Blue Blood sponsored an awful lot of events this Halloween, but the one I was saddest to miss personally, because I had to work, was the Release the Bats 10 Year Anniversary party. In addition to limited edition RTB 10 anniversary commemorative Blue Blood pins, the goodie bags for the event included limited edition RTB 10 anniversary commemorative pins and all sorts of fiendish goodies, including some Sisters of Mercy tickets.

When Release the Bats started in 1998, Shane Talada wrote in his Anorexic Press zine, “It is with complete and utter disregard for all that is established, and with murderous intent we seek to tear down and rebuild a part of the underground movement that became institutionalized by greed.”

He was talking about what was being called goth or gothic by flavor du jour club promoters in the Los Angeles club scene at the time. It was a situation where something, which had seemed like the dark part of punk, had diverged into this wussy netgoth scenario with prissy clothing and a playlist limited to corporate pop dark bands only.

So Jenn Bats, Dave Bats, Shane Taleda, and Jeremy Meza set out to participate in reclaiming deathrock for the scene. I’m not sure whether Jeremy Meza is still involved. I haven’t seen him there when I’ve gone in recent years and, liking everyone involved, I’ve never asked, for fear of the answer. The rest of Element was on hand for the anniversary festivities to perform air guitar in the video featured above.

All of this, I guess, just goes to show that sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. In every cool scene, there are always good guys, always bad guys, always dramas, always pretenders, and always annoying dicks who care more about a dollar than they do about what they are involved in. While it all goes in cycles, the cool stuff hasn’t been wiped out entirely yet, not even with cool new internet astroturf technology. So keep your hopeful hats on.

I’m going to admit that this year, like many Americans, I’ve been too caught up, either following election coverage or avoiding it, to properly celebrate Halloween. Sure, Blue Blood is sponsoring a few Halloween parties, most notably the Release the Bats decade anniversary. And I remembered to freshen up my hair color and play with squash a little. Some years, I get all freaked out about wanting to do too much for Halloween, but this year I haven’t even had my favorite holiday at the front of my brain most of the time. But I’ve been enjoying a bit of vicarious Halloween joy today, checking out the work of people like Dana Dark and Ray Villafane.

More on Dana Dark’s Halloween secrets later, but I want to tell you all about Ray Villafane now. He is an artist who primarily appears to work on sculpture for folks like Sideshow Collectibles and McFarlane Toys. In the unlikely event you are not familiar with those companies, they make collectibles for the horror, science fiction, fantasy, and general monsters and comic books realm.

But, wow, can Ray Villafane sculpt a pumpkin! Some people paint or draw on pumpkins. Most people just scoop out the guts and cut holes for features. I like to make jack o’lantern art at one step remove and have nude models scoop out the guts and cut holes for features. But Ray Villafane turns the pumpkin carving process into real sculptural works of art.

I’m feeling more buoyant about Halloween just thinking about it!

Are you mad as hell and not going to take it any more a la Network? Don’t vlog blowing your head off. Just celebrate INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY today and digitally yell your head off. According to founder Derek Arnold, “CAPS LOCK DAY IS A CELEBRATION OF LIFE AND FOREVER SCREAMING TEXT FOR ALL ETERNITY AND LOVE” and I guess he ought to know.

So don’t be shy. Start your engines, keyboard warriors, and say it LOUD.

In case y’all were wondering, the illustrative photo here is actually a snapshot I just took of my real life Caps Lock key, along with a special, limited-edition, 10 year anniversary Release the Bats, Blue Blood commemorative pin . . . and the piece of dental plastic I have been sleeping with, in order to avoid breaking all of my teeth via the combined power of stress and my mighty jaw.

HAPPY INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY!

PS In case anyone reading this is entirely new to teh intarwebs or has been wondering why people get peeved when they type in ALL CAPS, the reason is that ALL CAPS is a simple way of communicating screaming blue murder via keyboard and web connection. You can try opening your window and yelling too. Fewer people will hear. You may get in more trouble. But it might be more satisfying and you can always explain to the arresting officer that you were only throwing an offline holiday celebration for INTERNATIONAL CAPS LOCK DAY.

As I mentioned earlier, Blue Blood has been doing a number of media sponsorships as we move into our fifteenth year and Blue Blood was the media sponsor for the Release the Bats Nine Year Anniversary. It was an amazing evening.

Dave and Jenn Bats were the hosts with the most. DJ Shane Taleda, of Element and STG fame, celebrated his birthday. The band Fangs on Fur did their deathrock meets Burning Man performance. And a good time was had by all.

Luminaries in attendance included Forrest Black, Dahlia Dark, Domiana aka Vita Voodoo, Michelle Aston, Thistle Harlequin, Eva O, Kettle Cadaver, Dave Grave of Frankenstein, and of course yours truly and many many more.

So, of course, Forrest Black and I shot a ton of artistic portraits of a bunch of the fiends who came out to help celebrate. You can see photo galleries at the following links:

**Release the Bats Nine Year Anniversary
Deathrock Photo Gallery #1
by Forrest Black & Amelia G

**Release the Bats Nine Year Anniversary
Deathrock Photo Gallery #2 Extended Remix
by Forrest Black & Amelia G

As Blue Blood comes up on our fifteen year anniversary — wait a second, wtf? Did I just say fifteen year anniversary? It feels like it was only yesterday that I was sitting on the floor of my punk rock group house, folding issues of Black Leather Times with my unsavory pals, and talking about how I was thinking about trying something glossier and maybe more erotically-oriented.

Doing Blue Blood in print plunged me headlong into a world which included so much which fascinated and intrigued me. One of my favorite things was trading publications with like-minded zinesters all over the world, showing them what I made and getting to see what they created. I think it was trading zines with the late great Ghastly magazine which eventually led me to meet up with the multi-talented deathrock crew from Release the Bats.

Some of how the world has turned out is certainly not what I envisioned when I took the road less traveled, but I guess fifteen years and going strong means I chose okay. I hope. A funny thing about being a lean independent but workaholic organization like Blue Blood is that we always have a ridiculous number of projects going on at once and sometimes some projects happen bizarrely fast, while others get completed on a timeline that only seems natural to vampires.

Speaking of the undead, I have really enjoyed the photographic work Forrest Black and I have created shooting at nightclubs over the years. In current internet business terms, I guess Blue Blood is technically the media sponsor for the upcoming Nine Year Anniversary of Release the Bats. But really the Blue Blood crew is just going to be kicking it old skool with our longtime pals at RTB and photographing them for posterity. Right now, we’re posting the photos Forrest Black and I shot at the Release the Bats Deathrock Prom to give you all an idea of how spectacular it is going to be. If you are anywhere in Southern California, I recommend you come on out to Release the Bats at Que Sera in Long Beach this Friday. We’ll be shooting a few of the most over-the-top deathrockers there and there will be a whole lot of drinking and rejoicing, if you are into dressing up or drinking or celebrating. Dress to be caught dead!

Release the Bats Deathrock Prom Gallery
Photography by Forrest Black and Amelia G

Release the Bats Deathrock Prom Extended Gallery
Photography by Forrest Black and Amelia G

I only met Rozz Williams once.

A bunch of the Blue Blood crew were in Los Angeles, celebrating the release of Blue Blood #5. That was the first full color issue of the magazine. I’d used a comic book printer who did high quality art repro and had no problem printing depictions of nude women. Heck, they actually also printed tons of publications involving sexualized eviscerations of women. (Yes, we were doing cross-promo with Glenn Danzig’s extreme Verotik at the time and he used the same printer.)

But the printer had had some concerns about Blue Blood’s content. First, they were very concerned that there was bestiality. I was like, WTF? They are holding up printing my magazine because they are concerned about the bestiality? Where do they think I have bestiality? Then I realized that I had written a fiction piece about the drummer in a dykey industrial band who gets with a werewolf. I was proud of the story and it was illustrated with elegant photographs by the famous Gunter Blum. I was thrilled that someone as huge as Gunter Blum wanted to be in Blue Blood. I really didn’t want to remove the werewolf piece and I really wanted to get my magazine printed. So I call the printer ready to do battle.

It turned out that the werewolf erotic fiction was not the problem at all. NOFX had sent Blue Blood a blow-up sheep. At the time, NOFX was unpopular with a lot of music journalists because they didn’t like to do interviews. I thought sending me a Love Ewe (get it?) was a billion times cooler than any interview could be, so I thought they were totally cool. Forrest Black shot me using a strap-on on the NOFX Love Ewe and we ran a picture of it, as part of a piece on NOFX, in Blue Blood’s bits and pieces entertainment section. Just looking at the film, the printer had thought this was actual bestiality. After the magazine was printed and shipped, the printer told me they were very concerned that I had male nudity in the magazine. That was undeniable and not about to change, so I only printed one issue there.

The issue came out, despite the printer’s reservations, and it looked great. So the Blue Blood crew headed out to Los Angeles to celebrate. On Rozz Williams night at the Probe on Highland in Hollywood, California, we were all feeling really good about having gotten the magazine hot off the presses, against so many obstacles. We were meeting so many interesting new people. We were thrilled to be among our own, among people who wouldn’t be pussies about something as funny as fucking what was essentially a punk rock balloon animal.

I went over to where Rozz Williams was holding court and gave him a copy of the new issue. He was shy and sweet. He thanked me. He told me he had enjoyed the earlier issues and did not have this one yet. Maybe he was just being polite, but the thing which sticks in my mind is that he took a moment to be kind. But, when I walked around the club, there were all these people saying the most terrible things about Rozz Williams. I don’t mean they were criticizing him for being a little too into Charles Manson and Jeffrey Dahmer or something. I mean, people were just tearing the man down, saying he was past it, he was old, he looked ugly, his music didn’t matter, and on and on.

In point of fact, as an unbiased visitor from out of town, I feel qualified to say that Rozz Williams looked ethereally beautiful. I don’t recall what he was wearing. My attention was drawn to his face and the encounter was brief, but his makeup was deft and creative for a man to be wearing. He looked timeless, not old. His music had made a difference to a large percentage of the people in the room. Even to people who were not big fans of Christian Death or Shadow Project, Rozz Williams was an important creative driving force in the West Coast deathrock scene and his influence helped launch so many bands and so many cool creative people.

Fast forward a few years. Rozz Williams has committed suicide. Nightclubs in Los Angeles throw mournfests for him and they get good turnout. People speak his name reverently, they press fist to chest and say, “mi hermano.” I’m probably spelling the Spanish incorrectly, but you get the idea. (They might not be pronouncing the Spanish either.) I remembered the crush of people running Rozz Williams down. Although the Probe was one of the biggest nightclubs I had ever been to and they thought the man was worth throwing a night for, while he was still alive, most of their patrons couldn’t support someone who’d made such a difference . . . not while he was still drawing breath.

People often ask me to pin down precisely who Blue Blood is for. Gothic, body modification, deathrock, punk, fandom, glam, rivethead, ad infinitum. Really, Blue Blood is for people who have moved through a lot of subcultures. For people who have that maverick something different. Who feel a certain attraction in a lot of those scenes, but who do not feel wholly satisfied in any particular one. Blue Blood is for people who enjoy exploring and experiencing the creative fringes, and the cultures which thrive there, but don’t want to cram themselves into some cookie-cutter mold.

In the deathrock scene, it is rare that the people who have accomplished a lot get very much credit for it. The thing which made me think of Rozz Williams was noting that a link to BlueBlood.net was removed from Wikipedia’s woefully incomplete and slanted entry on deathrock. Someone had complained that Blue Blood was porn and thus did not belong. First of all, if deathrock is supposed to be for gothic folks with balls, what is anyone doing whining about smut practically designed for them personally? The multitalented Jeremy Meza’s late lamented deathrock mag Ghastly described Blue Blood as “It’s the one you’ve been waiting for! Death rock porn! Punk smut!” (For years, I used to run that quote with an ellipses in place of the word porn because I am troubled by the semantics, but that is a subject for another article.) Secondly, BlueBlood.com is where the naughty pictures are. BlueBlood.net is where we run lots of free articles and free forums and free promo tools for the scene. Blue Blood magazine in print had both deathrock music press and erotic photo sets in the same place. Glad I could clear that up for anyone that all was not patently obvious to. A bizarre percentage of the Wikipedia entry is on the Long Beach club Release the Bats. Blue Blood were huge early boosters of that club night. We shot tons of photos there. At great personal cost, I might add, as we were using film. We hyped Release the Bats both online and in print. Release the Bats was kind enough to host the re-launch of BlueBlood.net party. Whether someone thinks Blue Blood is the best thing to happen to deathrock since Sex Gang Children and 45 Grave or not, the deathrock connection is undeniable. At some point, perhaps I may attempt to list all of the luminaries, of the deathrock world, Blue Blood has done something with. I’ll include Jeremy Meza and Ghastly, although neither is mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for deathrock. Viva Britannica.

There are a lot of appealing things about the deathrock scene. I love a non-wussified gothic look with yummy torn fishnet and leather and Alien Sex Fiend has smacked me from the stage with an obscene balloon. (Recurring motif. I guess there is something about me which makes bands want to press lewd balloons against my flesh.) The appeal of deathrock is why so many of us have spent time figuring out the hair products needed to create a devil lock or ordering expensive import CDs. But the problem with that scene, like many others which remain subculture, is that the nail which sticks out gets hammered down.

Blue Blood is for the nails which stick out.