Tish and Snooky Bellomo – Aging Disgracefully (Founders/owners of Manic Panic) | S5 E03
“Just because we’re older doesn’t mean we can’t have fun. WE always say we don’t want to age gracefully. We want to age disgracefully!”
Sisters, punk rockers and “accidental entrepreneurs,” Snooky and Tish Bellomo agree, ”If you had told us back in 1977 that doing what we loved and sharing our unique style would influence music, art fashion and beauty for the next four decades, we would‘ve thought you as crazy as us!” As teenagers in the early 70s, Tish and Snooky went from clubbing in the downtown punk scene to performing in “some wacky off-the-wall” shows to joining Blondie as backup singers. In just a few short years, they parlayed their trailblazing style to open Manic Panic, the first punk rock boutique in the U.S. The vivid, rainbow color hair dyes (theirs were always vegan and cruelty-free) that they created in the 1970s sparked a hair care revolution and helped celebrities like Cyndi Lauper, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry stand out in the headlines.
Today Manic Panic is a global, “alternative beauty” business operating in 40 countries. And Snooky and Tish still perform with bands like the Sic F*cks, a punk/glam band they founded with Russell Wollinsky over 40 years ago. Join us to hear about how Tish and Snooky keep paving the path for us to age disgracefully.
For more on Tish, Snooky and Manic Panic, check out:
Their newly published book, Manic Panic: Living in Color https://smile.amazon.com/s?k=Manic+Panic&i=stripbooks&ref=nb_sb_noss_2
The Manic Panic website: https://manicpanic.com
More about Tish and Snooky who were featured in the Punk Lust Exhibit at The Museum of Sex (NYC) - https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/inside-museum-sex-punk-lust-exhibit-763725/; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSM0vCzSKYY
+ TRANSCRIPT
Joanne and Idelisse: Welcome to Two Old Bitches. I'm Idelisse Malave and I'm Joanne Sandler. And we're Two Old Bitches! We're interviewing our women friends and women who could be our friends. Listen, as they share stories about how they reinvent themselves.
Just because we're old doesn't mean we can't have fun. And you know, we always say we don't want to age gracefully, we want to age disgracefully.
Idelisse: Joanne, this time we got to speak with two women who have decided that they want to live colorfully until the very end.
Joanne: And they are. Do you remember the first time...I remember the first time that I put purple in my hair and I felt so transgressive. I think I was 62 years old, that was about six years ago.
And Manic Panic is the company that the women were about to interview and started by Tish and Snooky Bellomo, right? Who really started the craze of crazy colors.
Joanne and Idelisse: They brought fantasy hair color to the United States in the seventies, and it has survived, and now it's not just young people. No. Now in fact, I stopped putting color in my hair because it became so boring to see 80-year-old women with green. The New York Times for goodness sakes, did a whole article about, you know, gray hair and all these funky colors in it. And Snooky and Tish are musicians, punk rockers, punk rock legends.
They are part of the exhibit at The Museum of Sex on punk lust. And they are totally fabulous and as transgressive as you can imagine. But at the same time, they are these consummate business women who developed Manic Panic, which now is in 40 countries, a global brand, and they're just keep growing and growing and growing. They do. And they, they started, they had the first punk rock store in America on St. Mark's place, right in 77, I think two or five something like that. Right.
Joanne: So they, they were icons of the seventies. Well, if for people who remember CBGBs, The Mud Club, the Ramones, that whole, that whole vibe in the seventies, Manic Panic is the symbol of those times.
Idelisse: Okay. And they are, as, as they said at one point, you know, punk at heart and it is so... punk is one of those things that never die.
Joanne and Idelisse: Yeah, It's recycled...it keeps coming back. Always present, it's reincarnated. So now let's listen to how it all started.
Snooky and Tish: We're not beauticians or by any means. We never went through beauty school...and we never went to business school either. No, we just like learned it by doing it and we're still learning it as we go along. We were singers and we were out on the scene when we were young and you know, out clubbing all the time and we were in Blondie and we just, you know, be all over the underground scene and people liked our look and wanted to know where they could buy it.
So we decided as a sideline to our singing career, we'd opened up the first punk store in America.
Idelisse: Right. So you did. And where did you open it up?
Snooky and Tish: 33 St. Mark's Place. It was really cheap. There were all these empty stores on the block. Nobody wanted to be there. It was like this burnt out hippie...
Joanne: Yeah. I remember
Snooky and Tish: ...block.
Joanne: Yeah, it was nice.
Snooky and Tish: So it was cheap. So.
Idelisse: And what did you sell at the store when you first started?
Snooky and Tish: We sold, um, batches of, you know, bands. We sold, uh, records and, um, pictures and band t-shirts and stuff we made. I knit sweaters and jeans, designed dresses and everything.
Yeah. We would never sell anything we didn't love ourselves or wear ourselves.
Right away we started selling hair dye because we were um, bringing it in from the UK because they already had it.
Idelisse: And when you say hair dye, you mean hair dye in fabulous colors?
Snooky and Tish: Yes. Oh yeah.
Idelisse: Not coffee, not clairol....not champagne blonde. No.
Snooky and Tish: No, no. We would go over to England with suitcases full of stuff that they could get over there, like vintage sunglasses or whatever we found here. If they were really into the fifties, sixties...we'd go over there and sell it all. And then with the money we'd buy stuff that we didn't have over here. Right. And the hair color and...field boots and stuff. We were international smugglers... We were cute young girls, so they never could do anything....(inaudible).
Idelisse: So how old were you when you started the business?
Snooky and Tish: I think I was say 22 or 23.
Yeah, something like that.
Somewhere around there, 25, maybe, maybe 23 and 25 or 22 and 24. We were pretty young. We were very young, it was, it was funny too, because we would, um, we were in a band called, uh, Eddie Dixon and the Dixonettes too.
And, um, we would, we would get these courier flights and we would go over to England for free. And then you could get a really cheap flight back on, was it Virgin or something for like, I don't know...maybe in the eighties or Icelandic Air? I remember you could get a really cheap flight back. So we would get like, oh, 100, I think. And then we would fly over for free and then come back on a cheap flight, but sometimes we would go for just like one or two days and come and fill our suitcases come back and then we'd have gigs. So we used to alternate going over and getting stuff. And I remember coming into Sophie's we played this little honky-tonk bar on Avenue A with like giant bags, full of stuff, you know, barreling through the crowd and, um, you know, right off the plane and onto the stage.
Our old band, The Sic F*cks...and we're in a band called Blue Coupe with Dennis Dunaway, who's one of the founding members of Alice Cooper Group and Joe and Albert Bouchard, founding members of Blue Oyster Cult, and, um, then we run the business and then design logos and whatever. So we were artists and entrepreneurs and creatives.
There should be a name for that.
Idelisse: Some people I've heard, they call themselves, we're creatives. And we do art and we do this that and the other thing. So in the bands, um, do you pay to play a particular instrument? Vocals?
Snooky and Tish: We sing, we sing.
Joanne: I mean, you were backups for everybody, Blondie, Patti Smith.
Snooky and Tish: We backed her up once in Central Park, but we've known her for aa bajillion years, you know, not well, but we, we know her and, uh, she's always been really kind to us.
And especially when we first started our business and she came in and gave us Patti Smith buttons, badges, whatever you call them. And, uh, some poems that she autographed, oh, this'll help you pay your phone bill or something like that.
Joanne: ...that's so generous.
Snooky and Tish: Yeah.
Idelisse: And many decades later, they're still balancing business and music.
Joanne: Completely. You know, there's an NPR show called How I Built This, which is about how people build businesses. This could be a How I Built This episode because Tish and Snooki told us about really what every entrepreneur that is a good entrepreneur goes through, which is this constant process of learning and learning...
Idelisse: They are truly self-taught.
Joanne: Yes.
Snooky and Tish: We're workaholics and we're kind of control freaks.
I think it's, I was thinking about that, cause I thought, you know, everybody says they're control freaks, but I think we're perfectionists. And um, I think we really like things to be right. It doesn't really have to be our way, but they should be right. And politically correct. And ethically correct, everything. You know, we just don't like things to be too not right.
So many new challenges every day, especially with, um, uh, different groups of people, you know, the different age groups you have to treat completely different. It's really incredible...
... or understand them differently, treat them basically the same...
Idelisse: ...are you talking about employees?
Snooky and Tish: Employers. You have to speak to them different each, each, uh, age category.
You might be saying the same thing, but you have to say it in a different way.
Joanne: Okay. Now this is fascinating. What's your take? So what's the different way?
Idelisse: So let's say I'm a millennial, so to speak. What do you have to do in order to speak to me?
Snooky and Tish: I think you can't be direct. You have to skirt around everything and say it in like five different ways.
So, you know, make sure that they understand it and ask them to repeat it so that they, so that you know, that they understand it and, um, then check up on them to see if they did it. And constantly tell them what a great job they did.
Idelisse: Oh like Dr. Spock? "Look what you did!"
Snooky and Tish: Yeah. If you're ever going to give them negative feedback, you have to couch it in a certain way.
We have this view of Manic Panic that it's more than just a hair color brand. It's a lifestyle. And there's so many directions we can go, we're licensing our name for various items. And, um, that's part of it, but also extending the line. And, uh, you know, I, I feel like, you know, like when you're unique and you do something and then everybody starts doing it and you say, oh fuck this I don't want to do that. You know? It's not like I want to give up the hair color, but I want to go to another level and do something else now that they've all done this. You know, look what they've done to my song...
...they've kind of not, they haven't ruined it for me, but they've kind of, I dunno, made it kind of, not as cool as it was.
Joanne: You influenced the mainstream and now it's mainstream, that's what it is.
Snooky and Tish: Yeah, we went from extreme to mainstream.
Joanne: Exactly.
Snooky and Tish: We love our business so much and want it to grow beyond where it is and, you know, kick our competition in the asses. And, uh...I think we need to find people who believe in us and our vision and who will help us because we've come to a certain point and there's, you know, things that we don't know how to do.
Like digital marketing for instance. And but it's funny because it's like, and we can learn it, always telling us, like, we have no idea what we're talking about, but then the experts come in and say, yeah, well, that's right. So we do have good instincts.
Um, and it was our dream. So it wasn't to go global, to go global and you know, to, to get the world, to come around to our style.
Yeah. They finally caught up. Yeah.
Joanne: Make it more colorful.
Snooky and Tish: Yeah. And even, I mean, even L'Oreal has caught up. So the (inaudible) people that have laughed at us, like all the, all the people at these trade shows would look at us. You know, with the raising the eyebrows...giving us the stink guy and, you know.
Idelisse: Two sisters with a shared career in music and business, not that common
Joanne: Not that common. And it really is the story of a family business, a family calling because Tish and Snooki, not only have been in business with each other and in music with each other, all these years, their mother had a huge influence...
Idelisse: Ans it sounded, as listeners will hear shortly, they were a partnership as little girls.
Joanne: Yeah. From the very beginning.
Idelisse: Early on.
Joanne: Yeah.
Snooky and Tish: I mean, I'm sure there, there are times when we each want to kill each other, but, uh, it's, it's not, it's not, uh, it's not that often and it's not as, um, I don't know. I think it's, it's in a way, easier to deal with your sibling. If you can get along.
Joanne: Was it a decision? Did you make a conscious decision? Like we're sisters we're going to work together...
Idelisse: Or maybe something more, not lifetime, but you know, oh, we want to be musicians and we're going to go off and do that together.
Snooky and Tish: I think because we, when we were young, we, um, moved around so much that we were stuck together and you know, our mother would say, oh, you know, don't you know, don't go off alone and, you know, be with your sister.
Joanne: ...Watch your little sister.
Snooky and Tish: When we started getting older, we'd, you know, go out together and then we start singing together...it was natural.
Idelisse: And when you started performing in bands and things, did you do that together? Were you always like a set?
Snooky and Tish: Yeah. Yeah.
Joanne: And it was just never a question you never had to discuss it?
Snooky and Tish: It just, no, it just was like natural to us...organic... It was the way it was supposed to be.
And we couldn't imagine it any other way.
Idelisse: And when did you move out of home...how old? Your mother's place? Your mother's home?
Snooky and Tish: I never left. She oh...she was amazing when we were growing up, our toys were her glitter and, cause she did greeting card design. So she had paint and glitter because it was like in the yeah, late fifties and early sixties. And they put that glitter on the cards and she had like glitter in every color. And so she said, well, you know, you can design greeting cards too.
So we would, you know, use all her glitter and paints and design greeting cards...and wrapping paper...and wrapping paper, threshold designs and then we'd sell them to her.
She would have to pay us (inaudible).
Yeah. We were always putting on shows and making our poor mother watch. Cause she'd be so tired. She raised us by herself. Our father had abandoned us when we were kids. So, um, but we'd make her watch our shows and we'd put on costumes. And you know, when we'd have family get togethers, we'd be putting on shows.
Our cousin was a few years older than us, so she was like our manager... you know get us all prepared in the bedroom and then sends us out (inaudible). And when we were really little we'd have these puppet shows. We were on the ground floor in this building. And so our window was really low and we'd have these puppet shows from inside.
Idelisse: That was your stage for your puppet show was your window, oh how fabulous.
Snooky and Tish: And they were free puppet shows, but then we'd, we'd run the concession stand between shows.
So the show was free, but you had to, you know, if you wanted, you could buy this Kool-Aid and the, I used to like to cook, I still do, but I, one of the first things I made, and I think I was like in kindergarten or something, or first grade, I used to make rice. And then our, our father had taught us to, um, you would put butter in like glasses. Like you could use a shot glass, you'd buy a shot glass and then stick the rice in and then, you know, make this little mold of...cute little mold of rice. And all the kids were like, and they were like garnished with jujubes. And then the Kool-Aid too, you think of jujubes and Kool-Aid. They're both like.... (inaudible) hair colors!
Um, but she always encouraged us no matter what we were doing, even, you know, when we were in punk rock bands or whatever...when she finally found out we were in the Sick F*cks, she, she, we didn't tell her the name at first. And then it wasn't. Keith Haring or one of his friends told her, the students at the school of visual arts, finally, blew our cover.
Joanne: Said your daughters are in a band called The Sick F*cks?
Snooky and Tish: Yeah, they showed her an article or something. No, I guess she wasn't. Then she looked, she would come to The Sick Fcks. She came and saw The SIck Fcks a few time. And she named our store, our business, manic Panic. It came from her cause she was an art therapist and she was, um, working in Bronx Psychiatric and it's a psychiatric term. So, you know, her patients would sometimes go into manic panics.
So when we were trying to think of a name for our business, she came up with that and it was perfect.
Idelisse: And Joanne, do you think our listeners are wondering, so what color are in Snooky and Tish's hair now? Well, it's, since you can't see them, we're going to tell you that Snooky has a lovely French blue um, in her hair with two purple-ish,
um, strands toward the front and Tish has fuchsia colored hair, which is in fact, the color that she started with when they started experimenting with fantasy hair colors back in the day.
Joanne: In the seventies. And I think it's also important, you know, right now you can do whatever you want to your hair. It can be fuchsia, orange, yellow. In the day when they were doing it, it was so transgressive. And I love listening to them talk about that.
First time I did really, you know, vivid color because they did black when I was younger.
Um, but, uh, I guess it was in '77 and I did my hair fuchsia. Joanne: Um, when you were performing?
Snooky and Tish: Well, just, just to do, just to do, just to... a little, you know, it was over at first I had dark hair, like dark brown hair. So at first I just put fuchsia over the dark brown so it would be like this beautiful, like uh, black cherry color. And then I started bleaching it and making it brighter fuchsia and reds.
Idelisse: And there you are, and your partner in crime, right? And bands is now sprouting fuchsia-colored hair. And your hair was....
Snooky and Tish: ...my hair was originally brown. It's not anymore.
But, um, I always wanted red hair, so I went red and I did red over the whole thing. And then I, um, natural red, natural, naturally red, but then with too bright stripes. Bright red bleach stripes, sort of like we've both gone back to kind of our roots. Cause I have these two brighter Frankenstein kind of blues purples.
I in the beginning it was, um, really, you know, you would just get such looks and you'd get anger too. And you, you got, uh, people who were frightened. I always remember, um, our friend Ellen, who lived next door had sublet her apartment temporarily to, um, this band and a bunch of young kids. And they all had dyed hair and the, uh, landlord, the landlady yelled at her and said, you can't have these people coming in and out of the apartment buildingwith green hair. It scares the old people.
So, you know, and I think we scared people and old people too and it angered people too, because I got, um, I got punched in the face once, knocked out cold.
Joanne and Idelisse: In New York. It was a stranger?
Snooky and Tish: Yeah. It's guys come to the city from the suburbs to go punk bashing. Um, they'd go like around the punk clubs and...
Well, it was, we were at the opening, I think Snooky was in Europe or something, but, uh, I was at the opening of the Mud Club, the first night of the Mud Club. And we went to the corner of Church and White and we were hailing a cab, me and a couple of friends. And, um, this car pulled up and they all got out. All these guys got out and started a fight and they started, you know, a bunch of people from the Mud Club came some of the guys and, you know, tried to stop it. And everybody was fighting. It looked like West Side Story. And, um, then some, I was trying to get some guy away from kicking, one of our friends in the face and somebody tapped me on the shoulder and I turned around and he sucker punched me in the face. And I just like did one of these things and fell over and I was out cold. I had no idea.
Idelisse: One of these things is hand to forehead in the conditional perils of Pauline...
Snooky and Tish: I couldn't, I couldn't believe that when my friends told me that they said you put your hand up to your head and you fell over backwards. Which I thought was very glamorous.
Like the leaders, like the influencers of that era, because people would see us out and about with these colors and want to emulate us. But at the same time, when we'd go to trade shows like at the Javits Center to buy stuff for the store, when we got to that point where it could do buying for the store, these, you know, men would, would not take us seriously.
They just thought we were these freaks... actually up to a couple of years ago was like that. They didn't take us seriously.
...I mean some take us seriously. Some still don't and even, I mean, you know, I don't want to get into this too much. I mean, people still don't take women seriously. And I don't think it has that much to do with the color of your hair. It's like such bullshit.
I remember sitting in the store one day and this like salesman came in and asked to speak to the owner and I said, I'm the owner. And he said, no, no, I need to speak to the owner. And I said, I'm the owner. He said, no, no. I want to talk to the real owner, the man. I said, I'm the real owner. And he wouldn't believe me and stormed out.
Joanne: So Ide, one of the things about getting older is that reaction that you get from yourself when you look in the mirror, right? And the way that the beauty industry keeps telling you, obviously not just when you're older, right. About how you're supposed to look and interviewing Tish and Snooky was so uplifting because that's not what their beauty business is doing.
Idelisse: It's not what their beauty business has ever been about. It's been, it's a very different vision and understanding, uh, transgressive one again, they're very transgressive. That is much more about yourself and how... you want to be presenting yourself to the world.
Snooky and Tish: It's alternative beauty, and we've always promoted it, alternative beauty and looking the way you want to look and expressing yourself the way, you know, you want to express yourself, you know. I think black lipstick looks great on a lot of people and you know, the pastel lipsticks on darker skin looks amazing and there's so much you can do as far as beauty goes. I've always loved fashion. I've always loved, uh, cosmetics. We were, we were like putting um, you know, glitter on our faces and all that when we were kids. I was trying to use my mother's like, um, crayon, uh, those pastel crayons, things, crepe paws, or whatever, smearing them on my lips...I just loved anything that I could get my hands on. I remember getting a model um, maybe it was an airplane or something, for Christmas and the only thing I was really interested in with those enamel paints and they went right on my nails.
Joanne: Great.
Snooky and Tish: Yeah, I know, I know toxic, but it didn't really matter to me. And we got hand-me-downs, we were very poor and I would chop them up and, you know, get the sewing machine out.
And it's not always blonde hair and blue eyes and tiny little turned up nose. There's like so many different forms of beauty and that's not the definition, that might be somebody's definition. And it's all very nice. And it's not, it's all like this whole trend thing, you know, where like, I mean, when we grew up, unfortunately it was boobs and small hips. We had small tits and big asses.
So now we're, now we're like, you know, we are...the big ass club is in and(inaudible).
Idelisse: ...becoming fashionable, but there's such a different intent in there because I remember with fashion, with makeup, with all of the kind of the message was that you were trying to disguise how you really looked in order to look beautiful to somebody else, mostly men. And what you've talked about is pleasing yourselves, you know, expressing yourselves and giving them the finger. I love it.
Snooky and Tish: I just came, to a conclusion now, whatever, I just, I just realized that in the sixties, when Twiggy came out, that was a big fuck you to fashion. It was so cool because all of a sudden there's a skinny, skinny girl with like, uh, the most ridiculous eye makeup. And instead of, you know, red lips, she had like, you know, frosted, whiter, frosted pink, and it was like a real kind of fuck you to you know, the, the fashion and makeup industry and everybody went, oh, wow. Just like, they're kind of doing now with the hair color. Wow. I can, I don't have to have blonde or brown hair, I could have, you know, orange hair.
Joanne: Right.
Snooky and Tish: And I just, I just remember that being a really big influence on me like that, you know, fashion didn't have to be what it was told to be.
Idelisse: Despite their transgressive views about beauty and, I would say age as you'll soon hear, or have heard already, you know, um, Tish and Snooky still, like many of us who are older, still experience ageism, and the way that often people can be condescending. And aren't you cute young lady, et cetera.
Joanne: That's right. Ageism and sexism, which they talk about and
Idelisse: how the two intersect, young lady.
Joanne and Idelisse: You cute thing, you. And they don't just fight back. They are so funny and they do these things that are basically their fuck you, but in the sweetest way. Um, right. And so they started this thing on Instagram called the anti-influencers, A-U-N-T-Y. Right. It's like anti-main, like anti-main and also anti-everything. Right. And so, yeah, they're going to tell us about that.
Snooky and Tish: We didn't want to be called grandmas. We thought auntie is kind of cool. And it also kind of auntie, auntie, auntie, auntie, you know, so, um, because we wanted to be, um, influencers shouldn't always have to be beautiful and young and, um, you know, through one of those pretty lenses, I don't even know what they call them, those lenses, those apps, those apps to make you beautiful.
Idelisse: Right.
Snooky and Tish: I have a real problem with people thinking that they look like that.
It's just us trying to be funny and us trying to be, uh, you know, lighthearted about the whole thing about aging and about like people's perception of age and, you know, maybe giving advice to younger people... The whole influencer thing, there's all these, you know, young influencers and you know, it everything's about beauty and staying young. And that's not always going to be there.
It's certainly easier for men. I will say that. I mean, they're allowed to age and we're not. We, we were in this show and everybody told us how great we had been and how much we added to it. And, you know, I think we really were great in that. And then, then we found out later that, um, oh, some of the guys in the band who were like, you know, our age thought that, you know, we were too old to be in the band in that...and they should get younger backup singers to make them look younger.
Idelisse: It doesn't work that way.
Snooky and Tish: I mean, I see lots of women doing whatever they want, you know, older than my age. And, um, I see, you know, more and more people like performing older, you know...uh, oh my God, Debbie Harry. We went to see her when we were in Argentina and she was great. And, and you know, she's still doing it, touring. She's older than she's definitely in her seventies... And Cindy Lauper is probably somewhere around my age.
My memory is better than anybody who works for me. And, um, I, I think we're only getting better...but there's a problem with people not respecting you because you're older, they think, cause you're older, you don't remember anything. They think that you, you're an idiot and you're, uh, it's really difficult and they think they can get over on you.
And, uh, you know, we're having some issues with people just not respecting and, um,
Joanne: And you think that's age-related?
Snooky and Tish: Absolutely.
Idelisse: I do too. Absolutely.
Snooky and Tish: And sex-related. Sex-related too. I think even more. It's age and, you know, you get the people like kind of treating you like, oh, you're so cute.
Just because we're older doesn't mean we can't have fun. And, you know, we always say we don't want to age gracefully. We want to age disgracefully.
Oh, I'm always giving the middle finger to mainstream. I mean, you know, we've always had that fuck you attitude. And I think we always will. And I think it's great.
There's a freedom that comes with age that you don't have because you're not trying to like impress somebody or get laid or something, you know?
Joanne: Exactly.
Snooky and Tish: You know, it's like, it's, it's not, um, I mean, I, if my Metro card doesn't work right, and you know, I sneak on the subway, I pull the thing forward and slip through like the old days, I think to myself, I'm just going to tell them, you know, screw you...my thing...my card didn't work, what are you going to do? Arrest me?
Idelisse: And what advice do these two amazing women have for younger women?
Snooky and Tish: Start earlier. Start to be, you know, an old bitch earlier cause you know, we spend too much time trying to please everybody and, you know, look perfect. You know, nothing's perfect and nothing's around forever. So, you know, enjoy yourself it's later than you think.
Idelisse: So Joanne and I are always excited before we do our interviews, but I have to say, Joanne, you were particularly excited before this interview. Was I misreading you?
Joanne: No, no, of course I was excited because they are, as I've read and known for years, they're the Martha Stewarts of punk.
Idelisse: But they're also, they were very relevant at that time in your life.
Right? You were downtown with them...you were downtown with them.
Joanne: I was out downtown looking at them, amazed by them. They were (inaudible).
I am a complete groupie of manic panic.
Idelisse: As am I now, but you know.
Joanne: ... A complete groupie. For those of you who want to know more and we're sure there are many of you, they have a book out called Manic Panic: Living in Color.
Uh, you probably use their products already, but if you don't go to Manic Panic website and order them, they are spectacular. I think, you know, I think what we forgot to say Ide is their products forever have been vegan and cruelty-free.
Idelisse: Yes. And they did talk about the fact that they wanted to do right.
Whether it was politically or, you know, vis-a-vis and whatever they wanted to do right. So they did think about these things before many, many, many others did.
Joanne: And so thank you for listening to yet another episode of your favorite podcast, Two Old Bitches.
Idelisse: It's my favorite.
Joanne: It's funny. It's my favorite too.
Idelisse: How odd?
Joanne: Don't you think? And in case you find yourself with nothing special to do, please go to iTunes and give us a five-star review.
Joanne and Idelisse: And actually also tell your friends about us. That's such a good idea. We want more listeners.
Yeah, come on, do us a favor, we're old.
...this is a labor of love for us, but we want to know that more people are having fun.
Joanne: See you next time.
