2016 - Lobotomy on Display
When Punk Turned 40
In 2016, Pleasant Gehman and I had a retrospective of our zine Lobotomy at the downtown Los Angeles gallery, Lethal Amounts. We didn’t intentionally plan it for the year punk turned 40 - it just worked out that way. (You can see from the flyer that it the opening took pace on March 5, which is what day it was when I started writing this post). The exhibit included large format fine art prints of my “greatest hits” such as The Cramps, The Ramones, Joan Jett, and Iggy Pop. Pleasant enlarged certain wacky pages of Lobotomy into poster size, and displayed the originals - paste-ups and typed pages under glass.
Howie Pyro (he was in The Blessed and D Generation and numerous bands in between. During his teenage years, in The Blessed, he was one of Lobotomy’s NYC correspondents) wrote a fantastic article in Dangerous Minds that described the history of Lobotomy in a delightful and delicious way.
This story never gets old, and that’s how he opens his piece:
The Xeroxed fanzine became notorious in the Hollywood punk scene from its very first issue, when Kim Fowley threatened to sue 18-year-old Pleasant over the sarcastic and derogatory comments she wrote about him. Because Pleasant couldn’t afford to re-print her ‘zine, she hitchhiked or took a bus to the various record stores that carried Lobotomy and cut out the offending paragraph with scissors!
Punk may have been looking at 40, but Lobotomy was turning a young 39.
Our first issue was published in late Spring/early Summer 1977 and featured our friends Mumps on the cover. They had just played some shows at the Whisky, opening for Van Halen and were planning to come back again soon (they returned in the Fall, at the Starwood, opening for Devo on Halloween).
I remember having seats close by all of them for the Bryan Ferry concert at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium on June 12.
It’s easy for me to remember that date because it was my sister’s 16th birthday and my parents bought her a brand new Volkswagen Beetle in a deep blue. She drove down to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara on her own! She was much more savvy than me behind the wheel as she started driving when I did, and she is three years younger than me. But you know siblings - equal treatment = peace in the home. In fact, during the one year we were in high school together, she used to borrow my car at lunch time, unbeknownst to me. I didn’t find out until the day I went to get something out of the car… and it was not there. Of course, I reported it stolen and about 30 minutes later, it turned up, parked kind of near where I originally parked it, a bit askew, and with three $1 bills tucked into the steering wheel cover. My sister later told me that $3 was for gas.
By mid-1977, I was already taking as many photos as I could afford at every show I attended. This provided a ready-made archive for our future zine.
At the Whisky a GoGo alone, January and February featured multi-day bookings of Van Halen, The Motels, and the triumvirate of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers in their earliest Los Angeles gigs - Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Blondie, and The Ramones.
In March at the Starwood, there was John Cale ! I had already seen Lou Reed a couple months earlier, at the Roxy. My Velvet Underground jones was sated by seeing rock and roll’s most important-to-me creators in such small venues.
Cheap Trick headlined at the Starwood the following week. I am sad to report that my live photos of Cheap Trick drowned in Hurricane Sandy, and all I have left is this extreme close-up of Tom Petersson.
By the time April rolled around, there was a road trip to San Francisco to see Iggy Pop with David Bowie in his band on keyboards - Blondie opened for them! Television were on a parallel tour route. I saw them both multiple times that month.
And then Mumps came to town for gigs in May and June !
I can’t tell you HOW MUCH PLEASANT AND I LOVED MUMPS.
We were obsessed. They’re the first cover story for Lobotomy and the lack of coverage on bands like Mumps was a primary reason for starting a fanzine. This link is to a Brief History of Lobotomy.
And this link is to the 10-year-old event page on Facebook which was just a little bit more fun to revisit than I thought it would be.
Chris Ashford, who still runs WHAT? Records stopped by. He released the first records by The Germs and The Dils and other local OG punk bands.
While we didn’t coordinate this event to line up with punk turning 40, we did schedule it to dovetail with our regular UCLA seminars. I believe this is the year that Merch Girl was born, and we realized that the students in the Q&A asked more questions about our wild hijinx than about the historic cycles of popular culture (although we ALWAYS reference Paris between the Wars and Weimar Berlin - the era is the axle on our particular punk car). This is how War Stories was born. Our next seminars coincided with War Stories shows - first at El Cid, and then at the Roxy, and one in San Francisco too. We tried our hand last week at War Stories on ZOOM, and I think it may become a thing going forward…. Stay tuned.
Punk turns 50 this year, and the Summer of Hate turns 50 in 2027. I’m taking my exhibition - REtroSPECT / 50 Years of Photos on the road to celebrate in one long 2-in-1 kind of party. It’s going to be part photo exhibit, part Exploding Plastic Inevitable - punk style.
I’ll be visiting Chicago, Portland, San Francisco, Detroit, and Austin sooner than later this year - so keep your eyes open.
If you’d like to help me realize my Exploding Plastic Inevitable goals, have a look at my Flash Sale site, which changes monthly. There are great deals on photo prints, and these are the last opportunities to buy a print from the convenience of your electronic devices before they’re only available at my shows. This is how I fund-raise. I also take donations! You can chip in any amount on this link.
FINALLY - I am taking PRE-ORDERS for the image below.
Pleasant and I have done numerous photo sessions and this image comes from a day we spent shooting in her bedroom when she was still living at home.
I am making:
18x24 poster (will sell for $30)
11x14 prints (will sell for $50 - prints can be signed - signed posters are NOT available at this time)
Pre-order deposit is $20 for either item, and you can pay on this link.
You’ll receive a PayPal invoice for the remaining amount when your item is ready to ship, on or about March 17.
This edition will be limited to 50
- pre-orders will help determine how many of each format I’ll ultimately make.
FERRY FOREVER. Those shots are amazing. And a warm hello to you and Pleasant!