Today we’d like to introduce you to Pleasant Gehman.
Hi Pleasant, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
By the age of four, I already knew I was destined to be an artist. I was lucky to be born into a highly creative family who all made their living in the arts. My mother was a singer with big bands on the vaudeville circuit; she wound up singing and dancing on Broadway and later taught theater and became an author. My father was a famous author and journalist. My aunt was an incredible painter; her daughter has a circus school in St. Louis, all my siblings are wonderfully creative.
As a child, my first love and main goal was to be a dancer…and a writer, a singer, a visual artist and an actor. Adults constantly hounded me to pick just one as a career, but I couldn’t – and wound up doing all of that and more, making a living from it. I haven’t had a day job since 1983 – my creativity is my life. Being a dancer was foremost in my childhood goals, it didn’t happen until I was much older. As a kid, I was obsessed with ballet, with the dancing in Broadway musicals and on tv: all the old Busby Berkeley films, variety shows like Ed Sullivan and the go-go girls on “Hullabaloo”. My father wrote for National Geographic, and one issue had a feature on Istanbul. There was a photo of a Turkish belly dancer, which I tore out – I thought she was the most gorgeous and glamourous thing I’d ever seen. I actually keep that photo in my wallet for years through adulthood. However, my hopes of dancing professionally were dashed at a young age when a ballet teacher informed my mother – right in front of me:
“She has flat fleet – she’ll never be a dancer!” I went home and cried myself to sleep.
Just after that, at the age of eight, I acted in my first stage play, not a school show, but in a legit theater. I also my first appearance on film then – it was a college student’s documentary film, and from both of those, I‘d gotten the acting bug. I’d already been putting on dance shows in the garage and advertising them around the neighborhood. They were free to get in, but I charged the audience a nickel to leave! Performance came naturally to me. Growing up in the 1960s, my mom always had her theater students over for rehearsals and would sing constantly with her friends and I’d join in. I’d been drawing since I could hold a crayon and “writing” before I could spell. I’d dictate stories to whatever adult was around, so I could put them with the pictures I made. There were so many art, theater and film books in my house, I’d lose myself in them for hours.
I also wanted really badly to be witch, a fortuneteller, or both. I suspect there was some witchery going on with the women on both sides of my family. My paternal Grandma Nelly -who was also a terrific painter – kept track of the moon phases for planting vegetables and flowers. She knew everything about home remedies and hand-painted Hex Signs and all over her house to protect it and painted Distelfink birds for good luck on all her kitchen stuff like teapots and ceramic cups. I think she believed in the Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic called Pow Wow. I’d sit on my Ukrainian Grandma Pauline’s lap, listening to stories she’d tell about her mother, my great Grandma Rose. Apparently, Grandma Rose read tea leaves, but she passed away long before I was born.
I also wanted really badly to be a witch, a fortuneteller, or both. I suspect there was some witchery going on with the women on both sides of my family. My paternal Grandma Nelly -who was also a terrific painter – kept track of the moon phases for planting vegetables and flowers. She knew everything about home remedies and hand-painted Hex Signs and all over her house to protect it and painted Distelfink birds for good luck on all her kitchen stuff like teapots and ceramic cups. I think she believed in the Pennsylvania Dutch folk magic called Pow Wow. I’d sit on my Ukrainian Grandma Pauline’s lap, listening to stories she’d tell about her mother, my great Grandma Rose. Apparently, Grandma Rose read tea leaves, but she passed away long before I was born.
By the time I turned twelve the early 1970’s, I’d discovered rock ‘n’roll and the occult. Both took over my life immediately. I’d stay up all night to watch shows like “In Concert” and “The Midnight Special. Glam Rock was just starting around then and my favorites – David Bowie and Marc Bolan of T Rex were huge in England but unheard of in America. I did chores around the neighborhood, babysitting, mowing lawn sand raking leaves to buy records and to purchase first tarot deck through mail order. I had no idea how to read them, but it was an obsession. Tarot books were hard to come by in a small, mostly Catholic New England town, So I read books on magic from the library, trying to find out as much as I could. I also got an Ouija Board around that time. Almost immediately, I started doing Ouija sessions and tarot readings for my girlfriends. Since I didn’t understand the meanings of each card, I took cues from the pictures and made up stories….but apparently, I had a knack for it. Because I didn’t adore American teen idols like Bobby Sherman and David Cassidy and had no interest in being popular at school, the other kids made fun of me, calling me “Witchiepoo”, after a character from the H.R. Pufnstuf television series. Though I was an outcast, I didn’t really didn’t care.
In 1975, my mom moved our family to Los Angeles because she’d gotten a job at Twentieth Century Fox, and in hindsight, I realize my adult life started immediately. I always figured I’d wind up in New York, but Los Angeles was truly my wet dream; I’d been obsessed with Old Hollywood Glamour forever. I turned sixteen three days after landing in LA. A little after that, I visited my mother on the Twentieth Century Fox lot and got asked to be in a Roger Corman film called Hollywood Boulevard. I’d loved Roger Corman since seeing Little Shop of Horrors on tv so I begged my mom to sign the waiver cause I was a minor, and for some reason she did – I don’t think she knew what kind of films he made! Two days later, I was on the set, in tight jeans and a white tank top, getting sprayed with a firehose with a bunch of other actresses -a Hollywood wet dream, literally!
But what I really wanted to do was hit the LA rock’n’roll clubs and concerts I’d been reading about. Queen was playing at The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, and I took the bus there, with sequins braided into my hair and wearing a tattered 1940’s evening gown. A handsome silver-haired man in the row in front of me handed me a joint, and it took a second to realize it was Tony Curtis! In my first brush with Hollywood, I couldn’t believe I was getting wasted with one of my favorite movie stars! Then I got distracted by two guys walking down the aisle, one with a bright orange Bowie shag and the other shirtless in a cape and black satin pants. They turned out to be Paul Beahm, later known as Darby Crash and George Ruthenberg, later known as Pat Smear. I threw a matchbook with my phone number on it to them right as the lights were going down. The next day they called me and we started hanging out non-stop, we were inseparable. A few days after the concert, we cut school to hang out in the lobby at The Beverly Hilton, where Queen was staying, cause we were hoping to meet them. Instead, we met two girls who were doing the same thing. They were Belinda Carlisle and Terry Ryan, who later became Lorna Doom of The Germs. I don’t think any of us knew how fortuitous that initial meeting was going to be – it leads us all into the late 1970’s LA punk scene.
Around that time, I got a job as ticket taker at The Whisky A Go Go, which was great because I was going there every night to see bands, anyway. George/Pat became my first boyfriend, then The Germs were formed. Belinda was their first drummer but never played with them. She later became my roommate at the famous punk house I had called Disgraceland. The Go-Go’s album went to number one on the charts while she was living there.
I’d moved into Disgraceland with my bestie Kid Congo, who later joined The Gun Club and The Cramps. was literally a hub for the LA punk and rock’nroll scene for a decade, from 1978-1988
I’d already been publishing my punk fanzine Lobotomy with my friends Randy Kaye and photographer Theresa Kereakes. There weren’t really any fanzines in LA yet – not like later with Flipside and Ben Is Dead. We always put it together when we were shitfaced drunk, usually on my living room floor or at photographer Theresa Kereakes’ place- they were both called “The Lobomotomy Apartment”. I’d also been doing Lobotomy Nights at The Whisky, my first venture into producing shows. Even though it was a photocopied fanzine, Lobotomy leads me to becoming a professional writer.
In 1978, Jay Levin, publisher of LA Weekly asked me to do a rock’n’roll gossip column called “LA Dee Da”; I also wrote my first cover article feature for them shortly after. I sent samples of writing to other local and national magazines, and they all accepted my work, too. I worked as a staff writer for LA Weekly, Los Angeles Magazine, Variety, The LA Reader, The Hollywood Reporter and often free-lanced for Billboard, Spin and Rolling Stone.
Because I already was familiar with booking, producing and promoting shows, in the early 1980’s I became the band booker at the seminal Hollywood punk clubs Cathay De Grande and Raji’s, working at both while I was still writing non-stop. Then, I started my own all-female band, The Screaming Sirens.
The Screaming Sirens toured extensively throughout North America and released two albums on Enigma Records, Fiesta and Voodoo, as well as many singles. We band appeared on numerous film soundtracks and compilations in the 1980’s and 1990’s. In 1988, I co-wrote a film script based on The Screaming Sirens with director Max Tash. The title came from one of the Sirens’ songs, “The Runnin’ Kind”. It was originally an indie film but got picked up by MGM and had a premiere and a theatrical release in 1989.
Concurrent with the Sirens, my Disgraceland roomie Iris Berry and I founded The Ringling Sisters, a writing and spoken word group made up of female lead singers from popular Los Angeles bands. We soon morphed into a band and were signed by A&M Records, releasing the LP Sixty Watt Reality, produced by Lou Adler. My Ringling Sisters guitarist Dave Catching – formerly of Eagles Of Death Metal and now in Mojave Lords, conceived the wacky Ringling Sisters side project: it was an outrageous X Rated trailer trash country band called Honk If Yer Horny, which went from being a one-night joke band to having a five-year career, including making an EP and having videos in regular rotation on Euro MTV and headlining South By Southwest.
My club booking jobs and rock’n’roll writing were still going on, but because of The Ringling Sisters, Iris and I started making chapbooks of our poetry and memoir stories. We did spoken word readings at clubs, theaters, art galleries, record stores and coffee shops. The same time we were at South By Southwest, Gary Hustwit, publisher at Incommunicado Press told me he wanted to do a book with me; of course I said yes. Senorita Sin came out in 1994. As of now, I’m the author and/or editor of eight books and have two more on the way.
My life changed drastically once again in 1989, the year “The Runnin’ Kind” came out, and the year I turned thirty. Through a chance meeting at a rock club I met a girl who asked if I was a belly dancer; she said I moved like one. When I found out that she was, I asked her to teach me. I cleared a space in the Sirens’ rehearsal studio, called a bunch of girlfriends, and got together a Saturday morning belly dance class. After a few weeks, I was the only one left. I met other belly dancers and took more classes. I’d trade private lessons for housecleaning – and I always hated cleaning house, but that’s how into it I was. As fate would have it, a friend offered me a free airline ticket to Greece – you could just swap tickets in those days. I called the airline, added on Cairo, and went off on the adventure of my life with like $200.00 in my pocket. I saw shows in Greece and Egypt and took classes in Cairo. I returned with a costume, did a student recital, and got asked to perform at a party. From there, it escalated. Tying in with the rock’n’ roll, one of my first gigs was onstage at The Roxy. Next thing I knew, I was teaching belly dance, then going out of state to teach. It grew exponentially.
In 1997, I started performing as a soloist with The Velvet Hammer Burlesque in LA. Widely acknowledged as the first Neo-Burlesque troupe, I did belly dance as well as striptease. In the early 2000’s, using my stage name Princess Farhana, I began touring internationally to teach and perform belly dance and burlesque headlining belly dance and burlesque festivals all over the world. I’ve performed and taught in Egypt, Turkey, Australia and China, and toured several times across Europe and The United Kingdom, Mexico and Canada as well as throughout the USA. As a belly dancer, I judged numerous competitions and appeared on the covers of every belly dance trade publication. As a burlesque performer, I’ve been a judge at the USA’s legendary international burlesque competition, The Miss Exotic World Pageant, and was the 2014 keynote speaker at Burly Con. I’ve been featured on the covers of numerous mainstream publications and on the cover of the London, UK Sunday Review’s feature on American Burlesque, and appeared in twenty-six instructional or performance DVDs. I did a lot of dancing in music videos, including Madonna and Ricky Martin. I performed in and got interviewed for documentaries, television news segments and appeared in the sitcom “The Nanny”;. Choreographer Fatima Robinson made me her assistant choreographer for the Tom Hanks film “Charlie Wilson’s War”; I choreographed the belly dance sword piece.
Comedian Margaret Cho was one of my dance students, and we became friends. She started a burlesque and comedy show called “The Sensuous Woman” in 2007; and I was a cast member. In 2008, we toured and did a nine-week Off Broadway run at The Zipper Theater in Manhattan. and also appeared dancing and being interviewed in segments in Margaret’s DVD Assassin and her television series The Cho Show, and in the videos for Margaret’s songs “Anna Nicole” and “My Puss”.
In 2017, after 12 years of constant travel, I took break from touring. I thought I’d have a year off to relax, but instead, I got even more busy than when I was on the road. I had a dream about an occult burlesque show, kinda like The Zodiac Club in my favorite film, the 1958 “Belle, Book And Candle”. I’d recently met Shana Leilani at The Green Man store. Like me, she was a witch and a psychic; she was also a new burlesque dancer and we bonded hard. I described the dream and asked if she’d co-produce the new show with me – she said yes.
As fate would have it, the doors flew open immediately; it was just a matter of saying yes to the universe and crossing each threshold.
Less than a month later, on May 17, 2017, Belle, Book and Candle had a sold-out debut. The next show, which (thanks, universe!) just happened to be on the exact day of Summer Solstice, also sold out. In that first year, the show also hit directly on Autumn Equinox and every New Moon or Dark Moon. It was uncanny – people were asking us how far in advance we’d booked the shows in order for them to coincide with pagan sabbats and the phases of the Moon! The show is popular for burlesque fans but also became a hub for the witchy/pagan community in LA. We did a few online shows during lockdown. We’re now in our fourth year doing live shows again at El Cid.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Finding the time to accomplish everything has always been the hardest part! When I was a lot younger, people told me I had to pick *just one thing” and concentrate on that, but there were so many things I wanted to do, I just did what I wanted jumping from one project to another, but often I’d have like three or four going concurrently, so it gets crazy.
I am very fortunate to have so many opportunities (and ideas) come to me, but time is always a struggle… plus, I love what I do and I’m a workaholic! I keep trying to take some downtime, but it doesn’t usually work out. There’s so many things I want to do, or projects in process, or shows to produce, rehearse, make costumes for… it’s a grind but a grind I love.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I’m constantly working in several genres at once. On my Instagram profile, it says “multi-genre artist”. On my passport, it says “writer performer”…
Depending on who you talk to, I’m most well known as an author, a dancer or a punk rock poster girl, LOL.
There’s t a lot of info on me and my work on the internet. Go to youtube to hear my bands, see me dance, hear my spoken word CD Ruined, or Blacklite Sleaze, 2006 collaboration with noted house music producers Peace Division, which became a hit in Europe and The United Kingdom, entering the British Charts.
I’m also one of many authors featured in Under The Big Black Sun: A Personal History Of LA Punk, compiled by John Doe and Tom De Savia. as well as in the follow-up More Fun In The New World, published June 2019. These books and y memoir “Showgirl Confidential” and my reference book “The Belly Dance Handbook” are all available on Amazon or your local book store.
My podcast The Devil’s Music which explores the intersection of rock& roll and the occult is now in its second year, available across all podcast platforms. The focus is the intersection of rock& roll and the occult. Some of my recent guests have included Pee-wee Herman, Dana Gould, Belinda Carlisle, Kid Congo Powers, Jennifer Finch of L7, Margaret Cho, many prominent psychics and witches and numerous others.
Recently, I was featured as an interview subject in The Go-Go’s Showtime Documentary and in Vice TV’s “ Dark Side Of The 90’s” in the Viper Room episode.
I wrote another memoir in the 2020lockdown – it’s called “Rock & Roll Witch” and will be published by Punk Hostage Press Halloween 2021.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
The main piece of advice would be to follow your dreams and don’t let anyone or anything get in your way! Consider all opportunities. Don’t let people tell you what you can or cannot do. Take chances, put yourself out there!
Focus on your goals, learn as much as you can and foremost, do what you love because you’ll never get tired of it.
Pricing:
- Tarot readings: $50-120
- Belle, Book & Candle Tickets: $20-30.00
Contact Info:
- Website: www.pleasantgehman.com
- Instagram: @princessofhollywood
- Facebook: @pleasantgehman
- Twitter: @pleasantgehman1 @PrincessFarhana @tarotalimah
Image Credits:
Maharet Christina Hughes, Roberto Tibuni, Matt Odom, Victor Andrade, Margot Reyes, Jules bates, Morgan Hudson
