Aaron Hillis in Spin documents the story behind Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains, the '80s cult item that he terms, with some justice, "the missing link between punk and riot grrl." Stains was the brainchild of Nancy Dowd, who made her bones as a screenwriter in the late 1970s with Slap Shot and Coming Home. Punk was still a going concern when Dowd completed her script (originally called "All Washed Up") about some rebellious teenage girls whose bad attitudes and worse music briefly turn them into stars and role models for disaffected youth. The script fell into the hands of director Lou Adler, who had helped produce the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival, brought The Rocky Horror Show to America, and then turned filmmaker with the first Cheech and Chong picture, Up in Smoke. Adler may have been looking for a new subculture to milk, but Dowd managed to bring in music journalist Caroline Coon to serve as the film's technical adviser, and the on-screen cast didn't lack for authenticity: Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols and Paul Simonon of the Clash were brought in to make a raucous noise behind an aspiring punk vocalist played by an unrecognizable, skinny young Ray Winstone, and Fee Waybill of the Tubes contributed a surprisingly moving performance as a has-been metal singer, whose features hang down as if to protest all the make-up he's slathered on them over the years.
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