so sad, to have lost such a wonderful person.

dean and i were friends at NYU and i was his first drummer in Dean and the Weenies. Over the last few weeks, I kept meaning to reach out to him and tell him the following:

Hi Dean - I wanted you to know I have been playing drums to your first Velvet Mafia record and listening to it non stop for the last several weeks. Despite marriage, kids, suburbia, and this BS called a career, I still manage to play and your record has been my first choice for the last several weeks.

The record is brilliant and Deli Boy is breathtakingly stupendous - one of my all-time favorite songs. It got me thinking back to the mid 80's when we started playing. Being practically the house band at Pyramid on Drag Queen Sunday nights, sharing the dressing room with Hapi, Lady Bunny, etc. was so fun. Playing with the Weenies has become an indelible part of me and I can never thank you enough for allowing me to share in that experience. You touched my life then and continue to do so now. Thank you for being you and allowing me to be a small part of your life.

*****
I write the above in sorrow - we have lost someone so unique, so special, and it fills me with emotion. Regret that I never got to send the above email. Sadness that I will never be able to thank him in person. But hope that he will return and assault us again with his cutting humor, brilliant songs and wanton thoughts!

I will love and miss you forever Dean.

Rocko

This message has been edited. Last edited by: rocko,

An Historical Note...

In our culture it seems to be of paramount importance who was "the first," when in reality any ideas we might have are the result of a barrage of influences we receive from the cradle onward.

"You know you weren't the first bald drag queen, Dean," said Constance in the mid-nineties.

Likewise, the first boy bar dancers at the Pyramid in jockey shorts were Greg W. (a wall streeter by day) and Sister Dimension (!). This was in 1981, before Dean came here from the wilds of Maine.

However, whether or not Dean had ever seen Constance or those very first Pyramid bar dancers, or even knew about them, he took both concepts to the N-th degree, and made them his very own.

This is what makes a legend a legend. And Dean one of the most special in the pantheon of legends. He will truly be missed.

This sucks. This just plainly sucks.

Dean will be missed. He was always there- and now he's not. A movement all by himself.

You're right of course Hatch, the whole "being the first" is so "Francine 59" of me.
First or not, Dean took everything to the extreme.

I remember DJing at one of his parties.
There were HUNDREDS of guys totally naked going totally ape shit!
At one point he had at least 15 or 20 guys jerking off in unison on the bar (he told them all to come at the same time).
It was hysterical.
I got inspired and put on Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

quote:

With the lights out, its less dangerous
Here we are now, Entertain us.

They came together.
It was a high point in my DJ career and I'm sure Kurt and Dean are laughing about it right now.

This is so shocking. Ironically I'm reading this news from the Fairmont Hotel in DC as I type (here for work). I only knew Dean very casually, but he was always so kind and his sense of humor will be missed. Another piece of youth falling away ...

I heard the news about Dean tonight. I am so sorry. He will be missed.

take care
Teri

What a spectacular being Dean is/was.... We met 100 years ago when we both worked at the World.... had a lot of respect for each other, and always shared laughs... recently we reconnected via myspace and were writing back and forth.I adore you Dean, gorgeous and mean God Bless The Queen!

Thank you for your stories and words here, they are a comfort and I know our own "velvetmafiacapo" is reading every word.

For friends of Dean's who might not have seen him of late, I just wanted you to know that he went out at the very top of his game, creatively challenged, respected, even worshipped by new legions of fans, writing, performing...living!

His last performance, September 8 at Low Life in the Howl Festival was a complete departure from any of his usual schticks, and yet he made it completely his own. Knowing of his historically troubled relationship with the NYPD, we asked him to portray a crooked Irish cop from a century ago.

In his Keystone Kop uniform and gigantic pentagram, he TURNED IT OUT! On his blog, of his LOW LIFE show he simply wrote:

"I LIVED"

Like Pops, I will cherish that last memory of him, the humor and tongue-in-cheek glamour, the roar of appreciation from this VERY hometown crowd, till we meet again.

He LIVED


Photo by Mark Tusk

This message has been edited. Last edited by: daddy,

From Mark Tusk:

quote:

sorry to hear about dean; i didn't know him well, but i knew him for
for a long time, i now realize. i so wish i'd taken photos at his
birthday in the courtyard of the world in a whole other era: someone
gave him a big bouquet and i remember joking how he beamed like little
(big) miss america. and, the guy grilling hot dogs said to everyone
"spread your buns and i'll stick it in." weenies, haha.

what's freaky about the attached pic is that after low life i came
across this, which i took one night at rock and roll fag bar and blew
up myself in my first apartment. i photographed the photo and it's
been in my camera since...i never thought i'd show it as any kinda
tribute, but there's something about his face being washed out, the
eyes peeking thru his shades and his loop earing blocking the eye of
the guy in the backround that i like. and yeah, that's young-er me on
the right, having shot it myself. i'm mystified how i got both
of us in the frame, but greatful i did.

anyway, i thought you'd get a kick outta that, and feel free to put it
on the motherboard if you like. i've got a few other r&r fag bar
shots, but that's the only one with dean that i blew up.

...and, i also wish the shot backstage of him giving me the finger,
which i didn't include in the flaneur pile, came out better. may have
to review the full set...

again, sorry how this turned out, but boy, did he go out with a bang:
his song in TSP totally rocked!

xo,
MT

Another one from Mark Tusk.
Dean as the crooked Irish Cop at this year's LOW LIFE @ The Howl Festival.

I knew Dean as did many through the years via performance and always
viewed him as an exotic spider - gorgeous and terrifying. The physicality
alone was a phenomenon. When told 'his
body could not be identified for a week' ... I made a bad black-humor joke - "What fool couldn't identify THAT body?"

I only got to know the man personally very recently as a result of doing
editorial for our Verbal Abuse #5. Dean's submission was a masterpiece
of concision, mordant wit and insight... I barely had to do a thing to
'make it' perfect. Ask Chi Chi and she'll tell you how unusual that is.
... well now I can't resist relating something about it...

It's a zip-through the 80s, a 'Lost City' indeed, as per the various famous
types he rubbed up against. He always has something rude and hilarious to
say about them. The next-to-last entry for 1988 is appallingly awful...
I literally screamed when I got to the end of it.
That wicked humor and what my friend Carl Apfelschnitt would term
"tragic-pig grandeur" shines with a
hysterical gleam. I'm thrilled we have something of his for #5 and I'm
thinking Chi might have to make it a Memento Mori for The Johnson.

Dean does seem in himself one of those Utopian cities, a place where a
certain order and truth strained to be perfect, but always
with a black laughing edge slashing through the glitter.

In the course of our short correspondence I asked him if he had more
material about his life, since his mini-tour of the 80s promised so
much more thick and rich detail. He said he'd been wanting to write his
autobiography and had TONS of material. But that he didn't know how to get
started or get focussed. I offered to look through everything he had and
start editing it. He was excited to think someone would help him with this project.

This is another thing I wanted to say... Look around you, and tell the genius next-door HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THEM and appreciate them.... NOW. You'd be surprised to know how marginal and isolated ... Dean told me he felt! As so many of us feel.... SO DON'T WAIT until we're on our death-beds or as "a hot dame on a cold slab" to say you worshipped our asses! TELL US NOW.

Sorry to say, he did not get around to sending me anything. We decided to meet up first when I got to NY. So I hope this material for his Autobiography is right there on his computer desk-top, to be discovered, kept intact and
cherished. And if the executors decide to go for it and need an editor, I think Dean would have been happy with my red pencil.

Pax Vobiscum

Robert Coddington, who is the archivist for Nelson Sullivan's videos, wrote and asked me to let you all know that he has been posting clips of Dean on youtube.

This is a link to a video of Dean & the Weenies performing "Teri Toye" at the 5th anniv. of Pyramid . . .

TERI TOYE
http://youtube.com/watch?v=kYSc312UVSg

Here's "fuck You" at the Limelight.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ucXElJkG_8g

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hapi Phace,

Legends never die. Dean embodied everything that was authentic and necessary for downtown nightlife and its congregation. Thank you Dean, you will be missed.

Gorgeous.
Teri Toye was always one of my faves.

And I love how in "Fuck You" Dean comes down the stairs and has to raise the mic stand another foot.

I think he raises it more like 9 inches.

I got the call from Walter on Friday and it took me a long while to process. Then I sent out an email blast to whomever I thought might not have heard. I got replies from Fenton of WOW and Danny Fields, as well as Tall Paul Gellman, and a number of others from back in the day. All were unanimous in saying it would be hard to imagine NY without Dean. My memories of him are also of his laughter...the loud percussive dirty cackle that he would often greet my snide commentary with.

He was one of the few people I would actually take the time to see when I visited NY (apologies to all others!) because I knew I could make him laugh and that would make me laugh.

I'd known Dean since the mid 80s...and he was always the same; ridiculously talented, hilariously opinionated, outrageously filthy, and way way way ahead of his time.

I hope the images I put together from my old vault below will bring some joy...I know I have more somewhere but these really caught him in his many guises from that era when I first met him.

Love to all of you who shared your love for Dean here.

Your old friend,

David Scharff

I only found out about this today! It's a very sad day in New York, we will all miss Dean and his incredible influence on the East Village gay (sub sub)culture. My fondest memory of Dean:

He was hosting that ultra notorious club night "Pubic Hair Club for Men" at the Comeback. Go-go boys were required to masturbate. To get to the dancefloor you had to climb a flight of stairs in a narrow hallway, and open a door. Just as I was about to open the door, the door flies open, and there is Dean, in a black dress, lipstick and those sunglasses and heels having a HUGE fight with his then boyfriend (let's just call him "Chris")they were wrestling with each other on the floor!, Dean pulling "Chris'" hair. I was speechless! and it finally sort of ended abruptly, neither of them any worse for the wear. The funny thing was Chris started working at Dick's Bar a week befor this happened, and he was the one who invited me to go see the place!
I will miss you very much Dean.

I wasn't planning on crying today...but when I heard this news, the tears pretty much took over. This is so very sad, and my heart goes out to everyone in Deans immediate circle of friends and family.

Dean was a very special and wonderful person. Although he wasn't someone I spoke with on a daily basis, I was honored to call him a friend.

He was without a doubt, one of the nicest, most sincere people in the downtown "scene". I first learned of his exsistance in the Eighties, the same way many people did...by watching him serve up his own brand of bald fierceness in "Mondo New York". I was still in high school at that time; a gay goth loner stuck in the drudgery that was 1980s New Hampshire. It comforted me to know there where all these freaky people somewhere in the world that were doing something different, cool and vital with their lives.

Suffice to say I was totally star struck when I finally got to meet Dean in person, in the early nineties. But he was totally gracious and he made me laugh with his deadpan dry wry sense of humor. The Velvet Mafia was a great band. Such great songs and a live set that was packed full of pure fag rock energy. I loved every second of the shows I was privvy to see. I only wish I'd have gotten a chance to see them play more.

Dean will be missed. He will always be a rockstar in my eyes.

The one good thing (maybe the only good thing) about a tragedy like this is that it brings the family back together.
Just "seeing" so many familiar faces here makes me (and I'm sure Dean) very happy.
When we owned MOTHER I knew we had something very special because when something like this happened, MOTHER was where everyone would gather. It was where the memorial would be etc.
The torch has now (happily for Chi Chi and I) been passed on to Mr. Joe and The RAPTURE CAFE.
Same family (watched over by the dowager Hathaway) -different house.
Chi Chi had the idea of bringing the MOTHER community online. I, of course, had no idea what she and Rob were talking about.
Now I do.