“How can you be tough with a Christmas cake in your face?” A Sex Pistols short story

The quote of the title belongs to John Lydon, lead singer of the Sex Pistols, the English punk group that shook England in the period from 1975 to 1978. Lydon was referring to band member Sid Vicious, known for his violent behavior, at the end of a benefit concert the Sex Pistols gave for the kids of striking firefighters in Huddersfield, on Christmas day 1977. The firefighters were on strike for nine weeks and needed to feed their children.

John Lydon eats his cake at the Huddersfiled gig in 1977

Lydon said about the childrens’ party: “That gig made me feel like I’d actually achieved something.”

Julien Temple, director of a film on the Pistols, who was present in the children’ gig has said:

“To most people they (the Sex Pistols) were monsters in the news. But seeing them playing to seven- and eight-year-olds is beautiful. They were a radical band, but there was a lot more heart to that group than people know.”

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2528815/When-Sex-Pistols-werent-quite-vicious-Unseen-film-1977-shows-band-handing-posters-dancing-pop-hits-childrens-charity-gig.html#ixzz4xXP9UkFi
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Eventhough at the time the group was only two years old, they had made their mark on the map. But the conditions were difficult for them, because they were banned from the mainstream media and from performing almost everywhere in the UK.

They were hated by the establishment, shut down by the police, pilloried by the press.

Ticket for the Sex Pistols Gig in Huddersfiled, Christmas 1977

There are no details of the location on the ticket, just the instruction to telephone a number two days before the event. The punters would call and get the details of the event.

Following the benefit gig for the firefighters’ kids, and the devouring of the car bonnet size cake, the band gave their last concert in the UK, in Ivanhoe’s Club on Manchester Road, Huddersfield.

In January 1978 the Sex Pistols toured the USA. At the end of the tour, John Lydon split and left the band.  This was the end of the Sex Pistols as we know them. Sid Vicious died of drug overdose in February 1979. The other wmembers of the band reunited in 1996, and a few more times after that. But the real stuff was gone in 1978.

Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren 1976

How did the Sex Pistols come about? To put it in simple terms, the context was provided by the punk movement of the early 1970s. The actors who made it happen, excluding the band members, were Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood. Westwood was an elementary school teacher, and McLaren an art school dropout.

430 Kings Road, London

Without overstating it, one can say that the Sex Pistols were born in the shop that McLaren and Westwood kept on 430 Kings Road, London. Its name since 1974 was SEX, and it was the place to be for all who loved punk in London in the early 1970s. The shop’s main commodity was punk itself.

Glen Mattlock, the future bassist of the Sex Pistols was an employee of the shop.

The other members of the band were:

  • John Lydon (aka Rotten, because of his bad teeth), lead vocalist
  • Paul Cook, drums
  • Steve Jones, guitar
  • Sid Vicious (John Stuart Ritchie), bass – he replaced Mattlock in early 1977

As early as 1972, Mattlock, Vicious and Lydon were regulars at 430 Kings Road.

The Sex Pistols in Paradiso club – Mattlock plays the bass

At this point, one must answer the question “What is punk?”

Oxford Dictionaries define punk as “A loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the late 1970s.”

In 1975 there were over 1.5 million unemployed workers in the UK, most of whom were castoffs from its deteriorating industrial base. In this context, it would not be an exaggeration to say that punk expressed to an extent the frustration and agony of the disenfranchised British youth.

Punk would mean you were the lowest of the low.

Robert Ebert, an American film critic, puts things in perspective:

“The Catch-22 with punk rock, and indeedwith all forms of entertainment designed to shock and offend the bourgoisie, is that if your act is too convinving, you put yourself out of business, a fact carefully noted by today’s rappers as they go as far as they can without going too far.”

The Sex Pistols went too far for their own good.

From left to right: Cook, Jones, Mattlock, Lydon, McLaren

On the 8th October 1976, EMI signs the Sex Pistols up for a period of two yers and a signing fee of UKP 40,000. But three months later, on the 6th January 1977 EMI fired the Pistols. They were too hot to handle.

On the 10th March 1977, A&M signed the Pistols for UKP 75,000, only to drop them a few days later!

It was the brave Mr. Branson and his Virgin company who signed the Pistols on the 18th May 1977.

“God save the Queen”, the band’s second single, was released on the 27th May 1977. It sold 150,000 copies in the first day and 200,000 in the first week. The song was banned by the BBC, as a song of “bad taste”. The members of the band were attacked in the treets by disgusted members of the public. Lydon had reported wounds in the knees by machetes and the in the face by bottles.

However, as Paul Cook, the drummer of the band has said: “We didn’t have a manifesto, but we wanted to shake things up.”

Sex Pistols nd Vivienen Westwood on stage, at Notre Dame Hall in Leicester Square, London, on 15 November 1976. Photograph: Ray Stevenson/Rex Features

In terms of the ideological foundations of the punk movement, I would like to mention Situationism, the movement that was behind May 1968 in Paris. (8) Apparently, Malcolm McLaren was a committed situationist.

Guy Debord’s theory of the Spectacle is the foundation of situationism. Simply put, the world we see is not the real world but the world we are conditioned to see, and the Situationist agenda is to explain how the nightmare works so that everyone can wake up.

One of the famous pieces of Situationist graffiti to appear during the Paris ’68 riots was “art is an academic headache.”

 

It It is almost 40 years since the firefighters’ children benefit concert given by the Sex Pistols in Huddersfield’s Ivanhoe Club. The Sex Pistols are gone. Punk is gone.

Is revolt gone as well?

Sources

  1. Anarchy in Huddersfield: the day the Sex Pistols played Santa, The Guardian

2. The Filth and the Fury, review by Roger Ebert

3. A Merry Punk Rock Christmas: Anarchy in Ivanhoe’s. For Malcontents Only

4. Get Pissed, Destroy (Or Eat Cake): The Sex Pistols’ Final UK Gigs, Christmas 1977. By Peter Alan Loyd. Bombed Out

5. God Save the Queen at 40: how the Sex Pistols made the most controversial song in history. By James Hall, The Telegraph

6. Anarchy in the EU: the Sex Pistols’ drummer on why Brexit isn’t punk. By Michael Henderson. The Spectator

7. How Vivienne Westwood’s Punk Revolution Changed Fashion Forever. By Asaf Rotman, Grailed.

8. Situationism explained! and its affect on punk and pop culture. By Amy Britton, Louder than War.

 

 

 

The Condor, “Big” Davey, Rudi Gernreich’ s monokini and Carol Doda

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WARNING TO THE READER

This article must be avoided by all people who cannot tolerate, accept, and so on, the naked female body. Please abandon ship now and seek safe passage to another destination.

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The Condor Club, North Beach, San Francisco, 1973

Introduction

This is a story about a place, the night club “The Condor”, a female dancer, Carol Doda, a Public Relations (PR) agent, “Big” Davey Rosenbeg, and a fashion designer, Rudi Gernreich. Together, they made “topless entertainment” a reality in San Francisco in the early 1960s.

 

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Carol Doda in The Condor

Carol Doda

Carol Ann Doda was born in Solano County, in Northern California, on Aug. 29, 1937, and raised in San Francisco. Her parents divorced when she was 3.

As reported in LIFE magazine (11 March 1966) Ms. Doda held a number of jobs like prune-picker, file clerk, ballroom dance instructor and cocktail waitress before becoming an employee of the Condor nightclub in San Francisco’s North Beach.

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The Condor

 

The Condor had a different name and owner before 1964. Its name was “House of Pisco”, named after the drink “Pisco Punch”. Pisco is a late 16th century brandy made from grapes that originated in the Viceroyalty of Peru. It was available in San Francisco since the 1830s when it was first brought from Pisco, Peru via ship by rawhide and tallow traders trading with California towns. During the California Gold Rush of 1849 the brandy was readily available in San Francisco.

In 1964 “The Condor” needed a push to its business, which was moderate in volume to say the least.

Hiring “Big” Davey Rosenberg as a PR man was one thing. It turned out that it was more than enough.

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“Big” Davey Rosenfeld in The Condor Club with three of the performers (1972)

 

 

“Big” Davey Rosenberg

“Big” Davey Rosenberg was a public relations agent in San Francisco. He was not a moderate man. He once told a Playboy interviewer.

“I personally am responsible for the name ‘topless entertainment’… I personally put ‘topless’ in the dictionary.”

Davey Rosenberg was the right man in the right place on the 19th June 1964, the day that changed “The Condor” and many other things in San Francisco and the United States of America.

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Rudi Gernreich

Rudi Gernreich

Rudi Gernreich, was an Austrian-born American fashion designer and early gay activist who had learned about female fashion in his aunt’s dress shop in Vienna. Rudi and his mother fled Austria after its annexation to Nazi Germany, where Hitler had banned nudity, among many other acts. Austrian citizens were advocates of exercising nude, a rejection of the over-civilized world. Gernreich was very much against sexualization of the human body and the notion that the body was essentially shameful, which was reflected prominently in his designs. (MessyNessy)

His genial way of cutting fabrics and his dramatic vision of female silhouette gave him the idea to create the top-less swimsuit. Trying to avoid any connection with pornography, he incorporated the idea of ​​topless in every outfit.(afashionhistory)

In 1964 Gernreich designed the monokini, a topless swimsuit. The monokini had a rough reception.

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Widely censored in the media and renounced from all corners including Vatican officials and the U.S Republicans, who tried to blame the suit on the Democrats’ stance on moral issues. Even the Soviet Union chimed in, calling it barbarianism. Never intended by the designer to be a commercial success, over 3000 monokinis at $24 were sold in New York in the summer of 1964 at leading store like Henri Bendel. (MessyNessy)

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L-R: Davey Rosenberg, Gino del Prete, Carol Doda, and Herb Caen at the Condor Club on 22 October 1965

Synthesis

At this point we have all the ingredients required to put together the story. But having all the ingredients of a story is not enough. They have to somehow come together. In this story, the agent who brought them together was Davey Rosenberg.

The Condor’s publicist, “Big” Davy Rosenberg came up with the idea to have Carol Doda dance in a monokini. The garment was brought for $25 at the I. MAgnin store in San Francisco, and on the 19th June 1964, it all came together. Carol Doda, wearing Rudi Gernreich’s monikini  performed topless that night.

In a 2009 interview with The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Doda, a former secretary and cocktail waitress, said: “The minute I knew I existed in life was the night I started the Condor thing. The only thing that mattered to me was entertaining people.”  (The New York Times)

Within a few days, women in clubs all the Broadway St. clubs of San Francisco were sporting the monokini in many of the clubs lining San Francisco’s Broadway St, effectively reinventing the burlesque era of the early 20th century and ushering in the era of the topless bar.

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Carol Doda

 

 

 

From a 34B to a 44DD

There was a technicality though that had to be addressed. Carol Doda’s natural bust was not big enough for the monokini dance.

Ms Doda was transformed from a 34B to a 44DD by 44 surgical treatments (the number was “just a coincidence,” she said) in which emulsified silicone, was injected at a cost of about $12,000 in today’s dollars. The procedure has since been banned, but Ms. Doda, who began every day with a bowl of Wheaties, said she suffered no health complications. Her bust was said to have been insured for $1.5 million. (The New York Times)

 

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Carol Doda with Bay Area wrestling pesonality Woody Farmer (1980) – Bay Area News Group Archives

The 1965 Bust

On April 22, 1965 Doda was arrested with Gino del Prete, owner of the Condor Club during police raids to stop bare-bosom shows in North Beach.. They were cleared when two judges instructed innocent verdicts. Judge Friedman’s memorandum to opposing attorneys reads,

“Whether acts … are lewd and dissolute depends not on any individual’s interpretation or personal opinion, but on the consensus of the entire community …” 

Epilogue

Carol Doda is no longer inhabiting this planet. She passed away a month ago. But her legacy stays on.

“I don’t believe topless is a fad,” Carol Doda told the (San Francisco) Chronicle in January 1967. “It’s something that’s going to stay — like burlesque.”