The book came out at least two or three years ago, but "The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists" (which I fleetingly mentioned here) is well worth picking up, not just because it was co-compiled by Flaming Pablum favorite Handsome Dick Manitoba, but for the sheer volume of insightful trivia contained therein. Some time after it's publishing, its sibling book, "The Official Heavy Metal Book of Lists" hit store shelves. It too is also worth a read.
One of my favorite aspects of both of these books, however, is the illustrations by Cliff Mott. Mott's cartoonish caricatures echo a similar sensibility of favorite illustrators of mine like Danny Hellman, John Holmstrom and even a touch of Gerald Scarfe, yet still manage to completely capture the essence of the individuals depicted.
In any case, why am I bringing it up now? Well, because during a random recent Google image search (I was looking for a picture of X guitarist Billy Zoom for a reason that now escapes me), I happened upon a gallery website whereupon you can actually purchase Mott's original illustrations. The gallery show itself dates back to summer 2008, but it looks like the option to buy is still viable, should you be looking for the perfect Christmas present for the unrepentant punk rocker in your household. Even if you can't afford one and are just in the mood to peruse, they're well worth your time. Check it out here.
I've written about this blog once before, but it really bears repeating.
Bob Egan and I may not have very many favorite artists in common, but DAMN if I don’t ever love the hell out of Bob’s blog, PopSpots NYC. Y’see, while I like to go on little adventures to try and pinpoint the exact locations of various album cover photo shoots (as I’ve done here), I am purely a sniveling little dilettante compared to Bob Egan. Bob is a MASTER at this, and the work he puts into each image is nothing short of maddeningly exhaustive. The sheer amount of technical minutia Bob goes over in locating the ludicrously precise spots boasts the same scrupulous attention to insane detail normally found in obsessive scrutiny of the Zapruder film. Even if you don’t give a flying fig about artists like Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen, it’s really fascinating stuff. I mean, it’s so brilliant that I almost fear for Bob’s sanity. Go check it out at once.
I spoke about it quite recently, but in Spalding Gray's "Swimming to Cambodia," he speaks about always striving to find the defining moment of every experience. The story below may have been one such moment of my Thanksgiving break out in Quogue, however strange.
Late in the day on Friday afternoon, I went out for an autumnal stroll with my little ones, Charlotte (age 7) and Oliver (age 5). The kids were happily walking through piles of leaves while I soaked up the crisp fall afternoon. I was even carrying a walking stick, for crying out loud. In any case, the seasonal splendor came to a sudden halt, however, when little Charlotte took a tumble on the pavement. She'd been lost in whatever little narrative she'd constructed with her little brother and wasn't watching her step. After that tell-tale pause, Charlotte let out an anguished cry that probably shook several of our neighbors out of their tryptophan-addled naps. I rushed over and scooped her up (Charlotte's a little bit of a delicate flower and big on histrionics) and managed to calm her down a little. We turned around and went back home, the silence punctuated by Charlotte's little whimpers.
We got back to my mom's by around 5pm, when the dark falls like a heavy quilt, blanketing everything in pitch black. We walked inside and Charlotte suddenly noticed that her knee was bleeding through her jeans and immediately the water works resumed in force. Peggy and my mother attended to her, but we realized that we were fresh out of Neosporin. As such, I was summarily dispatched to the nearest pharmacy in Westhampton Beach.
I climbed into the car and headed out. It being a suitably dark and chilly evening, I fired up some Joy Division on the car stereo (I always keep a clutch of CD's in my mom's crappy car). The drive to Westhampton, however, was like something out of a David Lynch film. It was only about 5:15 pm, but the darkness was so impenetrable that I really needed the brights on to see where the hell I was going. Moreover, the wasn't another soul on the road at all, nor seemingly any lights on in any of the houses I was passing. It was as if everyone had dropped their silverware immediately after Thanksgiving dinner and cleared out with all haste. I tried to stave off the encroaching sense of chilly isolation by crooning along with ol' doomy Ian Curtis, moaning balefully from the car stereo, turned up to an unhealthily assertive volume.
I screeched into the Rite Aid lot and parked sloppily, convinced the store was about to shut its doors in the thickening gloom of the night. I picked up some Neosporin and a box of Mickey Mouse band-aids, paid and split. Mission accomplished.
I hopped back into the car and pulled out. As I turned onto Beach Lane and was cruising towards the bridge, I spotted something strange up ahead. On the side of the road was a crumpled heap of something. As I approached, I thought it might be a person. I stopped the car, the motor still running, and got out to investigate. Curled up on the side of the road, just shy of the grass was a large deer lying in a slowly widening pool of blood, presumably freshly clipped by a speeding car ... although I hadn't seen another car on the road for ages.
Sufficiently creeped out, I turned to get back into the car ... half expecting a robustly-antlered buck to come charging at me out of the darkness, seeking vengeance.
The entire time, the song below was booming out of the car. I doubt I'll ever hear it the same way again.
I got back in the car, and sped home through the dark.
Round these parts, I generally defer to Jeremiah Moss of Vanishing Downtown when it comes to Edward Hopper, but I was going through some photographs yesterday and stumbled upon one that immediately made me think of the painter's signature style. I don't know how much license Hopper took with depicting his city scenes -- did they necessarily relate specifically to exact addresses (hence the whole "Nighthawks" debate), or did he simply paint locations based on composites from his memory? In any case, I stumbled upon the Hopper painting below sometime in the summer of 2010 and thought it resembled a spot on Colonnade Row. Below that is a photograph I took in of my daughter Charlotte and one of her little friends, Nate, in front of that very spot on Colonnade Row. This was on their first day of school circa 2006.
It's not a complete match, of course (no columns), but I thought the similarity was sort of interesting.
ADDENDUM: Just for laughs, here's that same spot today (with Charlotte joined by her little brother Oliver)....
I don't remember exactly how I first became aware of Spalding Gray, but it was probably via his somewhat bizarre turn in the Talking Heads' 1986 film, "True Stories." To be honest, I'd actually seen his big screen breakout in "The Killing Fields" back in 1984, but in all candor, despite the seismic impact the experience had on him, he's on screen for all of about three minutes in that amazing, harrowing film. But yeah -- "True Stories" was probably where he struck me as someone to watch.
I didn't see "Swimming to Cambodia," his celebrated monologue about his "Killing Fields" experience, until way after the fact. I think the next thing I caught Gray in was a broadcast of his performance in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" on PBS. Around the same time, a friend gave me a copy of Gray's book, "Sex and Death until the Age of 14." Before I knew it, I'd become an avid Spalding Gray fan, and started hunting down his other work. Like an equally neurotic, WASP incarnation of Woody Allen (though not a native New Yorker), Gray exuded a sensibility that I found entirely entertaining and intellectually compelling. Like Allen's, his work certainly wasn't for everyone, but for those that didn't mind his somewhat self-absorbed schtick, Gray's perspective on the world always delivered.
The afore-cited "Swimming..." is obviously his most beloved monologue, but my favorite piece of his remains "The Terrors of Pleasure," which Showtime or HBO or one of those outlets taped in 1988 and the Comedy Central used to show all the time. I remember repeatedly watching it with my mom during my post-college years. It's a shaggy-dog rumination on Gray's attempt to buy a rustic country house in the Catskills wherein to compose his Great American Novel. Though spliced with fleeting snippets of film, it's largely just Spalding sitting at his signature desk, unspooling his quirky yarn. It's still steeped in his typical bouts of existential dread, but it's comparatively breezy and totally engaging. I still own it on CD and VHS, actually (though I no longer own a VCR). Regrettably, it was never put out on DVD, even after his passing. Strangely, I can't find any of it on the `net either.
From that point on, not only did I make it a point to see Gray's performances (my mom and I saw both "Monster in a Box" and "Gray's Anatomy" onstage), but I also used to spot Gray himself around town. I shared a revolving door with him (I was entering, he was exiting) at a court house downtown, leading me to speculate how he'd behave during a spell of jury duty. I also spied him once or twice in SoHo back in the early 1990s (before its makeover into the pricey, outdoor shopping mall it is today).
Time went on and I kept up with Gray sporadically. I think the last thing of his I read was "It's a Slippery Slope," which documented his foray into skiing and his new phase as a parent. I always meant to pick up "Morning, Noon and Night" from 2000, but never got to it. Then came news of his car accident in Ireland that left him scarred and irretrievably depressed.
When word first started circulating in 2004 that Gray was missing, like everyone else who'd followed the man's career, I was particularly saddened and expected the worst (there being a well-documented strain of suicidal thought in Gray's story). By the same token, when the news came that his body had been recovered and that he'd evidently thrown himself from the Staten Island ferry one night into the dark, impossibly cold waters of New York harbor, I couldn't fathom it. How do you do that? How do you bring three children into the world and then check out on your own will like that? I pray that's a realm of depression I'll never know. Regardless, it was a desperately tragic end to an extraordinary life.
Eight years later sees the publication of his journals. I spotted the book (edited lovingly by Nell Casey) on a recent trip to Shakespeare & Co. and couldn't resist. I'm currently only about a third of the way into it, but it's somewhat exhaustive and, well, truly depressing. Though Gray would often let what seemed like huge swathes of his deep-seeded neuroses into his work (often solely for comedic effect), those eloquently confessional moments on the stage, the page and the screen only hinted and the deeply unsettled, roiling storm of doubt, confusion and crisis that was perpetually spinning in the man's head.
If you're a fan of Gray's, it's assuredly interesting, but at the same time, I'm worried that it may forever alter the way you experience his work. Approach with caution.
The photograph at the top comes courtesy of the Galinksy NYC blog. Strangely enough, that memorial tile can be found in Tompkins Square Park. I always considered Spalding more of a SoHo guy than an East Village type, but go know.
The list of New York City bands that clawed their way to success is long and storied. From KISS to Blondie to the Beastie Boys to the Strokes to LCD Soundsystem and beyond, hundreds of notable bands have proven that -- despite the hardship, the competition and a relentless tide of indifference, rejection and urbane negativity -- sheer tenacity can win the prize. Longer still is the list of New York City artists -- from the Fugs to SWANS to the Cro-Mags to Cop Shoot Cop -- who, despite never really making any substantial amounts of money, somehow managed to carve their names into the tree of critical acclaim ... or, at the very least, notoriety.
Then, of course, there are those star-crossed bands who, despite their talent, energy, chops, style and savvy, never end up making the cut.
Sadly, the Metromen were one of those bands.
Who were they? Well, the Metromen were a versatile four-piece who started making the New York circuit in the late 70's and early 80's, riding the rising tide of New Wave in a similar vein to artists like Joe Jackson and The Police. For all intents and purposes, they were a fun, capable and promising outfit. They became, as I understand it (being that I was in grade school at the time, not loitering around NYC rock clubs like I would in later years) a regular fixture on the scene. Then, for some reason, it all went kaput. The band broke up, for whatever reason, and that was that.
They're not entirely gone, mind you. The band boasts a MySpace page, a Facebook page and even Wikipedia notes of their fleeting tenure. According to the latter, the band even recorded an album, but it never saw the light of day. There was even a brief Metromen reunion at Maxwell's back in 2007.
So why am I bothering to talk about this regrettably obscure band? Well, I stumbled upon a video on YouTube of theirs with which they used to open their show at the then-newly opened Ritz on 11th Street (now Webster Hall) and it blew a new part in my hair. Look beyond the low budget and the slapstick shenanigans of the young, enthusiastic band and soak in the sights and sounds of 1980 NYC. Look for the adjunct location of Bleecker Bob's (!!!) on MacDougal Street, and take a look back at 11th Street years before the massive AMC Loews Village 7 movie complex was constructed. It's truly a trip back through time as THE METROMEN TAKE THE RITZ....
And for the sake of posterity, here's a quick taste of what the Metromen sounded like. Enjoy...
My colleague Rosa wrote up an interesting little post today about new website called Drinkify that ambitiously claims to be able to suggest the perfect cocktail to accompany whatever music you happen to be listening to at the time. Being a slavishly opinionated, self-appointed music knowitall and boorish tune-snob, I chortled dismissively at the conceit and wagered I'd be able to stump it in nanoseconds. But, much to my surprise, for each seemingly esoteric entry I submitted -- from proto-cyberpunks Von Lmo to juvenile noiseniks the Happy Flowers to Boston hardcore mainstays SSD to 4AD dream-popsters Insides -- Drinkify had a cocktail to match each artist. Kudos for that.
That said, my pal Drew gave it a whirl and rightly pointed out that the perfect drink to accompany Minor Threat should be a Coke and not bourbon, being that the band in question were the cornerstone of the straight edge movement. Alright, points off for that.
I'm not sure what the algorithm at work with Drinkify is, but it's a fairly entertaining gimmick. My favorite entry was when I typed in the death metal pioneers in Possessed. Drinkify suggested that I drink 6 oz. of blood served neat, garnished with a wedge of pineapple. Bahahaha.
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