Irrelativity

“…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

009 — How I looked in the dream last night !

Had one of those dreams 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 I turned into myself. How I look now.

I asked myself if I had the password to get into the show? I said it does not matter because 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 Flipside 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! Al said he had to go see about a band. I told him go ahead I will 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!

Bubble Gum Flopside Comics

Experience the first bubblegum comic that will blow your socks off… and they’re coming to your local area before we soar into a brighter future with the Mothman!!

Bubble Gum Flopside Comics… so go screw!

Sunday Is Random pick and random read day….“gigs and flyers!”

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!”

Until next Sunday….

Random Book Day By Hudley

http://sugarbuzzmagazine.com/bands/davetravis/davetravis.html

*Equinox 1970 Film

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067055/

The Most Interesting Woman Alive…

Random Pick day is Sunday !

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 !

Faust (Part One)

Mephistopheles says to Faust:

That’s very nice.

There’s only one thing I find wrong;

Time is short, art is long.

You could do with a little artistic advice.

Confederate with one of the poets

And let him flog his imagination

To heap all virtues on your head,

A head with such a reputation:

Lion’s bravery,

Stags’ velocity,

Fire of Italy,

Northern tenacity,

Let him find out the secret art

Of combining craft with a noble heart

And of being in love like a young man,

Hotly, but working to a plan.

Such a person-I’d like to meet him;

“Mr. Microcosm” is how I’d greet him.

All About A Song: Very Very, Wild Wild…

Punk Rock Historian and Professional Consultant

Hudley Flipside

8/30/2022

I resurrected this old post because it is a good story about the history of a song. As I am beholding to many. KROQ, Rodney Bingenheimer and the early Flipside Fanzine Crew and all of those nobody punks on the streets who welcomed me in… us in, no questions asked.

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 once “young woman” once more. Looking over at son, he is clearly into the drums because he is mocking the drumbeats.

“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”

Rodney, Posh Boy, Mike (ZED) and Steve (ZED). GOLD Records for the success of Beach Blvd. From Los Angeles Flipside Fanzine Number 20, The Circle Jerks Cover By Edward Colver

“The punk scene was like Halloween, Christmas, horror films, and freedom all at the same time. Overwhelmed, I felt as though I was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, mimicking Puck— taking on the images that were around me without question. I was becoming one with my punkalullaby. I coined the word punkalullaby. It means that the whole time I was in the punk rock scene, from beginning to end, it was all about a song. One song to the next pulled me though the scene. Once that loud music got into my blood there was nothing like it.”

~ HUDLEY FLIPSIDE, THE SEMINARY OF PRAYING MANTIS, MY PUNK@LULLABY

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, Rodney Bingenheimer (Rodney on The Rocks) and the Los Angeles punk rock scene. (Ya there was a time before Henry… amen hallelujah!!)

“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-Go’s, on his massively influential shows.”

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 I first heard the song Ballroom Blitz. Fresh, stimulating, and as wild as the Los Angeles streets I soon joined.

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!!

“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. 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.”

~KROQ Wikipedia

Helen Wrote…about Dead Clubs!!

Punk Rock Historian and Professional Consultant

~ Hudley Flipside

Recently, a few of our Los Angeles Clubs have closed or are in the process of transforming. All generations or music scenes go through these changes. Owners and promoters come and go. Yet what is happening now seems as revolutionary as when the underground scene claimed these clubs as their own. I speak from the late 70s to now because it is nothing new. I just hope that the youngsters will continue finding and creating a scene that comes from their rebellion. Technologies have changed everything!

We no longer go to shows to make friends and find support like we once did. We don’t need fanzines anymore or a band’s creative flyers. These are for the old-time collectors. Gamers and hand-held devices are changing the world.

It is something we all have to work out, because it can’t be what it used to be. Festivals are a nightmare from my perspective. No one can ever bring this particular youthful music scene back… no matter how anyone tries to ‘Viagra’ it. I find joy in reflecting back on this time.

I am presenting an extremely wonderful article by Flipside Fanzine’s Roving Reporter Helen Jewel. It is a good read. Ya might have to squint your eyes or zoom in a great deal to read it; I invite you to be amazed. Enjoy the patina of the original Flipside Fanzine. It has aged a lot. Again, Thank you Helen. I appreciate you much more now than I ever did then!!

From Issue Number 37 the mid-1980s. Dead Clubs by Helen Jewel

(With a little help from her friends!)

Tell Us the Truth

Sham 69 are playing around. Shows with good and bad reviews. As though my heart does not sense the beating heart of another comrade, from my youthful rebellion, who touches the soil of the land.

Dancing around and around in my room like Rumpelstiltskin around a fire singing these simple words;

“They don’t understand no they don’t understand
They don’t wanna understand…”

These are my first dancing memories of punk rock. As I spiraled into the heart of it… I also spiraled out. Seeing with peripheral vision the shadows of days gone by, I am often pulled again into this guilty, responsibility of a musical addition.

As a succubus that pulls at my firmer soul, I pull it off. I hold by conscience, my individual power and resist this. Jumping into the anger of youthful rebellion. I am not her anymore. Reflective and mature and proud… I can take it. Nothing to prove or take with me…but friendship.

No affirmation of great things to hold on to. As the rogue wave of darkness envelops those we love in death. So too the scene that once was is slowly taken away by this same darkness. Happy for the boys in the band that linger on…for now!!

“Everyone keeps telling me I’m gonna be free. We all know we’ll never be free.”

Belong Misdirected

We are twisted in soul because soul is by nature and of necessity in a tortuous condition…We might also be less threatened by the grotesque, horrible, and obscene , since, from the imaginal perspective, the bizarre would simple belong.

~ The Myth of Analysis, James Hillman

I am watching an old film Noir way to much. It is Crime of Passion featuring Bararab Starbuck, Sterling Hayden and Raymond Burr. Each time I watch it I study a different part of the film from a different perspective or character. A well written essay Noir. It is basically about passion put in the wrong place or misdirected passion. Maybe it is about ambition misdirected by love. I think this film has a message about the American dream. I like this film because it does keep the sexual passion in the glance of an eye, or the move towards the bedroom. Subtle words that leave the imagination to glow.

The soundtrack does tell you, very well, what the film is all about. A few twisted souls in this film, YES…. I will most likely watch it again…there is something beautiful waiting to be discovered that I just have not found yet.

Happy autumnal equinox.!!

Round-Up 30 minute Maniac

Cause no one needs a fanzine anymore…

Originally a 2014 post I was 56 and youngest son was 14. Now I am 64 and he is going to college at 22. The bands are still playing around the massive kaleidoscope exposition of festivals. I watch them explode and march on from town to town, city to city and country to country. The punk festivals are grandiose to see happening. Fun for the bands yet this little fanzine gal can’t go back to being a face in the crowd during a time of a terrible pandemic with an ‘ebb and flow’ which is rather unpredictable. I am glad I got to see them before festivals became a phenomenon of big and bigger shows with long and longer lists of bands. Or even the weird funky boat cruises. It leaves me a bit perplexed yet I can listen to the music anytime and my “amber moments” are still in my brain as fresh and palpable moments of a once punk scene.

Mockingly and nasty, as we stood in line in front of the Fonda Theater marquee, an older man on a bike wheeled by yelling,

“Ha ha maybe forty years ago!”

Saturday Night 2014 Hollywood,California

My son and I were standing in line. In front of us was a twenty-year-old and in back a couple about my age. These punk shows bring out the underground punk community. The good and disgusting levels. I love it so much my head almost burst.

01 – race against time 0:00
02 – knife edge 2:45
03 – lycanthropy 5:00
04 – necrophilia 7:34
05 – sick boy 9:33
06 – state executioner 12:06
07 – dead on arrival 14:39
08 – generals 12:18
09 – freak 19:37
10 – wardogs 22:06
11 – city baby attacked by rats 23:37
12 – City babys revenge 26:13

Last night I could hardly make it through Lycanthropy while fighting off some guy who wanted to continually throw my son up on stage. Even though son seemed to like it. He said,

“I saw Colin’s face flash by me.“

Up front the stage was hot. All were intimated by the solar flares of sun burning in the Fonda Theater. A halo hot sauna of extreme is how it was there. A full house.

The 5th Wave at the Fonda Theater pic by Hudley

The 5th Wave slashed the theater with some questionable lyrics, mixed with saxophone and trombone ska. Excellent! Their fans shining. I was very impressed by the courtesy of the young punk women this evening.

A smile was easily shared and that communal feelings of a punk rock community ran in my heart. Strangely different from my generation. I was very impressed indeed. A lot of women in groups and alone gave me hugs for having a son with me.

I hope son takes advantage of this when he gets beyond my reach, because now he has a silence about him that I respect.

The Ads were so satisfying I cried. I love them and again always superimposed images from over the years blended with the reality of now. Fast songs have matured nicely into longer ones. Remarkable! As Steve Soto was there still playing his original sound.

GBH were wild as they always are. Yet, they were a little rushed. I hear it is an intense tour. Colin’s voice was hoarse, yet it was hard to tell over the audience singing their songs. Colin made a stab at the fans in the balcony who were not moving.

Who were just sitting there as being lazy and with other critiques? I don’t know why so many young punks came up to me trying to exchange my receipt with theirs so they could sit in the balcony. It all was a bit confusing from my perspective.

Fun and eye-opening show with the usual subtle instilled words for those listening!!

We enjoy our punk rock community…so go screw Mr. Bike man over 50! This 50 something year old loves it still!!