Exclusive Interview: Raffaele – The Queen Of Clubs

The white-hot Raffaele (aka Queen Vixen), immortal metal queen from Cycle Sluts From Hell and The Creeps, anger enthusiast and feminist spy, could still kick your ass, but she’s just not that pissed off anymore.

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Let’s take a ride back in time, shall we? Tell me about your childhood. Where were you born? At what age did you become interested in music? Who were some of your early influences?

I was born as Anna Mae Bullock in Nutbush, Tennessee … Oh wait, nope. Wrong bio. I was born and raised in upper Michigan,where it’s very cold and constantly snowing. My mother told me that at the age of [three] I started dancing when the Beatles came on TV, so I think I’ve always loved rock and roll. I was extremely shy and wore thick glasses and spent most of my time listening to music, reading, writing about my teenage suffering, and plotting a way to get out of the Midwest. Both of my parents were pretty indulgent as far as what their kids wanted to do. My mother’s family is very musical, but I had no plans to pursue music and went to art school, then fell into being in a band. I never had major musical aspirations, I really just wanted to get myself into the party.

As for influences, I am a child of the 70’s, my early influences were Aerosmith (before the pods took them), Queen, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Pink Floyd, The Stones, the Beatles. This is going to date me, but I was totally obsessed with Todd Rundgren and had a photo of him in my locker at school. Then when punk rock hit I got very into that. I was the only kid in my small town with a pierced nose and dyed hair. I thought I was really rebelling then, even though I still got good grades and didn’t go out with boys. The straight girls at school hated me and would yell insults when I walked by. I saved up for a pair of leather pants and I sewed them really tight down the legs and their heads practically exploded with rage. I feel sorry for kids now because they don’t have the amazing bands that we had growing up. Music was everything to me.

You say you have “worked in and managed some cool clubs and go-go danced on a few bars”. Can you elaborate on that?

Once I got to New York I quit school after the first semester to hang out in clubs. I was from such a small town that the proximity to the action was just too much for me, I wanted to live in it. So I got a job at Danceteria right away, then the The World. In both places I saw so many amazing shows and met every rock star on the planet. I managed Lismar Lounge, where CSFH was born, bartended at Scrap Bar, where all the hair band and metal rock stars hung out when they hit NYC and slung drinks at a ton of other smaller, random, awful places. Then I managed Coney Island High in the 90’s, which was the last bastion of old school New York rock and roll club energy, and I go-go danced for years at Squeezebox, which was a gay rock party that has since been memorialized in a documentary.

How did the Cycle Sluts From Hell come to be? Tell me about the time you spent in the band. Have you any juicy, debaucherous tales to tell?

CSFH was spawned out of a party night that our friend Glenn Benson created at the Lismar Lounge, called Cycle Slut Thursdays. Lismar was an interesting place, it was tiny and an absolute dump on First Avenue, owned by a small time Chinese mafia guy who watered all the alcohol down. But Glenn talked a good game and he let Glenn take it over and it was a clubhouse for all the bands on the Lower East Side at the time, so a lot of bands came out of that scene and got record deals – us, Circus of Power, White Zombie, Raging Slab, and larger bands passing through town would play there just because it was so much fun. Jane’s Addiction played to a room that fit maybe 75 people max, water dripping from the ceiling, it was just magic. And Joe Walsh came down and played with the Skulls, drunk off his ass and telling the funniest jokes. It was hilarious and just off the chain all the time.

Everyone was very into biker culture and we loved Zodiac Mindwarp and the Love Reaction, so we lovingly stole much from them. We put together a show for Cycle Slut Thursday with friends and co-workers, just a covers thing for fun for the night, and it turned into a loose sort of girl gang. We all had jackets and got in a lot of bar fights, we were pretty aggressive, me probably most of all. And we noticed while putting up flyers for that first show that people freaked out (in a good way) over the name, and the show was packed and got a great reception. So after that we put an actual band together with four of the girls, and that took off from the start. Our second show was opening for the Ramones. Joey Ramone hung out regularly and was incredibly supportive and largely responsible for getting us noticed right away.

And you will have to wait for the book to get the debaucherous tales. Although honestly, I don’t remember half of what happened. I do know that it was never dull!

After the CSFH disbanded, what direction did your career take you?

I started a band called The Creeps with two ex-members of the band, Virginia Staska (She-Fire), and Pete Lisa (Lord Roadkill). Pete was an integral part of the Sluts, there would have been no band without him. He’s a brilliant songwriter, as is Virginia, and I feel that he’s been overlooked by the writers of 80’s history because he was content to play behind [four] women. And Virginia and I had always worked very well together. So between the three of us and our new members (Thaddeus on bass, Jo Jo from Missdemeanor on drums), we wrote some great tunes.

But we were not driven enough and I am pretty lazy when it comes to the work involved in being a true musician, so it fell apart. We were burnt from CSFH experience, which was very difficult in some ways. And I wanted to get out of the bars so I took a somewhat straighter job managing a printing/publishing company called POPsmear, and then that led me to my current job.

You currently work for costume designer (and Academy Award Nominee) Patricia Field. That’s gotta be a sweet fucking gig. Tell me more about that.

I don’t work with her on costume styling, I am in her store every day doing administration, buying, project management, that kind of thing. It’s a small company and everyone does everything. Patricia is a great boss, she’s incredibly smart and cuts through the bullshit every time. She’s generous and has been very good to me and I have a lot of fun at my job. I work with great people and it’s pretty crazy and entertaining most days.

I have a love/hate relationship with fashion, so I am still working it out in my head. I don’t feel that fashion supports women the way it should. The industry is predominated by gay men who like women for the most part, but only one particular type, which of course 90% of us cannot be. I love an overpriced pair of shoes as much as the next girl, but at the same time I see what a sham the whole label thing is, it makes billions of dollars off of people’s need for status, which in the end is really just a need to be loved, which I don’t believe fashion can provide in any real way. I am also frustrated by the fur industry and the fact that most people in fashion don’t think or care about the planet’s eco-system too much. It haunts me that I work in an industry of unnecessary consumption, so I try very hard to bring awareness to the people around me without being a bore.

Music is cut and dried for me – it’s epic, life-changing, life-saving, it is air to me. I have friends and co-workers who feel that way about fashion, but I don’t. I have always been a weird amalgam, I’m super fashiony to my rock and roll friends and I’m super rock and roll to my fashion crew. I make my peace with it every day at work. But that being said, I absolutely love clothes and the ability that fashion gives us to reinvent ourselves, and I do love many parts of my job. It’s taught me so much and continues to teach me. Just one day with Pat and your mind can be blown. She really does create art in that she helps sculpt each character on the screen with her costume decisions. And because I work with creative people they are very understanding about needing to have a life outside of work. Everyone is a dancer or performer or designer of some sort, and it’s exciting and fulfilling to be around that energy.

When we met in the ladies room at Joe’s Pub in NYC after Storm Large’s show, I was so stoked that you were the first person ever to know whose eyes (Siouxsie Sioux’s done by Chelsea Rhea of Mean Machine Tattoo in Tampa, FL) I had tattooed on my forearm. You yourself have some killer ink. Can you tell me about your body art and the meaning behind some of the work?

Well first, I think that the fact that people don’t know they’re Siouxsie’s eyes is a bit depressing. They’re iconic!

I have been tattooed by: Louis Lombi, Chris Garver (before Miami Ink), Mike Ledger, Jon Clue, and Wendi Koontz. All great people. I got my first tattoo, a panther on my shoulder, in 1984 or 85 maybe? At the time women didn’t have tattoos; two of the girls I worked with at Danceteria did, but we were very much an underground culture and people were always photographing them and commenting. So I very much wanted to separate myself from the “straight” world as they had, and I chose the panther on a visible place like my arm because in my mind it was a traditional tough guy tattoo. I desperately wanted to be bad ass and it was a big deal when I got it. Mike Monroe had a panther on his arm as well, slightly different spot, and he told people that I was copying him, which annoyed the hell out of me at the time but now I think is kind of funny. Like, dude, it’s flash art, get over yourself.

Then the rest sort of happened. I got an awful decorative band underneath that from a random dude at Hanky Panky in Amsterdam. We were on tour and I wanted to commemorate it, but he dug so hard it scarred up and was really messy looking. I think he just didn’t give a shit, but it was my own fault for stumbling in half drunk to a place and pointing at something on the wall. So I asked Chris Garver to fix it and add some more underneath, and he did a great job and added the heart piece underneath, which I love.

Then I got Mike Ledger put the word “Beautiful” on my inner arm. I wanted something to remind me that it’s all good, if you know what I mean. The interesting thing about that one is that women immediately connect to it while most men don’t really get it. But then I had a big mishmosh so I asked Mike to fix my left arm. He doesn’t do tribal, which is so dated now, but he is a friend and did me a favor and did a great job pulling it all together. Jon Clue is also a friend and he took 5 minutes to put my boyfriend’s name on the inside of my arm, but I like to list him because he’s awesome and adorable and has done all my boyfriend’s work. And Wendi Koontz did the giant floral piece on my right arm last summer, I was trying to balance out all the work I have on the left. We did 5-6 hours every week for 2 months and I will never do that again. I had a terrible allergic reaction and my body just broke down, I’m still recovering. But she is a major talent and a sweetheart and next year I’m going to go in and have her finish off the inside of that arm.

I have mixed feelings about tattoos. As I said, at the time I got my first one they really meant something to us and was a means of declaring our rebellion. When you saw someone else with tattoos you knew they were kindred. Now everyone is tattooed and it’s purely decorative, and honestly sometimes I feel that it mars the beauty that’s already there with our clean skin. I understand why some people find them unappealing and I tell people that don’t have any that it’s almost more subversive not to get any at this point. But I like all of mine and it’s a part of my history and my body, and I’d probably do the same thing all over again given the chance.

During Storm’s show, she said, “One of my best friends is in the audience. We used to do our weight in drugs back in the day. It’s a miracle we look as good as we do.” Storm was, of course, referring to you. How was it that you and Storm came to be (and still remain) such good friends?

Storm and I met during the CSFH whirlwind, when things were very wild. As I remember it one of the girls in our group (friends, not band) accused Storm of hitting on one of the boyfriends. Storm just laughed and her response was so real that I immediately liked her. We sort of assimilated her into our circle but she and I hit it off the most. We have different upbringings but our hearts are very similar in many ways. We were nuts but in a deeper way we weren’t; we were both trying to find our way through our pain in the most fucked up ways possible, but when we looked at each other over a table full of drugs we recognized the truth in our eyes. If that makes any sense? We both have keen survival mechanisms and I think we were both each others center in the eye of the hurricane. I recently told her that she is probably the sanest of my friends, which is ironic considering the subject of her one-woman show ["Crazy Enough"].

Once she moved out West we remained in touch but could go for months or even years without heavy contact. In the beginning when things were awful there were some heavy phone calls, but as we got older things got less dramatic and the phone calls got shorter. We both know that the other one is always there. There are some friendships that feel like “home” and no matter how much time passes, you step right back in as soon as you start talking. I know that one of us will be around when we’re old ladies and the other one dies. That’s how it is with Storm and I’m happy that she’s been spending more time on the East Coast.

The Cycle Sluts’ self-titled debut album will be reissued on February 15th, 2010. Any plans in the works to promote that? Perhaps another CSFH reunion?

Nope. I’m happy it’s been re-issued, the Google alerts have gone up! But I’m lazy about getting onstage, which involves a lot of rehearsing and time-commitment. Plus Virginia is in Minnesota and Vas (Venus) is busy with her band Hanzel und Gretyl, Donna (Honey) has her band the She Wolves. I’m glad we did the small partial reunions that we did, they came at a time when I needed to remember who I was in some ways, and the response we got the first time we walked onstage was so loving and loud that we had to just stand and take it in for a minute. But for the most part I’d like people to remember us the way we were.

What are your proudest accomplishments?

Hmmm … the first one that comes to my mind is my dog. I rehabilitated the most fucked up and abused little dog you’ve ever seen, and it was a long, rough road. And then I would say the amends I’ve been able to make for some of the pain I’ve caused people over the years. I know that’s corny, but it’s important to me.

[Also], touring with Motörhead, that’s a pretty great thing to have on a resume. OH! And I was SOOO psyched that [69 Eyes front man] Jyrki 69 listed me in his top 5 gothic pin-ups list in Metal Hammer recently, that made my year.

But for the most part it’s the smaller, day to day things I’m more proud of because they’re more difficult – stepping up to be a good partner to my guy, that kind of thing. It’s easy to get onstage and have people tell you you’re awesome, it’s far more difficult to live an honorable life in the daylight.

What are you currently working on?

I have recently made up my mind to buckle down and put the wheels in motion to get a book out after procrastinating and waffling for a decade. I have made a commitment to cut my hours down at work to make it happen, so now I really have to do it. I’m completely terrified.

Where do you see yourself in ten years?

Hmmm … well, that frigging book will be out and I intend to be more financially independent with less time constraints. I would love to have the means and free time to devote some energy to animal welfare. Beyond that I will allow the Universe to arrange the details for me.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

I would just tell everyone to keep their eye out, because it ain’t over til it’s over!

Finally, if you could describe how you see the world in one word, what would it be?

Complicated!

Be sure to check out Raffaele’s MySpace page HERE as well as her blog, “Miss Anthrope’s House Of High Drama” HERE. And thanks again for the interview, Raff. Yet another high point of my blogging career. You have such a beautiful mind, heart and soul. – Jen

Tagged as: Cycle Sluts From Hell, Queen Vixen