Flaming Pablum

Really Worth Sharing

From the National Prayer Service on Tuesday, Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde's words to Trump, literally speaking truth to power. This is some Punk Rock, right here.

“Let me make one final plea, Mr. President. Millions have put their trust in you and, as you told the nation yesterday, you have felt the providential hand of a loving God. In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now. There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican, and Independent families, some who fear for their lives. The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings; who labor in poultry farms and meat packing plants; who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They…may not be citizens or have the proper documentation. But the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals. They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurudwaras and temples. I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away. And that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here. Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land. May God grant us the strength and courage to honor the dignity of every human being, to speak the truth to one another in love and walk humbly with each other and our God for the good of all people. Good of all people in this nation and the world. Amen”

-Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde

Today

This awful day seems like as good a day as any for me to take a break. 

Instead of forcing myself to come up with stuff that I'm just not genuinely excited about, I think I'm going to take a little time off. 

In a nutshell, I've kind of lost my muse, for the moment. I'm not in a mindset to share anything new. I don't have anything to say. I'm not feeling the need to express myself. 

I'll be back when I re-find my inspiration. 

Back to Leo London’s Lower East Side

I’ve invoked the Flickr photos of Leo London a few times here. I don’t know the guy. I just happened upon his pics, at one point, and found several that spoke to my own NYC experience, and I’ve been raiding his collection ever since. Apropos of nothing, I was looking at them again and thought I’d re-circulate them. Both the one up top and the one below are Leo's. 

Presumably captured while he was an NYU student at the dawn of the `90s, Leo’s pictures detail his various apartments in the East Village and Lower East Side, his exploits at any number of bars and cocktail parties, a few random road trips and his life gigging in a band called, I believe, Lobster of Hate. It’s not that his photographs are anything that novel, but they seem aligned with my own predilections and associations of the New York City of that era.

Please enjoy them and tell him Flaming Pablum sent ya. And as long as we're talking Flickr feeds, you can see my own similarly inclined collection here. 

Bring the Noizz

If you’ve ever covertly harbored the burning desire to buy me a beer or, conversely, long nursed a fantasy about pouring a beer over my head, you’ll soon have your opportunity to do one or both of those things next month, out in the wilds of Bushwick, Brooklyn (or the `Schwick, as objectionable hipsters call it) when the mighty Art Gray Noizz Quintet joins forces with Lydia Lunch, Knife Thrower (the new band helmed by Erik Sanko) and the Skull Practitioners.

When I saw the line-up announced today -- all big faves of mine --  I immediately procured m’self some tickets, despite having never been to the venue in question (the Sultan Room). In any case, I’ll be there, and you should be, too!

Find tickets here.

Meanwhile, here’s a great, relatively recent interview with Art Gray and Ryan Skeletonboy of the Art Gray Noizz Quintent. Your life will be immeasurably bettered by having read it.

Here’s a taste…

Save Los Angeles

I made a few pilgrimages to Los Angeles in the `90s when a couple of my friends moved out there (specifically to a bungalow in nearby Costa Mesa, as I discussed here). As a lifelong New Yorker, all I knew about L.A. was stuff I'd seen in movies and television, romanced by locales from films like "Repo Man," Penelope Spheeris' "Suburbia" and "The Decline of Western Civilization." I dutifully logged hours in music joints like The Troubadour, the Whiskey A-Go-Go, the Roxy, the Viper Room, the Jabberjaw Coffeehouse and the Rainbow ...specifically to pay homage to Lemmy from Motörhead's perch at the bar. We ate and drank copiously in places ranging from Barney's Beanery to the Formosa Cafe, and hung out everywhere from the La Brea Tar Pits to the arid bed of the Los Angeles river and even tried to reach the Spahn Ranch, where the Manson Family briefly held court. It was all so alternately exotic and sleazy and intriguing and glamorous and historic and beautiful. So, yeah, I was basically a completely insufferable, doe-eyed tourist, but the place left an indelible impression on me that sustains to this day.

Earlier this week, a friend of mine posted a video of the smoldering remains of her home, and then came reports that the flames have reached Sunset Boulevard, where several of the concerns listed above are. To see all this unfurl has been shocking and heartbreaking.

There are lots of ways to help. If you are in a position to help, consider donating to MusicCare's Los Angeles Fire Relief Effort to Help Music Professionals Fund or the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank or Salvation Army California Fire Relief, to name just three.

Old News About Stupid Shit: Dissecting “The Punk Rock MBA”

I realize this was news two weeks ago, and everyone’s probably moved on, but whatever. If you come here expecting breaking news, I don’t know what to tell you.

I should also preface this by saying I’ve only seen the YouTube “content” from this guy a couple of times … and in each of those instances, I was unimpressed.

I’m talking, of course, about Finn McKenty, the persistent YouTube vlogger and self-described “Punk Rock MBA” who, over the course of the last several years, built up a loyal online following via his series of videos discussing Punk Rock and ancillary concerns, frequently with an accent on marketing enhancement. Late last year, McKenty announced he was quitting his YouTube endeavors because he had “met his financial goals.”

So, what’s my grievance, you ask?

Well, for a start, “Punk Rock MBA”? I’m sorry, but FUCK YOU! Even before I’d ever heard this guy speak, I immediately found that title pretty objectionable. I mean, given his allegedly vast experience in marketing, branding and such, that mercantile oxymoron (to my mind) sort of summed up his whole approach, but that just set my teeth on edge from the get-go.

On a deeper level, McKenty was the type of music “content creator” with a tireless penchant to putting things into neat, little clearly defined boxes, repeatedly reducing whole oeuvres, styles and sounds into easily categorized subdivisions with little or no regard or concern for artistic merit or creative expression. It’s an approach more suited to touting athletic statistics or automotive performance than music and art. Moreover, many of the bands McKenty routinely championed – with precious few exceptions – were all pretty mediocre at best, but that’s just my own opinion.

Personally, I realized the guy was a complete, shit-talking fraud when in a discussion with Fat Mike from NOFX (who I also have several issues with), McKenty offered that the best American ska/punk band was Sublime (this is the wrong answer by every conceivable standard). The right answer is Operation Ivy, but whatever. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I do not take kindly to the pervasive reinforcement of ill-informed opinions.

Regardless, this was all borne out recently when, in an interview towards the end of the year, McKenty expounded that not only had he been doing it all exclusively for the money, but also that he NEVER HAD ANY INTEREST IN MUSIC TO BEGIN WITH. Given my above take on his opinions, priorities and overall presentation, this revelation wasn’t all that surprising, but kind of disappointing and, well, depressing all the same.

Many more invested folks have already weighed in on this (like this guy and this guy), and I’m really just kinda banging the same gong, so to speak, but it’s hard not to come away from this story with a really bad taste in the mouth. I mean, on the one hand, I guess McKenty can be commended for his mastery of the medium, despite his purportedly complete disinterest in both the subject matter and the demographic that his content catered to. If what he says is true – that he was never even remotely interested in music – it’s kind of astonishing how he managed to credibly sustain his endeavor this long, let alone with any modicum of success.

I guess I’m just more struck by the cynicism of the whole ruse, and I can’t figure out what McKenty has to gain by being so openly disdainful of it all (he referred to his followers, at one point in that interview, as "smooth-brained, low-vibration people"). I gather he plans to now concentrate on new avenues to … um… well, I guess “exploit,” is the word, but I really don’t think it’s a particularly good look for him to expose himself as such a bitterly unapologetic charlatan. If you were a potential future investor or partner, would you want to do biz with this guy? I wouldn’t.

More to the point, it bums me out that this guy built himself an arguably authoritative bully pulpit of influence over a community of aspiring music fans without, well, … any authenticity or genuine passion for the music. That’s just fucking lame, however competently he managed to pull it off.

So, yeah, fuck Finn McKenty!

"Pretty Vacant"

From Ralph Bakshi's "American Pop," ...

Sweater or Not: Re-Assessing a Sartorial Taboo

Commonly regarded as sartorial shorthand for being an insufferable, preppy douchebag, tying a sweater around one’s neck has been considered a lamentably objectionable stylistic flourish pretty much as long as, say, popping the collar of one’s polo shirt and/or perching one's eyeglasses atop one's head have been. It’s just one of those things that immediately sends a specific message. But, people still do it. They even write defensive blog posts about it.

While it’s not my preferred means of employing a sweater, I realize that times and sensibilities change and that maybe —just maybe— it’s just an absurd “rule” to begin with. Still, you probably won’t catch me doing it. For what it's worth, my 20-year-old daughter declared that while she’d never date someone who wore a tied sweater, the sweater-`round-the-waist look is “way worse” on a man, although I'm not entirely sold on that point. 

That all said, in recent days, I have twice been confronted with evidence of individuals from well outside of the nefarious realm of oppressive douchebaggery rocking the tied sweater look. These photos don’t excuse or defend the practice, but serve only to give one pause for thought.

Seen below are the Sex Pistols in March of 1977, captured upon the signing of their ill-fated contract to A&M Records in front of the well-appointed grounds of Buckingham Palace. Just to the left of the late Sid Vicious is stalwart drummer Paul Cook, smiling broadly at the camera and sporting a fuzzy mohair sweater doubtlessly procured from the collection of Vivienne Westwood. He sports it, fetchingly, around his shoulders like a J. Crew model.

Despite their comparatively grand, indelible entrance into pop culture, the Sex Pistols would messily flame out shortly after the above photo was taken, prompting lead singer/provocateur Johnny “Rotten” Lydon to form the significantly more adventurous and experimental Public Image Ltd. The original line-up of same is pictured below, comprised of Lydon, guitarist Keith Levene, drummer Jim Walker and — pictured far left — bassist John Wardle, a.k.a. Jah Wobble, whose signature dub-influenced playing helped forge post-punk’s trajectory.

For all his insouciant iconoclasm, however, the estimable Mr. Wobble is seen …. with a sweater around his neck and shoulders.

So, if Punk Rock royalty like Cook & Wobble can get away it, … could it be so bad?

Ramones on Extra Place: From Chalkie to Char

I stumbled quite randomly on the above shot of the Ramones posing behind CBGB on Extra Place, the alley between the Bowery and Second Avenue in 1977. I initially assumed it was snapped by frequent Ramones documenter, Bob Gruen, but it turns out it was actually captured by one Chalkie Davies for the cover of the NME. I did some further Googling, and found this site wherein Chalkie himself discusses the shoot...

In April 1977 Mick Farren and I came to New York to check out the punk scene for the NME. We went to all the well known Clubs including CBGB's, Max's Kansas City, the Bottom Line, Danceteria and the Mudd Club.

Joey Ramone lived close to CBGB'S which was on the Bowery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Initially we took photos on the roof of Joey's apartment building but although it looked like New York it did not really have the right feel.

I had spotted this alley when walking over to Joey's place, it was a block from  the Bowery and seemed perfect to me, it was full of trash and totally run down, back then huge parts of Manhattan were like this, the money had run out and the city was bankrupt.

I dragged the four Ramones to the location, I did a number of group shots, aided by their Artistic Director the late Arturo Vega. It seemed odd having somebody else telling the band what to do, all they did was stand there in a line, but it made them relaxed so I was happy to let him help.

To me this sums up the American Punk scene at that time, leather jackets, t shirts and jeans was the look they all had, it's a shame the Ramones never had the true success they deserved, but their influence should never be underestimated.

This afternoon, my daughter Charlotte and I were walking around the neighborhood, and we ducked down Extra Place to replicate the shot. 

It doesn't quite exude the same vibe, these days. 

Forty Years Later: Back to the Sounds of 1985

A couple of days ago, I tried to put up one of those collages on Instagram about my favorite albums from 40 years ago, that being 1985. I had to keep taking it down, however, to amend and augment it. I eventually realized that it was a fool’s errand.

The sheer volume of, to my mind, absolutely crucial records from the single year of 1985 is simply staggering. Now, granted, it’s been said that the music you experience during certain formative periods of your youth go on to inform your tastes moving forward, but I’d suggest that these albums are spectacular by any conceivable standard and despite whatever age your ears might be.

I started off 1985 as a senior in high school. The following summer, I split my time between washing dishes at Ina Garten's Barefoot Contessa out in Westhampton Beach on Long Island and working as a runner for a graphic designer in Manhattan. I finished off 1985 as a freshman in college. That's me in my freshman-year dorm room. Steady on, ladies. 

Off the top of my head, these were the records that scored those experiences, and I'm sure I'm forgetting a few titles. 

Click on it to enlarge. 

Here's a taste of same. Note that the brilliant Oil & Gold by Shriekback and the Enigma Variations compilation are nowhere to be found on shitty Spotify, but "Shadowdrive" by the Jet Black Berries is included to represent the latter. Stick with records and discs, kids.