NEW YORK -- Wendy O. Williams, the deceased singer of the 1980s destructo-

rock band the Plasmatics, was remembered by several hundred fans, friends and family

Monday night at CBGB's, the East Village nexus of the American punk scene.

Rod Swenson, the band's former manager and Williams' companion for

many years, led the audience through a celebration of the singer, who died from a

self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 6 at her Connecticut farm.

At CBGB's, the singer was remembered primarily as she was 17 years ago -- as a

mohawked 32-year-old at her professional peak. Back then, virtually every

Plasmatics concert evolved into a pyrotechnic and pornographic tour de

force that thrilled fans while shocking the faint of heart. Williams, whom Swenson

discovered at a Times Square strip joint called Show World, would wear little more than

bikini bottoms and nipple clamps while leading the punk band through aural and visual

assaults that caused the demise of multiple guitars (via chainsaw), televisions (via

sledgehammer) and automobiles (via explosion).

As part of the tribute, Swenson introduced people from the worlds of radio and records

who said their lives were changed by the Plasmatics. Michael Alago, an A&R man for Elektra Records, said he still has

trouble hearing high notes since the time he scaled the speaker scaffold at a 1981 Plasmatics

concert in Times Square. "People come into my office with tapes and I always ask them to

turn up the treble a bit," he said.

Oedipus, the venerated DJ from WBCN-FM Boston, said he "had an epiphany of

sorts" during his first Plasmatics concert. After bearing witness to the onstage destruction,

"I realized that I was taking myself way too seriously, and it was all because of this band,

this woman," he said.

Swenson introduced old video clips, including one that talk-show host Tom Snyder won't

soon forget. In a 1981 appearance on Snyder's "Tomorrow Coast to Coast" program, the

Plasmatics chainsawed a guitar in half during "Butcher Baby" and blew up a Chevy Nova

at the end of "Masterplan," littering the stage with engine parts and quarter panels and,

some say, causing NBC to cancel the show.

A clip of "A Pig Is a Pig," a song that usually featured Williams smashing a TV to

bits, showed her simulating fellatio on the head of a sledgehammer before using it to send

the picture tube to its eternal reward. Only weeks before,

Milwaukee police had arrested her on an obscenity charge for trying that same

trick in their town.

Swenson said the video for "The Damned," which ends with Williams driving

an exploding school bus through a wall of TVs, was a favorite of "Beavis &

Butthead" until an MTV viewer copied the trick and burned his house down.

Every Plasmatics performance was a spectacle. Those that didn't end in

arrest featured a topless Williams "shooting" the Marshall amps and

lighting scaffolds while the rest of the band destroyed the drum kits and

guitars.

Joey Ramone, former lead singer of the Ramones, remembers the Plasmatics' heyday as an

"anything goes" period in the music scene. "Things have calmed down. Today everything

is very conservative," Ramone said before heading off to

his punk-rock birthday bash at Coney Island High, a few blocks away from CBGB's. "I

was a friend of the band and a fan of the band," he said. "We used to all hang out. But it

was only a handful of people back then who were into exciting and outrageous music and

stuff. Things are different now."

Today -- a time when getting arrested for onstage mayhem requires a real effort --

Williams-style antics have become grist for the nostalgia mill. Gyda Gash, lead

singer of the tribute band New Hope for the Plasmatics, said she and her

musician friends revived the onstage spectacle on Halloween night in 1996 as a goof. "We

chainsawed a guitar, sledgehammered some things, and we

even had a character in the band who was the butcher baby," she said.

Ah, the memories ...

The tribute ended with the remaining members of the Plasmatics thundering

through their repertoire "one last time," as guitarist Richie Stotts commented. But without

Williams around to bare her chest and break things up, the fortysomething musicians

looked like anyone else from the neighborhood. Wendy O. Williams, rest in peace.