Flaming Pablum

Defending the Unimpeachable: John Carpenter's "Halloween"

I'm normally a big sucker for Halloween in the classic, spooky, dark sense .... not the shrill, booze-addled and slutty sense. And I was ramping up my usual campaign of "Keep Halloween Scary and Evil" in recent weeks, but then Sunday's news of the death of Lou Reed kinda took the wind out of my sails regarding all things morbid. I'm relatively certain right now that lots of folks are re-thinking their Miley Cyrus costumes in favor of going as "undead, slutty Lou Reed." I hate what Halloween has become.

In any case, over at the job, my colleague Gael Fashingbauer Cooper wrote a nice little paean to arguably the quintessential seasonal flick, that being, of course, John Carpenter's "Halloween" from 1978. I'm not going to bother synopsizing the plot for you. You either know (and love it) or you don't. It's an unimpeachable horror classic ... and not nearly as gory as most project, assume or remember.

Or so I thought.

Kevin Polowy of Yahoo! Movies showed Carpenter's signature film to a group of 10 "millennials" for the first time, who, by and large, somehow failed to glean the genius, invariably preferring slackjawed bullshit like "Saw" or "Hostel." In a nutshell, this is why I pretty much hate young people.

If you can't appreciate the singular brilliance of "Halloween," I sneer disdainfully down my nose at you. That is all. You will never change my opinion.

And the soundtrack is essential.

Last Words on Lou

It’s only been a couple of days since the passing of Lou Reed, but it’s already turned the world upside down for a lot of folks. Quite unsurprisingly, lots of luminaries weighed in, from Iggy Pop and David Byrne through Robert Christgau and Legs McNeil. Annoyingly, there’s also been a lot of snark and flat-out vitriol, notably by Salon’s hipster-baiting by Neil Pollack (but still way too soon)and the Daily Mail’s flat-out hatchet job. I don’t think I’m going off on any limbs by asserting that -– love him or hate him -– Lou’s contribution to modern music was seismic, but evidently haterz gonna hate, as they say.

In any case, my tireless comrade Bob Egan of PopSpots spied the post I put up the other day, and evidently couldn’t help himself. Herewith he explains the location of the shot in question:

Alex, For your edification, the Avon 7 theater was at 724 7th Ave between 48-49 on the west side. At the south corner was the HOWARD clothing store. You can see the "RD" next to the Avon marquee on the right picture, and the "D" in back of Lou's head. The Howard store was later a Popeyes where I used to eat. Half of that block, including the Howard store and the Avon 7, has been replaced by a skyscraper called 1600 Broadway, the bottom of which is the M+M store. So this way, after you replicate the photo with your kids at the northwest corner of 48th and 7th, you can buy them M+M’s for posing for dad. The picture come from a website called Grindhouse Database. Now there's a hobby!

This was Lou's Town

Prior to my freshman year of college in 1985, all I really knew about Lou Reed was "Walk on the Wild Side" (which, despite its narrative of transgression and Lou's invocation of "colored girls," was and remains a classic rock radio staple) and, er, "I Love You, Suzanne." That all changed upon first meeting Jay Freeborne in the Denison University library (we immediately spotted each other and recognized one another as kindred spirits, as I was wearing a Circle Jerks t-shirt and he was wearing a Talking Heads t-shirt ... this in a roiling sea of Polo, Brooks Brothers and J. Crew). `Twas Jay that was a fairly pivotal figure in expanding my horizons beyond hardcore punk, gothic rock and heavy metal to embrace further-flung music like King Crimson, The Stooges, Berlin-era Bowie, The Feelies and yea verily The Velvet Underground. All it pretty much took was one spin of the title track to White Light/White Heat and I instantly hooked on the Velvets, soon to hungrily seek out more.

Finally steeped in the hills and valleys of Lou Reed's catalog (and the valleys are admittedly deep), I started spotting Lou himself around town. I've got a pretty shaky track record about accosting my idols on the street, but I knew better than to badger Lou, his reputation for being surly having long since solidified itself. I spotted him walking north out of Times Square, just steps away from the Brill Building. Some time later, I saw him clothed entirely in martial arts gear walking west out of St. Marks, just a stone's throw from the old location of the Electric Circus, where he performed with the Velvets as part of Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Neither time did I become Johnny Fanboy and gush. One left Lou alone. That was kind of the rule.

As I said back in this post, my favorite anecdote about Lou Reed comes from, I believe, John Strausbaugh's "Rock `Til You Drop." Lou was doing an in-store record signing at the old Tower Records on 4th and Broadway (now the .... ugh ... MLB Man Cave), and Stausbaugh attended with then-Soul Coughing frontman M. Doughty (who used to pen a music column for New York Press under the colorful nom-de-plume, Dirty Sanchez). Before joining the line, wise-ass Doughty/Sanchez ran and fetched a copy of an album by Lou Rawls, and brought that up to be signed, a gag that made even the notoriously thorny Lou Reed crack up.

Anyway, there's not much more I can say about Lou Reed that isn't being similarly expressed in more eloquent prose than mine via a thousand different outlets right now. Many are quick to point out that he hadn't made a significant album in some time (let's just not discuss Lulu right now), but they can all go to Hell. Lou Reed's passing is a huge loss, the world is a poorer place because of it.

The photo above comes from a future post by my friend Bob Egan of PopSpots, who amazingly tracked down the exact spot pictured on Lou's debut solo record. Egan never fails to amaze me in that capacity.

 More about Lou Reed on Flaming Pablum....

Fuck Radio Ethiopia, Man, I'm Radio Brooklyn
Street Hassle
Where Stood Lou? Lou Stood Here
Y'know, Those Were Different Times
Rock Shots
Velvet Style
Walking, Not Settling
Happy Birthday, Lou Reed

 

Good Night, Lou

The world is 1,000 times less cool today. Rest in peace.

Stuff You Might Have Missed

Hey all….It’s been an action-packed October, with lots of items to discuss, so here are a few of my recent favorites

Stay the Hell out of the Cecil Hotel: The incident itself happened much earlier this year, so why The Vigilant Citizen (an entertaining haven for conspiracy theorist crackpottery) chose to publish their rumination on it now is a bit mystifying (perhaps for Halloween?). In any case, the strange story of Elisa Lam remains a truly unsettling tale from the facts alone. While I understand the official explanation that Ms. Lam was ruled bi-polar, that doesn’t explain everything. Why was the Canadian tourist staying at the Cecil Hotel -- a seedy establishment with a pointedly morbid back history involving multiple suicides, Richard “Night Stalker” Ramirez and even the “Black Dahlia” – to begin with? Why did the elevator behave the way it did? How on earth did she get up to the roof? I’m not copping the conspiracy theory nor suggesting the supernatural, but it remains a captivatingly creepy story. Check it out.

It being near Halloween, the time seems right to address this unearthed interview with founding FEAR member Derf Scratch. Derf passed away in 2010, but had left the FEAR fold acrimoniously prior to that. Here he lengthily tells his story.

Want to stroll around Central Park, but are chained to your computer? Well, now, thanks to Google Street View, you can still virtually ramble around New York's favorite green space.

Notoriously polarizing British music periodical N.M.E. released its list of the top 25 albums of all time, and the backlash has been predictable. But, of course, lists of this kinda are entirely arbitrary to begin with. But really….Arctic Monkeys and Oasis among the best of all time?? DO give me a friggin’ break.

Listen to Tommy Ramone do a mournful rendition of “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend.”

The A.V. Club weighs in on why “Donnie Darko” is creepy. I’ll have to watch it again, as I didn’t think it was all that creepy.

Sarah Palin poses with dead bear she just presumably shot to illustrate a point to Piers Morgan. This Just in: She’s a bad person.

To cleanse your palette, here’s a little ditty from Public Image Ltd. about the unfortunate young lady that inspired “The Exorcist.”

Desperately Seeking Skullface: SOLVED

Call off the dogs. I’ve gotten my answer.

Yesterday, you may remember, I posted a little piece about “Desperately Seeking Susan,” wondering aloud if anyone knew the artist responsible for the stenciled skeletons that adorned the case Madonna’s seen lugging around in the beginning of the film, and all over her boyfriend Jimmy’s band van (see ablove). I mentioned that I felt sure I’d seen that exact style of artwork outside of the film, and postulated that it might have been some local SoHo street artist at the time.

Well, the response was relatively huge (or at least huge compared to a lot of things I put up here, which often are met with a chorus of crickets). Encouragingly, lots of folks knew the answer and offered some tantalizing extra bits of info.

Tim B. of Stupefaction fame wrote:

The artist was/is Michael Roman. We used to sell his t-shirts at Bleecker Bobs. I'm pretty sure he's still around...I just don't know where. He MAY be in San Francisco now, but don't quote me on that.

Meanwhile, a reader named Rich D.of Obsolete Press wrote…

It sounds like we were running in very similar circles in the mid 80's! Oddly, a friend posted something yesterday on FB about Desperately Seeking Susan, and I mentioned the Mike Roman Stencils, and the next day your post showed up. The wonders of the web! I posted a link to Mike's site in the comments. Anyway, I just wanted to mention that you may remember those same stencils adorned the Aztec Lounge.

It looks like Michael Roman is indeed still with us (check out his website here), and I believe Tim and Rich are right – I probably remember seeing his shirts at Bleecker Bob’s and his art at the Aztec Lounge (as photographed below by David Vega).

Anyway, thanks for weighing in, peoples! Consider this skull-adorned case closed!

Matzos and Mohawks on the L.E.S.

They’re heroes for some and clowns to others, but I’ll probably always consider San Francisco’s Rancid to be something of a guilty pleasure. Sure, they look the part and their pedigree (at least two former members of Operation Ivy) is pretty unimpeachable, but there’s always been something so slavishly derivative about the band. They’ve worn their adoration of The Clash and The Specials on their spikey sleeves, but hey – if you’re going to emulate a couple of bands, you’d be hard-pressed to pick two better. I also sorta love their dogged insistence on dressing like 1982 never ended.

In any case, “Time Bomb,” -- from Rancid’s 1995 effort, And Out Come The Wolves -- came up on a random selection on my iPod recently, and its video immediately sprang to my mind. Though Bay Area to the core, for some reason they chose to film the clip for this irrepressible, hiccupy ska number in New York City. The action takes place on the Lower East Side, rife with fleeting shots of Rivington Street (the home of art/activism/social center/punk hangout, ABC NO RIO), and featuring lots of likely extras and in punk-revivalist and rudeboy finery.

That’s nice and all, but when I think of Rivington Street, the first place that springs to my mind is Streit’s Matzos. It’s not that I’m a big fan of matzos – although I certainly have nothing against them – it’s just that I always admired their signature signage, which makes a couple of cameos in the Rancid clip (00:49 and 01:40). I wonder what Streit’s employees thought of all the commotion when this video was being filmed.

I took this shot of the corner of Rivington and Suffolk sometime in the mid-90’s,…probably right around the same time the video below was filmed.

Today – almost twenty (!!) years later -- Streit’s is actually still on that corner, but their sign is not. Not sure why they took it down (maybe it was damanged in Hurricane Sandy? I’m reaching), but it’s gone.

Desperately Seeking Skullface

Okay, here’s a random one.

A few nights back, I found myself -– apropos of nothing -– sitting down to watch another airing of Susan Seidelman’s 1985 opus, “Desperately Seeking Susan,” the arguably star-making vehicle for “Like a Virgin”-era Madonna (although one could make the case that Madonna was going to be a star with or without the help of Seidelman’s film). One might wonder why I chose to watch this movie again, given the savaging I recently gave Seidelman’s earlier work, “Smithereens.” I didn’t have a great agenda, but I’ll maintain that “Desperately…” is a superior film on a number of different levels.

In any case, “Desperately Seeking Susan” remains a fine little movie, and an excellent time-capsule-worthy bit of 80’s NYC cinema. It’s got a suitably farcical plot that is thin but engaging, and for trivia-trainspotters, there’s a bevy of notable treasures (cameos by Richard Hell, Rockets Redglare, Anne Magnuson and Arto Lindsay, some interior footage of Danceteria and Love Saves the Day, and the inexplicable scene wherein Madonna is listening to “One Thing Leads to Another” by The Fixx on a pair of headphones). But there’s one little detail that’s always piqued my curiosity.

The film’s McGuffin, if you will, involves a pair of pilfered Egyptian earrings that Susan –- played by Madonna -- lifts from sleeping Richard Hell’s jacket in the beginning of the movie (Hell is later pushed out a window for having stolen them himself). She puts the earrings, along with the rest of her belongings in a very distinctive, round case that looks as if it were designed to carry a snare drum or a very large hat. She then stores this case in a Port Authority locker, but then loses the key for same when she leaves it in the pocket of the frankly ridiculous pyramid-themed jacket she trades for a pair of bejeweled boots at Love Saves The Day on Second Avenue. Shenanigans ensue.

The detail in question that’s been plaguing me, however, is the design motif on the case –- some stenciled, stylized skulls –- that also appear later in the film all over the van driven by Susan’s boyfriend Jimmy (see screengrab above), suggesting that Susan possibly appropriated the drum case from Jimmy’s band. Whatever.

Here’s the thing: I want to say that I remember that stenciled skullface pattern from outside of this movie, as if it was a bit of SoHo street art (not unlike the stenciled head I searched for a little while back). I also want to say that I’ve seen it on an album cover somewhere, but –- again -– I cannot specifically place it.

I did some searching online, but all I come up with are D.I.Y. fashion blogs, and P!nterest posts penned by fashionistas seeking to mimic Madonna’s style from that era.

Perhaps Susan Seidelman discloses its origin on the director commentary track on the DVD, but does anyone know who the artist is/was responsible for the skeletal motif? Is there a backstory here, or am I just imagining things and vainly projecting? Does anyone know?

Sing out, art-heads and Madonna-collectors.

Where'd DeNiro Park his Wheels?

Yesterday, Dangerous Minds unearthed a car ad from 1970, featuring a disarmingly youthful Robert DeNiro showing off his new wheels to, presumably, some of his neighborhood locals. Given his position as one of the Hollywood’s preeminent heavyweights, the fact that DeNiro ever did a car ad at all is fairly significant in itself, hence DM’s choosing to devote a post to it.

But as I watched it, I became suddenly consumed with trying to pinpoint the corner depicted. One commenter on the Dangerous Minds post suggests that it’s not a street that exists in New York (i.e. it’s a crappy, unconvincing stage-set of the kind routinely employed by “Friends,” “Seinfeld” and in that Beastie Boys video for “Make Some Noise”). I suppose that could be true, but watch the video again -– that street looks pretty authentic and pretty familiar.

I started wracking my geographical chops. Is it the intersection of King and MacDougal Streets? The intersection of Jane and Greenwich? The intersection of MacDougal and Cornelia Streets? The spot where Jones meets Bleecker? I’m assuming it’s somewhere downtown –- Greenwich Village/West Village/Little Italy -– but can’t pinpoint it.

Not that it matters, but DeNiro actually grew up on the corner of Bleecker and Sixth Avenue, in the building that today is the Little Red Schoolhouse.

Who can name this street?

ADDENDUM: Well, I flew this challenge by the master himself, Bob Egan of PopSpots, and he turned it around with the quickness. It is indeed right in the heart of the Village. Here's Bob's explanation.

DeNiro is right where Dylan took the Freewheelin Cover on Jones right below West 4th Street. DeNiro’s father come out of a meat market. Do a google search for Florence Meat Market. It’s at #5 Jones Steet. I think the awning in the video is #5, too.

I knew this spot looked familiar. As it turns out, the Florence Meat Market is situated directly next to Record Runner, an old favorite haunt of mine that's still there, but seemingly always closed.

So, basically, here's the modern-day depiction of the scene grabbed at the top. Recognize it now?

Where The Music Used to Live: Slight Return.

Back in August, I culled together a slew of photographs I’d spotted across the `net of since-vanished New York City record and disc shops. It struck quite a nice chord, and I got a lot of comments and such. Huzzah. In any case, I was recently thumbing through Flickr and came across a few other images that fit that same bill, so I thought I'd put together another addendum to that post. 

Rocks in Your Head, SoHo
I've written about Rocks hundreds of times it seems. It's probably the shop I miss the most, if truth be told. It was pretty much perfect in every way. In any case, a photographer named Meadows took this particular shot. Ira, the guy who owned the place, had probably stepped out to grab a sandwich. Today, the space is occupied by a real estate firm.

Norman's Sound + Vision, East Village
As I mentioned back in this post, I never considered Norman's a particularly crucial spot, but it was good for the standbys, the surprise bargains and the casual perusal. Here's a nice shot of its interior. Sometimes, the racks got so packed that if you managed to excise a disc, you'd have a devil of a time re-inserting it. Today, it remains an empty, disused storefront. Richard Alexander Caraballo took this shot.

NYCD, Upper West Side
Ah, now here's a spot I really do miss. Originally opened up by one or two of the guys who'd worked at Smash CDs on St. Mark's Place, the original NYCD first appeared on Amsterdam Avenue between W.80th and W. 81st streets. In the mid-to-late 90's, they moved over to a basement level spot just across the way on 81st. The guys who operated the place were cool, chatty and really knew their stuff. In this incarnation, they'd sometimes have in-store performances and the like. I was exceptionally bummed when they closed. Today, I believe this space is a daycare center or playschool. Thanks to Pretty Kitty for this shot.

Wowsville, East Village
I recounted my favorite Wowsville anecdote back on this post. Today, I believe the Spaniards that ran this shop have repaird to Berlin, where they've re-opened it. I wonder if they still have the big Ramones print I wrote about in that earlier post. In any case, it was a shame to lose them (especially considering that the shop they occupied is now a rinkydink cellphone joint). This comes courtesy of Sean.