Flaming Pablum

At Home with the Cales

Based on what I knew about her -- which is admittedly very little -- I was never a fan of Betsey Johnson. I mean, there's pretty little reason why I should've been a fan of a pointedly "wacky" clothing designer, but I just found her shtick to be a little cloying. But, y'know, whatever. I'm not really her target demographic. She now has a reality show of her own, which looks somewhat insufferable. But, the woman's got to make a living, I suppose.

But earlier this week, courtesy of what I'd consider probably the coolest blog on the Web, Dangerous Minds, I had my own mind blown by a post they did about Johnson's fleeting marriage to John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Who knew? Well, I'm sure lots of people knew, but I sure wasn't one of them. Turns out Betsey Johnson's a good deal cooler than I'd ever assumed. Evidently, she was heavily involved with the Velvets, and outfitted them during Cale's years with the band. Again -- go know!

While wed, the Cales apparently had an apartment on LaGuardia Place (see pic above, prized from the article). In 2013, it's hard to fathom the idea of an incredibly hip couple living on that particular strip, but back in 1968, that portion of the Village was a very different place, obviously.

Today being Father's Day, I was out with my kids walking around and taking pics, and I remembered this article as we started walking south on LaGuardia Place. As such, here is my homage to Betsy Johnson and John Cale, snapped at roughly the same spot.

And, strictly for laughs, here's my favorite John Cale track...

Back to the Jungle

George DuBose has taken some amazing album cover photos in his day -– and several for the Ramones –- but I’d always assumed that the cover of 1983’s Subterranean Jungle wasn’t based on a photograph of da brudders on an actual subway car, but rather some kind of artful pastiche. Turns out, however, that it was, as the photo above (spotted on Tumblr) demonstrates. Can anyone name the platform? Good luck with that one.

The first time I ever saw the Ramones play live was on the tour for this record in 1983. Strangely enough, it was not at a grotty New York City club filled with leather-clad punks and rock cretins, but in the unfamiliar environs of a gymnasium at Stony Brook University out on Long Island in Southhampton. Regardless, the band assumed its usual attack formation (with oddly blonde Richie Ramone filling in for Marky after he’d been evicted from the drum stool) and accordingly blew a hole in the place. I remember buying (and cherishing) my first Ramones shirt at that gig… Arturo Vega’s signature seal on the front, and the back festooned with an American flag, with the words “Subterranean Jungle” splattered over the stripes. Over time, it became too small for me. I believe my mom actually inherited it for a while (she'd wear it while cleaning the house). It's long gone now, in any event.

Few people consider Subterranean Jungle to be a crucial Ramones LP. Let's face it, it isn't (although it was inarguably superior to its predecessor, 1981's Pleasant Dreams). One could argue that their last "credible" studio record was 1978's Road to Ruin, although each successive release usually had at least a track or two to recommend it. At the very least, Jungle features "Psycho Therapy," which might be the band's last truly great single (although `87's "I Wanna Live" isn't bad). I also quite dug their cover of The Chambers Brothers "Time Has Come Today."

After that show at Stony Brook, I'd go onto see the band several more times. The final time, strangely enough, was on another college campus. They were playing a middle-of the-day, open-air gig at Syracuse in the Spring of 1993. The crowd was thin and the elements were unkind. It wasn't an especially memorable show.

The band kept going ....and going and going... for several more years. My friend Rob B. and I would frequently remark to each other "Should we go see the Ramones next weekend?" "Nah, they'll be back." That was usually the case for a long while ... until it suddenly wasn't. The band broke up. And then they started to die. And that was very sadly that.

 

The Search for the SoHo Stencil: I FOUND IT!

Okay, here's one that probably matters to only three or four people (I being one of them) at most, but I just thought I'd close the circle on it

This past February, some of you may remember a selection of posts wherein I discussed the screengrab above, a still from the late Spalding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia." Originally, I posted this as a quiz to see if anyone could correctly identify the corner upon which ol' Spalding was waiting. In characteristically detailed fashion, Bob Egan of Popspots weighed in in March and pinpointed the spot (largely thanks to its cracked pavements) to be the northeast corner where Grand intersects with Wooster (in SoHo, obviously).

While that riddle was solved, I was positively vexed by a more elusive one that the picture boasted, that being the street art depicted behind Spalding. Back in the 80's, I vividly remember that stenciled image of an Asian man's head with slightly spiky hair to be everywhere around the streets of SoHo. I have no idea what it meant (an ambitious artist's self-portrait?), but it was all over the place. In addition, I recalled a parody of the image that was also everywhere at the time, that being a depiction of the same guy after being shot in the head.

I spent a couple more posts moaning about them, trying to find someone else who remembered them, but no one bit. I combed through veritable tomes of SoHo street art, reached out to friends of mine who are more street-art-savvy than I, but kept coming up empty. I was starting to think it was all just some unattainable fragment of the past I'd never find further evidence of.

Until last night!

I went back to a entry I'd published back in July of 2010 for no readily apparent reason. I'd brazenly lifted a photo from one Leo London's Flickr feed because it invoked a seemingly long-forgotten NYC punk band (that being Falafel Mafia). London was nice enough to weigh in and express gratitude that I'd appreciated the pic. But then, I started re-investigating his collection, and was I was practically blown out of my chair when I stumbled upon a single image that had everything I needed. That image is below.

London says that this photo was taken in October of 1990, but doesn't specify the address. Check out the selection of stencil's on the wall behind the blurry-faced figure, and you'll see that same original stencil, the mock, ominous shot-in-the-head ("End the Joke - Die For Your Art") stencil and even a second parody featuring a face that I'm interpreting as Keith Haring.

Wherever this location is, I'm dead sure these images have long since been washed off in the ensuing twenty-four years. But there they were.

Down On The Street

“Look out, honey, `cos I’m usin’ technology!”

The other day on Get Back to Work, I put up a fun little shot that I’d spotted on Tumblr of Iggy Pop sitting on what looked like it might be the Bowery or 14th Street. In turn, the mighty J. Yuenger re-posted it, but also tracked down another photo presumably from the same shoot, that being the one above.

Taken by the late Ken Regan in 1984, here we see Ig composing on a primitive word-processor, perhaps hashing out some lyrics that would later appear on 1986’s Blah Blah Blah. Glance twice and you’ll notice that his Igness is seated just around the corner from the Bowery on Houston, in front of the frequently re-tooled mural wall that was formerly adjacent to Billy’s Antiques. It being 1984, Iggy’s looking comparatively young and spry, while the world around him looks to be in some disrepair. Stroll down that block today and it’s markedly different.

These days, you might be more likely to see Mr. Pop slumming around this neighborhood with fatuous fashionista and rocker-wannabe, John Varvatos.

Can anyone name the location in this shot, though?

MCA Day on Charles Street

I didn't plan this, but I found myself in the West Village this afternoon with my kids, and being that today is "MCA Day," i.e. the one year anniversary of the death of Adam "MCA" Yauch of the Beastie Boys, I had my kids sloppily re-enact one of my favorite photographs of the Beasties, taken by the great Ricky Powell on Charles Street (read more about all that here).

The original:

The wee Smiths 2013 edition:

And for my money, this was MCA's finest performance:

 

Third Avenue Puzzle

The explanation is probably strikingly banal, but I was at Five Napkin Burger on East 14th Street with my kids on Monday afternoon (they really wanted to try the sliders), and while I was looking out the window onto the grotty splendor of that particularly busy stretch of Third Avenue, I spied a sign I’ve frequently wondered about (see below).

At first glance, I’ve always assumed that the billboard-sized sign simply predated the taller building that stands in front of it, and the construction of the latter closed off the remainder of the sign from view, leaving only the cryptic letters “TML ets DNA” in view. But that doesn’t add up, as I can’t for the life of me think of any words that end in “TML” or “DNA.”

I posed the question to my kids, who were surprisingly as immediately fascinated by it as I was (Oliver likes anything to do with letters or numbers). Is it an anagram? Some fractured Latin? Some antiquated code?

What does "TML ets DNA” mean? Anyone?

Beasties on Broadway

Just to close the circle on this quiz, as expected, two readers basically confirmed that Josh Cheuse's photo above was also snapped around Broadway and 26th Street, in front of the St. James building.

Loyal reader James C. Taylor (who solved the original Beastie Boys puzzle by noting the distinctive "torus" and "quoins" on the building in question) writes:

Looks like the west side of Broadway between 25th and 26th. The building to the left of the gentleman in the coonskin hat is 1133 Broadway, aka the St. James Building. Below "OFFICES FOR RENT" the sign behind Run say "Kew Management" (they're a client of my company and are still located on that block).

Meanwhile, my pal and former neighbor (and noted photographer) Glen E. Friedman adds:

the gentleman in the coonskin hat is none other than DJ Double R, and besides Run_DMC and the Beasties, the other gentleman are the members of Whodini (Jalil and "Ecstasy") - no doubt shot around the management offices of the time which were at 1133 Broadway.

Earlier this week, as I was walking up Broadway on my way to work (wherein I also caught this snippet of church-worrying fashion), I once again walked by the St. James building.

It certainly does look like the same spot, but there's one odd thing. If you look back up at the photo at the top, there's what looks like a tiled or textured edifice behind Mike D and MCA. That particular surface is nowhere to be seen today. I suppose it's also worth noting that this picture was taken about twenty-eight years ago, so things have obviously changed. Certain other elements definitely match up, though -- like the stone, circular medallions that adorn the entrance to the building (see below).

Anyway, that's another one solved. Look for more coming soon....

Back with the Beasties

I've done a couple of photo quizzes centered around the Beastie Boys by this point, which makes sense, given that they were NYC to the bone. In any case, loyal readers may remember this quiz from 2011, which took a little while to track down. I'd initially suspected that it had been snapped somewhere around the NYU area, given that the university's dorm just south of East 8th Street on University Place had been the fledgling headquarters of Rick Rubin's Def Jam label. As it turns out, that speculation was wrong. The picture in question, taken by one Josh Cheuse, was actually captured at Broadway and 26th Street, which was around the corner from Russell Simmons' management offices.

This morning, however, as I was starting my day, I spotted the below photo -- presumably from the same shoot -- of the Beasties hanging out with a very young and slim looking Run-DMC.

Now, given what we know about the previous photograph, it's probably not too big a stretch to assume that this shot above was taken nearby. But who can name exactly where? Ready? Steady? GO!

Hanging in the Park with the Velvets

If you do a Google image search for the name Donald Greenhaus, you'll invariably be presented with a clutch of images of the fledgling Velvet Underground -- perched on the roof of their Ludlow Street apartment with housing projects in the background and standing on the stoop of that building. Greenhaus was once of the first shutterbugs to capture the band, then still with original member and oddly nautical-looking Angus MacLise in its ranks, prior to the arrival of Moe Tucker. In Greenhaus' photographs, they don't look quite as cool, cocky and sure of themselves as they would in later incarnations.

I was thumbing through some ancient copies of SPIN recently (which is where I found that fleeting shot of Freebeing Records in the last post) and came across a photo of the Velvets by Greenhaus that I don't ever remember seeing before. See that photo below (and click on it to enlarge).

Invariably taken from the same shoot the resulted with those more widely-distributed images, this picture finds the foursome holding court in a park somewhere. As I look at it, however, I'm having a hard time placing it. I want to say that it's the Jefferson Market Library in the heart of the Village that looms behind them (appended with the since-torn-down prison structure that formerly abutted it). To the right, you can see the signage of a luncheonette. I'm entirely guessing, but is that the corner of West 11th Street, where Greenwhich Avenue meets 7th Avenue, which would put the Velvets in what is now the derelict power island that used to feed St. Vincent's Hospital. 

Am I right? What say you?

The Clash City Shopper

A little while back, I re-posed the challenge to pinpoint the corner a strikingly bequiffed Mick Jones of The Clash waits on in the photograph by Pennie Smith at left (click on it to enarlge). I originally spotted this picture lovingly framed on the wall of Trash & Vaudeville and later re-printed in the book accompanying the boxed set, Clash on Broadway). I first cited it in this quiz from 2011, but never solved the riddle. To my mind, it just doesn't seem like there's enough detail in the photograph to nail it down. Obviously, Mick's fresh from having procured some items from Trash & Vaudeville on St. Marks, which might place him somewhere nearby, but it's still pretty sketchy.

Bob Egan of Popspots, however, was keen to offer some suggestions. Here was his first stab:

Hi Alex, This is my guess on the Mick Jones photo, since he has a Trash/Vaudeville bag in his hands and the store is about 5 stores down from the corner. I thought I sent this once, or it is it that you are not 100% sure? Frankly I’m not 100% sure, but it fits in a pinch.

I countered that the big building behind Mick couldn't be the big brown building cited in the St. Marks picture, as that's the Cooper Union dormitory, which wasn't built until about 1991 (a good decade or so after this photo was snapped). I actually spent a few nights sleeping in that place in 1992 (read that saga here).

Bob came back with another shot:

I've attached Third aVe and ninth St from Tenth Street looking south (froma shot of Red Grooms the painter from my John Cohen/Dlan entry) . Those windows seem to match up, Was that where the dorm was that came later? Or was that on the left of the Jones picture?

Unfortunately, in the passage of time, I now now longer remember what building predated the Cooper Union dorm on that sliver of Third Avenue, so perhaps it is that corner. Could Bob be correct here? What do you think?