Flaming Pablum

An Inappropriate Kiss

A while back, I penned a post about the seeming incongruity of AC/DC getting into bed with Walmart. It struck me as odd that a band renowned for such lascivious sing-alongs as "What Do You Do For Money, Honey?", "Sink the Pink" and "Big Balls" would be deemed fit for wholesome family-consumption by the imperiously puritanical big box retail outlet. But, I guess the band's reputation as a sound investment overshadowed their penchant for the puerile and priapic. This week, I spotted a story which prompted a similar response.

At this stage of the proceedings, there are a million reasons to be disappointed by Kiss, from their tireless merchandising through their dishonest insistence on carrying on with imposters in Ace & Peter's respective guises. Hopes for the band to gracefully bow out with storied legacy intact were dashed on the rocks decades ago. Lambasting Gene Simmons for selling the soul of the endeavor at every conceivable opportunity is like scolding a kangaroo for hopping; it's just what he does. It's his nature. He can't help it.

That all said, there have been several occasions wherein I've been tempted to go AWOL from the Kiss Army and become a conscientious objector. That Pepsi ad. The coffee shop. The proposed Broadway musical. That cringe-inducing Olympics performance. The televised facelift. The Dr. Pepper ad. The appearance on 'American Idol' (oh good lord, that was rough). The list is endless (although I will always love Ace Frehley's spot for Dunkin' Donuts). They just don't make it easy to be a Kiss fan with any semblance of dignity these days.

The band's always had its detractors. Jann Wenner to this day refuses to put them anywhere near the cover of Rolling Stone (yeah, like that means anything anymore). They're pooh-poohed for being all spectacle and no substance. They've been accused of ripping off their gimmicky shtick from Alice Cooper and The New York Dolls. Fair enough. I love both of those bands as well (and yes, Alice Cooper is a band, not just one guy), but perhaps if the `Dolls spent less time doin' smack and more time writing better tunes, they'd have scaled greater heights. For my money -- love'em or hate'em -- Kiss were (note: past tense) a better band than the New York Dolls. I realize this assertion will incur the same sort of wrath I received for taking potshots at Patti Smith, but boo hoo. It's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

Anyway, the story that gave me (further) pause this week was the report that Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley are currently developing a Kiss-themed children's television show. Again, I'm not sure why this surprises me this late in the day, but once upon a time (i.e. circa their first three studio albums), Kiss was all about libidinous depravity and rebellion. They played loud, aggressive rock and dressed like leather-clad, Kabuki-slathered super-villains. When I was a nascent Kiss fan in the mid 70's, Kiss singularly embodied everything that my parents vehemently abhorred, which – of course – made them THE PERFECT BAND. They were designed to terrify your parents. This is the band that wrote paeans to adventurous sex ("Nothin' to Lose"), booze ("Cold Gin") and jailbait ("Christine Sixteen"). They asked to put the "X" in sex and implored you to "lick it up!" FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, THEY TITLED THEIR SIXTH STUDIO ALBUM LOVE GUN! (a record upon which they included a ditty about the infamous penis-molding groupie phenomenon of plaster-casting). My belabored point here is that Kiss at their best were pointedly not safe for the whole family. And that's exactly how it was meant to be.

I'm being unrealistic, revisionist and naïve, I suppose. Lord knows I was still watching Saturday morning cartoons when I first started getting into Kiss, so maybe it was always in the cards. Still, it just doesn't seem right, does it?

Paint Over Soho

Way back at the end of 2007, I composed a weepy little post about vanishing downtown street art, calling special attention to the vast murals that used to cover wide expanses of otherwise dull brick. In the course of same, I mentioned two Soho murals, specifically a bizarre crucifixion tableaux-of-sorts on 6th Avenue over the (now long gone) Moondance Diner and a large replica of the Mona Lisa staring out from the intersection of Thompson & Broome Streets. I didn't really become a fervent photographer until the mid-90s and sadly failed to capture either of these artworks on film. This, dear reader, is why I love Flickr so much. Clearly a site I've been hitting a lot lately, for an unrepentant nostalgist like myself, Flickr is a veritable gold mine of otherwise impossible-to-find images of our since vanished city. Anyway, at long last I finally found pictures of both of the murals I talked about (see below .... originally here and here, respectively, taken from a larger set of 1980s NYC Street Art). Visit either of these locations today, and all you'll see are giant, boring billboards.

A shame, that.Ooh, I should also point out that both of these photos were taken by one Allan Molho, and I commend him on his work and thank him for sharing. 

Wide Open Place

Just a quickie. The below picture would have gone quite well with this post of a few weeks back. I stumbled upon this shot on Flickr in this larger set of NYC shots from the 60's & 70's. This beautiful expanse of wide open space is long gone, of course. This plot of real estate is now the home of that giant, self-styled "undulating' blue shampoo bottle. This particular shot dates back to 1967, the year of my birth. The luncheonette was long gone before I ever remember visiting Astor Place, but I do indeed remember the lightning bolt mural on that north facing facade. I miss that.

Click on it to enlarge.

Really Pre-Gentrification

Hats off to This Ain't The Summer of Love for posting a link to Welcome To Your Parents' New York, another amazing trove of (seriously) vintage Manhattan photographs. Go check it out.

The City as a Canvas

I spotted the below image on Flickr this morning and thought it was so cool that I'd share it here. Old timey NYC punk fans will recognize this façade as the building that formerly abutted CBGB back in the day, later to morph into CBGB's Record Canteen and later still, the acoustic space/gallery. Hardcore heads will doubtlessly recognize the invocations to NYHC stalwarts like the Cro-Mags, Agnostic Front, Murphy's Law et al. The location pictured is now the site of the rock photo gallery, Morrison Hotel.

As it happens, it turns out that I already linked to this collection of street art photos back in July of `08, but it looks like they've added some since then, so it made sense to re-post the link for a compelling stroll down graffiti-splattered memory lane.

Joking Apart

This just in! After the rumor mill went berserk earlier in the week about Killing Joke postponing both the release of their album and the accompanying tour (see my weepy post regarding same here), bassist Youth and estimable tub-thumper Big Paul Ferguson had the decency to reach out to the faithful to deliver a proper, respectful update. It's true, everything has been pushed back. Click here to read their missive in full.

All parties concerned sound genuinely disappointed. Hats off to the boys for doing the right thing and setting the record straight. Bring on September!

Then & Now: Magickal Childe

Here's a quick one. I just passed this walking home from work this evening. Once a hotbed of occult paraphernalia, now a sleek & tony Tapas restaurant. I wonder if they bothered to exorcise the place before opening up Sala.

35 West 19th Street, 1997:

35 West 19th Street, 2010:

My City was Gone

I saw Flaming Pablum's click-traffic get a nice jolt this week when a post of mine was picked up by The New York Times' City Room blog. Within a larger article about – oddly enough – the dubious practice of bringing babies into Brooklyn bars, I was invoked as an example of someone who indulges in nostalgic whims. Fair enough, I can live with that. I've never resisted the nostalgia tag as it applies to this weblog. The post they were referring to was my rumination on the summer of 1992, a period of time that seems simultaneously recent and hazily distant. I don't think I needlessly wallow in nostalgia, but by the same token, I can't imagine that even the most hardened of stoics can ignore all the changes -- both positive & negative -- that have taken place in New York City and not think back to earlier times. But again, maybe I'm just too sentimental and feeling my oats, so to speak.

In a similar vein, I received a note from a reader last week that has found me struggling for the proper response. Assuming it's not just a wind-up, "Ilia" writes:

Nice blog! the music is really good! All i know about NYC is from the movie downtown 81, liquid sky... and similar... i got the pleasure of knowing Michael Holman and Maripol, i think they were ruling the NYC's scene in the 80's. i am 23 i am trying to be an artist, but here in europe it seems to be so hard... i saw downtown 81 it really really inspired me... Is new york still that openminded? i mean would it be hard for a young artist to enter in the community? what's it like?! i'd like to bring those times back! I have this feeling that moving to nyc is gonna change my life... am i wrong?

The jaded curmudgeon in me wants to say that the fabled, fetishized and fertile NYC of 1981 is dead and gone, but I should also probably qualify that by pointing out that in 1981, I was a gormless high school putz and not a hepcat Mudd Club regular. That said, I believe it's fair to assert that unfortunate truth that New York City – or at least Manhattan – is probably the LAST place you should come to be an artist. While I too continue to celebrate them, the "open minded" days are over. If you can find a way to successfully "bring those times back," I'm all for it, but don't come here expecting the wild frontier of Jean-Michel Basquiat et al. Their Manhattan is but a memory.

I can't speak for Brooklyn, though. The bohemian paradise you seek – or the closest approximation thereof – may be waiting for you there, but you'd better hurry up. It's going fast.

Surely You Jest!

Bad news for Killing Joke fans. Hot on the heels of Jaz Coleman's birthday, it seems the boys have postponed both the release of their new album and the accompanying tour (an outing I've already procured tickets for). I'm not sure what's up within the camp, nor has their been any official word posted from KJ headquarters. Maybe it's just a misunderstanding? Hmph! 

To offset the bad news with good, here's a appetite-whetting taster of their new material, recently obtained by some resourceful souls on The Gathering. Sink your teeth into it, as it may be all you get for a while. Although, hope does spring eternal.

NYC: 1992

It still doesn't seem that long ago to me, but I suppose it should. Children born during the summer of that year are now freshmen in college. We've had three presidents since then, and two of'em were two-termers. There have been wars, fads, trends, scandals, huge cultural moments, natural disasters and history-altering events all since then, but 1992 still seems strangely contemporary to me. I've grown used to frequently mentioning how I still have t-shirts and mixtapes from that year, but if truth be told, I don't have anything to play the cassettes on anymore and the t-shirts are now all a bit form-fitting, so to speak. That's what eighteen years will do to ya.

18 years ago, I was twenty-five years old. I was working at LIFE Magazine and living in Yorkville on the Upper East Side. By day, I was an editorial assistant to the news editor, assigning stories and chasing down reporting from stringers. On the side, I wrote in a freelance capacity for a freebie newspaper called New York Perspectives (gone), a tiny independent music `zine called The New York Review of Records (long gone) and a short-lived, glossy version of Creem Magazine (gone). I was busy, active and saving money by living at home (an arrangement that would only last so long). While I probably grumbled about it at the time, life did not suck.

While I worked by day, by night the city was my playground. Uptown, I was often found hanging out at either Ryan's Daughter or The Gaf (both on East 85th Street), while my downtown base of operations was a tiny apartment on Irving Place that was being rented out by my friend Rob. The building was purportedly the residence of Washington Irving at one point, and Rob rented the garden-level floor from the brother of Wallace Shawn (as such, we'd routinely answer the phone with an emphatic "Inconthievable!") From this space, we ran roughshod over the lower Manhattan.

That summer was a busy one. Work-wise, I was tapped to orchestrate credential logistics for LIFE correspondents and reporters at the Democratic Convention at Madison Square Garden. As a perk, I got to use them myself and check out some of the proceedings first hand. That was pretty exciting, coupled with the fact that I'd just started dating a girl from the office. Weekend days were spent in the verdant, idyllic sprawl of Central Park. Weekend nights were spent downtown, usually seeing live music.

My favorite bands at the time (Killing Joke, Cop Shoot Cop, the Stranglers, etc.) remain my favorite bands today, but while other folks were paying entirely too much attention to Nirvana and Snoop Doggy Dogg (sure, both had their moments, but I was sick to death of both of them at the time), I was digging a whole bunch of different and -- in some fleeting cases -- dubious stuff. Probably the biggest albums of that summer for me were Check Your Head by the Beastie Boys. How The Gods Kill by Danzig and Psalm 69 by Ministry. I was also grooving to stuff by Spiritualized, Curve, Blur, Kingmaker, Ned's Atomic Dustbin, Shakespeare's Sister and …. er… Arrested Development. I saw Metallica co-headline Giants Stadium with Guns N' Roses (the former rocked, the latter spent too much time changing costumes), U2 at Yankee Stadium a couple of times on their bloated-but-entertaining Zoo TV tour and the second incarnation of Lollapalooza (the one with Lush, Pearl Jam, the Jesus & Mary Chain, Ice Cube and the Red Hot Chili Peppers). Otherwise, I spent way too much time in now-vanished live music clubs like the New Ritz, Wetlands Preserve, The Pyramid, Tramps and The Marquee and too much money in since-shuttered downtown watering holes like Downtown Beirut, Alcatraz and The Cedar Tavern.

It would all change, of course. I broke up messily with that woman from my office (that weepy saga can be read here) and everyone was laid off from LIFE Magazine in relatively short order. All three of the periodicals I was freelancing for folded, forcing me to find other outlets. My personal circumstances would continue to change. Most of those rock clubs and bars mentioned above closed, and the city itself seemed to transform.

So, why am I blathering on about the summer of 1992 when both my current situation and the city I live in are radically different from their incarnations of that time period? Well, I happened upon the video below on YouTube, and it touched it all off. Ignore the cheezy soundtrack and drink in the sights on NYC in the balmy, carefree days of the summer of 1992.