GUN CLUB LIVE, icons circa 1981

photos (C)1981 Heather Harris
Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Patricia Morrison, legendary Los Angeles punk icons.

Jeffrey Lee Pierce, although a magpie of musical styles, ended up sui generis. He could care less what other punks were doing, he was gonna reference voodoo swamp chants, slide Delta Blues, Appalachian folk and bebop jazz in his screaming punk gumbo years before the Black Crowes woke up to the same roots.

His band Gun Club spanned a decade and a half, two coasts and four continents worth of assorted band configurations. His wailing voice, slightly flat but passionate as all get out, was unmistakable from any other soul in the occasionally samey world of punk and post-punk. He was fearless onstage. And frequently really, really drunk.

East Coast publications compared his lyrics to T.S. Eliot in their spare imagery, which figured since Pierce reputedly was well read and literate. Murder ballads and modern allusions to the fire of love abounded in Gun Club songs. On the West Coast, people would have scratched their spikey-do heads in wonder at this assessment, since the man in person was an out of control alcoholic. He suffered the inevitable fate of those devoid of interventions, and died in 1996.

Patricia Morrison! Wowza! Bow down in unworthiness to the True Queen of the Goths! As early as mid-1970's, Patricia had already perfected this exact look depicted (here in motion in my top photo as if she were a Gainsborough painting heroine on the windy English moors) with her real hair, not extensions. She's been bass player extraordinaire to The Bags, Gun Club, The Sisters of Mercy, and The Damned, actually wedding singer Dave Vanian of the last cadre of punk Goths. (Together they hatched a little ghoul, and she's temporarily retired.) In the earliest interviews with Cassandra Peterson, she admitted she "borrowed" her Elvira look from a fellow Los Angelean, a female musician. That rather obviously would be our Patricia.












Check out Kurt Voss' documentary "Ghost on the Highway" about Gun Club for the insiders' assessments of its career arc, plus innumerable Youtubes like:

A H*o*T*t*i*e IN DISTRESS

For your consideration, take a gander at yon hottie. Slim, enigmatic, modern-looking and a 16 year old professional model when the photo was taken, setting the Wayback Machine to 1901. The half-closed eyes, head tilted thusly, off shoulder garment just so: this is one talented model. She's Evelyn Nesbit, whose still relevant story most recently was chronicled in the book "American Eve" by Paula Uruburu, published in 2008.

In the summer of 1981 I took my visiting grandfather to see two films made about people he knew personally around the turn of the century before, "Reds" about John Reed, his erstwhile Harvard classmate turned doomed Bolshevik hero, and "Ragtime," which included a sub-plot of the scandalous real-life murder of Stanford White over a showgirl/model. My grandfather (story HERE) had worked for Stanford White's firm of McKim, Mead and White, the latter architect unceremoniously offed by the jealous husband of White's former mistress, aforementioned showgirl/model Evelyn Nesbit. So who was this intriguing female face? 

I obsess easily (but hasten to add harmlessly) and one of my continuing interests remains beautiful femme fatales with early success who, despite obvious innate intelligence, were slated for later failure. (Can we say subjectivity boys and girls?) Evelyn Nesbit fits nicely within this subset of my books or movies about Louise Brooks, Gia Carangi, Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen,) Empress Elizabeth of Austria, Lady Idina Sackville (wife of murdered Joss Hay, Earl of Errol, both of Kenya,) Zelda Fitzgerald, Edie Sedgwick, Adele Bloch-Bauer, Bettie Page or Lady Anne Blunt (daughter of mathematician Countess Ada Lovelace [often regarded as the world's first computer programmer] and granddaughter of no less than Lord Byron. Good genetics there! While her bounder husband slept with every female aristocrat in England, Lady Blunt alone is responsible for having saved the Arabian Horse breed from interbred extinction, as it rapidly was being crossed only with Thoroughbreds in its native Middle East to fashion faster racehorses.)

Author Uruburu contends that Nesbit's life and ordeals represent a cautionary tale to today's teen celebs (while firmly rooting her bio in the times and context.) Nesbit was gifted with curiosity, artistic proclivities, love of books and learning, and yes, drop dead beauty, and became the sole breadwinner for her widowed family with her later modeling career. She had no adult guidance from her clueless mother and was easy prey for exploitative types of all stripes. Her main benefactor raped her, her new rich husband beat her, and the millionaire dynasty who counted on her testimony to save its scion from the electric chair for shooting her former lover in cold blood in front of oh, er, um, 500 or so witnesses in a public place dropped her financially like a lead balloon once same was accomplished.

There's no extant film footage of her *, but plenty of photos to discover online, given her popularity in the modeling world of the Fin Du Siecle. In every one, she looks out to us from a universal, timeless place, nary a sign of the clunky, stylized and fixed-in-cement dowdy heroines like Lillian Russell who more typlified the age. She could be... similarly aged Miley Cyrus in that off-shoulder drapery. Her cautionary tale is that even the gifted need professional guidance and personal support in careers that are so innately collaborative, the media. (As far as the gifted requiring both support and aspects of luck to succeed, I highly recommend the book "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell, which outlines how even mega-talents like Bill Gates and the Beatles needed surprisingly similar additional factors beyond talent to have realized their respective successes.)

Her lovely smile, as depicted above and below, would soon fade.

The mega-rich Thaw family who had enlisted her help vital to getting the murderous husband off immediately disowned her, rare in cases with an heir. Thaw himself eventually only left her $10K, the same amount he left to a waitress he had just met.

Her attempted film career failed. There was drug abuse, suicide attempts, and extreme single mother hardships during The Depression and war years. She eventually supported herself as a sculptor and ceramics teacher, and lived modestly into her eighties. My schoolmate Reidun was one of her caretakers at a facility, said she was sweet and remembered her son visiting as well.

"The tragedy wasn't that Stanford White died, but that I lived." 
   -Evelyn Nesbit, 1934

* FLASH NEWS ALERT !!! This footage of Evelyn singing later in life has recently been unearthed! Behold: 

IN SEARCH OF JIMMY RECCA

So that Retrokimmer could post a true, worldwide music biz scoop HERE , last Friday I photographed the seemingly elusive Jimmy Recca, M.I.A. bassist from the mythic 1971 lineup of The Stooges that featured both Ron Asheton and James Williamson on dueling lead guitars, who again flirted with fame in The New Order (the first, non-New Romantic one,) a short-lived supergroup with Recca, Asheton, the MC5's Machine Gun Thompson and an assortment of famous but unreliable singers. This New Order proved so unpublicized in its mid-70's era that A) I, who loved all things hard rock and proto-punk at the time wasn't even aware of their existence in my local burg and B) they opened for the last incarnation of my future better half Mr. Twister's first band Christopher Milk, (although after they'd parted ways,) a group past its label-sponsored prime. Then the world lost track...

Back to the mythic 1971 Stooges. We can all thank Carlton Sandercock for immortalizing the short-lived, 1971 Recca-bassed/Ron and James twin lead guitar Stooges on his Easy Action box set "You Don't Want My Name You Want My Action." (And Carlton's [through Kimmer's] recent search to give Recca his You Want My Action royalties seems to have prompted a new New Order retrospective for posterity in the works.)

This 2009 release of 1971 material (details HERE ) validated the suspicion that record execs of the day were stone cold deaf in dismissing both the band and its (heretofore unheard) material, as both were magnificent beyond belief even via the (cleaned up) audience recordings on the 4 disc set, which included both legendary Electric Circus, NYC sets heretofore known only in the photo evidence of Iggy covered head, bare torso to toe in silver spray-on paint, and 2 other gigs photographed with this improbable line-up. It also prompted a mini-fad of searching for Jimmy Recca amongst online Stooges' chats, the most amusing involving highly creative writing by one "Chin Lee" spinning tales of Mediterranean academia and nonesuch, spawning weird catch-phrases such as "I'm Chin Lee and I ride the bike!"

As retrokimmer noted, the real Jimmy turns out to be managing the venerable Alley rehearsal studios in North Hollywood CA (venerable in L.A. translates as older than a decade, and The Alley's been around since my better half Mr. Twister rehearsed and showcased there thirty five years ago in his punk band Chainsaw.)

Jimmy still has great hair and arresting blue eyes, so in person he's recognizable from the photographic evidence of some four decades ago. I didn't catch every word, as his voice is as low-volumed as my own, which reminded me how hard I probably am for others to hear, and how much of my own hearing has been compromised in my four-decade live music photography pursuits.

He told me James Williamson (our session HERE and HERE ) had gotten him into the band when the he was in his teens, and that he had seen the show his old bud Ron Asheton played at our local (now extinct) Coconut Teaszer club which I had photographed some 19 years ago (HERE.) (But then again it was too crowded to see individuals in the audience. I my short self had to stand on a bar stool to photograph the stage.)

The Alley remains a prestigious place to be (I had just missed the Red Hot Chili Peppers before our photo session) and an extremely pleasant work environment, what with its original '70s decor of indoor spider plants and hand-hewn natural woods a la retro Topanga and Laurel Canyons. I noted that its steep wooden spiral staircase must have played havoc with the platform-booted musicians of the original glam era, and he claimed the only real mishap occurred with a suicidal trespasser was thwarted in his leap from same only by catching his footwear on the Fort Apache-style wooden fence below.


Note thirty-seven years' worth of band graffiti in my photo above. I have a fuzzy recollection that I myself might have been responsible for the one that reads "Eschew Obfuscation!" from the Chainsaw days, as that sounds like me in the mid-70s. The Alley remains sort of this side of L.A.'s equivalent of Swinghouse, so it's very nice to see that overall, the formerly elusive Jimmy Recca has done well. I'm Heather Harris and I shoot the music.

THE NEW YORK DOLLS, LIVE 1973

My NY Dolls tales are minimal but extant, having photographed the New York Dolls live in 1973 at the Whisky A Gogo. I was a natural/stage lights-only snob in those days, not even bringing a flash, so I have very few photos from that show's dimly lit presentation, the best one showing David Johansen in his ebony halter top together with Johnny Thunders sporting his Elvis-like sneer and Big Hair. Far, far better for all concerned to consult Bob Gruen's excellent "All Dolled Up" documentary, easily available on Amazon and the like.

Shortly before he moved to New Orleans and expired, Thunders attended a New Years' Eve show at the Hollywood Palladium starring ex-Sex Pistol Steve Jones. We both were standing in the guest list/VIP line together, since as a photographer, I required special entree for the audacity of wanting to enter with a camera. And we were both were being hassled about getting in at all, me-- because all photographic press are treated in the gamut from mere damage control to outright terrorists at rock shows, and him-- because they didn't recognize him or his name. We didn't speak to one another, but shared a knowing smirk at the staff's lack of worldliness in dismissing him.

Once he had been the ultimate in photogenic Italianate bad-boy cuteness, thanks to his cheekbones and overall good bone structure. Maybe they really didn't recognize him. By now, he had terrible skin, sallow, resembling "cottage cheese" acoustic ceilings. Even though I toted a flash unit along with me at that point in my career, any thought of my doing paparazzo-type pics (which I normally eschew anyway) of him in line would have been cruel. He did not look in any shape or form healthy. And as was shortly proven, he wasn't.

AWESOME COLOR: better and better but gone

Amazon's product description of their newest release Mass Hypnos (Dig): The psych-garage-noise purveyors jump back in the minivan to play every rock club, basement, & skate park they can, leaving a trail of broken guitars & pizza crusts from Michigan to Mars.

Cute, but this isn't quite fair. Indeed, Awesome Color remains a category-busting young power trio of the most maximum enjoyment possible for rather more reasons. Their 14,457 fans on Myspace, as their own contemporaries, completely fathom whatever references abound that remain completely indecipherable to yours truly. And I don't care.

No, I'll be addressing you, Mr., Mrs. and Ms. Over Forty Rock Fan. You complain and criticize (and say I'm nothing in your eyes. Boomer referential, sorry) that nothing new sounds as good as the favorites of your own youth. Balderdash and crockola. Step outside your demographic for a moment: the air's fine out here.

It's just a question of quantification (they're aren't that many of them) and medium (strangely enough, the exponential growth of the web to promote all that is spankin' new in correlation to the decline of open-minded, free to hear radio stations willing to play something different has resulted in muddy miasma of millions upon millions of new bands online about whom you never will know a thing and will have broken up by next Thursday anyway, so why bother.)

Awesome Color are just the exceptions for you, fellow hard rock geezers. Their three releases on Sonic Youth's boutique label Ecstatic Peace each present a progession from frantic urgency, earliest Stoogean minimalism (you're going to love their 2-note songs,) head in the clouds stream of consciousness, and noise afficianado-ing to excellent musicianship and groove-on-groove sound vibrancy, all within the same cd. And each cd proves more wondrous than the next.

Full sonic descriptions in my earlier AC blog here.

So just buy at least one already and bliss out to something novel for a change. If you don't, Dr. House knows you're idiots. Stimulate those regressing brain cells with good new music. Of course, the band itself is going to hate me for pitching their life's work to their grandparents. And I don't care.

Annotation to my live photography of Awesome Color here, 4.26.10. As with many youngish bands, their gigs mutate throughout any long tour, and I found myself traipsing under onramps and running across freeway offramps in downtown Los Angeles searching for the impromptu club to which their cancelled-that-night venue was transferred. (thank gawd I checked online before I left. I'm not that much of a geezer. Hmm. Strike that. I am insofar as I forgot the exact local dates and missed the easier to find, static club gig of the night before. Sorry, Derek.) In actual fact, I never would have found the "club" (the patio of a government building) at all had I not heard it from afar down the street (which caused it to move all bands indoors after complaints from the slum next door) and into the gallery space therein. Hence the white walls.


Below is one of the patio bands, Garbaj Kaetz, who get a B+ for their efforts thereupon. Their grade might rise if they're still playing past next Thursday.


Stop the presses, unfortunate addenda as of 5.6.10 : on the heels of ending its latest cross-country bread and water tour, the band Awesome Color is no more, although all its recorded legacy remains available for purchase and all its members remain alive, well and open to new creative music endeavors, especially Derek Stanton. I'll never joke about bands playing past next Thursday ever again, I swear!

SEARCH AND DESTROY:RAW POWER DOCUMENTARY PREMIERE

Tremolo Productions' documentary "Search And Destroy: Raw Power" drew quite the throng (guesstimated at 90% acceptance) to Hollywood's Egyptian Theatre this week for its invite-only premiere. The film accompanies the Deluxe package version of the newly re-released, restored Iggy and The Stooges' prophetically seminal cd "Raw Power."

It details the volatile creation story of the 1973 masterwork which changed the direction of every single hard rock genre thereafter despite, as dryly intoned by its singer Iggy Pop on film, being demoted to the 39-cent bins at Aron's Discount Records across the street from Fairfax High School, West Hollywood, some three months after its initial release.

Never before seen live footage of the band performing circa 1973, although less than pristine in resolution nonetheless presented the Raw Power vintage Stooges in full adrenaline glory on a very active night in St. Louis MO. Its full effect was that of a very nice dream.

The dvd also elaborates on the band's eventual vindication decades after its horrendous spate of genuine bad luck (and askew lifestyle decisions borne of frustration as much as hedonism) as proffered both by its participants and its fans, rather a few of whom are inordinately famous. Their rise, fall and rise story rivals that of populist equine Seabiscuit for heart-wrenching drama of overcoming adversity, probably a factor as much as the music revolution/sea change in their eventual triumph with a now adoring public worldwide.

At the premiere, the actual guitarist of same who changed all hard rock genres thereafter James Williamson fielded hugs and declarations of wonderfulness from his aforementioned adoring public in person, while sharing a question and answer spot afterwards with the film's co-producer, Stooges' staff photographer and author Robert Matheu. Williamson recounted tales of the Stooges' final "Death March" touring, while Matheu related his geography theorem of why the three albums by the Stooges varied so.

Pictured above, left to right: Richard Meade, Dire McCain, both of literary magazine Paraphilia, James Williamson of Iggy and The Stooges, and Evita Corby, rock couture designer and, as pointed out that evening, the individual whose ass was featured on "Kill City," Iggy and James' next masterwork after "Raw Power." And below, encore:
P.S. Retrokimmer wrote a post HERE with this pic of your otherwise modest photojournalist shedding all vestigial remnants of professional aplomb therein.

IAN HUNTER, AXL ROSE, SLASH, MICK RONSON

All jamming, left to right: Ian Hunter (of Mott the Hoople,) Axl Rose (Guns N'Roses,) Slash (in shadows, of Guns N'Roses) and Mick Ronson (of David Bowie's Spiders from Mars) at the Hollywood Palladium.

THE DOGS- legendary band rockin' Detroit, NYC, L.A., Tokyo and beyond

all photos (C) 1985 - 2010 Heather Harris. All Rights Reserved.

The hardest thing to do in art remains chronicling one's own self objectively if accuracy is required. The second highest hurdle of subjectivity is to write about one's friends, hence no blog heretofore about The Dogs, a legendary punk band whom I've known for two and a half decades while considering bassist Mary to be my closest female friend. I found at least a voice sputtering through in relaying instructions to their videographer for a shoot in my studio last summer, excerpted as follows.

Joel-- Thanks for fitting this in. (-technical specs followed-) What might make it fun for you as opposed to them (they live for this stuff) is your encounter here with some genuine, lifelong subversives. In no way intellectuals, as artists they are real do-ers, activists as opposed to bookish shoegazers, always creating, and they have impressed the hell out of me in my acquaintance with them for the last two of their four decades as a band. I thought about this re-reading your "what is art anyway" blog on your site (Joel definitely deserves a plug here.)

Don't be fooled by their friendliness, one of them a family man with a traveling music equipment sales job, one of them still amazing-looking with a flirty laugh alongside near technical perfection of her bass, one of them's can-do agreeability belying his complete percussion mastery.

They were once kids who opened in the '60s for the MC5 and the Stooges in their native Detroit, supported S.D.S. and all the (original) anti-war stuff, frequently were arrested for starting riots there, played for free, played festivals, refused to pay-to-play here in L.A., toured the U.K. and Northern Ireland in the 1970's (Mary told me our '94 Northridge earthquake damage reminded her of normal Belfast,) maybe kick-started punk at CBGB's wearing their street clothes of leather jackets and torn jeans onstage (with future Ramones watching,) definitely kick-started DIY punk in L.A. with their Radio Free Hollywood four-walling of live venues along with chums The Motels and The Pop, opened for Van Halen, AC-DC, Kiss, all the later punk legends, Guns N' Roses, in fact you name 'em, they probably opened for them, survived Phil Spector's gunplay, were name-checked by Henry Rollins, Spin Magazine listed their “Slash Your Face” 1978 single as one of the top 10 great punk rock songs of all time, became cult legends around the world enough to easily tour packed venues in Japan in 2007 and to astound Mr. Twister's record company in Italy during Chainsaw's reunion Euro-tour in 2004 ("You are friends with The Dogs?!?") but never really plugged in or got any payoff and yet DIDN'T QUIT.

They've survived personal fall-outs, triple-bypass heart surgeries, major addictions, not to mention the foremost enemy of rock and roll, the passing of time. Yes, they've all played in other bands in the last two decades as well and continue to do so (Mary-She Rok and Kanary amongst others; Loren still in Little Caesar, Texas Terri's band and Gilt Lily in the past; Tony played some damn gigantic Metal Festival in South America no less) but how many musicians remain authentic enough to keep their actual teenage dream alive (Mary and Loren were high school sweethearts remaining bandmates despite breakup) this late into adulthood without recompense? As full time artists no less?

All this info only supplements the major aspect of The Dogs to their fans: their music. It accomplishes all the impossible paradoxes of all great art: concomitantly complex yet simple, personal yet universal, and always mind-blowingly right for power trio-hard rock. That'll always speak for itself. Addenda: as Retrokimmer noted upon her own introduction to them, you can't believe the fun, cheerful, unproblematic people you first meet as The Dogs are such hardcore, speedmetal-fast, technically adept, monster players. Can one rock forever at the same intensity? Hell, yeah.

Photographs herein are The Dogs from 1985 through 2010, featuring Loren Molinare, Mary Kay and Tony Matteucci. Original 1960s/70s Dogs' drummer Ron Wood (the other one) is shown in my pic of the Dogs with the late Arthur "Killer" Kane (of the New York Dolls.) At the bottom right of this post, Mary collapses giggling after her backwards somersault while still performing killer bass-lines in a video shoot of The Dogs' "Punk Rock Holiday," 2009. I actually first saw The Dogs perform in 1977 at the Whisky in L.A. on a bill with The Motels and The Pop, but was camera-lessly reviewing that night for "Performance" magazine. Of course I was knocked out by them and wrote same. 'Still am.

MY BANNED PHOTOGRAPHY!

All photographs (C) 2010 Heather Harris. All Rights Reserved.

One of Retrokimmer's great historians of the Detroit/Ann Arbor area's regional rock legacy, Big Rich Dorris wrote of sitting out a dream bill of terrific Michigan acts (excepting the MC4) to photograph locals because "no cameras were allowed so I stayed in the lobby." This is why most of the music photographers who started out four decades ago when I did simply have stopped doing it: no artist wants a noose ever-tightening around their neck until you're strangled as a job requirement. Nowadays, if you're not the official band photog, you're not allowed to shoot a whole show: even Associated Press is subjected to a two or three song maximum.

What a world- great performances onstage and no cameras allowed at events which are hardly the rarefied sanctums of, say, theatrical plays, requiring reverent silence and non-disturbance for any enjoyment whatsoever. As for disruptive potential, no one ever even remembers me there shooting. When did commemorating raucous rock for posterity become damage control, and why did cameras become equated with machete knives and other weaponry insofar as concert-goers are searched for both upon entry?

Actually, it began in the early 1970s with British managers and minders banning onstage photography so that a) only their own hired hands' shots would exist for editing and b) to launch the artificial frenzy of restricted access that paparazzi so highlight amongst celebs. Yes, spin control works this way: Ronald Reagan's presidential handlers created the "POTUS emerging from the landing helicopter press conference" specifically so that press they deemed unfriendly would have to shout their questions and sound foolish or be unheard (ignored) altogether. This lesson in P.R. is taught in universities now.

Above is Mick Hucknall of Simply Red in the early '90s disproving claims that he's not a singer of grand exertion onstage; in fact, he's sweating up a storm which makes this back-lit silhouette photo far more interesting graphically. But this shot couldn't have been taken before the three song limit expired.







To the left is Wendy James and her band Trans-vision Vamp in the late '80s taking a break on the set of an American network broadcast television show I had been assigned/hired/authorized to shoot. They were all decked out in their "iggy and the stooges" post-punk finery, but before I could pipe up that I had photographed the originals, their minders banned me from their personal image-mongering.


To the right is Mary Kay, then of (Motley Crue's) Emi Canyn-led female metal-ers She Rok alongside Jessica Hahn, then of smokin' hot evangelical scandal, at the filming of Penelope Spheeris' film "Thunder and Mud" (the one just before her breakthrough "Wayne's World." Somehow it doesn't tend to show up on her filmographies.) This is one of the few times I conspired to set up a shot, which I deemed okay since I had given Mary the "Bad Influence" shirt from Nashville in which she claims credit for leading Jessica to a Road to Ruin. I was authorized by the band and the production to be there and shoot them but days later the P.R. company representatives harangued me about same with many an implied threat. So I had a moral choice: sell this photo for big bucks of a person who was very much in the tabloids with her purported scandal and possibly get my friend who had secured my authorization to be there in the first place fired from her band, or dump the then timely snap. Answer: this is the first time this photograph has been seen in public, almost two decades after I took it.

JAN KING, STILL ROCKIN' IN CHICAGO

photo (C) Heather Harris.

Once upon a time I heard a rock anthem so epic it should be considered in the same breath with "Layla," so impressive was this song "Memento Mori" in its scope, emotion and crescendo of guitar and vocal power. Unless its author sells it to a movie, this song won't be heard by the general public. But at least you can still hear the current work of its writer Jan King, one of rock's premier singer/songwriter/guitarists via her new ensemble in Chicago, Medicine Ball.

Jan is sitting in the middle of the above comely coven in my photo taken about a decade and a half ago of one of her many quality rock groups, Crying Blue Sky with bassist Mary Kay (of The Dogs) on the right and Tammi Peden who stills drums with Jan on the left. Her other notable bands were The Orchids with Che Zuro amongst other female musicians, Puss n' Boots and Shrieking Violet. Relocating to Chicago from L.A., she's all business now with power/blues trio Medicine Ball, well documented on their own sites:
http://www.myspace.com/jankingandmedicineball
http://www.reverbnation.com/jankingandmedicineball