Flaming Pablum

Back to A7

Just a quick one to highlight this great "lost segment" from my friend Drew Stone, giving a great, authoritative history of A7 just off Tompkins Square Park, which was basically the flashpoint of the whole New York Hardcore scene. Lots of great history, here, do check it out:

The Candid Cashier

In recent weeks, the supermarket around our corner has seen something of a turnover in its staff of check-out cashiers. One new member of this team is a little lady named Consuela. This petite, elderly woman has checked my groceries out a few times, by this point, and now evidently feels entirely comfortable chatting with me, which I’m completely cool with. I’m pretty goddamn chatty myself.

A couple of weeks back, the wife and I had been planning on having some neighbors over for a few drinks, so I was dispatched to procure a few essentials. I hit the nearby liquor store first and got a bottle of white wine, then popped over to our supermarket, where I proceeded to grab a six-pack, some chips, some olives and maybe some cocktail napkins. With the wine bottle still tucked under my arm, I brought these items to the register where Consuela was waiting for me.

“Looks like you’re having a party,” she sighed as she was ringing me up. “Oh, just some of our neighbors,” I responded. She looked up at me expectantly as if to suggest that I might consider inviting her, too. “Oh, it’s not just you?” came her retort, augmented with a coquettish fluttering of her eyelashes. I laughed … not knowing quite what to do with that.

Last night, meanwhile, I was again back amidst the aisles of our supermarket, grabbing some makings for quesadillas (Oliver is perfecting his Mexican culinary skills) and, again, yet another six-pack of beer. As before, Consuela was waiting for me, doubtlessly ready to dispatch another surreal observation.

When she got to my beer -– a regular item of purchase for me – she asked to see my I.D. Having now bought an ill-considered quantity of the beverage in question from this establishment, I might have assumed that she could eschew this particular step of the process, but Consuela is either ardently bound to protocol or possibly just forgetful. Or just really fuckin' bored.

“I’m 55,” I said, handing my card to her, “but I’m truly flattered that you think I look so young.”

Handing my card back, she again looked up at me. “Well, your face looks like the face of someone in their forties, but this…” she exclaimed while waving an accusing finger at my midsection, “yes, …. this certainly tells me you’re into your fifties.”

“Wait, WHAT?” I was both highly amused and taken somewhat aback. I laughed, finding her blunt assessment almost kind of endearingly refreshing.

“I’m sorry,” she continued as she handed me my change, “I just have to tell the truth.”

The K&D Sweepstakes

For whatever reason, late November/early December regularly finds me in a state of flux wherein I’m getting pulled in multiple directions by work demands and familial obligations. I am in no way unique, in this capacity. As a result, new content here on Flaming Pablum, during these months, can be spare and/or comparatively lightweight in substance … or more lightweight than usual, I should say.

But triggered by today’s episode of Desperately Seeking the `80s (about the bizarre antics of the late Bess Myerson), I did remember an anecdote worth sharing.

Just real quick, for those not versed in the subject, Bess Myerson was a prominent political figure and former Miss America who suffered a pronounced fall from grace that only started when, in a fit of berserk jealousy and jilted rage, she mounted a persistent campaign of potty-mouthed harassment against the rival for the affections of a former boyfriend. This ultimately manifested in stalking, some poop-related home deliveries (I shit you not) and mailed threats. But it all started off as a round-the-clock battery of anonymous calls. Meg from DSTE prefaced the episode with the engagement question to Jessica as to whether she’d ever made “a prank call.” That’s what prompted the anecdote below.

That’s enough preamble.

Given the advanced state of telecommunications here in the 21st Century, the “prank call” -- a rudimentarily juvenile pastime for the very easily amused -- is all but extinct. But if you are of a certain age, you’ll doubtlessly remember having perpetrated one, participated in one or, at the very least, bore witness to a friend resorting to the telephone for a cheap laugh at someone else’s expense. If you didn’t, I can’t help you. You missed out.

In any case, the usual prank call just involved ringing up some random phone number and executing the lamest of possible gags at the hapless soul on the receiving end. Confusion and/or consternation would inevitably ensue which invariably prompted idiotic giggles and the customary hang-up. Mission accomplished. It was all too common a practice for shit-eating little punks of a certain sensibility.

But my grade school pal Peter (not his actual name) and I had an extra edge.

Peter was a classmate and best friend of mine, at the time (this being circa 1979 or so) and lived with his family in a lovely apartment on the southeast corner of East 96th Street and Madison Avenue. After being let out of our school on East 89th Street, Peter and I would routinely march up Madison Avenue to his place, usually after a few zealous rounds of whatever arcade games were on offer at any number of nearby pizza joints and candy stores along the way (one favorite being the “Missile Command” machine at the Sweet Suite on Madison Avenue between 90th and 91st – now a sedately genteel wine bar). By this stage of the proceedings, Peter and I were largely preoccupied with silly, age-appropriate crap like Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, “Star Wars” and Marvel Comics, but were gradually foregoing that sort of stuff in favor of an immersion in the music of the day. This all said, given that this was still well prior to the advent of the internet, let alone MTV, we regularly found ourselves looking for new ways to stave off boredom. This was when we turned, like many of our obnoxious little peers, …. to the telephone.

As it happened, Peter’s family lived on the second floor on the northernly corner of their building. Their dining room featured views to the north and to the west overlooking the expanse of East 96th Street and down Madison Avenue. For whatever reason (it seemed bizarre to me then as now), Peter’s family kept a telephone in that dining room. Said phone was very conveniently located on a small table in the very corner, in between two huge windows. This meant one could conduct calls while enjoying splendid views of whatever was happening down on the street. Directly below this window, on East 96th Street, there was a crosstown bus stop bookended by a – WAIT FOR IT – phone booth. That phone booth would have been just out of the shot in the right-hand side of this photograph below, taken in 1984 by one Todd Jacobsen, whose estimable Flicker feed I brazenly pilfered it from. That’s Peter’s building (and second-floor corner window right above the street sign) on the right-hand side of the photo.

You may already see where this is going.

Anyway, one of us would run downstairs and out onto that street to get the number to the (again, not pictured) phone booth, and then run back upstairs and into the dining room where the other was waiting, with telephone receiver in hand.

Having procured the phone number, we’d then start calling that phone booth.

At this point, I should also point out that just a little way down on the northwest side of Madison Avenue across the divide of East 96th Street (but in full view from Peter’s dining-room window) was a concern called K&D Wines & Spirits, a busy little neighborhood liquor store.

This was a game of patience, let’s remember, as not everyone was initially inclined to pick up a phone ringing in a phone booth.

But every now and then, … we hooked one.

Peering down like two shitty little gargoyles from that window, we watched as one luckless loner ambling down the sidewalk noticed the ringing phone. We watched him slowly stroll over to the booth. We could barely contain ourselves with anticipation. Would he do it? Was he going to pick it up?

Eventually, …. He succumbed, and we immediately snapped into serious execution mode.

HIM: “Ummmm… hello?”

US (speaking in a laughably unconvincing lower register to try disguise our small years): “CONGRATULATIONS!!! You have just won the K&D Liquors SWEEPSTAKES! Stand by for further instructions on HOW TO COLLECT YOUR PRIZE MONEY!!”

:::::CLICK::::::

At this point, we’d hang up and look for the reaction. On this one occasion, we knew we’d caught a live one. The gent had snapped out of his torpor and was practically twitching with excitement. We dialed down to him again.

:::riiiiiiing::::

He picked it up only nanoseconds into the first ring.

HIM: “Hello? HELLO? I’M HERE!”

US (again, not sounding credibly older than our twelve years at all ): “Is this the gentlemen I was just speaking to? Good, now listen closely – to collect the winnings of K&D’s special sweepstakes, all you need to do, right now, is cross East 96th Street, enter K&D Wines & Spirits and – as loud as you can – say the special winning password: ‘COTTAGE CHEESE’! Once again, that’s ‘COTTAGE CHEESE’ as LOUD AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN! HURRY! TIME IS LIMITED. DO IT NOW!”

::::CLICK:::::

We again hung up on this poor man and cackled maniacally as we saw him frantically dash across the street (in a moment of merciful synchronicity with the universe, the light was conveniently green, so he didn’t charge out into open traffic) and – oh my God, he’s actually doing it – into the doors of K&D Wines & Spirits.

By this point, Peter and I were both practically wetting ourselves laughing.

Moments later, we saw our gullible mark being politely ejected from K&D, having presumably scared the daylights out of everyone in the store, at the time. Still giggling, we watched from the cruel safety of Peter’s second-floor dining room as he shuffled around in front of K&D before glumly walking off down Madison Avenue.

Today, K&D Liquors is now up the road a couple of blocks in Carnegie Hill Towers. Their former space is now occupied by a daycare center called Playgarden. Peter and I sadly fell out of touch after we both graduated from our school on East 89th Street in 1981. If I am correct, in later life, Peter became a chef. As far as I know, his family no longer lives in that building on East 96th Street.

That phone booth below that second-floor dining-room window was permanently removed in 2011.

`Tis The Season

This morning, I found myself sitting in a doctor’s office in lower Manhattan. Feeling already on edge from both the mysterious condition that brought me there and by the fact that I was ostensibly supposed to be at my office working, I was not exactly "at my best." But there was another element causing me pronounced displeasure and discomfort, one that recalled stories of Guantanamo Bay torture sessions involving tireless airings at high volumes of painful, disruptive, and sensory-battering music.

Much like the pervasive stench of a Shake Shack when you’re not-at-all hungry, there is something genuinely irritating about having to hear Christmas music when you’re not even slightly prepared or in the mood for it. Said irritation is amplified a whopping thousandfold when the Christmas music in question has undergone a needlessly melismatic R&B “reboot.” I am referring, of course, to Mariah Carey’s 1994 effort, Merry Christmas, wherein that vile, soulless harpee warbles erratically all over a string of canonical Christmas warhorses from “O Holy Night” through “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” and all unfortunate points in between. Adding shrill insult to pronounced aural injury, there is also a fistful of Carey “originals,” most deplorable amongst them the abjectly indefensible “All I Want for Christmas Is You,” which dependably makes me want to maim every living soul in a five-block radius.

Later in the day, I started writing multiple richly worded and needlessly violent paragraphs about how it seems impossible for me to hate anything more than I hate "All I Want For Christmas Is You," but then realized I'd more than covered that subject here in great detail. 

As such, I abandoned that post. You're welcome. 

That all said, I found myself asking the question, "would it be alright just to allow for a tiny modicum of breathing room between the holidays?"

Evidently, the answer to that silly question is a very emphatic ...

 

"Fuck You, NO!" 

 

Happy Holidays

Happy Thanksgiving from Flaming Pablum

Goodbye, Wilko Johnson

Ask the average rockhead loitering around your corner bar’s jukebox who their favorite guitarist of all time might be, and you’re bound to be buried underneath of avalanche of predictable purple-prosed hyperbole about one six-string noodler or another. Fleet-fingered guitar sorcerers like Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen, Jimmy Page, Dave Gilmour, Yngwie Malmsteen, Joe Satriani and the like usually garner the most praise. And I’m not knocking those guys — well, fuck Yngwie and Satch -- but there’s no arguing with those other cats. But I’ve always maintained that style is much more important than chops. Anyone can learn to be technically proficient. But actual style? That cannot be taught.

Wilko Johnson of British pub-rock band Dr. Feelgood was not a conventionally competent musician. Ask him to play you some rudimentary warm-up exercise, and he’d invariably stare at you blankly with his tremendous bug eyes. Wilko was a self-taught guitarist, and the manner in which he taught himself was unique. It was simply his own style of playing that owned little, if anything, to conventional guitar playing. The BBC summed it up as "a distinctive, finger-picked style that blended percussive stabs and fluid licks, allowing him to play lead and rhythm guitar at the same time,” which kinda covers it. But you had to see him do it. Augmented with his restless stage presence (Wilko seemed to be unable to “keep still” while playing, insisting on pacing maniacally back and forth, when performing) and his aforementioned bug-eyed glare, Wilko slashed relentlessly at his battered Telecaster in swift, chopping movements. Not only did it sound amazing, but it was truly a spectacle to behold.

I was entirely late to the table on Dr. Feelgood. As an insufferable student of Punk Rock, I had, of course, read all about the band and their origins in so-called pub rock (as in “rock played in pubs,” usually of the vintage R&B style of, say, the early Who), but it wasn’t until Julian Temple’s 2009 film, “Oil City Confidential” that I experienced the genuinely innovative sound of the band. Pre-dating and pre-figuring British Punk by a few crucial years (and also an inspiration to Yank punk stalwarts like Richard Hell), the band — and especially Wilko — was incalculably influential on later distinctive guitar players like Joe Strummer of The Clash, Paul Weller of The Jam and Andy Gill of Gang of Four (among many others). Never mind the unattainably seasoned guitar wizardry of Steve Howe or Richie Blackmore, Wilko Johnson was the embodiment of what would become Punk Rock’s do-it-yourself ethos. And many tried to replicate it, but everyone fell short.

Wilko Johnson died on Monday at age 75, this following a rich life and a bizarre thwarting of cancer in 2014. There will never be anyone like him.

Rest in Peace. Crank this way up….

Pasted On The Wall

A little while back, I scoffed openly at the endeavor being propagated by NOFX frontperson “Fat Mike” that he was opening the first “official” museum of Punk Rock, in Las Vegas, no less. “Oh great,” I thought, “an institution dedicated to a subculture dedicated to upending institutions.” The notion is a farce. Moreover, who would be deciding who is -– and who isn’t -– included? Whose definition of the divisively nebulous term “Punk Rock” would be applied? The whole thing, to my mind, is a fool’s errand and as equally meaningless as the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame.

This all said, I’m not at all against the preservation of archival elements of that subculture. I remember posting an entry here in 2019 about discovering that a specific flyer from a Circle Jerks/D.O.A./Redd Kross show at the Ritz in 1985 that I’d attended was added to the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art. What had originated as simply a means of advertising a punk gig had since become a prized piece of cherished folk art.

To this same end, the esteemed Cornell University Library has added a new digital collection of Punk Flyers to their online archives, and it is an impressive resource indeed. Sparingly laid out with easy and intuitive search functionality, the collection of over 2,000 images contains rarified invocations of bands both celebrated (Bad Brains, Black Flag, Discharge, etc.) and comparatively obscure (Code of Honor, Fidelity Jones, the Feederz, etc.). It’s by no means comprehensive, but I did manage to waste a whole lot of time exploring its content.

Check It Out Here.

And before you ask, no they did not have that Cop Shoot Cop flyer I’m still vainly searching for.

Whole World In His Head

Bear with me, please.

Oliver’s going to hate that I posted this, but I can’t help it. You already know I’m an insufferably proud dad, but this really blew a new part in my hair.

As I understand it, during some downtime during an extracurricular period, Oliver took it upon himself to draw the world map FROM MEMORY. We all have our own thing. When I was his age, it was comic books and punk rock. For whatever inexplicable reason, Oliver latched on to vexillology, geography and world history. You could put a gun to my head and ask me to replicate the correct placement (let alone accurate shapes) of each nation, and I’d have to take the bullet.

I am routinely amazed by my boy, but this is just some next level stuff.

Flaming Pablum vs. Colbert

Apropos of nothing at all, I’m taking the Colbert Questionert.

Here we go…

• Best sandwich? I’m going to say a good bacon, egg & cheese on a roll.

• What's one thing you own that you really should throw out? Jeezus, where do I begin? I still have boxloads of cassettes I should probably part with.

• What is the scariest animal? I am still entirely captivated by the majesty of the Great White Shark. Hard to fathom anything credibly scarier than that.

• Apples or oranges? Well, I’m allergic to apples, so I’m going with oranges.

• Have you ever asked someone for their autograph? The last person whose autograph I asked for was probably Ace Frehley.

• What do you think happens when we die? As much as I love the notion of the cycle starting all over again, I’m sort of inclined to believe that nothing happens. We simply cease to exist.

• Favorite action movie? I’m tempted to cite films like “Apocalypse Now!” and/or “A Clockwork Orange,” but both of those are so much more than simply “action movies.” I’m going to go with “The Road Warrior.”

• Favorite smell? Slow-roasting fresh garlic in extra virgin olive oil.

• Least favorite smell? For whatever reason, I have a horrible reaction to the small of hyacinths (the flower).

• Exercise: worth it? Absolutely, although without becoming a fitness zealot.

• Flat or sparkling? I’m not fussed.

• Most used app on your phone? Probably Instagram.

• You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life: what is it? The notion of only being able to listen to one single song for the rest of one’s life seems like a slow boat to madness, regardless of whatever song it might be. But, ... how about ... "I Can't Give You Anything" by The Ramones. 

• What number am I thinking of? I was told there’d be no math.

• Describe the rest of your life in 5 words? “Focused on what actually matters.”

Guns N' Poses: GN'R on West 54th in 1991

Back in 2012, I posted a little piece here about going to see Guns N’ Roses at the New Ritz (formerly Studio 54) on West 54th Street in 1991, and the steps I had to take to procure tickets. It’s not that I was an especially pronounced Guns N’ Roses fan (then or now), but I was unemployed, at the time, and my friend Rob convinced me that it would be a thing to see and what the Hell else was I doin’, etc., so I happily went down and stood on line all day to get a special voucher and blah blah blah (it’s all in that old post).

As I mentioned in that post, even during their oft-rhapsodized heyday (that being the wake of their 1987 opus, Appetite for Destruction), I don’t think I was ever really convinced that Guns N’ Roses was anything more than just a hair-metal band wearing punk t-shirts. That first record was perfectly enjoyable, but hardly what I would’ve considered groundbreaking. I’d sooner point to their rivals in Jane’s Addiction as the more exciting band of that moment, but whatever.

My friend Phil Freeman of Burning Ambulance (referenced back on this post) wrote an amusing takedown of GN’R’s new bloated box set, today, and in doing so revealed that the entirety of that 1991 show at the New Ritz I took pains to attend was included as a bonus in the box. I relayed that to aforementioned Rob on Facebook, and a friend of his posted the video below -– which is that very show, sparing anyone reading this the trouble of having to go out and buy the thing (and if you were really considering doing that, might I suggest raising your standards).

I don’t remember much about this show other than, as I said in that earlier post, more costume changes than a Liza Minelli drag tribute revue for Axl. But here it is now.

Look for me in the crowd.