"Formerly Street Queen" the first Nervebreakers original song...

"Formerly Street Queen" was the very first song I wrote with my Nervebreakers songwriting partner Mike Haskins. I am guessing that was perhaps 1975 or ’76, when I was around 21 years old. “Formerly Street Queen” is an excellent example of it’s time & what is now referred to as “proto-punk,” with alternating fast & slow parts topped off with an epic-sounding final long section, building up to a resolution with a spaghetti-western turn at the end.

My old band from that era, The Nervebreakers, have a new/old album (FACE UP TO REALITY) released last year by Freddie Krc’s SteadyBoy Records, filled with original songs written & performed during the band’s late ‘70s heyday, but never documented & recorded until a 2009 band reunion. Got that? New in 2022, but recorded in 2009, but composed before 1980. "Formerly Street Queen" is included on this release.

Please check your local record store to see if it’s in stock. If you don’t find it there, I have some available here on eBay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/155359139433

The ‘street queen’ illustration included here was one I lifted from a social media post, with no attribution listed for it’s source, that I ran across recently. Since we had a song with that in the title I posted it to Facebook with a link https://youtu.be/OHUHncPED2w to the song. Lo & behold, the wonderful Miriam Linna of Norton Records commented & informed me: “That image was hacked out of Bad Seed mag!” Bad Seed was a famous groundbreaking fanzine she & her late husband, Billy Miller, put together many years ago. So I quickly inserted in my posting the real source for this image that you see here, with apologies. Miriam’s one of the coolest, cutest dolls around but I know you don’t wanna get on the bad side of the original “bad seed."

Miriam Linna on Ron Haydock

 Sometimes I like to mirror (or copy) what I think are important posts made elsewhere online because occasionally the original source will disappear completely. I've only had the original author complain about this but once. But in a couple of cases, the original online source has disappeared and the author or subject of the post has contacted me relieved that someone had preserved the post and gratefully thanked me. The following post was posted on Facebook by Miriam Linna. I know the odds of Facebook disappearing seems low at this point. (Think Myspace.) But sometimes someone innocently posts material Facebook deems outside their "community standards" and suspends the account and years of posts are lost. Odds are this material from Miriam will resurface in a new future edition of KICKS Magazine. Hopefully.

FROM Miriam Linna:

“REMEMBERING RAT PFINK RON HAYDOCK DEPT. Here at HQ, we remember Ron, our ultimate #1 culture mangling superhero, every day, all day. On Aug 14, 1977, Ron's life ended his life under the wheels of an 18-wheeler in Victorville, California. For a guy who struggled with mental health issues for his entire life, he was insanely productive. The rock n' roll uber-fanatic played guitar, inked songs, made records, wrote about records, horror movies, monster movies, western movies, film stars, forgotten lore, and wrote, inspired, and starred in movies himself, plus delivered a staggering number of paperback books under various pseudonyms. Documenting his life has been a main focus here. 

In 1987, ten years after his passing, I visited Ron's brother in trying to wrap my head around why the supernova known alternately as Lonnie Lord, Vin Saxon, Arnold Hayes, Don Sheppard and Jerry Lee Vincent (among others) would choose to end his days as he did. The brother gave me the briefcase that Ron was carrying that night in August. He had added to the mix, the death certificate, various insurance forms linked to the event of his death, and two pocket-size loose leaf binders. One was his address book and the other was a meticulous accounting of his stories, submissions and publications. Those two little binders have lead me into a life where all things must measure up against the Haydock yardstick. 

Bhob Stewart, who would become my best friend and in all ways, mentor (and I dont toss that word around), was Ron's NYC roommate in the late 60s), told me when we first met to discuss Ron, that unemployed Ron would get dressed for work every morning and sit down at the kitchen table to type. BHob said a stack of typed pages grew and grew and grew ("thousands of pages!") and that he'd read some of these "incredible tales", thinking Ron would submit them to publishers. One day, the stack disappeared. Then Ron vanished. Bhob never saw the stack-- or Ron-- again. For years I wondered about that stack of stories. 

As fate would have it, and this, proof that nothing is an accident, I was visiting in Burbank with Ron's friend Don Glut. As I went to leave, running very late for the flight home, Don asked me to come into into his garage. He had something to give me. He pulled out two cobwebby (really!) legal-size boxes that had been passed along to him when friends sorted through Ron's apartment after his death. Don had not opened them since 1977. When I got back to NYC and cracked open the boxes, I came very close to fainting. Inside, tightly packed, were the "thousands of pages" that had vanished from Bhob's kitchen table decades earlier. 

Forry Ackerman told me that he chose Ron as heir apparent to Famous Monsters. Ray Dennis Steckler said that Ron was visionary, and "the talented one." I've been unraveling his story, for over thirty years. The big revelations at one time were in "Runnin' Wild" in Kicks #7 and on the Norton anthology "99 Chicks". It's time for an update to honor our hero, Midwest everyman superhero Ron Haydock. Always in memory. Here's my favorite photo. And the slowest tune he ever recorded.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbeSdeljfPU

Fasbinder 62's Collection of Quotable Cramps Quotes

Fasbinder 62 from the Staysick Yahoo Group at: http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/staysick/ recently posted a collection of Cramps quotes he saved.


(Image from Miriam Linna's kicksville 66 blog at: http://kicksville66.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-first-band-cramps-1976-pt-1.html)



"Here's some clips from various Cramps articles and interviews I have collected (and then brilliantly lost) over the years..."
--Fasbinder 62
http://groups. yahoo.com/ group/Zombies_ March_On/


Cramps, the: Interview (june 1980 ZigZag) – Lux trembles with glee at
the memory of a night in Bristol, where they played an old church "It
was in the cellar, there was no floor. So they had this tarpaulin
where the floorboards used to be. You could see the church through
the holes and there was the Lord's Prayer behind us, it was great."
That night Lux was compelled to indulge in some of his notorious
onstage lunacy and got hold of some wires hanging down to swing out
over the punters. He made it back onto the stage by walking on their
shoulders. "They were all going, step on my shoulder, hurt me!"


Interview (4 jan 86, NME) "Nick's been to every Raiders game this
season," beams Lux. "The Raiders are more rock'n roll than 99 out of
100 groups today. Wherever they go people are frightened to death of
them…" Ivy "They're a bunch of hoodlums. There's a cliché about
sport; it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game.
But their motto is just `Win, Baby!'"
Lux "The truth of the matter is they just want to go in and destroy
the other team… Their uniform is silver and black with skull and
crossbones. Anyplace they play they can sell out the stadium because
people know there's gonna be fights. When the Raiders play, they
say `Your mother's a fuckin' bitch you fuckin' asshole!" They scream
at other players, they antagonise them. It's not like morale-
building, good natured sports, it's way beyond."
Lux "I feel like I've been surfing, I've listened to enough surf
records. I think there's something more deviant about surf records
than really had to do with surf music. All the best surf music was
made in our part of town, a whole way away from the beach. That
becomes suspect in my mind because all these records are so, like,
Manic. Maybe the girls in their bikini's caused all this manic
activity. But I think it had to do with something more involved than
that." He trails off mysteriously.
"Ecstasy is really great!" proclaims Lux. "Have you ever taken
ecstasy? It's LSD, heroin… it makes you lurve your fellow man. Can
you imagine a drug that makes you lurve your fellow man?" his
beatific grin quickly evaporates into a mock responsible expression
following a warning glance from Ivy.
"Yeah," she says "It'll give you Parkinson's disease."
Lux says "It's too bad they're not legal cos anybody can make `em and
anything can happen."


Clipping - "I wish I could make my new stuff sound as different as
the Cramps are to Status Quo, but I can't." Frank Black.


3 reviews of Flamejob – The Cramps also ritually abuse `Route 66' in
a way that makes the Stones sound like the safe old English drips
that they are, treating it with the same reverence as their version
of `Heartbreak Hotel' – that is, with all the respect of a PCP crazed
drunk starting a fight at the Queen Mothers funeral. / Lux Interior
once memorably stated that he spends 95% of his time having sex and
the other 5% thinking about having it. / Signing to hip indie label
Creation was a most unlikely but highly clever move.


Interview (Halloween 1989) The album's title was originally the catch-
phrase of an obscure `60s TV horror host in Cleveland who went by the
name of Ghoulardi. Lux, who was a teenager at the time, remembers his
performances well. "He was really great! He'd say `Stay Sick!,' `Turn
Blue!' and `Purple Knif' which is fink spelt backwards. Everybody
drank these big Ghoulardi shakes which had every flavour imaginable
mixed into them… and then green dye! That guy was intense. On TV he
had this wavering little halo around him and one spot light under his
face. He'd blow things up on TV. They'd be showing a horror movie and
then, after the commercial break, he'd have a model of a split-level
house with a car and mom and dad waving to each other in the front
garden… then he'd blow it up on TV. That guy was like Hitler or
something, he was really something different."
On Date with Elvis not being released in the States… "All these A+R
departments in America are a buncha scared bunny Rabbits" sneers Lux
in disgust "all hoping they can hold onto their pay-cheques for one
more week. There are a lot of record companies that have tied up a
lot of our time over the years, going out to dinner with us, talking
with us… But when it comes round to the real thing, they're all
groupies. Some people talk about it and some people do it!"


Interview (City Limits) "You can see a film like Naughty Dallas and
the strippers really existed. It happened. There was no concept or
anything. These are things that interest us because they're to deal
with real people." Opines the striking Mr Interior as a way of
expressing his disgust at those who see the band as a two-dimensional
cartoon. "We have 3000 films on video-tape and we're looking for
stuff all the time."


Interview – "We're the Kings and Queens of Rock
and Roll." Says Ivy "We don't take life seriously, we take ourselves
seriously, and what we do, we're just totally committed to
it." "We've already dominated the world" snarls Lux "If only they'd
just come to that realisation. "


Interview (Poison Ivy on her self-image) – What image do you have of
yourself? "Flaky and incredibly disorganised. I also think that I am
completely normal and it is the rest of the world which isn't. A lot
of values that are really valued in contemporary society I don't
have. I'm spaced out most of the time. I like it that way, being on a
different wavelength." What image are you trying to achieve? "That of
a well-decorated Christmas tree." Do you wear make up? "People think
I wear too much but I don't think that's possible. I hate the natural
look."

New Miriam Lenna Blog - KICKSVILLE 66

http://kicksville66.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-first-band-cramps-1976-pt-1.html

KICKSVILLE 66

FRIDAY, MAY 15, 2009
MY FIRST BAND : THE CRAMPS 1976 (Pt. 1)

"Erick Purkhiser, better known as Cramps leader Lux Interior, died on February 2. Long ago, and for one year, he was my friend. I was the drummer in the first Cramps lineup which played forty-odd dates over an eight month period from the first show on All Saints Night 1976 through July 13, 1977, the date of the NYC blackout. With his passing came a mess of calls asking about the early days. After years of avoiding a backward glance, I was suddenly dropped headlong into the well. A moldering box of old stuff materialized from way back of the closet, and old friends began sending in decades-old snapshots, clippings, bits of correspondence. That first year in New York was my coming of age, at least in calendar years. It was also my first year behind the traps, on the flipside of fandom. It provided a hazing that alternately galvanized and confused my head, so these few words and pictures will seem sad and funny at the same time. I hope this helps clear the cobwebs for those who care. Walking through my dreams, like the Pretty Things would say. RIP, Lux. "



"...That first run-in was at a small Sixth Avenue eatery called Chicken & Burger World, located right by Bigelow’s Pharmacy and a stone’s throw from Village Oldies and Discophile, where Helen and I had been trawling for records. A familiar looking tall guy with long hair and a velvet jacket had sidled over to our table to say that he’d seen us at a show at the Piccadilly Inn in Cleveland a few weeks earlier, and then he told us that he and his girlfriend Ivy (who waved from their table and then came over to say hi, a tiny lady with billowing sandy curls) in the middle of moving to New York to form a band, and that I should play drums with them. I was shocked. I told him I’d never played at all and that seemed to be a selling point. I’m guessing they had come from California to Ohio not long before that to see Lux’s family—he was originally from Stow, five miles from Kent, and I understood his family was in Akron. As he was talking, I realized that I had seen him at a Kinks show-- the Schoolboys tour- I remembered he had been wearing turquoise shoes. Subtle. We exchanged addresses and soon after I got back home to Ohio, there was a letter from Lux saying that they’d be stopping by when they came back to move their stuff to NYC. ..."



"... Bryan’s sister Pam had arrived in NYC a couple weeks earlier, and she had filled in a couple rehearsals in the record store basement, just for laughs. Regardless, another band photo had been snapped and another handbill hatched. There’s also a great early cameo flyer of just Bryan, gazing over his shoulder. So here I was now, not knowing what I was getting into, and not knowing which end up was up on a drumstick, in with this snap-happy trio with a name, and a selection of photos, and zero experience, or musical ability for that matter. Lux handed me a brand new pair of sticks and pronounced me the world’s greatest drummer. Let’s go. Just like that. No audition, no test run, no lessons, no suggestions of what to play or how fast..."



"...Around the same time, we were messing with the Troggs’ Night Of The Long Grass. That still is a personal fave. God bless Reg Presley and all he stands for, crop circles and all. Somebody get Reg on Coast To Coast AM, please! That spring, my Ohio pal Peter Laughner came to visit at the apartment above a hardware store on 12th Street and First Avenue that I was by then sharing with Buffalo’s best, Miss Lydia Lunch and nutty Cleveland import Bradley Field, who was fresh out of jail in Ohio. (The pair would go on to bang a gong as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.) Peter arrived with Lester Bangs and Richard Lloyd in tow, and we hung around listening to records and a demo Richard had just cut, solo; finally taking a cab to pick up photog Stephanie Chernikowski. It was a perfect late spring day, the windows were down and the taxi was going fast. I remember it clearly, as it was the last time I would see Peter. He phoned right before his death in June. .."

GREAT STUFF, CHECK IT OUT...
http://kicksville66.blogspot.com/2009/05/my-first-band-cramps-1976-pt-1.html