I was thinking about what is left over from work done or from ones own experience. I think of a scene from the Musical Film Paint Your Wagon when a scheme is made to gather all the gold that falls down under bars and saloons. Miners for gold losing their gold dust. A clever way to get rich or collect from what is unknowingly or uncaringly left behind.
That is what it is like for me now as I gather my Flipside Fanzine gold that is dissected all over the place. I know I will never get rich from my gossamer shining memories or documentation of a scene during my youthful rebellion, but it seems to go on shimmering everywhere. It has a real story and narrative that I still gather.
I cannot put back together the vein of gold enduring as a solid experience that was documented but I can try and show my story, the Flipside Fanzine story, as it happened, and this is important to me. I can be a magnet pulling the gold of Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine towards me and alchemize the authentic narrative to share. A richness like gold that will endure.
Punk Rock Historian & colleague and Professional Consultant
Hudley Flipside
Maybe a cliché or fuck up, or glitch will be found… my burning tears… always found in an honest Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine project or on a vinyl record played too many times….
My celebration today…
A Hudley Flipside Editorial
Rodney on the ROQ vinyl band compilation. Vol. 1-3
That crazy Godzilla Punk Rock Night Club in Sun Valley is where I first saw GBH’s – Leather, Bristles, Studs and Acne spray painted on the wall.
I was then in search and found the vinyl and became a fanatic. 44 years now for me.
The album City Babys Revenge is one of the best sounds of punk rock! The band and songs are phenomenal. A forty-year celebration. I got the vinyl from Zed Records of Long Beach and played it loads. Yet seeing (Charged) GBH live was just the best experience I had as a young punk bird. They still thrill me as an old crone owl.
A hardy band that still tours around the world and I think they are indestructible. I really do!
A bit of history in front of Perkins Palace Pasadena mid 1980s.
The holidays and my dad’s birthday all bring up memories of my family that I grew up with. It has been about ten years since both of my parents died. They both lived a long, good life. I think it is good to think about loved ones and remember them. It is a seasonal thing too.
My dad was a WWII Vet. He discovered veteran benefits where he could travel really cheap anywhere around the world. So, Mom and dad did just that. They traveled everywhere.
All their five children grown up and independent, mostly. They took off.
As a teenager in High School, it was kind of strange not having mom and dad there. Yet, my older brother or sister reluctantly helped out.
In the late 1970s and through the 1980s mom and dad continued to travel.
I was running a punk rock fanzine at the time. I gave them some issues to give out to any punks they met up with. This image is from Germany. Mom with a local punk rocker. It must have been around 1984.
Punk Rock Historian, Colleague and Professional Consultant
Hudley Flipside
The Ness of Mike
The last day of November “Amber Moments” when Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine could have constructed a vinyl house built of records in Whittier California.
Reviewing records started out simple. Just turning on the funky tape recorder and staff at flipside would just talk. As Larry Lash states in the rather new Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine the Narrative Documentary / Film, Epeisodion ONE.
The reviews recorded were then transcribed and into the issue of Flipside Fanzine they went. No editing. Published galore.
Well, that was the beginning of the record reviews. Each record sent to the Flipside PO Box was to Whittier California. Many bands were all seeking a review. Seeking a promotional push for their world of fanatical punk rock fans. I called the new records fresh from the vinyl bakery. Yet some did come later a little bit stale.
I even reviewed a few records I purchased from Lovell’s Record Store uptown Whittier or from Zed Records in Long Beach.
My personal favorites like the Ramones or Charged GBH. Yet records collected around us pretty nicely. All free. The cats loved to claw them just fine thank you. Oh, the tears of many a collector. As time went on and as the Flipside crew grew and changed, we did things differently. After my fingers almost fell off from typing.
I have callused fingers due to this and should have become a guitar or bass player in a band where I could be playing all these gigantor festivals and traveling the world. But we ended up giving our new shit workers a nice stack of records to review. Some of them even helped with the typing. I thank you from the depth of my fanatical punk rock ole’ heart.
“We do have myths. Myths nourish the old soul with even older stories. They give us strange images and amazing suggestions; these promote speculations that activate the aging mind.”
~ Hillman, James. The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life
Oh, I grew up with the Werewolf story. My best friend Gigi and I walked down to the local market with our pennies for candy. Then back up the wild hills, what we kids called “the Indian trails,” to watch scary movies on Saturday. Only with a big pillowcase full of candy. We knew this quote by heart,
“Even a man who’s pure at heart and says his prayers at night, will become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the Autumn moon is bright.”
The original quote written by screenwriter Curt Siodmak is “Even a man who is pure in heart and says his prayers by night may become a wolf when the wolfbane blooms and the autumn moon is bright.”
Move forward to the early 1980s when I played Charged GBH’s song for the first time. It was such a treat. I became a kid again climbing the “Indian trails” once more.
The wild sage bushes, hills of grass and sun above and the windy blue sky. I was free running and rolling through the wonder of youth. The easiness and thrill of being scared by good old monster films. Walking home at night with the full moon coming up from the Verdugo Mountains Range and hearing owls singing!.
I never saw the band play the song live in the 1980s. They would tease us. But Ross and Jock are very clever and played a new song.
Then a few years back 2007 when they were touring in the United Sates, we went to see them in Ventura California. Not far from my hometown. They must have known we were coming!! As we were walking towards the event from behind the theater I heard a call,
“Hudley, Hudley…”
We saw Ross screaming from a second story room. His English slang-accent endearing to my heart. Looking up we heard him tell us to wait there he had something to tell me.
So, when we were in front of the theater Ross and Colin came out. Colin came up to me and said,
“Hudley, we have a real treat for you. We are going to play the old songs.”
I often got on their cases. Asking them to play Lycanthropy. Even had them write out the lyrics to the song on a napkin. Which I still have. It only took about thirty something years to finally hear GBH’s song Lycanthropy live.
Well that about does it this year with my little story about a band, a song, wolfbane and the first full moon of Autumn.
As ritual goes every first full moon of Autumn, since first hearing the song Lycanthropy, I listen to the song! I dance, howl and enjoy my childhood and youthful rebellion again! I enjoy the song so much! All the good wild feelings are there !
October 9, Hunter’s Moon
The next full moon will be on Saturday morning, Sept. 10, 2022, at 5:59 a.m. EDT.
Yet, the Moon will appear full for about three days from Thursday evening to Sunday morning.
“Aging makes metaphor of biology. The organic changes are a form of poetic speech, rewriting personality into character.”
~ Hillman, James. The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life
Doug Fitzsimmons @punk_diversity is dedicated to sharing music and art with a focus on the early LA punk scene.
It feels good to have inclusion in the punk rock and or underground narrative. Artists, writers, bands, and fanzine writers… all of us smiling into the internet. The electrical fire …. It is fun and surprising to me.
This is Doug Fitzsimmons journey and one can see it all on Instagram.
“You know Iris Berry is the one that encouraged me to start this journey.”
He seems very driven.
“I know it is crazy. I have been so blessed to have the opportunity to meet so many. It has helped that the community has vouched for me & my project which is also to document those who might fall out of the narrative if it is not done soon.”
As we have lost a couple of good buddies recently from the punk scene, I feel his determination.
This picture has a story. I was at the Hong Kong Café in China Town. It was early 1979 and I did not know Al Flipside from Flipside Fanzine very well. Yet he took my picture that night.
He said when he went to bed later that night, he saw me in a dream. The picture he took. My image was made up of hundreds of little dots like an X-8 drawing. X-8 is the original master mind behind Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine. Well, the rest is history.
Conspiracy theory are Shawn Kerri and Mad Marc Rude the same person?
Punk Rock Historian & Colleague and Professional Consultant.
~ Hudley Flipside
I may be whacked and out of this world but existing through the punk scene some things bugged the hell out of me. This is one story that needs some clarity.
Shawn Kerri is an American cartoonist who was dynamic through the 1970s & 1980s. She is known for her art as one of the rare female contributors to Cartoons Magazine and as part of the early Southern California punk rock scene, creating iconic images used by the Germs and the Circle Jerks.
Kerri moved to Los Angeles in 1977 and was involved during the punk rock scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1978, she published a fanzine called Rude Situation, with Mad Marc Rude, who was then her boyfriend.
‘During this period, she drew numerous promotional flyers and tour posters for her friends, which included members of the Germs and the Circle Jerks. One of her best-known images, “Skank Kid””
A little punk history, a cross over. I still believe that Mad Marc Rude and Shawn Kerrie are the same person. I thought this and no one has made me think otherwise.
When Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine came out with our Comic Relief Issue # 33 both Mad Marc Rude and Shawn Kerri premiered in this issue.
I have been studying both of their signatures. Both are different yet there is a similarity, though I must admit a very subtle one. As is their art.
The “A” looks like a Mad Marc Rude “A.” It has the format of his signatures. Yet it looks like her signature in how the rest is formed except for two things.
A “C” is added to the beginning and an “E” is added at the end.
The cartoon is humorous filled with punk savvy and has the Mad Marc Rude / Shawn Kerri style. During the early punk scene most all of our communications / correspondence was done through the mail. So many artists, friends, bands and beyond I never met in person. This is the case with Mad Marc Rude and Shawn Kerri. As a punk historian I may not find a conclusion to this narrative. Someone please help me debunk this with solid evidence.
Expose the falseness or futility of this. DEBUNK THE PUNK!
“A gentleman with the mad soul of an Irish convict poet’: remembering Chris Bailey, and the blazing comet that was The Saints.”
~ John Willsteed
Published: April 11, 2022 9.44pm EDT.
“Chris Bailey isn’t the first of our creative children to leave this life behind and move on into memory. With their passing, like the returning comet, the past is freshly illuminated, allowing us to look back at our young lives. Back when the future was broad in front of us, urged on by voices like Bailey’s to open our eyes and see the world.”
Rendering of the band The Saints. Hudley Flipside, 2010.
I have often written that the band The Saints is one of my only addictions in my life. After the death of Chris Bailey, (now one year ago).
I have been grieving him and a general time shift. The 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, 2010s and now. Over 40 years. This band led me on a path into a different realm of being. I found a bunch of misfits like me.
I found my voice and I awoke from a kind of existential youthful experience to find myself and my soul. Music, friends, and a punk community that still holds my heart. Yet also knowing Chris Bailey was born the same time and so close to mine … we share these same generations or ten-year changes.
Youth to adulthood and being senior citizens. As this post explains so much more in an indirect way too. In my grief I decided to do something that I do once in a while to soothe my soul. I reached out to Carl Jung books. What came to mind yesterday was something from one of Carl Jung’s Black Books. Volume two page 175-6.
I read from the last paragraph. I call it random reading. The intuitive response is amazing to me. Encouraging action also. So, with this so much is shared, and I am content to move on past my grief. Into a new season of life knowing that,
“the world beyond, where men are whole and complete, unlike here. The saint’s halo also characterizes his transcendent shining light, his psychic being.” (p.162) The Black Books, Volume Two, Carl Jung
Life endures … this gives me hope maybe like finding the Sun!
“In this moment the enormous tension was released and like rain it swept away [57/58] everything that was tensed, too highly strung. And soon sleep returned and brought with it a curiously beautiful image.” {138}
“Forms walked clad in white silk in a colored atmosphere. Each surrounded by a strangely fragrant, glowing tinted aura, some reddish, the others blueish and greenish.” {139}
{138} “This paragraph was replaced in LN by “Then I had a second vision.” ” (p.162).
Picture.. reversed.
The Saints (Barry Francis, Ivor Hay, Janine Hall, Bruce Callaway, Chris Bailey) at The Hero of Waterloo, Sydney. 1980. Picture by Judi Dransfield Kuepper.) Image taken from article by John Willsteed,
“Jung recounted this dream to Aniela Jaffé and commented upon it as follow: This is some kind of in-between realm (the term definitely occurs in the original version of the dream) The idea was that if one is confronted with the shadow- as was the case through the experience of Siegfried’s dream then the idea comes:
I enter into a twilight: I am this and yet also something else. And this doubleness an abdication of the unconscious, which reached strangely far beyond me.
Like a saint’s halo- This has a strange effect on the attitude toward the human being.
If one is in the company of several persons, and one knows them and knows about their shadows, one then sees these people as they are, but are also something entirely different. They are surrounded by a strange sphere. They live in a strange, light-colored sphere, which circumscribes their ‘other’ state.
This seemed to me to be like a vision of the world beyond, where men are whole and complete, unlike here. The saint’s halo also characterizes his transcendent shining light, his psychic being.”{139} (MP, p. 170)
The reminder of this entry was replaced in LN by “I know, I have stridden across the depths. Through guilt I have become newborn.” (p.162)
Once at a pub a guy came up and said, “What do I call you HUD, Hudley Flipside or Holly?” I told him, “… just call me what you want…. ‘Hey you’ will do.”
At the Pub
I struggled with the name Hudley Flipside but now I have a solid feel for it as my good writer’s name that has history and contemporary standing as a dame to be reckoned with. Over 40 years now!
Being a behind the scenes punk was fun. It was a lot of hard work and was often boring. Such as picking up the mail every day, typing endless words written by punkers whose writing was hard to read. When no one else would do the work, I did it.
For all the good punks celebrations going on around here. I want to join in and say a little something about the Hudley Flipside name. My last name was Hudson. Someone called me HUD… maybe X-8… and it caught on. Or maybe it was someone from a band before Flipside Fanzine… who knows?
The point being it became my name as a publisher and co-owner of an underground punk Fanzine. I am kind of put upon to say that I did not think the “punk rock community” would be so uplifting and supportive of itself. There were times in the 90s when I ran away from it and hated it. Not the case now.
I’ve learned to appreciate it and try to flow with the best of it. I am part of the punk community whether I like it or not. Anyway, as I am an old dame now, I want to join in with one of the best pictures taken of me as a youngster by Al Flipside. He took a lot of them too. We had thousands of pictures and negatives all around the place. Pictures of cats, bands and beyond.
Today I was watching as the wind blew a whirlwind on top of a pool of water. It moved around as a tornado or Golden Ratio. A soft movement as it was. I authored this poem at the end of a Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine CATALOG that I put together. I was most likely 20 or 21, maybe younger or older. A 1980s me. I wonder where I was back then? So goes my journey of Intellectual Property and gathering Flipside merchandise together. It was nice to see it all again. So, here is a place if anyone wants to know some original source of Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine. I will continue to look for more of it from the 1980s.
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