Flaming Pablum

Music Across The River

Back in the late 80’s and into the 90’s, there were really only two reasons to ever go to Hoboken. The first one was Maxwell’s, a coolster live music venue catering mostly to indie bands. It was located way the hell down on Washington Street. It’s still there, of course, but for some reason, I need to speak about it in the past tense, being that I haven’t set foot in the place in about twenty years. I saw a few memorable shows there back then, most notably The Wedding Present, Lush, an anarchic display by Cop Shoot Cop and a truly seismic performance by Mr. Bungle that was just entirely insane (in a very good way). Like I said, I haven’t been to Maxwell’s since before the Clinton administration, so who knows what it’s like now. But chances are, if I was headed towards Hoboken, this was one of the two destinations I was bound for.

The other place, meanwhile, is the joint pictured above. Piers Platter Records was a bitch to get to (if you were a lazy Manhattan snob like myself) as it meant boarding the PATH train, but once you were there, it was just an amazing place for music that was pointedly off the radar.

I stumbled across this reminiscence of Piers Platters, and it’s more authoritative and magisterial than one I could ever muster. Click on it and celebrate Hoboken’s finest hour.

Back to the Jungle

George DuBose has taken some amazing album cover photos in his day -– and several for the Ramones –- but I’d always assumed that the cover of 1983’s Subterranean Jungle wasn’t based on a photograph of da brudders on an actual subway car, but rather some kind of artful pastiche. Turns out, however, that it was, as the photo above (spotted on Tumblr) demonstrates. Can anyone name the platform? Good luck with that one.

The first time I ever saw the Ramones play live was on the tour for this record in 1983. Strangely enough, it was not at a grotty New York City club filled with leather-clad punks and rock cretins, but in the unfamiliar environs of a gymnasium at Stony Brook University out on Long Island in Southhampton. Regardless, the band assumed its usual attack formation (with oddly blonde Richie Ramone filling in for Marky after he’d been evicted from the drum stool) and accordingly blew a hole in the place. I remember buying (and cherishing) my first Ramones shirt at that gig… Arturo Vega’s signature seal on the front, and the back festooned with an American flag, with the words “Subterranean Jungle” splattered over the stripes. Over time, it became too small for me. I believe my mom actually inherited it for a while (she'd wear it while cleaning the house). It's long gone now, in any event.

Few people consider Subterranean Jungle to be a crucial Ramones LP. Let's face it, it isn't (although it was inarguably superior to its predecessor, 1981's Pleasant Dreams). One could argue that their last "credible" studio record was 1978's Road to Ruin, although each successive release usually had at least a track or two to recommend it. At the very least, Jungle features "Psycho Therapy," which might be the band's last truly great single (although `87's "I Wanna Live" isn't bad). I also quite dug their cover of The Chambers Brothers "Time Has Come Today."

After that show at Stony Brook, I'd go onto see the band several more times. The final time, strangely enough, was on another college campus. They were playing a middle-of the-day, open-air gig at Syracuse in the Spring of 1993. The crowd was thin and the elements were unkind. It wasn't an especially memorable show.

The band kept going ....and going and going... for several more years. My friend Rob B. and I would frequently remark to each other "Should we go see the Ramones next weekend?" "Nah, they'll be back." That was usually the case for a long while ... until it suddenly wasn't. The band broke up. And then they started to die. And that was very sadly that.

 

Back to Blank City

I first mentioned this film back in 2011 on this post, but I finally got around to seeing Celine Dahnier's "Blank City" last night, and it pretty much blew me off the couch.

When it comes to documentaries about No Wave, the pickings are mighty slim. There's Scott Crary's "Kill Your Idols" from 2006 (which I've lambasted here before), but that's ultimately like the "Full Metal Jacket" of No Wave docs; it's half a good film. Beyond that, you're largely left with several rote documentaries about Punk that cram in a few bits about No Wave when not waxing rhapsodic about how nothing really happened between the death of Sid Vicious and the rise of Nirvana.

But "Blank City" is wonderfully exhaustive on the sprawling, creative collision of film, music and art in New York City during the late 70's and into the 80's, touching on Punk, No Wave, the Cinema of Transgression and beyond. Along the way, Dahnier lands incisive interviews with luminaries like Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie, Glenn O'Brien, Lydia Lunch, Amos Poe, Steve Buscemi, Thurston Moore, James Chance, Patti Astor, Deborah Harry, Fab 5 Freddy, Lung Leg, Nick Zedd, Anne Magnuson, Kembra Pfahler and many, many more. Its attention to detail is impressive and illuminating, drawing the parallels between the insouciant frontier spirit of the all the artists of the period across the board, be they filmmaker or musician or both (and, in most cases, they usually were both).

"Blank City" also lovingly captures that period of New York City with both reverence and unblinking clarity -- yes, it was a hotbed of parameterless creativity, but it was also crime-ridden squalor.

Even if you're not a smelly music dork or an esoteric cinema head, "Blank City" is entirely fascinating. Seek it out at once. It's on Netflix. Go fetch. Now.

Blank City Official Trailer from Celine Danhier on Vimeo.

Sounds of St. Mark's Place

It’s both predated and outlived the other music shops on St. Mark’s Place like Venus Records, Smash CDs (which later became Rockit Scientist), Mondo Kim’s and even its own cassette and compact disc annex in the early 90’s (which I loved -– now a bong retailer), to say nothing of the other East Village disc shops who’ve fallen, like Stooz Records on East 7th, Gimme Gimme Records on East 5th, Norman’s Sound + Vision on Cooper Square, Etherea on Avenue A and Wowsville and Free Being on Second Avenue. Apart from Kim’s on First Avenue and Rainbow Music (that entirely unwieldy and uninviting hoarder’s hive disguised as a shop just a few storefronts to the north of Kim’s), if you’re looking for tactile, playable artifacts of recorded music, Sounds is one of the last outposts still operating.

Unlike so many of those other cramped shops, St. Mark's Sounds always had a regal, almost church-like feel. Up a sweeping stoop of stairs you entered through a heavy, vault-worthy door into a high-ceilinged chamber stuffed to the rafters with LPs and, later on, compact discs. From floor to ceiling, every square inch of the place is covered in music. Where not obscured by racks of CD’s, the walls are covered with multiple layers of stapled on promo posters. I vividly recall one afternoon in 1987 when I asked if I could buy the large poster for the then-newly-released Murphy’s Law debut. “Kid, this is a record shop,” said the guy behind the counter, “not a poster shop.” To this day, that poster -- and many others – still hangs on that wall.

With the endearingly grotty Grassroots Tavern in its “garden level,” Sounds almost feels like the anchor of St. Marks Place … a stubborn holdover from a vanishing age. Normally, when I post entries like this here, there’s usually some dire news appended at the tail end, invariably disclosing the details of a lost lease or a spiraling rent problem. For the moment, however, that’s not the case with Sounds. As far as I’m aware, they’re staying put, although how they manage to meet the demands of their presumably stratospheric rent remains a mystery. I’d imagine the lion’s share of their sales are in used CD’s. How much longer will they be able to stick it out?

There have been record and disc shops that closed that I practically wept over (Rocks in Your Head in SoHo being foremost among them). If I’m being honest, I can’t recall the last time I purchased anything at Sounds. I’m really glad it’s still there, as it holds many fond memories for me, but rarely do they have what I’m looking for by this stage of the proceedings.

Another notable reason to pop into St. Marks Sounds, though, is the incredibly rare Plasmatics poster they have right inside the door that’s evidently been there since about 1979 and that -– even as a slavish Plasmatics fanboy – I have *never* seen anywhere else. Much like that Murphy’s Law poster, the folks at Sounds aren’t parting with it or listening to any offers, although I’d wager it might be one of the most valuable things left in the place (despite the fact that it’s covered in an oily patina of decades of dust). Check it out now while ya can.

You can catch a nice video glimpse of the old St. Mark’s Place (circa 1990) on this post, featuring Robyn Hitchcock busking on Sounds’ stoop.

Punk's Not Dead ... It's Just Extremely Hungover

Spotted this refugee from 1982 this morning in the shadow of the Flatiron Building. 

Waiting for the Hatching

It was finally a beautiful morning worthy of Spring today, so I stepped out for an early morning stroll around the neighborhood on my own. It being Memorial Day weekend ... or maybe it was just symptomatic of the early hour ... the streets were pleasantly bereft of traffic. You could leisurely walk down the middle of the road without fear of being run over by a car, bus or dreaded Citibike.

But as I was soaking up the open air on Astor Place, my eyes kept getting fixed on the new office complex (alternately referred to as "The Death Star" or a number of suitably ominous variations thereof). I couldn't stop myself from taking the picture above as I crossed over to St. Marks Place.

It seems like only yesterday that the block it now occupies was a flattened, open space, ringed with a fence speckled with the strenuously idealistic IMAGINE A PARK HERE! sticker campaign. An open patch of green grass sure would have been preferable to what stands there now.

I walked down St. Marks, snapping a few other pics, but remained keenly aware of the looming building behind me, which now stares down at St. Marks in silent anticipation. Everyone seems resigned to it now, but just wait. For lack of a better analogy, it's like a cliched sci-fi movie. The gigantic alien spacecraft has landed alright, but it hasn't yet completely lowered its doors. We're still waiting for the giant, steely, shiny egg to hatch.

If you think it's an eyesore now, just wait until the hundreds and hundreds of sharply tailored office drones, hedge funders, marketing executives and social media entrepreneurs move in and the gigantic facility becomes fully operational. What will that mean for St. Marks and the surrounding neighborhood? Will, say, Trash & Vaudeville experience a robust uptick in tartan bondage-pants sales? Will Sounds be flooded with new requests for out-of-print albums? Will Gem Spa need to hire extra staff to meet the Egg Cream demands?

We'll see.

Puttin' on the Blitz

Spotted on eBay this morning. $5K for a t-shirt.  Click here for the back story.

Just Kids in a Doorway

At the risk of belaboring a point, I've never been a Patti Smith fan. I've explained why on multiple occasions here (most recently here). That all said, I've had so many people recommend her memoir, "Just Kids" to me. Even though her music puts me off my food, I am considering picking it up just to see what all the fuss is about.

In any case, when I spotted the above photo of Smith with her "Just Kids" partner-in-crime, the late Robert Mapplethorpe recently on Tumblr, something about it struck me for some reason. After staring at it for a long while, it hit me. I had my long-suffering kids put their shoes and coats on and out we walked down University Place to Washington Mews. My hunch was correct. See below.

More dad-as-insufferable-rock-geek photo homages:

MCA Day on Charles Street
Rockers in the Street: Joe Finds Power on 14th
Rockers in the Streets Redux
Rockers in the Streets
Oliver in the East Village
Stranger Still Than 'Stranger Than Paradise'
Chelsea Mourning: Slight Return
After the Gold Wush
What a Waste

 

For the Love of 1993

Spotted a notice that this New Museum art installment only has a few days left, so I may as well weigh in while it's still going. First, watch the video.

I gotta say, while I do really love the concept, it's still seems so recent to me. I mean, yeah -- twenty years is twenty years, but as I said back in this post about 1992 (a better year, for my money), it still feels like yesterday to me. For some reason, my real line of demarcation of the past remains 1989. Anything prior to that seems like ancient history.

Of course, I'm purely projecting. This city is entirely different now than it was in 1993. The change is everywhere. It's physical. Things don't look the same. Things aren't the same. But, still, I can remember 1993 as if it were just earlier this week.

In 1993, I was 26. I was long out of college, but back living at home with my mom (like a bit of a loser) if only because it was cheaper, and I was able to pursue my dream career as a journalist (then as now, not the most lucrative field). That all said, as 1993 began, I would shortly be laid off from my gig as an editorial assistant at LIFE Magazine. My high school friend Rob lost his job around the same time, so we took our respective severance pays and blew them on airfare to London, where we spent a week or so going to British record shops and pubs (with no great desire to return to reality in New York City). That didn't suck.

I came home to a frustrating game of vocational cat & mouse -- doing odd editorial gigs around Time Inc., doing some pick-up work in an art gallery, a real estate agency and continuing to write for a clutch of music magazines. I'd later land another full-time gig at TIME Magazine before 1993 came to a close, but it was a financially threadbare and stressful year.

I was also on the rebound from a heroically botched office romance that had still left me naively shellshocked for several more months than was realistically warranted.

I'll say this, though. Music was better in 1993. For me, 1993 was all about Suede, Wu-Tang Clan, Cop Shoot Cop, Anthrax, Grant Lee Buffalo, Monster Magnet, A Tribe Called Quest, James, Morphine and, if I'm being honest, that first LIz Phair record. All good stuff. Of course, back in 1993, there were many, many more record and disc shops still around, and just as many live music venues still in operation.

Anyway, if you pine for 1993, pick up one of those phones before it's too late and you're stuck here in the present.

Meanwhile, here's me in 1993:

...and here's me in 2013 (in roughly the same spot). Yeah, I guess 1993 was a long time ago.

 

Phriday Photo

Just some vintage REVS/COST from the 90's. Get through Friday, everybody. Remember...`tis a long weekend! Rejoice accordingly.

For more groovy pics of street art, click over to my Flickr page.