So, I took the kids out to a playground over on St. Luke's Place in the West Village this afternoon. While Charlotte & Oliver were happily running around, I couldn't help noticing a disconcerting preponderance of police helicopters circling overhead. When it was time to go, the entirety of the Village was flooded with police cars and 6th Avenue was restricted to one thin line of traffic moving at a snail's pace. It was quite a chaotic scene. I asked around. Rumor had it that President Obama was having an early dinner at Blue Hill on Waverly. I've been to Blue Hill once. It's excellent.
After a lonely and very uncomfortable week (long, unpleasant story short: I was diagnosed with a kidney stone on Monday), Peggy and the kids returned from a visit with my in-laws in Texas yesterday. Once again, the apartment is filled with the laughter and chaos I missed so much. During my time off, so to speak, I was able to check out some cool stuff around town and re-connect with some old friends (y'know, when I wasn't literally writhing in pain and drinking my weight in water), but life is now back to some semblance of frazzled normality. Meanwhile, if you're a forty-something white male like myself, let me just strenuously advise you to drink lots of water now. You'll thank me later. Seriously.
I hope everyone has a lovely weekend. To send you off, here are a couple of tracks that have been blowing my skirt up of late. Neither of them are especially original (by a rather significant long shot), but their relatively obvious influences are compelling enough to make me overlook their respective shameless derivativeness. Enjoy.
I've had an idea kicking around in my trivia-addled noggin over the last several weeks that I've considered bringing to fruition here on Flaming Pablum. By this point, everyone's pretty much wrung their hands raw over the loss of late, lamented CBGB and ruefully watched its transformation into poser-kingpin John Varvatos' sartorial shrine to expensive revisionism. It's already old news. But even though CB's is long gone, tourists still show up in front to take pictures, which lends the following concept credence. People are fascinated by the actual place; the physical location. So with this in mind, I thought it'd be interesting to track down a few other since-vanished venues/hotspots/culturally-significant locales and see how they've transformed. More recently, however, I realized that the slightly disconcerting Google Maps application renders the entire endeavor somewhat superfluous.
Last week, I walked through Chelsea to the former site of the short-lived live music venue, The Marquee. Despite countless evenings spent there in its fleeting early 90's heyday, I practically had to check the address just to confirm that I was walking on the same street. The exterior of the building (now an art gallery) had undergone such a structural modification that it bore precious little resemblance to its former incarnation. I'm not quite sure what I'd been expecting, though. While portions of the street still looked as they did way back when, I wasn't really struck with that elusive "sense of place" that I suppose I was searching for. While the afore-mentioned John Varvatos boutique tries to wear as much of the residual character of its address' previous occupant on its sleeve, most of the sites of long-since-closed clubs give little-to-no clues that anything had ever happened there.
On Sunday night, I got together with a pair of old friends -- neither of whom live in Manhattan anymore -- at the Ear Inn, amazingly still perched on the far end of Spring street. While ruminating on how much the Ear's neighborhood had radically changed (from an eerily desolate urban backwater into a veritable Emerald City of gaudy, glass and steel high rises), we somehow started discussing another long-since vanished favorite spot, that being Danceteria on 21st Street. I only went to the club a couple of times in 1985 -- then at 30 West 21st Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues -- but those visits left indelible impressions. Dorkily enough, my first introduction to Danceteria was during the meandering hours after my high school senior prom. Following a stuffily rote evening at The Water Club on the East Side, a clutch of us repaired downtown to experience some proper nightlife. After a wince-inducing visit to a then-still-operating Studio 54 (then in its pale death throes), my classmate Liz suggested Danceteria. It should also be pointed out that New York City at the time was not exactly renowned for carding. That would all change a year later after Robert "Preppie Murderer" Chambers slew Jennifer Levin in Central Park after picking her up at Dorrian's Red Hand on the Upper East Side. But in 1985, high schoolers getting into bars and clubs wasn't that much of a stretch, strange as that may seem today.
We must have looked like a gaggle of aliens stumbling into the club in our prom finery. There's a famous scene in "Desperately Seeking Susan" wherein Madonna drags Rosanna Arquette's husband to a nightclub. That scene was filmed in Danceteria (where Madonna had been a notorious regular). As cartoony as it may look today, that scene perfectly captures the club. A mutli-tiered funhouse of wild art, video screens, music, dancing and drinking, Danceteria was teeming with punks, goths, new wavers, hip-hoppers and all stripes in between. On one floor, you'd hear Suicidal Tendencies and the Butthole Surfers while on the next it'd be Kurtis Blow and Houdini. Our little group made it upstairs to the bar/lounge area. My friend Liz disappeared with some mohican wearing a tattered American flag as a kilt (I wouldn't see Liz again until about 2006). The rest of us only stuck around for another drink or two, but I knew I had to come back.
Sure enough, a couple of weeks later, my friend Rob D. and I endeavored to re-visit Danceteria. I couldn't remember the exact address at the time, but had a vague idea and figured I'd know it when I saw it. I vividly remember the pair of us walking down Fifth Avenue in search of the right corner to hang a right on. I even remember what I was wearing (a black t-shirt with the insignia of my lamentably exclusive private grade school, St. David's, under a black security guard's shirt -- with epaulets - that I'd procured earlier that week at Canal Street Jeans). Amazingly, after a lengthy stroll, I managed to divine the correct location, and in we went. We repaired to the lounge floor again, trying very hard not to look like out-of-place schmucks. The music from the tier below pulsated up through the floor. I recall hearing the signature strains of "How Soon is Now" by the Smiths and "Master & Servant" by Depeche Mode as I sipped my beer, looking around bemusedly at the proverbial wildlife. Then -- as if on cue -- I heard the opening notes of "Love Like Blood" by Killing Joke. "Rob," I exclaimed, "we're going downstairs immediately."
Liberated by the sound of my favorite band, Rob and I hit the dance-floor and spent the rest of the night there. Killing Joke was followed by the Lords of the New Church's riotously bawdy take on Madonna's "Like a Virgin." A frankly scary-looking girl with a thick haystack of pitch-black hair danced up to me and asked if I, in fact, had gone to St. David's. Suddenly, we were dancing and talking with people and having the time of our lives. It was perfect.
Danceteria closed sometime in 1986, although I'm not entirely certain of the reason why. I'd initially heard that they were busted for their tirelessly permissive habit of letting in underage drinkers (like myself and Rob), although I went on a disastrous blind date with a girl in the mid-90's who claimed to have worked there and she reported that the reason Danceteria shut its doors was because someone had stepped into the open elevator shaft and fell to their death. That could certainly be true, but I'll be damned if I can find any documentation of it. Twenty-three years later, you'd never know such a place would have existed on West 21st Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues. The strip in question is a veritable ghost town of clubs. Down from Danceteria's old address is the great, lost live venue Tramp's, which closed sometime in the late 90s, and around the corner on 6th Avenue is the old Limelight. The exterior of the old Danceteria, meanwhile, again owes nothing to its past. In fact, the building as a whole is now a very pricey luxury condominium, and there's a Starbucks just under a yard from its front door.
When I walked back in search of the place, I couldn't really recognize it. In fact, I wrongly pictured it as being closer to Fifth Avenue than it evidently was. It's just another boring Manhattan street now, largely bereft of any cool signifiers or notable characteristics. While I'm evidently not the only person to have gone on such a pilgrimage, it seems the fact that Danceteria ever existed here is just a largely forgotten footnote at best. That may be the case, but I'll always remember my fleeting few moments there.
I first heard the track below at Danceteria on that second night with Rob. They showed the video on the many screens and I was completely blown away. The problem was, however, it never gave the artists' names. I spent the next few weeks trying to track it down (this was prior to the internet, mind you). I eventually stumbled upon the 12" at the (also closed) Tower Records on West 66th Street. In any case, this song will always remind me of those nights at Danceteria. This is "Ball of Confusion" by Love & Rockets. Crank it.
This post is going to be in striking contrast to yesterday's item about GG Allin, but whatever. Looking back, there was always music in our home when I was growing up. Even before I discovered Kiss and started pilfering choice selections my older sister's collection, there were plenty of records in the house that I was into. My parents routinely played a steady rotation of singer/songwriter-types like Cat Stevens, Simon & Garfunkel, James Taylor, Carole King and bands like Abba and The Beatles (although I believe Sgt. Pepper's was the jumping off point for them -- no fans of lysergic weirdness they). I can't remember if they were my mom's records or my step-father's, but there was some groovier fare on offer as well, notably by the Ramsey Lewis Trio, Ray Charles, Sergio Mendes' Brazil `66 ("Mas Que Nada" is the fuckin' jam!), Herb Alpert and The Baja Marimba Band, an instrumental mob who wore ridiculous sombreros and vaguely offensive comedy-mustaches. On top of those, there were piles of soundtrack albums (I was inexplicably stricken with the original cast recording of "Camelot" as a young lad) and quirky comedy LPs by guys like Stan Freberg, Tom Lehrer, Spike Jones (the original ala "Cocktails for Two," not the director) and Bob Newhart. All these great platters of physically substantial vinyl came sheathed in heavy cardboard sleeves, often with ornate gatefolds. Even though these records were largely bereft of power-chords and/or cries for violent insurrection, I immersed myself in them the same way I would with my favorite rock albums a few short years later. My imagination was still fired by them, and ultimately they acted as the "gateway drug," if you will, for my since-lifelong music obsession.
My grandparents' record collection was also rife with favorites. They lived nearby when my sister and I were still young children, and we'd routinely plunder through their LPs, mostly comprised of "old people music" like Jerry Vale, Perry Como and Edith Piaf (my grandmother's favorite). But they had some decent stuff as well. My personal favorite was a bizarre little record called Battle Stereo, which augmented a series of predictable battle anthems with sound effects like blasting canons and firing muskets. Sure, it sounds incredibly cheesy now, but to my eight-year-old ears, it was pretty damn cool.
There was another record of my grandparents that we came to absolutely cherish, so much so that we appropriated it from their collection and took it home (I'm not sure if we informed them of this pilferage or not, to be honest). Hidden amongst their selection of calypso albums was this strange little record by some guy named Blind Blake. There's a actually revered Chicago blues guitarist named Blind Blake, but this was a different dude. This Blind Blake hailed from the Bahamas. Evidently, during one of my grandparents' trips down to the islands sometime in the 50s or 60s, they'd seen this guy play at their hotel and -- as was their habit -- they picked up his record. Said habit explained the staggering amount of unlistenable tripe in their collection, but as far as we were concerned, the Blind Blake record was freakin' gold. Playing a strange, mutant hybrid of calypso-ragtime-blues, Blind Blake played goofy little numbers like "J.P. Morgan," "My Pigeon Gone Wild" and the endearingly bawdy (though we didn't know it at the time) "Lord, Got Tomatoes," all sang with folksy charm in a strange Bahaman accent. I can't imagine how many times we played that record and giggled like little idiots. The music itself was pretty damn great as well, featuring a fat guitar sound, a stand-up bass and Blake himself, I gather, playing banjo (I think) over the top. It was just different from anything my sister and I had ever heard, but we completely dug it.
Sometime shortly afterwards, my sister Vicky and I started getting into contemporary rock and pop. A friend of Vick's gave her a copy of Queen's then-new A Night at the Opera for her birthday, and that quickly blew everything else away. Then Vicky bought a copy of Mothership Connection by Parliament. Not to be outdone, I saved my paltry allowance up and bought Dressed to Kill by Kiss -- the first LP I ever bought. We'd both been bitten by the bug, and we were hooked. The vintage soundtrack albums, ancient bossa-nova records and, yes, even Blind Blake got shoved to the back of the shelf. A couple of years later, my dad sent my sister and I a big box of promo records while he was stationed in England as the London correspondent for Forbes magazine. There were loads of titles in there, but I vividly remember Pure Mania by the Vibrators, the first Boston album and the first record by The Clash. In short order, Vicky and I were becoming nascent music snobs, and routinely punishing the rest of the household with our increasingly-polar tastes. If I recall correctly, the first time I ever heard my step-father utter the word "bullshit" was in response to hearing me blast "Reach Out" by Cheap Trick -- off the soundtrack to to Heavy Metal: The Motion Picture -- out of our living room stereo one Saturday afternoon (I believe the full quote was "what is this stupid bullshit you're listening to?") Ah yes, good times.
Time passed. My parents got divorced. Victoria went off to prep school. We moved house. Lots of shuffling ensued. My grandfather passed away by the time I was a senior in college. My grandmother followed a couple of short years later. Life sped up. In a short span of years, I was a bona fide working professional and insufferable music geek attempting to pass as a legitimate "music journalist." I tried to play myself off as having very varied tastes, but I still largely clung to "that which rocked," opining derisively on music that failed to fit my narrow litmus test. I remember getting actually angry at my good friend Sean's fervent discovery of some vintage performer called "Ukulele Ike." I wanted him to appreciate the crap I was digging at the time like Pantera, The Wildhearts and _______ (insert name of frowny, 90's indie rock also-ran here), but Sean just liked what he liked. I believe I called his newfound Ukulele Ike appreciation a "pretentious affectation," but he (wisely) just laughed me off.
Then it happened. Some time in 1996, I was randomly rummaging through a second-hand book & record store on West 18th Street and I stumbled upon it; a pristine 10" record of good ol' Bahaman Blind Blake. The cover art was identical to my grandparents' copy, but the colors and track-listing were different. It all came rushing back to me. Without hesitation, I bought that sturdy slab of vinyl on the spot, suddenly hugely eager to hear those endearingly goofy songs from my now-distant childhood. Trouble was, I no longer owned a turntable. The record sat unplayed on my shelves for the next five or so years until I eventually moved all my vinyl records into storage. I finally owned another Blind Blake record, but to this day haven't been able to spin it.
The internet's a funny thing, though. I periodically searched for stuff of Blake's out there, but rarely found much information. That changed a couple of weeks ago. I discovered an authoritative discography of Bahaman Blind Blake's work, which in turn brought me to this page, wherein another avid collector was offering home-burned CD compilations. I ponied up my eleven bucks and bought one. In all candor, that disc arrived the same day as the Killing Joke live box set I'd been anxiously awaiting. Guess which one I listened to first? That's right -- Blind Blake. Despite having not heard these songs since I was -- I don't know -- no older than eleven or twelve years old, it still all came rushing back to me. I remembered giggling in my grandparents' den out in Long Island on hot summer afternoons, hearing my grandfather singing along in the kitchen. And these songs still sound as great today as they did back then. Is my testament of affection for Blind Blake's vintage calypso music a "pretentious affectation"? Maybe, but at the end of the day, music is music. You either appreciate it or you don't. And for a variety of reasons, I sincerely appreciate this stuff.
Under normal circumstances, I'd have ripped a track from the CD and put an embedded MOG player (see these posts), but MOG is evidently going through some structural changes, so I can't. However, I did manage to find a track from that original LP on YouTube, of all places, so you can sample of taste of what I'm talking about. Here's "Lord Got Tomatoes." Enjoy.
As with all dead rock stars, the legacy of the notorious GG Allin has blossomed like a tall, turd-slathered sunflower since his inevitable passing in 1993. He didn't plan it that way. GG had famously threatened to kill himself onstage on numerous occasions, but overdosing on heroin robbed him of the chance to execute that grim spectacle. Here in New York City, GG Allin was already the stuff of legend well prior to his death, but for the purposes of schooling the unwilling and/or uninitiated, an ambitious NYU film-student (at the time) named Todd Phillips put together a documentary that treated Allin and his band (the equally bizarre but surprisingly charismatic Murder Junkies) with the respect they (very arguably) deserved. That film was called "Hated."
My friend Rob B and I had always joked about going to see GG but, of course, we never did. Something about his reputation for pelting his audience with fistfuls of his own feces didn't really have us scrambling for tickets. Love him or hate him, GG Allin was no act. Committing to a GG Allin show meant the risk of serious physical injury (or, at the very least, witnessing some frankly unspeakable acts that would be forever seared into your subconscious). So, when Rob told me about a screening of "Hated" back in 1993, we were all over it (if I remember correctly, Rob called to find out more and actually ended up chatting with Phillips himself). In any case, we went to a screening and became instant fans (Fun fact: Phillips second contested-documentary, "Frat House," was scored by Jim "Phylr" Coleman of my beloved Cop Shoot Cop). When "Hated" was released on VHS, I instantly snapped up a copy. It was simply a must-own.
A friend of a friend borrowed my videocassette of "Hated" sometime in the late 90's and kept it for about two and a half years before returning it to me -- broken. I wasn't crushed. It wasn't really the type of movie you needed to watch every week. Years passed. While I still owned one of Allin's albums (the unexpectedly listenable but still roundly offensive Freaks Faggots Drunks & Junkies, recorded with a combo called Bulge), I pretty much stopped thinking about him. I remember seeing Allin's brother/bass player Merle (with his long, scraggly, dreadlocked beard and signature Hitler mustache, he was pretty hard to miss) and flamboyant, naked drummer Dino around the East Village every now and then (Dino took to dying his hair and handle-bar mustache two wildly different, neon-tinted colors and became a bike messenger), but even they seemed to vanish from the neighborhood after a while.
A couple of years later, my children started attending a school on the border between the Lower East Side and the East Village. The walk to get to same had me routinely strolling by the former spot of the fabled Gas Station (which is now a Duane Reade), the site of the last GG Allin performance ever, which culminated in a riot (you can see footage of the event and read more about the Gas Station on this post). In turn, that made me want to see "Hated" again.
So last night, uninspired by the thought of watching the DVD of "Iron Man" that Netflix were nice enough to send me (I'm sure it's excellent, but I'm just not that excited about it), I stepped out in search of something better. At Generation Records on Thompson street, I was elated to find a "special edition" copy of "Hated." Released in 2007 (why didn't I hear about this?), this new version featured brand new and extensive interviews with Merle, Dino and GG's mother and new commentary from Phillips. Plus, as a very silly bonus, the disc comes with a set of fake GG Allin tattoos. Yeah, `cos ya need those.
If you're a fan of the original film, I can't recommend this new edition highly enough. And if you haven't seen it, you really should treat yourself. The documentary also captures some great shots of the East Village of the early 90s (notably footage of St. Marks Place and long-since-closed 3rd Avenue bar, Space at Chase) in its largely pre-gentrified glory. Be careful, though. There are moments of "Hated" that are genuinely repulsive and profoundly disturbing by pretty much every conceivable standard. Maybe don't watch it while you're eating and/or with your mom. You've been warned.
It's the day after my wife & kids have gone visiting in-laws for a week and my 57th day of "imposed sabbatical" from the office, so being that it was another spectacularly sunny, summer-like day, I decided to again go to some neighborhoods I rarely have the opportunity to visit anymore. Where yesterday found me returning to the Upper East Side and Yorkville to check out some art exhibits, I figured I'd go stroll up through the West Village into the Meat Packing District and then on into Chelsea.
The Meat Packing District -- or what's left of it (they should really come up with a new name, being that nine-tenths of the actual meat-packing businesses have been chased out of the neighborhood) -- was depressing, but that's not really surprising. I grew up on the placidly dull streets of the Upper East Side. When I started discovering and exploring the city as a young lad, I used to routinely visit neighborhoods like the Meat Packing District (and, likewise, Soho and the East Village) because they were so legitimately funky and different. The Meat Packing District used to be this wild, gritty frontier. If you could withstand the smell, didn't mind stepping over actual animal parts that were frequently in the street and weren't afraid of transexual prostitutes, there were many sights to behold in the Meat Packing District's picturesque realm of urban desolation.
That's all gone now, for the most part. The neighborhood now is a ridiculous "Sex & The City" nightmare. The byways are lined with posh boutiques and the streets are clogged with hateful fashionistas and greasy douchebags with dubious tans and expensive sunglasses. The endearingly seedy leather bars are gone, as is my once-beloved Hog Pit (see my earlier lament of same here). The Hog Pit's shell is still there (click on pic above to enlarge), but I gather it's soon to be a Ralph Lauren outlet. Yeah, we need another one of those.
After strolling around this area for a while -- unsuccessfully trying to find the old entrance to The Cooler on West 14th (that strip has changed so much I couldn't recognize it anymore) -- I headed north up 9th Avenue into Chelsea. My blogging comrade Jeremiah Moss of Vanishing New York has posted frequently about it, but the economic divide between the haves and the have-nots has never been more uncomfortably on display than on 9th Avenue between 16th & 18th Streets. On the east side of the avenue looms the ostentatious Maritime Hotel (formerly the home of disgraced Father Bruce Ritter's Covenant House), staring face to face with several rows of low-income housing projects. The local businesses that now dot this strip of 9th Avenue include old school bodegas and check cashing joints rubbing shoulders with incongruously snooty coffee bars and boutiques. The dichotomy is somewhat jarring.
Up a few more blocks, I hung a left on 21st street to go check out another former haunt. The Marquee at 547 West 21st street was a relatively short-lived live venue in the early 90's. It was a regular stop for most of my favorite bands right when I got out of college and was immersing myself in the muddy waters of "music journalism." From my mom's apartment in Yorkville, it was a ridiculously long trek to get to it. Perched at the far end of 21st street (across the street from bondage bar called Zone D.K., also long gone), it was a forever-walk from the 6 train stop at 23rd & Park. But it was a fantastic little venue with great sound and perfect sight-lines. The first time I was there, it was still called Sonic's. The walls were painted like the surface of the moon, and I was there to see a little go-nowhere beat combo called Nine Inch Nails. Once it turned into the Marquee (named after the fabled London club of the same name), I'd later see no less than House of Love, Lush, Birdland, The Wedding Present, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Swervedriver, Julian Cope, The Charlatans, The Fatima Mansions, 24-7 Spyz, Limbomaniacs, Primus, The Sundays, The Wonder Stuff, The Rollins Band, My Dad is Dead, Pigface, Ride, Curve, Chapterhouse, The Butthole Surfers, Mr. Bungle, Pylon,The Senseless Things and Blur all within its hallowed walls. By the midpoint of the decade, however, somebody thought it'd be a great idea to turn the place into a Latino dance club called El Flamingo. The venue later turned into a theatre of sorts, hosting a disco-burlesque re-telling of Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" as "The Donkey Show."
Today, 547 West 21st street looks nothing like it's former incarnations (click on pic at left to enlarge). It's now a rather boring art gallery (one of several that sprouted up in recent years after West Chelsea strove to become a sort of New Soho). I'm glad it's an art gallery instead of someone's luxury condo, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss those late nights of loud rock in that little space.
Below are some other pics I snapped along the way.
Peg and the kids took off this morning for a week visiting my in-laws down in Texas. As such, I've been left to my own devices here in the city. It being a glorious day, I decided to head on up to the Upper East Side to check out a couple of art exhibits that my super art-savvy pal C-Monster was kind enough to hip me to. My first stop was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art to check out Roxy Paine's new installation, Maelstrom. I posted an entry about it here already, but you really have to go check it out with your own eyes. It's amazing. Even though the roof deck of the Met was flooded with corpulent tourists and other human cattle, the bizarre effect of Paine's frantic sculpture remains undiluted. Sort of a cross between wild, tangled tree branches and lightning, Maelstrom is both fascinating and a little intimidating. As C-mon said, it looks a bit like nature preparing to take revenge on humanity. Get uptown and check it out. (picture below).
My next stop was to the Park Avenue Armoury to see Ernesto Neto's massive installation, Anthropodino. Much like with Maelstrom, mere photographs do not do this art justice. You have to see this thing to believe it and experience it properly. A sprawling, cocoon-like structure made of pliable gauze and festooned with hanging bundles of aromatic spices, it looks like some sort of alien hive. I haven't the foggiest clue what it's all about, but it's a fun, eye-popping experience that I can't wait to bring my kids to. Go check it out!
As I noted here back in 2007, I was decidedly not a fan of the plan to re-model Washington Square Park. The idea of moving the fountain over just seemed silly and needless. But, the chain-link fences came down today, and I have to say, it's pretty spectacular. Note obligatory nodding junkie on the fountain steps to the right in top photo.
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