1. Train In Vain – The Clash

2. Dancing In The Dark – Bruce Springsteen

3. Scentless Apprentice – Nirvana (1993 Loud and Live MTV version)

4. Gutless – Hole

5. Silent All These Years – Tori Amos

6. Rebel Girl – Bikini Kill

1. Paper Dolls – Sierra Demulder

Sierra’s probably most well known for Unrequited Love Poem but Paper Dolls definitely ‘speaks’ to me a lot more. My favourite part:

“And I know sometimes it’s hard to feel perfect
when you can’t tell an adam’s apple from a fist
because some ashtray of a man forced you to play his eden.”

I also really recommend her poem Mrs Dahmer because hey, combining slam poetry with serial killers – what more could I ask for?

2. Ten Honest Thoughts On Being Loved By A Skinny Boy – Rachel Wiley

My favourite part:

“The phrase “Big girls need love too” can die in a fire.
Fucking me does not require an asterisk.
Loving me is not a fetish.
Finding me beautiful is not a novelty. 
I am not a fucking novelty.”

3. The Honest House – Megan Falley

My favourite part:

“Did you know that the metronome inside us quickens when telling a lie? I want to build
an honest house, where the motion detector is so sharp it knows when my thoughts leave
the room. Where the clap-on lamp works as a polygraph. When you swear you still love
me, the lights flicker.”

I also really love some of Megan’s other poems like For Those Who Are Right Now Still Looking For Closure, and Fat Girl.

4. Blue Banket – Andrea Gibson

My favourite part:

‘Walking to the car alone
get the keys in the lock
please, please, please, please open
like already you can feel that five-fingered noose around your neck
his nails digging graves into the sacred soil of your flesh
please, please, please, please open”

Basically everything else that Andrea Gibson has written is incredible, I can’t even choose favourites.

5. I Had A Dream About You – Richard Siken

My favourite part:

“Still wet, I lay down next to you. Your arms, your legs, your naked chest,
your ribs delineated like a junkyard dogs.
There’s nowhere to go, I thought. There’s nowhere to go.”

There’s no video for this one but you can read the whole thing here, his book ‘Crush’ is one of my favourites.

6. Survival Poem #17 – Marty McConnell

I’m just going to post the whole thing here because it’s short and I can’t choose a favourite passage.

“because this is what you do. get up.
blame the liquor for the heaviness. call in late
to work. go to the couch because the bed
is too empty. watch people scream about love
on Jerry Springer. count the ways
it could be worse. it could be last week
when the missing got so big
you wrote him a letter
and sent it. it could be yesterday, no work
to go to, whole day looming.
it could be last month
or the month before, when you still
thought maybe. still carried plans
around with you like talismans.
you could have kissed him last night.
could have gone home with him, given in,
cried after, softly, face to the wall, his heavy arm
around you, hand on your stomach, rubbing.
shower. remember your body. water
hotter than you can stand. sit
on the shower floor. the word
devastated ringing the tub. buildings
collapsed into themselves. ribs
caving toward the spine. recite
the strongest poem you know. a spell
against the lonely that gets you
in crowds and on three hours’ sleep.
wonder where the gods are now.
get up. because death is not
an alternative. because this is what you do.
air like soup, move. door, hallway, room.
pants, socks, shoes. sweater. coat. cold.
wish you were a bird. remember you
are not you, now. you are you
a year from now. how does that
woman walk? she is not sick or sad.
doesn’t even remember today.
has been to Europe. what song
is she humming? now. right now.
that’s it.”

via.

1. Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain

I mean, obviously. As if you didn’t read the title of the post and know these babes were going to be on this list. I wrote an entire post about how much I love Courtney a few months ago and I’ve been a Kurt/Nirvana fan for almost as long as I’ve loved Courtney and Hole. I love Courtney’s ‘Dirty Blonde‘ and Kurt’s ‘Journals‘, I love the home videos of them with their daughter Francis Bean from Hit So Hard: The Life and Near Death Story of Patty Schemel, I love Heavier Than Heaven and Poppy Z. Brite’s ‘Courtney Love: The Real Story‘. Love, love love. They were an amazing match of two incredibly talented people and if you buy into any of the bullshit rumors about their relationship you are a jerk.

2. Wendy and Brett Whiteley

Maybe artists aren’t technically rock ‘n’ roll couples but Wendy and Brett lived at the Chelsea and were junkies so whatever, I think they qualify. They met when she was 16 and he was 17, travelled all over Europe and America together, and got Janis Joplin to babysit their daughter Arkie while they lived at the Chelsea in New York City. Eventually Wendy got clean, Brett didn’t and they divorced in 1989. He ODed in 1992 and today Wendy Whiteley lives in Lavender Bay near her secret garden. They also created some great art but I think you guys can find that on your own with the help of google.

3. Iman and David Bowie

Usually I find the rock star and model pairing really boring but I love these two. They met on a blind date which I think is so cute. I really wish they had gotten together earlier than the 90s though, imagine the outfits they could have been pictured in together in the 1970s or 80s, man that would have been good. Anyway, they’ve been married for 20 years which in celebrity years is pretty huge, they have a twelve year old daughter and as far as I can tell they seem to be the perfect couple.

4. Beth Ditto and Kristin Ogata

Beth Ditto and her partner Kristin Ogata have been best friends since they were 18 years old and now, in their 30s, they’re engaged to be married. Every single photo I have ever seen of them, they just look so freaking happy and I love it! I’ve read interviews with Beth where she says that she thinks she was ‘born to marry Kristin’ and like, what is more heartwarming than that?! There’s not much information about Kristin online (or at least that I could find anyway) all I really know about her is that she used to be a waitress/student, worked as Beth’s assistant and is from Hawaii. I want to know more!

5. Sable Starr and Robert Plant (& Stiv Bators & Iggy Pop & Johnny Thunders & anyone else she hooked up with because she was awesome)

If you weren’t reading GroupieCentral.com when you were a teenager you missed out. Although it’s no longer online you can find pages from it scattered around various places on the interweb, the famous message board is here but a lot of the other content appears to be lost forever. Sable Starr was a famous Los Angeles groupie (obviously the whole idea of ‘groupies’ is a totally sexist and gross concept) in the early 1970s. She dated or hooked up with guys like David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin and Johnny Thunders (although from what I’ve read he was a douchebag who abused her so let’s not talk about him). It gets pretty creepy when you’re reading about these hook ups because Sable was 13 or 14 years old and was hooking up with guys 10+ years older than her but I know that when I was a teenager I thought that was kind of awesome (now that I am 10+ years older I know that if a 20-something dude is trying to date teenage girls he is a creep and teen girls should stay the hell away from him) and I can still sort of suspend belief and think about how cool it must have been to see Sable Starr and Miss Pamela of the GTOs having screaming fights in LA bars.

In the mid-70s Sable moved to New York to live with Johnny Thunders for a few years, then dated Richard Hell and after they broke up she ‘retired from the scene’ and moved back home to LA at the ripe old age of seventeen. I wish that she had written a book about her life or something but sadly she died of a brain tumor a couple of years ago.

For further reading see: Lori Maddox, ‘I’m With The Band‘ by Miss Pamela/Pamela Des Barres, ‘Please Kill Me: An Uncensored Oral History of Punk‘ by Legs McNeil, ‘Hammer of the Gods: The Saga of Led Zeppelin‘ by Stephen Davis, Sighs and Whispers’ Style Icon posts on both Sable and Lori (And yes, in case it wasn’t obvious I do love this shit. I might write a blog post solely about these groupie girls one day).

6. Demri Parrott and Layne Staley

Demri Parrott and Layne Staley aren’t usually mentioned in stories about tragic rock n roll couples which is weird because their story is basically perfect for it. They got together sometime in the late 80s/early 90s, were engaged from 1992 – 1994 and broke up in 1994. Demri died on October 29, 1996 at age 27 and Staley died in April 2002 aged 34, both deaths were heroin related. There is a lot of information about Layne on the internet due to Alice In Chains’ fame but there isn’t much about Demri, just a couple of websites with some photos and a bit of information about her being an aspiring model and vintage clothing lover which is a bummer because I would love to know more about her.

Runners up: Kim and Thurston, Drew Barrymore and Eric Erlandson, Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe (or Fred Smith), Ione Skye and anybody, Stevie Nicks and anybody, Stephanie Seymour and Axl Rose, Amy and Blake, Nancy and Sid, Edie and Andy (sort of), Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger, Priscilla and Elvis, Kate Moss and Pete Doherty.

1. Rosemary’s Baby (1968). Straight off the bat I should probably say that Roman Polanski is a rapist and a piece of shit and I hate him. But now that’s out of the way, Mia Farrow’s outfits (and haircut) are out of this world perfect, the building they live in (The Bramford which is actually The Dakota where Yoko Ono lived or maybe still lives) is beautiful, and I will probably always love anything to do with the occult due to watching ‘The Craft’ too many times as a pre-teen.

2. The Panic in Needle Park (1971). Needle Park is actually Sherman Square on the Upper West Side and if you couldn’t tell from the title, this is a movie about heroin users. Kitty Winn won Best Actress at Caan in 1971 for her role, Al Pacino is all young and cute in his second film appearance ever, and New York is all gross and cool looking, especially the subway! There is just something very aesthetically pleasing to me about a dirty graffitied train, I don’t know what that’s all about.

3. Taxi Driver (1976). I’m sure you’ve seen Taxi Driver and I’m sure you can quote ‘you talkin’ to me’ and all the rest. My favourite parts: Jodie Foster’s red platforms, the long camera shot down the hallway while Travis is trying to convince Cybill Shepherd to go out with him again, and of course all the scenes of driving around New York City at night in the 70s.

4. Annie Hall (1977). Woody Allen is also a jerk (I might need to re-read ‘How to be a Fan of Problematic Things‘ while I write this post) but Diane Keaton is lovely and there are so many shots of New York in the 70s that I can look past that for an hour and a half.

5. Times Square (1980). It’s about two teenage girls who break out of a mental hospital and start a punk band. Tim Curry plays a radio DJ. I don’t know what more to say, I mean if that doesn’t make you want to watch it there’s something wrong with your taste. The soundtrack is crazy good – The Ramones, Lou Reed, Talking Heads, The Cure, Patti Smith etc. The director, Allan Moyle, also directed Pump Up The Volume and Empire Records which are two of my favourite 90s films.

6. Sid and Nancy (1986). The first time I saw Sid and Nancy was in 2002 when I bought a pirated copy of it on VHS from Missing Link Records (back when they were on Flinders Lane) for $10. I remember being scared they wouldn’t sell it to me because it was rated R18+ and I was 15 years old but luckily they didn’t ask for ID. I loved it then and I still love it now. Not all of it is set/filmed in New York, the first two-thirds are in England but once the doomed couple make it to New York you get all sorts of treats like a very young Courtney Love playing with kittens in a club, that scene of Sid and Nancy making out while rubbish (trash) blows up around them, and lots of shots of the famous Chelsea Hotel. Nancy died in room 100 of the Chelsea and apparently Courtney and a bunch of the cast and crew snorted heroin in that room to celebrate the end of shooting the film.

In the 1990s Reese Witherspoon was awesome. Not that Legally Blonde didn’t have its place, and Walk The Line was an enjoyable movie and everything but I have seen some of her 90s films many, many times and they have pretty much cemented my forever love of Reese. Here are some of her best ones:

1. Freeway (1996)

I’m surprised I haven’t heard much about Freeway lately with all the 90s revival stuff that is all the go at the moment. Freeway is awesome. It’s a fucked up re-telling of Little Red Riding Hood, but a very fucked up re-telling. Reese plays Vanessa Lutz, a 15 year old girl with a prostitute mother, sexually abusive stepfather and about twenty minutes in, a dead fiance. The movie follows her adventures as she runs away from home after her mother and stepfather are arrested and tries to find her grandmother. Along the way she encounters a serial killer, prison, Brittany Murphy (R.I.P angel) as a heroin addicted lesbian, and a lot more awesome stuff while wearing super 90s brown lipstick, a high ponytail and crop tops. If you like this movie you should check out Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trick Baby starring Natasha Lyonne and Vincent Gallo. It’s not really a sequel, there’s none of the same characters or anything but it is another awesome fucked up movie.

2. Fear (1996)

Reese plays Nicole Walker who is kind of a good girl but she wears fantastically short mini skirts (with over-the-knee socks) and despite the wishes of her overbearing father (that dude from CSI), she starts dating this weird older guy named David (Mark Wahlberg). David turns out to be pretty crazy and I guess the end is supposed to be horror movie-ish but I don’t really care about any of that because as a horror movie it’s not very good. What is good is the soundtrack (how many times can you play the same two songs by Bush? NOT NEARLY ENOUGH! And that cover of ‘Wild Horses’ by The Sundays which I think was also on the Buffy soundtrack), Alyssa Milano as Reese’s slutty BFF, a how-not-to in home tattooing, 90s Seattle fashions, and the scene where Reese (wearing one of those awesome mini skirt and over-the-knee sock outfits) gets fingered on a rollercoaster.

Nice jeans, ya dork!

3. S.F.W (1994)

There is definitely not enough Reese in this one. Stephen Dorff is the star of the show and yeah, I guess he was cute in a mid 90s sort of way but I want more Reese. The scenes she is in she is great as a 16 year old girl held hostage in a convenience store for over a month and then once she gets out she’s all over tv talk shows. I like her best in the hostage scenes though when she’s all dirty and drinking beer with Stephen Dorff. To slightly make up for the lack of Reese there is a small appearance from Babes In Toyland and a Hole song on the soundtrack.

4. Election (1999)

This is such a bizarre and great movie. Reese is Tracy Flick, an overachieving teen girl obsessed with winning the role of class president. We didn’t have stuff like student council in Australian high school so I always like a bit of that Americana high school stuff. Reese is creepily perky, a bit of a wolf in sheep’s clothing and is a big part of the unraveling of a teacher’s life. You get to see Ferris Bueller get stung in the eye by a bee, Chris Klein (that guy from American Pie who used to go out with Katie Holmes) in his first ever role, and Tammy Metzler who is one of the best characters in any teen movie I’ve ever seen.

5. Pleasantville (1998)

The (kind of) return of bad girl Reese! Reese is Jennifer, a very modern 90s teenager who accidentally gets transported into a 1950s sitcom. Then she has sex with a boy and totally fucks up their chaste 50s world. The colour effects were sort of cool when I first saw this in the late 90s but now it just looks a lot like that photoshop affect I remember girls in my high school really liking where the photo would be black and white with just red lips or a red rose or something.

6. Overnight delivery

Reese has dark hair, a shitty car and works part time as a stripper (I swear her hair-do and stripper outfits inspired Mena Suvari’s look in ‘Loser’ two years later) . Paul Rudd is young and cute like he was in Clueless. They end up on a cross country roadtrip together to try to intercept a package that Paul Rudd has sent to his girlfriend via (you guessed it) overnight delivery and hijinks ensue. Reese is cynical, funny, and very sex positive which I enjoyed.