Flaming Pablum

Discpocalypse Now

Hot on the heels of the revelation that Bleecker Bob's on West 3rd Street is to soon become a Starbuck's (yeah, `cos we NEED another of those, don't we?) came more bad news this morning courtesy of EV Grieve, that being that Rockit Scientist Records on St. Mark's Place has lost its lease. Rockit Scientist was never my favorite shop (I much preferred that location's incarnation as Smash CDs, which later changed its name to NYCD and moved to a couple of perches on the Upper West Side before it, too, surrendered), but I did indeed shop there on occasion.

If memory serves, Rockit Scientist started off over on the other side of town on Carmine Street (another strip where record/disc shops used to be plentiful). I remember browsing through their racks one afternoon in that location and Chris Robinson, the beardy and highly talkative lead singer of the Black Crowes came in and started chatting with the dude behind the counter. I've never counted myself as a fan of the Black Crowes, but just from eavesdropping, I was encouraged to find that Robinson was a voracious fan of all types of music and shared a hunger for new sounds. I walked away with new respect for the guy.

Back on St. Mark's, with Rockit Scientist leaving, EV Grieve points out that St. Marks Sounds remains the last surviving disc shop on the strip (now that age-old spots like Venus Records and Mondo Kim's are long gone). There's still a Kim's outlet not too far away on 1st Avenue and, as Grieve cites, Norman's Sound + Vision just around the corner, but who knows how those respective ventures are still holding on. Now that I think of it, the only real remaining disc shops left in downtown Manhattan that come to mind -- apart from Norman's, Sounds, Kim's and the soon-to-be-shuttered Bleecker Bob's and Rockit Scientist -- are Other Music, Rebel Rebel, Bleecker Street Records (which used to be Golden Disc), Academy on 18th,  Generation Records, Record Runner (which never seems open), House of Oldies on Carmine and (frankly shitty) Second Hand Rose on 12th street. Surely, I'm forgetting one or two, right? Help me fill in the blanks.

Regardless, time was when there were more than could be counted.

Marquee Memories

A couple of years back, I wrote a teary-eyed little post about revisiting the site of the long-since-closed early 90's music venue, The Marquee. There's currently a Marquee club over on 10th Avenue between 26th and 27th, but I'm not talking about that place. The Marquee I'm referring to wasn't too far from there, though. This Marquee was at 547 West 21st Street between 10th Avenue and the Lincoln expressway. It was way the hell out of the way at the time, but it was a great space. As I said in that earlier post, I saw a slew of amazing bands there and was deeply bummed when it closed (after which it turned into a Latino dance club and then a theatre and is now a comparatively sedate art gallery). Whenever I walk down that street (which isn't too often), the early 90's all come flooding back.

In any case, one of my fondest memories of The Marquee involves Henry Rollins. I was writing, at the time, for a tiny independent music magazine called The New York Review of Records (if you've heard of it, give yourself a gold star and accept my apologies). Henry Rollins was in town both touring with the Rollins Band and promoting his latest project, a collaboration with hirsute Rollins Band bassist Andrew Weiss called, somewhat forgettably, Wartime. I lined up an interview with Rollins for the NYROR and was told to meet him out front of The Marquee (where the Rollins Band would be performing that evening). Having been an avid Black Flag fan since first hearing "Rise Above" on a friend's mixtape in the early 80's, I was deeply psyched.

I met the great man standing outside of 547 West 21st Street, bereft of any semblance of a smile, with arms folded, legs akimbo. Still being somewhat new to the rock journalism game and easily prone to being awestruck by my idols, I probably seemed like a hapless little fanboy in my Skinny Puppy t-shirt, clutching my crappy hand-held tape recorder. But Rollins was nothing if not professional -- if not especially personable-- at least at first. We talked about Wartime and the Rollins Band, although he clearly had no interest in discussing Black Flag in the slightest. He was curt, viscerally self-effacing and practically bit my head off when I asked him if he stayed in touch with any of his "contemporaries.' By this I meant folks like Ian MacKaye or Glenn Danzig or H.R.. "Oh, I have contemporaries, do I? Who might they be?" he barked. I back-pedaled and explained myself (stammering, doubtlessly) and he cooled off, but the whole exchange was pretty intense.

By the end of the interview, he could tell I was genuinely sincere and a fan, and he gamely signed my copy of the No Policy e.p. by his first band, S.O.A. ("one old record" he scribbled on the sleeve). We shook hands in a Rollins immediately commenced an interview with another doe-eyed rock journo-type who'd been waiting patiently behind us.

I returned to the Marquee later that evening for the show. New York's own Lunachicks were the opening act, and they put on a hilarious, high-voltage performance. In the middle of the proceedings, however, there was a bit of a commotion in the crowd (and not just the usual pit scuffle). The `Chicks even stopped mid-song to get involved. I was standing over on the right, and only saw what looked like a wolfpack of skinheads suddenly close in on someone and beat him senseless. The guy was pulled out of the scrum ... strangely with his pants around his ankles. From the stage, one of the Lunachicks called out thanks to the skins. A couple of years later, I'd learn what that episode was about. The recipient of that rigorous beat-down was none other than Dino Sex, erstwhile drummer for GG Allin's band, The Murder Junkies. As detailed in disquieting minutia in the excellent GG Allin documentary, "Hated," Dino isn't quite right in the head and was deeply obsessed with the Lunachicks. As it turns out, Dino showed up at the show at the Marquee that evening and was so caught up in the erotic rapture from watching the mightly Lunachicks that he felt obliged to drop trou and commence masturbating in front of them. Neither the band nor the skinheads in the crowd were especially sympathetic to Dino's display, and responded accordingly. While bloodied upon his exit from the Marquee, Dino did survive the experience more or less intact. I believe he's currently a bike messenger. He's prone to dying his hair a flaming orange and sports a neon green handlebar mustache. Ya can't make this stuff up.

Anyway, The Rollins Band came on afterwards, thanked the Lunachicks for letting them "close" for them and launched into a blistering set. I'm only mentioning all this now as I stumbled upon the below clips from that very show. In the top clip, "Hard," enjoy Henry's signature verbal deflowering of a vengeful heckler. The bottom clip is a sprawling, funked-up cover of the Velvet Underground's "Move Right In" (if you like this rendition, a similar version, recorded live in Austria, can be found as an extra cut on Hard Volume, oddly listed as "Joy Riding with Frank"). Shortly after this show, The Rollins Band signed with Imago records, played the first year of Lollpalooza and released The End of Silence which catapulted Rollins towards an even greater audience.

Today, what was the Marquee is now an art gallery, the Lunachicks went on "hiatus" in 2000 and Rollins has largely since given up music, opting instead to continue writing, publishing books of photography (see clip below) and continuing his spoken word shows. I caught his birthday performance last year at Joe's Pub.

What a Waste!

Peg and Charlotte left this morning for a weekend at my sister-in-law's, leaving Oliver and I to fend for ourselves, but we've been enjoying ourselves. While out this morning, we passed down West 3rd Street, and I asked a passerby to snap a picture of us in front of the recently-ill-fated Bleecker Bob's. It wasn't until I got home that I realized that it pays unintentional homage to Ian Dury's 1977 debut, New Boots and Panties!.

 

Disney Gets Slipped a Mickey

Initially, I wasn’t going to address it here because (a) I’d already done so somewhat laboriously on Facebook and (b) the last thing this weblog really needs is another obstreperous, vein-popping screed from me about t-shirts. As fate had it, however, the story built up steam and the next thing I knew, folks at my job were asking me to whip up a little something on it. So, I collected my thoughts, subtracted HUGE ANGRY SWATHES OF RAGE from them, and wrote what I considered to be a fairly straight account of the whole kerfuffle. So, if you really want to re-live the whole DISNEY RIPPED OFF JOY DIVISION’S UNKNOWN PLEASURES FOR A T-SHIRT saga, click right here to read my take on it for TODAY.com’s style blog, The Look. Also, let’s face it – I’m an attention whore, and want you to read everything I write. Humor me.

Depressingly, the shirt is no longer available (well, you can find it for stupid amounts of money eBay). I’m actually going to DisneyWorld (god help me) in February, and had been planning on picking one up. Oh well.

 

Farewell to Bleecker Bob's?

Weirdly, I've had posts fleetingly alluding to both Billy Idol and Bleecker Bob's already this week, and here they both are again, united in a single post. Odd, that.

My first encounter with Bleecker Bob's was probably around 1982, or so. My friend Walt had just moved out of his mom's place on the Upper East Side (the neighborhood where he and I had grown up and went to school) and into his dad's place down on Cornelia Street in the Village, just off 6th Avenue (the tall, triangular building that currently hosts Crazy Fantasy Video and Papaya Dog on its ground floor). He showed up at my place back uptown brandishing a record-sized paper bag. He wasn't in my front door for more than a minute before he revealed the bag's contents. There, sheathed in a protective translucent envelope, was our Holy Grail. Walt had finally managed to put his hand to the fabled "B Stiff" 12" by Devo on Stiff Records from 1978 -- a fabled artifact that, as committed Devotees, we'd been obsessed with finding. I was flabbergasted. "W-w-w-w-where did you find it? " I gasped. "You have got to come down and see this shop," said Walt. "it's going to blow you away."

Walt was talking about Bleecker Bob's, the already-old-and-dusty stronghold of underground vinyl that was, oddly, not actually on Bleecker Street itself (I'm sure there's a backstory there) but on West 3rd Street between MacDougal Street and 6th Avenue, just a stone's throw from Walt's new home (there was also another outlet, briefly on MacDougal just off 8th Street, which you can see evidence of in the video on this post). There were scores of other amazing record shops around there as well -- notably Subterranean Records right across from Walt's new front door on Cornelia Street, 99 Records further down on MacDougal Street, Record Runner over on Jones Street and a host of great places like Venus Records and It's Only Rock n' Roll over on West 8th Street (You can read all about those joints here, sadly). For budding music geeks like Walt and I, we had discovered the promised land. But Bleecker Bob's was our first.

I immediately began making regular pilgrimages to Bleecker Bob's and its surrounding network of music shops. Between the vintage vinyl that hung on the walls to the ever-present music that came blasting out of the soundsytem to the every-changing array of rarified t-shirts and posters and other ephemera, at the time I would have been happy to spend the rest of my life inside Bleecker Bob's. I remember prizing some crucial stuff there in my day, notably both the Turn to Red e.p. and the Act is Done bootleg by Killing Joke, the Now We Are Six single by the Happy Flowers, the warthog-shaped picture disc of Motorhead's "Killed By Death" single, the "Where's Captain Kirk?" 45 by Spizzenergi. The list goes on and on. I can remember thumbing through the bins there and suddenly spotting Vinnie Stigma and Roger Miret from Agnostic Front come trudging in. I remember standing in the t-shirt section in the back on some snowy afternoon and catching Marc Almond of Soft Cell perusing the vinyl. I didn't take the amazing shot at the top of this post, but that's, of course, Billy Idol exiting Bleecker Bob's (wearing the same t-shirt he sports, I believe, on the cover of Generation X's eponymous debut). That was snapped one by Chris Egan (you can check out his other photos by clicking here).

Behind the counter were some stars as well. I first met Kris Needs while he was toiling behind the til there. Craig Flanagin, one of the founders of maverick queercore pioneers God Is My Co-Pilot, also manned Bleecker Bob's register (and was tirelessly patient with my endless requests to see stuff pinned on the back wall). There was also this dude we referred to as Ringo, given his striking resemblance to the renowned Beatle, although I believe his actual name was John. John was incredibly informed and always happy to play things for curious customers. Those guys were all great.

Bleecker Bob Plotnik himself, meanwhile, was a bit of a wild card. When he was in the store, the atmosphere was charged and, frankly, unrestful. He was prone to screaming at employees and customers alike, and was all too happy to throw people out and/or ban them from the premises (I believe the Beastie Boys boast about the latter in their "Open Letter to New York"). Bob had a way of rubbing a lot of folks the wrong way. I think he's actually called out by name on the back of We're the Meatmen ...And You Suck by the Meatmen. And when the Meatmen are calling you a dick, you know you're reached a new depth.

In later years, Bleecker Bob's was sort of overshadowed by its competitors. I started finding better stuff (in better condition, for better prices and for far less verbal hassle from Bob) at other outlets. Upkeep at Bleecker Bob's went downhill as well. Everything in the place seemed coated in a patina of slimy dust, which didn't make for the greatest browsing experience. Ringo/John stayed on for a long while, but Craig and Kris had run screaming from the place (almost literally) ages earlier. Basically, after a while, Bleecker Bob's became kinda moot.

I kept going in for old time's sake and to peruse their stuff, but actual purchases became exceptionally rare. I want to say that in recent years, Bob has been confined to a wheelchair. I'm not sure of the circumstances, but I remember being really depressed when I noticed that. But, the shop soldiered on. In a way, Bleecker Bob's became the record shop equivalent of CBGB. Sure, you were glad it was still there as a landmark of things you held dear, but your reasons for actually darkening its door were becoming fewer and further between.

So, why am I writing about all this now? Well, my friend Jeremiah Moss wrote up a post on Vanishing New York yesterday, and dropped it onto my Facebook timeline with the question, "Is your heart still beating?" According to Jeremiah's piece, Bleecker Bob's is soon to become a --- WAIT FOR IT -- Starbuck's.

I was dependably chastised earlier this week by my friend Rob K. (who has a bit of a history of doing same) for too often invoking the phrase "Is nothing sacred?" In typically learned fashion, Rob pointed out that "them who rep for punk rock and many other formerly transgressive idioms should take a step back and think for a second whenever the phrase 'is nothing sacred' or something similar comes to mind." I love Rob for the precise reason that he's prone at check-mating me like this. It makes for spirited debates. In the instance of the demise of Bleecker Bob's, I'm not about to exclaim "Is nothing sacred?" (although I do believe I hyperventilated and shouted "Oh for fuck's sake!"), but the closing of the place will indeed make me very sad. Another part of my youth and another storied slice of downtown NYC's character will vanish with it.

Enjoy your grande frappuccinos, you fuckers.

ADDENDUM: This just spotted on Bleecker Bob's Facebook page....

ATTN Friends:::
please email us at [email protected] if you see available retail space for rent. Bleecker Bobs is not planning to close, heck we just bought a bunch of metal cds yesterday and a lp collection including lots of Beatles/Bruce/Dylan and other classic rock favorites!!!

With a Rebel Yell

Pardon me if I'm milking these, but here are yet another couple of shots from the afore-praised NYU archives. Presumably from 1983 (the year of the release of Rebel Yell), the top one features a gaggle of Billy Idol fans camped out at the old Tower Records at Broadway and East 4th (which is now some sort of sports mancave thing). The whole notion of kids waiting in lines to get their hands on a new album already seems so ... quaint and antiquated. But, that's what we did. And even though Tower was the mid-80s equivalent of a big box retailer, they did indeed have a grand selection, once upon a time. Their import section, at least, was formidable. The lower shot is from a different in-store appearance, evidently, from 1984. 

My favorite anecdote about in-stores at Tower Records can be found in John Strausbaugh's "Rock `Til You Drop," if I recall correctly. Lou Reed was signing records, and Strausbaugh attended with then-Soul Coughing front man M. Doughty. Before joining the line, wise-ass Doughty ran and grabbed a copy of an album by Lou Rawls, and brought that up to be signed, a stunt that even made the notoriously thorny Lou Reed crack up.

Missed The Target `til I Finally Hit the Red

A veritable blast from the past...

Open for Biz

As I mentioned in my last rapturous post, in a rare moment of wanting to do the right thing, I refrained from posting any pictures from NYU's sprawling Washington Square Area Image Collection. Instead, I dutifully shot them a note, explaining how blown away I was by their photographs and asked if it'd be alright if re-posted some of them here on Flaming Pablum. Encouragingly, they were totally cool with that. As such, herewith a shot Bleecker Bob's circa 1983. Take a closer look and you can spot some tell-tale signifiers of the era, notably vinyl covers by Bowie (a "Let's Dance" or "Modern Love" 12?), Punch the Clock by Elvis Costello, Nina Hagen, The Fleshtones and some others, and t-shirts featuring MDC, Black Flag, Void, The Clash and The Stray Cats. Actually, all told, apart from a few cosmetic changes, the exterior of Bleecker Bob's hasn't changed much in ensuing 29 years. In any case, once again, for more finds like this, go directly to the source.

Vanishing Downtown Photographic PAYDIRT

In search for fodder for this here weblog, I've been known to scour the `net, looking for rarified images of the New York City of my youth, specifically of neighborhoods or storefronts that had particular resonance for me. I've pretty much exhausted all of my own photographs, so I started respectfully mining the fertile frontiers of Flickr for other pictures of a New York City of a since-vanished age. I'm not alone in this hunt. Some of my favorite local blogs like EV Grieve, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, The SoHo Memory Project, Bowery Boogie and many, many others do this as well. In doing so, we've set up a de facto community of NYC bloggers that is often lambasted for being stuck in the past and/or accused of glorifying eras of Manhattan-living that were not all that history has made them out to be. Fair enough, but while I may indeed look fondly back at the NYC of my childhood and adolescence, I'll be the first to suggest that it had its myriad downsides (like, say, getting mugged on occasion). That said, compared to the antiseptic, venomously exclusive and gentrified Manhattan of today, it was a veritable hotbed of possibility.

Anyway, blah blah blah. The reason I'm waxing rhapsodic about all this now is because this evening, from the standpoint of a nostalgia-crazed NYC blogger, I just hit fucking PAYDIRT. You may remember a post of mine the other day wherein I spoke about Rocks in Your Head, a since-vanished record shop in SoHo. For some reason, I wanted to find another pictures of same. One or two Google image searches later, I came across a shot of Rocks In Your Head I'd never seen before. At first, I couldn't pinpoint a date on it (though I would later), but looking at the vinyl featured in the window (including Tattoo You by the Rolling Stones, Pretenders II, Penthouse to Pavement by Heaven 17, Beauty and the Beat by the Go-Gos, Dark Continent by Wall of Voodoo and Half Alive by Suicide), I'd have to say it was 1981. I traced the photo back to to its original website, and I was floored.

The image in question comes from the New York University Archives: Guide to the Washington Square Park and Washington Square Area Image Collection, 1850-1990. I was all fired up to post a bunch of their images here until I read the fine print.In a nutshell, you're ostensibly supposed to get written permission before publishing them. While that hasn't really stopped me in the past, I feel it would be a sort of churlish and disreputable move on my part to post them here now. But, by the same token, I feel that I ABSOLUTELY MUST SHARE THIS AMAZING FIND with the kind folks and kindred spirits who regularly read my blog. This is truly the biggest cache of amazing downtown NYC photographs I've ever encountered. It almost makes me want to overlook New York University's tireless expansion. That they've amassed such a collection is to their credit.

So, what are you waiting for? Yes, you'll see images of Washington Square Park from every conceivable era at every conceivable angle, but the REALLY GOOD STUFF requires scrolling about halfway down until you get to Series II: Washington Square Area. After this point, you'll find BREATHTAKINGLY RARE shots of stuff like...

- The Astor Place subway station
- The Broadway area around the NYU environs circa the 60s, 70s and 80s.
- The old Bleecker Street Cinema
- Vintage shots of Bleecker Bob's, Folk City, Tower Records, Rocks in Your Head, Tio Pepe Cafe, Arch Cafe, Cafe Figaro, The Captain's Table, The Cookery, Lone Star Cafe, Andy's Cheepees on 8th Street, and SO, SO MUCH MORE.

You have no idea how exciting I find this collection. Again, I'd love to put some up here, but I want to be respectful of the archivist's wishes. GO CHECK IT OUT AT ONCE!

Getting Gotye

As I was moaning about fairly recently, it’s becoming increasingly uncommon that I hear new music from genuinely new artists that leaves a lasting impression on me, largely because I’m becoming a stuffy old poop who dearly wishes you’d get the hell off his lawn. In any case, a little while back, my colleague Kurt posted the video for “Somebody That I Used to Know” by Gotye (featuring additional vocals by New Zealand pop siren Kimbra), and I found it to be a haunting slice of emotive pop the likes of which haven’t been heard on the radio for ages. Here it is now….

Last night, meanwhile, I stumbled upon this cover of the same song, played by a band that goes by the very silly name of Walk Off the Earth. I haven’t got the slightest clue who they are. Hell, I barely know who Gotye is. That all said, watch the clip below as FIVE (5) band members all play ONE (1) guitar SIMULTANEOUSLY and replicate Gotye’s melancholy duet flawlessly. I found it truly impressive and now almost prefer it over the original.