Flaming Pablum

Off To France, Then

Am currently at home, waiting for the kids to get back from school, after which we depart immediately for the airport for our flight to Paris (as discussed here).

In the interim, here are my five favorite songs sung in French. I am not including "Ca Plane Pour Moi" by Plastic Bertrand because it's always been hugely annoying.  Enjoix...

"Envoyer" by The Young Gods ... Okay, yeah, they're actually Swiss... but the song's still in French.
"Prefabriques" by Trust ...Who says the French can't credibly rock? 
"La Folie" by The Stranglers ... Slightly dreary and ponderous, but hey ... sung in French, and filmed in Paris.
"Pourquoi es Tu Devenue si Raisonnable?" by the Wedding Present .... They're not French at all, but recorded in French anyway. Mais, oui!
"Le Petit Chevalier" by Nico ... Not actually sung by Nico, but rather her little boy, to very creepy effect. I used to squeeze this song incongruously onto many a mixtape, back in the day, designed to unsettle the listener. It usually worked. 

Cinquante-Deux à Paris

Hey all. Sorry for the relative slowdown here. Am busy getting my ducks in a row in advance of a quick trip to Paris for a few days. The wife was over in London for the annual London Book Fair, so the kids and I are flying over to meet her in Paris, the City of Light, wherein I will ring in my …. good lord …. fifty-second birthday. I will be back midweek next week, so you can expect regular service to resume thereabouts. I was in the process of writing a needlessly lengthy rumination on the new Nick Cave opus, Ghosteen, but … honestly …. does anyone really need me to weigh in on that?

By my count, not including a layover in the sparwling DeGaulle airport last year en route to Lebanon, this will be my third trip to Paris in my lifetime. I first went in 1987 at the tender age of 20 (see pic above, repping Bauhaus on the Pont Neuf). The last time was in 2003, when my wife was pregnant with our first child.

I don’t really have much of an agenda. Given my predilections, most of the places I remembered enjoying in Paris – punk rock record stores like L’Evasion and Bimbo Tower – are long gone. I will be curious -- if I can find it –to go back to Deyrolle, the strange taxidermy emporium I wrote about way back when. This will be our kids’ first time, so I’m dead-certain we’ll be doing a lot of conventionally touristy stuff. I’ll just be happy to roam the streets, take some pictures, sample some fromage, maybe wander around Pere LaChaise in search of notable graves, etc.

If we make it back to Sacre Coure in Montmarte, perhaps I’ll have the kids replicate this old warhorse of a video…

A bien tot

Firehouse 1-2-3

Who's Got Thirty Days: Revenge of the 30 Day Song Challenge

Yes, It's another one of these...

1. SONG YOU LIKE WITH A COLOR IN THE TITLE: “Blacker Than Black” by Goodbye Mr. MacKenzie
2. SONG YOU LIKE WITH A NUMBER IN THE TITLE: “Two at a Time” by Cop Shoot Cop
3. SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF SUMMERTIME: “Summer Goes Too Fast” by Life in a Blender
4. SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF SOMEONE YOU'D RATHER FORGET: “Coward” by SWANS
5. SONG THAT NEEDS TO BE PLAYED LOUD: “Coward” by SWANS
6. SONG THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO DANCE: “Flashlight” by Parliament
7. SONG TO DRIVE BY: “Mindcrawler” by Uncle Acid
8. SONG ABOUT DRUGS OR ALCOHOL: “White Light/White Heat” by the Velvet Underground
9. SONG THAT MAKES YOU HAPPY: “She Sells Sanctuary” by The Cult
10. SONG THAT MAKES YOU SAD: “Damage” by David Sylvian + Robert Fripp
11. SONG YOU NEVER TIRE OF: “Down On The Street” by The Stooges
12. SONG FROM YOUR PRETEEN YEARS: “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” by The Hollies
13. SONG YOU LIKE FROM THE SEVENTIES: “I’m Not in Love” by 10cc
14. SONG TO BE PLAYED AT YOUR WEDDING: “Golden Brown” by The Stranglers
15. SONG YOU LIKE THAT'S A COVER: “Cattle & Cane” by The Wedding Present (originally by The Go-Betweens)
16. SONG THAT'S A CLASSIC FAVORITE: “Run To The Hills” by Iron Maiden
17. SONG YOU'D SING A KARAOKE DUET WITH SOMEONE: “Madness” by Killing Joke
18. SONG FROM THE YEAR YOU WERE BORN: “Lucifer Sam” by Pink Floyd
19. SONG THAT MAKES YOU THINK ABOUT LIFE: “Up The Junction” by Squeeze
20. SONG WITH MANY MEANINGS FOR YOU: “Charlotte Sometimes” by The Cure (live version off of Curiosity)
21. SONG YOU LIKE WITH PERSON'S NAME IN THE TITLE: “Shine On Elizabeth” by Cop Shoot Cop
22. SONG THAT MOVES YOU FORWARD: “Black to Comm” by The MC5
23. SONG YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO: “Danny Nedelko” by IDLES
24. SONG BY A BAND YOU WISH WERE STILL TOGETHER: “Know Your Rights” by The Clash
25. SONG BY AN ARTIST NO LONGER LIVING: “Wild-Eyed Boy from Freecloud” by David Bowie
26. SONG THAT MAKES YOU WANT TO FALL IN LOVE: “Call Me” by The Style Council
27. SONG THAT BREAKS YOUR HEART: “This Woman’s Work” by Kate Bush
28. SONG BY AN ARTIST WHOSE VOICE YOU LOVE: “Every Word” by Sade
29. SONG YOU REMEMBER FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD: “Mas Que Nada” by Sergio Mendez & Brazil `66
30. SONG THAT REMINDS YOU OF YOURSELF: “Eighties” by Killing Joke
31. SONG THAT COMFORTS YOUR SOUL: “Kleenex" by Generation X

Drinks on Ms. Adu: Settling the Great Sade Debate

A reader named Gabriella (I believe) just weighed in to assert her piece on the Sade question (which I’ve already devoted two posts to), but I unwittingly deleted her comment by accident -- so please weigh back in, Gabriella! Apologies.

The gist of her comment, however, was to emphatically confirm that Sade never lived in New York, thus never poured drinks at Danceteria and that her former boyfriend, the afore-cited Robert Elms, never worked as a New York club DJ. I picked up that last bit of info from Wikipedia, so go know, as they say. I don’t pretend to be an authority about any of this – I’m just trying to get to the bottom of the rumor.

With all this in mind, I reached out to my old comrade Willie (not his real name). You might remember me invoking him on a few posts here (notably here, here and here). In a nutshell, Willie was a precocious high-school classmate of mine, who somehow gained carte blanche at several Manhattan nightclubs while the rest of us snivelling teens were still squeezing blackheads, listening to Motley Crue and playing our Atari 2600s. Willie attracted quite a bit of stick from the rest of our class, at the time, as we were somewhat roundly incredulous at his presumably tall tales of late-night debauchery alongside the hip glitterati. In a nutshell, many thought he was simply full of shit. In later life, as I became immeresed in a frankly dubious “career” as an ersatz “music journalist,” I found myself regularly chatting with veterans of the New York City club community. When I did so, I could never resist the urge to ask if any of them knew my pal Willie (that sounds like a euphemism for something, but I assure you it’s not). More often that not, they answered in the affirmative. As it turned out, Willie was not quite as full of shit as many might have assumed.

Anyway, in the wake of this great Sade debate, I figured I’d reach out to Willie, Jack of All Clubs, as he would at least have some degree of an informed opinion on the notion. I put the question to him: Did Sade ever bartend at Danceteria?

Willie, in turn, reached out to Danceteria’s owner (who he is indeed Facebook friends with). Here is that answer:

“She probably went behind the bar and served a few drinks as a promo stunt when she played with her band Pride, but best to ask _______ [name redacted by me], as she put the whole thing together. Sade was not on the payroll or scehdule, though.”

Again, at this stage of the proceedings, I have zero reason to doubt my friend Willie’s contacts and information. I don’t know the individual who allegedly “put the whole thing together,” so I’m not going to pursue that, but as far as I’m concerned, this legend has been debunked.

….unless you have evidence to the contrary?

Here's what the most celebrated former iteration of Danceteria at 30 West 21st Street looks like today. Not as much fun is had within.

And here's how it used to look ...

Bad Brains in Central Park, `79

Absolutely without question, this is the coolest goddamn thing you will see today.

I've mentioned the Rock Against Racism shows here before, notably here, here and here, but check out this footage from 1979.

Sade Behind The Bar?

Ironically, I prefaced the last post with a preamble asserting that I didn’t like getting things wrong, but….

Shortly after posting the last entry about Sade’s alleged stint bartending at Danceteria, my scrupulous pal Miles (you may remember him from this post and that post) weighed in…

Not wanting to knock your latest post but... I’m highly skeptical that Sade bartended at Danceteria. Nothing in any of the books / posts I’ve ever read mention her living in NYC pre-record deal. Certainly the first US show was there, but I just googled the shit out of it and only the Vice post you linked to (which seems to be written by a teenager whose just discovered the downtown scene), a further post from a year later that makes the briefest mention and your post come up. Wikipedia says nothing about her living in NY. Everything I’ve read before is that she was part of the London post-Blitz club scene like Le Bear Route, the Kilt, etc while she was at fashion school then which is where she joined Pride who morphed into Sade... was the Vice article where you originally heard she bartended in NY?

As it happens, the Vice piece was not the first source of this legend/rumor/myth for me, although I’m hard-pressed to define what was, at this late stage of proceedings. With my own Google search, I can point out that in a piece in BoweryBoysHistory from five years prior to the Vice piece, Sade’s Danceteria-barkeep tenure is also fleetingly mentioned.

While exhaustive, Wikipedia posts aren’t always that reliable. I did find further fodder for Miles’ argument, however, in this excerpt from Paul Simper’s book, “Pop Stars in My Pantry” which – while not ruling out a later possible stint as a bartender – does seem to suggest Sade never called NYC home for any sizable period.

By the same token, the Wikipedia page does mention her early relationship with English writer/broadcaster Robert Elms who, in the `80s, was a club DJ in New York. Conceivably (and without any evidence), one could maybe suggest that during one of those periods, Sade went with him and took a gig at Danceteria, but this is strictly wafer-thing projection.

Compounding all this, the stately Miss Adu is not especially versed to giving interviews, nor has she – as yet – written an exhaustive memoir.

So, … is it simply an urban myth?

Weigh in.

This, meanwhile, is my favorite track of hers.

Downtown with Sade

This is kind of a dumb one, but I feel it’s worth addressing, as I don’t really like to get shit wrong. I mean, it certainly happens – probably more so than I’d prefer – but when I can, I like to correct my mistakes.

In any case, I have a friend named Peter, who I actually met when he reached out to me about some entry or another I posted here on this stupid blog about some subject simillarly near’n’dear to his heart. Turns out that we had a lot of stuff in common, and became fast friends thereafter.

These days, Peter works at a spot in SoHo that I find myself walking by on my communtes home from the office, and we’re getting into the habit of stopping and chatting.

During the course of same last night, Peter started some anecdote that -– for a reason that now elludes me -– involved an invocation of sultry pop chanteuse Sade Adu. Knowing our mutually shared allegiance to all things Punk Rock, Peter felt obligated to preface his invocation with a sheepish confession that he’d always loved Sade. Not that he was worried, but I told him that I – too – stand with Team Sade (technically and pedantically, it’s worth pointing out that Sade -– like Blondie before them -- is a band, and not just its titular singer). In college, alongside apparently mandatory copies of the first Violent Femmes record and the Legend compilation by Bob Marley (everyone I knew seemed to own both of these), you were always bound to find a copy of Sade’s Diamond Life. Didn’t matter if you otherwise listened exclusively to Black Sabbath, Oingo Boingo or fuckin’ Hank Williams – everyone owned Diamond Life, if only in that it was simple, sonic shorthand for “don’t come knockin’.” If I heard “Smooth Operator” or “Hang On To Your Love” or “Frankie’s First Affair” emanating from behind my front door during those four years, that usually meant that one or more of my roommates were … y’know …. goin’ at it. It was either that or Avalon by Roxy Music.

Yeah, so anyway, I love Sade. You’d be a fool not to. Beyond their music being sublimely crafted sophisto-pop ripe for the classiest of sexytime, there’s just no arguing with the enigmatic Ms. Adu’s voice. Feel fee to disgaree, but you’re just wrong.

Back to Peter’s story: For some reason he felt the need to invoke Sade with regards to a torrid teenage tryst he’d been attempting to conduct at the time with a young lady who went to my high school (this was a year or two after I’d graduated -– we didn’t cross paths). It was at this inconvneient point in Peter’s narrative that I interjected with a bit of unsolicited trivia.

“Dude, you know Sade used to bartend in the East Village, right?”

This kinda de-railed Peter’s monologue, so I never found out how his story came to fruition.

The problem was, I couldn’t remember the specifics. Was it King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut (now Niagara) on Avenue A? or the Lismar Lounge (now d.b.a.) on First Avenue? Those didn’t sound right. Can you imagine Sade at the Lismar Lounge? Maybe it was Downtown Beirut???

In any case, I swore to him that it was true.

Turns out, of course, I was off on a couple of points. Sade Adu was indeed a bartender, and did indeed spend some time on the Lower East Side (see photo below of “Sade & Co in Alphabet City in 1982,” purloined from NYC Nostalgia), but the venue wherein she poured drinks … was actually Danceteria, which actually makes a bit more sense, when ya think about it.

So, yeah, my bad. You can read what I have to say about Danceteria, meanwhile, here, here, and here, …. should you care, of course.

ADDENDUM: there have been ... developments. 

The Gang on Greene

Someone posted the above photo on the Greenwich Village Grapevine group on Facebook, this morning, and it caught my eye.

It's evidently titled "Teenage Gangs, Greene Street," and was taken in 1950 by Douglas Jones for Look Magazine, and it's currently part of the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

As I look at it, though, I'm having a very hard time placing it on the contemporary Greene Street. The building on the far left corner with the burly columns doesn't ring any bells for me. Of course, the building might have simply been razed, by this point. Let's face it, 1950 was a little while ago. 

Can anyone accurately pinpoint this intersection? 

The Continental is Dead

I already said my formal goodbye to The Continental in February of 2006, when they removed the stage at the rear of the room and stopped hosting live music. I literally never set foot in the place again, after that. Once it reverted into just another shitty East Village bar – the type of venture the neighborhood already had in unwieldy abundance – there really was no reason for my further patronage.

This all said, in the last couple of weeks, the easterly strip of Third Avenue between the corner of St. Marks Place and the Cooper Union dormitory has been effectively razed. The buildings that once housed that McDonald’s, the Continental, St. Marks Pizza (and its many abortive, follow-up concerns) and the vape shop on the corner that used to be an Optimo newspaper shop are all gone for good, soon to be replaced by a massive development that will block out the sun and decmiate any remaining semblance of neighborhood character.

You may remember I posted a pair of “then and now” pics of that strip in recent weeks, which prompted one specific regular reader to typically take me to task for lionizing and lamenting a patch of the East Village the viability of which as a genuine hub of subculture (or whatever) has been long extinguished. I don’t argue with that point, necessarily. It’s been a long, damn while since this strip held fascination for anyone beyond SantaCon participants. This all said, despite its final thirteen years as just another antagonistic douchebag bar, once upon a time, The Continental counted me as a regular.

As laboriously cited elsewhere on this blog, during the 90’s, I was routinely found in attendance at the venue in question for any number of shows by bands like Nashville Pusssy, The Unband (above), The Figs, The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, The Upper Crust, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Candy Snatchers, Furious George, Falafel Mafia, Iron Prostate, The Niagaras, Mephiskapheles, The Bullys, the criminally short-lived Lee Harvey Keitel Band, and countless others. No, it wasn’t the nicest joint, and the stories of owner Trigger’s thorny eccentricities are myriad and colorful, but as a place to catch bands of a certain variety, it checked all the right boxes and then some.

One of my favorite pictures of my dear friend Rob D. and myself was captured there. We’re depicted downstairs, loitering outside the restrooms while – if memory serves – the Candy Snatchers were dodging projectiles above us. Here’s the photo now. Decorum was not necessarily the order of the moment.

And here’s all that remains of The Continental now.