It should go without saying, at this point, that we're living in some genuinely difficult times on a variety of fronts. As such, comparatively trivial bullshit should really not be the priority while bigger fish are being fried. But being that this stupid blog largely concerns itself almost exclusively with comparatively trivial bullshit, I thought I might as well address it.
The bloom is evidently off the rose in regards to Shepard Fairey's portrait of Deborah Harry on the southwest corner of Bleecker & Bowery. Back in February -- when life deceptively seemed significantly simpler -- you might remember I noted that someone had tagged up lovely Debbie's neck. Well, someone else took that baton and ran with it, as the mural has pretty much been wholly defaced, at this stage.
Once again, people are grappling with real problems, these days, so the sullying of some fetching street art doesn't really rank that highly on the unspeakable crime ladder.
Beyond its rich history and beauty, we were continually struck by the warmth of the Lebanese people. When I'd stop and ask for directions (which happened a lot) and they found out that I was there not on business but as a tourist, they would light up with pride and regale me with sights I needed to see and foods I needed to try. It was truly an incomparable experience, which is why news of the port explosion is so abjectly horrifying.
Mercifully, my wife's wonderful cousins are all okay, but the footage of the blast and the pictures of the resulting devastation are absolutely heartbreaking.
In lieu of discussing any depressing and/or divisive news story about the dystopian Hellscape that is our current reality, here's a vintage photograph of The Go-Go's, featuring Jane Wiedlin rocking a Motorhead shirt.
After 16 posts on the subject, you’d think I’d be done, right? Nope.
When last I discussed the late, lamented Cedar Tavern in 2017, it was to relay the news that the actual old mahogany bar had been installed in a new space in Austin, TX. You can read that post here.
The video below, meanwhile, tells the backstory of how and why it ended up back there. Check it out.
I cannot take credit for the image above — a cleverly manipulated re-rendering of Pennie Smith’s iconic photograph of Paul Simonon from the cover of London Calling by The Clash — that was put up on Instagram by a cryptic poster who goes by the elusive moniker M.O.T.E. But, upon spotting it earlier this week, it sort of fit my mood to a tee.
Smith snapped the original photo of Simonon at New York City’s Palladium, although you should really check with my friend Dave Marin about the exact date. It was not a choreographed shot. She simply captured the moment wherein the lanky Clash bassist lost his patience with his instrument and decided to take it to task. When storied Clash frontman Joe Strummer saw the shot on Smith’s contact sheet later, he purportedly zeroed right in. “That’s the album cover.” Case closed. I’ve always found some irony in the fact that while Smith’s photograph almost singularly captures the brazen iconoclasm of everything punk rock was allegedly about, London Calling was actually much more of a love letter to a broader range of musical styles than simply another slab of by-then conventionally vitriolic “punk rock.” That cover, however, remains a perennially resonant photograph, cramming myriad associations into a single image — frustration, nihilism, reckless abandon, rebellion and rage.
Replacing Paul Simonon’s doomed Precision bass with a hapless laptop, M.O.T.E. has obscured the context, but retained the associations. Suffice to say, over the last several weeks, I have routinely felt like treating my laptop like Paul Simonon’s start-crossed Precision bass and lashing it against the pavement. After four and a half months of working remotely, while myself and my extended team at work have amply demonstrated our prowess at staying busy and productive, the novelty has really worn thin. I remain rapturously thankful to still be actively employed in this doomily dystopian hellscape of an economy, but there seems to be an overall malaise, at this stage of the proceedings. Everyone’s testy, tired and irritable — exhausted by the uncertainties of the future, the inefficiencies of the present and the abject idiocy of the recent past, when a more thought-out federal response to the pandemic might have brought the situation under control sooner, as opposed to the literally plan-free anarchy that is our current reality. Collectively, I think we were all hoping and expecting to have things in hand, by now, but that’s just clearly not the case.
It’s also tragically laughable that even this many months — and this many deaths — into the pandemic, many of my slackwitted fellow countrymen are still balking at simple guidelines emphatically extolled by revered medical professionals. 155,000 Americans are dead, and we’re still seeing video after video of irretrievably dim Costco shoppers thwarting mask requirements and moaning about their personal freedoms being violated.
One of their own — Herman Cain — similarly refused to wear a mask, calling the pandemic a “Democratic Hoax.” He went mask-free to a Trump rally in Tulsa, OK. Shortly afterwards, he tested positive for COVID-19, got ill, was hospitalized and is now — WAIT FOR IT— dead.
What more evidence do you need, at this late point in the day?
Don’t be stupid like Herman. Wear a mask. Stay safe. And don’t smash your laptop …. you’ll regret that.
Earlier today, a friend of mine posted an antiquated photo on Facebook of the deservedly late Jeffrey Epstein that dated back to his days as a math teacher at the prestigious Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. His reasons for posting the image were a little foggy — something about trying to establish a jokey conspiracy theory about Epstein having ties to John Lennon, whose son Sean was a Dalton student.
In response to same, someone pointed out that the shot of the young Epstein bore a resemblance to Ben Stiller, but I countered with the observation that he more resembled a member of The Knack, as sleazily immortalized on the sleeve of their debut album from 1979, Get The Knack. This tenuous connection was made all the more fitting given the Knack’s notoriously brazen affinity for the pruriently verboten — as best exemplified on songs like “Good Girls Don’t,” “Baby Talks Dirty,” “That’s What the Little Girls Do” ….I’m not making these up…. and, of course, “My Sharona,” wherein Knack vocalist/songwriter Doug Fieger famously conceded that he always got it “up for the touch of the younger kind.” Yeah, that hasn’t aged too well, has it.
Sure, it’s easy to recoil from this inarguably unseemly aspect of The Knack, but who among us — of a certain age, at least — did not warm to the inimitable strains of “My Sharona” in its heyday? While I can say that I’ve never owned a copy of Get The Knack, I'd be lying through my teeth to say I don’t enjoy that song, even this many years after the fact. While I didn’t buy the LP when it came out, I vividly remember buying the cassette of Chipmunk Punk, a dubiously assembled clutch of deeply debatable “punk” songs of the day covered by Alvin & The Chipmunks, which featured no less than three Knack compositions, “My Sharona” foremost among them. Even then, I was struck by the lazy or oblivious inclusion of that “touch of the younger kind” line, to say nothing of Fieger’s assertion of the sense of “victory runnin’ up the length of [his] thigh” on what was ostensibly a children’s record.
Since the dawn of rock’n’roll, questionable, provocative, risqué and downright objectionable lyrics have been a part of the proceedings. Whether chalked up to poetic license or shifts in sensibility, popular culture has long overlooked myriad examples of lyrical narratives that skirt the lines of taste, propriety, morality, good judgement, etc. We forgave Johnny Cash for shooting that guy in Reno just to watch him die, Bob Marley for shooting that sheriff and Robert Smith for killing that Arab (itself an allusion to Albert Camus’ “L’Etranger”), but something about The Knack’s unmissable focus on carnal knowledge of underage girls remains pretty uncomfortable. Of course, as someone who owns albums by cretins like GG Allin & The Murder Junkies, I can’t exactly feign any outrage with any credibility. But unlike ol' Geeg, The Knack took their icky schtick nationwide, and nobody really blinked.
Check out this clip of The Knack playing Carnegie Goddamn Hall in 1979 as a prime example. CARNEGIE HALL!!!
And yes, …. it still cooks. Sure, the Knack were largely considered an ironically “safe” alternative to the more volatile Punk Rock of the day (if you believed the sensationalism), given their clean-cut image and taut power-pop stylings. They were the squeaky-clean, skinny-tied New Wave prototype to offset the allegedly slovenly safety-pinned hordes. But whatever your stance on the band’s authenticity, chops, fashion sense or street cred, you can’t argue with the infectiousness and longevity of “My Sharona.” It remains a classic, for better or worse.
And even given all that I’m able to read into and project ontot “My Sharona,” I still cannot deny my sheepish appreciation of it.
When people stop playing “P.Y.T.” by Michael Jackson, maybe I’ll reconsider.
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