Flaming Pablum

21 Questions from Curbed

I have a long history of waffling on New York Magazine, especially more recently, when their online presence -– and especially their pop-culture site, Vulture -- zig-zags wildly from great, in-depth interviews with various movers and shakers to vacuous, rinky-dink pop piffle written by sniveling youngsters who, in the grand scheme of things, really don’t know shit from shinola. Results may vary, but that’s how I feel about it.

In any case, I noticed that their Curbed section (which New York subsumed in 2020) just revived its "21 Questions" column, their most recent edition featuring architect Billie Tsien. I thought the questions themselves were compelling, so despite not being a “creative New Yorker” on par with Ms. Tsien, I thought I’d take a stab at them myself. Here’s how that goes….

Name: Alex

Age: 54

Neighborhood: Greenwich Village

Occupation: Director of Content and Editorial Services in the Corporate Communications department of a performing rights organization.

What’s hanging above your couch? A framed poster of Jamie Reid’s graphic design for “God Save the Queen” by the Sex Pistols. I bought it in the summer of 1986 off the ceiling of Second Coming Records on Sullivan Street (long, long gone). It hung on the walls of my college dorm rooms for my sophomore, junior and senior years, after which it was rolled up and put in a cardboard tube for three decades, only to be exhumed, framed and hung on our living room wall last year.

What’s the first job you had in New York? I had a gig as a runner/gopher (or as I described it on my resume, “apprentice”) for a graphic designer. Basically, it was my job to run painstakingly crafted mock-ups of ads and other promotional materials to various cosmetic agencies around midtown. I’d wait there while executives scrutinized the work (I had to bite my tongue frequently from saying “DO YOU KNOW HOW FUCKING HARD SHE WORKED ON THIS?”) and then run back to the graphic designer’s studio apartment on the Upper East Side.

What color are you always drawn to? Purple.

What work of art or artifact are you most surprised you own? We own a little figure called “The Little Wanderer” by artist Yoshimoto Nara, thus called as she has little wheels and rolls around as if sleepwalking. We bought her as a lark when our little Charlotte was born in 2004 from a long-since-vanished baby shop on Broadway called Little Wang. She has lived in our kids’ room ever since. Upon hearing that Nara’s work has become only more celebrated in recent years, I did a little research. Today, “The Little Wanderer” can fetch up to $4,500 on eBay. Who knew??

Which New Yorker would you want to hang out with? So many of my favorite New Yorkers – Jim Carroll, Anthony Bourdain, Joey Ramone, Pete Hammill, Spalding Grey, etc. – are already dead. I think Laurie Anderson would be kind of interesting to have dinner with.

What’s the last thing you made with your hands? Well, I didn’t make the pumpkin itself, but I carved one last weekend, and was pretty pleased with the results.

Is there one thing you own multiple versions of? There are certain albums like It’s Alive by The Ramones, Funhouse by The Stooges, Spirit of Eden by Talk Talk, Nothing’s Shocking by Jane’s Addiction and several albums by Killing Joke and Cop Shoot Cop that I own on every available format. I also have all of the published editions of “Please Kill Me” by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain.

What New York City museum do you always go back to? This is a toughie, as I genuinely love so many of them. While I frequently cite The Museum of the City of New York as my favorite, I think the one I routinely return to the most is probably the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as it remains just a magnificent place to stroll around and get lost in.

What do you always have next to your computer? At this stage, probably an external disc drive.

Where is the best view of the city? The one from my office.

What building or object do you want to redesign every time you see it? I genuinely loathe all the so-called “supertalls” (fuck you, yimby!), but there’s something particularly noxious about 432 Park Avenue. It was probably the first one of them to go up in Manhattan, and it’s just an artless rod that blocks out the sun and ruins the symetry of the cityscape. I have nothing but ill will for everyone who owns an apartment therein. Knock it the fuck down.

What’s one thing you would change about your field? I would make the calculation and quantification of royalties for artists from streaming platforms significantly fairer.

If you could live anywhere in New York City, where would it be? I genuinely love the neighborhood we live in, so I wouldn’t change that, but a couple more bedrooms would make life significantly simpler.

What would you hoard if it stopped being produced? I don’t know if the paltry amount I’ve already collected could be construed as “hoarding,” but I have three or four 160gb iPod Classics (one still pristinely wrapped) and would not be averse to picking up another, should the right opportunity present itself.

What do you do to get out of a creative rut? Go outside and walk around.

Where was your first NYC apartment and how much was the rent? Well, when I was born, we lived on East 89th Street between Lexington and Park Avenue. I have zero clue how much the rent was.

Where in the city do you go to be alone? If I “vant to be alone” Greta-Garbo-style, I go out for long walks. There are myriad places wherein to find solace and solitude in this teeming metropolis. You just have to know where the quiet streets are.

Worst piece of career advice you’ve ever gotten? “Let them call you,” or words to that effect. Anyone that tells you that playing hard-to-get is the way to land the job you want is fucking wrong. Be assertive. Let them KNOW your level of interest.

What have you given away to someone that you wish you could get back? When I got married and my wife “officially” moved into my apartment on East 12th Street, I put a lot of my stupid shit in storage and farmed off a few items to friends. My friend Rob now has my lovingly framed poster for the Ramones’ Road to Ruin album (featuring art by the great John Holmstrom), as well as a super-rare Cop Shoot Cop/Cows gig at CBGB (albeit NOT my Holy Grail poster). I honestly don’t have the wall space for either of them, anymore, but I do miss that Ramones poster something awful.

What’s your favorite NYC restaurant and regular order? I don’t honestly know that I could single out one, solitary restaurant as my very favorite. It depends on my mood, the company, the day of the week, etc. But for the sake of this post, I’ll pick Elephant & Castle on Greenwich Ave just steps to the south of West 11th Street, and my favorite dish there – although it was worryingly absent the last time I was there was the brunch favorite of poached eggs with pureed spinach on potato pancakes. Sheer joy on a plate.

What do you want your obit headline to be? “He’d have agreed with you, if you were right.”

“What Song Are You Listening To?”

There’s actually a couple of guys who do this, and maybe you’ve seen these videos in your own travels around YouTube, but the basic premise is someone walking around the streets asking people sporting ear pods or headphones what song they are listening to. I suppose it’s sort of an interesting experiment. This morning, I spotted this one below, shot last month in and around my own neighborhood of Greenwich Village and Washinton Square Park. Take a look.

At first watch, I found this to not only be mind-numbingly repetitve (the constant mantra of the question gets real old, real fast) but also, on a personal level, somewhat profoundly depressing, given that so many people on my own home turf seem to be listening to abjectly shitty music. I mean, maybe apart from the one guy who cites “Orion” by Metallica, almost every individual here cites what I would consider abysmal piffle. Apparently, rock really is dead, or at least for the NYU kids.

But beyond my own boorishly snobby tastes and arrogant opinions, the crucial flaw in this format is the utter lack of any semblance of fruition. There is no real follow-up, no judgement, no drama and no consequence. The voice behind the camera simply thanks his accostees for their time and, occasionally, their "good taste" (as if). I think it would be way more rewarding if this was handled in a manner comparable to Billy Eichner’s “Billy on The Street,” wherein bystanders are either half-heartedly rewarded for their participation with a single dollar bill or subjected to exasperated and venomously antagonistic retorts from Eichner. That would totally work better. “What? You’re listening to DRAKE? You’re obviously an asshole!” “You’re voluntarily listening to Bad Bunny?? REALLY? Even with so many better options open to you?”

Now THAT I would watch.

Back to The Bowery: Minor Threat at CBGB, 1982

I’ve spun this yarn a bajillion times here, but I used to be next-door neighbors with noted photographer Glen E. Friedman. In case you’re unfamiliar with him, I last described him on this post as "the incredibly prescient and endearingly outspoken photographer that documented the crucial gestation period of skateboarding culture (seek out "Dogtown & Z-Boys" if you're unfamiliar with same) and some of the most iconic photographs of the then-still-percolating eras of hardcore punk and Hip-Hop. You've doubtlessly seen his handiwork on album covers by Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Slayer, Minor Threat, LL Cool J, Ice-T, Suicidal Tendencies and countless others.” He’s also just a super cool, funny and thoughtful guy and a fellow New York City dad.

These days, while we don’t live down the hall from each other any more, we are still both in the same neighborhood, and do periodically run into each other and catch-up. Given our similar interests, Glen’s usually got something compelling to report. I ran into him today on my way back from running a couple of stupid errands, and true to form, he had coolness to share.

Glen recently stumbled on some video of a Minor Threat show at CBGB in 1982. He took some amazing photographs at that show — some of them now legitimately iconic images of the band. But the video acts as a striking testament to Glen’s skills as a photographer, as it demonstrates the complete chaos of an early `80s hardcore show. It's frankly astonishing that he was able to frame such distinct, singular, isolated moments during the complete mayhem that was doubtlessly swirling around his lens. Here’s what Glen had to say…

I made photos of Minor Threat during this show. It’s total bedlam… can’t believe I did.

The quality of the video is pretty horrible, but still worth checking out. I never saw it before today. It’s incredible how it brings my mind and body feeling right back to the intensity of the moment.

Check out the video below, and Glen was nice enough to allow me to share a couple of his pictures from that day underneath.

As the saying goes, THIS is hardcore!

Some of Glen's work...

Rite at The Ritz: Julian Cope on East 11th Street in 1987

Earlier this week was Julian Cope’s 64th birthday, a sort of unbelievable number for such an ageless figure. I mean, sure, in more recent years, Julian has seemingly gone well out of his way to hide his fabled physiognomy behind a beard worth of Odin, but his mind and his muse seem as hyper-youthful as ever.

I last invoked him here and here, but he’s always been a big favorite of mine, even given his more indulgent forays into music that seems light years away from the stuff that first drew me to him (check out his sprawling discography, if you don’t believe me). While I’m personally partial to his Peggy Suicide phase from the early `90s, which found him balancing his growingly adventurous penchant for far-out experimentation with his preternatural gift for absolutely perfect pop, I was indeed a big fan of his early solo records like Fried and Saint Julian, which were indeed a bit more comparatively polished.

The excellent blog Dangerous Minds already did a magisterial post about this video — an MTV-recording of Julian’s show at the Ritz on East 11th Street in 1987 -- I figured it was worth re-surfacing with my own spin on it. Here’s the great man running through a set of his then strongest material, not to mention flailing about on his signature bendy mic stand. It’s great stuff, especially his cover of "Non-Alignment Pact" by Pere Ubu. 

I only got to see Julian Cope perform twice — once at the Marquee on way West 21st street (gone) on the tour for Peggy Suicide and then again, a few years later, at the tiny Westbesh Theatre in the West Village (since bricked up, I believe) as a one-man show when he was promoting his album 20 Mothers. He’s still maniacally active, but I wouldn’t hold my breath for another Stateside live appearance.

Even if you’re not versed in the man’s stately oeuvre, it’s a nice taste of what a show at the Ritz was like. Enjoy….

Back Again to Mondo Kim's

Mondo Kim’s on St. Marks Place was a multi-tiered funhouse of geekily esoteric music and cinema that was truly a great place for those inclined towards that sort of stuff (i.e. me and my friends). But, of course, it was not to last. It had to leave that storied space in 2009 and relocate over to smaller plot over on First Avenue, where it lasted for another five years or so. When it was announced that the St. Marks iteration was closing, I wrote a couple of misty posts about it. Since it’s departure, that massive space has become a boozy arcade, if memory serves, but I’ve never stepped inside it as such, nor do I have plans to. 

Photographers James and Karla Murray posted the below shot from 2001 on Facebook today, and it sent a jolt of nostalgic reverie right through me. I so miss this place. Click on it to enlarge. 

Check out more of their work here.

Lost in OldNewYorkLandia

Tumblr is a platform I don’t find myself using, too often (although I do still maintain my own space there, that being Get Back to Work). That said, there are a few specific Tumblr users who cotinue to raise the bar. One of my very favorites is OldNewYorkLandia, which is an astonishing well curated aggregation of archival images from eons past, mostly all responsibly credited. The one below is one such image, taken by Leonard Freed in 1954 or 1955. This is, of course, Jersey Street in what was then technically known as Little Italy but is now perceived more as just part of SoHo. Indie cinema heads might recognize it from the opening scene of Jim Jarmusch’s “Permanent Vacation” or from the video for “Down By Law” by Madball.

For more amazing vintage New York City pics, definitely check out OldNewYorkLandia, but be warned … it’s easy to get sucked in and spend hours scrolling.

Welcome Back to The Pleasuredome

Last night was my 36th high school reunion. Technically, the proper milestone would have been *last* year (35th, as we all love tidy increments of five), but because of COVID, that was reduced, last year, to a chaotic zoom call. But probably because COVID is still with us (thanks to the willfully ignorant and vax-reluctant), this 36th wasn’t quite as robustly attended as it might’ve otherwise been. Still, as my son now goes to the same school (and was giving tours to crotchety alumni), I felt obligated to go. Plus, y’know … open bar. Who am I to turn my nose up at that?

In any case, given my heartily cultivated neuroses, I, of course, arrived bang on time. This is a long-standing problem. Throughout my teens and twenties, I used to arrive at parties at the specified times, only to hear the sound of hairdryers still blowing behind front doors, prompting the necessity to walk around the block three or four times before making a more well-timed, fashionably tardy entrance. Not wanting to (still) be that guy, I decided to take a leisurely stroll around the surrounding environs before making the scene, so to speak. To score said stroll, I selected an album that was period-specific to my high school years, that being Welcome To The Pleasuredome by ye olde Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

While ambling south down Fifth Avenue, beneath the magisterial edifice of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I realized I probably hadn’t listened to this record in any real capacity in decades. Richly over-the-top and somewhat ridiculously overproduced (thanks, I believe, to former Buggle/Yes knob-twiddler Trevor Horn) Welcome To The Pleasuredome is a sumptuous and suitably audacious affair, but still kinda completely rocks (that bass!) Heard through the prism of 2021, where songs like “WAP” and “Pu$$y Fairy” win prestigious industry accolades, “Relax” *still* manages to sound uproariously un-nuanced and strenuously inappropriate in its espousal of indiscriminate ejaculation. “Two Tribes” hasn’t aged quite so well, and suffers from a bit of frowny heavy-handedness, considering the libidinous reverie of the rest of the album. But it still has that bass to recommend it, unlike “The Power of Love,” which remains po-faced and ponderous. Who decided to put an earnest Christmas carol on an album otherwise preoccupied with carnal gratification? There are also the covers — The Temptations’ “War” and a cheeky swish through Springsteen’s “Born to Run” — but neither threaten the main attractions here.

For me, though, the real revelation was the title track, a sprawling, thirteen plus minute suite, veering from the wide-screen audio depiction of a verdant garden of abundance into a driving, bass-driven odyssey ripe with lush and surprising sounds and instrumentation -- washes of space-age synthesizers, periodic bursts of clangy guitars, Morricone-cribbed “HOO HAH” chants and even a chugging harmonica subtly buried in the mix. The lyrics may not be the band’s finest work (“there goes a supernova … what a pushover!”), but Frankie never claimed to be profound.

As a single piece of music, the suite of “Welcome to the Pleasuredome” is practically as expansive and cinematic as latter-era Pink Floyd, albeit the horniest and gayest Pink Floyd you could ever hope to hear. That aspect really cannot be overstated, though. I would have been a high school junior upon first hearing the whole Welcome to the Pleasuredome album and otherwise slavishly devoted to laughably hyper-masculine punk, hardcore and heavy metal records. While just shy of any brazen bluntness (Holly Johnson’s zealous pronunciation of the present-tense verb/descriptor, “ERECT” while quoting Coleridge notwithstanding), Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s debut opus was still such a proudly in-your-face celebration of myriad facets of human sexuality. As a result, it felt a thousand times more taboo and dangerous than anything Suicidal Tendencies or Iron Maiden could ever hope to offer.

Even as the pimply and introverted geek that I was, I indeed knew what this album was all about. Much like “Love My Way” by the Psychedelic Furs, it duly fired my imagination about the mysterious realms of intimate physical interaction (a realm I would still be some years away from attaining, not for any lack of trying). It didn’t matter to me that these songs were almost certainly about gay sex — they were about sex, and performed in a manner that addressed the subject in a comparatively more welcoming, healthier and more relatable way than as handled on, say, Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue or Fair Warning by Van Halen, where sexual scenarios were invariably more predatory than celebratory. These songs, like the afore-cited “Love My Way” before them, scored many a fantasy of dancefloor and boudoir escapades with various ladies from my high school who shall remain forever nameless. While those ornate dreams were ultimately never realized, they still vividly exist in three-dimensional technicolor within the grooves of Welcome to The Pleasuredome.

How is this record regarded today? As far as I know, it hasn’t been feted with any critical reappraisal. No one’s penned a 331/3 edition about it (like Annie Zaleski’s excellent recent one on Rio by Duran Duran). ls it perceived as too empty, arch, affected or topically irresponsible? Is it marred by its proudly lavish production? I don’t quite understand it

As the title track came to its preposterous signature climax with Holly Johnson’s campy cackle roaring through my headphones, I glanced at my watch. It was time. I stepped inside my former high school with the impossibly bacchanalian strains of Welcome to the Pleasuredome still ringing in my ears to re-join the ranks of my now middle-aged classmates to reconvene and reminisce.

The Holy Grail of "Dumb Rock Shit": That Cop Shoot Cop at CBGB Gig Poster

Just re-surfacing this for no real reason other than a colleague just asked me what I got for my birthday. I told her and she was surprised that there were no items of, as she called it, “dumb rock shit” (as she know that’s the type of stuff I like). I told her, though, that buying “dumb rock shit” presents for me is a perilous endeavor, being that, by and large, nobody really knows what I’m looking for. I mean, yeah, certain key friends of mine might know, but my wife and kids aren’t going to know some weird bit of arcane ephemera from one band or long-lost bootleg recording of another. They wouldn’t even begin to know where to track that kind of thing down. Nor should they, really.

More to the point, at this late stage of the proceedings, if anything, I should be getting rid of my stupid stuff and not accumulating more of it. I did make certain efforts towards that end, recently. I parted with a lovely-albeit-long-neglected Iron Maiden box set, giving it to a friend of mine who’ll doubtlessly appreciate it more than me. I mean, yeah, I still love Iron Maiden, but I hadn’t touched the thing in about twenty years. It’s been largely locked up in my front hall closet, untouched and unplayed. The friend I gave it to just got a fresh Iron Maiden tattoo on his friggin’ back, so he is clearly more deserving of it than I. I’d do well to continue parting with such items.

In any case, though, I conceded to my workmate that there is still one item I’m obsessed with finding. Here’s that backstory (last invoked on this post)…

As first mentioned in this ancient entry, I first became aware of New York City’s own Cop Shoot Cop back at the dawn of the 90’s. I’d initially been assigned to interview the then-notorious ensemble by a free weekly called New York Perspectives (long dead). Contrary to their fearsome reputation, I found the guys in the band to be thoughtful, grounded and funny individuals, and I became a swift and ardent fan of theirs, catching their shows at a variety of since-closed divey music venues. This being back during a more fertile age for music, the East Village and the Lower East Side in general were awash in gig flyers (much like the ones I collected from the Rock Hotel).

Anyway, around the release of their second album, White Noise, Cop Shoot Cop played a gig at CBGB. The band was renowned for their eye-catching, provocative gig posters — often utilizing bits of striking, inflammatory imagery, and the poster for this particular show was no different. I remember a tattered copy of it being pasted up on a disused notice board outside the forbidding edifice of that since-condemned public school on East 4th between First Avenue and Avenue A. The art utilized a bit of an Anime/Manga cartoon of a screaming, angry face behind bars, with COP SHOOT COP and CBGB displayed in a bold, angular font. It was quite a striking bit of art, and I coveted it.

The trouble was, they were gone almost overnight, either ripped down or covered up by other posters. That shredded one on East 4th Street was impossible to prize (and actually stayed up for several years before the notice board itself was dismantled for whatever reason).

I became friends with the guys in Cop Shoot Cop, and former vocalist/bassist Tod [A] even gave me an armful of old posters and flyers of theirs at one point, but this one was not among them, frustratingly.

In the ensuing years, that single Cop Shoot Cop poster became something of a holy grail for me, but I simply never saw it again. Tod [A] didn’t even remember it (and he did most if not all of the poster designs).

Maybe I’d dreamt it??

But then, as I’m watching “Sound and Chaos: The Story of BC Studio,” there comes a discussion of a particular happening at the studio wherein Cop Shoot Cop and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion partook in some sort of jam session. In a bit of archival footage from the event, they show a snippet of an interview with Spencer, and what’s on the wall behind the couch they’re sitting on?? THAT GODDAMN POSTER!!

The jam session in question (filmed in Martin Bisi's Brooklyn studio on the Gowanus) was later released as its own DVD entitled The New York Post-Punk/Noise Series Volume 1. Regular readers might remember me alluding to same in last summer's piece about annoying one's neighbors with loud music. In any case, that DVD even features the members of the band being interviewed underneath same. The shot above is actually members of the Blues Explosion and the program's host, not any of the C$C boys. 

Anyway, that really blew a new part in my hair. If you have a copy of this poster — get in touch, `COS I WANT IT AND WILL PAY HANDSOMELY FOR IT! 

Shots in the Dark

Renowned photographer Godlis, who I've mentioned here a few times before, is part of a this great new, inventive documentary. Here's the official description:

A 37TH DEGREE ORIGINAL FILM
Between 1976 and 1980, young Manhattan photographer David Godlis documented the nightly goings-on at the Bowery’s legendary CBGB, “the undisputed birthplace of punk rock,” with a vividly distinctive style of night photography. Lewie and Noah Kloster bring his photos to life with electrifying immediacy, bolstered by black-and-white watercolor animation, a rollicking soundtrack, and voiceover narration by Godlis himself.

“Shots In The Dark with David Godlis” is this week's Staff Pick Premiere. Read more about it here: vimeo.com/blog/post/shots-in-the-dark-with-david-godlis/

Check it out here:

Shots in the Dark with David Godlis from Tall Glass with Ice Productions on Vimeo.

54

I turn 54 years old, today. I have nothing really to say about it, but felt I should acknowledge it.