Weird Music: The Ladybirds, Not The Only All-Girl Topless Band In The 1960s

The blog post that got Weird Retro a facebook ban for posting a link on its facebook page.

There were a few all-girl bands around in the 1960s called The Ladybirds it turns out. First there were one of the first all-girl rock bands The Ladybirds from California from example, who opened for the Rolling Stones in 1965. Then there were the British vocal harmony group The Ladybirds who were to perform regularly on the British TV show The Benny Hill Show from 1968 onwards. None of these bands however performed topless. Unlike the The Ladybirds that hailed from the state of New Jersey in 1967, and... Well we'll get to that in a bit!

The "topless" Ladybirds were a five-piece garage rock band, that were no novelty act. These girls learnt to really play, according to Dick Boyd's book, Broadway North Beach, The Golden Years - A Saloon Keeper's Tales, they originally simply pretended to play instruments but ultimately learned to play them. Anyway back in 1968 after being forced out of New Jersey for their apparently lewd costume choice, they headed west. They made it to Las Vegas, where they appeared with comedian Godfrey Cambridge at the Aladdin Hotel, and at some point they made it to California. In California the played at the infamous Blue Bunny Club in Hollywood and found a home at the Tipsy club in San Francisco. 

They were managed at various points by Voss Boreta (husband of topless dancer Yvonne D'Angers and manager of topless dancer, Carol Doda) and professional golfer Raymond Floyd. In his youth Floyd was known as a lunatic, lush loving  party animal who part owned a club.  It was through this that Floyd wound up managing The Ladybirds. In 1998, Sports Illustrated magazine ran an article that mention Floyd and the band, "He [Floyd] was part owner of a bar, Coke's, an investor in a topless girls band and one of Carol Doda's many admirers."

The band even went on tour, there are records of them appearing at the Crystal Room in New York City, Isy's Supper Club in Vancouver, the Town 'n' Country in Winnipeg and Chez Paree, Quebec in 1968. Thus leaving a vacancy at the Tipsy club in San Francisco, so promoter Davey Rosenberg hit on the idea of starting another all-female topless band covers band. The band Rosenberg formed were called The Hummingbirds, and featured famous exotic dancer Angel Cecelia Helene Walker (better known as Satan's Angel) on bass. 

Satan's Angel's signature act was to light her tassels aflame, "then extinguishing the flames by means of strenuous mammary rotation". Hence her full stage name being Satan's Angel, the Devil's Own Mistress, Queen of the Fire Tassels.

Anyway, getting eventually to the point of this of blog post. It appears there actually was another all-girl topless band called The Ladybirds in the 1960s, that hailed all the way from Denmark. They formed in 1968, and toured extensively throughout Scandinavian. It's even reported that they made in to the UK, and played in Bristol in 1973. The same year that the band formed they opened for the Yardbirds at the Fjordvilla Club in Roskilde, Denmark, on September 8th 1968. Sometimes then billed on adverts as the New Yardbirds, the band would later change their name to Led Zeppelin. It is that tour of Scandinavia in 1968 that is considered to be Led Zeppelin's first ever tour as a band.  

Weird Retro Fact: The original American All-Girl Topless Band, The Ladybirds made into the Weird Retro Top Ten: Bands That Dress-Up In Weird Costumes.

Weird Retro Fact: Read about the storm an innocuous and inoffensive link to this blog post, posted on the Weird Retro facebook page resulted in the page and its admins being banned from facebook for a 30 days. Banned By Facebook: The Nipple Police Strike Again!

Weird Retro Fact: Read about the Wild, Wild World Of Jayne Mansfield (1968), the only known footage of The Ladybirds performing on screen.