Manic Panic - Tish and Snooky ALL FOR THE LOVE OF ROCK'N'ROLL! "It was really magic" The Dictators Dog Collar On Friday September 13, Manic Panic N.Y.C. Celebrated their 25th 'Manniversary'. They had auctions of photographs from our favorite Rock Photographers and wonderful dog collars by the stars. CBGB's Hilly Kristal It all started off at Serena's, under the Chelsea Hotel, with fine champagne to loosen up the wallet for the auction of celebrity designer dog collars: "The collars were designed by a few friends, Ace Frehley, KISS, Alice Cooper, All My Children (cast), Ann Wilson, HEART, B-52's, Bernadette Peters, Brian Devive, PETCO, Broadway Cares, Cher, Cindy Adams, Cyndy Lauper, The Dictators, Glenn Danzig & Howie Pyro, DANZIG, Deborah Harry, Denis Leary, The Go-Gos, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, Joanna Mastroianni, Michael Musto, Moby, Nancy Wilson, HEART, Nicole MIller, Nikki Sixx, Patrick McDonnell "Mutts", Rue McClanahan, Serene Bass, Steven Tyler, AEROSMITH, Talking Heads, Todd Oldham, Tom Tom Club (by James Rizzi), Valerie Harper, World Wrestling Ent/WWE, Wynonna Judd" Gyda Gash Their designs were inspired by the wonderful brave dogs with names such as Dodger, Uno, Charlie, Kermit and Pepe. Jayne County The photographs were donated by Bob Gruen, Leee Childers, Mariah Aguiar, Roberta Bailey, Michael Gildo Lenny Kaye To perform at this celbration were the amazing: Jayne County, Handsome Dick Manitoba, Robert Gordon & the original Tough Darts, Charm School, Starr Spangles, Gyda Gash, Lenny Kaye, Joe Hurley, Jimi Bones Band, Annie Golden & Lisa Burns to name but a few of the stars. To help celebrate was a mass of luminaries from the many scenes that Tish & Snooky have influenced. Lisa Burns & Annie Golden "We are celebrating this important event by honoring heroes who helped our city so much after the attack on 9/11 - the K-9 units and Search & Rescue Dogs who worked so hard at the WTC and the all-volunteer Suffolk County SPCA who provided these dogs with much needed on-site veterinary care." John Holmstom All the moneys from the eventfull evening goes to the Suffolk County SPCA. Leee Childers & DeadBoy Jeff Magnum A few of the Uniformed gentlemen and their K9 partners were there at the party looking very handsome indeed (the dogs that is!) the amazing Robert Gordon Then we all piled into cabs down to CBGBs for some serious entertainment. Abbie 'n' her hubbie! NYWaste caught up with the sisters, Tish & Snooky in their studio/warehouse. Who luvs ya, Jimmy! What made you decide to make it a benefit and not just a celebration for yourselves? Tish: We've always wanted to do a benefit for animals, we've been talking about that for years because we are such animal lovers. Rogue's March, Joe Hurley Yes, I see a lot of pussycats around. T: For our 25th Anniversary we want to do something really big and special and do everything all in one night! A benefit and it was related to the WTC, Snooky: We put everything all together in one night. We really tried to so much, really too much in one night. The bands, alone, would have been one incredible thing. The photos and auction would have been another incredible thing and the dog collars designed by celebraties would have been another cute thing. But we just did it all at once. T: The amazing thing was no one thought that the Uniforms & they doggies would actually go down to CBGBs, but there they were. I don't think they knew how to take it all with all these rockers getting really drunk around them! I thought they might have felt a little bit out of their depth. S: some people did actually hightail it out of there! Thinking they were working! T: but the dogs were on break. They weren't working! They are man's best freind. Some people are against working dogs. S: Think how many firemen have rescued dogs and cats from burning appartments, getting them out of trees. There is a connection. It's not like they are snakes or something. Dogs and cats have been with us as partners from the begining. They keep old people company. We work for them! Picking up after they shit and feeding them. Steve Mach, CB's Lighting Magician Oh, I agree, some dogs were born to work and just get seriously bored with nothing to do. T: Some even end up in therapy. S: Our manic Panic dog, Daisy May, is not a working dog, she's more of a therapy dog. Everybody comes and pets her and kisses her. It's really good to have dogs and cats to kiss in the day when it gets so stressfull around here. There was a therapy dog at the club, a true therapy dog. He goes to old age homes & he goes to hospitals. The Best Hair Model in the World Let's go to the start. What was it like at the begining? T: we actually opened up the first Punk boutique in America. It was on St. Marks place. Now it's such a trendy area, back then we were pionneers. There really was nothing there. We got a lot of publicity off of it. We started doing wholesale a few years later and basically got into supplying USA and Canada with hair dye and other products that we were either importing or making ourselves. S: At the beginning anything we liked, Punk Rock, anything from make-up to clothing to shoes. Tish was designing the clothes, the hair dye we were importing it. Didi Delicious! The Colors must have been like old ladies hair rinces? T: the colors have been around since the sixties, even the fifties. By I guess they were used more for Poodles, talk about working dogs, they were used for toning other colors, like purple to tone down the brassyness of peroxide blonds, and they were used for Saint Patrick's day. They were really used for really extreme stuff. We made it into fashion here because nobody else was doing it and we just kept expanding on it, and wholesaling it, getting it to Canada. S: We started with $250 each and rented this store front on St. Marks Place and we were living at home with out mother. We just kept reinvesting our money back into the bizness. I just found these old records from when we were trying to keep records in those days. And some days we would make 50¢, some days nothing. A good week we would make a whole $100. We got so much press and we had nothing to sell really at the beginning, just a few little things. But, it's the press that really made us. T: And that neighborhood too, because all the other store owners on that block saw all the cameras constantly coming into the store, so they started turning their stores into Punk stores. S: before there was hardly anything on the block. By the time we left there, our rent was up to $3500 and going up to $5000 so we said forget it. It was a little rodent infested dump. We just left and we just decided to concentrate on wholesale which was just getting bigger and bigger. T: other stores were always calling us to buy stuff so they would look cool. S: We felt like it was the end of the world when our landlord wouldn't renew our lease and was raising the rent, but it ended up being the best thing that ever happened to us. We just started to concentrate on the wholesale. Mostly the hair color. We did it out of my boyfriends studio appartment. T: we did that for over a year and then we moved back onto St. Marks place into a basement under the Gap. S: but we still had stuff from the old store that we wanted to get rid of, but we were mostly doing wholesale. Then we moved into another basement on 9th St. and that was Jimi Hendrix's old crash pad. Just for fun! Oooh, groovy T: it was a groovy little basement, we were there for a few years. In that time our wholesale bizness had got so big, we had to move to a big space in Tribecca, a big loft. We thought that was huge when we moved in there. S: we built it up and then we finally outgrew that place and the landlord was raising the rent. And once again we moved into a bigger place, we found this place which is four times the size of that other space. T: It's not easy in New York. We are a New York based bizness, they don't make it easy for New Yorkers. We moved six times in the 25 years! It's a lot to move your bizness, it's bad enough your home. They don't make it easy in New York which is why a lot of biznesses move out. We've been through it all in New York and we haven't left! We've been through 9/11 and it did effect us. We saw the towers burning from our windows here. If your selling bottled water and gass masks you made a lot of money last year, but people selling luxuries like lipstick, well people were skipping on it. Not buying as much, like impulse buying. S: People weren't even going out, why should they. They're not going to buy stuff to look great when they weren't even going out. Clubs suffered and so did our bizness. Club life hasn't bounced back to pre 9/11 yet. So to see the crowds that we saw at CBGB's was pretty amazing. T: The party lasted nine hours! A real marathon. There were so many wonderful people that helped us. And nobody stole anything. I was thinking that people were going to read about it in the paper and try to steal stuff away. Tish & Snooky Taking it to the Top! It must of been the guys in uniform keeping them away. It was very brave of them to come into the depths of Punkdoom. Ruling the Empire! To see fantastic photos of the rescue efforts of the dogs and the care that the SPCA gave to these heroes, and to give more of your support, please go to www.suffolkspca.org Riley on the high line! Tish & Snooky's Manic Panic is this years winners of the Small Buisness award 2002 from Kranes magazine. Today CBGB's tomorrow the World! Suffolk SPCA www.manicpanic.com BACK TO HOME