Rain Fanzine

25/07/2023

Trenchmouth and Writhing Gods. Analogue interviews and live footage from the late 80s/ early 90s. Finally found my stash of video 8 tapes.

23/04/2022

Cynthia Albritton, a.k.a. Cynthia Plaster Caster, the legendary artist and "recovering groupie" renowned for the plaster casts she took of many top musicians' erect pen*ses and other body parts died on Thursday 21st April after a long illness. She was 74.

Her collection included Jimi Hendrix, Wayne Kramer of MC5, Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks, Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys as well as female breasts from the likes of Letitia Sadier of Stereolab, Sally Timms of the Mekons, Peaches, Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and many others. She later expanded her subjects to include filmmakers and other artists and eventually amassed a collection of 50 plaster phalluses.

She began her plaster casting career while living in Chicago in 1968. After meeting Frank Zappa, who found her art concept both humorous and creative (although he did not participate), Albritton found in him something of a patron. He moved her to Los Angeles - a goldmine for her line of art - where she found multiple willing assistants to help prepare the subjects for her work.

In 1971, after her apartment was robbed, Zappa and Albritton decided the casts should be preserved for a future exhibition and entrusted them to Zappa's business and legal partner,

Herb Cohen. However, artists declined to participate in the exhibition, and she made no casts between 1971 and 1980. In a surreal situation, she found herself having to go to court in 1993 in order to get the 25 casts she had left with Cohen returned; ultimately she got all but three of them back.

In 2000, Albritton finally held her first exhibition of the casts in New York, and expanded her purview to include women's breasts. Her career was immortalized in the 2001 documentary, "Plaster Caster."

09/10/2020

Our sympathies to Pierre's family and friends.

Pierre Kezdy, former bassist for massively influential Chicago punk bands Naked Raygun and Pegboy, has died. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that Kezdy died of cancer early this morning in a Glenview, Illinois hospice. He was 58. A teenage Kezdy first played in the early Chicago punk band Strike Under...

18/12/2019

Stolen equipment alert!

14/02/2019

Always... 😡😡😡

For more information: www.londonedge.com

26/12/2018

Remembering my dear friend Jon Schnepp who passed away earlier this year and the times he'd dress up as Anti Claus and pose for Polaroids with friends. He was also writer and director for Metalocalypse - and designed and created the look of the five band members. Schnepp's poetry was included in a few issues of Rain Fanzine and several of our fundraisers where hosted in the South Wabash loft where he lived.

05/05/2018

SAIC Fashion 2018 runway Fashion Department, SAIC School of the Art Institute of Chicago

05/05/2018

School of the Art Institute of Chicago 2018 student fashion show runway * Fashion 2018 Fashion Department, SAIC