Lawndale Art Center: SPEAKEASY featuring Mydolls

Lawndale Art Center is proud to present the third installment of SPEAKEASY, a program featuring music, performance, and discussions of contemporary art that takes its cue from the eponymously titled series that took place at Lawndale from 1993-2002. Featuring Mydolls' release of their limited edition collectible red vinyl EP, It’s Too Hot for Revolution, and a Q and A session with friend of the band and former Lawndale Executive Director Mary Ross Taylor, SPEAKEASY will take place on Friday, March 3, 2017, at 7 pm. 

Mydolls, Houston’s original femme punk band, has been part of the music scene since founding in 1978. Part of the first wave punk scene, Mydolls was fronted by girl punk rockers who have since paved a path for women in the arts and continue to empower a new generation of fans. Mydolls continues to play national and statewide shows on a regular basis.

The event is free and open to the public.

20HERTZ: A World of Our Own: Mydolls and the Houston Punk Scene

As part of the 20HERTZ music lecture series, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston presented A World of Our Own: Mydolls and the Houston Punk Scene, an interview with Texas first-wave punk band Mydolls (1978-present), SugarHill Recording Studios President and producer Dan Workman, and Nancy Agin D. of Wild Dog Archives. Mydolls discussed their nearly four-decade-long career recording, touring, and producing records; their DIY ethos and cultural impact; and their role as community leaders working to empower women and musicians of all ages. Following the discussion, Mydolls performed a live concert in the Museum gallery.

In conjunction with the lecture series, Nancy partnered with CAMH to organize a display of punk artifacts and ephemera from the band’s archives in the Museum’s Cullen Education Resource Room and create a zine takeaway for the exhibition.

Video Sanctum is an online VHS/Beta archive and retailer specializing in uncirculated, out-of-print horror, exploitation and other rare and obscure cinema titles. The company values the historical significance of genre film on vintage formats, having resurrected/recycled the cassette tapes in its collection from now defunct Texas video stores, and hosts a bi-monthly mystery screening series in collaboration with Civic TV Laboratories to rediscover, discuss and preserve forgotten films on video. 

Wild Dog Archives is a digital archive documenting a legacy collection of 50+ years of Texas counterculture, underground music and punk zine ephemera.

The collected artifacts of Henry Wild Dog, who launched Houston's first punk rock fanzine in 1979, creates a narrative of the first wave punk scene emerging in Houston in the early 1980s. Wild Dog Archives’ vision is that the collection is a legacy of Texas popular culture and music history, and that these objects should be preserved for future generations to rediscover Houston’s contemporary underground arts and culture scenes.

This digital archive serves as a conduit for sharing rare and out-of-print materials connected to the national underground music scenes happening in the 1960s-’80s. Each artifact was researched to uncover hidden histories and historic information about the sociopolitical and cultural events of the time.