Flaming Pablum

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Hats Off to the Highline

Relatively hot on the heels of news that the space that was formerly known as alternately Webster Hall and The Ritz is reopening later this year (although it’s reopening now directly across the street from a new mega-hotel …. the guests of which, I’m assuming, might not be thrilled to be staying across the street from an active live music venue), comes news that the Highline Ballroom over in Chelsea is shuttering.

While by no means good news, I can’t say I’m especially heartbroken, as the truth of the matter is that I only darkened the doors of the place once, and that was to see The Stranglers in 2013. For whatever reason, I’ve never gone to another show there.

That being said, it seems more often than not that the shows I do want to go to are now happening at venues in Brooklyn. Both of my new favorites – IDLES and Daughters – are both playing in Brooklyn in the next few months (at Brooklyn Steel and Warsaw, respectively). That’s cool, and I’m planning on going to both, but … I am missing the days when Manhattan was more of the destination for these things.

In any case, farewell, Highline – I should have known you better. For what it’s worth, that Stranglers show was absolutely astounding for both crowd and band alike.

'WDUB 91.1 FM in Granville ... We Don't Suck!'

Herewith a a post that is bound to be somewhat strenuously niche.

It should probably come as no surprise that I was one of those annoying kids that hosted a college radio show. Given the one-two punch of my penchant for insufferable pedantry in the music-trivia department and my veritable “face made for radio,” it was a perfect fit, as far as I was concerned. I’d spend hours that, in hindsight, would have been better devoted to studying plotting out my playlists, painstakingly curating a trio of two-hour shifts a week on WDUB, 91.1 FM in Granville, Ohio for a comparably diminutive listening audience that was blithely disinterested in my selections on a good day. In a nutshell, despite my best, emphatic efforts to introduce WDUB’s listeners to the joys of bands like Kraut, The March Violets and The Screaming Blue Messiahs, they were otherwise perfectly content with the brazenly steady diet of The Allman Brothers, Little Feat and the Grateful Goddamn Dead that most of my fellow WDUB disc-jockeys dutifully doled out. Envelope-pushing was not really a priority at “The Doobie.”

Regardless, I really didn’t care about what WDUB played when I wasn’t on it. For me, the whole experience was ultimately just about self-indulgence. Given free rein to lord my musical tastes over an anaemic sliver of Central Ohio’s Licking County, I often went out of my way to make the transitions from preceding shifts as jarring as possible, segueing from an umpteenth airing of Don McLean’s laborious warhorse, “American Pie” and straight into something like “Kill Surf City” by the Jesus & Mary Chain or “Sweat Loaf” by the Butthole Surfers. Anything it took to antagonize Denison’s robust demographic of ersatz-hippies was the order of my show, and I reveled in it.

I spun records and blabbed into the microphone at WDUB -- whose tagline for the last two years I was on it, was the somewhat ignominious “We Don’t Suck!” — for three of my four years, but did not, in the end, pursue a career in broadcasting afterwards. At no point during my time at WDUB did the consideration of “going pro” cross my mind. I harbored no desire to go into commercial radio which, as far as I could tell, bore absolutely zero resemblance to the free-form, anything-goes realm of college radio. Apart from some brief stints backing up my high school pal Rob B. on his show at Fordham University’s WFUV, I haven’t set foot in a radio studio since.

Fast forward three decades….

In rummaging around in my mom’s basement over Thanksgiving, I came across a clutch of cassettes filled with recordings of my shows on WDUB. Dating back to 1988, these tapes hadn’t seen the insides of a player since shortly after they were recorded by this kid who lived down the hall from me during my junior year. I decided to exhume them from the dank wilderness of Mom’s basement, despite no longer having a device on which to play them.

Earlier this week, I bought myself an audio converter for the purposes of making digital files out of them to host here on my stupid blog. After setting everything up, I cracked open the first tape and started the process, re-living the show as I converted it.

Suffice to say, it wasn’t a revelation so much as an exercise in acute embarrassment. A morning show captured in the early spring, this tape finds what would have been the 19-year-old me speedily slurring through my announcements in between tracks by somewhat predictable bands like The Cure, The Mission, The Lords of the New Church, The Plimsouls, The Cult, Pop Will Eat Itself, The Feelies and several others.

I cannot vouch for the fidelity and, given the age of this tape, proceedings do sort of wobble and drag at certain points, finding certain songs practically changing key. This is only one show — I evidently have several others to plough through. As a period-specific document of a certain time and place, it’s amusing.

If you care, please avail yourselves…. ADDENDUM: Might not work with Safari, but try Firefox.

WDUB Morning Show - First Part

WDUB Morning Show - Second Part

 

Fuck You, Dry January

I mean, let’s face it, January sucks, no matter how you slice it. Between it being long, dark and cold and the comedown from the ostensibly festive holiday season, one can’t help but enter into it with some semblance of dread and despair. This, of course, comes coupled for many with a sense of guilt and obligation, whether it’s because of the resolve to honor one’s New Year’s resolutions or simply to detoxify via the self-imposed exile from boozeville that is so-called “Dry January.”

In past years, I’ve endeavored to accomplish the DryJan challenge, as routinely mentioned on my year-end surveys and at great length here last year. Last time around, as I said, I was knocked off the horse early by the arrival of the colorfully named winter weather event, the Bomb Cyclone. That’s just an excuse, of course. Had it not been the Bomb Cyclone, I’m sure I would have concocted some other reason. In short order, it was beery business as usual.

This year, however, it felt less like a whim or nagging twinge of guilt and more like a necessity. December had proven to be a robust month of imbibing, what with a preponderance of holiday events to attend. After weeks of office Christmas parties, a wedding and a few other booze-laden social engagements, we repaired to my brother-in-law’s place out in Pennsylvania for Boxing Day. I was pretty much handed an open beer when I stepped out the car at 2:00 pm, and that kept going until well into the evening. By New Year’s Eve, I was beyond determined to undertake a Dry January. Hell, I was positively looking forward to it.

I wasn’t getting sloppy-shitty, blacking out, slurring my words, starting fights with strangers or anything, but the burly intake of beer was becoming routine, and my tolerance was ascending sharply. Between the probable weight-gain, the conceivable strain on my liver (although my friend Keith keeps reminding me: THAT’S WHAT YOUR LIVER IS FOR, DAMMIT!) and, frankly, the expenditure -– I felt it was high time to flex my long-dormant will power, dry my system out and save some money… the latter reason reinforced by the arrival of some beefy post-Christmas Amex bills.

For no readily apparent reason, however I decided to augment the swearing-off of beer with two other stipulations. I would go without my iPod (yep, I still use an iPod … and you can go fuck yourself if you find that funny), as I’d been noticing a shrill uptick in the tinnitus that has been screaming in my right ear since 1999. Being that it’s been suggested that alcohol-consumption heightens the ring (along with salt, sugar and pretty much anything else that makes life worth living … like, say, oxygen and sex), I figured I should give my ears a break as well as my liver. A steadily stentorian diet of IDLES, Daughters and, strangely, The Upper Crust for much of December certainly weren’t doing them favors.

The third prong of my resolution was fairly simple: Take the stairs. Not at the office, mind you, but at home. It’s not a big deal, but I figured walking up and down the five flights would be a good habit to get into. To be honest, my building is fairly squat, and you’re on the second floor before it even hits you and while you’ve digested that information, you’re practically on the fourth floor. But hey, … couldn’t hurt, right? Regular readers might remember my running campaign from a few years back. Recurring knee problems forced me to abandon that, but I figure walking up and down stairs is something I should be able to regularly tackle.

Anyway, that was going to be my January – thirty-one days marked by sobriety, silence and strength.

Honestly, the toughest of the three directives to honor has been the stairs. It’s not that I’m lazy or that I find ascending those five flights too challenging, but rather that I just forget. I walk into my lobby, and muscle memory almost takes over. I check my mail and boom, next thing I know I’ve pushed the button and gotten on the elevator. There have been times when I have actually gone back downstairs and repaired to the stairwell to complete my mission, but I’m just finding it hard to remember to do it.

Swearing off my iPod has been less complicated, although I threw that particular towel in today. In the ten days without wearing earbuds, I’ve noticed the ring minimally rise and fall in its ceaseless pitch, but not necessarily as the direct result of anything I’ve been doing – as far as I can tell, at least. This morning, I was just bored, so I slipped them back in and scored the latter half of my commute with some vintage New Order at a reasonable volume. No one is hurt by this.

In terms of the beer? Last night, after a bone-chilling walk home from the bottom of TrBeCa to the heart of the Village, I reconsidered my decisions. Yeah, I was able to turn it off for ten days, and can completely keep going, but why am I punishing myself? It’s not like someone’s going to hand me a fucking medal at the end of the month. I’m sick of drinking seltzer and tea in the evenings. I sprang for a six of Sapporo and indulged.

And with that, yes, I’ve technically failed Dry January again. I may go back to it this evening, but it almost doesn’t “count” now, not that anyone’s keeping score.

Weigh in, readers …. How are you fairing with your resolutions?

TWENTY Things I Just Do Not Care About

1. "Broad City" ending.
2. "The Sopranos" returning.
3. "Games of Thrones" continuing.
4. R. Kelly's record sales surging in wake of documentary about his predatory sexual exploits.
5. Britney Spears cancelling her Vegas residency.
6. Anything about any Vegas residency.
7. Woodstock's 50th Anniversary
8. Who is going to host the Oscars.
9. Who is performing on "The Masked Singer."
10. Meghan Markle's pregnancy.
11. Jeff Bezos' divorce.
12. Cardi B's parenting tips.
13. What the Fiji Water Girl has to say about her newfound fame.
14. Anything Pete Davidson, Gwyneth Paltrow or Kanye West is saying, doing or thinking.
15. Anything pertaining to professional football in any capacity.
    
    ADDENDUM:
16. Anything to do with Coachella -- who is playing it, who has pulled out of playing it, who is sponsoring it, who is attending, etc. 
17. Chris Pratt's faith-based fitness plan. 
18. ANYTHING faith-based. 
19. Marie Kondo's tips for tidying-up. Fuck off, lady. 
20. The most-liked egg on Instagram. 

Return to Dirty Old Fun City

Astonishingly persistent readers here might remember a post from -– Jesus -– five years ago already wherein I documented the doings of an intrepidly obsessed cinephile named Jonathan Hertzberg. Hertzberg took it upon himself to compose something of a master-reel of footage from New York City-centric cinema from arguably the most adventurous era, that being the 1970’s (and into the very early 80’s). This was all culled into a frankly overwhelming video series called “Dirty Old New York a.k.a. Fun City.” The end results were a location-spotting NYC blogger’s dream, …. kind of the cinematic equivalent to the Beastie Boys’ sample-heavy watershed opus, Paul’s Boutique.

When I’d penned that original post in 2013, Hertzberg had only completed, I believe, two installments of the series, and I somewhat churlishly whined that he hadn’t included any footage from Tony Scott’s “The Hunger,” Milos Foreman’s adaption of the Broadway musical “Hair” and a host of films from later in the 80’s. At the time, Hertzberg himself wrote in. Here’s what he had to say.

Thank you for words and space you've devoted to my "Dirty Old New York" project! These are fluid pieces and have been updated already a few times with more planned, i.e. "missing" footage could and likely will appear in the updates, like firmware. It's hard to have every wanted film on hand at any moment. I was a bound a bit by availability, quality of footage (rules I broke a few times), and time frame (which I also stretched a bit). In general, I was going for DVD-quality, 16x9 footage from approximately '66 to '84. But, this has stretched a bit into '85. I had to stop somewhere or it would keep going, and I was looking for the gritty '70s-like years for the most part and not the period when the '80s started to look like the '80s as we remember it.

DOWNTOWN '81 appears for a bit in Part I and returns in Part III. SUSAN will likely appear in III. HAIR and KING KONG and some of the others you mention should be in there as well.

Tellingly, it’s taken me five goddamn years to get back on board. In the ensuing half-decade, Hertzberg not only completed his series, concluding with a fifth chapter, but did some specialized cuts as well, concentrating on stuff like recurring character actors, a Super 8 reel of New York footage his father shot in 1969 and other fun stuff, all very much worth checking out.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to embed Part IV of “Dirty Old New York aka Fun City” being that a passage of it enjoyably concentrates on “punk vs. disco,” cannily juxtaposing the strangely parallel exploits of John Travolta’s Tony Manero from “Saturday Night Fever” with Richard Hell from “Blank Generation.”

 

Cool, right, well, click here to go to Hertzberg’s Vimeo page to watch the whole series and then some. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

Subway Shenanigans

Personally speaking, as a native New Yorker, I hate riding the fucking subway and do it as infrequently as possible. Were it up to me, I’d walk everywhere, and usually endeavor to do so, but life, of course, doesn’t always work the way you want it to. As such, I brave the subways like everybody else, when I have to.

There’s a code of conduct one should observe when traveling by rail underground, although obviously not everyone adheres to it. Personally speaking, unless a subway car is close to empty, I usually prefer to stand. My kids never quite understand this, and I tell them that it’s because I’d prefer to be able to “spring into action” should I have to. That’s obviously something of a dramatic embellishment, but there is some truth to it.

While everyone has their own private stipulations, there are some rules that should be universal: Let passengers off before you get on, don’t stand blocking the doors, don’t eat aromatic food, wear deodorant, etc. One would like to think these and a few choice others go without saying. If only.

It comes and goes, but it strikes me that more recently, the New York City subway system has been besieged by a new plague of inconsiderate conduct. From manspreading and panhandling to assault and battery and all points in between, the indignities and affronts on unsolicited offer during your average subway ride are once again myriad. To help us tally these unfortunate instances comes Gothamist, who tidily compile archives of bad subway behavior under the tag “Subway Etiquette,” a category amply fed by the ability to publicly shame oblivious offenders via personal technology and social media. Find it all here.

Incidentally, you don’t have to go underground to have your day ruined on New York City mass transit. Late last week, my son and I boarded a curiously empty (always a red flag) bus on Third Avenue, only to discover that someone had taken a robust dump in the stepwell of the rear exit.

Only in New York.

Screw Your LimeWire

DISCLAIMER: I started writing this on Monday. When I came back to it today –- Tuesday -– I found that what I’d penned read a bit … maybe churlish is the word? But …. c’est la guerre.

--

Are we really there already?

To be fair, if I’m being kind, objective and fair-minded, the article I’m about to discuss here is ultimately not that different from the countless entries I’ve posted that have lionized, say, the lost art of lovingly curating a mixtape or any one of the myriad paeans to the long-shuttered, otherwise-forgotten record shops of my youth. I still live, breathe and pine for these arguable anachronisms.

But if you hadn’t already gleaned as much, with the fleeting exception of my own cherubic offspring, I don’t have a lot of time for young people, so being kind, objective and fair-minded about this piece isn’t really on the menu. This is my lawn …. you are cordially invited to remove thyselves from it.

A young writer named Daisy Jones of Noisey – an outlet I’ve railed about here a few times before – recently posted a weepy homage to LimeWire, a iffy file-sharing service from the 2000s that picked up the baton first brandished by Napster, enabling a new generation of nascent-albeit-fucking-lazy (fight me) music fans to furtively explore, unwittingly infect their computers and -– to some minds -– violate copyright law and steal music.

Here's the graph that really set my teeth on edge.

On LimeWire, you could lose yourself for hours searching for the perfect thing to listen to, and because it felt like no one was watching, that could be anything. Before then, the only way to access music was physical, or through radio and music TV, but those platforms were often consumed publicly, so had the propensity to be performative. Suddenly, you didn’t have to pretend to like watching Kerrang or Kiss or whatever was cool among your friends. You could download Britney albums until 2AM, or get heavily into Norwegian metal. Whatever: LimeWire made your taste yours.

She goes on. Read if for yourself.

Regardless of its arguable -- oh dear me, god forbid -– “propensity to be performative,” access to the physical manifestation of music went on to be sharply curtailed thanks to ground first broken by services like Napster and LimeWire. Within a relatively swift period of a decade and change, the rituals of prior generations were virtually decimated, as once-thriving circuits of record and disc shops – both independent mom-&-pop’s and big, established chains – were forced out of business and their stock in trade reduced and devalued into dated period-pieces or ironic hipster detritus.

I find it hard to fathom that I’m about to start a paragraph with this qualifier, but…

BACK IN MY DAY…, when you wanted to hear, search out, discover and/or procure new music, you had to actually put your pants on and LEAVE THE GODDAMN HOUSE to go to places and meet with people who could enable and assist you in said endeavor. If the radio and/or MTV weren’t satisfying your needs, it made sense to actually go to places where the music you were interested in might be found. Along the way, you were bound to meet similarly inclined folks and forge new relationships, hear new things you weren’t expecting, expand your horizons, explore your city and a host of other benefits.

Personally speaking, I made many a great friend and discovered an unquantifiable amount of new music this way. Yes, I had to actually leave my home and interact with people and go to new places that I didn’t know – shock, horror, outrage. In short order, I became part of a communal subculture. That’s pretty much all gone, now, thanks to the jack-booted march of a technology that caters to a generation weaned on convenience, entitlement and immediate gratification.

Our way was better.

Bowie's Day

Today is the birthday, of course, of the late David Bowie, who died three years ago this Thursday, … an event the world is still coming to grips with.

A lot has been said since his passing (I memorialized his impact thusly), and his absence continues to be felt. While we still have his enjoyably vast body of work to explore and/or re-discover, there will sadly be no more from the great man.

Every Bowie fan has their own favorite iteration. While I first warmed to his apocalyptic, proto-goth phase circa Diamond Dogs (the first record of his I acquired after appropriating my older sister’s copy of the ubiquitous ChangesBowie LP), thrilled to the post-punk-imbued Scary Monsters and got swept up in the unabashedly populist reign of the Let’s Dance days (hey, it may have been pure pop for the masses who couldn’t get their heads around his earlier work, but it was still fucking marvelous music), I prefer to remember Bowie preserved in the video below, an augmented outtake from the 1981 film, “Christiane F.”

If you’ve not seen it, don’t get too excited about the film, unless you genuinely enjoy gloomy scenes of squalor, drug abuse and sexual degradation in early 80’s Berlin. That all said, the title character (played by the doe-eyed Natja Brunckhorst, who appears in the latter-half of this clip) is obsessed with Bowie. As such, this is a snippet of “the concert scene,” fleshed out and subtly augmented by a savvy YouTuber named Mister Sussex. Sussex excised most of the narrative elements of this clip (i.e. heroin-addled Euro-teens in varying states of despair) and beefed up the Bowie content. I think he did a pretty great job of it, actually.

Some curious factoids: Bowie & Co. are lip-synching here, but doing it masterfully. Then again, footage of Bowie reading aloud from a phone book would be damn compelling, too, as far as I’m concerned. Secondly, evidently the wide crowd shots meant to imply the expanse of a concert stadium were allegedly lifted from footage of an AC/DC show -– and in the final, released version of “Christiane F.,” there’s even a wide shot wherein AC/DC fleetingly appear –- were the editors on heroin, too?

Thirdly, the Bowie footage was purportedly shot not in Europe but in New York City, somewhere. Based on the grey curtain backdrop, I’m speculating if it wasn’t shot in the confines of the Upper West Side club, Hurrah, where the video for “Fashion” was later shot. Anyone?

While other mitigating factors arguably mire its excellence -– like the fact that this version excises most of the slowly building intro and/or that arguably lamentable guitarist G.E. Smith appears (he later of “SNL” notoriety and also an inexplicably right-leaning wingnut who played this song at the RNC in 2016, seemingly oblivious to its frothy references to the occult and cocaine), it captures a certain period of Bowie’s elegant majesty perfectly. From his signature profile to his popped-collar James Dean jacket, he is the quintessence of cool, here.

It's too late to be hateful.

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