Marble Bar Poster Art

Posted on June 16, 2009 by almosthipguy

Marble Bar Poster Art

by Tom Warner

After blogging about the Chelsea Graveyard/Slickee Boys Memorial Weekend show at the Ottobar, I got nostalgic and dug up my Marble Bar memorabilia. Recalling that at 2005’s Marble Bar 20th Reunion some guy had given me a CD full of scanned pix of old posters and calendars, I finally loaded it into the computer for a look-see. I’m posting some of the best here because, well, no one else to my knowledge has put them up there. So, for history (and old Marble Bar-ers)’s sake, here ’tis.

Continue reading “Marble Bar Poster Art” at Tom Warner’s “Accelerated Decrepitude”

Posted in Marble Bar, Punk / New Wave | 1 Comment

Susquehannock Indians: Giant Medallions and Pimp Sticks

Posted on June 13, 2009 by atomictv

“In the 15th century, only the Susquehannock Indians knew the paradise that was to become Essex.” — Essex, by Jackie Nickel

“In Captain John Smith’s map of 1606 is a picture of a Susquehannock warrior, with this curious description: ‘They seemed like giants to the English. Their language sounds like a voice in a vault. …One had a wolf’s head hanging in a chain for a jewel. His tobacco pipe three-fourths of a yard long prettily carved with a bird or a deer at great end, sufficient to beat out one’s brains. The calf of the chief’s leg was threefourths of a yard about, and all his limbs so proportionate, that he seemed the goodliest man we ever beheld. His hair on the one side was long, and the other shorne close like a coxe’s comb. His arrows were five-fourths long, headed with the splinters of a white chrystal stone, like a heart an inch broad and one and one-half inches long; these he wore in a wolf’s skin at his back for a quiver.'” —Maryland Historical Magazine

In describing the Susquehannock chief, Captain Smith said that “the calves of his legs were three-quarters of a yard about, and all the rest of his limbs so answerable to that proportion, and he seemed the goodliest man I ever saw.” “They seemed like giants, and were the strangest people in all these countries, both in language and attire; their language well becomes their proportions, sounding from them as a voice in a vault. Their attire is the skins of bears and wolves, some have cassocks made of bears’ heads, and skins that a man’s head goes through the skin’s neck, and the ears of the bear fastened to his shoulder, the nose and teeth hanging down his breast, another bear’s face split behind him, and at the end of their nose hung a paw, the half-sleeves coming to the elbows, where the neck of bears and the arms through the mouth, with paws hanging at their noses. One had the head of a wolf hanging in a chain for a jewel, his tobacco-pipe, three-quarters of a yard long, prettily carved, with a bird, a deer, or some such device at the great end sufficient to beat out one’s brains, with bows, arrows and clubs suitable to their greatness.” —A Brief History of Lancaster County

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Marble Bar Pix

Posted on May 13, 2009 by almosthipguy


Leslee Anderson behind the Marble Bar

Attention all Marble Bar alumni, whoever and wherever you are. A talented photog going by the nom de Internet “Jack of Hearts” has a fantastic Flickr photostream of bands (local and national) that played Baltimore’s Marble Bar back in the early ’80s. His profile lists his occupation as Fire Alarm Tech, but the guy’s a great picture snapper. (I wonder if I met him back in the day?) Below are his profile pix showing him as both as a longhair and a hell-bent-for-leather boy.


Jack of Hearts

Jack’s band pics profile The Cramps, Monuments, Judie’s Fixation, Oral Fixation, Slickee Boys, Ventures, John Cale, Sex in Miami, even the infamous 1982 Johnny Thunders show at Roger and Leslee Anderson’s historic rock club when an inebriated Thunders stormed off the stage after being beaned in the head by an errant beer can!


Johnny Thunders at Marble Bar (1-29-1982)

Check out more band pix at:
Jack of Hearts’ “Marble” Photostream

I love his pix of the Judie’s Fixation. Singer-turned-latter-day-body-builder Vaughn Keith (aka “Ben Wah”) was a madman! A ton of rock singers cavort nekkid or semi-nekkid onstage (Lux, Iggy, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.), but Vaughn would actually eat beer cans – this in the days before eco-consciousness about recycling aluminum products! hence the blood dripping from his chin in the photos below.


Vaughn, looking like a Maori tribesman


Vaughn recycled beer cans BEFORE it was cool

Vaughn’s 2006 passing from AIDS even made the news in the New Yorker, where he was fondly remembered by music critic Alex Ross:

Quo usque tandem abutere
On World AIDS Day, I’d like to remember my high-school Latin teacher, the fierce Vaughn Keith, who was also the lead singer of the obscurely famous DC punk band Judie’s Fixation. Their hard-hitting anthem “Martyr Me” can be found on the 1978 compilation 30 Seconds Over DC. It holds up.

And Judie’s Fixation guitarist Brian “Lumpy” Jones (shown below) was one badass guitar player.

Jack also has a great pantheon of local club and band flyers:
Jack of Hearts’ Balto/DC Club and Band Flyers

This Slickees flyer for a show at the 9:30 Club is especially cool:


Psychedelic Slickee Boys flyer

And I really like his Flickr photo set below:
“Friends and other people at the Marble Bar, Baltimore, MD Early 80s“. Highlights below:


Dave Wilcox: With friends like this, who needs Q Tips?


Crazy Keith!

I forget Keith’s last name (Wurst?) but he was certifiably insane in the membrane. I remember he came to a Katatonix gig in Annapolis and his frenetic pogo dancing so impressed a music critic that he got singled out in the review for resembling something along the lines of “Jerry Lewis exposed to repeated electro-shocks.” I vividly recall my last Keith sighting at some Sowebo Festival in the ’90s…he was in that dive bar next to the old Mencken’s Cultured Pearl (now the Vietnamese restaurant Pho), railing against a woman who had the audacity to criticize his beloved Charles Bukowski. “Who are you compared to Bukowski?,” he screamed. “He’s a genius and you’re just a female with a vagina!” [Ed. note: is there any other kind of female? Did I miss something in Biology class?] I think Keith had a drinking problem. Just a guess.


Cindy Borschardt in her Claire Grogan (Altered Images) phase

Who wasn’t in love with the lovely Cindy Borschardt, aka “Bobby Sox,” former chanteusse with The Beaters? Obviously, Jack of Hearts was a fan of the photogenic Ms. B. Her sister Susie was equally hot (good gene pool there!).


Hail hail, the gang’s all here!

Jack of Hearts’ Band Photostreams, A-Z:
Balto/DC Club and Band Flyers
Cramps Marble Bar 3-2-83
John Cale Marble Bar 1-14-83
Johnny Thunders Marble Bar 1-29-82
Judie’s Fixation Marble Bar 4-30-83
Judie’s Fixation Galaxy Ballroom 12-17-83
Judie’s Fixation Marble Bar 12-30-83
Marble Bar People
The Monuments Marble Bar early 80s
The Monuments Parrot Club 9-25-83
The Monuments Galaxy Ballroom 5-83
Oral Fixation Marble Bar
Sex in Miami Marble Bar 12-30-83
Slickee Boys Marble Bar 2-19-83
Slickee Boys Marble Bar New Year’s Eve 81-82
Slickee Boys 9:30 Club 2-9-84
Ventures Marble Bar 2-19-83

Posted in Marble Bar, Music | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Still Katatonic After All These Years

Posted on April 19, 2009 by almosthipguy


Thanks Hon: Thee Katatonix 30th Anniversary
Thee Katatonix
UK Spud, 2009

Excellent singles compilation highlighting local band’s glorious mid-’80s neo-psychedelic period.

Forward into the past…

Adolf Kowalski just mailed me this latest “new” Katatonix CD – a collection of choice singles (and one new “bonus” track) by my old band’s best lineup of Kowalski and Mr. Urbanity and various bass players and drummers (but mostly “Beautiful” Tony Belle on bass and “Big” Andy Small on the skins) – in honor of the 30th anniversary of the group’s founding in 1979…(though the groundwork for the band was set in motion, amidst puffs of hemp and gulps of Blackberry brandy, in the fall of 1978 in Towson State University’s wooded “Glen” – where freshman Ross “Adolf Kowalski” Haupt, freshwoman Katie “Katatonic” Glancy, and jaded junior Tommy “Gunn” Warner decided Punk Rock was the answer to their dying-of-boredom-in-the-‘burbs collegiate blues – we didn’t start playing out until our debut/debacle at Towson’s Oddfellows Hall in April 1979.) Katie Katatonic and I (Tommy Gunn) are not on this CD at all, and that’s why I like it…in fact, though Adolf probably didn’t appreciate it at the time, Katie and I did him a big favor by quitting Thee Katatonix at the end (literally, as it was New Year’s Eve) of 1980. When we stopped playing music, that’s when the band really started to play music. (I’d like to think the Thanks Hon title is a subconcious salute to the Tom and Katie bailout. If so, you’re welcome – we did it all for you!)

Contine reading “Still Katatonic” at Accelerated Decrepitude.

Posted in 80s Rock, Music, Punk / New Wave | Tagged , , | Leave a comment