My neighborhood (basically in between Astor Place and Washington Square Park) lost power last night about 8pm on the dot, triggered by an explosion at the Con Ed plant down at the far eastern end of 14th Street. We broke out the candles and the flashlights, turned on the radio and called the neighbors round and made the most of it.
Around 10:30 or 11pm, my neighbor Bruce and I went out for a quick stroll around the `hood, and it was truly surreal. The streets were pitch black, but the sky was eerily illuminated (with random flashes of light). Faces would suddenly appear at you out of the gloom. It truly was like something out of an apocalyptic zombie flick.
Today wasn't quite as fun, of course. There's talk of the power not being restored for a few days. We have no hot water. The kids are going kinda bonkers (and very alarmed that Halloween is looking unlikely tomorrow night). I'm typing at you now from my office in midtown, where I stopped in to catch up with my colleagues and charge up my cellphone and my wife's cellphone (both drained). Soon, I'll be hoofing it back downtown...before it gets too dark.
It's freaky in the dark. And, as Newt once sagely admonished, "they mostly come at night .... mostly."
It seemed somewhat ironic that SWANS, a band notorious for a vast, engulfing maelstrom of sound should be dwarfed by a literally vast, engulfing maelstrom, but that's what it was looking like yesterday. Despite the fact that I'd been looking forward to this show for months, it seemed fairly likely that in light of the impending wrath of Hurricane Sandy (otherwise known as "Frankenstorm" and many colorful variations thereof) and the accompanying closing of the NYC mass transit system, SWANS' October 28th date at the Bowery Ballroom was going to be cancelled or postponed. But as I kept checking back over the course of the afternoon, the Bowery Ballroom's website continued to assert that the show would "go ahead as planned." That seemed a bit offsides, I thought, being that a large swathe of the band's fan base probably resides in landlocked Brooklyn.
After hemming and hawing and punishing my friends on Facebook (let alone my wife) about it for hours, I decided to take the dare. Around 8:45 pm, I stepped out into the eerily quiet (albeit steadily breezy) night to march down the Bowery to Delancey Street. Strangely for the first time in decades, the streets around the Bowery once again exuded that once-prevalent vibe of quiet, empty desolation.
While it was originally a sold-out show, there was plenty of elbow room to be enjoyed in the Bowery Ballroom last night. And am I glad I went? Put simply, it was one of the most intense performances of music I have ever witnessed. I won't blather on any futher, as I have a natural disaster to prepare for, but please enjoy my photos from the evening....
The surprisingly excellent Devendra Banhart...
Gira in action...
An ABSOLUTE NECESSITY...
Thor and Phil giving it some serious percussive whallop behind Michael during "Coward"...
Here's a bit of an encore rumination. I originally composed this for The New York Nobody Sings, but am re-posting it again here in commemoration of the impending All Hallow's Eve.
It happened 31 years ago this month. Punk rock fan John Belushi -- at the top of his game (and arguably at the height of his abuses) -- convinced Lorne Michaels to book the notorious Los Angeleno punk band, Fear, as musical guests on "Saturday Night Live." The extent of Belushi's clout with the show must have handily overshadowed the threat of impending controversy that inviting a band like Fear onto the program would invariably accompany. Either that, or the musical-guest-vetting process was woefully lax. In any event, the infamously foul-mouthed, obnoxious and violently provocative four-piece was booked for the suitably scary air-date of October 31, 1981. Donald Pleasence, fresh from reprising his role of Dr. Sam Loomis in the then-just released "Halloween II" was the host.
What happened next is the stuff of punk rock legend. To accompany Fear's performance, Belushi organized a group of hardcore kids to come onto the broadcast to replicate the energy of a live Fear show. Among this garrulous smattering of youths were several notable members of the emerging New York, Boston and Washington D.C. scenes. NBC decided to hold off on unleashing them for Fear's first number (during which time the kids in question proceeded to wreak havoc in the corridors of 30 Rock). For the second number, the kids were ushered out to slam. Somewhat unsurprisingly, in retrospect, absolute chaos ensued. Audience members cowered in terror as Doc Martins flailed and fists flew. Things turned really ugly when tensions flared between the D.C. crew and the New York kids, culminating in some broken bones and blood letting. It's reportedly none other than Ian MacKaye himself who shouts out between songs, "New York SUCKS!" .... an exhortation that touched off further inter-scene acrimony. Hear Cro-Mag vocalist and NYHC mainstay John Joseph tell his side of the story here.
Aghast at the riot unfolding in their studio, NBC panicked and pulled the plug a few moments into Fear's last song, "Let's Have a War." The rest, as they say, is history. Fear went onto to become even more of a cartoon than they already were (this curious clip of lead singer, grizzled tough guy and future actor Lee Ving somberly crooning "The Impossible Dream" from "Don Quixote" suggests that Fear's slack-jawed bluster was largely just shtick anyway). SNL wouldn't see this brand of excitement again until Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of the Pope.
As a curious personal footnote, I was actually on the same block of these events that very same evening, watching Devo play next door at Radio City Music Hall (on the New Traditionalists tour). It was my first ever concert (and a good deal more sedate than what was to unfold at 30 Rock).
Herewith Fear's first number from that evening. There is footage of their second and third song, "Beef Baloney" and "New York's Alright if You Like Saxophones," but they're repeatedly taken down. You can see them here, though. Enjoy and Happy Halloween.
Sadly, there are precious few still from the event...
The wife and I had some old friends over for dinner the other night who now live out of state, and the conversation quickly turned -- as it frequently does in our house -- to the physical erosion of culture (for lack of a better description) caused by the jackbooted march of technology. By this, of course, I'm talking about how the alluring ease and accessibility of purchasing goods and services on the internet has virtually wiped clean the chances of long-term survival for independent, brick n' mortar mom n' pop establishments that sell stuff like, say, music and literature. In other words, record & disc shops and bookstores are all going bye-bye.
The predictable retorts about the "brilliant user-friendliness" of Kindles and the convenience (the dreaded "c" word) of Amazon ensued, but I'm far too stubborn and pig-headed to cop to those arguments. It probably sounds ridiculous, but I still feel pointedly guilty anytime I order something from friggin' Amazon, and usually only resort to that after I've vainly combed the city's comparatively dwindling network of stores for whatever item it is I'm searching for and come up (predictably) empty-handed.
Anyway, blah blah blah, moan moan moan, gripe gripe gripe. To drive my point home, I started citing a laundry list of formerly beloved book and record shops that have since gone the way of the wooly mammoth. The Pageant Book & Print Shop, formerly at 109 East 9th Street, was near the top of my list, which reminded me that I'd "favorited" the shot below on Flickr by one Kccnola. Ideally, they won't mind me re-producing that photograph below.
A longtime neighborhood fixture (when the neighborhood had more bookstores than banks, coffee shops and pharmaceutical chains), Pageant was a lovely shop, staffed by intimidatingly literate albeit entirely friendly folks. I believe it made the odd cameo in a Woody Allen flick or two. In any event, the shop shuttered in 1994 and was replaced a couple of years later, if memory serves, by a bar who kept the name Pageant. That decision must have been bad karma, as the venture flopped. Sometime in the early 2000's, I want to say, the place re-opened as The Central Bar, a perfectly decent -- if strikingly indistinctive -- Irish Bar choked to the rafters with widescreen televisions that play sports at you around the clock. I've certainly put away a few pints there in my day, but it's never my first choice.
Anyway, here's my inevitable Then & Now entry...
The Pageant Book & Print Shop at 109 East 9th Street circa the early 1990s (courtesy of Kccnola)
Over at The Job yesterday, we ran a little news item about how there is evidently a new sitcom in the works from the same folks who bring you "The Big Bang Theory" called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (which, if you've lived in a cave for the past several decades, is the title of Nirvana's signature anthem). For those with fond memories of the grunge era and the "alt.rock" 1990s, this was invariably met with baleful sighs and shaking fists. I felt pretty neutrally about this news. For a start, I've never even considered watching "The Big Bang Theory," so really don't have a frame of reference in that capacity. Sit-coms don't really take up that much space on my radar.
Secondly, I never really thought that Nirvana were the greatest gift to mankind. I'm not going to lie, though. I didn't mind them, and I still own copies of their albums. But it never struck me that they were doing anything that bands like Sonic Youth and Husker Du hadn't already achieved in years prior. Yes, they appropriated a riff from my beloved Killing Joke, but that's all ancient history by this point, now falling squarely into "who cares?" territory. Lord knows Killing Joke certainly swiped their own fair share of riffs.
I have no idea what a sit-com called "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would be about, but I can only assume it'll be a "wacky" depiction of the flannel-swaddled early 90s, rife with thinly sketched stereotypes slinging around the appropriate lingo and sporting era-specific Melvins t-shirts and the like. If I'm right about that assumption, it certainly doesn't bode well for the series.
In any case, the news did indeed jump-start some of my own memories of the era, and those are all inexorably woven with associations with specific music. While, yes, I did own a copy of Nevermind and discs by other Seattle bands like Soundgarden (way better than Nirvana, btw), Pearl Jam, Mudhoney et al., I was largely more into several East Coast outfits like my beloved COP SHOOT COP, Helmet, Surgery, Barkmarket and their high-decibel ilk. By no means did the Pacific Northwest hold the copyright on noise rock.
In the fall of 1992, I actually took a trip to Seattle to visit my friend Sam, who'd moved out there after we'd interned at SPIN together (how very "alt.rock" of us). That visit was heavily scored by Lunapark, the debut album by the new band of Dean Wareham (ex-Galaxie 500) called Luna. Where Galaxie 500 was languid and minimalist, Luna was more of a straightforward ensemble, crafting perfect pop songs, but couching them with rockier guitars and Warheham's inimitably sleepy vocal delivery. And as I was on the shakey rebound of a botched office romance at the time, Luna's songs about relationship dysfunction could not have been more appropriate. I lived inside this record for a while.
What I didn't realize is that Luna actually made a (comparatively big budget) video for the album's "big single," "Slash Your Tires," which I didn't see until this morning. While it's far from the greatest video (depicting a "Sid & Nancy"-style couple in the throes of tumult), it features some provocative scenes of the Lower East Side (and maybe a little bit of Brooklyn) circa 1992, which prompted me to post it here. See below.
Years later, Luna is no more, Sam left Seattle and moved to Portland, Oregon (also very hip, I'm told) and "alt.rock" is now a punch line. The end.
Remember The Gas Station? I've spoken about it a few times here – notably on this post. Essentially, it was a former gas station that turned into a junkies' shooting gallery that turned into an art-installation-cum-performance space over on Avenue B back in the late `80s and early 90’s. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, it made fleeting cameo appearances in this obscure video by late, lamented Amphetamine Reptile band Surgery and an equally obscure indie film called “Manhattan By Numbers,” but its biggest brush with notoriety came from hosting what became the final live performance by GG Allin & the Murder Junkies (more about that here and here). After that calamitous event, the Gas Station's days were pointedly numbered.
This, in turn, led me back to Google to do a periodic search for more photos of the place. I was amazed at what I found. When I composed my original piece about the Gas Station in 2008, the only visual evidence of the place's existence I could find across the internet was that photo of it being demolished. Here in 2012, the Gas Station is now lovingly commemorated with this lovely collection of photographs that really give a detailed depiction. I also found this nice first-person account of the Gas Station from a woman who lived around the corner from it, a post that came appended by the photo above (featuring GG in the center.... hat tip to Dying on Bar Time).
But the image I was really struck by in my searching was collage of the place made by one Leif Harmsen. Not only did Mr. Harmsen capture the ramshackle vibe of the Gas Station and it surrounding neighborhood circa 1989, but he also includes a telling and fittingly provocative back history. See below.
GAS STATION was an abandoned gas station at Avenue B & 2nd Street NYC that we used as a metal workshop, bar, outdoor sculpture exhibition space, an indoor and outdoor performance space, concerts venue and billboard art location. We welded everything out of abandoned scrap metal trash, including the perimeter fence and chairs. The electricity, weirdly, was still connected and free - perfect for our electric welders. While I worked there in 1989 I made maximallist urban landscape collages and cybernetic metal sculpture, including a car horn organ with matching chair that eventually wound up being incorporated into a bar called the "Bovine Sex Club" in Toronto. At the end of muggy summer days, especially after welding, I sometimes opened the fire hydrant and took a power shower right there on the side walk.
A collage I made at the Gas Station of Ave B @ 2nd St., incorporating found objects and featuring the Gas Station at centre, 1989. Sometime around 2000 as the area was gentrified, the Lower East Side landmark was demolished to make way for a drug store and low-rise condominiums. The work itself was bought by an insane Toronto art collector who then threatened to destroy it if I didn't do a bad deed for him. I refused his extortion and assume he's since made good on his threat. I still have the negatives, so could re-create something similar but it wouldn't have the authority of the original made as it was on a perfect day, then and there.
By the way, a quick word of warning: I was perusing around the rest of Harmsen's site, and a great deal of his artwork is of the decidedly NSFW type, so please surf with caution.
Anyway, as has been documented elsehwere, the Gas Station is long, long gone, replaced by a Duane Reade. It's been suggested that the ghost of GG Allin haunts its back aisles. I'd love it if that were true, but I'd imagine ol' Geeg would have other afterlife plans
As someone who lives in the Astor Place area, I realize it's the most cliched of possible things to bitch about, but I really cannot get over the sheer size of the new building that's going up (which EV Grieve accurately describes as the "Death Star.") It seems much more massive than the original plans made it out to be, although maybe I'm just in denial.
Time was when everyone was up in arms about the Cooper Union dorm that went up, which looks positively quaint by comparison. I actually spent several days living in that space as a visiting reporter back in 1993 (you can read about that here).
Then came the arrival of Kmart in the old Wannamker building.
Then, of course, there was the purportedly "undulating" big blue shampoo bottle that went up.
Then all those hotel towers started sprouting up down the Bowery, making the surrounding cityscape look similar to the opening scene of "Blade Runner."
And now comes this. It seems like only a couple of weeks ago, the plot of land had been razed and we all started musing about how nice it would be to leave it that way. Remember all those "Imagine a Park Here" messages? So much for that.
I can't speak for anyone else, but I get rather pointedly depressed every time I look at this thing. What will it look like when it's finished? What areas of sun-dappled pavement will it plunge into perpetual shadow? What will it do to the already eroding neighborhood character? What firms will occupy its interior?
I hope it gets routinely pelted with glass-shattering rocks when it's finished.
The wife and I frequently divvy up the school drop-off schedule for our kids. Somehow, despite the fact that it was a grey, relentlessly rainy morning, it was determined yesterday that it was my turn. Dutifully, I shuttled my little ones out the door, over a few avenues and up twenty-something blocks to their school safely, happily and, for the most part, dryly. I then turned on my heels and marched back downtown through the rain, zig-zagging my way back across the avenues and through various neighborhoods.
Walking down Third Avenue, I decided to swing to the right when I hit East 11th street, taking me past the seemingly eroding Loews Village VII and, of course, Webster Hall, a locale that never fails to trigger an avalanche of memories. Not because of its incarnation as Webster Hall, mind you, but for its back history as The Ritz.
I've spoken about The Ritz numerous times here (see below), as it was a fairly crucial spot for me in the mid-to-late 80's (prior to shutting its doors in 1988 or so and re-locating to the former Studio 54 space uptown for a number of years as "The New Ritz").
By comparison, I probably only managed to see a handful of shows in that storied room on East 11th street, but they were all amazing experiences. Off the top of my head, I recall seeing The Ramones, Squeeze, The Mission, The (reunited) Dead Boys, Murphy's Law, Fishbone, The Toasters, Urban Blight, the Circle Jerks, Redd Kross, D.O.A., Kix and a few others.
When it changed over to Webster Hall at the tail-end of the 80s, it was pretty much strictly a dance club for a long while, but they eventually started having the odd live show now and again. I remember seeing Redd Kross there once more in the mid-90's and being so excited to be back in the building. Killing Joke even played there again in 2003 or so (squeezed between a couple of incongruous bands on a clueless CMJ bill). More recently (kinda), I've seen The Secret Machines there (and spotted Bowie up in the balcony -- that was cool). Yes, it's the same room, ostensibly, but it just doesn't feel quite like the old Ritz anymore, which is sad.
I don't really have any news here, other than that I'm starting a new category for ruminations of this kind called Vanished Venues. Look for more soon. Below the ancient flyer, see some memorable live footage all captured at the old Ritz.
Bad news. The sprawling Cooler Than Jesus site is being shut, which means finding rare, live footage of bands like Killing Joke, Cop Shoot Cop, the Sisters of Mercy, Bad Brains, Lush and droves of other Flaming Pablum favorites will now be even tougher. You may remember I sang this site's praises back here. Here's their final word on the subject:
+++++The fine folks at blip.tv have deleted our account. And with it, all the hard work that went into making thousands of rare recordings globally available, hassle free and at no cost. Seeing how it literally took years to encode, edit and upload that stuff, we won't be going through this torturous process again. We hope you enjoyed these recordings while you could. Like all good things in life, this little treasure trove wasn't meant to last. 10/2012 Team Coolerthanjesus+++++
I have no punchline here. It's just a bummer. Pour one out.
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