Hey all. Pardon the relatively prolonged silence, but it’s been one of those weeks wherein I feel like I’m being swallowed whole by a work project. I have some cooler, longer stuff in the works to post here, but that’ll have to wait for a bit. In the short term, though, I wanted to pass on a few things.
I did a number of posts about the Plasmatics here over the course of the last few months, which – in the grand scheme of things – is a bit odd, considering they’ve been dormant since the dawn of the 90s, much less since Wendy O. Williams passed away in 1998. In any case, the estimable Please Kill Me website just posted a lengthy and meaty piece on the band, featuring interviews with guitarists Wes Beech and Richie Stotts (above) and they touch on many great anecdotes from the band’s heyday. Should you care, it’s worth checking out.
Next up, you may remember a couple of posts I put up about singer/songwriter Amy Rigby, whose book “Girl to City” was a real favorite of mine last year. I got to interview Amy during the height of the pandemic, last year, and she and I have since become pals on social media, which is fun. Recently, someone posted a recording of her No Wave band, The Stare Kits, recorded live in 1979 at Tier 3 over on West Broadway. You can hear Amy bashing away on the drums. It’s very cool. Go check it out here.
Lastly, some of you might remember a few posts I devoted to John Lurie, some years back. In a nuthsell, on a couple of occaisions, I posted about the man, his music and his story, and then he, in turn, weighed in. We had a bit of a dialogue going, for a while. Since those days, he released more music under his alter-ego, Marvin Pontiac, and debuted a new series on HBO called “Painting with John.” The latest news is that he has a long-promised memoir about to come out called "The History of Bones." If, like myself, you’re eager to read that, click here for more info.
I’ve said it here several times before, but I always preferred Sonic Youth when they were artier and weirder than the cuddly alt.rock darlings they sort of became. In any case, here’s a clip from that era, circa the release of Bad Moon Rising, as captured at Stache's on High Street in Columbus, Ohio (above) in August of 1985. A month after this was shot, I would start attending college at nearby Denison University.
I first posted this footage, along with a rumination about the venue in question, back in 2011, but that video — like so many others in the wilderness of YouTube — vanished into the ether. It resurfaced here as recently as this past January. Here’s what I had to say about it back in 2011.
I haven't been back to Columbus, Ohio since about 1990, but as I understand it, Stache's was torn down some years ago. A quick search on YouTube, however, brought up a few clips that brought back some memories of the place. Below is a video of, ironically enough, New York's own Sonic Youth rocking the wood panelling off the walls at Stache's (playing my favorite-ever song of theirs, "Death Valley `69"). This was recorded in August of 1985, a good month or so before I'd ever set foot in the place. Like Stache's itself, the clip is low on frills (and it's amusing to watch the scant few paying patrons blithely walk in front the "stage" whilst the `Youth are in throes of strumming their fingers bloody). Still, it gives you a quick taste of what it was like. Plus, it rocks. Enjoy.
As it happens, I may be headed back to Columbus some time later this year to take my daughter to look at some prospective colleges. If so, I might swing by the former site of Stache’s and see what’s there today. But here’s a taste of how it was….
Strangely untouched by the cruel passage of time, Record Runner on Jones Street just keeps on running. I spoke about it here, but to walk inside (knock, please) is to step back into a world where Madonna and Duran Duran are still gods among mortals. Names like the Senseless Things, Flesh For Lulu and Pop Will Eat Itself may all be the answers to Anglophilic trivia questions in 2021, but at Record Runner, they still sit comfortably upon shelves, waiting for reappraisal.
Hot on the heels of sharing the Apology Line podcast with me earlier this week, my pal Caroline (both a fellow former Upper East Side resident and kindred spirit in all things punky/indie/underground, specifically of the New York variety) shot me another link to another podcast, albeit to a very specific episode. She did this, I assume, given my penchant for getting fixated with finding elusive minutia from my ever-distancing youth.
In any case, in this episode of the Reply-All podcast, a man becomes singularly mystified by not being able to identify (nor find any evidence of) a song he vividly remembers both the lyrics and the melody to, and it haunts him. He searches all over the internet, but finds absolutely nothing to back up his recollections. This is the story of the lengths he goes to in order to solve the quandary of the mystery pop hit from his memory.
Anyway, it was definitely right up my alley, and I totally empathize with this story’s protagonist. Want to find out how it all ended? CLICK RIGHT HERE TO LISTEN.
For whatever reason, I don’t listen to podcasts as often as I might. I mean, I do have a few favorites, notably Marc Maron’s “WTF,” Lydia Lunch’s “The Lydian Spin,” Dana Gould’s “The Dana Gould Hour” and Damian Abraham’s “Turned Out a Punk,” but I only listen to any of those maybe once or twice every six months.
While discussing a frequent, quintessentially New York topic of intrigue with my friend Caroline, she asked if I’d ever listened to “The Apology Line.” I assumed it was some new indie band, as that’s the kind of stuff we regularly discuss, but it turns out it’s a podcast. She gave me the briefest of synopses about it, and I was instantly intrigued. Here’s the official description…
If you could call a number and say you’re sorry, and no one would know…what would you apologize for? For fifteen years, you could call a number in Manhattan and do just that. This is the story of the line, and the man at the other end who became consumed by his own creation. He was known as “Mr. Apology.” As thousands of callers flooded the line, confessing to everything from shoplifting to infidelity, drug dealing to murder, Mr. Apology realized he couldn’t just listen. He had to do something, even if it meant risking everything. From Wondery the makers of Dr. Death and The Shrink Next Door, comes a story about empathy, deception and obsession. Marissa Bridge, who knew Mr. Apology better than anyone, hosts this six episode series.
Sounds cool, right?
I have to confess that I have no memory of ever spotting any of the “Apology” flyers, but they were evidently very much a thing.
I have something of a long history of harping on about music biopics (summary: THEY SUCK), but -- in all candor -- in the wake of "D.O.A.," "The Punk Rock Movie," "The Great Rock N' Roll Swindle," Alex Cox's "Sid & Nancy" and Julien Temple's "The Filth & The Fury" -- to say nothing about Lydon's multiple memoirs, Jon Savage's "England's Dreaming," Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain's "Please Kill Me," John Robb's "Punk Rock: An Oral History," Steve Jones' "Lonely Boy" and Glen Matlock's "I Was a Teenage Sex Pistol" (and this is just a select smattering of media -- there has also been a pile of TV documentaries) ... is there any actual *NEED* for a biopic on the Sex Pistols?
I mean, even a cursory listen to the gratuitous cash-in that was Some Product: Carri On Sex Pistols tells you pretty much everything you could ever really need to know.
BOTTOM LINE: Want to learn about the Sex Pistols? Get ahold of a copy of Never Mind The Bollocks, listen to it and GET ON WITH YOUR LIFE!!
As I’ve mentioned before, while my musical tastes tend to skew strenuously towards the guitar-as-weapon aesthetic, I do consider myself lucky to have grown up in New York City during what I believe is roundly considered to be the golden age of hip-hop. Without even trying, I was regularly exposed to the burgeoning stages of the genre via several forward-thinking classmates of mine in high school and, honestly, just from walking around these Manhattan streets, wherein records by names like LL Cool J, Run-DMC, Kurtis Blow, Houdini, MC Lyte, Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five, KRS-One, Kool Mode Dee and — yes, do please wait for it — the Beastie Boys were seemingly always in the air, so to speak. I was in college when Public Enemy made their mark, and that really changed everything.
After graduating in 1989, as mentioned here, I scored an internship at then-still-credible SPIN Magazine, wherein my horizons were further broadened to the genre that, by that time, was really hitting its stride. At one SPIN party or another at a long-since-vanished club on 14th Street called Nell’s, I was privileged to watch the nascent hip-hop band, A Tribe Called Quest perform, not realizing, at the time, how significant a name they would become. Following my stint at SPIN, I got involved with a venture ambitiously named The New York Review of Records, which I’ve mentioned before. Largely via the enthusiasm of the magazine's editor and erstwhile club disc jockey Brad Balfour and fellow “staffer” Kris Needs (who I spoke about here), a lovably insouciant veteran of British Punk, former Bleecker Bob’s employee and erstwhile rock journalist, I was exposed to further crucial hip-hop like De La Soul, Leaders of The New School, Brand Nubian, X-Clan, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo and countless others. I may have otherwise been occupying myself with the hoary goth melodrama of The Mission and willfully antagonistic noise-rock by Cop Shoot Cop and Prong, but despite my best efforts, I had become unwittingly versed in the contemporary hip-hop of the day.
This all said, I am still entirely clueless when it comes to the hip-hop that seems to resonate most with the masses. I have no clue why people latched onto the all the Bad Boy and Death Row stuff and the way more innovative Native Tongue stuff sort of dwindled out. Beyond inarguable names like Public Enemy, Wu-Tang and the Beastie Boys, my favorite hip-hop records, by and large, were from acts no one seems to care about anymore like Das EFX and New Kingdom, bands who had immediately recognizable style, to my ears. Why neither became huge is a mystery to me, especially considering the awful bullshit that DID rise to the top.
So yeah, I’m basically a contrarian idiot, when it comes to hip-hop, but one record that I lovingly remember as being an across-the-board favorite of all parties concerned, at the dawn of the 90s, was a curious concept album called Sex Packets by an inventive collective called Digital Underground. Hooked in by the unapologetically libidinous storyline (something about an illicit hallucinogen that replicated the ultimate sexual encounter) and irrepressible singles like “Dowhutchyalike” and “The Humpty Dance,” Sex Packets seemed like a Mothership Connection for the hip-hop generation (no accident, that). While, again, I was otherwise besotted with guitar bands like The Wedding Present and Pussy Galore, at the time, Digital Underground was a crowd-pleasing palette-cleanser like no other. Smart, funny, incredibly produced and musical, the album still sounds amazing over half my life later. Later singles like “Same Song” and “No Nose Job” were also fucking fabulous, to say nothing of the whole album, Sons of the P. Great stuff.
If you’re a music head, you might already know where this is going. Primary mouthpiece and founder Shock G (aka Humpty Hump aka Piano Man aka Gregory Jacobs) passed away yesterday at the age of 57. He’s another hip-hop luminary that didn’t see enough recognition for his work, to my mind. I wrote his obit for work. Read that here, if you care, and go out and buy yourself a damn copy of Sex Packets and thank me later.
Since about October or so, the company I work for has been letting those of us who’ve wanted to come back to voluntarily work two days a week in our offices, if we’d like. Given the diminutive size of my apartment and the fact that I frequently have two testy teenagers therein vying for WiFi and elbow room, I’ve taken full advantage of this offer. Surprisingly, however, not many other of my colleagues have, and I’ve frequently spent those two days alone in my office, often going entire eight-hour shifts without seeing another human being.
While at first it felt like a step towards normalcy, the prolonged failure to bring the pandemic under manageable control quickly put a stop to any hopes of a return to the pre-COVID routines. The novelty of going into the office swiftly wore off, but I’ve kept going in, regardless.
But, I’ve not been totally alone. There has been a skeleton crew of regulars from various departments that have also been periodically coming in. As such, we’ve been frequently stopping by each other’s offices to say hi and get at least brief, reassuring moments of human interaction. It’s a small enough organization to really know most of the people on staff.
I have one colleague, whom I’ll call Koby for the sake of this post (not his actual name), who has been doing the same as I have. While he’s not a member of my department, I have worked with Koby on a number of different projects. Since I first got here, he has always been the coolest, most inclusive team-member to work with, and we’ve always gotten on like a house on fire. It’s a nice organization to begin with, but I was always stuck by how nice Koby was to everyone. He seemed genuinely invested.
Yesterday morning, it was looking like another day of solitary confinement until Koby popped his head in my office to say hi. He pulled up a chair, and I happily turned away from the frankly yawnsome project I’ve been working on to chat with him. We had the most banal of catch-ups, discussing the usual COVID-related topics and when we expected the office to officially open back up. These were not pressing issues by any stretch of the imagination, but, again, it was nice to talk and remind ourselves of the regular practices we’ve left behind and look forward to brighter days ahead. After a bit, Koby got up to continue his rounds of saying hi to the paltry few other folks in the office. I thanked him for stopping by, and off he went.
Today, I heard that, overnight, Koby passed away. I don’t know very many particulars, but he was evidently home with his wife, suffered a heart attack and died. By all appearances, Koby was young, healthy and spry, with no readily detectable, health-impairing vices to speak of.
I have been in something of a fog all day since learning this horrible news. Mere hours after blithely shooting the shit in my office, Koby crossed to the other side.
Take care or yourselves and be good to each other.
By its very design, street art is ephemeral. Not necessarily made to last and furtively executed either in haste, overnight or under the radar, it is a guerrilla-style form of expression the very clandestine nature of which is to surprise its viewers and then, in most instances, vanish forever. I’d suggest that huge parts of its appeal are in its fleeting existences and outlaw status. You may not have expected it. You did not ask for it. You cannot control it. You cannot own it. The most you can do is paint over it.
Graffiti is loved and loathed in equal measures by the city’s residents. But despite New York’s own robust history of trailblazing street art, there isn’t really one, formal public record of it. Sure, names like Zephyr, Lee Quinones, Futura 2000 and Dondi are frequently cited by denizens — to say nothing of artists whose work went “legit” like Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Richard Hambleton and Jean-Michel Basquiat — but, as far as I know, there is no single tome or collection that authoritatively documents the work of the most celebrated street artists and graffiti-writers. But, I suppose that’s the point. It’s a wild, organic art form. You’re not supposed to be able to institutionalize it.
It’s for this very reason that I’ve been so preoccupied with a certain quest — to find the Plasmatics wall.
It seemed sort of wildly out of place to spot an invocation of The Plasmatics — very much a downtown concern — on a wall up in Spanish Harlem, much less an invocation composed in the signature bright colors and stylized renderings of graffiti, which, in those days, was more steeped in the burgeoning culture of hip-hop than in punk rock. But, again, it’s easy to assign such meaningless parameters for the sake of neatly encapsulating an era. There, for whatever reason, was a colorful depiction of Wendy O Williams and the Plasmatics' logo on a facade north of East 96th Street. Why was it there? Who knows? Maybe whomever spray-painted it was simply a fan.
But, as mentioned in that post, when I sheepishly went back to find it after that school trip, pedaling nervously on my shitty BMX past the “the border” between the Upper East Side and Spanish Harlem at East 96th Street, I couldn’t seem to find it again or, more likely, I wimped out and did an about-face before getting too far uptown.
And that was basically that.
I cannot recall what prompted my penning of the post in 2010 about it other than that it’s always been something I was struck by and remembered. After a while, though, given that I never found any further evidence of its existence, much like that certain “punk” issue of New York Magazine (which I, of course, later found), I started wondering if maybe I’d imagined it, and started giving up the notion of trying to find any evidence of it.
But in already in a few instances this year, for whatever illogical reason, I have stumbled across beguiling bits of Plasmatics trivia that resulted in a series of in-depth posts (all collected here, for your convenience, if you care). in the spirit of same, I figured I’d revive my quest for Wendy’s wall.
For a start, I posted the entry on the Plasmatics fan page on Facebook, asking aloud if anyone else had remembered seeing it. Suddenly the thread came alive with remarks from commenters saying they’d recalled seeing it from the windows of a Metro-North train and speculating as to its possible whereabouts. The problem, however, is that like me, no one had snapped a pic of it. At the very least, I had corroboration of its existence.
Then I went back to the well and started getting creative with Google, entering in any number of combinations like “Plasmatics,” “Wendy,” “mural,” “Manhattan,” “80s,” “graffiti,” “Park Avenue” etc., but continually came up empty. I actually reached out over Instagram to fabled graffiti tagger Lee Quinones and photographer/graffiti-champion Henry Chalfant to see if either of those guys remembered it. No one got back to me.
I started feeling that old sensation of futility once again until I happened upon one article or another that made mention of an over-promisingly named strip of concrete called — wait for it — the Graffiti Hall of Fame. While not an actual “hall” of any tangible quality, this area was a designated street-art destination established in 1980 on — WAIT FOR IT, ONCE AGAIN — the northernly reaches of Park Avenue. Things were starting to add up. I started Googling “Graffiti Hall of Fame” and “Park Avenue” and scrolling through the ensuing images.
It was almost too easy.
Evidently painted by an artist named Dez, the whole wall came up via another promisingly named entity called Graffiti Database. I was genuinely astonished to have found it. Here’s a closer look at it…
Regrettably, I have no idea who took this photograph or when, but it’s definitely the mural I first saw, although the passage of time rendered the images in my head with way more nuance and detail. I’m still mystified as to the specifics of its backstory, but I can at least now rest, knowing I didn’t imagine it and that I’ve closed the circle on another inane quest.
Here in 2021, the Graffiti Hall of Fame is still a going concern, but the Plasmatics mural was painted over decades ago.
And, once again, for the uninitiated, these were the Plasmatics...
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