Suck My Kiss

My dreams in the music business have, for the most part, been entirely fulfilled. But in this new day and age the ability to make music on the level I require has become more and more difficult, needing as I do to stay way out in the fringe, dangling off the edge, as it were.
Music boils in my blood and I haven’t any choice in the matter, even trying on several occasions to leave it behind with little or no success. But those musical dreams of my youth haven’t been dashed in the slightest. Hardly. And on occasion I’m reminded of what it felt like in those halcyon days of discovery and wonder.
The other day, while taking a break from mixing a record I’d produced, I’d retired to the restroom to take care of some personal business. While taking my leave I noticed several boxfuls of ancient LP’s sitting in front of the toilet which brought back a host of memories. I thumbed through the stacks and each record had a specific memory attached to it, a bit like traveling through history. There was the Weather Report album, “Heavy Weather”, whose fusion of jazz and world music had opened my horizons, challenging me to a large degree. There was a New York Dolls record which had really raised the bar on raw garage band rock from the bowels of NYC, David Johansen and crew all "dolled up” which pretty much shocked the shit out of the entire world at that time. And then I ran across an album cover that brought back one of my most vivid memories of rock and roll at its grungiest. The cover pictured some guys looking like low-rent mercenaries standing alongside a tank with a naked woman in the middle, two strips of black gaffer tape covering her nipples sporting a monster mohawk which was a foot long and standing proud; The Plasmatics, an underground bowery punk band fronted by Wendy O. Williams; she a rather charismatic, unhinged, ex carny barker/porn star whose elliptical orbit intersected mine one night in Hollywood at the Whiskey A Go-Go and I was forever stained by the event.
I’d seen The Plasmatics in action on my very first trip to NYC, the rube that I was, as even then I was seeking out the unusual, the different, and when I spied the ad for their appearance at CBGB’s in The Village Voice I knew I had to be present and accounted for. The show fare you well blew my mind and I will never forget the tall, gangly guitarist who was deathly pale and sporting a baby blue mohawk, wearing a nurses outfit, playing a Flying V, bashing his head against his amp until it bled. Alleyway rock and roll seeped into my veins that night and poisoned me for life.
Living in Los Angeles a few years later, I was more than pleased to read in the Calendar section of the L.A. Times that The Plasmatics were appearing at The Whiskey A Go-Go. No brainer this, and for once in my life I showed up early to make sure I wouldn’t miss the spectacle to follow.
The sound was gorgeously unbearable and I was in a full on sweat by the time they’d finished the first song. Chaos reigned. I was alive. The joint was heavin’.
Midway through the show, I’d managed to clamber right up to the front of the stage. Wendy -damn near naked- held me spellbound with her sexual ferocity. During one song, while the guitarist was taking a solo, she reached behind his amp and picked up a double barreled shotgun and proceeded to blast these large flower pots filled with daisies that were perched uncomfortably on the tops of their mountain of amps. As she continued to blow the pots to smithereens, a piece of one terra cotta pot which suffered from Wendy O's wrath flew right at me and before I could duck it smacked me in my forehead and I went down for the count.
I don’t know how long I was out, but when I woke my face was covered in blood and I managed to stand up, doing my best to get my wits about me. I held onto the monitor in front of Wendy trying to maintain my balance. Wendy was in the zone, shouting a hoarse lyric, when she looked down on me and pounced, grabbing my arm, yanking me to within inches of her face, and with a professional’s technique thrust several fingers of mine into her mouth and began to fiercely suck them in imitation of a rather fantastic blow-job. Then, when she was sated, she threw my hand aside and spit globs all over the punters surrounding me. The bloodthirsty mob went ballistic... and I was forever changed... seriously affected.
I stroked the album cover, the memory washing over me, reminding me of the thrill of live music, the power of music, the power of sex, the danger and chaos which moved me, that made me explore music much further than I’d ever intended. And I was thankful.
I left the restroom and re-entered the control room invigorated.
Wendy O. Williams died several years ago, her voice quieted.
I’m far from done. And with a tip of my hat to the musical oddballs and freaks and loonies like her and others, I will continue to search for that elusive lost chord.
I will not be denied.