Flaming Pablum

Rest in Peace, Arturo Vega

I was shocked and saddened to learn via Facebook this afternoon of the death of Arturo Vega. For those who might not recognize the name, Vega was essentially the fifth Ramone and primary design strategist for the band.`Twas Arturo who came up with the iconic seal below, that you see on countless t-shirts (and lamentably on several One Direction fans).

I actually met the man at the gym once (yes, I used to go to gymns). Thing was, I didn't even recognize him at first, but I was wearing a Ramones shirt at the time. "Where'd you get that?" he asked. It was black shirt with the cover art of PUNK Magazine's Ramones issue (with Joey on the street corner -- see below), and we started chatting. When he disclosed his identity, I practically had to pick my jaw up off the floor and assumed the "I'm not worthy" crouch. In any case, he was incredibly cool, humble and chatty. Just a great, stand-up guy who had plenty of time to discuss his time with the Ramones.

Circumstances surrounding his death are still uncertain, but he wasn't that old a gent. It's sad news, regardless. Pour one out for the man.

Puttin' on the Blitz

Spotted on eBay this morning. $5K for a t-shirt.  Click here for the back story.

Blitzkrieg Bloomingdale's

My bloggy comrade EV Grieve put the above photo up on his Facebook page earlier today, and it’s precisely the type of thing that sends me into a bug-eyed, vitriolic lather.

Just to be a pedantic music geek knowitall for a moment…I think my biggest grievance with this is the fundamental lack of comprehension of what PUNK is/was. If its inherently about the music (which, of course, not everyone agrees on), then the Pretenders’ third album Learning to Crawl (which is emblazoned on the young lady's chest above) is a laughable choice. I mean, sure, Chrissie Hynde was a major face on the scene (see photo below), but even the first Pretenders LP is barely “punk” by any credible standard. “Brass in Pocket”? That might as well have been played by Boz Scaggs. But Learning to Crawl-era Pretenders? It's a fine album, yes, but it's about as punk as Hall & Oates.

Said EV: "According to this Bloomingdale's ad in the Post today, we're in for a Punk Summer. Prepare now! His Ramones T-shirt is $48, her Pretenders T-shirt is $64."

THESE ARE T-SHIRTS, PEOPLE!!!

Chrissie in her punk days...

Kate Simon & Chrissie Hynde wearing their best Sex t-shirts, London, 1976, by Joe Stevens, as lifted from Stupefaction.

Blasphemy on Broadway

Having endured about fourteen years of Catholic school, I'm not especially bothered by blasphemy. In fact, by the time I was at the tail end of grade school, I was positively drawn to anything that evoked even the faintest whiff of evil, largely thanks to my tastes in comic books, horror movies, "Advanced Dungeons & Dragons" and the music of KISS and Black Sabbath. Even the most tenuous invocation of Satan or Hell became something I was fascinated with. A lot of that still holds true today.

I've probably spun this yarn here before, but I once broke up with a girl I'd been briefly dating in the early `90s because of an arguably blasphemous album cover. Sally was a transplanted midwestern girl who'd become a fashion and style editor for a major men's magazine (with this in mind, clearly we were already doomed) and we'd met at a party thrown by a weekly freebie newspaper I'd been writing a music column for. She was fun, but we has so little in common. At one point, presumably in an effort to understand my hobbies and interests better, she was over at my apartment and was thumbing through my records (this was back when vinyl was still a viable medium). I forget what I was doing, but I heard her gasp and saw her clamp her hands over her mouth as if she'd seen something unspeakable. "What's the problem?" I asked.

Sally proceeded to pull out my copy of Celtic Frost's 1985 opus, To Mega Therion, holding it nervously by its edges .... as if it was radioactive, or something. She held it up at me with a look on her face that silently screamed incredulousness and accusation. In case you're not familiar with it, To Mega Therion boasts some pretty distinctive cover art. In a nutshell, it's an H.R. Giger painting (he's the dude that did all the initial design for the "Alien" movies) of Satan using a crucifix as a slingshot. She may have been a sophisto fashionista, but still being a dutifully god-fearing midwestern girl, Sally didn't take kindly to my fondness for giddily blasphemous heavy metal. The fact that I started laughing didn't help matters much either. There'd been doubts in the air already, but this -- for me -- was officially the deal breaker. "If the very thing that causes me so much amusement, causes you such horror," I laughed, "clearly we should probably call it a day." And so we did.

I'd have imagined that she'd have been comfortable in her faith enough not to be bothered by Celtic Frost's cartoony shenanigans, but I guess that wasn't the case. She left in a huff, and I probably cued up a track off Venom's At War with Satan and promptly got on with my life.

In more recent years, though, the trappings of the extreme metal underground have started to infiltrate more mainstream culture. I wrote about it a number of years back, but I was surprised to see the studded belts and spiky bracelets -- formerly sported only by leather-clad punks, metalheads and bondage aficionados --- creeping into the fashion scene in much the same way ironic rock t-shirts (and, for that matter, mohawks) had some years earlier. Tonsorial and sartorial signifiers that once firmly connoted allegiance to one youth subculture or another were becoming appropriated and subsumed by mainstream fashion.

That all said, when I was strolling up Broadway earlier this week, I was genuinely surprised by the garment depicted below in the window of a shop called Opening Ceremony on lower Broadway.

While maybe not as overt as, say, Cradle of Filth's notorious "JESUS IS A CUNT" shirt of a few years back, I was generally surprised to see this particular design on a t-shirt being sold outside of a head shop on West 8th Street or a dumb rock gear joint on St. Marks. Apologists could possibly cite the fact that the inverted cross isn't necessarily Satanic (the cross of St. Peter is actually an upside-down crucifix), but I have grave doubts that this is that. It's not that I'm offended (I'm more offended by stuff like this), it's just that it's pretty surprising that this image has become so de-fanged.

Or has it? What do you think?

'Lay Down Your Soul to the Gods of Rock and Roll'

More chitter-chat about endearingly objectionable bands, although you’ll get no disclaimer this time. If you are offended by Venom (especially this late in the day), you invariably deserve to be, and you probably had a hard time wrapping your head around the subtle nuances of “This is Spinal Tap.” In terms of writing about Venom, however, I really wrung the topic dry back on this post from 2009 (with a slight return in this post). There really isn’t that much more I can say about this endearingly ludicrous band, other than that they’ll always firmly occupy a place in my heart.

In any case, in doing a Google image search recently (I was looking for variations of the old “Home Taping is Killing Music” logo … a quaint little alarmist campaign the music industry tried to laughably foist upon consumers decades ago), I stumbled upon the t-shirt design below, and the all-consuming coveting started in earnest. These apparently came out in 1983. Where the hell was I? Regardless, my birthday is in October, and I wear a size "large." Just sayin'.

INFERNAL ADDENDUM: My comrade Piers sagely pointed out that I misquote Venom's signature anthem, "Black Metal,"in my headline, the correct lyric being: "Lay Down Your Soul to the Gods Rock N' Roll." There is no "of." All this time, I thought Cronos was just frantically slurring through it in hellbound haste. Color me embarassed and ashamed. 

And if you’re still unfamiliar with Venom, here they are circa during their Hell-hailing heyday.

Missing Pieces

In recent weeks, I’ve penned a couple of posts about storied New York City bands – namely The Lounge Lizards and SWANS -- and was very surprised to have had members of both of those bands weigh in down in the comments section (specifically John Lurie and Jarboe, respectively). Here’s another post about a New York City band, albeit a significantly more infamous one. The last two times I written about them, a former band member (Chris Egan) has weighed in. A new trend? We’ll see.

My enduring fascination with the notorious Missing Foundation of the 80's and 90's has been well documented with three windy posts here on Flaming Pablum and a fourth on The New York Nobody Sings. I don't honestly have a tremendously new reason to post about them again here, apart from re-finding this nice post by former Born Against vocalist Sam McPheeters about his own impressions about Missing Foundation. I also found this more recent piece via Souciant, although there aren’t many revelations therein.

Like Sam McPheeters, however, the appeal of Missing Foundation for me remains largely rooted in their menacing mystique, their impenetrably difficult music and the fact that their fearsome notoriety managed to eclipse the band itself. Abated by their inventive campaign of ubiquitous and cryptic graffiti, Missing Foundation palpably managed to strike fear into the hearts of the entire city, largely thanks to a rather laughably alarmist local news story that unintentionally inflated their legitimately blackened reputation into the stuff of legend (see that clip here).

As I wrote back in 2010, Missing Foundation brainchild Peter Missing went on to transform his art and his message into entirely different mediums, abandoning New York City in a rash of alleged F.B.I. harassment, relocating to Berlin and delving into electronic music. Again, when I posted about them back then, I was taken to task in the comments section by a Missing acolyte for not staying current with Peter's more contemporary doings. Fair enough, but from what I could tell, the man's more recent work seemed to lack the incendiary power that fueled early Missing Foundation's ferocious reputation. To be fair, I haven't heard his latest project, Missing Seven Hazard, so I can't speak credibly about it. You can find out more about it, however, via the Humanity Records website (which admittedly doesn't look to have been updated since about 2010).

While sniffing around for other bits of Missing Foundation ephemera to exhume, however, it seems more material of theirs has surfaced on the web in recent years. Via Tumblr, I was excited to find the flyer to the right (click on it to enlarge) of a Missing Foundation show in 1992 (playing alongside the similarly-inclined Black Rain) at a venue dubbed Sweet Jane's. The name didn't register with me at first (apart from the obvious Velvet Underground allusion), but the address did -- 113 Jane Street! Loyal readers of Flaming Pablum and NYC hardcore denizens might recognize that address as the former site of the original Rock Hotel (which I posted about a couple of times, but most notably here). I suppose sometime between its tenure as the Rock Hotel and its time hosting the original incarnation of "Hedwig & the Angry Inch," the space was re-christened Sweet Jane's. One can only speculate how long that lasted.

Below is video footage of what I would assume is the show advertised on the flyer. It probably is the same show, given that Missing Foundation amassed a reputation for rarely being invited back to a venue, given their pronounced penchant for inciting destruction. Years later, that same space has morphed into "The Jane," a boisterously posh bar renowned for bothering its neighbors in a far more dispiriting way than Missing Foundation would ever be able to muster. That said, when they kick into "Burn Trees" at the nine minute mark in the clip below, things get do get a bit hectic.

In more recent years, I started seeing the MF symbol (the iconic upended martini glass) used in conjunction with the Occupy Wall Street movement, which makes a degree of sense, given the more extreme pockets of Occupy's contingency.

What are YOUR recollections about Missing Foundation? 

Rise Above, Charlie Brown

Spotted in a t-shirt shop on Fifth Avenue this morning....

Heresy Redux

Back in June, you may remember, I posted an incredulous little entry (histrionically dubbed “Heresy”) about a certain t-shirt. The offending garment in question was a One Direction t-shirt that was basically a brazen appropriation of Arturo Vega’s iconic Ramones logo. I did my usual war dance, cried foul, shook my fist at an uncaring god, etc. What I didn’t realize at the time is that there’s actually a backstory.

Evidently, one member of One Direction (who, if you’re not aware by this point, are a British boy band currently capable of making a planet’s worth of teenage girls rend their undergarments) has made a habit out of wearing Ramones t-shirts. Yes, evidently Harry Styles is a Ramones fan, or -- at the very least -- thinks the shirt looks cool. Fair enough. I don’t wish death upon him for that or anything. Really, I don’t.

The strange thing, though, is that in the wake of Harry’s sporting of the Ramones logo, the already-revered emblem has gone onto become some sort of totemic touchstone for One Direction nation, prompting feverish teenage girls to post questions online like “Should I wear a Ramones shirt to a One Direction concert?” and the like (The answer: No. No, you shouldn’t.)

What seemed to happen next was that there was a sudden panic for Ramones shirts, although not out of any love for the Ramones, but simply because our Harry is keen on da bruddahs. So, I guess the next logical step was for some entrepreneurial soul to design that One Direction/Ramones logo mutation I first spotted on Tumblr and re-posted here.

Ever since I did that, however, traffic on this weblog has relatively SKYROCKETED. That single post gets more hits a day than virtually anything else I’ve ever put up here (the exception being the post about Chuck Klosterman’s theory about Radiohead’s Kid A that was linked to by Cracked… that still gets a bajillion hits weekly). What’s more is that I get loads of e-mails (usually in Spanish or in broken English), frenziedly asking me “WHERE CAN I GET THAT SHIRT???”

Here’s the thing: I don’t know. Moreover, I don’t care. Maybe do a little Googling? It’s not that difficult. Stop asking me.

Anyway, that’s it. No big frothy-mouthed rant this time. At the very least, maybe the respective coffers of the Ramones’ estate are benefitting somehow, however backhandedly. If a single chinless, chicken-chested and tousle-haired British kid can inspire an army of teenage girls to maybe even buy the odd Ramones album, then perhaps that’s a good thing.

By the way, these are the Ramones.

Cursed on West Eighth Street?

If you haven't already gleaned as much, I am -- for some inexplicable reason -- somewhat obsessed with the doings of Eighth Street. Hell, it should really have its own category on this blog, by this point. In any case, I spotted another development on that troubled strip this evening that I feel compelled to share.

I'm not sure why, but 24 West 8th Street simply cannot get a break. Back in the day -- as the hip kids say -- that address played host to the original Butterfly's, which was every self-respecting rock kid's sartorial paradise. Boasting a sprawling collection of punk and metal t-shirts and accompanying accessories, whether you were a fan of Andi Sex Gang, Adam & the Ants and Visage or Iron Maiden, Venom and Black Flag, Butterfly's had you covered, and then some.

Then, of course -- it closed. And then it was nothing for a great while.

A long time after that, the space re-opened as a upscale wine boutique with the cryptic moniker of Is Wines.

Then, of course -- that closed. And then it was nothing for a great while.

More recently, the space re-opened as a cute and inviting little bakery called the Apple Cafe Bakery. I never went it, but it struck me a nice little place to grab a cupcake or a croissant or maybe even a baguette for your evening meal. But like I said, I never went in, and apparently I wasn't alone in that capacity.

Now it's nothing again.

Is the place cursed?

Giving Up the Gun

It's something New Yorkers used to joke about, and something nostalgic bloggers like myself come dangerously close at times to even celebrating: New York City's so-called "bad old days." You remember the t-shirts, I'm sure. A picture of a .44 magnum underneath the legend: "Welcome to New York City! Duck Motherfucker!" I suppose in the wake of the one-two punch of Giuliani and Bloomberg, New Yorkers felt safe in lampooning their grisly past in this way, lulled into a false sense of security by those mayors' re-imagining of "fun city."

Yesterday's events, meanwhile, put all that in rather jarring perspective. At the end of the day, there really isn't anything funny or cool about nine injured and two dead because of some despondent apparel-designer with a grudge and a gun.

I'm a tremendous hypocrite, of course. Some of my favorite films include gun-crazy Scorsese flicks like "Taxi Driver," "Mean Streets" and "GoodFellas." I sport a wristwatch emblazoned with the insignia of The Punisher (if you're unfamiliar with the comic book vigilante in question, he looks like this). I own a t-shirt from the fabled Jon Jovino Gun Shop (its pistol-shaped signage made famous by photographer Berenice Abbott in 1930). Hell, one of my favorite bands of all time is named Cop Shoot Cop (although, honestly, one could argue that the band's name is actually an allusion to the junkie's lifestyle -- cop dope, shoot dope, go cop more dope -- but that's not an argument that's going to win one any friends). In other words, I'm as guilty as many others in the celebration of the steel.

I'd like to believe, however, that I'm fully aware of the distinction between what is entertainment -- however morbid and tasteless it might be -- and what is reality. I do not condone the age-old argument that popular culture ultimately fuels gun violence. There's obviously a glorification of it, but I'm not convinced of the cause and effect equation. Millions and millions of people watch violent films, but exceptionally few go out and replicate what they've seen on screen. More to the point, I'm not someone who generally believes that gunplay is the wisest form of conflict resolution. I don't own a gun. I never have, and I sincerely doubt I ever will.

Obviously, lots of folks enamored of the Second Amendment would vehemently disagree with me, as is their wont. That's a problem that's far too complicated to get into here. Suffice to say, I can't imagine why anyone needs to own an assault weapon of any kind. But, y'know -- call me crazy... or an effete liberal pansy or whatever. 

I'm not sure why this recent shooting -- the latest in a grim succession -- made that much more of an indelible impression on me more than, say, the Aurora massacre or the Sihk temple attack. Selfishly, it's probably because I walk right through yesterday's crime scene every day on my way to work. 

I was also put off by the callous immediacy of how certain media outlets disregarded sensitivity and journalistic standard by presenting fully graphic images of the crime scene almost under an hour after the event had even transpired. BuzzFeed, as one example, posted full-on images of one of the victims. Even the New York Times' website featured a rather robust amount of gratuitous bloodshed right on their homepage (see below and click on it to enlarge in all its gruesome glory). At least BuzzFeed gave you something of a paltry warning.

 

So what's the big takeaway? Am I afraid of real guns and squeamish about actual bloodshed? Guilty as charged, your honor. Maybe it's time to ditch the Punisher watch.