1980’s – Page 2 – Brian Ferrari's Blog

The Playground Swing

“I have been working on this piece for years.”

That’s what I told myself. When I went back to look for earlier drafts that I was sure I had started, I discovered that there were none. I never wrote anything down – I only thought about sharing this story. For years. Until now.

“Do you have any real ghost stories?” is a fun question that pops up occasionally in social situations. My go-to response is the story of The Playground Swing – an unexplained occurrence from when I was in the 6th grade. Whether or not it is an actual ghost story, the memory has stayed with me for 44 years.

Just as the clear, cool weather of an early September day can evoke memories of 9/11, the story of The Playground Swing always comes back to me on crisp October mornings. It sneaks in sideways while I’m going through my morning routine, or while I’m commuting. It evaporates before I ever sit down and type it out. There’s not a whole lot to the story, really. It’s that unexplained simplicity that makes it a bit anticlimactic in the telling.

It was the fall of 1980 and I was in 6th grade at Bowling Green Elementary school in East Meadow, New York. We had moved into my grandmother’s house the year before, after a year of unrest following my parents’ divorce. I was happy to be living there, in the cozy house my mother grew up in. I looked forward to going to the school that my parents, aunts, and uncles had all attended.

Once upon a time, I had been a popular kid, but this was our second move in under two years. I remember hearing that it was a bad age to be uprooted and have to make new friends. Obviously many kids maneuver their way through it successfully. I didn’t.

5th grade had been bad, but I did have a couple of new friends to help me get through it. When we got into 6th grade, they were in a different classroom on the other side of the school. In my class, there were no allies. It felt like they were all against me. Looking back now, I would have to say that, among those in my class, I was met with 50% aggression and 50% apathy.

I was a chubby kid in need of a shower and a haircut, with big eyes and thick lashes that caused me to be regularly mistaken for a girl. My class picture says it all: This is a photo of an 11-year-old who was misgendered by the photographer moments before he snapped the picture. When I rolled my eyes and said, “I’m a boy,” he sputtered “Oh, uh… I was talking to that girl over there.” Now smile! *Click*.

For years, my memory was this: One day, my entire class gathered after school to confront me as I walked through the playground towards home. I’m sure it wasn’t ALL of them but when faced with an angry mob of your peers gathering around you, well… I didn’t stop to take attendance. It was a lot of them.

What was their plan? To beat me up? What would that accomplish? I don’t think they actually knew either, and in that disorganization I was able to run away. My best defense was that I could always run fast.

My mother called the school to complain and I was allowed to stay home the next day. The vice-principal went and spoke to the class, asking why they were picking on me. The response landed me in his office for a lecture: I had a bad mouth. I cursed at everyone. This is what he was told. I was the problem. No mention of the taunts and name calling that were the catalysts for my colorful language.

Fuck them, I thought.

My teacher was Mr. Dillon, a soft-spoken beanpole of a man who had been teaching there since my parents attended in the 1950’s. He kept his Vantage cigarettes in the breast pocket of his shirt, and another teacher would stop in to watch the class while he went out for smoke breaks. He had lost his wife a few years before and seemed sad, defeated, and waiting to retire.

In the Bowling Green student handbook that nobody reads, I found that if I brought a note from my mother, I could go home for lunch. I don’t know of anyone else who did this or wanted to. Teachers and staff would look at me funny when I presented my note and told them I was heading out. I would run home to avoid the lunchtime awkwardness of where to sit, as well as any potential playground altercations.

We went on a field trip that year to the top of the World Trade Center, which I loved. Two things stick out about that trip: Standing up against the glass and looking down. It was dizzying. I also remember that when it was time for lunch, I sat with the teachers. They seemed puzzled.

Back to The Playground Swing. Our classroom overlooked the playground and on this one sunny and clear October morning, all of us began to notice this one swing moving back and forth, high and steady like a metronome. It was empty. There was no wind and all of the other swings were completely still. I don’t know how long this went on – it seemed like an hour.

Mr. Dillon tried to redirect our focus back inside the classroom. His voice had a nervous quiver to it that I had never heard before. He could see the swing too, and there was no visible explanation. There were no nearby structures for someone to hide in and pull a string to create this effect. It was a freestanding swing set in the middle of a flat asphalt playground.

By the time the lunch bell rang, the swinging had stopped. We all headed out into the hall, where the kids from the classroom next to ours were similarly perplexed – they had seen it too. There was talk of it being the ghost of some kid who died the year before I moved there, but I don’t remember the name, and surely I would have heard about this before.

Nobody had an explanation, and it never happened again. And that’s the story of The Playground Swing.

The school year went on. The bullying continued, although somehow I managed to avoid another angry mob scenario. One of my main tormentors was this butch brute of a gal who treated me as her physical and verbal punching bag. My mother once again called the school to request that she stop assaulting me, which resulted in her getting called to the vice-principal’s office. We were in music class when she returned. As she walked past where I was sitting, she grabbed the top of the back of my chair and slammed it towards the floor. I fell backwards, landing flat on my back with a loud crack. Everyone gasped. And nobody did a thing.

I got back into my chair, buried my head in my arms and sobbed uncontrollably. The feeling of hopelessness was overwhelming, with one thought repeating in my head: “This will never end. This will never end. This will never end.”

Our last day of school was a needless half day with nothing to do. Mr. Dillon, who could barely maintain control of his class on the best of days, was losing the battle. Kids were killing time by throwing things, yelling and walking around, waiting for dismissal. I’d had enough of this scene and decided to make a move.

While Mr. Dillon was trying to catch a kid who had wandered down the hallway, I went to his desk, opened the drawer, found my report card, and walked out the door. Once outside the school, I heard someone yell out the window “He’s coming after you!” So I ran. I ran through the playground – past those motionless swings. I ran away from that school as fast as I could, faster than ever before. I would continue running away from that place for years.

I would like to say that I didn’t look back, but I did. Every once in a while I would think about what I could have done to navigate those waters more successfully. While I can go back and forth with ideas about how I could have improved my social game, there is one thing from that year that had no explanation or variables: What was up with that swing?

If it was a ghost revisiting the playground to have one last turn on a swing, that’s less frightening than the abuse I suffered at the hands of my classmates.

I just wish I had more stories about benevolent spirits and less about wretched children.

Kurt Bieber: From Little Me to Colt Model

You may already know this, but anyone with an affinity for self-indulgent grande dame memoirs and/or the camp humor of Auntie Mame needs to seek out the 1961 book Little Me, The Intimate Memoirs of That Great Star of Stage, Screen & Television Belle Poitrine, as told to Patrick Dennis. The book spawned a Broadway musical starring Sid Caesar in 1962, which was revived with Martin Short in 1998. However, the book is whole different animal. The 2002 reprint with a new foreword by Charles Busch may be out of print, but affordable copies are easily found online.

The whole thing is a parody – a camp fiction classic created by the Auntie Mame author with over 150 photographs by Cris Alexander, an actor who appeared in both the stage and film versions of Auntie Mame. Alexander had transitioned into his second career as a photographer.

Actress Jeri Archer embodied Belle Poitrine in the photographs with a cast of characters playing her co-horts. Among the familiar faces in the company are character actresses Dodie Goodman and Alice Pearce, author Patrick Dennis (as Cedric Roulstone-Farjeon) and his wife Louise (as Pixie Portnoy). Cris Alexander also appears in various roles alongside his lifelong partner, ballet dancer Shaun O’Brien (as Mr. Musgrove). Miss Rosalind Russell makes an appearance as well.

The role of Letch Feeley, Belle’s hunky paramour and costar, was played by Kurt Bieber. After the publication of Little Me, Cris Alexander wrote, “Shaun and Kurt generated an unprecedented amount of fan mail, all sent to the publisher’s office.”

Letch Feeley & Belle Poitrine, aka Kurt Bieber & Jeri Archer in Little Me

Kermit Henry Bieber was born on January 5, 1929 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. A 1946 graduate of Emmaus High School, Bieber worked at the local Sears before serving in the Army during the Korean War.

After his discharge, he headed to New York, where he studied drama, dance and voice at The American Theatre Wing. Roles in summer stock soon followed, with ensemble work in Can-Can, Happy Hunting, Oklahoma! and Wonderful Town.

The Morning Call, *Allentown, PA (6/21/1960)*

It was his work in a regional production of On the Town that took his career to the next level. Cris Alexander later wrote, “Ross Hunter may have discovered Rock Hudson, but I discovered Kurt Bieber during a summer package of On The Town (Pittsburgh ’58).” By October of that year, Bieber was back in New York playing a sailor alongside William Shatner in the original Broadway production of The World of Suzie Wong.

More regional work followed, including a stint in the play Teahouse of The August Moon with Red Buttons. It was around this time that Cris Alexander began to shoot the photos for Little Me, casting Bieber in the role for which he is best remembered.

In Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis, author Eric Myers writes “Most memorable to a certain contingent of the book’s audience was actor Kurt Bieber, who… displayed plenty of muscular flesh in nearly all of his photos.”

“I loved doing Little Me. People would stop me in the street and say ‘Aren’t you Letch Feeley?'” Kurt fondly remembered. “It was a first. No one had ever done a book like that… it was such a different atmosphere then. The photos were really a breakthrough.”

*“Kurt Bieber is a* poseur *extraordinaire. The grace and symmetry of the youthful physique is captured in this study by* Male Today.”

Following the success of Little Me, Bieber continued acting as well as modeling. He found work as a “posing strap” model for Male Today and other physique magazines. He was an early subject for Jim French, a photographer who was starting up a photo studio under the name Rip Colt. An early Colt film loop lists Bieber as one of the performers – a softcore scene with three muscular models lathering each other up in a shower – but none of the models appear to be him.

In 1969, Bieber had a bit part as a Times Square street hustler in Midnight Cowboy:

At the dawn of the 1970’s, 40-year-old Bieber – no longer a young chorus boy – opted for a new look. He transformed himself into the quintessential gay clone: an urban cowboy/mustache and Levi’s/hanky-code persona that would characterize the gay scene for the next decade. His photos for Colt studios now typify that era of gay erotica.

He was quoted as saying “I loved being photographed in the nude. I’ve always been an exhibitionist. To be an actor, you have to be. Besides, I got to choose the models. I chose hot men that I could get off on. That’s why they gave me (Colt superstar) Dakota.”

*Colt Studios photo of Kurt Bieber with Dakota*

*Kurt Bieber (in a Colt t-shirt) outside Badlands in the West Village, NYC (1979)*

While major film roles never materialized, Bieber appeared in several commercials and continued to garner background work in films like Last Summer and Chapter Two. He can be seen offering poppers to a cohort at The Eagle in the controversial Al Pacino film Cruising (1980):

His appearance in Cruising landed Bieber on the cover of the February 1980 issue of Mandate Magazine. In his interview, Bieber mentions that he played Letch Feeley among other acting roles. He differentiates himself from the other Cruising extras, some of whom were cast off the street. “I want to stress that I did it as a professional… It’s just a job.”

As for those rumored to be having sex on camera in the leather bar scenes; “On the set, some people were having sex for real, but (director William) Friedkin didn’t ask anybody to. No way I would suck cock in front of a camera,” he says.

Although Bieber doesn’t mention his work with Colt Studios in this article, four months later Mandate ran a 10-page spread titled “Whatever Happened To Letch Feeley?” This feature tracked Bieber from his Little Me photos through his work with Colt Studios.

When asked to sum himself up at the close of the article, Bieber said with a smile; “I’ve done a little bit of everything and I’ve loved every minute of it.”

Later in 1980, Bieber was done in by a poison dart in Times Square during the opening sequence of Eaten Alive, an Italian cannibal movie:

The epilogue of Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis (2000) notes that Bieber “has been an extra in almost every movie ever filmed in New York City. Kurt says he is ‘still around and still cruising Christopher Street.'”

*Kurt Bieber behind Whoopi Goldberg and Patrick Swayze in a scene from* Ghost (1990)

Decades later, Little Me fans still recognized him. “Even today, I’ll sometimes walk into a store and someone will say ‘Wow! Letch Feeley!’ How they recognize me after all these years, with my white hair, I’ll never know.”

Kurt Bieber passed away at age 86 on December 31, 2015 in New York City.

Truman Capote in Mandate (1985)

Truman Capote is the subject of this article from the February, 1986 Mandate magazine. The piece was written by Boze Hadleigh just over a year after Capote's death.

Continuing with our theme from the last post, Truman Capote is the subject of this article from the February, 1985 issue of Mandate magazine. The piece was written by Boze Hadleigh just 6 months after Capote’s death.

The infamous book jacket photo of Truman Capote from Other Voices, Other Rooms. One critic commented, “He looks as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality.” (1948)

Donald Windham on Truman Capote: Christopher Street (1988)

Donald Windham and his partner Sandy Campbell were two of the subjects of my recent collaboration with the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society. The Fire Island Muses of George Platt Lynes and The PaJaMa Collective focused on the subjects of their photography and artwork, specifically during summers spent on Fire Island.

Donald Windham (with Paul Cadmus) & Sandy Campbell in PaJaMa photos of the early 1940’s.

I recently rediscovered this piece written by Windham for a 1988 issue of Christopher Street. I bought the magazine at a West Village newsstand back in the day, and it has remained in my possession all these years, proving yet again why I never throw anything away. Because you never know…

Back in 1987, Donald Windham had published Lost Friendships: A Memoir of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Others. This article was written the following year in response to the publication of Gerald Clarke’s 600+ page biography Capote, which Windham describes as “misguided.” Clarke’s book would later be adapted into the 2005 film, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman winning an Oscar for his portrayal of troubled Truman.

Note that the photos accompanying the article are credited to Sandy Campbell.

*This photo appears in several places on the internet misidentifying Capote as Sandy Campbell with Donald Windham, Piazza San Marco (1948)*

*Capote with Sandy Campbell at the Kansas border, October 1964*

Debbie At The World (1989)

Here comes the 21st century… it’s gonna be much better for a girl like me…
-Deborah Harry, “I Want That Man”

I recently came across the 2018 Interview magazine article “An Oral History of The World: the most iconic nightclub you never heard of”. This reminded me of my one and only trip to the legendary club when Deborah Harry played there in November, 1989.

Seven years after Blondie went on hiatus, “Debbie” become “Deborah” as she released her third solo album, Def Dumb and Blonde – an eclectic 15-track collection that most fans consider to be her best effort outside of the band. Although the album did not crack the US Billboard top 100, it reached the top 10 in the UK and other countries.

I got tickets to the November 11 show. This was the second of three sold out shows at the Lower East Side club. The guy I was seeing when the tickets went on sale was no longer in the picture by the time the show came around, so I ended up taking my older sister, Kari. She had been a Blondie fan a decade before – it was her cassette of Parallel Lines that we wore out.

We came up out of the F train at Houston Street and First Avenue and started heading east into Alphabet City, walking briskly past the homeless huddled around burning trashcans and assorted drug-induced shenanigans. Kari was holding onto my arm, talking a mile a minute – engrossed in a story that I hoped would keep her distracted for as long as possible. We were somewhere between Avenues A & B when she finally looked around, slowed a bit, gripped my arm tighter and said “Oh my god. Where are you taking me???”

“Almost there!” I said, although I wasn’t sure if we were.

I knew nothing about The World – a 16-and-over nightclub that payed little attention to underage drinking, a quaint complaint given the other activities that allegedly went on there. Housed in a crumbling former catering hall, it had that air of faded decadence prevalent in many East Village hangouts. It was as if the party continued on in the ruins of past generations…. clubs and galleries in the dilapidated haunts of German, Polish, and Ukranian immigrants, followed by another generation of hippies and poets, then punks and artists who had now come and gone. We were in the last months of the 1980’s and all that the decade had wrought was slipping into the past. But would Debbie, um, Deborah Harry?

There was an air of anticipation as to how this show would go: her first solo tour at age 44 – the same age as Tina Turner at the time of her Private Dancer success 5 years earlier. Given that Harry was back on her home turf – just a few blocks from CBGB’s – would she lean into her rock/punk roots? Surely this would not be a parade of greatest hits.

Still, it was a surprise when she quietly took to the stage along with her ever-present creative partner Chris Stein and opened her set with the jazzy Motown ballad “The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game.” This Marvelettes cover was the final song on Blondie’s 1982 LP The Hunter. It was an intriguing choice for an opening number, as if she & Stein were picking up right where Blondie left off.

And then the show shifted into gear: playing through a set heavy on Def Dumb & Blonde‘s edgier cuts while seamlessly mixing in Blondie album tracks like “Cautious Lip” & “Detroit 442”. The set wound down with “Brite Side,” her latest single which segued into a cover of The Velvet Underground’s “Waiting For The Man”.

For the encore, she took off her jacket and returned the stage in just a black bra. When presented with a bouquet of roses, she bit the head off of one and spit it back at the audience. She tore through a couple of conciliatory hits: “Call Me” & “One Way Or Another”, plus her minor solo hit “French Kissin’ In The USA”.

Here’s where memory gets tricky: I recall that she did a Ramones cover as her final song. In the years following this show, I saw The Go-Go’s and Kirsty MacColl both cover “I Wanna Be Sedated” as final encores at their concerts. Some mental wires got crossed and 30+ years later, I thought Harry sang it too. But thanks to the internet and her fanatic fans, I am reminded that the Ramones song she covered on this tour was “Pet Sematary,” the theme to the Stephen King movie that her old friends had released earlier that year.

Here’s a recording from The Roxy in LA on October 23, 1989 – two weeks prior to The World shows in NYC:

My sister had gone off during the encore to find a bathroom. Towards the end of this song, she reappeared, white as a ghost, saying “Ohmygod ohmygod you have to help me! I have to pee SO bad and there’s only ONE bathroom for everyone! NO STALLS. I asked someone if it was the ladies room and she said ‘Men, women… what’s the difference?’ ohmygod you have to help me!”

Downstairs in the bathroom, I stood with my back to her, holding my full-length wool coat open like some sort of reverse-flasher trying to block her from the view of everyone except the woman sitting on the toilet right next to her having a conversation with her friend. I was trying not to laugh too hard as my sister kept muttering behind me “ohmygod ohmygod unbelievable… men, women, what’s the difference… unbelievable….”

On our way out, I poked my head into the lounge, where futuristic electronic music played. I could only make out strange silhouettes in the dim colored lights of the smoky room. It seemed like a cross between the Creature Cantina and something out of The Jetsons.

After a quick t-shirt purchase at the merch booth, we were back on the street. Kari was holding on to my arm as we headed down East Second Street. A panhandler approached and said “Now there’s an attractive couple!” My sister let out a sustained “Eeew” which I punctuated with “She’s my SISTER.”

“My apologies.” He responded quickly and moved on to the second half of his spiel as he walked alongside us. “I’m having a rough time right now. If you could reach down into your pockets and help me out with anything, anything at all, I would really appreciate it.”

Kari, absentmindedly reached down into her pocket and presented him with a matchbook. He was not amused.

We turned on to Avenue A as he stood there screaming after us “Fuck you bitch! Fuck you! I will fucking BURN you bitch!”

She didn’t seem to hear him. Shaking her head, she said, “Oh my god. That bathroom.”

It would be another year and a half before I relocated to the neighborhood. But The World ended just two weeks before I got there: On June 27, 1991 co-owner Steven Venizelos – described by the New York Times as “a corpulent man with a penchant for jewelry” – was found murdered on the balcony of the club. He was shot three times at close range. There were no signs of robbery and the case went unsolved. In keeping with the East Village trend, the building was demolished to make way for “luxury” apartments.

And Debbie? She’s still going strong. As she sang in “I Want That Man,” Here comes the 21st Century… it’s gonna be much better for a girl like me… the reunited Blondie brought in the new millennium with “Maria,” a #1 hit in the UK. They were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2006.

Her latest collaboration is with The Dandy Warhols – “I Will Never Stop Loving You.”

Don Herron’s Tub Shots Part IV: Christopher Street (1980)

Back in 2018, I posted two collections of artist/photographer Don Herron’s Tub Shots, a series of images featuring the famous and near-famous posing in their bathtubs. This coincided with an exhibition of 65 photographs at the Daniel Coon ey Gallery here in NYC. The blog posts (Pt. 1 and Pt. II) still garner a considerable amount of traffic, as well as a third collection posted 2 years ago. Now we have a fourth selection of the collection: a Christopher Street magazine feature from April, 1980 and recollections from the subjects.

The April, 1980 issue of Christopher Street, with football player David Kopay sharing the cover with a very nice Tom of Finland illustration.

Among those featured in the Christopher Street layout was artist Mel Odom, who shared memories of the experience in Pt.1.

Ronald Chase is a San Francisco-based artist, photographer, educator, independent filmmaker and opera designer.

Demetrie Kabbaz (1944-2014) was a painter known for his highly stylized portraits of Marilyn Monroe and other iconics of pop culture.

The article mentions a 1981 exhibit at Jehu gallery in San Francisco. The tub shot of gallery owner Ron Jehu (1937-2007) is also included alongside actress Mink Stole and popular San Francisco DJ Sheila Rene (1939-1998).

Writer Felice Picano: “Don came to my duplex at 317 E 11th Street, now owned by Annie Leibovitz and he was a sweet man, so he climbed onto the back of the bathtub where he was cramped but also supported by two walls and he shot a bunch of photos.

“He then asked if I could recommend others to shoot, and I sent him to either George Stavrinos or to Victor Hugo (Halston’s lover). By the time Don was done, he had gotten a pretty full and accurate portrait of Bohemia In New York City in the period. And, as I wrote in my book Art & Sex in Greenwich Village, Don captured what was probably the last unified downtown NYC bohemian community.”

Peter Hujar (1934-1987) was a photographer primarily known for his portraiture. His photo is featured on the same page as fellow photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989). Annie Leibovitz would later recall, “Peter and I shared a distaste for Robert. One of the reasons is that Peter thought Robert was silly, you know, which he was. And he thought that Robert copied him in certain ways, which of course he did.”

Belle de Jour was New York’s most notorious dominatrix in the 1970’s and 1980’s. She ran a successful commercial dungeon and a weekly S&M theatre in her midtown loft. Submissive men, suburban couples, and thrill seekers were known to fill the bleachers to watch Belle and her entourage perform.

Don Herron‘s own Tubshot can be seen in this ad for a 1982 gallery showing:

Sur Rodney Sur recounts his tub shot: “We used the bathroom of Cynthia Chiarulli’s loft for the photo shoot, which was styled by Suzan Silver, a jewelry maker who made her wares from mirrored plastics she purchased on Canal Street. She provided the lipstick and sprayed the sides of my hair silver.

“I used the photo for the cover of my first book of poems… I organized an exhibition of Donald’s prints at the Tribeca club Stilwende and also showcased Suzan’s jewelry. I also screened a new version of my TV talk show – the All New Sur Rodney Sur Show. Sometime after the event I produced a version of my talk show where I interviewed Holly Woodlawn in a bubble bath for a photo shoot with Donald in a television studio in Chelsea.”

Valery Oisteanu: “I remember being introduced to Don by Timothy Greenfield and Don was part of the East Village Arts scene. He was very friendly. I was writing a monthly column at that time in Cover Arts magazine called ‘The Wall Patrol’ about art galleries…. Don took a photo of me naked wearing a Mylar face mask and there are also butt plugs as a humorous prop.”

Colette Justine (aka Colette Lumiere) is a multi-media artist who is considered a pioneering street performance artist and “photographic tableau vivant.” She is also known for playing with male/female gender roles through different guises and personas.

Käthe Kruse, performer/artist: “I was staying with John Heys when he was photographed by Don. When we met in John’s apartment and he saw my hair, he asked to photograph me too. So after the shoot with John, I got off my clothes and laid down in the bathtub and he arranged my hair. Then he climbed up to the edges of the bathtub and started to photograph. He told me that he always takes the same number of photos (eighteen) and then he stopped. I love these kind of concepts. When I was back in Berlin I received one print and after all these years it is still hanging in my home. I love the photo and I am very happy and thankful to have been photographed by Don.”

Photographer/visual artist **Christopher Makos** (1980)

Stanton Weiss (1952-2022): “New York in the 1970’s was an unparalleled place. There was an edge to it and a feeling that anything could happen. I had a seemingly conservative job working for Dick Ridge, the renowned interior designer. The phone rang. ‘Stanton darling, it’s Pat. Don Herron wants to photograph me and I need to use Dick’s tub! My bathroom is being painted.’ Pat was Pat Loud, America’s first reality star of PBS’ An American Family. She is a stunning woman, and unlike other reality stars, she is the epitome of grace and style. She posed with calla lilies and then Don asked me if I would like to be photographed as well.”

Pat Loud (1926-2021): “I recall Don calling me to say he was doing a series of photographs of people in their bathtubs and would I pose for him. I told him I didn’t do bathtubs but he assured me that nudity was not his objective and I could use all the bubble bath I wanted…. I don’t know whose idea the calla lilies were that seem so dominant and strategically placed and yet so out of place for such a photo.”

Dick Ridge (1928-2021): “I received a phone call from Pat Loud, who asked me if I would pose along with other people of the moment for a picture in my bathtub. Having just returned from Southampton, I had a pretty good tan and decided ‘Why not?'”

Poet Michael Ratcliff, Performer/Fashion designer Katy K (Kattelman), Legendary nightlife performer Joey Arias.

Marcus Leatherdale (1952-2022) was a Canadian portrait photographer who was personally and professionally associated with Robert Mapplethorpe.

Michael Musto: “Don contacted me with the idea of photographing me in my bathtub. I thought that was a novel idea, especially since I usually took showers, not baths. He wanted the photo to express my eccentric side, so I wore the shower cap, shades and white lipstick. I found Don to be likeably quirky and creative. This was a time of horror because of the mounting epidemic, but it was also a time when LGBT culture, nightlife, and solidarity were on the rise. I used my Village Voice column as a venue for both anger and humor at the same time, while also expressing myself via fashion and nightlife antics. Don’s photo captured my multiple moods.”

The Lost Madonna ’80s Megamix Video

Back in the dinosaur days of VHS tapes, there were various companies that offered music video subscription services to commercial businesses. Every month a new videocassette with the latest music videos would arrive in the mail, just for viewing in their establishment. These tapes were not for sale to the general public.

One of the most popular companies in the U.S. and Canada was Telegenics, a New York-based operation that produced monthly tapes over an 11 year span, from 1983-1994. Founded by Tommy Diesso and Chris Russo, Telegenics offered a variety of music styles to choose from: Top 40, Progressive, Urban, and Pop Rock with some occasional specialty releases of 12″ Remix, Dance Classics, and Christmas, to name a few.

In the late 1990’s I used to buy these tapes in second hand stores and then later on eBay. In the days before YouTube, this was often the only way to see music videos that didn’t get airplay on MTV or VH1. I had my NYC public access show Bri-Guy’s Media Surf at that time and would air obscure music videos from artist like Kirsty MacColl, Alison Moyet and others that the music video channels paid little attention to.

But the Madonna MegaMix was something else: A 7-song, 11 minute remix of her hits up to the summer of 1988 when it was released. The medley features “La Isla Bonita,” “Who’s That Girl,” “Open Your Heart,” “Into The Groove,” “Papa Don’t Preach,” “Where’s The Party,” and “Dress You Up.”

“Where’s The Party” is of particular interest, as there was never a music video for this album track, but one is created here using clips from many of Madonna’s other music videos.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/197KRc9B9C

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Dbx7CH5onYq

I aired the video on Media Surf a couple of times during the show’s 10-year run. In 2012, I digitized the clip and uploaded it to YouTube to share. It was immediately flagged for copyright infringement and blocked from viewing worldwide. Although it was not visible to the public, I left it uploaded to my channel and promptly did nothing with it for 11 years.

And now, as Madge has come around and is embracing her legacy with a 40th anniversary tour, YouTube (or Warner Music, or the lady herself) have decided to allow for such things to be viewed by the general public. Enjoy it while you can! It may be gone tomorrow.

Kenn Duncan After Dark

Kenn Duncan is widely considered to be one of the foremost dance photographers of the late 20th Century. In addition to his work as principal photographer for After Dark and Dance Magazine, his photos also appeared in Vogue, Time, Life, Newsweek and Harper’s Bazaar. From the mid-1960’s through the early 1980’s, he photographed nearly every major dance company in the world as well as many Broadway shows.

Born in New Jersey on September 22, 1928, Duncan began his career as a figure skater and then segued into dance. His career took another turn when he was sidelined with a broken foot and signed up for a six-week photography course at the local YMCA. Naturally he gravitated back to the dance world for photographic inspiration.

In addition to his dance photography, Duncan was well regarded for his nude photographs, with an emphasis on male subjects. His first two books, Nudes (1970) and More Nudes (1971) were favorably received for his “discreet and artistic arrangements of his subjects.”

After Dark was an edgy entertainment and culture-based magazine that sprang from the waning Ballroom Dance Magazine in 1968. In The Rise And Fall Of Gay Culture, Daniel Harris writes; “One of the strangest reincarnations in journalistic history… it was out of the ashes of a periodical devoted to such topics as waltzes, rumbas, and turkey trots that After Dark, an audacious mass-market experiment in gay eroticism, arose like a phoenix in all of its subversive splendor.”

Although After Dark was not officially a gay magazine, the publishers were certainly willing to cater to that audience, pushing the envelope on male nudity to a degree that is still not seen in mainstream US publications 50 years later.

Richard Thomas (1969)

Sal Mineo (1971)

Duncan photographed Bette Midler numerous times through the years, including three After Dark cover photos and the cover shot for her 1976 Live At Last LP.

Rudolph Nureyev (1971)

Mikhail Baryshnikov

In 1971, Kenn Duncan photographed singer Lou Christie for his Paint America Love LP.

Harvey Evans was photographed in the buff for the October, 1971 cover of After Dark to promote the television adaption of the musical Dames At Sea.

LaBelle (l-r) Nona Hendryx, Sarah Dash, Patti LaBelle photographed in 1972 shortly before their intergalactic makeover.

Tony award-winning Welsh actor/director Roger Rees in several undated photos.

Brad Davis (1981)

Maxwell Caulfield (1981)

After Dark shuttered in early 1983. The following year, Duncan published The Red Shoes, a photo book featuring celebrities wearing red shoes in a nod to both the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale as well as the ruby slippers of The Wizard of Oz. Among those featured were many familiar subjects of his earlier work, including (pictured below) Brad Davis, Bette Midler, Maxwell Caulfield, Eartha Kitt, Dick Cavett, Mikhail Baryshnikov, John Curry, Richard Thomas, Gregory Hines, and Treat Williams.

Duncan began work on a second Red Shoes book, but it remained unfinished, along with several other projects. He was just 57 years old when he died of AIDS complications at New York Hospital on July 27, 1986. In 2003, the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts acquired 600,000 photos from Kenn Duncan’s estate. Many of these photos have been digitized and are now available for viewing online for free.

A Stroll Through 1980’s NYC

September 11th and the onset of Fall always makes me think back on the New York City that I photographed as a teenager in the 1980’s.

My photography class would take field trips into Manhattan each semester. Later I began hopping on the Long Island Rail Road to venture in by myself. I loved photographing the city. There was – and is – an infinite number of things to focus your camera on. I learned early on that as much as I loved taking pictures in the city, I did not enjoy photographing the people. I was afraid someone would freak out and demand money or break my camera. My photos with live subjects tended to be dark and blurry or out of focus because I just wanted to snap the photo and run.

Instead, I focused on other elements of the city – a cat in a window, a gargoyle on a building. The purple shoeprints that appeared all around the village in the mid 1980’s. I would go into the city on a Sunday and walk south from Penn Station to the World Trade Center and back, snapping pictures the whole time.

To this day, I will spot a familiar building detail or doorway and remember… oh yeah! I took a picture of that in 1986. After 9/11, I would scan through the footage from that day, searching for familiar places on the plaza and in the vicinity, looking for details so familiar to me in the photos I had taken years ago.

*The Statue of Liberty gets a facelift (1984)*

Chinatown (1984):

South Street Seaport (1984):

TriBeCa (1986):
Donovan’s Publik House was at 108 Greenwich Street. It is now Suspenders restaurant. 67 Greenwich Street housed The Whitehall Hardware Store when this photo was taken. In 2021, the New York Times profiled this structure in an article titled The Indestructible Townhouse. El Internacional, formerly El Teddy’s was a popular hangout at 219 West Broadway. The Guest Of A Guest website described it as “The epitome of downtown cool.”

World Trade Center from above and below (1985-86):

Penn Station / 8th Avenue (1986):

Downtown (1984-86):

Ronnie Spector – Siren (1980)

I recently found myself perusing (as one does) the March, 1981 issue of In Touch For Men Magazine when I happened upon an article about Ronnie Spector. “How timely,” I thought, as August 10th marked her 80th birthday. Unfortunately, the Ronettes lead singer passed away at age 78 in January, 2022 – click here for a tribute with some choice song recommendations.

Ronnie didn’t have a whole lot going on when Genya Ravan called her up out of the blue and asked her to sign with her new record label, Polish. Ravan was a fellow rock and roll veteran – a Holocaust survivor from Poland who, as Goldie Zelkowitz, fronted the legendary female rock band Goldie & The Gingerbreads. After a name change, a stint fronting the band Ten Wheel Drive, and several solo LPs, Ravan was ready to use her production skills on her own record label. In her memoir Lollipop Lounge: Memoirs Of A Rock And Roll Refugee, Ravan clarifies the label’s name: “‘Polish’ as in shine, not the nationality.”

While the music industry might have been through with Ronnie, Ravan was extremely excited with the prospect of producing her first solo LP. “I was a great fan of hers. I’d loved the sound of her voice ever since I first heard it,” she wrote. “Also, my own career as a singer seemed to be looking bleak… so working with Ronnie seemed to offer an alternative way of permanently stamping my mark on the music industry.”

Ravan’s idea was to expose Ronnie to some of the acts from CBGB’s that she was producing – to bring her iconic voice to a contemporary rock setting.

The album was recorded at Media Sound, RPM and Electric Lady studios with contributions from members of Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, the Dead Boys, Mink DeVille and many others. In addition to producing, Ravan also provided backing vocals.

In her own autobiography, Ronnie admitted that she did not feel a connection with the New York punk scene that she felt Genya was pushing her to embrace, although she would concede that the harder edge of Siren inspired her to cut loose on the vocals in a way that she had never done before.

While the lady doth protest, it must be noted that her cover of The Ramones’ “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” was a natural choice for her to cover: Phil had just produced The End Of The Century for the group, including a cover of The Ronettes “Baby I Love You.” Joey Ramone would later produce Ronnie’s 1999 EP She Talks To Rainbows. If Ronnie didn’t like “Here Today, Gone Tomorrow” initially, she must have had a change of heart, as she re-recorded it for her 2006 CD The Last Of The Rock Stars.

She also collaborated with classic punk band The Misfits on a couple of tracks in 2003. Safe to say, Genya Ravan was on to something after all.

*Ronnie & Goldie: Spector with Genya Ravan (1980)*

Another standout track that is often overlooked is “Any Way That You Want Me,” a Chip Taylor composition originally recorded in the 1960’s by The Troggs and then Evie Sands. As producer, Ravan’s idea for the album was to “make sure the music had an edge, but at the same time I didn’t want to lose Ronnie’s 1960’s sound entirely.” This track walks that tightrope very well.

Unfortunately, the album doesn’t quite stick the landing with its final track: “Happy Birthday Rock ‘N’ Roll” is a 6 minute passive aggressive valentine-slash-middle finger of a song dedicated to Phil Spector. Harkening back to her ex-husband only negates the distance that the rest of the album puts between Ronnie and her musical past.

By 1980, the story of Ronnie’s barefoot escape from her marriage was no secret. Giving this song the subtitle “For Phil” is just bizarre. Imagine if Tina Turner had dedicated the final track of her Private Dancer LP to Ike.

The lyrics present Phil as the embodiment of “Rock ‘N’ Roll” itself, alternately praising him for his accomplishments, but noting that “You’re pushing 40 / but you’re still not old,” and “Some people say you’ve lost your grip / They say you’re past your prime and you’re no longer hip.”

One can imagine that Phil was not thrilled when he listened to this.

The songwriting on this track is credited to Elkie Brooks and Peter Gage, even though there are several musical breaks that segue into the choruses of “Be My Baby,” “Baby I Love You,” and “You Baby” – Ronettes songs that originally listed Phil as a co-writer. None of the original songwriters are credited here. By comparison, Eddie Money’s 1986 hit “Take Me Home Tonight” – with Ronnie’s “Be My Baby” refrain – lists that song’s writers – Jeff Barry/Ellie Greenwich/Phil Spector alongside the other songwriters. Perhaps if Siren had been a commercial success, the famously litigious Phil would have come after them.

Reviews for the LP were all over the place – from high praise to the lowest dismissal:

Above: NME – Great photo / Terrible review (8/30/1980)

*A pan from The Austin American-Statesman, whose reviewer also mis-genders Ms. Ravan. (9/27/80)*

The Newsday review above was followed by one for Blondie’s AutoAmerican. (12/26/80)

In a more recent assessment, Joe Viglione writes on the AllMusic website; “If Phil Spector overproduced to good effect, Genya Ravan purposely underproduced, choosing instead to let flavors of different musicians paint the fabric behind Ronnie Spector.”

Genya Ravan stands by the album, writing; “I’m very proud of Siren… and of what I did for her on it. I think it’s the best thing she recorded after her glory days with Phil Spector.”

Category: 1980’s