The Motherboards most bookish topic turns a page, continuing from:

Rapture Café & Books, Part 2

...so read on!

Mark your calendars...

Wednesday September 26th-October 20
Art On Our Walls:
Johnny Dynell's "The Jackie 60 Invitations (1991-1999)"
Opening Party: Wednesday September 26th 8PM
Rapture Café & Books
200 Avenue A (between 12th & 13th Streets) 212-228-1177
Free Admission


New York's Jackie 60 was a creative center of New York nightlife for an entire decade, a Tuesday-night bacchanal with an artistic bent. The weekly was founded in 1990 by nightlife luminaries Chi Chi Valenti, Johnny Dynell, Richard Move and Kitty Boots, later joined by Brian Butterick (aka Hattie Hathaway). Disillusioned with the stale, over-commercialized state of the New York night, the group set out to create a club environment that was performance oriented and distinctly underground in tone.

The Jackie 60 experience, with its weekly themes and stream-of-consciousness MC’s, was enhanced by its “little, dark and different” location in the then-seedy Meat Market district. To its fanatical mixed following (some of whom had abandoned clubs decades ago), Jackie 60 fast became a Mecca. The club assumed a level of audience sophistication unparalleled in Gotham, and Jackie regulars from designer Marc Jacobs to pop supernova Debbie Harry consistently rose to the challenge. Every week, the club's decor, performers and soundtrack were transformed according to theme, which varied from Hasidic hip-hop (Fiddler In The Hood) to classic murder (A New Year's Most Foul) to supermodel angst (Pooped-Out Party Girls.)

The weekly invitations, designed by Johnny Dynell, were an integral part of these 550 weekly editions. His black and white, DIY style was both a nod back to the punk era of his youth and oddly jarring in the era of day-glo rave graphics. Each week’s invitation defined not only the theme and performers, but gave strict instructions for audience participation in the weekly dress codes.

At Rapture Café & Books from September 26 - October 20, dozens of these throwaway works of art will be exhibited in a unique look back at New York’s last truly free nightclub experience. Highlights will include the annual “Brown Party” series and Jackie’s Playhouse classics like “Cokewhore: I’m Not A Cokewhore, I’m a Model”.

At the opening night party, director Jack Gulick will screen exclusive footage from the upcoming Jackie 60 movie, filmed during 1999 in the climactic final year. The footage continues the black & white tradition of the Jackie 60 graphic style and will be screened in the "tableaux" tradition of 1900s French film pioneer Méliès.

I can't wait for my show!
Just to see and hear Jackie again.
Jack and Jamie (aka snowflake) have given us a DVD of the black and white medium shot camera footage from the Jackie movie.
WITH SOUND!
No editing, just like Andy Warhol's "Empire State Building" movie it will be the sights and sounds just as it happened on stage.

I already feel drunk.

Soooooooo excited for this!

I will be there... pretending to be ten years younger!! ahhh those were the days.... so glad to have been there! And can't wait to revisit those fantastic invites... most of which i kept too (and am not sentimental about anything!!)so Daddy u MUST be a genius!

Very much looking forward. Will someone, Hattie, Paul, Emp, say "Oh so 6-0" into the mic!?

Would make a fabulous ringtone, come to think of it!

Who owns the rights to that? I'd pay a buck 99 - at least!

I just wet my pants!

I was watching some of the footage that we are going to show on Wednesday.
It's sick!

This camera angle is great because not only do you get the whole stage but also some of the audience. And a LOT of you are in it.
This show will really bring back memories.
We are playing the soundtrack from the DVD so it's live, just as it happened. Warts and all.
I didn't watch the whole thing yet but there are quite a few nights on it.

"Cruise Parks Of The World" and "Uncle Charlie's Cabin" really had me going.

"uncle charlie's cabin" was one of my all-time favorite jackie themes. connie girl really let the white boys have it that night.
truly twisted.

Wait till you see Connie Girl as Angela Davis!

I wish you and Musqurat could be here.

BTW Goblin...
John Avril from Portland says hello.
(I gave him your info.)
He and his "March 4th Marching Band" were performing at The Hoillywood Bowl in LA as well with Pink Martini.
They are amazing.
They are playing in New York October 8th at The Knitting Factory.
Check them out!

Connie as Angela Davis.
"Steal This Invite: Revolutionary Women of Amerika", JACKIE 60, May 1999

Photo by Paul Brissman
(Still from the upcoming Jackie 60 movie)

I am going insane trying to pick out invites to display.
Where do you draw the line?
"ARTBORUM"
"SILENCE OF THE LUNCHPAILS"
"RUBBER NURSES"
"STIGMATA 54: AN EVENING OF GOTH DISCO
(for every drag queen that ever died... or lived!)"
"UNCLE CHARLIE'S CABIN"
"ONE FLEW OVER THE EAGLE'S NEST"
"The NOW IS UTOPIA"
"FEAR OF A BLONDE PUSSY"

Please, whatever you do, don't draw a line.

One thing strikes me as I look through ten years of Jackie 60 invites.
We had a hell of a lot of frontal nudity.
Mr. Joe said that wouldn't be a problem though.

Geesh. You're gonna ask me? It's among the best artwork this town has ever seen!

I would prefer some rear-al nudity. You know us drag queens:

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Miss Understood,

Mr. Joe should know.

He's confessed to providing certain xrated poses live in the elevator to the top of the Empire State Building all for the delectation of the security monitors. I think the clips are going to be issued in the upcomming DVD compilation Up The Big Shaft, Ten Years of XRated Late Night Rides to the Top, being released by the security workers' union local 201 this Fall. -All proceeds go to charity of course.

Seven, how dare you! It was the elevator going down, not up.

I saw this today on the Scientitian Weblog

Very nice.

quote:

September 25th, 2007 by RJJNYC

Hello! It’s Jackie 6-0. The Rapture Cafe & Books is launching an exhibit of Jackie 60’s flyers, opening party is tomorrow night. There’s no easy way to convey the Jackie experience…onstage craziness (have to admit the specifics of individual shows and themes have blurred, for some reason the El Mariachi night with a bemused and amused Miranda Richardson perched on the edge of stage is about a specific an image I can come up with, for reasons we won’t get into here…), Paul Alexander and Richard Move MCing, Johnny Dynell spinning fierce tunes over an excellent sound system, playing “Love Hangover” when the night was at it’s messy end. Remember the night the Mayoral election results came in, I think it was Chi Chi Valenti who announced that Dinkins had lost and the crowd started booing and jeering Guiliani’s victory; seems like a miserably watershed moment, looking back.

But that’s history. For now, remember: it’s a Jackie world, and we all live in it.

But that’s history. For now, remember: it’s a Jackie world, and we all live in it.

I think that's what needs to be on the swizzle stick for tonight.