I wasn’t going to post about it, originally, but since a few people keep invoking it, I might as well throw in my two cents.
I’m talking, of course, about the Museum of Sex’s sorta-new “Punk Lust” retrospective.
I’d seen the posters advertising it for weeks, featuring a gratuitously cleavage-heavy shot of Alice Bag of storied L.A. punk bad, The Bags. Given my interest in the subject matter -– Punk Rock, not cleavage, although I do technically enjoy both -– I figured I should eventually go check it out. Four or five weeks back, I had an afternoon to myself, so I strolled up to 27th street and Fifth to have a look at “Punk Lust: Raw Provocation 1971-1985.”
Obviously, Punk Rock means many different things to many different people. A movement and a subculture predicated on renunciation, Punk smeared itself across a wide spectrum that extends far beyond simply music and fashion. While I’d sooner associate wanton carnality with certain other musical and/or cultural movements -– specifically disco and some of the less salubrious aspects of heavy metal -– sex, sexual politics, sexual identity and sexual expression all played their part within the much-ballyhooed parameters of all things Punk.
As such, this exhibit focusses on what I’d consider more of the obvious touchstones (although why they settled on this rather arbitrary time-span -- `71 to `85 –- pretty much eludes me). In a nutshell, while there were fleeting things I’d never seen before (details below), I didn’t really encounter anything too surprising.
This was my first trip to Manhattan’s Museum of Sex. While, sure, I’d been mildly curious, the whole endeavor has always seemed pretty silly. I couldn’t imagine myself paying an admission fee to go see an exhibit of “Dildos Through the Ages,” or some such. But slap the label “PUNK” on something, and I’m sure to show up, sooner or later.
Up three flights of stairs, you enter a reasonably large room adorned with myriad posters, photographs, record sleeves and other period-specific ephemera underscoring sexually-charged elements of Punk Rock both obvious and comparatively nuanced. Of course, there’s a whole big focus on Malcolm McLaren’s SEX shop, the very name “Sex Pistols” and the British scene’s strangely anemic associations with bondage gear (the `Pistols famously penned “Submission” at the behest of McLaren, but the lyrics were all about a submarine expedition). There are a few of Vivian Westwood’s naughty t-shirts, a giant-sized poster of the Cut album cover by the Slits (featuring the band topless and slathered in mud, in case you're unfamiliar), plus invocations of stuff like "Pay to Cum" by Bad Brains, “Love Comes in Spurts” by Richard Hell, “Orgasm Addict” by Buzzcocks, “Whip in My Valise” by Adam & the Ants, etc.
This all said, it’s all pretty obvious. I didn’t really need a museum to inform me about the sexual connotations of “Can Your Pussy Do The Dog?” by the Cramps.
To its credit, the show does display the original magazine photo-spreads of Gaye Advert (of The Adverts …. duh!) and Cosey Fanni Tutti of Throbbing Gristle, two suitably provocative punk luminaries who posed nude for men’s magazines, back in the day. I had legitimately never seen those before, although to look at them preserved under glass like artifacts from ancient Egypt was a somewhat strange experience.
I will say this, though -– and here’s where my laboriously-well-established penchant for being insufferably pedantic rears its ugly head once more. If you’re going to invoke the particulars of Punk Rock -– even if historical minutia isn’t the thrust of your exhibit -– it’s in your best interest to get your facts right.
FOR EXAMPLE….
In their inevitable invocation of the Plasmatics -– a longtime favorite of this here blog and a band for whom sex obviously played a very big role -– while the emphasis may understandably be on the late Wendy Orlean Williams and her singular aesthetic of spot-welding an overt, defiant sexuality with suitably punky pugnacity, it’s important to remember that the Plasmatics -– for better or worse -– were still very much a band. There were other individuals involved beyond the late Ms. Williams. My beef here is that the Plasmatics’ Ivy-league Svengali Rod Swenson was their manager. He was not their bass player. While the band had a Spinal-Tap-like roster of members, bass detail was limited to Chosei Funahara, Michael David, Greg Smith, Jean Beauvoir and Chris “Junior” Romanelli. Swenson never played bass for them, or any other band. Ultimately, is this an important point? No, but facts are fucking facts. Get them right.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE…
There was a performer in the late 70’s named Cherry Vanilla, who’d originally emerged from the Warhol scene to reinvent herself as a sexually assertive chanteuse of New York City Punk. Through the auspices of IRS Records’ Miles Copeland, Cherry Vanilla decamped from the big splash she’d been making in NYC to London, where she was paired with a new band to help break into the British scene… only to ultimately fail at making much of a dent.
Cherry Vanilla’s forays into overtly aggressive, sexually-charged antics (most photos of her find her with tongue extended, groping herself and/or sporting a shirt with sequins that spell out “Lick Me”) are obviously the reason the Museum of Sex sought to highlight her in this exhibit. While she didn’t quite make the same impact as many of her peers, the nature of her approach makes her indeed suitable for inclusion. Fair enough.
In their treatment of her story, however, the Museum of Sex’s curators made what I would consider a rather huge omission. While Cherry Vanilla never became what anyone would consider a household name, she did inadvertently serve as something of a crucial stepping-stone for the nascent line-up of a little band called The Police. To fill out the London iteration of her act, Miles Copeland drafted original Police guitarist Henri Padovani along with Stewart Copeland and fucking STING as both her backup band and opening act, helping the rookie ersatz-punk trio further find their footing.
In “Punk Lust,” there’s even a sizable photo of Cherry with Sting playing right fucking next to her (above, just over her right shoulder), and he isn’t even identified.
Sorry, but shit like that is inexcusable. Do your damn homework.
Unsurprisingly, at the end of the exhibit, you’re invited to exit through the gift shop …. where you can buy a neon-yellow Nevermind The Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols shirt … for fifty bucks.
Skip it.
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