RickyS
10-26-2007, 06:29 PM
This should be amazing!
Here's the press release-
BRENDAN MULLEN & ECHO PRESENTS
HEY, MORTALITY!
Dead or Alive in 07?
PUNK VETERAN’S DAY, 2007
THE MASQUE 30th ANNIVERSARY PARTY & BOOK RELEASE
Venue: Echoplex + Echo
Date: Sunday, November 11, 2007
Time: 5pm onwards
Where: Enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd, between Scott & Park Avenues in Echo Park, CA
Who: THE PLUGZ (Tito Larriva, Barry McBride & Charlie Quintana), THE EYES (Charlotte Caffey of the Go Go’s; DJ Bonebrake of X, Knitters; and Joe Ramirez of Black Randy & the Metro Squad), SKULLS and a hell of a lot more TBA. All Ages
Celebrate the release of Live at the Masque 77-79 (R77/Gingko Press) a 300+ page photo artbook painstakingly compiled and edited
by Brendan Mullen (Masque founder-author) and street art digital archivist Roger Gastman (founder of R77 Books) featuring several different locations for the Masque and Masque Presents shows,
including the original basement space of Cecil b. de Mille’s building
in downtown Hollywood.
Salute the songwriting and musicians of the Masque era, a short-lived time in Angeleno-So Cal pop culture during 77-79 where art school educated schlubbs rubbed elbows and groins with socially alienated suburban teens and street people to create a separatist template for an entire renaissance of undergound music, arts, fashion and lifestyle that spanned the 80s and 90s.
More about the line-up:
Plugz (Tito Larriva, Barry McBride & Charlie Quintana) will reunite for the first time since 1982 to perform the Electrify Me album in its entirety. This classic recording was the first full-length studio album self-produced, self-released on their own label by any band from the ’77 punk scene.
THE EYES
Starring Charlotte Caffey of the Go Go’s, DJ Bonebrake (X, Knitters) and Joe Ramirez (Black Randy & the Metro Squad)…one of the original pop-punkers to play the Masque, the Eyes beautifully belied the myth that punk rock bands didn’t know how to play their instruments. Along with the Avengers, the Eyes were Masque regulars and an unacknowledged early influence on X, still getting their sound down during 1977.
This original version of the Eyes broke up during 1978 when X raided DJ and the Go Go’s bagged Charlotte. Joe Ramirez who played punk rock on a Telecaster and performed and recorded with Black Randy’s band, will fly in specially from his current home in Caspar, Wyoming.
SKULLS
Billy Bones and his new band convenes an open jam for all living alumni from the beginning of the band [Fall of 1977] to the present. Expect all the early hits and probably some deranged covers: Victims, Incomplete Suicide, Kill Me, Kill Me, Building Models, On Target, etc.
CONTROLLERS
Along with the Skulls, the Michigan-transplanted Controllers played the Masque the most where they attracted the attention of NY-transplanted Fluxus artist Al Hansen who managed them from late
‘77 into 79. Stingray will throw in a few numbers by his other band Kaos. I begged him for Iron Dream, at least.
Many more bands TBA next week…
More about the book:
Previously unpublished photos, posters, flyers for bands who got their start there like X, Go Go’s, Dickies, Bags, Eyes, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, Plugz, Skulls, Controllers and the Deadbeats leap out
of every page, many of them in full color. Also included are pre-Masque bands who played there to ever-expanding audiences, namely the Alleycats, Zeros, Dils, Screamers, Germs, Weirdos, Avengers, Mau
Mau’s, and many more pioneers of early West Coast punk/hardcore.
Photography by: Michael Yampolsky, Frank Gargani, Eric Blum, Melanie Nissen, Ann Summa, Al Flipside, Dawn Wirth, Gaby Berlin, Donna Santisi, Jenny Lens, Alain Saint-Alix, Jules Bates, Carol Torres, Bibbe Hansen, Jill Ash, Jill Von Hoffman, Ladd McPartland, Scott Lindgren, Philomena Winstanley, Kerry Colonna, Herb Wrede, Chris D., David Guilburt, Tony Montesion and others.
Poster/flyer designers: David Allen, Judith Bell, David Brown, Exene Cervenka, Chris D., Margaret Guzman, Larry “Dammit” Hammett, Havoc, Lux Interior, Bob Biggs, Tony Kinman, Paul Lesperance, Paul Picasso, Tom Recchion, Cliff Roman, Brendan Mullen…
Foreword by curator-historian Kristine McKenna.
Introduction by Brendan Mullen.
BLURBS
You know in Escape From New York when Snake Pliskin goes stalking around some bombed-out mutant habitat and glimpses some nasty business in the shed with the shattered windows? Or in Alien III when the next victim is looking for a way out and peeks into a room where the alien is dragging some lopped off human chunk? Or, in Fellini's Satyricon, where the lads and Giton the slave boy are coming home to the Tower of Babel…with all this weird action happening in the side rooms? That was the Masque. We had a lot of fun. You knew the LA punk scene was the
real thing because it kept on happening. Gary Panter, artist
This book is a wonderful illustration of why The Masque was more than just a punk rock venue, why it was a place where one could go any hour of the day or night and find kinship. "To escape horror, one must first bury oneself in it." This quote [from Jean Genet] is graffiti’d onto a wall which must have seemed a terrifying place to a casual observer but to those who created it, it was our darkness and horror that filled and permeated those rooms. We exorcised our demons down there. We buried ourselves in our own horrors and weren't afraid of them anymore. Alice Bag, artist
The Masque was like heaven and hell rolled into one. You could always
go there..it was like the clubhouse…it was the coolest, like a bomb shelter, a basement..all these weird rooms and stairways going up to a cement ceiling…it was so amazing, such a dive…but it was our dive and you could just scrawl all over the walls. The bands were great when they were just starting, all the best bands played their best shows at the Masque..” Hellin Killer, member of The Plunger Sisters.
The Masque was kinda a speakeasy and a clubhouse for misfits. You got a sense of something really big going on and you’d go, “How come I’m one of these people?” It was an overwhelming sense of awe that it was even happening…mingling with people from different social backgrounds was great…Claude Bessy was completely different from Belinda Carlisle and there they were. Even though a lot of us didn’t have much in common, we were together because there was nowhere else for us to go…” Exene Cervenka, artist
The sort of cultural phenomenon that blossomed at the Masque requires a precisely calibrated convergence of energies; conditions must be perfect, and perfection is a fleeting and short-lived thing. Though punk has been trudging along for decades, the glory days of that first generation didn’t last very long. That the glory days came to pass at all has a lot to do with Brendan Mullen. L.A. punk probably would’ve happened without his heroic efforts but it’s hard for me to imagine such a thing, because he was so central to what transpired here thirty years ago. The necessary kindling had accumulated in sufficient quantity independent of him, but he’s the one who lit the match, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. It was
a privilege to be part of it. Kristine McKenna, journalist-curator-historian.
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Here's the press release-
BRENDAN MULLEN & ECHO PRESENTS
HEY, MORTALITY!
Dead or Alive in 07?
PUNK VETERAN’S DAY, 2007
THE MASQUE 30th ANNIVERSARY PARTY & BOOK RELEASE
Venue: Echoplex + Echo
Date: Sunday, November 11, 2007
Time: 5pm onwards
Where: Enter at 1154 Glendale Blvd, between Scott & Park Avenues in Echo Park, CA
Who: THE PLUGZ (Tito Larriva, Barry McBride & Charlie Quintana), THE EYES (Charlotte Caffey of the Go Go’s; DJ Bonebrake of X, Knitters; and Joe Ramirez of Black Randy & the Metro Squad), SKULLS and a hell of a lot more TBA. All Ages
Celebrate the release of Live at the Masque 77-79 (R77/Gingko Press) a 300+ page photo artbook painstakingly compiled and edited
by Brendan Mullen (Masque founder-author) and street art digital archivist Roger Gastman (founder of R77 Books) featuring several different locations for the Masque and Masque Presents shows,
including the original basement space of Cecil b. de Mille’s building
in downtown Hollywood.
Salute the songwriting and musicians of the Masque era, a short-lived time in Angeleno-So Cal pop culture during 77-79 where art school educated schlubbs rubbed elbows and groins with socially alienated suburban teens and street people to create a separatist template for an entire renaissance of undergound music, arts, fashion and lifestyle that spanned the 80s and 90s.
More about the line-up:
Plugz (Tito Larriva, Barry McBride & Charlie Quintana) will reunite for the first time since 1982 to perform the Electrify Me album in its entirety. This classic recording was the first full-length studio album self-produced, self-released on their own label by any band from the ’77 punk scene.
THE EYES
Starring Charlotte Caffey of the Go Go’s, DJ Bonebrake (X, Knitters) and Joe Ramirez (Black Randy & the Metro Squad)…one of the original pop-punkers to play the Masque, the Eyes beautifully belied the myth that punk rock bands didn’t know how to play their instruments. Along with the Avengers, the Eyes were Masque regulars and an unacknowledged early influence on X, still getting their sound down during 1977.
This original version of the Eyes broke up during 1978 when X raided DJ and the Go Go’s bagged Charlotte. Joe Ramirez who played punk rock on a Telecaster and performed and recorded with Black Randy’s band, will fly in specially from his current home in Caspar, Wyoming.
SKULLS
Billy Bones and his new band convenes an open jam for all living alumni from the beginning of the band [Fall of 1977] to the present. Expect all the early hits and probably some deranged covers: Victims, Incomplete Suicide, Kill Me, Kill Me, Building Models, On Target, etc.
CONTROLLERS
Along with the Skulls, the Michigan-transplanted Controllers played the Masque the most where they attracted the attention of NY-transplanted Fluxus artist Al Hansen who managed them from late
‘77 into 79. Stingray will throw in a few numbers by his other band Kaos. I begged him for Iron Dream, at least.
Many more bands TBA next week…
More about the book:
Previously unpublished photos, posters, flyers for bands who got their start there like X, Go Go’s, Dickies, Bags, Eyes, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, Plugz, Skulls, Controllers and the Deadbeats leap out
of every page, many of them in full color. Also included are pre-Masque bands who played there to ever-expanding audiences, namely the Alleycats, Zeros, Dils, Screamers, Germs, Weirdos, Avengers, Mau
Mau’s, and many more pioneers of early West Coast punk/hardcore.
Photography by: Michael Yampolsky, Frank Gargani, Eric Blum, Melanie Nissen, Ann Summa, Al Flipside, Dawn Wirth, Gaby Berlin, Donna Santisi, Jenny Lens, Alain Saint-Alix, Jules Bates, Carol Torres, Bibbe Hansen, Jill Ash, Jill Von Hoffman, Ladd McPartland, Scott Lindgren, Philomena Winstanley, Kerry Colonna, Herb Wrede, Chris D., David Guilburt, Tony Montesion and others.
Poster/flyer designers: David Allen, Judith Bell, David Brown, Exene Cervenka, Chris D., Margaret Guzman, Larry “Dammit” Hammett, Havoc, Lux Interior, Bob Biggs, Tony Kinman, Paul Lesperance, Paul Picasso, Tom Recchion, Cliff Roman, Brendan Mullen…
Foreword by curator-historian Kristine McKenna.
Introduction by Brendan Mullen.
BLURBS
You know in Escape From New York when Snake Pliskin goes stalking around some bombed-out mutant habitat and glimpses some nasty business in the shed with the shattered windows? Or in Alien III when the next victim is looking for a way out and peeks into a room where the alien is dragging some lopped off human chunk? Or, in Fellini's Satyricon, where the lads and Giton the slave boy are coming home to the Tower of Babel…with all this weird action happening in the side rooms? That was the Masque. We had a lot of fun. You knew the LA punk scene was the
real thing because it kept on happening. Gary Panter, artist
This book is a wonderful illustration of why The Masque was more than just a punk rock venue, why it was a place where one could go any hour of the day or night and find kinship. "To escape horror, one must first bury oneself in it." This quote [from Jean Genet] is graffiti’d onto a wall which must have seemed a terrifying place to a casual observer but to those who created it, it was our darkness and horror that filled and permeated those rooms. We exorcised our demons down there. We buried ourselves in our own horrors and weren't afraid of them anymore. Alice Bag, artist
The Masque was like heaven and hell rolled into one. You could always
go there..it was like the clubhouse…it was the coolest, like a bomb shelter, a basement..all these weird rooms and stairways going up to a cement ceiling…it was so amazing, such a dive…but it was our dive and you could just scrawl all over the walls. The bands were great when they were just starting, all the best bands played their best shows at the Masque..” Hellin Killer, member of The Plunger Sisters.
The Masque was kinda a speakeasy and a clubhouse for misfits. You got a sense of something really big going on and you’d go, “How come I’m one of these people?” It was an overwhelming sense of awe that it was even happening…mingling with people from different social backgrounds was great…Claude Bessy was completely different from Belinda Carlisle and there they were. Even though a lot of us didn’t have much in common, we were together because there was nowhere else for us to go…” Exene Cervenka, artist
The sort of cultural phenomenon that blossomed at the Masque requires a precisely calibrated convergence of energies; conditions must be perfect, and perfection is a fleeting and short-lived thing. Though punk has been trudging along for decades, the glory days of that first generation didn’t last very long. That the glory days came to pass at all has a lot to do with Brendan Mullen. L.A. punk probably would’ve happened without his heroic efforts but it’s hard for me to imagine such a thing, because he was so central to what transpired here thirty years ago. The necessary kindling had accumulated in sufficient quantity independent of him, but he’s the one who lit the match, and I’ll always be grateful to him for that. It was
a privilege to be part of it. Kristine McKenna, journalist-curator-historian.
Reply With Quote