“The Greek poet Orpheus carried Willow branches as a symbol of the inspiration this sound gave.”
weeping willow
I pause outside as bee and lady bug fly around.
Sweet is the nectar from
lemon tree and lavender.
Letting go of worries and
desires that do not serve me now.
An old friend, a song, comes to mind
as my "leaves in the wind."
Perfect are old recorded songs
and the insect, flower and tree!
Somehow as I pause in breathing,
I am lost in this perfection.
The recurring of pause of being,
the repetition of listening to old songs
the heartfelt listening and watching nature,
Is my catalyst for artistic expression.
Never to let us down !!
“My Punkalullaby is incredibly brave journal about the early days of Flipside, High School, discovering Nirvana, and the LA punk scene. Many of the stories about the LA scene have been told repeated ad nauseam, but Hudley has a unique perspective on what happened and what it was like.”
~ Steve Hart, New Wave Chicken Magazine
Out today! Take off where the last one left off. The journey continues… this is the drugs and foolish love issue.
December 1979 is around 37 years ago. A very tight and small club of mutual fans, promoters and band members were a rebellious team. Before Henry Rollins galore, when the underground punk scene was unique, new and growing as a wild-fire. I swear our agenda was as sincere and planned as peeing on the walls. I use to take a few photographs back in the day as the shift from Hollywood to Orange county became the thing like a large earth quake. Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine was there hanging with the scene. Drunk and wild as a windblown day.
I just signed an agreement to releases an image I took a long time ago about the punk scene for a film called “20th Century Women.” The image is my intellectual property. Some day when, hopefully, my grand-kids or great grand kids are viewing this film they may take to heart what their “grand ma ma” did for an underground punk scene. It feels good to share a history with a company that respected my rights. They pursued me with respect and integrity. It feels very good in the scheme of my life. There are many stories from THE BIG PUNK ROCK this is mine.
The photograph is of Black Flag at the Church with Keith Morris singing after they had officially broken up, a unique photograph is the photograph that I have licensed today. It is not about the money, it is about how I am still amazed that anyone would care about a hot, sleazy, little underground church basement in some place called nowheresville some 37 years ago… because we knew at that time, at that time & place, that no one gave a fuck! I am amused that this lost sentiment has changed. I am happy to signature this agreement today.
Life is a song; having a beginning, middle and end. A song has a soul each time you hear it. A song shares feelings and memories which awaken the life lived. A song holds on to experiences of good and the bad times! A song has a spirit which is eternally youthful, middle-aged and old. A song ends as all living things. A song has all the qualities of life. A song amplifies us, the human being, who create the songs and those that resurrect listening to the songs … time and time again.
Da Capo Press is under a big black sky. Yes, it is good that we all have the freedom to share our stories. In the supermarket I seem to get some deep emotions pulled up. We are all visually abused at the checkout stand. As usual I had to turn the ugly Trump man image around. Was it Time, Time/Life, Rolling Stone, People are another big media cutaneous pig where I viewed his image, and by chance the inside front page had a book review. My brain sucked it in so fast and I did not want to read it… but it came at me like a kamikaze knife. “The real punk rock …,” “X and the Go-Go’s, “the beloved untouchable Minutemen.” Then there was the one image of Henry Rollins …. His bald head.
“It is a curse…”
I put my blueberries and tortillas on the checkout stand. I know how big media gets a review in such magazines. Is it an honest interview or is it a promotional piece, or, a big advertisement? It all reeks and my heart breaks a bit to think about how the ‘young punk dead’ would rebel against this… as they did 30 years ago.
At Flipside Fanzine we had an endless supply of photos of all the punk bands. It was common underground weed photographs. Not for sale, or for a museum or for any uptown media DICKS. That was not our agenda.
Henry Rollins’s shaved head,
“Twenty something years ago; what issue was my review of Black Flag live in? A show where I called him a penis head?”
I think it was because he was one big muscle of sweat. It was meant to be a humorous blow from an underground nobody punker chick reviewing just another show. Henry took it like an evangelical’s literal agenda when reading the bible. He was not hip to Los Angeles yet.
By the time the punk scene hit the ‘80s there was a continuous explosion of riptide underground movements happening at the same time. Bands like X and the Go-Go’s went with the big labels. They left the underground punk scene and faded. A mirage in the desert of big media. We did not focus on them anymore.
Was it 12 years ago when the “Old-School” nostalgia punk thing started to happen? It has passed its peak baby. I was a silly doe when I approached Santa Monica Press and Feral House Publishing 12 years ago with my memoirs about the punk scene. No one was interested. I even shared my ideas with punk Icon Keith Morris? No dice…that is how vinyl melts… old school wise.
I am not bitter just sad. I find that some people are too eager to tell their story in a big way. Big promotional campaigns and all the media hype is a downer man. I wanted to write my memoir because I was concerned that the punk scene, as Flipside Fanzine, might be forgotten? Why am I so loyal … I am still trying to figure it out!
What I have learned is this, I am more determined to do it myself now. DO It Myself BABY… locally and with my own media machine; a computer, scanner and little art closet. I have my heavenly share of nasty sharpie pens, erasers and pencils too. I’ll hang with a community of peasants that don’t really want to break the membrane into the realm of fame and stars on Hollywood. I’ll stay a bard of the earth and sky, in the alley … to the ‘young punk dead.’
“…Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
I find comment ’bout my looks irrelativity,
Think I’ll go and have some fun,
‘Cos it’s all for free.
I’m not searching for a reason to enjoy myself…,” – Yardbirds
How I looked in the dream last night !
Had one of those dreams again of being back at the scene of the 1980s. A club morphed into a Golden Voice show! The tight feelings were there of knowing all the bands and the characters and players ! Jim Kaa of the Crowd was talking in my ear when brother Gus showed up. We are not talking these days, but in this dream we approached each other for a forgiving hug when he turned into myself. How I look now.
I asked myself if I had the password to get in to the show? I said it does not matter cause I am in and not going anywhere!
Lots of guys from bands were roaming around! I was consciously aware enough to dig being back in the middle of things. Running around and being part of what was happening…like everyone else there! My scene, my friends something to offer and cover! Al approached me, we then were at an adjoining Chinese restaurant. We were shooting the breeze ! I was wondering where the bar was ’cause a cold beer sounded good to ease my social tension!
Al had a new computerized contraption that took pictures, recorded bands and interviewed bands; ready for documenting the whole scene. All from a large black computer book!
He was on the cutting edge and creative as usual. As we were eating our noodles a band came on! He said he had to go see about a band. I told him go ahead I’ll watch over your noodles until you get back !!
I awoke from the dream with a missing feeling of belonging once to a music scene that was overwhelming, wild and unpredictable. I was spoiled then! My heart will always mourn those days of youthful rebellion !
The first bubblegum comic book to suck your socks off… and they’re coming to your local suburbia art walk before we melt into oblivion with the Moth man !!
Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion.
~Arthur Koestler
Humid and a belly filled with coffee on a Sunday while kids are playing their games; I find that I am OK! I look to see that the cats are OK too. Youngest is silent as oldest is screaming at his friends as he games online. An easy Sunday in my cave, then all of a sudden like a flash of lightning from yesterdays storm, my imagined sharp arm reaches through the air pulling me, with eyes-closed, to the books on the brown shelf. I know, I just saw the cult classic Equinox* last night. All about a book and a Demon…Yes a book can change ones perspective about life. Here this reading of some random video promotion… moves us to something musical…
“To the Minutemen, the world was divided between two things-gigs and flyers. Everything was playing shows or getting people to the shows. The rest was not reality.”
~ A History Lesson Part One Synopsis by Dave Travis
This small paragraph can’t be the motif of Punk Rock… but it is…, riding the wave with many guys who were at that place from “one note to the next,” I am glad that this random pick helped me to let go of my grieving process. What I feel for my punk-rock-youthful days, and when life really was only “gigs and flyers!”
Here at the office of The Seminary Of Praying Mantis are many many books. Mantis does more than, with silence and insightful grace, sit on a flower or leaf. Often Mantis is found engaged in a book. As this is a seminary of sorts, and today is under the wonderful magic of a waxing gibbous moon; this day comes forth the ritual of random pick from a book day. Ordained by mantis and so forth etc… with a front leg, that is sharp with spines, grasps open a book… randomly of course !
2015: Jumping in the truck and taking the kid to school. Turning on the radio while a song is starting to play. So we turn it up as loud as can be. The car radio vibrating as truck bounces its way down the road…breaking the mediocrity of routine by invoking my “puella” once more. Looking over at son, he is clearly into the drums because he is mocking the drum beats.
“The Ballroom Blitz” is a song written by Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman and originally recorded by the British rock band The Sweet. Billboard ranked it as the No. 16 song for 1975.”
1976: At the age of 18 the song Ballroom Blitz played on the Telefunken Radio. The radio vibrated on the wood shelve next to the fireplace. It was free FM KROQ.
“Poo Poo Pee DOO…KROQ”
“KROQ’s 1976 rebirth was perfectly timed with the emergence of punk rock and New Wave and KROQ quickly became the voice of the burgeoning Los Angeles scene, with disc jockey Rodney Bingenheimer joining the station and introducing many new and local bands, including The Ramones, The Runaways, The Stray Cats and The Go-Gos, on his massively influential shows.[7] As punk expanded its hold on the music scene of the mid to late 1970s, KROQ steadily adding more of it to their freeform format, cementing their place in the Los Angeles market.[8] The station’s proximity to Hollywood and the Los Angeles punk rock scene gave it a unique place in the development of this newer music and much later with the alternative rock genre. In the late 70s and early 80s KROQ was quickly becoming one of the most influential radio stations in broadcast history.”
Whenever Ballroom Blitz came on the radio I bounced like a rubber ball around any room. A song that is responsible for pulling me into the world of KROQ, RodneyBingenheimer ( Rodney On The Rocks ) and the Los Angeles punk rock.. (Ya there was a time before Henry… amen hallelujah!!)
If a song can encapsulate youthful dreams and rebellion …this is the one for me. Like many songs that we take for granted, this tune always seems as new as the day it was new…fresh, stimulating and wild as the Los Angeles streets I did join. It is a very wild song. The word very and wild are my favorite words and I use the words while describing this song…ya ya ya!!
I am a graphic artist. I work on 8 ½ by 11 or 11 by 17-inch water color paper. I like using pencil, ink, and watercolors. I also do some of my Flopside comics on Carson Comic book layout paper. I like to try and catch the essence of images, be it flowers, humor, political editorials or the praying mantis.
Ἡ Πότνια Θηρῶν … My champion and my love… this site is dedicated to her !! Potnia Theron ~ Lady of the wild animals.
QUOTES :
It is the prime task of a truly modern mind to endure both the spiritual and the practical as the framework for her life.
Johnson, Robert A.. She: Understanding Feminine Psychology (p. 80). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. ______________________________________________________________
The Mantis will sit in an attitude of extreme reverence and contemplation, his head turned sometimes slightly on side as if he were waiting…for the wind to come from far beyond the mountains on the other side of the desert to bring him a story of life before and beyond the moment. …~ Pg. 22.
The Creative Pattern In Primitive Africa by Laurens van der Post
.......................................................................................
Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. (Roy Ascott’s phrase.) That solves a lot of problems: we don’t have to argue whether photographs are art, or whether performances are art, or whether Carl Andre’s bricks or Andrew Serranos’s piss or Little Richard’s ‘Long Tall Sally’ are art, because we say, ‘Art is something that happens, a process, not a quality, and all sorts of things can make it happen.’ … [W]hat makes a work of art ‘good’ for you is not something that is already ‘inside’ it, but something that happens inside you — so the value of the work lies in the degree to which it can help you have the kind of experience that you call art.
~ Brian Eno
................................................................................
Mysterious in day's broad light,
Nature retains her veil, despite our imprecations,
and what she won't reveal to human mind or sight
levers, screws or hammers
cannot wrench from her. ~ Goethe
Faust part 1
Writing has laws of perspective, of light and shade just as painting does, or music. If you are born knowing them, fine. If not, learn them. Then rearrange the rules to suit yourself.
~ Pg 8 The Divine Comedy ~ Dante
...........................................................................
"I always liked the intensity of the recording."
~ Chris Bailey from the band The Saints
............................................................................
"Sometimes people try and tell me what is and isn't punk, or that GBH do or don't fit in, but they're generally no older than my socks, and they know about as much. I've lived my life doing what I want the way I want to ever since I got expelled from school. Ever since 1977....That's punk rock"
~ Ross Lomas: From his Book City Baby.
.............................................................................
"As I was walking among the fires of Hell,
delighted with the enjoyments of Genius;
which to Angels look like torment and insanity.
I collected some of their Proverbs. "
~ William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell", 1790
.................................................................................
"This disco guy wanted funk in our sound with 10,000 backing vocals, the guy laughed at Tony when he tried to sing, they treated us like shit. Casey wanted to hit that engineer dick...Posh Boy told us not to play games with him, he'd play games with us. That engineer was a real dick."
~ Steve Soto ADOLESCENTS
---------------------------
The Electromagnetic Hypothesis of Olfaction” at the Society for Scientific Exploration conclude that insects use a portion of the EM spectrum to communicate.” ‘Pg 207 Lost Star of Myth and Time by Walter Cruttenden
-----------------------------
HEY YOU !! My Intellectual property
Please if you take anything from this site please tag hudleyflipside.com as the source of this material. NOTICE this is all copyright material Hudley Flipside (aka Hud) and Hudley Mantis.... most importantly 'Hudley' is the pen name and pseudonym created by (me) Holly Duval Cornell.
