Flaming Pablum

Rock Shots

Caught a nice little interview with venerable rock photog Mick Rock on NPR this morning. For those who might not recognize the name, Mick Rock's storied pictures adorn the sleeves of several amazing albums, and his individual portraits -- of everyone from Bowie, Lou Reed (manipulated above) and Iggy Pop through Debbie Harry, Queen and Madonna -- are nothing short of iconic. Click here to read the story and hear the interview.

Fourteen Years Gone

I've marked the sad day in years past, so why stop now? Today is the fourteenth anniversary of the death of Wendy O. WIlliams of the Plasmatics. Pour one out. 

I don't know that I have anything to bring to the table on the subject that I haven't already, only that Wendy barely got a fraction of the respect she deserved and met tragically premature end.

More on the Wendy and the boys from years past....

To Hell & a Handbag with Wendy O. Williams

Where was Wendy's Wall?

There's No Escape When It Infects You

Twelve Years Gone

Out of the Silent Planet

This was already on Curbed and a couple of other places, so many of you may have already seen this, but for those who haven't, go check out Lucie & Simon's haunting "Silent World" collection -- an eerie collection of photographs of urban centers like Paris, Beijing and -- of course -- New York City, but robbed of virtually all of their respective inhabitants (the photographers usually plant one or two individuals in each frame). They're quite striking.

Above is their depiction of an uncharacteristically ghostly stretch of 6th Avenue. I've worked in or around the neighborhood above for all my professional life, and it's truly a rare scene to see it that deserted, being that it's usually choked with iPhone zombies, tourists, besuited office douches and other human cattle.

Kiss Me in The Park

Ask anyone who grew up here in Manhattan, and they'll probably agree that there are increasingly fewer locales around the island that still look the same way they did a decade ago. While, yes, change is the only constant (thanks, Heraclitis), the transformations this city has seen in the last twenty years or so could make one's head spin. Whole neighborhoods have been re-rendered. The cityscape has been altered. Where there was once air and space, there are now looming new towers. Watch a film that features fleeing shots of the city from the 60s, 70's or 80's (hell, even the 90's), and you may not recognize some of the streets depicted.

The great exception to that rule, for the most part, is Central Park. Of course, as I pointed out in this post, it too has undergone a bit of a facelift in the past several years and is now largely a cleaner, safer place than it was when I was a child, but its basic layout and topography have been left relatively intact. To this day, there are parts of Central Park that look pretty much the same way as they did back in the 1970s of my childhood. Here's hoping that continues to be the case.

In any event, the reason I'm discussing all this is because of the photograph above. Shot by one Waring Abbott in the summer of 1974, this picture shows Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Gene Simmons of KISS strolling incongruously around what is referred to, somewhat indiscriminately, as "The Pond," tucked just to the north of Central Park South. Throw a stone from this spot and, if you've an exceptionally good arm, you could conceivably crack a window at the Ritz Carlton. Simmons and Frehley actually describe this day in the book, "KISS: The Early Years," although this particular photograph does not appear therein. "What KISS and a park have in common, I'm not sure," says Gene. "What KISS and daylight have in common, I'm not sure, but there we were."

If you look at the rest of Abbot's shots from that afternoon around the surrounding streets, it reeks of 1974, given the hairstyles, fashions, cars and storefronts of the era. What I love about this shot, however, is that you could conceivably go right back to this very spot, and it would look completely unchanged, although I'd imagine you'd be hard pressed to encounter the boys of KISS still loitering about.

Velvet Style

I think the only reason I thought to post this photo was because of our topsy-turvy weather lately. I optimistically put my navy pea coat away a week or so back when it was a balmy 70 degrees,.... only to find myself gong back to the closet to retrieve said coat just two days later when it was suddenly 20 degrees again. In any case, I always think of this photograph -- taken by one Nat Finkelstein, presumably circa 1967 or so -- when I rock the pea coat (here sported manfully by the Velvet Underground's John Cale and Lou Reed). Not that the pea coast needed their help, but this photograph elevates it to the very height of coolsville for being worn by the Velvets, as far as I'm concerned.

Even beyond the pea coats, I've always been fascinated by this photograph. Flanked by "producer"/svengali Andy Warhol (also looking dead cool in black, with a black leather jacket), the Velvets are seen strangely chilling out in what looks like a lobby, probably waiting for an elevator (and curiously without drummer Moe Tucker). Guitarist Sterling Morrison (looking the least put together of the four), looks a bit sedated and disheveled. Lou's looking characteristically surly. Warhol's looking effetely foppish, well aware of the camera. Cale's just being cool, as was his wont.

Much has been made of Warhol's contributions to the Velvet Underground, although it's widely purported that he really never had anything to do with their actual music (despite getting a producer credit on the debut LP). He probably had more to do with their visual aesthetic -- their sharp threads, the preponderance of black, the shades, but I'm purely projecting, of course. While, as far as I'm concerned, the Velvet Underground never made a musical misstep (although I've never heard Squeeze, the post-Reed album helmed by Doug Yule, but no one really counts that one), I think Warhol kept them on the distinctive track, visually. With the possible exception of The Clash, I can't think of another band who look so effortlessly cool in virtually every photograph than the Warhol-era Velvets.

Citing the Warhol-era is important, as after the band and he parted ways, they started to look like they did in the photograph below (although they still sounded great). Satorially-speaking, it's hard to recognize them as the same ensemble (although, of course, they're not -- that's the afore-cited Cale-replacing Doug Yule standing to Lou's right, if you can see either of them beyond their eye-immolating paisley).

And, for the sake of posterity....