HAPPY BELATED VALENTINE'S DAY 2006!

How are you all? I just returned from a couple of days in Los Angeles. I saw my daughter and Clearence, my manager.

Something fabulous has come up from Cyprus! The first 24 hour Internet TV station.

Click here and experience the beauty and fun of everything Cyprus has to offer!

http://www.cyprusworld.tv/

Mary Finnigan is just back from a trip to New Zealand; she had a blast and promised to forward a link so we can read her debrief/blog about the trip!  Mary launched her business site upon her return from the Southern Hemisphere; it is gorgeous! 

Check it out: www.2write.co.uk/

Also, sorry to hear that Mr. Funtone has been feeling poorly and Joselle, Roy Roger's lovely sister, is recovering from a broken arm after wrestling an electric gate to the ground. A speedy recovery to both of them.

Roy Rogers, from Atlanta, and who now lives in Los Angeles wrote:

"BIG TIME into historic preservation and that's my main hobby lately!  My group WEHONA has been taking off, lots of clout and we have had results!  I feel really empowered-- nice feeling, counters the bad things a bit..."

The WEHONA society works to preserve historic architecture and I hope that it has a strong impact on saving Los Angeles. I was distressed on my last visit to see how few of the older buildings remained. West Hollywood needs some talent to address the details of architectural history and Roy has the artistry and knowledge and the credentials to achieve an improvement in Hollywood's restoration.  

We are on the hunt for a computer for our friend Leee. Leee is busy writing his memoirs and we can't wait for that wonderful book to be published. Jayne County has already read some select paragraphs and is raving about Leee's accomplishment.

Leee Black Childers is an incredible Rock n' Roll photographer, Leee was vice president of Mainman in the mid 1970s and manager of many wonderful bands including Johnny Thunders and Levi and the Rockats.

Bego and LaLa are fine and send everyone Valentine's greetings!

Meanwhile I am going to England with LARRY TEE to help celebrate the LONDON OUTSIDERS FESTIVAL. Larry previously hosted an OUTSIDERS MUSIC FESTIVAL IN NEW YORK.

PSP OUTSIDER FESTIVAL 2006

is the brainchild of London promoter Patrick Lilley (QueerNation) &

Larry Tee ( music mogul & producer of Electroclash and Outsider Music Festivals in New York).

Some of the PSP OUTSIDER events will be hosted by Angie Bowie.

PSP Outsider is planning an extravaganza of fun, color, light and spectacle, a collision of Fashion, Photography, Film and Live Music. Let’s explore the output of cultural renegades, sift the sands, compare the progress, dig the changes and applaud the innovators in global night and counter culture2.

In techno speed www.yourpsp.com will access free downloadable content. Rebels of popular culture from the last 30 years will entertain and inspire you! In addition to free downloadable images, music and videos there will be club events, photo exhibitions, film screenings & happenings.

Outsider ‘Great’ Film Festival

The OUTSIDER FILMS will be screened at the luxurious Rex Cinema and Bar http://www.rexcinemaandbar.com/  in Soho, with performance breaks and DJs happenings.

Screening dates are April 16th, 17th, 23rd , 24th, 30th & 1st  

Dig!

Dir Ondi Timone (2003) DIG! is the widely acclaimed, fascinating documentary that tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of two talented musicians and their bands; Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols and Anton Newcombe, leader of the Brian Jonestown Massacre. Shot over seven years and culled from over 1500 hours of footage, DIG! dissects their star-crossed friendship and bitter rivalry as they battle between selling records and selling out.

The Legend of Leigh Bowery Dir Charles Atlas. (2001) is an in-depth and revealing tribute to an outrageous and outlandish artist. Whether he was making headdresses out of toilet seats, or giving birth to a full-grown woman in a nightclub, Bowery defined London's culture of outrage and influenced a generation of artists and designers on both sides of the Atlantic. He was also the muse and model for pre-eminent British painter Lucian Freud. Featured appearances by Boy George, Damian Hirst, Bella Freud, Michael Clark, Rifat Ozbek and many others.

"The Nomi Song" Dir Andrew Horn (2003) Looks like an alien, sings like a diva - Klaus Nomi was one of the 1980s' most profoundly bizarre characters to emerge through rock music: a counter tenor who sang pop music like opera and brought opera to club audiences and made them like it. The Nomi Song is a film about fame, death, friendship, betrayal, opera, and the greatest New Wave rock star that never was! 

Dir George Hickenlooper (2003) Mayor of the Sunset Strip tells the story of music, celebrity and the pursuit of fame through the eyes of pop impresario Rodney Bingenheimer.  Motivated by his love for music and the allure of Hollywood, Rodney first hit the infamous Sunset Strip as a teenager during its psychedelic 1960s heyday.  A constantly evolving fixture as 'scenester', journalist, promoter and club owner, Bingenheimer was deemed "Mayor of the Sunset Strip."  He began spinning records on Los Angeles’ cutting-edge radio station KROQ, and soon became one of the country’s most well known DJs. Rodney was the first to play songs by David Bowie, Blondie, The Ramones, The Sex Pistols, No Doubt, Coldplay Oasis, to name a few.  This compelling documentary unveils the unusual life of a man who was taken in by Sonny and Cher as a teenager, was a stand-in for Davie Jones on the Monkees, and went on to launch the careers of a multitude of stars. 

Dir Jim Fields & Michael Gramaglia (2003) In 1974, the New York City music scene was shocked into consciousness by the violently new and raw sound of a band of misfits from Queens called the Ramones. Playing in a seedy Bowery bar to a small group of fellow struggling musicians, the band struck a chord of disharmony that rocked the foundation of the mid-seventies music scene. This quartet of unlikely rock stars traveled across the country and around the world connecting with the disenfranchised everywhere, while sparking a movement that would resonate with two generations of outcasts across the globe. Although the band never reached the top of the Billboard charts, they managed to endure in face of fleeting success and crushing interpersonal conflicts by maintaining a rigorous touring schedule for twenty-two years.

Tracing the history of the band, from its unlikely origins, through its star-crossed career, bitter demise and the sad fates of Joey and Dee Dee, End of the Century is a vibrant, candid document of one of the most influential groups in the history of rock. 

 The Cockettes Dir. Bill Weber and David Weissman (2002) Emerging at the end of the '60s, The Cockettes were a theatrical troupe of assorted hippies, drag queens and gay men who embraced the new drug-fuelled, anti-establishment counterculture in San Francisco. Founded by the flamboyant 'Hibiscus', they started out by performing improvised musicals before the midnight film at the Palace Theatre.

As their popularity grew, so too did the flamboyance of their events, and the number of their ranks. Continuing successfully into the early '70s, they briefly counted Divine and pop diva Sylvester as members. But eventually they drifted apart, or went solo, leaving a lasting legacy most evident with the emergence of 'glam' rock and the popularity of acts such as David Bowie and the New York Dolls. Combining archive footage and contemporary interviews – with former Cockette members and celebrity fans such as John Waters – this documentary portrait is an affectionate, sometimes amusing, and often touching tribute to a cultural phenomenon that re-establishes The Cockettes as the innovating pioneers that they were.

The insane years of Le Palace the mythical Parisian discotheque with the abandonment since 1996, will ravel out of France 5, this evening, at the time of the diffusion of a documentary new carried out by François Jonquet and Chantal Lasbats. One completed time symbol bathed by the rates/rhythms disco music, Le Palace was created in March 1978 per Fabrice Emaer, on the model of famous Studio 54 of New York. 

Until disappearance in 1983 of the true king of the Parisian nights, the old theatre centenaire of the street of the Montmartre Suburb was the framework of festivals étincelantes where the largest stars international ravelled, crossing anonymities sharing same unconcern that with the daily newspaper the journalist Alain Pacadis told, in the columns of Release. Quintessence of the festival but much more than one simple discotheque, Le Palace, whose restaurant was decorated with frescos of the painter Gerard Garouste, was a place of convergence, crystallizing a number of currents, attitudes and modes during the years hedonists of the before-AIDS. 

Documentary "the Palace Years" analyzes the extraordinary success of the place, but also the nostalgia which just like joins together those who attended it, young people for which the club of the Montmartre Suburb is the reference as absolute as inaccessible. With through art, the music and the fashion with the turning of years 1970/80, the realizers peel this unequalled phenomenon, become a world legend. "It is thus a film where the small one and the great history mixes, starting from films of files, often new turned by the actors of this adventure. Le Palace incarne also the Utopia of a vast democratic festival in the intoxication of the night ", underline the realizers François Jonquet and Chantal Lasbats. "Fabrice Emaer had an idea of genius by betting that what had been made with Studio 54 could be applied in France. In the country of Giscard, to mix rich person and the poor, white and blacks, hétéros and fags was quite simply a revolutionist ", estimates the journalist Didier Lestrade. "No matter who could enter to Le Palace if an effort had been made on the look or the attitude". "the years of Le Palace",

dir Dick Jewel

Performance

directed by Nick Roeg & Donald Cammell, written by Donald Cammell (1970) Chas, a violent and psychotic East London gangster needs a place to lie low after a hit that should never have been carried out. He finds the perfect cover in the form of guest house run by the mysterious Mr. Turner, a one-time rock superstar, who is looking for the right spark to rekindle his faded talent. Summary written by Brad Jackson.

directed by Paul Tickell (1995) Featured appearances by Jordan Siouxsie Sioux and Vivienne Westwood, John Lydon & Malcolm McLaren

Exclusive download gallery featuring a selection of imagery shot by Kate Garner and David Swindells -the photography documents the rise of the outsider from eccentric to mainstream – ranging from mainstream to club reportage. The shots showcase characters that have used their individuality to shape the mainstream. Individuals featured include JT Leroy, Bjork, Jeremy Healy, PJ Harvey, Leigh Bowery, Talvin Singh, Kate Moss, Davina Mcall & Sinead O’Connor with reportage from inside and outside legendary nights including Taboo, Billion Dollar Babes, Kash Point, Trip, Anohka, Boys Own Parties, Kinky Gerlinky and Slow Motion.

The imagery will also form a live exhibit at the Elms Lester Painting Rooms W1 running from 24th April – 30 April, with a follow on showing at The Great Eastern Hotel.