Ex-Slash
Magazine founder, Claude Bessy, dies
As confirmed by several sources, Slash Magazine editor and former Catholic
Discipline frontman Claude Bessy (AKA Kickboy Face) succumbed to
cigarette-induced lung cancer at his home in Barcelona on Saturday, October
2. Hit List editor Jeff Bale had warned me Bessy was gravely ill a month
ago
when I requested Bessy's email address toward interviewing him for The
Big
Takeover, having seen his column byline appear in Hit List for the first
time
on American soil in two decades (his inclusion on the roster was a major
inducement for me to write for them, too). Those of you who have issue
28 of
The Big Takeover may recall I devoted an entire page of that 10th anniversary
issue to record reviews penned by Bessy in Slash from 1977-1978, because
he inspired me so much when I was a teenager with his style, and a total
fullout
passion I could never hope to match (nor could anyone else) for the things
he
liked, and even for those things that offended his editorial soul (as anyone
who
remembers his immortal "I have excellent news for the world" ad lib in
the
Decline of the Western Civilization L.A. punk movie, quoted below, could
attest!!!). No other music writer inspired me more to want to start a magazine.
I never met him, but I wanted to for 21 years, and even just missed him
in Los
Angeles 19 years ago, arriving to find he had just moved to England. His
new
column in Hit List made it clear he still had plenty to say. In an e-mail
statement, Bessy's old friend Brendan Mullen, who booked the legendary
L.A.
punk club The Masque in Slash's heyday, said of him: "The town cryer, the
poet laureate and beloved tavern habitué in our little village of
late '70s L.A.
punk, died Saturday. Claude moved to Spain 12 years ago after a seven year
sojourn in England. Originally from Normandy, Claude came to the U.S. in
1973, and founded Angeleno Dread, the first reggae fanzine in L.A. County.
He adopted the Kickboy Face pen name from some Jamaican dub artist
before meeting graphic artist Steve Samiof in Venice circa '75-'76, whereupon
the two launched Slash with Philomena Winstanley and a group of other artists
in May, 1977. As Slash's chief editorialist, and in person, he was one
of the
most passionately irreverent characters I have ever met. No one was sacred
from his barbed wit, not even myself (and I liked to think of him as my
favorite
drinking crony), and certainly not the major record companies, who'd
frequently find their full-page ads adjacent to an editorial review mercilessly
trashing the record. Claude was the first writer to predict the Germs and
X
would be the most influential of L.A.'s Class of '77 bands, and was
immortalized in the Decline movie saying: 'There was never any such thing
as
New Wave, it was the polite thing to say when you were trying to explain
you
were not into the boring old rock 'n' roll, but you didn't dare to say
"punk,'
because you were afraid to get kicked out of the party and they wouldn't
give
you coke any more." He is survived by Philomena and his mother. As Claude
himself once wrote in a brilliant, unpublished poem: 'Death is often trampled,
and the bars never close.'" He was 54. ~http://www.bigtakeover.com/news.html |
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City of
Night Punk rock mourns a pioneer
By
Lisa Derrick
Sadly, word has reached L.A.
that noted punk-rock critic and musician Claude Bessy died on Friday,
October 1, in Barcelona,
Spain, of lung cancer. He was in his mid-40s. Bessy was one of the founding
editors of Slash, the influential
Los Angeles punk magazine that eventually turned into a record label, and
he performed in the band
Catholic Discipline under the name Kickboy Face. Catholic Discipline was
immortalized in Penelope
Spheeris' punk-rock chronicle, The Decline of Western Civilization, which
also featured Bessy declaring
to the camera: "There is no such thing as New Wave." (Alas, he was wrong,
and Bessy's denial couldn't
hold back the onslaught of A Flock of Seagulls and Kajagoogoo.) His distinct
personality, both in print
and in person, helped shaped the burgeoning Los Angeles music scene.
"Kickboy was as influential
[to the scene] as the bands themselves, " recalls Hal Negro of Hal Negro
&
the Satintones. "He had
the loudest written voice, and his pieces were a mirror of the scene. Some
in the
punk scene contributed by
being in bands; some contributed in style. But Claude was a leader in both
poise and attitude, and
he was able to communicate both through his writing. I'll always remember
when
he shoved a piece of cake
into my father's hair at my 21st birthday party, which was held at the
Masque."
Convinced that Ronald Reagan's
election as president promised nothing good, Bessy permanently left the
country for Europe in 1980.
At press time, no Los Angeles memorial service had been scheduled....
Speaking of punk rock, filmmaker
Dave Markey (The Year Punk Broke, Desperate Teenage Lovedolls)
was scheduled to show his
rarely seen one-hour documentary, Reality 86'd, last weekend as part of
a film
festival at the Yerba Buena
Center for the Arts. Unfortunately, the screening itself got 86'd by SST
Record's big kahuna Greg
Ginn. Markey -- who was once a drummer in the band Painted Willie -- had
shot the footage when his
band was part of the final Black Flag tour in 1986. The six month U.S.
onslaught, dubbed "In My
Head," featured Ginn, Henry Rollins, Cel Revulta, and Anthony Martinez
performing as Black Flag,
along with Ginn's instrumental band, Gone, and Painted Willie. Tickets
had
been sold for the Yerba
Buena showing, and the film had been scheduled as the first screening of
the
evening when a fax from
Ginn's attorney ordered the organizers to shut down the screening or face
a
lawsuit. Reality 86'd was
still shown at a secret location, while some uncomplaining ticket holders
viewed
a copy of Lovedolls that
festival organizers hastily dug up from a local video store....
Last Friday night, the photography
of Nadar and Warhol was the inspiration for five spoken word pieces
at the Getty Center, created
to illustrate and elaborate upon the works of the celebrity photographers.
(Warhol, of course, snapped
his celeb pals during the later half of this century, while Nadar was one
of the
earliest famous portrait
photographers, snapping shots in the 1850s.) Coifed and gowned like early
Warhol
superstar Baby Jane Holzer,
L.A. glamazon Vaginal Davis told outrageous stories about his band, the
Afro Sisters, being interviewed
by Interview magazine (one of the last interviews Warhol oversaw),
explaining that the band
had lied to get press by saying they had a record deal. "Interview must
not have
had fact checkers," laughed
Vag. She also recalled that she dressed as Frida Kahlo (complete with
unibrow) for a "Come as
your favorite dead artist" party at the New York club, Area, and had to
spend
the entire night explaining
to everyone (including Warhol!) just who Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera were.
(This was in the early '80s,
folks, a decade before Madonna popularized the Mexican artist.) Exene then
played off the Warhol myth
by bringing out time capsules from behind the stage, each time morphing
more and more into Warhol
with the aid of a wig and makeup. Mimicking Warhol's ennui laden whine,
she riffed on John Kennedy
Jr.'s death ("All that beauty at the bottom of the ocean") and celebrity
status,
before she was joined by
Sara Flicker, who was dressed as the legendary 19th-century actress, Sarah
Bernhardt, one of Nadar's
subjects. Flicker then performed a spoken duet, "If I Had Lived," with
Exene's
faux Warhol.
Poet Pat Payne read pieces
inspired by Warhol's Polaroids of painter Basquiat, while slides screened
on
the white dress she was
wearing. Singer-poet Barnes (who will perform his work in progress, Loud
Boy
Radio, on October 22 at
the St. Genesius Theatre in West Hollywood) did his stripped-down beat
stuff,
debuting "Club Kids in New
York City," which was inspired by Warhol. Finally, event organizer Lisa
Freeman delivered an internal
monologue from the point of view of one of Nadar's subjects that began
"Kiss my ass, Nadar." Kudos
to Freeman for conceiving and curating this sold-out night of creative
deconstruction of celebrity
mythology, which enthralled guests ranging from elderly art patrons to
such
L.A. artists as Ron Athey,
Glenn Meadmore, and Phranc. The exhibit runs through next Wednesday,
October 10....
The following night, LunaPark
was awash in goodwill for booker Jean-Pierre Boccarra's birthday
celebration. Boccarra began
his club career with the avant-garde Lhasa Club on Hudson Avenue in the
early 1980s, then opened
Largo before moving onto LunaPark. His latest establishment has a no-cover
downstairs club, featuring
a variety of DJs spinning nightly, along with eclectic bands and performers
on
the upstairs stage....
Got a hearse? Well, the Orpheum
Theatre is planning the world's longest hearse procession on October
22 as part of their fifth
annual Spook-a-thon. The weeklong event also includes a tribute to director
Tim
Burton on October 15 and
a devilish burlesque show on October 29, as part of the Friends of the
Orpheum's fund-raising efforts
to help save and restore the famous landmark showcase. Call
213-239-0949 for more details....Other
Halloween theme scares for this final year of the century include
Rob Zombie's haunted house
at Universal City Walk. Speaking of whom, former White Zombie
bandmate Shawn Zombie and
her new band, Famous Monsters, will be opening for the Cramps during
their annual L.A. Halloween
week shows at House of Blues. (By the way, the Cramps' new bassist is
Tim Ferris, formerly of
the Leaving Trains and Celebrity Skin.) And, of course, L7's Halloween
show
at the Palace is another
hot ticket....
Those looking to get out
of town for All Hallows' Eve may want to check out Las Vegas' version of
L.A.'s
own glam club, Makeup, when
it makes its "Sin City" debut at the Hard Rock Casino. Tickets for the
event are available in L.A.
at Retail Slut, but there's a limited capacity of 800 at the Hard Rock,
so get
'em while they last. (The
Hard Rock Hotel is already booked solid for the Halloween weekend.) By
the
way, limited capacity is
also creating long lines at Makeup's Los Angeles location at the El Rey
Theatre,
which reached capacity by
10:15 p.m. last Saturday. In other words, clubgoers, get dressed and get
in line
when the doors open, instead
of following that oh-so-El-Lay late-arrival ethos....
Finally, Joseph Brooks --
the promoter of Makeup -- is usually in the DJ booth at the El Rey, but
this
past Sunday afternoon, he
was onstage at the club as one of the models wearing the lush, sexy clothes
in
Monah Li's Spring 2000 fashion
show. The presentation also included turns on the catwalk by singer
Kathleen Wilhoite (radiantly
pregnant) and actress Marissa Ribisi, as well as slews of gorgeous,
normal-sized women, proving
that haute couture isn't simply for the skinny. Actress Tippi Hedren was
the hostess for the event.
On hand to view the spring collection were authors Bruce Wagner and Jerry
Stahl, film directors Jonathan
Craven and Modi, and designers Cynthia Vincent and Alicia Lawhon,
as well as loads of press
and fans of the designer. The event helped raised funds for two charities:
Children of the Night and
the Shambala Preserve. |
