Flaming Pablum

Kneejerked: The Great Dig Dat Hole Swindle

Here’s a super-dupe niche bit of petty, punk-rock pedantry.

A little over a year ago, storied Chicago musician, engineer and iconoclast Steve Albini passed away from a heart attack at the age of 61.

An incalculably revered and respected figure, having helmed the recordings of seminal albums by bands like The Jesus Lizard, Naked Raygun, Urge Overkill, Pussy Galore, Bitch Magnet, Slint, Boss Hog, Pigface, Superchunk, Failure, Murder Inc., Volcano Suns, The Wedding Present, Fugazi, P.J. Harvey, the Pixies, The Breeders and, yes … do please wait for it …. Nirvana, to say nothing about the inimitable music he made with his own bands, namely Big Black, the regrettably named Rapeman and Shellac, Albini was responsible for not only a massive part of the sound of the American underground, but also the sensibility. Preceded by his no-bullshit approach, his bluntly black-humored worldview, his fierce convictions, and his pronounced reputation for outspokenness (which frequently cast him in an unfavorable light), Albini cut quite a profile. In later life, Albini recanted many of his earlier, deliberately polarizing statements and took accountability for unwittingly nurturing a community of self-styled “edgelords.” While it may not have totally absolved him, this was an admirable thing to do.

Several months after Albini’s death, an online entity called Steve Albini’s Closet was established to “distribute the treasures amassed by the late polymath,” with proceeds directed towards Albini’s estate.

Obviously, as a fan of the man, his music, and his legacy, I took a look at the offerings upon the site’s initial unveiling but given that most of the items were asking to fetch some pretty princely sums, I didn’t give the endeavor too much thought. At this stage of the proceedings, I really cannot afford to be spending any more of my money on collectors’ items, much less ones in a format I can no longer play in my home (having given my last turntable to my collegiate son). Our apartment is already clogged to the rafters with too many of my vinyl LPs, compact discs, DVDs and friggin’ CASSETTES (I have a hard time parting with these things). I simply can’t go accruing more.

Regardless, Steve Albini’s Closet has continued to roll out bits of ephemera that get dutifully snapped up by record nerds and Albini acolytes conceivably across the globe. I stopped looking.

As if on cue, two comrades of mine – named Ted W. and Jordan M. – went out of their way to highlight a particular new item from Steve Albini’s Closet, namely a test pressing of the one and only album Kneejerk by Dig Dat Hole, the noise-rock trio that pre-figured Cop Shoot Cop. Asking for a cool thousand dollars for this rare slab of vinyl, Steve Albini’s Closet describes the item thusly:

(Ruthless test press ‘87) unissued LP RECORDED BY STEVE of this band who served as the bridge between Shithaus and Cop Shoot Cop condition: NM/-

Well, I don’t really want to rain on anyone’s parade nor make anyone feel stupid about their purchases, but I have it on fairly solid authority that that’s incorrect.

Back in the summer of 2020, an enigmatic YouTuber named E3 uploaded the entirety of the so-called Adult Contemporary Mix of Kneejerk, augmented with an interview with Tod [A] and Phil Puleo (then of Cop Shoot Cop, formerly of Dig Dat Hole) with a fanzine called Ugly American. In it, they discussed the whole arc of that band and that album. I re-purposed same for a post here, and – as you’ll read – they quickly shot down (pardon the pun) the notion that Albini had anything to do with the recording of the original Kneejerk.

So, for the individual that dropped $1K on that test pressing thinking Steve Albini had a hand in it, … I'm sure it's a simple misunderstanding, but I’m afraid to say that you’ve been had.

ADDENDUM: In the wake of posting this, I reached out to Tod [A] (who I only just saw a couple of weeks back during our trip to Istanbul) to see if he could provide any more clarity. Tod writes....

Steve Albini definitely did not record the Dig Dat Hole Kneejerk LP. If he had, it would definitely have sounded much better. Jon Spencer gave us Steve's contact and we were in the process of planning a release of the record on Steve's label Ruthless, when Steve informed us that he was too busy with Big Black stuff, and probably would not be able to do a good job with the release. At the time, this his us like a 2X4, but looking back, I respect his honesty. 

Soon afterwards, Dig Dat Hole moved to NYC and morphed into Cop Shoot Cop.

There ya have it. 

Here's a taste of Dig Dat Hole, recorded for WFMU in 1987..

Back to The Space at Chase

The East Village and Lower East Side had countless live music haunts that, in the wake of their respective closures, attained almost mythic status. Obvious names like The Dom on St. Marks Place, CBGB on the Bowery, The Ritz on East 11th and Coney Island High on St. Marks Place, as prime examples, are still routinely lionized – often by me – as legendary cultural flashpoints, but there were several others. The tiny space that was A7 on – wait for it – the corner of East 7th Street and Avenue A, which I’ve discussed here before, was just as crucial an incubator of the nascent New York Hardcore scene as CBGB. Long-vanished spots like Club 57, The Knitting Factory, Sin-e, Brownie’s, Cake Shop, Luna Lounge, Ludlow Street Cafe, Pianos, Thread Waxing Space, The Pyramid, The Cat Club, The Continental, The Lismar Lounge, The Spiral, Nightingale’s, The World and many, many others each made their respective mark in the annals of this city’s musical heritage, for one reason or another.

The one I’m discussing today, however, seems rarely rhapsodized in the same manner as its more storied contemporaries cited above. I’m talking, of course, about The Space at Chase at 98 Third Avenue.

To be honest, the establishment in question was never a spot of great renown. More recently, that address was occupied by a concern called Bar None, which held court on that patch of Third Avenue for an unbelievable 17 years, give or take. Bar None was essentially an irritating sports bar that catered to frat bros, jocks and SantaCon afficionados. When the property was seized by city marshals for chronic nonpayment of taxes, not many people were genuinely that broken up about it. Further allegations of sexual harassment of one of its employees didn’t help matters.

But, once again, before it was Bar None, it was The Space at Chase and/or The Chase Bar.

Contrary to popular conjecture, The Space at Chase was not named for the bank chain, but rather because of its original owner/proprietor Mark Chase. Not to be confused with the Chase Park Lounge (which I first invoked here and was able to verify here), The Chase Bar at 98 Third Avenue devoted a rear chamber of its facility to live music, dubbing that room the Space at Chase, which explains the dueling monikers.

Ostensibly a “rock bar,” the Space at Chase usually booked local artists or touring bands of a certain stripe. Some of the more celebrated names to have graced that stage include Ween, Nation of Ulysses, Archers of Loaf, Sebadoh, Slapshot, False Prophets, Yuppicide, Mephiskapheles, The Raunch Hands, The Radicts and The Mentors. Personally speaking, of the handful of shows I caught at the Space at Chase, the most memorable was probably a double bill in 1989 featuring Token Entry (in the throes of their abortive “funk-metal” crossover) and Senator Flux, a very earnest indie combo from Washington D.C. featuring Jeff Nelson, recently ex of Minor Threat, on drums.

The most notorious performer to have ever played that small room, however, was – WAIT FOR IT – GG Allin, who I recently invoked here. Either negligently oblivious or simply unbothered by the Geeg’s richly cultivated reputation for assaulting paying members of his audience, befouling the stage with his own excrement and inciting riots, The Space at Chase was one of the very few venues that would host him. Flanked by his faithful band, The Murder Junkies, GG soiled the premises of the Space at Chase on at least two occasions in 1991, one of which was captured on celluloid for posterity by director Todd Phillips, using it as a pivotal sequence in his documentary, “Hated.”

Here's footage from the soundcheck of one of those shows, which is considerably tamer than the main event later that evening (featured in “Hated”):

Delightful, right?

In any case, I can’t remember when the Space at Chase closed, but it would have been at some point in the early 2000s, after which Bar None took over and stopped hosting live music.

As alluded, no one spends that much time discussing The Space at Chase here in 2025, but I stumbled upon a fun blog post from about 2017 by a plucky copy consultant called Talking Shrimp. She evidently worked behind the bar at The Space at Chase around the same era GG was unsolicitedly relieving himself all over the place and punching patrons in the face. Here account of same comes refreshingly free of the smug pedantry and laborious knowitalism of arcane punk esoterica that insufferable rock snobs like me shamelessly wallow in. Please enjoy I Worked In A Fecal Punk Rock Bar (Or, How To Avoid Having A Business That’s Not Your Scene).

Don't Get Your Wax Wet

Hi all, and a belated happy 4th – or as happy as can be expected, under the circumstances – to you all.

I’d been meaning to post more stuff, over the past couple of days, but I’ve been grappling with a few things at this end, unfortunately.

One that I’m able to talk about is my right ear. Regular readers might remember a similar post from not that long ago, but as stated in same, I have a long history of ear trouble, a lot of it unwittingly self-inflicted.

This past Friday, I was out at my mother’s place on Long Island and my wife, my daughter and I went to the beach, as one does. Being that it was a bright, beautiful day out, I went in for a dip, at one point. I had no grand designs of any prolonged swim, but I just wanted to get a break from the heat for a moment. In the process of doing so, I ducked under the waves for just a few fleeting seconds to cool my head off, get my hair wet, etc. Almost immediately, I noticed something wrong in my right ear.

I wasn’t sure if it was water trapped in my ear or what, but it did not resolve itself and only got worse as the day progressed. By the evening, my hearing was completely compromised, and the ear felt sore and blocked.

We ended up coming back to the city the next morning (for an entirely different reason that I can’t get into here), and upon getting home, I immediately ran over to my nearest Urgent Care facility. They looked in both ears, and said there was some very thick, deep, compacted wax in my right ear. As I understand it, ear wax acts like a sponge and expands when it comes into contact with water, which explained the blockage. They offered to try to flush it out with a hydrogen peroxide treatment, but warned that because it was so deep, it may not work, and that, if anything, it might worsen the blocked sensation. Eager to rectify the problem, I told them to give it a shot.

Unfortunately, after several minutes of pumping warm water mixed with hydrogen peroxide into my right ear, nothing was loosening. I was tremendously disappointed. They suggested that I use Deprox ear drops over the next several days and then come back to try again, or to see a proper E.N.T. doctor with the proper “suction” equipment that no Urgent Care facility was going to have. This, however, was still only Saturday morning.

My wife suggested that the New York Eye & Ear infirmary over on East 14th Street might have that sort of equipment in their urgent care operation, so we trekked over there. They were very nice (and it’s a really clean, efficient facility), and their attending doctor took a stab at gingerly trying to remove the wax, but he, too, failed. Being that it’s evidently so deep, he didn’t want to risk compacting it further and possibly damaging the ear drum. He, too, suggested a proper E.N.T. and Deprox drops and sent me on my way.

By this point, I was fairly depressed and uncomfortable and have basically remained so. The Deprox drops only seem to clog up my ear canal further, and I still basically cannot hear. I shot a note to my primary care physician to please give me a referral to a E.N.T. in the system. It’s currently late Monday morning, and I haven’t heard back from him, as yet.

I was hoping to resolve this quickly, but that’s doesn’t seem to be on the menu.

ADDENDUM: As the morning dragged on without a word from my primary care physician, I decided to be a little more proactive, and got in touch with his practice to find a E.N.T. within the system. Luckily I was able to secure an appointment for late yesterday afternoon. I skipped out of work around 3:00 pm to race up to East 70th Street & York Avenue. I had to wait for a bit, but when the doc finally arrived, he cleaned out the offending sewage from my ear and all was again more or less right with the world. 

 

Poached By Bots? 10 Things You Could Do as a New York City High Schooler in the `80s That You Can't Do Today: REDUX

In early November of 2023, I was inspired by a conversation with a friend about how different the New York City of 2023 was for kids than the city of the early-to-mid 80’s had been for us. I quickly typed up a list of ten activities, places and things that routinely ate up my time as a petulant, acne-speckled teen (see above) that were (and remain) simply unavailable for teenagers today, and titled it – wait for it -- 10 Things You Could Do as a New York City High Schooler in the `80s That You Can't Do Today. You can read that by clicking right here.

This morning, meanwhile, upon firing up ye olde YouTube, I was presented with some content presumably tailored to my habits by the platform in question. On the top of that stack was the video below. Struck by the comparable theme to my aforementioned piece from 2023, I pressed play and was … well, nothing really surprises me anymore, but … suffice to say I was disappointed. Re-cast as if by some clumsy replicant, this video limply mines my original content, albeit thinly re-written by AI and given an incongruous and unconvincing voiceover.

Check it out below, but as the saying goes …. accept no substitutions for the real thing.

“NYC Tonight!”: GG Allin’s Final Gig, 32 Years Later

An inauspicious occasion to be sure, but this week marks the thirty-second anniversary of the death of GG Allin, who overdosed on heroin on June 28, 1993, after a typically tumultuous final performance at the infamous Gas Station -- aka the Space 2B Art Yard -- on East 2nd Street and Avenue B.

I’ve written about this fabled show probably too many times here, despite having not attended it. My friend Aaron went, though, and even appears in the notorious video of same – shot by Lower East Side legend, Clayton Patterson -- which I’ve posted here periodically. Like Chantal Akerman's "News from Home" (albeit in this way only), the GG Allin Gas Station footage frequently pops up on YouTube, only to be brusquely taken down in very short order. If you’re not up to watching it (which is perfectly understandable, if not advisable), it documents the fateful day, starting with an abortive soundcheck, a brief, brutal performance rife with the Geeg’s signature brand of ribaldry, and culminates in an ersatz riot that spills out onto the byways of Avenue B and the surrounding environs. Not exactly “The Last Waltz,” but you get the idea.

As mentioned in several other posts here over the years, while my pals and I were frequently tempted to go see GG Allin & The Murder Junkies play, the very real possibility of being physically assaulted by the star attraction, let alone getting messily pelted with greasy fistfuls of the man’s own freshly produced dung, always kept us away. If you have a hard time picturing that outlandishly unseemly scenario, might I recommend watching Tod Phillips’ grimly hilarious 1993 documentary, “Hated: GG Allin & The Murder Junkies.”

Thirty-two years later, you’d be exceptionally hard-pressed to find any evidence of the messy shenanigans of that day on that particular strip of Avenue B. The Gas Station was razed in 1995 to make way for a brutalist eyesore of a building with a Duane Read in its ground floor. I used to periodically suggest that the troubled ghost of GG Allin probably haunts its back aisles. The building itself, meanwhile, according to my excellent bloggy comrade EV Grieve, changed hands, last year, for the princely sum of $43 million dollars. Street Easy describes the current iteration of the building this way…

194 East 2nd Street is a full-service elevator building with a 24-hour doorman, elegantly re-designed lobby, hallways, and common areas, a new high-end fitness center with an infrared sauna and yoga/pilates room, and a tenant’s lounge with a billiard table.

The rest of that block is now peppered with sports bars and brunch destinations that cater to young, monied aspirationals and cloying, self-styled influencers, who are just as revolting, to my mind, as some might have found GG Allin & the Murder Junkies, but to each their own, I guess.

Once again, if you’re genuinely curious, you should seek out the full Clayton Patterson footage (currently to be found here), but someone synopsized the day’s events in this homemade music video for an early GG Allin track (when he was a bit more genteel behind the mic) called, somewhat presciently, “NYC Tonight.”

Frankie Goes to … The Mill

Here’s an odd one.

As recently as this past April, I posted a little entry about a long-vanished midtown attraction called The Mill at Burlington House, although I originally invoked it on a comparatively ancient post about same from 2015.

Today, meanwhile, I fielded a comment from a reader named Charles, who wrote…

I found film footage of this attraction while watching a Frank Sinatra movie called Contract on Cherry Street in 1977. I was wondering what opening scene about 2:30 in the movie this was shot in and came across your blog.

Sure enough, in one of the opening segments of the film, The Mill at Burlington House is used as a location.

Released in 1977, “Contract on Cherry Street” stars Ol’ Blue Eyes as a hardscrabble detective also named Frank who is trying to take on the Mob after his partner is killed … or something like that. In the scene in question, Frank meets his undercover informant, the ridiculously named Jack Kittens, to get some dirt on an automotive fencing ring. In fittingly clandestine fashion, they meet on the conveyer belt of The Mill.

Watch from about 02:30 onward…..

In all honesty, the movie looks like a bad, half-baked cop show from the `70s, but who knows? It might be great, not least for period-specific NYC locations like this one.

Big thanks to Charles for sharing!

There's The Beef: Back to the Meat Packing District of 1993

It’s a bit of a cliché, here in 2025, to point out how very different various downtown neighborhoods used to be. The East Village used to be squalid, scary, dangerous and a hotbed of punky, bohemian expression. SoHo used to be gritty and filled with artists. TriBeCa used to be desolate and deserted. The so-called West Village used to be quaint, quiet and manageable. Obviously, none of these things are still true today.

Then, of course, there’s the Meat Packing District which, as I said here way back in 2013, underwent a radical facelift that was easily the most severe in of the city’s transformation over the last few decades.

Formerly a grimly picturesque realm of urban desolation when still populated by genuine meat-packing businesses, underground leather clubs and a robust ring of transexual prostitution, the Meat Packing District could seem like a forbidding part of town throughout the `80s and `90s. But the area was also home to a host of beloved-if-eccentric spots like Florent, The Hog Pit, The Cooler, The Village Idiot, The Vault and, well,…er.. The Toilet (as fleetingly recounted by my friend and former Meat-Packing resident Pat Blashill here). It may not have been “something for everybody,” but folks who enjoyed the Meat Packing District enjoyed it for that very same grit, funk and character, of which there was an ample abundance.

I’ve mentioned it before, but as recently as 2000, I remember my songwriter friend Dusty Wright organizing an outdoor music fest for Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation called Beefstock to help raise support to designate the "Gansevoort Market" area (which loosely stretched from just below Gansevoort to just above West 14th) as a historic district, thus protecting its architectural integrity and sense of community. While that event was great fun, the events of September 11th the following year laid waste to any landmark protections for the Meat Packing District. There were bigger fish to be fried.

In any case, suffice to say that the Meat Packing District of today is just yet another dreadful outdoor mall of luxury retail and pricey bistros, completely bereft of the neighborhood’s formerly storied distinction.

It might be hard to picture the Meat Packing District of 2025 as anything other than what it has become. But through the magic of video – in this case, provided by long-time friend of the blog Gregoire Alesandrini of New York City in the `90s fame – you can re-visit the neighborhood in all its gritty desolation, circa 1993. Enjoy.

FEAR Unplug for the New Music Seminar: June 20, 1992

Like many other folks, I think the first time I ever heard of the storied Los Angeles punk band FEAR was via Penelope Spheeris’ 1981 documentary “The Decline of Western Civilization.” Hilariously obnoxious and inappropriate at every turn and actually way more musically accomplished than most of their contemporaries, FEAR became an instant favorite of mine, prompting me to immediately seek out their full-length debut LP, The Record. The band released further music – notably the “Fuck Christmas” single and a great follow-up album, More Beer in 1985, but if I’m being honest, The Record remains their definitive statement.

For whatever dumb reason, however, I didn’t get the opportunity to actually see FEAR properly play live until a decade or so later, when they plowed into New York City to play the New Ritz (the space formerly occupied by Studio 54) in the summer of 1992. I wrote floridly about that show here.

As mentioned in that reminiscence, however, I invoked a strange, pop-up acoustic performance I’d caught by them around the same time whilst mixing and mingling at the New Music Seminar at the Mariott Marquis hotel in Times Square. Here’s what I wrote…

Memories are slightly hazy, on this point, but I believe it was during this same visit in 1992 that I also saw FEAR deliver an incongruously acoustic -- but still endearingly objectionable -- performance as an impromptu event at the New Music Seminar in Times Square's Mariott Marquis hotel. Sadly, I've found no documentation of that performance, but a current co-worker remembers it well.

As I remember it, FEAR kind of appeared out of nowhere (they were pretty hard to miss) and set up shop on a random level of the hotel where badge-wearing attendees, at the time, were milling around schmoozing. Drummer Spit Stix (yep, that’s his name) merely whacked away on a cardboard box while lead singer/icon Lee Ving exhorted away. I can’t remember if Derf Scratch was still on bass, at that stage, but the band played a short, typically hilarious acoustic set to a gathering crowd of both the converted (geeked-out rock scribes like me) and otherwise bewildered industry types. I seem to remember standing next to singer/songwriter Vic Chestnutt and both of us enjoying it immensely.

In any case, while I’d gone on to recount the tale of this weird acoustic show many times, I could never find any evidence to corroborate its actual happening, although a former co-worker later verified that she’d been there to witness it, too.

Well, 33 years (to the day) later, my writer friend Jason Pettigrew – who was also at the gig in question – just posted the flyer…

For the uninitiated, this is FEAR…

Scrapped

I was shocked and saddened, over the weekend, to note the sudden departure of longtime graffiti stronghold Scrapyard on West Broadway.

Originally called Bomb The System (they changed names in the wake of 9/11), Scrapyard was a resolute chapel of the street art subculture (I've written about it here). It stood across the street from its sibling venture, SoHoZat ... a sort of underground comic/zine emporium. Around the corner on Canal Street, meanwhile, was The Trader, a grim Army/Navy store where you could also procure ridiculous items like throwing stars and nunchucks. Now, all three of these spots from my teenage years are gone.

Evidently, the space Scrapyard occupied for so many years is stated to be some sort of bespoke eyewear boutique. Pour one out.

Talking Türkiye

Well, I am indeed back from our travels in Türkiye. In the past, after I’ve come back from trips to, say, Ireland, Beirut, France and other places, I’ve shared a bunch of pics. Unfortunately, the service provider that hosts this blog has been suffering from an ongoing image-hosting issue, presumably the same issue that routinely causes images here to break for no reason. It now takes forever and a day to successfully upload a single picture, and now – after multiple attempts – I’m throwing in the towel. You’ll have to make do with the pic above of the majestic interior of the sprawling Blue Mosque, and the one of me below, standing outside it like a smug American tourist.

If you happen to be friends with me on Instagram and Facebook, you can see my pics there, if you’re truly curious, but there simply isn’t enough time in the world, bandwidth on the web or patience within myself for me to keep fighting with the failings of my aforementioned so-called service provider.

In a nutshell, however, Türkiye is just an amazing place to visit, and I cannot recommend it zealously enough. We basically spent a week in a boat (or, gulet) off the Southern coast, and then a week in the massive metropolis of Istanbul, a teeming city of 13 million that makes my native New York City seem quaint, orderly and entirely manageable.

If you get the chance …. GO!