Flaming Pablum

Recalling Rocks

Given the very nature of the unstoppable, jackbooted goose-step of time, it shouldn't feel surprising that certain periods of one's life or since-vanished places are forever becoming "longer ago," so to speak. It's as if they're trapped on a specific continent that you are continually sailing diametrically away from (although, to be fair, to milk that analogy, if you kept sailing in perpetuity, you'd eventually ram back into it on the other side). In any case, I'm continually struck by how things that have now taken place many years ago still seem relatively recent. It's as if you blink, and five or ten years go by. Earlier this week, for example, I read that the Pretenders' third album, Learning to Crawl, crossed a milestone of 28 years. I still think of that record as "their new one." Don't look now, but I'm getting old.

Yep, this is another post (much like, say, my recent one that recalled The Cat Club or my half-assed attempts to master skateboarding as a teenager) that shan't "move the needle" (as they're keen of saying in my office). It's just another shameless bit of nostalgia-wallowing. Stop here if that bores or offends you.

Still with me? Okay... well, apropos of nothing in particular, I recently stumbled upon an article that was published on the eve of the demise of the Manhattan incarnation of one of my old favorite haunts, Rocks in Your Head in SoHo. The fact that it's now been gone from its storied, bunker-like cave on Prince Street between Thompson and West Broadway for six years now really put the zap on my head. As I lovingly documented back on this post, Rocks in Your Head always felt like so much more than simply a humble record shop. It was more of a shrine or a seemingly secret meeting place for kindred sensibilities. When it could no longer afford the spiraling rents of the neighborhood, it moved to Brooklyn in April of 2006 to a location I never visited and closed for good shortly after that.

Nowadays, the space is occupied by a soulless real estate agency.

Siegel's NYC

Gothamist posted an amazing collection today of rough and rugged shots of NYC from the 1980’s by one Steven Siegel that are well worth a perusal (that’s one of his above). Click here for Gothamist’s take on it and here for Siegel’s own Flickr page. 

 

Unlucky 13th

EV Grieve put up a notice this morning that the long-standing sidewalk shed on the corner of East 13th Street and 4th Avenue has finally come down, ushering in a new stage of development for yet another needlessly huge and inevitably insufferable hotel that will assuredly blight the neighborhood like a boil-slathered tumor. In my day (i.e my ever-distant youth), this corner had special resonance for me because it was the home of the Cat Club, a smokey heavy metal joint that served as the first venue I was ever lucky enough to witness my favorites, Killing Joke, perform in the late summer of 1989 (see flyer at the bottom of this post). Martin Atkins was serving on drums, and in the crowd were luminaries like Johnny Feedback of local proto-hardcore legends Kraut, Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators and Joey Ramone. Handsome Dick and Joey were actually seated in a booth directly behind my friend Rob and I. I have a bootleg recording of the show. As far as I'm concerned, this event made 76 East 13th Street it hallowed ground. I wasn't able to prize any shots of the interior of The Cat Club, but I did manage to find the lovely photo above, courtesy of this fabulous Flickr page.

I've told the tale of this place before (notably on this post from back in 2005). Here's what I had to say at the time....

(76 East 13th Street) - To my knowledge, first it was the Cat Club, specializing in Heavy Metal circa the dawn of Grunge. Then it became the more versatile Grand. Then it gets confusing. From The Grand, it became System. After System it became the Key Club. After the Key Club, it became Spa. After Spa, it became Plaid. In any case, it hasn't been anything worth going to since it was the Grand. As the Grand, it was a nice little venue wherein I was fortunate enough to see bands like the Primitives, Redd Kross, Ethyl Meatplow, Motherhead Bug, Big Country, Cop Shoot Cop and Killing Joke (the latter when it was still called The Cat Club). But, as with seemingly every other great rock club in this city, they changed into a dance club. As Plaid, I believe they still had the odd live performance (it was the spot where Courtney Love supposedly brained a heckler with a mic stand a couple of years back). I believe it has since closed its doors and is currently inactive now.

Those days are all long over now. The corner lay rotting and dormant for quite a while until someone bought the space and construction started on the hotel. Doubtlessly, the address is shortly transform in to a hotbed of vulgar, nouveau riche exclusivity. But once upon a time, it was a place that rocked.

Oil on Sixth Avenue

Remember Midnight Oil? Of course ya do. Who could forget “Beds are Burning”? Being a fatuous music dork, I could point out that the storied Australian band had cranked out many awesome albums before that single that (fleetingly) found them fame here in the US, but whatever. In any case, the clip below dates back to around 1990, around the release of their seventh (see?) studio album, Blue Sky Mine. As explained here, the band were in town to play Radio City Music Hall, and thought it would be a really keen, eco-conscious thing to do (along with, let's face it, great publicity) to play an impromptu protest set in front of what was then the Exxon building at 1251 Avenue of the Americas (conveniently catty-cornered to Radio City). It was a stunt that recalled the Stones' fabled Fifth Avenue press fake-out and U2's "Where the Streets Have No Name" clip. I doubt very much that the Exxon corporation shook in its shoes, but I suppose it was a well-intentioned gesture on the part of Midnight Oil. No one could ever fault them for not having their hearts in the right place.

Why am I talking about all this now? Well, because I currently work in the building directly across the street from 1251, and every time I step outside my office, memories of this event flood back. While I also worked at 1271 Avenue of the Americas (aka the TIME-LIFE building) for over a decade, in 1990, you wouldn't have found me in this neighborhood, as at the time, I was sequestered in a cramped, dusty apartment on the Upper East Side, helping produce a tiny independent music magazine ... for no great amount of money and even less credibility, but who knew at the time?

In any case, 22 years later (streuth!, as the Oils might say), Exxon is no longer headquartered at 1251, having moved its New York offices to the seemingly incongruous environs of Brooklyn. Not sure who's holed up in that building, although the equally nefarious Chase Bank has a large share of it. Today, I work at 1250 6th Avenue, which is essentially the ass-end of the more prestigiously monikered "30 Rock." Midnight Oil, meanwhile, burned out in 2002, when lead singer Peter Garrett pursued political office in his native Australia. They reunited, briefly, in 2009, although I doubt the band could even get arrested here today, much less play a massive room like Radio City Music Hall.

Anyway, enjoy this quick taste of 1990 NYC. And if Midnight Oil's rock leaves you cold and clammy, know that they used to rock a bit harder than this slice of accessible pop. Personally speaking, I much prefer their more aggro stuff like "Don't Stand in Line," "Read About It," "The Power and the Passion" and the ass-whuptastic "Best of Both Worlds."

Sugar in Brooklyn

Copper Blue is twenty years old. Sobering.

Bob Mould discusses and performs “Hoover Dam”

Intermission

Shut Up and Play the Hits

On the Avenue

Fifth Avenue. The very name is synonymous with affluence. The mere mention of the thoroughfare in question conjures images of luxurious apartments with hardwood floors, penthouse terraces with sprawling views and storefront after storefront of exclusive, high-end shopping. To stroll upon the storied pavements of Fifth Avenue means catching a glimpse of the highest tier of Manhattan living. Blah, blah and yea verily blah.

Well, you can kiss all that fanciful claptrap goodbye, as I happened to notice earlier this week that Fifth Avenue – that bespoke boulevard of bounty – is finally getting a 7-11 of its own, up in the looming shadow of the stately Flatiron building. Get ready to suck down your Slurpee in style!

SK8 NYC

Here's an unsurprising confession: I was never a competent skater. Sure, I loved the culture, the attitude, the aesthetic and, of course, the bands, but I couldn't credibly skate to save my life. Seriously. One of my good friends, Danny, worked in a skate shop for a while in the mid `80s and fixed me up with some great gear. I had a battered Uncle Wiggly Fishstick (if memory serves) which I dutifully covered with Misfits and Circle Jerks stickers. But to see me assume the skateboard and attempt to master it was practically a sacrilegious insult to the entire skating community. I was the type of skater that basically had to hop off the thing when I came to a corner, re-position it in the direction I wanted to proceed in (oy) and get back on. It was truly, truly embarrassing. For the course of a few painful weeks, I insisted on "skating" to my summer job -- thinking I'd eventually get the hang of it -- but it was not to be. After I showed up continually late to that job (and invariably boasting a bloody knee from falling off the damn thing), I knew I had to face a hard, hopeless truth -- I was not meant for skateboarding. And no amount of cool t-shirts, Pushead stickers or lingo-appropriation was going to change that fact.

I have no idea what happened to my Uncle Wiggly Fishstick. I may have either given it to someone more deserving or back to my understanding (but disappointed) friend Danny. Twenty-someodd years later, I still perk up when I walk by a skate shop or see the signature font of the old "Thrasher" logo. When I hear the telltale sounds of a skateboard echoing down the concrete canyons of New York City streets, my head still floods with tunes like "Possessed" by Suicidal Tendencies or "Beach Blanket Bong-Out" by JFA. But in order to really be a member of that club, you have to be able to skate, and I just never could.

Others could and did, of course, and skateboarding continues to be a thriving subculture today, although most of the notable iconoclasts of the skateboarding community are even older than I am. In any case, I recently stumbled upon the documentary below and it triggered my tragic and failed attempts to join the ranks of the skating elite. Shot in 1990, this film -- named "Apple Juice" -- documents the travails of the NYC skater. Look closely and you may recognize a face or two, notably Harold Hunter, one of the original cast members of Harmony Korine's "Kids" who also turned up in the "Blow-Up"-alluding video for "In the Meantime" by 90's one-hit-wonders, Spacehog. I actually met him in a quirky antique store on Lafayette street around 2000 and he was very cool and chatty. Sadly, I understand he passed away in 2006 from a drug overdose.

In any case, enjoy....

ADDENDUM: Here's a shot of the storefront of Skate N.Y.C (as discussed in the video above). It was on Avenue A and East 9th.

Happy Bowie Day

As is being widely pointed out all over the pop culture media front today, today is David Bowie's 65th birthday. It's also my mom's birthday (hi, Mom!) In any case, here's a decidedly less-celebrated clip from the man. This is "Heaven's in Here," the opening track of the first album by the strenuously maligned Tin Machine circa 1989. Like both "Under the God" and the title track, this video was filmed at the Ritz on East 11th Street (now Webster Hall), featuring Bowie looking beardy and getting blusey before a hand-picked crowd of unconvincing downtown scenesters (Harley of the Cro-Mags appears fleetingly in both of the other Tin Machine performances shot that day).

I actually saw Bowie in the flesh in that very same room, although not performing. While attending a Secret Machines gig in 2004, my friends and I spotted Bowie sitting up in the balcony, enthusiasitically checking out the then-promising, high-volume Texan trio. We spent a large swathe of the evening looking up at him annoyingly, until he finally turned to face us, gave us a thumbs-up and then pointed at the stage, as if to suggest that it was the band we should be paying attention to, not him. He was right, of course.

Getting back to Tin Machine, though -- as I mentioned back on this post, while it's inarguably true that guitarist Reeves Gabrels slavishly overplays everything and Bowie's hamming seems more forced and contrived that usual, I do kinda dig this whole record. The second Tin Machine record and the live album are dreadful. Avoid them at all costs (if you could even find them today), but the first one really isn't bad. I mean it.

Anyway, happy birthday, Dave! Incidentally, despite his celebrated penchant for androgyny, the person pictured at the top of this post is not David Bowie. Rather, it is Florence Welch of Florence + The Machine, gamely showing her support for the under-celebrated Tin Machine in an exceptionally rare and presumably now-quite-valuable t-shirt.