The story of the Assassinettes

The Soul Assassins held a few rehearsals when I decided to bring a girl group into the act. Originally, this was designed as a way to build a female fan club, all of whom would become Assassinettes, but the promotion stunt eventually morphed into the stars of our show.

Claudia Assassinette

The original Assassinette was my girl friend at the time, Claudia, who I’d discovered while she was working as the phone receptionist for Tommy Boy Records. Claudia was a disco queen from Queens, half Italian, half Jewish. As far as style goes, few could touch her.

I think I asked her out on the spot or maybe it was my second visit to the office, but I was gaga over her immediately and couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Claudia had attracted others, most notably Jellybean, who had an open relationship with Madonna at the time. He offered Claudia a job as his assistant but when Madonna found out she hit the ceiling and had it squashed immediately, which hurt Claudia’s feelings since she was currently unemployed, something I suspected might have been somehow related with her unexpected involvement with me. Obviously, Tommy Boy never understood her value, but she would end up doing A&R for Profile Records before launching her own label called Maxi.

Flick brought in Jeannie, Romeo’s girl friend, and Claudia brought in her best friend, Elena, and the original trio appeared first in a club downtown that probably doesn’t exist anymore. Afterwards the girls were mobbed by horny guys while I immediately went down to the dressing room alone. Along the way, “Little Girl” by the Syndicate of Sound came over the sound system, a song we had actually played. Some stranger on the steps blurted out, “sounds exactly the same!”

I changed into a t-shirt as I was dripping sweat, when his imperial highness James Marshall, the dean of East Village rock critics, appeared in the doorway. I had no idea Marshall had even come to the show but was prepared to accept whatever withering comment he wanted to make.

Much to my surprise, he gave us an unqualified rave review, and I thanked him sincerely.

Shortly after this gig, there was trouble in paradise as Elena and Jeannie confronted Claudia about being off key, and that confrontation crushed Claudia and put her into a tearful state.

My Solomon-like decision was to start over. If Claudia couldn’t be chief Assassinette, I needed a new trio, as having the other two without her would be an endless psychodrama afflicting my harmony with the crew.

After calling the band together, and announcing my decision, I also established the first band rule: no sleeping with any Assassinettes.

Flick and Allegra

A promoter had recently created “The Mind’s Eye” at Tramps to revive the garage psychedelic era, the music made by real teens before record companies perverted everything. I sent Andre Grossmann down to photograph the new scene and he came back with really cool photos, one of which jumped out at me. After working up a nice puff piece to promote the club, I invitedĀ  Ivy, the genius promoter, to come to the office to check out the layout.

“Who’s that?” I asked Ivy pointing at a picture of an exotic multi-ethnic girl with purple streaks in her hair.

“Allegra of the Black Orchids,” she replied. I got Allegra’s phone number and invited her to the office to see her picture in the layout. I told Allegra I wanted to recruit her for my new girl group. I didn’t know it at the time, but that exotic look was half Vietnamese and half Sephardic Jew.

Allegra showed up with Abby, and right away explained she fronted her own band and couldn’t join my girl group, but felt sure Abby was the one I needed.

Abby Assassinette

I don’t think Abby had ever been in the sunshine. Her skin was porcelain perfection. Built like Marilyn Monroe with a face like Betty Page. Abby must have based those bangs off Betty as she soon produced a Page homage video starring herself.

Abby had to be one of the most popular and highest-paid topless dancers in the Tristate Area but never did gigs in Manhattan and none of us were ever allowed to watch that show but safe to say some of the moves made it into our show. Abby worked for a posh private library and no doubt pulled down a significant salary there as well.

Abby, Kimona, Lucy

Flick found Kimona 117, who had more of a hip hop background, while Abby possessed a PhD in garage rock history. And since they were both alpha females, one wondered how this could harmonize. But once Kimona opened her mouth and belted out a few notes, everyone in the rehearsal room, including Abby, took a step back. Kimona had a voice like Joplin. It was obvious who was going to be the female star of the show.

Abby brought in her best friend Lucy. They were both from Boston and both were professional dancers. It was really confusing trying to figure out who of the three was the sexiest, even when you lined them all up together, but I guess most guys picked Lucy, who eventually became the most popular runway model for the East Village look. Those three girls bonded into a real sisterhood.

And that rule about not sleeping with Assassinettes? Well, I forgot to tell the girls about it and they had their own agendas, so while some hookups happened, others misfired, and it did turn into a bit of a psychic mind-field sometimes after all.

 

The Roadtrek Life: Living Well is the Best Revenge

I dreamed about my own Roadtrek for over a decade before I finally was able to secure a vintage Dodge Versatile 190 for $20,000. The key was finding oneĀ  with solar panels. I had to upgrade the inverter and battery system after boondocking for a week with Busy Bee at the Rainbow Gathering, when we blew most of the circuits between charging the ebikes and blasting our mobile PA.

Since that upgrade I’ve introduced a host of electrical appliances including a hot plate, air fryer, hotpot, dorm fridge, mini heater/cooler fridge, 24 inch Amazon Prime TV, Alexa, mini vacuum, mini washing machine, hepa air purifier, electric shower, mini driver with numerous attachments, Verizon 5G Jetpack, mini heater.

It has emergency food stash, mostly rice, dried beans and various seeds for sprouting, but a quick trip to Whole Foods can easily outfit the vehicle with enough fresh food to last a week or more. Most of the storage space is kept empty for provisions.

I could carry around hundreds of pounds of liquids, but I actually never fill up the water tank unless I’m boondocking, and then only after I arrive close to the destination. I keep the black and grey water tanks empty, and the black water tank was never pooped in.

Should I come upon water in any form, however, I can top off two solar showers, mini tub, and various other containers, the most pure of which is the Brita pitcher in the dorm fridge.

My favorite beverage while driving is an ice-cold Mexican coke. My favorite snack are fresh french fries. Slice an Idaho potato into your favorite size and soak for a few minutes or more in water. Damp dry and spray with a mist of olive oil. Form into a tower and cook on high for 20 minutes in air fryer. Pull the tray after 15 minutes and jumble the fries.

The full-sized bed inside is an organic futon, same model as the one I sleep on every night.

Providing all the necessary comforts (as well as toolkits and medical equipment), these Roadtrek vans are the ultimate tool for social distancing.

Why are the killers of Malcolm X and Fred Hampton ignored?

If there’s a topic of interest to the intelligence community, rest assured there’s a massive tomb detailing every fact known written by some Ivy Leaguer and/or devoted Marxist, published by a prominent company, and given rave reviews by global press outlets. In this regard, I’m certainly reminded of Case Closed by Gerald Posner.

In the 1960s, confusion reigned supreme, and few had any clue regarding deep state machinations driving the collective unconscious. The trail into these operations has been snowed under by an avalanche of disinfo, although enough evidence has been assembled to see the shadows on the cave wall. Of course, those shadows are easily ignored by academia.

Two decades ago, an online researcher appeared suggesting the Los Angeles music scene was a CIA creation, and the sixties were designed to lead the youth into apathy through drug addiction. This same researcher later posted elaborate theories on why we never landed on the moon and why nobody got hurt at the Boston bombing. So right away, you know this person was salting disinfo all along. It makes no difference if he was promoting paranoia for profit, a paid operative of some intelligence agency, or a brainwashed MK/Ultra robot, the result is the same, and such people can never be debated because their positions are immoveable.

Al-Mustafa Shabazz killed Malcolm X but good luck finding that fact anywhere online, especially at Wikipedia. Up until his death in 2019, he drove a gold Mercedes Benz E-Class sedan and was married to one of Newark’s most prominent civic leaders.

Two recent developments have altered this landscape significantly. One was a Neflix documentary exposing the real murderer of Malcolm X (Al-Mustafa Shabazz) and his connections to intelligence operations. The other is publication of the book Chaos, which investigates Charlie Manson’s connections to the CIA.

There is another book recently published but I fear you won’t find anything about either of these revelations: Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties. ā€œThe Manson gang were bit players compared to the forces of law and order,ā€ write Mike Davis and Jon Weiner, as an explanation why hippie culture is not covered while the text concentrates on black and brown struggles against the LAPD. In fact, those liberation movements were greatly inspired by the Students for a Democratic Society, an organization we know today was infested and destroyed by FBI and CIA spooks operating without knowledge of each other, although both teams were promoting acts of violence.

I don’t know much about Davis other than he’s a lifelong Marxist, but I certainly recognize Weiner because he collected and distributed the FBI files on John Lennon. Now there’s a book of immense interest to the CIA because the assassin resembles a model MK/Ultra case. But you won’t find Weiner writing anything about that issue. Nor does he have anything of value to add to the JFK assassination. His one online comment on the subject is a review of Winter Kills, which presented the absurd theory JFK was killed on orders from his father. Weiner confesses of all the various JFK assassination theories, this one remains “his favorite.” Winter Kills was written by Richard Condon, who also wrote the incredibly insightful The Manchurian Candidate, which JFK enjoyed immensely, and which got made into a movie largely because Frank Sinatra was turned onto the book by JFK. After the rights were secured, JFK had one question for Sinatra: “Who’s going to play the mother?” The book was far more detailed on the complex world of secret societies at the center of power than the movie. The super rich members of the oligarchy are a different species and probably always have been.

Shortly after The Manchurian Candidate film was released, JFK was assassinated, and the parallels between the film and real life too pronounced so the film was shelved. It would not reappear until later in the decade, after evidence of the real MK/Ultra brainwashing campaign had been exposed.

The real story of the assassination of Malcolm X was revealed by historian Abdur-Rahman Muhammad who identified Shabazz (then known as William Bradley) as firing the first and fatal shots with a sawed-off shotgun, but those facts were not widely available until five years ago with the publication of Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Columbia University professor Manning Marable. This revelation was largely ignored until a Netflix documentary was released this year (without giving credit to Muhmmad or Marable).

The Netflix documentary also revealed the FBI had significant assets deep inside the upper circles of the Nation of Islam, although we have no idea how high those assets reached. The assassination was a coproduction between the FBI and the Newark mosque.

William O’Neil

Bradley reminds me greatly of another William who assisted wet work for the FBI around the same time. Like Bradley, William O’Neil was recruited after being arrested for a major crime. He became the personal bodyguard to Fred Hampton, who had just been made head of the Black Panthers. Unlike the FBI and CIA plants, Hampton was a pacifist and he’d only agreed to lead the Panthers if they became non-violent. Hampton was also the biggest threat to the emergence of the Weather Underground, which sought to destroy the SDS. But in December 1969, days after Charles Manson was charged in the Tate-LaBianca murders, O’Neil slipped a sleeping pill to Hampton so he would be disabled when the police assassins arrived a few hours later.

After the police assassins departed, the crime scene was left wide open, and among the first to arrive was leader of the Weather Underground, Bernadine Dohrn, who was soon leading the press around the blood-stained, bullet-ridden apartment. This appearance vaulted Dohrn into great celebrityhood and she deployed the murder as the reason why hippies needed to arm themselves and start shooting police. Dohrn herself would soon be linked to the deaths of numerous officers on both coasts. Soon she would be hailing Manson as a culture hero for “killing pigs,” and devising a three-fingered official Weather Underground “fork salute” as the proper way to hail him.

Six years before Hampton’s murder, on October 31, 1963, an anonymous tip from ā€œLeeā€ a confidential FBI informant, revealed some men in Chicago were planning to kill JFK, who was due to visit the following day. At the same time, a landlady called police to report four rifles with telescopic sights had been discovered in a room she’d just rented (a room overlooking the route JFK was soon due to follow). The Secret Service was notified and JFK’s trip to Chicago was cancelled.

Thomas A. Vallee

Strangely, Thomas Arthur Vallee was one of the men at the apartment, and he had been previously posted to the CIA’s secret base in Atsuki, Japan, along with Lee Harvey Oswald. The base launched the U-2 spy planes. Both Vallee and Oswald had since been involved with anti-Castro Cubans in New Orleans, and both were moved into offices overlooking imminent presidential parade routes. A Secret Service agent in Chicago blew the whistle on the cover-up of these facts, but he was swiftly silenced and threatened with jail. His name was Abraham Bolden.

But the important news is the policeman assigned to spy on Valle was Daniel Groth, the same policeman sent to execute Fred Hampton. Jon Weiner is an editor at The Nation, which has always held firm to the Warren Commission’s absurd findings, which is why it’s not surprising Weiner hasn’t been investigating MK/Ultra links running through suspicious assassinations.

The Nation is run by Katrina vanden Heuvel, who is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Her father William vanden Heuvel was a protege of William Donovan, who headed the Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA. Even more telling, vanden Heuvel was the personal attorney for Yale Bonesman W.A. Harriman.

Thanks to a group of counterculture burglars, the FBI’s Cointelpro operation was exposed in March of 1971, which forced the FBI to shred the records, which eventually allowed Dohrn to come out of the cold to accept a tenured professorship at a major university. This is how you read the shadows on the cave wall because real social activists like Malcolm X and Hampton are always disappeared, while intel stooges like Dohrn are rehabilitated into the upper echelons of academia.