and Cromagnon-esque jocks from Orange County had begun to infiltrate our scene, and many of us- especially the women- were put off by it because of the violence in the slam pits. Instead of the pogo-dancing fun we’d been accustomed to at the Masque, the idiots who’d just months before had been screaming at us from car-windows and beating us up had suddenly decided that punk was “cool” and the original scene began to splinter. 

 Many of the punkettes made a swift turn to the neo-rockabilly movement, perpetrated by Levi & The Rockats, an English band managed by the legendary Leee Black Childers of Bowie’s Main Man Productions. Brian/Kid and I had seen them at Max’s Kansas City in New York, opening up for the Cramps, and they were astounding. When they moved to LA and took up residence at The Tropicana Motel, Jane Weidlin and I were among the first punk chicks to convert, followed quickly by Belinda, Connie Clarksville, Rosemarie “Wyline” Patronette, Anna Statman, Ann McLean and many more. Though we all still adored punk, rockabilly shows were a much safer bet for us physically, and the guys were more courtly in a 1950’s throwback way.  Guys were converting too, including Jeffrey Pierce, Billy Persons (of The Falcons) and Brian/Kid. I reported on this trend with my first article, “Rockabilly Redux” for the LA Weekly, and after that, they gave me my own gossip column, the infamous La De Da, which I wrote for years, by myself and later in tandem with Craig Lee, and other contributors.
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 By early 1980, Ana Statman and I discovered The Blasters, just before their first album came out. Even though I still continued going to punk shows, writing for Slash, LA Weekly, New York Rocker and publishing my fanzine  Lobotomy, the punk scene had lost its initial lustre for me. The rampant violence at shows, constant police harassment and the rise of heroin as the drug of choice within the scene had left me seriously disenchanted.  The quick rise -and subsequent fall- of The Germs, the concert series for The Decline of Western Civilization, and in December, the untimely death of Darby Crash sealed  it for me.  I not only lost a dear friend- someone I felt I’d already lost to heroin- I was sure that the scene I’d loved so much had ended for real. At the time, I blithely moved on to other things- more writing, starting my own band, the all-female Screamin’ Sirens in 1983, and becoming the full-time booker for the seminal LA clubs Cathay De Grande and Raji’s.

  In retrospect,- and not just because I was so young- the years between 1975 and 1980 really were beyond incredible. Los Angeles was a crazy non-stop party and the punk scene was chock full of full of interesting, wildly creative people.  It was so much fun, most of us didn’t even have time to stop and notice that history was being made.

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 With  artist Brad Dunning, circa 1979

JUST A CRAZY LITTLE PLACE...MEMORIES OF THE SUGAR SHACK

 Sugar Shack coupon courtesy of Chuck Starr

 When most people think of their teenage years, they remember things like football games or the Senior Prom. Not me. The summer of 1975 was a highlight in my Peak Experience-filled teens.  And nothing is sweeter in my memory than the nights I spent at The Sugar Shack in North Hollywood.  The Shack, as we called it, was a refuge for  “adventurous” teenagers- oh,  wait, I really meant to say Juvenile Delinquents With Very Little Parental Supervision. If you imagine combining the degeneracy of the Weimar Berlin with an episode of Romper Room featuring  Jayne County as the hostess, and  a soundtrack by Suzi Quatro, you’ll get an idea of what an average night at The Sugar Shack was like.

I was Sweet Sixteen and had just moved to LA, a city that was in the throes of a strange musical limbo. The Hollywood club scene was in that  “no man’s land” between the end of Glitter Rock and the beginning of Punk; but let me assure you, there was plenty going on. While the rest of the world was grooving to the boss sounds of the latest Disco hits, there was a crowd of Tinseltown hipsters-although we would’ve abhorred being called that- going to see Toni Basil or The Tubes at The Roxy, Queen or Iggy at The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, or the Cycle Sluts, a theatrical drag queen troupe/ heavy metal band who were in residence at The Whisky A Go-Go. Since many of us were too young to drink legally, we’d prime ourselves for these gigs by scarfing handfuls of Quaaludes- the original Rorer 714 article- which could be purchased in The Rainbow’s  parking lot for a mere buck a pop.

Back then, rock music wasn’t the only thing that was caught in a gray area. My crowd and I were streetwise and sophisticated enough to be experimenting with drugs and sex, but hideously below the legal Age Of Consent. Since it was The Swingin’ Seventies, our nascent sexuality was also one big fat gray area…and it’s not like anyone was keepings tabs, either!  Our adventurous spirit fit in perfectly with the prevalent freewheeling attitude of the time. Mixed with the handfuls of pills we took combined with the Olde English 800 tallboys we guzzled in back alleys, it made any sort of sexual classification totally irrelevant.

We were a crowd of groupies, teenage hustlers, bisexual school girls and fringy sluts out, as the New York Dolls said, “Lookin’ For A Kiss”…or more, if we could get it…and usually, we could. Our favorite hangs were late-night coffee shops where trannie hookers turned tricks in the Ladies Room; places like Arthur J’s on Santa Monica Boulevard or   the two haunts on Hollywood Boulevard: Danielle’s and The Gold Cup which was immortalized in Black Randy’s song “Trouble At The Cup”.  Mostly we hung out at these establishments after hitting Westwood to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the millionth time.  None of these places served liquor, so of course they didn’t card anyone. You could be totally at home in your fishnets, heavy make up and Sally Bowles’ fierce Divinely Decadent attitude. After all, who was gonna to hassle you about your appearance…a stoned drag queen? Rodney’s English Disco had closed and The Masque wasn’t open yet, so these were our haunts…until The Sugar Shack opened.

Located in the depths of LA’s San Fernando Valley on Magnolia and Whitsett, The Sugar Shack was a juice bar where you had to show ID to prove that you were under twenty one…unless of course you were Kim Fowley or Rodney Bingenheimer or a visiting rock star. The place was tiny and wood paneled, with a long bar down the right side as you walked in. There was an upstairs lounge area that had a working fireplace,  clanging pinball machines, and couches were everyone eventually wound up  writhing around   with someone they’d just met.

 Main attraction was the dance floor, which took up at least a third of the club. Racks of colorful lights whirled around overhead, along with a Disco ball, a siren that sounded frequently, and strobe lights.  The notorious Chuck E Starr was the DJ playing Shack faves like Roxy Music’s “Do The Strand”, The Sweet’s “AC/DC” or “Fox On The Run” and   “Planet Queen” by T. Rex. He also favored hits from LA’s “grown up” (read: 21 and over) gay clubs, like The Andrea True Connection’s  “More, More, More” and  “Party Line” and Hot Chocolate’s  “You Sexy Thing”.    Ziggy Stardust look-alike Rick Ferris (aka Rick Bowie) would   jump up and lead an off-handed, infinitely hot Hustle.  Everyone in the whole place was in love with him, whether they’d admit to it or not.  But he big crowd pleaser was anything from The Rocky Horror Show – the entire dance floor would be filled with kids doing  “The Time Warp” in Busby Berkeley precision, and  “Cherry Bomb” by local gals and Shack regulars, The Runaways.  David Bowie was in a class by himself– “Rebel Rebel” and “Golden Years” were heard multiple times a night and no one ever got tired of them- everyone went insane. My late bestie Randy Kaye, (Co-editor of my punk fanzine Lobotomy and later an A&R man for Slash Records) remembers:

“No matter what Bowie song Chuck played, we’d all scream and run to the dance floor!”

 The main thing I remember about the dance floor- aside from making an ass of myself on numerous occasions by literally falling off my silver glitter platforms in a Quaalude stupor- were the mirrored panels that surrounded it on three sides. They were covered in a thick band of kiss marks in every conceivable shade of lip-gloss because everybody would   dance facing the mirrors and   kiss their own reflections. How very Seventies; we might’ve been messed up, but we sure didn’t lack self-esteem!

 

The Runaways

 “The Sugar Shack was a magical place,” sighed Cherie Currie, former Runaways lead singer, who, along with her twin sister Marie were the belles of the ball.

“Everyone would make a circle around Cherie and she’d…like…do her stage moves,” Randy said.

 Jane Wiedlin, who in the days before The  Go-Go’s was a Shack regular, remembers:

“ Me and my friends were all afraid of Cherie!  The Sugar Shack was fun, but it was full of teenagers.  I wanted to meet rock stars, so I liked Rodney’s and The Rainbow more.”

“The Sugar Shack was a great place to sort of…get over Rodney’s, where everyone was fucking three guys a night! ” said my former roommate Ann MacLean, who was in 11^th grade at the time.

“ You’d get there early, get really wasted in the parking lot, then hang out with gay guys and make out with your girlfriends. I remember a lot of chicks wearing those chubby rabbit fur jackets, which I thought were so cool! Money wasn’t important… everyone was running around screaming “GIRRRRL!” and “MISS THING!” and we’d all cram into the girl’s restroom to make out with each other.”

“There were a lot of bisexual girls,” recalls Rodney Bingenheimer, wistfully and with great relish,

 “I brought Roger Meadows-Taylor from Queen there and he loved it! When I brought all of Blondie there, they couldn’t believe what was going on- a club only for teenagers? They thought it was really wild!”

 Drama always ran high at The Sugar Shack. When the beautiful blonde bartender Vicki Ronald became the singer for Kim Fowley’s “punk” project, Venus And The Razorblades, everybody speculated in hushed whispers, wondering if it would cause a rift between her and Cherie.  They not only looked identical, they were best friends.  Date-stealing was common. If you lost sight of your paramour for even a few minutes, it was a safe bet you’d find them entangled with someone else in a parked car on one of the dark residential streets or in the alleys surrounding the place.

“God, I remember getting there really early to drink in the car,” Randy Kaye recalled, “…and then waking up on some side street, not knowing how I got there!”

 My close friend and bon vivant, the late Dennis Crosby (grandson of Bing) recalled:

“Sex in cars… sex on the couches upstairs… sex in the girl’s bathroom…French designer bell-bottom jeans that laced up the front and the back…Tuinals and Southern Comfort…  stumbling outside to puke across the street then going back inside to dance!”

 Because most of us were underage, the good stuff usually happened outside or after hours. The movie Foxes, which featured Cherie Currie, came close to what our secret teenage lives were like back then, but it didn’t quite cut it- outrageous as the film was for the time, it still whitewashed our real life experiences. We were rock n’ rollers adrift in suburbia, dealing with the adult-like harsh realities-and hardcore substance abuse as escapism-when most of us weren’t even old enough to drive! And as for driving: getting to the Shack was a nightmare that involved sneaking out of the house, and either hitch-hiking (which we all did then) or careening across Coldwater Canyon in a car with seven other people who weren’t old enough to drive yet either. 

Eventually, most of us stopped going to The Sugar Shack in favor of  a  gay club in Hollywood called Gino’s II…and then punk rock happened, dividing our crowd into two very distinct factions. Some of us saw it as the Second Coming;  the others preferred dance music, puka shells and feathered hair.

The Sugar Shack’s been closed for decades, but I still can feel the ecstatic sweat of the dance floor when Chuck Starr hit the siren and threw on “Suffragette City”; the enthusiastic and utterly wasted casual sex with someone whose name you didn’t know… and hoping all week long that you’d see them again the next Wednesday night. I remember my red heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses, kept on after dark and miraculously never lost.  I always wore my Carmen Miranda 1940’s style Kork- Eaze wedge platforms and “Drive-In” pants:  Chemin De Fer bell bottom jeans that  zippered all the way  from the front waistband to the back through your crotch so  they’d fall off you in two pieces. It was  such a rush to get out of the house on a warm, jasmine scented summer night…and watching Rick Bowie strutting  around in the strobes  on the dance floor like he owned the place.

I remember a lot about those Sugar Shack nights, and what it was like being a teenager in Los Angeles during the Seventies. To my own amazement, as these memories come flooding back to me in minute detail, I put on “The Timewarp”…and evidently  I didn’t kill too many brain cells  back in the day,  because my body remembered every move as though it  had been imprinted into my DNA.  Dancing in my living room , I take Just A  To The Left and  then  A Step To The Right  with  the sassy  flair I used to show off on the Sugar Shack’s dance floor.

 I’d gaze into the mirror looking myself directly into the eyes, slowly lower my lids, pucker up my Mary Quant Black Cherry glossed lips and   kiss my own reflection, just as the final chords of the song ran out.

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The   story you've just read is from my forthcoming memoir Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere , which will be published by Punk Hostage Press in early 2015.

 Saturday, September 27  I will be reading from  my book Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage, And On The Road  with the women of Punk Hostage Press at Beyond Baroque,  681 Venice  Blvd, LA, 90291  at 7:00pm. Info is here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/345505825625345/

  Get a signed copy of Showgirl Confidential here:  http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm