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As we lurch sweatily towards the official kickoff of summer, I thought I'd put up another link to my Flickr photostream (y'know, in lieu of putting up some original, pithily-composed, savvily-quotable and/or keenly insightful new content). Ideally, there'll be more of that soon. In the interim, please avail yourselves to the pics and enjoy yourselves.
Click here to see'em.
So, here we are at Father’s Day once again. As I’ve noted in the past, in terms of pop music (or at least the pop music I listen to), it seems there are inordinately more songs about shitty dads (I actually tallied a nice little playlist of same for DadWagon not too long back) than there are about positive, well-meaning relationships with dads. I really had to wrack my brain coming up with any. The first one that sprang to mind for me was the one below from XTC’s colorfully family-centric (and, to my ears, somewhat slightly overproduced) opus from 1989, Oranges & Lemons. When this record came out, I was a senior in college, and the band’s new focus on parenting left me a bit cold and clammy (I generally prefered XTC when they were clangy, frenzied and angry). So while I probably thought this song was soppy at the time, I now admire Andy Partridge’s canny encapsulation of the complex father-son relationship within the framework of a three-minute pop song. As the father of two increasingly less-little ones myself, I now find “Hold Me My Daddy” to be quite bittersweet.
Back when I was more of a regular barfly, I had my own yardstick for what determined a good bar from a bad one. Personally speaking, if a bar came saddled with an inescapable widescreen TV that was blaring sports at me, I immediately drained of enthusiasm. Secondly, I needed a good juke box, and a decent beer selection was always a bonus. You may beg to differ. You may require a dart board or a hospitable wait staff or a regularly-re-filled basket of peanuts on the bar. Everyone has their own stipulations.
I recently fielded a note from a reader who keeps his own weblog, Visceralist.com. Though also preoccupied with hip-hop and such, the primary thrust of Visceralist seems to be the documentation of the NYC bar scene. In a formidable series of breakdowns, Visceralist rates various watering holes in Brooklyn and Manhattan (mostly downtown), grading the establishments on particulars ranging from their decor through their respective girl-to-guy ratios. My favorite curious aspect of the blog, however, is that the very first item of business on each of these bar report cards regards their individual "Bathroom Situations." While such a factor would never really occur to me -- I mean, I certainly appreciate it if a bar has a working bathroom -- it seems to be the crucial variable in determining whether the Visceralist plans on ever darkening the bar's door again. He also seems to be unduly fond of Stella Atrois, but it's the bathroom aspect that really matters to him, and he's meticulous in his scrutiny (that's one of his shots above). I'm not judging or disrespecting -- I just find it kind of amusing. But, ya know -- to each their own.
Check out Visceralist.com by clicking right here.
Just a handful of shots from thirteen years ago...
Last Wednesday, Jeremiah Moss posted a great entry about the street photography of Carl Burton from the 1980s. Burton's pictures immediately reminded me of the photorealist paintings of Richard Estes. I'd only recently discovered Estes' work, but it's truly amazing stuff. Click on the image above of Waverly Place circa 1980 to enlarge-- that's a painting, by the way, not a photograph. A simple Google search of his name will bring up a wide selection of his work, but you can find a nice collection at this link right here.
Check this out. Rude and Reckless: Punk/Post-Punk Graphics, 1976-82 is the first New York exhibition surveying the extraordinary diversity of Punk and Post-Punk graphic design. It'll be happening July 21st through August 19th at the Steven Kasher Gallery at 521 West 23rd street. More info here.
As I mentioned back on this post, Bryan Waterman of the awesome History of New York blog asked me to contribute a playlist of "NYC Songs" to help ramp up the release of his and his colleagues' new additions to Continuum's 33 1/3 series. Typically, I agonized over my list -- and cheated and went with ten, when only five were solicited. Anyway, I came up with a list I'm pretty happy with. Click here to read it. Also be sure to check out the playlists by Flaming Pablum pal Tim "Karate Boogalo" B, Marvin Taylor, Caryn Rose and Dave Mandl.
Below are some songs that, for whatever reason, I jotted down but didn't make the cut. They're either topically appropriate or were simply filmed in NYC in a stylish capacity. Here they are, in no rank or order at all. What would be on your list of NYC records?
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