BGSQDBureau of General Services—Queer Division
BGSQD
Richard Boch, the author, is an artist who was the doorman of the legendary, New York City club. The place was more than just a venue for bands, it was a true ‘club’ for artists of all disciplines, and the relationships and collaborations made then still bear fruit today. Though it lasted only from 1978 to 1983, its influence is pervasive-it was, essentially, the birthplace of the Eighties.
Keith Haring was in charge of the ‘gallery.’ Anna Sui debuted her designs there. The Talking Heads, and other seminal no wave/new wave bands found their start at the Mudd Club.
Fab Five Freddy (Fred Braithwaite) said this about Richard and The Mudd Club: “More than the well-known doorman of the Mudd Club, Richard Boch played a pivotal role in why it was the coolest club in the world back then. Richard was the crowd curator, carefully only letting in the right mix of the wildly creative downtown movers and shakers who made it our hangout, leaving the squares and the unhip outside in the cold. Richard is now letting everyone into the Mudd Club by way of this well-written book that details the who’s who and all the fun we had while infiltrating, changing and disrupting pop culture.”
The Mudd Club is filled with anecdotes about and memories of coming to terms with sexuality, drugs, and how one becomes an artist in a time and place that is overripe with creative energy. Richard’s stories are personal yet are populated by the now famous (and infamous) denizens of New York’s artistic community.
Richard Boch will be introduced by Marc Jacobs.
Copies of The Mudd Club are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!
Author photograph by Kate Simon.
Recent pieces about The Mudd Club:
Bust Magazine- “The Mudd Club comes to life in a fascinating tell-all memoir.”
Richard Boch is an artist, writer and lifelong New Yorker. He was born in Brooklyn, grew up on Long Island and studied printmaking and painting at The University of Connecticut and the Parsons New School for Design.
In 2016 Boch narrated a slide presentation at HOWL Projects related to the New York club scene. Recent exhibitions of his work include a group show at McDaris Fine Art, a suite of multimedia prints titled A Throwback Thrown Forward, and a series of “Page Paintings” as part of No Wave Heroes. He was interviewed and quoted at length for High On Rebellion, the story of Max’s Kansas City by Yvonne Sewall Ruskin, New York in The 70s by Allan Tannenbaum, Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller by Chloé Griffin, Born This Way, the story of Gia Carrangi by Sacha Lanvin Baumann and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor by Tim Lawrence. In addition Boch is currently editing Bobby Grossman’s Low Fidelity: Still Photographs 1975 – 1983 and recently contributed a sidebar to Tannenbaum’s Grit and Glamour. In November 2015 he served on the host committee of the Mudd Club Rummage Sale Benefitting the Bowery Mission, the first Mudd-related event in over thirty years. The New York Times referred to Boch as making “live or die decisions” as the club’s “longtime alpha doorman.”