After a great deal of searching (in lieu of ordering the damn thing on Amazon... fuck that shit), I finally managed to track down a copy of "Totally Wired: Post-Punk Interviews & Overviews," the companion piece to Simon Reynolds' essential (to my mind) encapsulation of the post-punk era, "Rip It Up & Start Again, Postpunk 1978-1984." I first read "Rip It Up..." in the summer of 2005 and it practically blew a new part in my hair. Four years later comes this follow-up collection of interviews which are hugely entertaining and illuminating. If you're of fan of this music (and if you're not, why are you wasting your time reading my weblog?), you really owe it to yourself to track both of these books down with all speed. They are pristinely researched and totally engaging. I've also met Simon Reynolds on a couple of occasions and he's a very nice, very smart gent.
In any case, I happened upon the below passage in "Totally Wired" this past weekend and it really struck a chord with me. In a chapter devoted to an interview with David Thomas (a.k.a. Crocus Behemoth) of the legendarily iconoclastic Cleveland ensemble Pere Ubu, Reynolds coaxed this reminiscence:
Cleveland was a town of record stores. That's why it was the birthplace of rock n' roll in 1951. Alan Freed was in a record shop, the same shop that everyone in Ubu ended up working in at one time or another: Record Rendezvous. He noticed all these white kids getting of on 'race records,' so he started doing hops. Everyone who was in a band worked in a record store, and all the record stores competed against each other to have the most complete catalogues. To have everything of everything. There was a lot of specialized interest. That's why the worldwide Syd Barrett Appreciation Society was in Cleveland. There were these strong cliques of people. It was a real hothouse environment.
As I read that passage, I couldn't help but think of the network of similarly-inclined record stores here in New York City that I used to religiously loiter in and encounter the same sense of community that Thomas talks about. As I type this, most of those places have closed up shop. I only read today on EV Grieve's site that the former perch of Mondo Kim's on St. Mark's Place is now going to be a karoake parlor. Yes, we have the internet to bring like-minded souls together now, but I can't help but lament the loss of these types of folksy networks. This might sound somewhat histrionic, but without these places in the physical realm to foster and feed the imaginations and enthusiasms of musicians, fans and curious dabblers, have we lost (and/or unwittingly dismantled) the once-fertile breeding grounds for future generations of artists?
While you ponder that arguably hyperbolic point, I thought I'd provide a link to one of Pere Ubu's more choice moments. Sadly, neither of my favorite Ubu tracks --- "Non-Alignment Pact" and "Final Solution" -- can be found on YouTube. As such, herewith their entry into the amazing film from 1982, "Urgh! A Music War" (still criminally out of print on DVD). Enjoy.
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