It's been closed now for a decade, but since it's been gone, it seems almost inconceivable that such a place even ever existed, ... much like the neighborhood it once called home. See/Hear was an independent magazine shop in the heart of the East Village that specialized almost exclusively in music periodicals. It stocked some other reading material as well -- comics, poetry, cinema stuff -- but it's main attraction were "Zines"... independent fanzines, catering to all stripes of music geek, from bedenimed metal cretins to bespectacled indie dweebs to die-hard prog archivists, punk revivalists, psychedelic lost souls, and everyone in between. Located in a cramped, basement-level bunker, See/Hear was a furtive hive for fetishistic music knowitalls to meet, learn, glean, share discoveries, etc. Prior to the adventure-squashing advent of the internet, it was places like See/Hear that made being an ardent music fan so exciting.
My favorite anecdote about See/Hear comes from this very recent post on Dangerous Minds about the rarified and disarmingly profane "Hard Rock" cassette put out by Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace label (which featured luridly disturbing spoken-word pieces by Lydia Lunch and Michael Gira of SWANS). Evidently See/Hear's old proprietor plays in a Sonic Youth cover duo that practiced their art on ukuleles. Their name? SONIC UKE.
In any case, I probably discovered See/Hear around 1989, when I was interning and SPIN and just starting to work for an independent zine that I've mentioned here before called The New York Review of Records (or NYROR). After first walking down into the place, I swiftly became a regular. And I probably took it for granted for many years.
See/Hear is a tellingly indicative example of the New York City that I spend most of my time paying tribute to here on Flaming Pablum, because it's a New York City that's now largely vanished.
One of NYROR's contributors, the great and unrepentantly hirsute Brian O'Neil (or, as he sometimes called himself back then, Brain O'Null), posted this fleeting clip of the old interior of See/Hear on my Facebook page this evening, and I instantly felt compelled to post something about it here. Sure, it may look like just a dingy little magazine shop to you, but for some of us, it was a veritable temple.
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