Flaming Pablum

You Must Be Stoned!

So, the Rolling Stones are back in town in a couple of weeks, slated to play at the freshly-minted Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. I’ve actually seen them a couple of times in my day, albeit both instances during less-than-crucial eras (specifically the Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon tours). They still put on a great show, but whatevs.

Just for laffs, my comrade Drew and I took a look online to see how much tix were going for. See below. Click on it to enlarge.

Yep. And that’s for one (1) ticket. I don’t care if the seat in question is on Charlie Watts’ lap, I ain’t payin’ that.

Speaking of the Stones, herewith another clip from a more accessible age. I spoke about the incident in greater detail here, but the local newscast footage here – however grainy -- is kinda fun. Looks like ticket buyers are lined up on 6th Avenue between Washington Place and W 4th Street. There used to be a Ticketron there?

Back to the `90s

One of the greatest aspects about maintaining this weblog for the last seven years has been connecting with people (readers, fellow bloggers, artists, writers, filmmakers, musicians, photographers, etc.) who share the same affinity I feel for New York City and what I would consider its vanishing (or, at the very least, transforming) character. Along the way, I've amassed a steady stable of like-minded archivists and nostalgic folks with keen memories, and it's really been re-affirming. Every time I'm convinced I'm simply typing away into an empty void, someone comes along to share their own pictures or recollections. At the risk of getting all wetly weepy, it's really been encouraging.

With my fellow bloggers -- folks like EV Grieve, Jeremiah Moss, Bowery Boogie, Brian K, Yukie from The SoHo Memory Project and beyond -- whenever one of us stumbles upon a new trove of vintage NYC pics or a new blog rife with heretofore unseen images of lost elements from the city, we shout about it from the highest rooftop. Today is one of those times.

A gent named Gregoire Alessandrini reached out to me yesterday, inspired by my recent post about The Gas Station. Gregoire maintains an amazing, photo-driven blog called NEW YORK CITY 1990's, and when I perused through it this morning, my jaw dropped open. It's spectacular.

I devote an inordinate amount of time here waxing rhapsodic about New York in the 1980s, a decade I spent being a student. But the 1990s were just as dynamic. Most of my own photographs date back to this period. But Gregoire's pictures really, really capture it. As I've said in various posts along the way, the 90's don't feel that long ago, but to look at these photographs, you'd barely recognize it as the same city today.

Within Gregoire's archives, you'll find images of long-vanished storefronts, bars, landmarks, street art and other elements of the time period -- from Billy's Topless on 6th Avenue to the Savoy in Hell's Kitchen to The Vault in the Meatpacking District and all points in between --- that just do not exist anymore.

I'm taking the liberty of repurposing one of Gregoire's shots above. I don't recall the exact address, but the building pictured looming in the background is one I actually worked in for a spell in the mid-90's. After tiring of having an army of sketchy freelancers troop in and out of his apartment on a daily basis, my old editor for The New York Review of Records (a sadly long-vanished music rag I fervently scribbled for in the 90s) began a frenetic relocation dance around Manhattan. Circa 1993 or so, this was its temporary base of operations.

As you can see in the photograph, the eastern-facing facade of the building was festooned with a massive, imaginative mural suggesting that a higher portion of the building had become detached and was dangling from a thread. I always loved that. I'm not even sure I could identify this building today, but suffice to say, the mural in question was painted over eons ago. When I saw Gregoire's photograph, I was blown out of my chair. You simply have no idea how long I have searched for an image that captured it.

Once again, go check out NEW YORK CITY 1990's now! Tell'em I sent'cha.

Puttin' the Boot In

The 15-year-old me would doubtlessly applaud the news, but the cynical 45-year-old me knows better. Despite the fact that I still loyally wear Doc Martens (when I’m not wearing sneakers), spotting a sign in a window on Broadway just north of Union Square (right next go Good Burger) bearing the legend “Dr. Martens – COMING SOON!” doesn’t thrill me like it once might’ve.

Y’see, I’ve been to the Doc Martens boutique in SoHo. If, like me, you naively associate the fabled footwear in question with rose-tinted depictions of Mods and Punks and Skinheads and Rudeboys and hardcore and bands like The Clash and The Stranglers and The Cockney Rejects and Agnostic Front et al., you should probably steer well clear, being that the SoHo Doc Martens shop is pointedly more “Sex & the City” than “Dead Cities,” if ya smell what I’m cookin’.

Regardless, the news of Doc Martens Union Square does provide ample excuse to dust this one off…

Late for Lunch: The Demise of the Manhattan Music Shop Circuit

I’ve mentioned Lunch For Your Ears here and there on this blog a few times (most notably here), but it was one of SoHo’s precious few record/disc shops back in the day. Don’t bother looking for it now, however, as it’s long gone. As I alluded in that earlier post, I remember hearing some horrible anecdote about the end of Lunch for Your Ears, but never got the full story. All I do k now is that the shop closed around 1991, and the space it once occupied is now a pricey menswear joint called Gant Rugger.

Anyway, via a random vintage NYC on Tumblr yesterday, I followed the links to the Flickr page of one Diane Worland, who is responsible for a really compelling collection of NYC photographs well worth checking out (you can find them here). This is the first (and only) visual evidence of Lunch For Your Ears I’ve ever comes across. Ms. Worland cites the date as 1977, although I very respectfully question the veracity of that, as I don’t believe the shop was that old. I could, of course, be entirely mistaken.

While searching to validate that point, I came across this excellent article about great Manhattan record and disc shops that Jon Pareles wrote for the New York Times back in the carefree, balmy days of 1991. Here’s what he had to say about Lunch for Your Ears….

LUNCH FOR YOUR EARS prides itself on not being able to categorize its approximately 4,000 CD's and 4,000 LP's, new and used. "All the records that are most interesting are the ones that least fit into categories," says Manny Maris, the owner. "If they do fit into categories, they tend to be imitative." Lunch for Your Ears specializes in albums at the intersection of art-rock, free improvisation, new music and jazz -- the kinds of performers who play at the Knitting Factory a few blocks away -- that are unlikely to be found anywhere else in New York City, since German, British and Japanese labels seem more interested than American labels are in New York's improvisatory underground. The store is also plugged into British and European experimentalism from King Crimson to Annette Peacock.

"I'm looking for albums that have some kind of depth, quality and lasting replay value," Mr. Maris says. "And if I have a choice between something of quality that other stores carry and something the other stores don't have, I'll put my limited funds into what they don't have."

Anyway, I just spotted Ms. Worland’s pic and felt compelled to share it. Be sure to check out the rest of her work, as it’s pretty spectacular.

Meanwhile, back to that Pareles article, at the end of the piece he thoughtfully appended the addresses and phone numbers of each of the shops he’d cited. It’s a pretty extensive list, and not even entirely definitive (for my money, he forgot a few choice spots, notably Rebel Rebel on Bleecker). Although I’ve already addressed the fates of several of these locales here, behold the status (in red for dead, green for go shop there) of Pareles’ picks in 2o12.

Where the albums lurked….

BATE RECORDS, 140 Delancey Street – Gone.
BLEECKER BOB'S, 118 West Third Street – Still there, but credibly rumored to be gone soon.
CASA LATINA, 151 East 116 Street – Still there.
COLONY, 1619 Broadway, at 49th Street – Closed.
DAYTON'S, 799 Broadway, at 11th Street – Closed.
DOWNSTAIRS RECORDS, 35 West 43d Street, second floor – Closed.
FINYL VINYL, 89 Second Avenue, between Fifth and Sixth Streets – Closed.
G&A RARE RECORDS LTD., 139 West 72d Street - Closed.
GOLDEN DISC, 239 Bleecker Street – Changed to Bleecker Street Records….still there.
GRYPHON, 251 West 72d Street – Not sure, but they're not picking up their phone.
HIDEOUT, 5 Cornelia Street - Closed.
HMV, 86th Street and Lexington Avenue and 72d Street and Broadway – Both closed.
HOUSE OF OLDIES, 35 Carmine Street – Surprisingly still there.
IT'S ONLY ROCK 'N' ROLL, 49 West Eighth Street – Closed.
JAZZ RECORD CENTER, 135 West 29th Street, 12th floor – Still there, I believe.
J&M RECORDS, 364 West 110th Street -- Don't know.
J&R MUSIC WORLD, 23 Park Row – Still there.
LUNCH FOR YOUR EARS, 25 Prince Street – Closed (see above).
MIDNIGHT RECORDS, 263 West 23d Street – Closed.
MUSIC FACTORY, 1476 Broadway, at 42d Street – Closed.
RECORD MART IN THE SUBWAY, near the N trains in the subway station at Times Square – Not Record Mart anymore, but there is still a joint you can buy music in, amazingly enough.
RECORD RUNNER, 5 Jones Street – Still there, but rarely open.
REVOLVER RECORDS, 43 West Eighth Street – Long gone.
ROCK'S IN YOUR HEAD, 157 Prince Street – Closed.
SECOND COMING, 235 Sullivan Street – Closed.
STREET RECORD SHACK, 274 West 125th Street – Don’t know, but it doesn’t look promising.
ST. MARKS SOUNDS, 16 St. Marks Place – Still there, but not at all well.
STRIDER, 22 Jones Street – Closed.
TOWER RECORDS, 692 Broadway, at East Fourth Street and 1961 Broadway, at 66th Street – Gone. VENUS, 13 St. Mark's Place – Gone.
VINYLMANIA, 43 Carmine Street - Gone.

Crews Control

Named after the badass author who swaggered off this mortal coil this past March, Harry Crews was a one-off noise rock supergroup (dubiously dubbed "the Blind Faith of hardcore" by one Brit rock rag), featuring Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and a female wrestler named Sadie Mae on drums. I remember reading about them as they toured Europe at the tail end of the 80's. When their album -- a live record culled from said tour called Naked in Garden Hills -- came out in 1989, I was writing for a tiny independent music rag called The New York Review of Records, and I immediately claimed it. After quite digging Sonic Youth's mid-to-late 80's material (Bad Moon Rising through Daydream Nation) and having had my imagination aptly scarred by a long-neglected copy of No New York (Eno's fabled No Wave compilation featuring Lydia's nascent Teenage Jesus) that I'd lifted from my college radio station's undeserving library, I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but I was quite looking forward to hearing it.

If truth be told, I wasn't all that blown away. I haven't listened to the record in eons (and have never owned it on compact disc), but my first impressions back in 1989 were that Harry Crews sounded better on paper than in practice, where they came across more as high-concept caterwaul. I still have the vinyl somewhere, but suffice to say, it's not one of the platters I regularly pine to spin again.

Anyway, blah blah blah...why am I talking about this now? Well, I stumbled across the photo below on Tumblr this afternoon (click on it to enlarge), typically unencumbered with any descriptive detail, date or credit. Two things struck me about this photograph:

1. That slim young lady in the cap in the foreground is none other than Pat Place, former guitarist for Lydia's fellow No Wave peers, The Contortions and -- later -- a founding member of the Bush Tetras. If I'm to guess, she was initially a member of Harry Crews, but departed prior to the Euro tour that resulted in the album, as she's nowhere to be found on the credits. Maybe she didn't dig it? What's the story?

2. Where was this photograph snapped? They look to be standing on a basketball court or disused baseball diamond in a park. That looks like it could be a prototypical project behind the fence. I'm guessing somewhere on the Lower East Side. Any ideas? Speak up. Bob Egan, I know you can figure it out.

In the interest of fairness, I searched out Harry Crews on YouTube, and sure enough, there are a few tracks from Naked in Garden Hills to be found. Check them out....

Cold Turkey

It being the day before Thanksgiving, Flaming Pablum will be "going dark" as they say. Barring any sudden, hugely trivial developments on any of my usual fronts (or unless I get cripplingly bored at some point), it'll probably get quite quiet here. Have yourselves a happy, safe and argument-free holiday.

Middle-Age of Quarrel: Slight Return

Because I'm essentially a predictable cliche, I got dutifully hot and bothered yesterday when my old colleague Chris Harris of the endearingly juvenile metal blog Gun Shy Assassin posted the picture at left on Facebook (click on it to enlarge). For those fortunate enough not to recognize him, that's lamentable Rihanna-beater and justifiably-maligned pop-r&b singer Chris Brown sporting a fetching leather jacket emblazoned with the insignia of age-old bands like The Exploited, the Cro-Mags and Municipal Waste. While I honestly never gave a rolling rat fart about Municipal Waste, I do still hold both the Exploited and the Cro-Mags close to my heart (yes, I am a very silly person), and it pains me to see them associated -- however tenuously -- with a practitioner of strenuously insipid music, let alone a petty, violent guy who is -- let's face it -- pretty indefensible across the board. Also, if Chris Brown can cite a single song by any of the bands he's sporting on that jacket, I'll happily eat that triangular medallion that's hanging around his tattooed neck.

Later in the day, Gun Shy Assassin posted the development that the offending jacket in question has also graced the shoulders of Brown's former punching bag, Rihanna. Evidently, they're an item again, but it's not my job to keep track of such things (although I did once pen a flattering piece about Rihanna here, as much as it pains me to point out, given that she's since gone onto blight the world with a clutch of irritating earworms and is a nigh-on-inescapable figure of pop culture). I doubt she's a fan of the Cro-Mags either.

But, at the end of the day, I suppose I should get over it. It's a jacket. Big deal. And if it leads some gobsmacked Chris Brown fan astray and down the hardcore aisle to buy a copy of Age of Quarrel or Punks Not Dead or even Municipal Waste's Hazardous Mutation, then the world will be a better place.

But speaking of Age of Quarrel by the Cro-Mags, this incident left me wondering what the latest on their troubled front was, in the wake of this past summer's fracas at Webster Hall (which I spoke at some length about here and here). I know John Joseph's staying characteristically active, doing both his acclaimed rock tours of the Lower East Side and pitching in with Hurricane Sandy recovery. Is Harley still incarcerated? Is there an update?

While wondering about these matters, I happened upon this video report of the summer's incident. It answers precious few questions, of course. But if you feel like getting disgusted, stick around for the end of the clip wherein one Webster Hall-goer laments the interference of the NYPD (yeah, `cos a stabbing -- that's no big deal, is it), followed by a gaggle of ladies on a bachelorette spree. Cro-Mags shows evidently ain't like they used to be.

For the sake of context, here are the Cro-Mags in happier times ... and relatively not even all that long ago.

And, to be fair, here are The Exploited at their best (in my opinion):

NYC `73

Many of you probably saw this clip on Gothamist today, but for those of you that might not read Gothamist, I thought I'd reproduce it here.

Herewith a reasonably lengthy video from 1973. It meanders along at a fairly unhurried rate -- and spends inordinate amounts of time detailing inconsequential happenings in a recording studio -- but stay with it and you'll see some compelling footage of SoHo, Lafayette Street, West Houston and some other areas -- all steeped in fuzzy, edgeless grey.

I think the thing for me that's so striking about this clip is the attention to random detail. Every so often, the cameraman will zoom in on street sign or some architectural flourish or statue (like, say, Puck on the side of the Puck Building) and it suddenly seems so familiar, and I find myself being shocked that Puck was there in 1973. I mean, why wouldn't he be? I suppose I just associate certain sights and landmarks with my own experience, and it's weird to see them in earlier incarnations. When this film was shot, I was a 6-year-old living much further uptown. 

There's also a nice moment when they zoom in on the mural at the intersection of Lafayette and Bleecker and remark how brilliantly colorful it is. When I first spied that mural in the mid-80's (a decade after this was shot), its colors were already dull and decaying.

There are other bits when the cameraman and his hirsute friend are walking down the street, and the camera focusses on their shoes, or on the cracked, filth-laden pavement, and I find myself barking at the screen: "Life up your camera and pan around! Slow down!!! Turn left....walk down Great Jones!!" It's sort of frustrating to find this document, but have it wander so aimlessly.

Anyway, enjoy this gritty slice of a downtown Manhattan circa 1973.

KONK in the Park

My friend Brian MacDonald just found this and posted it on the book of Face, but I feel it's needs to be shared here. Who knew KONK had a proper video?

Herewith the band partying in what I'd assume to be Tompkins Square Park, but I could be wrong. Celebrity-spotters might notice the gent in the red cap as being Richard Edson, an original member of Sonic Youth and actor (he was in Jim Jarmusch's "Stranger Than Paradise" and delivered one of the best single lines of dialogue in "Ferris Bueller's Day Off"). Oh, and who's that at 02:05 into the video? Why it's pre-fame Madonna, of course.

Krank up the KONK:

Just a Few More...

Just adding to the these two lists....