Flaming Pablum

Dee Dee's B-Day

So long as we're on the birthday kick, Dee Dee Ramone would have been 60 today. 

Hell's Birthday?

His Facebook page says it's today, but Wikipedia says it's October 2nd. In any case, I just thought I'd take a moment to wish the happiest of birthdays to the original New York punk rocker and sartorial iconoclast, Richard Hell. Below is my favorite anecdote about the man, originally taken from this post.

This article reminded me of an anecdote I read, although I can't remember where. In any case, legendary New York Punk stalwart/architect Richard Hell and fabled Punk magazine scribe/scenemaker Legs McNeil were walking through Tompkins Square Park sometime in the 90's. Predictably, a by-the-numbers "Crustie Punk" teenager, replete with customary mohawk and cliched punk finery, approached the pair, scrounging for change. Hell strode onward without giving the "punk" so much as a glance. Legs followed afterward. Denied his small change, the young "punk" shouted after them, "yeah, have a nice day, you fucking YUPPIES!" Legs stopped in his tracks and turned around. "Yuppies?" he laughed, gesturing at Hell... still walking onward, "that guy INVENTED YOU!"

Crank it.

Demarcation of the Southern Terminus

Appropriated from the entirely excellent Tumblr, This Isn't Happiness

It's Too Late

Rats of Unusual Size

Last week on West 25th

Books and Televisions

Jeremiah Moss passed on an online petition on Facebook last week that I immediately signed without hesitation (and perhaps you too should consider it). As turns out, the storied St. Marks Bookshop -- now housed on the ground floor of Cooper Union's artlessly priapic sliver of a dormitory on 3rd Avenue (where I once spent several days living inside in the early days of 1993, in the "visiting scholar's suite") -- is in grave peril of closing due to its spiraling market rent. As one of the few surviving vestiges of the neighborhood's vanishing character and a vital stronghold of off-the-beaten-path, esoteric literature (you won't find a third of the books housed therein in your local Barnes & Noble), one would imagine St. Marks Bookshop to be something of a revered, untouchable landmark. Not so, alas. As of the moment, if it's not granted a rent concession, we might shortly see it transformed into yet another bank branch. You don't want that, do you? Click here to sign the petition.

While you're at it, why not visit the shop and buy yourself a book? Might I recommend the book I'm currently reading, my friend Bryan Waterman's stately rumination on Television's Marquee Moon for Continuum's 33 1/3 series. Bryan even mentioned this here silly weblog in the acknowledgements in the front of the book so, ya know -- how ya like them apples? It's an excellent account of the travails of Messrs. Verlaine, Hell, Lloyd, Ficca, Smith and their surrounding orbit of 1970s hipsters and proto-punks and an endearingly in-depth portrait of the East Village during one of its most-rhapsodized periods. I strenuously recommend it.

Anyway, go buy that book and go save the St. Marks Place bookshop. The clip below is also by Television. It's not on Marquee Moon, but rather on their reunion album from the fall of 1992. I was listening to this record non-stop during my exceptionally brief tenure in the Cooper Union dormitory, and I can't seem to walk down St. Marks Place without the band popping into my head (and I even encountered one of them there not too long back).

Street Art Photo Mystery on East 12th

Those smitten with the street art of the 1980s should get themselves down to the Dorian Grey gallery in the East Village to check out the "Club 57 & Friends" exhibit. Among the works presented is the photo below (taken by Hank O'Neal of a collaboration between Richard Hambleton and Jean-Michel Basquiat). Music-dork trainspotters like myself might also be quick to point out that these two artists' signature work was also featured on the cover art of Felshtones-collaborator Marty Thau's somewhat clunkily-compiled NYC rock compilation, The Groups of Wrath (see pic above) from the early 90's. It was cool collection of music and well-intentioned but somewhat botched, being that the cover art featured 80's art, but the disc featured late 70's music....whatever.

In any case, I'm captivated by the photo below not only because it features both Basquiat's inimitable illustration and Hambleton's sinister silhouettes (which used hold court on many a desolate downtown street corner), but because it was evidently taken right on my old block (I used to live at 39 East 12th.) Here's the thing that stumps me, though. If you look at 34 East 12th (basically the Police Athletic League Building), nowhere is there a patch of wall that mirrors this one in texture. In other words, the edifice upon which Hambleton and Basquiat created this artwork seems nowhere to be found in relation to the building today. Take a look at this Google maps representation. Not only is the building brown (which, admittedly, could have happened sometime after this photo was taken), but the facade is completely different, stone-wise, from the one in the photo (unless, of course, this painting was captured in the rear of the building or something). I can't figure it out.

Can anyone pinpoint exactly where this photo was taken? GO!

A Decade Later

In the past few days, as we approach the tenth anniversary of September 11th, 2001, I’ve been wondering what to post here, if anything. In the past six years on this blog, I’ve expressed most of my thoughts on the subject. While it is indeed startling that ten years have passed since that day, I’m not sure why a ten-year-anniversary is any more significant than a six-year-anniversary or a thirteen-year-anniversary, but I think that’s just because we all respond to even sets of ten.

I seem to remember that there was a moratorium of sorts regarding photographs from that day for a little while. People found images of the burning towers too jarring. As I’ve mentioned in the past, I took a bunch of pictures that day as well, but it’s never seemed appropriate or necessary to post them here or anywhere. This year, however, if you were put off in the past by pictures of that day, you should probably stay far away from the television, Internet and, Hell, you’re invariably better off staying inside with your shades pulled down and the lights off. It’s going to be everywhere. People love ten-year-anniversaries, and the media is all too happy to revisit virtually every single detail.

I’m a hypocrite, of course, because I work in media (and even co-penned my own commemorative piece this week about must-read books about September 11th). There are going to be tributes and memorials and timelines and shot-by-shot deconstructions (you can even watch almost every nanosecond of what was on television that day all around the world). It’s going to be strenuously difficult to avoid or ignore the anniversary.

For those directly affected by the tragedy, I don’t know if these sorts of anniversaries and their accompanying hoopla help or hurt. I can’t speak for them, but I’d imagine the family members and loved ones of my friend Mike from high school who died in his office at Cantor Fitzgerald in One World Trade Center feel just as heartbroken on the anniversary as they do on every single other day. I don’t imagine they’ll spend their time on Sunday watching the events replayed endlessly. But I could certainly be wrong.

In any case, moving forward, I don’t know if I’ll continue to weigh in on September 11th. We all lived through it, and we’re all still trying to understand it.

Instead of framing this post with an image from the day or yet another image of the WTC towers in flames, I decided to revisit one of my favorite photographs (I originally exhumed it here), that of the towers on their way up, probably shot sometime in the early-to-mid 1970s. I love how the SoHo that sprawls beneath still looks endearingly grotty and frontierish.

Lastly, I spotted the below clip on Gothamist last week and thought it was a fresh take on proceedings. Enjoy this montage of cinematic cameos by the Twin Towers. Can you name any films they left out? Off the top of my head, I noticed the “It’s All For the Best” sequence from “Godspell” is missing. What else is?

Twin Tower Cameos from Dan Meth on Vimeo.

Pop Quiz Answered: The Immaculate Consumptives in Sheep's Meadow in Central Park

This question didn't field a lot of responses, but here's the answer anyway: This is The Immaculate Consumptives, a short-lived post-punk supergroup featuring Lydia Lunch, J.G. "Foetus" Thirlwell, Marc Almond of Soft Cell and Nick Cave, then fresh from the recently dissolved Birthday Party. You can find out more about the project (as well as hear both interviews and download their actual music) via this site.

The photograph, meanwhile, was snapped for a spread in the British music weekly N.M.E. in the verdant sprawl of Sheep's Meadow on the western side of Central Park, roughly adjacent to Tavern on the Green and West 66th Street. Sadly, I have no idea who took this picture. What were these pointedly downtown types doing on the Upper West Side you ask? Good question. My personal theory is that, much like the Cure back in this photo mystery post, they were probably booked to play Hurrah's on nearby West 62nd Street, but I'm not entirely positive that there's any truth to that.

Here are my two little cherubic progeny frolicking this weekend on roughly the same spot.

It's the Law

Murphy's Law from 1996! That's my friend Dean Rispler on bass and -- if I'm not mistaken -- the interior shots of the stairwell were shot in his East 9th Street walk-up at the time. Not only is "What Will the Neighbors Think?" a great, rollicking slice of Murphy's Law (a good decade after their bulldozing, eponymous debut album), but the song/video unwittingly captures what's happening to the band's old East Village stomping (and I do mean stomping) grounds to this day. Also features some nice exterior shots of the stately townhouses on the northern side of East 2nd Street just east of the New York City Marble Cemetery (where I'm pretty certain Murphy's Law vocalist Jimmy Gestapo has never resided).

Fifteen years later, Jimmy Gestapo is still on the Lower East Side, operating the New York Hardcore Tattoos on Stanton Street and, I believe, still performing with varying incarnations of Murphy's Law. Guitarist Todd Youth went onto play with everyone from Danzig and DGeneration through Cheap Trick and Glenn "Rhinestone Cowboy" Campbell. Dean continues to play in bands and produces and promotes artists for Drug Front Records. The East Village, meanwhile, continues to gentrify.

 

 

And speaking of Murphy's Law, get your fingers limbered up to order up yourself a copy of the newly re-publisehed "Making a Scene: New York Hardcore 1985 -1988," by Bri Hurley, featuring some amazing photographs of the mid-80's CBGB scene (also featuring a lovely shot of Jimmy Gestapo and my fleeting co-worker Natalie on the cover). It's a must have.