Flaming Pablum

Six New York City Diners in 1974

St. Marks Place & Third Avenue

...in 2014

Oasis in Manhattan

If I’m being honest, I was never especially blown away by Oasis. I mean, they were certainly quite capable of cranking out a series of perfectly respectable-albeit-derivative singles that were loaded with catchy hooks and reminiscent of various well-established rock motifs, but I couldn’t quite understand why they enjoyed such a robust amount of popularity when – to my mind – some of their more musically adventurous fellow countrymen in bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and several others were stalled on lower rungs of the ladder. I mean, despite what short-lived NYC indie band Thin Lizard Dawn suggested, I never believed Oasis sucked, but I just didn’t think there was anything especially exceptional about them. I also never really warmed to Liam Gallagher’s voice, a sort of whiney amalgamation of Lennon and Lydon. I also never understood his penchant for basically standing stock-still when performing.

But, y’know, what the Hell do I know? Oasis went onto become one of Britain’s biggest musical exports, for a while, until the wheels fell off and the Gallagher brother could no longer stand each other. I’ve frequently suggested that if their music was as entertaining as their endearingly contentious interviews, I’d have been way more into Oasis. At the very least, Liam and Noel were quite handy with their pithy quips.

I’m only invoking their name here for a couple of reasons. I was recently discussing them with some work colleagues, and I came across the shot above. Somewhat famously, Oasis’ New York City debut performance was at Wetlands Preserve down on Laight Street in TriBeCa, a storied venue most renowned for spawning the neo-hippy jam-band scene comprised of bands like The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blues Traveler, et al. To be fair, while that was indeed Wetlands’ whole shtick, most of the bands I went to go see there had nothing to do with that vibe. From ska to funk to hardcore punk, Wetlands’ booking policy was refreshingly open-ended with regards to genre, so Oasis playing there wasn’t all that out of left field. More to the point, one could argue that Oasis’ music was no less retro-philic than the club’s more celebrated acts who were continually invoking the spirit of Woodstock, et al.

Regardless, while it was a decent-sized, bi-level club, the actual performance space was fairly intimate. I seem to always remember it being oppressively loud, as the sound bouncing off the back room’s concrete walls (floridly painted with pastoral scenes of flower-children dancing in leafy glades) had nowhere to go. That said, it was always a fun space to see a band. I never had a bad time there.

In doing research for this post, though, I discovered that the band actually graced the Wetlands stage twice on their debut American tour – first in July of 1994, and a second time three months later in October. You can see their full performance from the October date here.

I’m including the photo above from the July gig not just because it seems like a typical shot of the band, finding Liam in his signature stance, but also because it’s so telling of its era. Not only does no one have their fucking phone out, but I just love the guy pictured in the background just under Liam (the bespectacled gent in the Failure t-shirt). Dutiful rock journalist that he must have been (and given my own involvement in that vocation, I believe I might know the dude in question – Jon Wiederhorn, is that you??), he’s staring intently at Liam and actually taking notes with a pen and pad. That’s some goddamn dedication, right there. Here's another take...

The July gig was actually part of an annual music industry convention called the New Music Seminar, a string of dates every summer devoted to music showcases in various venues around town and schmooze-opportunities and panel discussions at a hotel in Times Square. I attended a few New Music Seminars, but I think I sat 1994’s out. I didn’t go to this Oasis gig, in any case. My former colleague Neil Strauss did, though, and wrote this little bit about it for the New York Times.

Just to bring things up to date as a side note, in the ensuing 28 years since this event, Wetlands Preserve is long, long gone. It closed in 2001, following the death of its founder-owner Larry Bloch. The building that housed the club, 161 Hudson Street, was converted into a luxury condo (of course) in 2004. The ground-floor space formerly occupied by Wetlands became an expensive bedding emporium of some kind for a while. Last time I walked by it, that concern had closed and it was awaiting a new tenant.

Both Jon Wiederhorn (if that's indeed him above) and Neil Strauss went further with their careers. I would later work alongside Jon during my tenure at MTV News Online circa 2006, and he’d go on to pen several books, including an authoritative guide on heavy metal called “Louder Than Hell.” Neil Strauss, meanwhile, who I’d worked with in 1990 at The New York Review of Records, later went on to write – as cited above – for The New York Times and other prestigious outlets. After writing some memorable profile pieces for Rolling Stone (including one where I believe he got into bed with Jewel), Neil was drafted to orchestrate (and presumably ghost-write) the fabled Motley Crue oral history, “The Dirt.” From there, Neil’s career took an interesting turn and he became an accomplished pickup artist, ostensibly for the purposes of writing a book on same. That book, “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” took Neil to a whole new level, so to speak. The last time I saw him was at a Cocteau Twins concert at the (since demolished) Roseland Ballroom. He was wearing leather pants.

Lastly, I stumbled upon this ancient video of Oasis and swiftly determined that it was shot here in New York City, possibly during the same stay as the first Wetlands gig. Herein we see the brothers Gallagher and cohorts playing in the Central Park bandshell, just steps to the south of Bethesda Fountain. There are also several shots of the band glumly burying their drummer in a makeshift public garden of the sort one used to encounter around certain portions of the Upper West Side and Lower East side. Can anyone identify the spot?

Facebreak

It wasn't triggered by anything specific, just the nagging, seemingly obvious fact that I spend way more time on Facebook than I probably should. I think it’s less about the social-media phenomenon and more about my own anaemic will power. I seem to have a very hard time giving things up and/or slowing things down. As such, in much the same way I frequently endeavor to taper off my beer intake or cut down on my coffee consumption, I thought I’d try stepping away from Facebook for a while, and see how that goes. If this exercise is anything like my attempts to curtail my affinity those afore-cited vices, I’ll probably be back on Facebook by next week, but … we’ll see. I want to give it a shot.

I should point out, however, that I don’t feel guilty about my usage of the platform. At its best, Facebook is indeed a great way to stay in touch with further flung friends, keep apprised of certain social events, learn about breaking news, evangelize favorite music, gather insight from one’s peers on a host of different topics, etc. By the same token, it’s also a tremendously powerful and frequently pointless time-suck. At its most banal, it can be distraction. At its worst, it can be a needless irritant or even a day-ruiner, if you find yourself embroiled in one stupid spat or another over any number of idiotic subjects. For me, it’s invariably about some ridiculously pedantic fine point about a former member of some long-forgotten punk band or something equally trivial. I used to regularly cross swords with people about our boundlessly stupid and irresponsible president, but I believe I scared off any remaining Trump-supporters from my friends list long ago. Suffice to say, I feel absolutely zero regres about that.

I don’t know exactly what I plan on accomplishing by doing this, and fully plan to return to the platform at some presently indefinable point, but I feel it’s an exercise worth exploring.

Have you ever stepped away from Facebook or other comparable, life-engulfing social media platform? How’d that work for you?

The Couch

Peggy and I got married in the summer of 2001. We returned to New York City from our honeymoon in Spain on Friday, September 7. The following Tuesday was …. well, you can figure it out.

Freshly married, eager to move forward with our plans and newly reminded of the fragility of human life, we promptly started looking to move out of my studio apartment. However cool and spacious it was, it just wasn’t an apartment necessarily conducive to having any babies, which was our priority, at the time.

In relatively short order, after looking at scores of uninspiring spaces, we somehow struck oil. Peggy happened to spot a promising listing in the very same neighborhood. By the tail end of 2002, we moved from a studio on East 12th to a “Junior Four” (read: a one-bedroom apartment with a dining room/study that could be re-purposed as a second bedroom) on East 9th. This was where we were going to start our family. As it’s turned out, we’ve been there ever since.

Once settled, we decided to get a sectional sofa. In retrospect, I cannot remember why. I think I was romanced by the one my cousins used to have at their old house up in the Berkshires. It just seemed comfier and homey. So, we went to shitty Crate & Barrell on Broadway and picked one up.

Details elude me as to why we chose a brown one, but that’s the color we got. I suppose it meshed with the other colors in the living room, but I’ll be damned if we were that thorough about it. The important thing was that it could accommodate several people quite comfortably. If necessity called for it, two people could sleep on it simultaneously.

In time, our plans to have children were realized, and our big brown couch was soon being climbed all over by Charlotte and, shortly afterwards, her little brother Oliver.

Guests came and went. Myriad meals were consumed on the couch. Parties were thrown on it. Countless drinks were spilled on it. A fortune in coins slid between its cracks. A graveyard of lost LEGO bricks vanished beneath its skirts. Various remotes went frequently astray beneath its cushions. But it served us well.

In time, its robust brown luster faded. In due course, the springs beneath the two most frequently sat-upon spots gave way. The “command center”/”driver’s seat” spot on the far end was soon re-dubbed “the Pit,” as whomever sat in it would sink, butt-first, towards the floor beneath.

When we could no longer tolerate it, Peggy started suggesting we bite the bullet and spring for a new couch. Because I ultimately loathe change, I was slow to get onboard, but even I was getting fed up.

The particulars of getting a new sectional sofa were far more complicated than we’d imagined, but living in a building without a service elevator meant that we had to choose a sectional of very specific measurements. I don’t remember that quandary when we bought the first one, but maybe we’d just gotten lucky.

It took us forever to find a suitable one. I honestly recused myself, after a while, about feeling the need to weigh in on its preferred design. As long as it fit and was comfortable, that would be fine by me. Colors really don’t matter to me.

We settled on one, paid for it and made arrangements for delivery. That will happen tomorrow. Today, our building’s super and handyman removed the old brown one.

On Oliver’s way home from school, he passed by the couch on the sidewalk and snapped the following shot, and I’m not gonna lie. I got kind of a lump in my throat about it.

Yes, it was an ugly, beat-up and suitably pooh-colored piece of shit, but this couch was really the epicenter of our home. There are videos of my kids as tiny tots crawling all over it. To see it dumped on the pavement really breaks my heart.

I was reminded of this song by the Lemonheads about feeling anguish over seemingly banal, inanimate objects.

The new couch arrives tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes. But I’ll always love the old couch.

No One Turns Off The Cars

One could crassly suggest that The Cars figured out the formula. Somehow, their quintessential brand of undeniably catchy New Wave slotted in perfectly alongside both the warhorses of rock radio like Foreigner, The Eagles and Fleetwood Mac as it did alongside fellow members of the new class like Joe Jackson, The Go-Go’s and The Clash. They boasted both a quirky, robotic sheen and enough burly rock chops (largely thanks to undersung guitarist Elliott Easton) to comfortably bridge the gap between the otherwise mutually antagonistic camps. Outfitted with the afore-cited Easton’s fleet-fingered guitar solos, the propulsive drive of drummer Dave Robinson – ex of proto-punk stalwarts, The Modern Lovers, the signature synthesizers of picture-perfect keyboard nerd Greg Hawkes, the sonorous voice of silver-blonde bassist/heartthrob Benjamin Orr and the distinctive vocals of founder/guitarist Ric Ocasek -- himself a storky sort of New Wave hybrid of Mr. Spock and Don Knotts -– the Cars were quite a package. But it wasn’t image or clever marketing that earned the band its place in the rock firmament --- it was their songs, pure and simple.

I’m sure one contrarian or another will beg to differ, but I’m hard pressed to remember anyone ever saying “man, I fuckin’ hate the Cars.” An inescapable staple of both radio and video, the music of The Cars was almost definitively the soundtrack of your youth, if you are now of a certain age. You don’t need to own all -- or any -- of The Cars’ seven studio albums to immediately recognize and be able to sing along with virtually all of their singles. Seamlessly produced with the same slickness their comparatively stodgy and hirsute (yet equally brilliant) fellow Massholes in Boston were chided for, Cars songs popped, thumped, buzzed, whirred, chimed and rocked in all the right places, alternately led by either Orr’s comely croon or Ocasek’s hiccupy yelp and anchored by choruses sung by what sounded like whole battalions of dudes in skinny ties and checkerboard trousers. You never heard a Cars song –- from the jittery “Don’tcha Stop” through to the expansive “Drive” --- that sounded unfinished. They were expertly crafted, road-tested (stupid pun alert) and guaranteed to deliver. No one scrambled to turn off the Cars. Leo Sayer? Kim Carnes? DeBarge? Hell yes, but never The Cars.

While I’d immediately dug “Just What I Needed” upon first hearing it on WPLJ (sandwiched between tracks by Jethro Tull and Styx) and was rendered a bug-eyed mute by their turn scoring a very particular scene in “Fast Times At Ridgemont High” with their iconic “Moving in Stereo” (you KNOW the scene I’m talking about), I bought my first Cars album on the strength of the jarring transition from the suitably nervous, twitchy “Shoo Be Doo” into the cinematic futurescape of the title track to their second LP, Candy-O. I still play it today, and still get the chills.

Maybe they didn’t write anthems. Perhaps they didn’t question authority. They assuredly didn’t shake the foundations of the establishment. That just wasn’t their scene.

But make no mistake -– The Cars were absolutely fucking brilliant.

Rest in peace, Benjamin Orr & Ric Ocasek.

Stupid Musical Opinions I Have Held

My great friend & fellow insufferable music geek Steve Holtje initiated this idea on Facebook last week, and it was sort of the logical progression from this post of last year, so here goes.

As I said in that post, while I no longer really believe in the concept of “guilty pleasures” (as an almost-52 year old, I think life is far too short to worry about what other people might think of my listening habits), there are still certain records and artists I’m quite surprised I devoted so many hours listening to. By the same token, as I think back, I cannot say I really feel any regret about digging certain music. I mean, with the benefit of hindsight, I can look back at specific records I purchased like Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge by the deeply stupid Canadian metal band Helix and/or maybe See You in Hell by the deeply stupid British metal band Grim Reaper and think I really ought to have known better, but hey … I was young, impressionable and deeply stupid myself, at the time.

So, while I don’t lament thinking, at one point or another, that certain music was worth my time (let alone my money), there were certainly moments wherein I harbored significantly misinformed opinions about particular artists. Here are some of those.

Stupid Musical Opinions I Have Held

1. Tom Waits' voice is unlistenable

For a long while, I found Tom Waits’ voice impenetrably cloying and affected. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could voluntarily subject their ears to his gruff, labored delivery, regardless of what he was wheezily crooning about.

Waits' brilliance, meanwhile, was forcibly imposed upon me by repeated airings of Swordfishtrombones and, more effectively, Frank’s Wild Years via my friend Rob D. From that latter record, I particularly warmed, somewhat ironically, to the track, "Cold, Gold Ground.”

But the song that really changed my tune on Waits was "Philippino Box Spring Hog” by way of my comrade, Tod Ashley. About a decade and a half ago, I used to work two overnight shifts a week at the TIME Magazine news desk in midtown. Tod, meanwhile, was a chronic insomniac routinely up past everyone’s bed time at his then-home down in TriBeca. In the small hours when newly broken news didn’t need attending to, I would instant-message songs back and forth with Tod. We would try to change each others’ opinions about certain sacred cows and unsung gems. One late evening, while I was unable to convince him of the brilliance of “Her Head’s Revolving” by paisley underground stalwarts, The Three O’Clock, his submission of “Philippino Box Spring Hog” from Tom’s Mule Variations album practically blew a new part in my hair. I was duly schooled, and it was all over, after that.

2. Steely Dan were just noodly jazzbos who made music for fern-bar-loitering divorcees

I don’t really know why I took such an immediate disliking to Steely Dan in my younger years, but I suppose they just struck me as so pretentious and sophisticated in a manner most of my favorite bands weren't. They were yawnsomely adult. Their album covers seemed arty and opaque (although, in retrospect, the sleeve for The Royal Scam does seem kinda metal). Their songs were about complex scenarios and filled with nuance, finesse and accomplished filigree. To my mind, Steely Dan just didn’t rock, so I made a series of exceptionally lazy assumptions about them.

Of course, Steely Dan were so much more than the soppy yacht rockers I myopically demeaned them as. While certainly jazzy with musical chops for miles, they were also arch, wry, sardonic, bitter as the punkest of the punks and very funny. They also wrote some perfectly flawless tunes along the way.

I didn’t have an epiphany with Steely Dan. I think I just wised up one day, and still feel stupid for ever selling them so short.

3. Patti Smith is only worthy of contempt

I kind of already covered this sore topic on this blog here way back when, but to summarize…

As emphatically stated here and then earnestly recanted here, my relationship to the music, legend and lore of Patti Smith has always been a troubled one. In much the same way I conjured several dim preconceptions about Steely Dan, I leaped early on with similarly myopic aplomb to the impression that Patti Smith was nothing but a pretentious opportunist whose music owed more to the hoary melodrama of Meat Loaf than to the distilled, cut-the-crap vitality of Punk Rock. I could not fathom equating her mannered, laborious incantations with the incendiary songs of the Ramones or the Dead Boys. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see it. I didn’t get it. So I judged and dismissed accordingly.

As mentioned in those posts, I took my indifference about her music to a more vitriolic level when I penned a probably-too-zealous chapter in a friend’s “humorous” book about toppling sacred cows. From that period on, I went from a passive non-fan to an active detractor. That was unfortunate for anyone within listening proximity of my big, stupid mouth.

For me, the wake-up call came via my reluctant reading of Smith’s justly celebrated 2010 memoir, “Just Kids,” which recounted her early years in New York alongside her muse and partner, Robert Mapplethorpe. While Smith’s prose didn’t necessarily change my appreciation for her music, it did completely decimate several presumptions I’d been harboring about her backstory and how she conducted herself. Suffice to say, she was not quite the shrill, avaricious starfucker I might have made her out to be. I continue to feel like a dopey heel about that.

That said, while I own a couple of Patti Smith albums, I still don’t really listen to them very often.

Okay, those are mine — WHAT ARE YOURS?

Goodnight, Daniel Johnston

I’m a little late to the table with this, but gimme a break …. it’s been a busy week.

I remember reading about Daniel Johnston way before ever hearing his music, but got my first taste via a compilation video called Mouthful of Sweat, which I bought for its inclusion of angry noise-rock bands like Missing Foundation, Prong and Cop Shoot Cop. Daniel's contributions ("Funeral Home," "I Did Acid with Caroline" and "Don't Play Cards with Satan") were *nothing* like the feral, aggressive music I bought the video for, but the songs were just as powerful, albeit in an entirely different way.

At once childlike, surreal and intimately heartfelt, Daniel's music hinted at a much more complicated story than the descriptor "Lo-fi indie songwriter" could ever begin to encapsulate. I had to write an obit for the man for work this week, which you can find here. Given the nature of my organization’s relationship with its affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers, it wasn’t really prudent to get into the specifics of Johnston’s otherwise largely acknowledged mental travails, although those aspects of his personal and creative life are essentially an inexorable part of his story. The man himself was entirely open about his struggles in that capacity.

That particular aspect of Daniel Johnston — his role as a pivotal figure in so-called “outsider” music (i.e. naive, self-taught) has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. There seems to be a sort of voyeuristic quality and not-so-vague exploitative element to celebrating the more eccentric parts of his art and music, which seems sort of brazenly inappropriate considering that the issues he was grappling with were very real. By the same token, much of the greatest art, music and literature throughout the ages has been produced by similarly troubled individuals. To not celebrate Johnston’s entirely distinctive and prolific work is to deny his life’s greatest endeavor.

When I think of Daniel Johston’s music, meanwhile, I am instantly transported back to a specific era of popular culture. I am reminded of discovering bands like Galaxie 500, King Missile, The Clean and Bongwater, hanging out in long-since vanished live-music venues like Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the Knitting Factory in on East Houston Street and the Thread Waxing Space on Broadway. His music played regularly in similarly long-shuttered esoteric record stores like Pier Platters in Hoboken, Rocks In Your Head in SoHo and Downtown Music Gallery. His songs evoked a specific, intangible sensibility that really did influence and inform a whole legion of artists more inclined to more purely expressing themselves rather than simply catering to trends or shifting units.

May he finally find peace.

We Are Doomed as a Species

Still zonked from the big work event that took me to Nashville and back earlier this week, I walked home from work in the warm, late afternoon, yesterday, up through TriBeCa and into SoHo.

Strolling north on Mercer Street, I was once again reminded of how much that neighborhood has changed. Where it was once a comparatively whisper-quiet backwater of modest, independent businesses and galleries, the strip in question is now a hotbed of retail activity, playing host to any number of high-end “streetwear” outlets that attract gaggles of teenaged hip-hoppers in expensive sneakers. The third-floor gallery I used to work in at 55 Mercer is long gone, its buidling converted into a pricey condominium a few years back.

As I proceeded further, I spied a roiling, animated crowd gathered just beyond the intersection of Prince Street. There was a horde of gawkers spilling over the sidewalk and into the street in front of the Mercer Hotel, gazing up at the hotel, many with smartphones extended above their heads in the hopes of capturing some fleeting image. It was not quite Beatlemaniacal pandemonium, but obviously someone of note was about.

I asked someone standing with earnest intent on the far corner what all the fuss was about.

Apparently, one of the Kardashian sisters was rumored to be inside.

Back from Nashville

Hey there, all. Well, as mentioned back on this post, I did indeed go to Nashville to see the fruition of a certain annual work event. While the walk-up to this week was fraught and stressful, the event itself went off more or less without a hitch, apart from a few eleventh-hour changes. But eleventh-hour changes are kind of to be expected, in these scenarios.

I’d share the details here, but they’re far from scintiliating. You’re welcome.

In any case, I managed to finish up proceedings in time to catch a couple of beers with my old comrade and fellow insufferable music geek Erik (you may rememberr him being invoked in this post), before I had to decamp to Nashville’s airport to catch my return flight to New York – a flight that was pushed back at least four times. This said, the booze & beer flows more readily, giddily and unrepentantly in Nashville’s airport to the extent that it makes a Saturday night in the East Village seem like an Amish prayer circle. This is not a complaint, and I took full advantage of same.

Being half in the bag wasn’t such a bad idea as, while I’m not sure if you’ve had the pleasure, flying on the anniversary of September 11th is still somewhat of a nervy prospect, even eighteen years later.

Speaking of September 11th, it’s hard to write anything about the events of that day without lapsing into predictability, hyperbole and cliché. The subject became a political football before the smoke had even cleared.

Eighteen years later, it’s proven to be the most transformative/disruptive historical event of our collective lifetime. What’s so surreal about that is that it’s become just that already — a part of history, despite the fact that those who witnessed it firsthand invariably remember the details of the day as if it happened earlier this week. I know I do. A whole generation of children has been reared into teen-hood in its wake, but I can still remember what t-shirt I was wearing on the day of.

Towards the end of last night's flight, while I was listening to the suitably eerie strains of “Neverland (full length version)” by ye olde Sisters of Mercy, I happened to glance outside at just the right moment from my window seat to catch the streaming towers of light from the memorial fountains of the World Trade Center reaching well into the dark heavens above my plane. To view this from the air is nigh on indescribable, and the resulting flight over the super-illuminated island of Manhattan was nothing short of breathtaking.

Oh, and actor and Esurance pitchman Dennis Quaid was on my flight, but we did not speak or interact at all.