Flaming Pablum

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I’ve never liked “New York, New York,” or at least Sinatra’s rendition of it. I always associate it with hordes of freezing tourists, pretending to have a good time watching the ball drop in Times Square. Its lyrics are rife with clichés and platitudes that ultimately don’t amount to anything especially substantive about the city, and I hate Sinatra’s mannered crooning of it. I hate the way they dust it off for weddings and sporting events. I find it plodding and ponderous and I never need to hear it again.

But, here it is, scoring a strange little film from 1979 by a gent named Arnold Baskin.

Providing stark visual contrast to the tune’s lushly over-rhapsodized descriptions of living the high life in the Big Apple, most of Baskin’s film concentrates on footage of unsuspecting sunbathers in Central Park and senior citizens picking their noses on Broadway benches on the Upper West Side, all captured on a typically unrelentingly hot and sunny summer day in New York.

I can’t speak for the filmmaker’s intentions, but it seems like a rather heavy-handed rebuke of Sinatra’s vainglorious victory lap of an ode to New York.

This all said, it’s still kind of a telling slice of what the city looked like back then.

See what you think.

Sticking To It

This is from a few years back, already, but it speaks to my fascination with street-art/graffiti/sticker culture. Personally speaking, I think it’s kind of offsides for this guy to be pulling down people’s stickers (i.e. defeating the purpose of people putting them up in the first place), but he’s not the first guy to dismantle other people’s street art (or vandalism, depending on your perception/sensibility).

Anyway, enjoy.

Six Minutes on St. Marks Place

©RichAllen

I’ve spoken about photographer Rich Allen a couple of times here (notably here and here). In any case, he’s been sharing his remarkable images of the East Village and Lower East Side from previous decades for a while now. Just recently (i.e. yesterday), he uploaded a great video. It’s an amazing step back in time.

As I mentioned in my last post, so much of the topography of downtown Manhattan has changed in the past couple of decades that many of these locations might seem tough to recognize.

In any case, it's regrettably unembeddable, so please go here to check it out. 

 

Strange Days Indeed

This past weekend, my son Oliver and I found ourselves watching one of my favorite movies of all time, that being “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” this being the original from 1974, not that Travolta bullshit from 2009.

Not only is the 1974 version a gripping, well-written and compellingly executed thriller, it’s also a quintessential New York movie. Being that large swathes of the film take place in the enrivons between Union Square and East 28th Street (just a stone’s throw from where Oliver has been going to school for the past decade), it is rife with visual depictions of spots that he and I encounter every day. Periodically throughout the movie, I’d blurt out location-signifiers like “look, there’s that corner where the Pret A Manger is today!” or “See, that’s Union Square, directly across from where Barnes & Noble is now!” or “That cop car is on Astor Place!” The specific sightings are all correct, but in many instances, given how much the topography of the city has changed since 1974, many of the locations were hard to recognize and reconcile.

In any case, this morning, I had to quickly run up to a spot in so-called “Midtown East.” After dropping off what I had to drop off, I started to head back downtown, hanging a quick right on East 36th between Second and Third Avenues. For rock geeks of a certain age and sensibility, this strip has resonance, as it’s the home of Sniffen Court, a bespoke little strip of choice real estate that features a fetching little mews of a type usually found in London.

Presumably preserved as a historic landmark and spared the rampant overdevelopment evident around the rest of the city, Sniffen Court is well known to the afore-cited rock fans because it’s the cover location of the second studio LP by The Doors, that being Strange Days. The suitably surreal sleeve to that 1967 album featured a slew of circus performers doing their thing in the middle of stately Sniffen Court. Personally speaking, while ostensibly a whimsical scene, I’ve always found something about the photograph somewhat sinister. Here it is now. Click on it to enlarge.

I covered both Sniffen Court and my feelings about the Doors back on this post, and don’t have much more to add to that, but as I walked by Sniffen Court this morning, I was relieved to see it looking, for all intents and purposes, more or less completely unchanged from the way it looked in 1967. It helps that the morning was similarly grey.

Here were the Doors in another part of the city … specifically Battery Park.

 

Pie in The Face

Jonathan Pie erupts on the events of this week. Brilliant and ENTIRELY spot-on.

Joking Apart

At the risk of belaboring the obvious, these are divisive times. Everyone seems a bit on edge and easily riled. I got into a little exchange on Facebook that typifies this condition and while it was ostensibly just a discussion about music, there were bigger issues at play.

A certain music writer — whose stuff I actually quite enjoy — posted the following quip: 

“I heard someone described as ‘the kind of guy who thinks Killing Joke is an important band,’ and days later, I’m still laughing about it.”

Now, I thought this was a bit offsides, so called him on it, suggesting that, as the former editor of a music mag that used to regularly put folks like Tila Tequila and Avril Lavigne on its cover, maybe he’s not really qualified to quantify a band’s importance.

He didn’t take that well, earning me an “oh fuck off,” followed in short order by the epithet “asshole.” It should be noted that his initial comment wasn’t really a statement about Killing Joke, but more about the type of individual that thinks highly of Killing Joke, and from as far as I can tell, the real asshole is the one who laughs at people whose tastes differ from his own.

Anyway, he could evidently dish it out, but couldn't take it. He unfriended me, deleted my comments and posted his one-sided take. But being that we share several friends in common, I provided that other side of the story on my feed.

This morning, he’d posted his own follow up (apparently, I touched a nerve), but was still missing the point. While I’ll be the first person to cop to my own ridiculousness for being a frothy-mouthed Killing Joke fan, this wasn’t really about that.

His comment wasn't an attack on the band – quite assuredly, Killing Joke don’t need me to defend them -- it was an attack on people who rate and/or value that band. The band is almost incidental. Their name certainly brought me to the conversation, but we could have just as easily been talking about The Buggles or Fleetwood Mac or Insane Clown Posse.

The bottom line is this: If you laugh at and belittle a group who don't share your particular tastes/opinions/sensibilities, you should be totally prepared to have said group laugh back at you. I did that, and he got all red-faced and took his ball and went home.

If you can’t take a joke, maybe think twice before you make a joke.

"No Trump, No KKK, No Fascist USA"

Well, if you didn’t like the last post, you’re sure to hate this one.

Above is a photograph of MDC playing in Central Park in 1982, as part of the Rock Against Racism shows (which I spoke about here and here). By any standard, it’s a remarkable photograph, but being that I’m also a huge fan of MDC’s first album, I thought I’d share it here, too. Here’s what the subject of this photo, vocalist Dave Dictor, had to say about it:

NYC Rock Against Racism 1982 Central Park... photo by Karen O’Sullivan. Back then, I was so mad at what I saw happening in the world. Now I’m still crazy mad but just so very sick to my stomach as well. Optimism is drained out of us. I love a lot of you warm folks but just tired of the human family’s greed, cruelty and arrogance. Now is the time sleep a little less and dream a little more. And fight for what is right.

This is MDC.

Edel Rodriguez

As I used to be keen to laboriously point out, I was lucky enough to work for TIME Magazine for twelve years, an experience that introduced me to more great minds than I can quantify and taught me more than any school I might’ve otherwise attended. The friendships I made there and the bonds I share with former colleagues still feel practically familial, and I am genuinely blessed to have worked alongside them.

There was one gent who worked in our art department, meanwhile, who I wish I’d gotten to know better. I worked in the adjoining space of the News Desk, which was sort of the nerve center of the operation, and liaison between the magazine’s editorial staff and its network of reporters, correspondents and bureaus in the field around the world. Edel Rodriguez was a quiet, affable guy, and we were certainly friendly, but we never really sat down and spoke at any great length or exchanged ideas. He mostly kept to himself, which was, of course, totally fine. But in the wake of all that’s transpired since I left the magazine at the end of 2005, I truly wish I’d gotten to know him better.

While I split TIME and went onto MTV News Online (and then various other outlets), Edel flourished in his role as an art director at the magazine, his incendiary, politically charged illustrations gradually starting to routinely grace covers of the magazine. His star rose swiftly. 

In more recent years, his artistic commentary on the state of the nation and, more specifically, the Trump Administration has taken on a genuinely iconic quality. Edel’s depictions of Trump’s ever-screaming, orange face has become synonymous with the global resistance to this unfortunate iteration of American government. Edel’s work has been published in the highest echelons of journalism, regularly blazing off the covers of The New Yorker, The New York Times, Newsweek, Rolling Stone, Fortune, Der Spiegel and countless others, earning him several awards. You’ve seen his work, whether you know his name or not.

In any case, you can probably understand now why I wished I’d gotten to know him better. I’ve been a regular follower and supporter of his work ever since. Last night, in the wake of Trump’s frankly ridiculous State of the Union speech, Nancy Pelosi seized a particular moment that caught the world’s attention, and Edel turned it around at once. Once again, I salute him.

Refuse and resist.

February

It may be the shortest month, but I friggin’ hate February.

Work is incredibly busy, as projects put off until “after the holiday” come roaring back to life, needing one’s full attention.

Having abjectly failed – again – at Dry January, I’m endeavoring to undertake a ….er… Fun-Free February, but even that was stymied, this past weekend, by the one-two punch of news of Trump’s impending acquital by the Senate and the untimely death of Andy Gill of Gang of Four, one of my all-time heroes. You’ll note the tell-tale can of Asahi above. We’ll see how the rest of February goes.

In any case, with all this and more going on, please stand by, for a little bit, for more ideally impactful posts.

Just one more anecdote, though, about Andy Gill and Gang of Four…

The first time I heard Gang of Four was via my late, beloved grade-school friend Pogo (previously mentioned here …. and no, not his actual name). I was still immersed in The Ramones and the `Pistols, when he forcibly made me catch up to current proceedings with a high-octane airing of the 12" of "To Hell with Poverty," with the impossibly sludgy funk of "Capital (It Fails Us Now)" on the flip side, both of which rightly harnessed my immediate attention. Fate fleetingly smiled when I came upon the Another Day, Another Dollar EP, which appended said one-two punch along with some genuinely incendiary live tracks. 

I posted "What We All Want" the other day, so here's the follow-up ... an amphetamine-fueled sprint through "Cheeseburger" wherein tragically deceased guitarist Andy Gill's instrument screams like a wrathful pterodactyl. Listen to the way Gill – or was it bassist Dave Allen? -- barks the very word "Cheeseburger" in response to vocalist Jon King at exactly 1:00 into proceedings.

Brilliance. Rest In Peace, Andy ... and you, too, Pogo. 

Give It to “Parasite”

In lieu of watching the Super Bowl last night – and if you’re wondering why I didn’t watch that, you’re just not paying attention – the wife, daughter and myself decided to watch “Parasite” instead, having only learned of it via the Golden Globes last month. Let me tell you, it’s a mindblower.

At the risk of lapsing into hyperbole, the film is a towering achievement. A richly written, unique and lovingly shot movie rife with more nuance, plot-twist, humor and suspence than I’ve witnessed in a single film in an eternity, “Parasite” is an incredibly rewarding experience.

By and large, I feel about the Oscars pretty much the same way I feel about the Grammy Awards, although I’d concede that the merits and technical execution of a film are probably much easier to quantify than the ineffable qualities of music. That said, most of my favorite films of all time never won an Oscar, and that doesn’t diminish their impact for me in the slightest.

Unlike the hotly contested Grammy Awards, however, the Oscars – while also subject to intense scrutiny, these days, over any number of oversights, accusations and justifiable criticisms – still carry more weight, prestige and gravitas than merely just another industry accolade. I’d suggest an Oscar win means more to a filmmaker than a Grammy win means to a musician, but I’m projecting.

I haven’t seen all the contenders for Best Picture. Hell, I’ve only seen “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” from that class, and “Parasite” is so colossally superior, it’s not even funny. And I fucking LOVED “Once Upon a Time In Hollywood.”

"Parasite" is not just the best film I’ve seen this year, it’s the best film I’ve seen in fucking YEARS!

Get over the fact that it’s got subtitles. You can read. Put on your big-boy pants and watch it. Thank me later.

And give it all the damn Oscars.