Flaming Pablum

For the Love of D.O.A.

Officially, the Alternative Tentacles compilation, Let Them Eat Jellybeans was released in 1981, but I didn’t get wind of it until a year or so after that, when my friend Brad played it for at me one balmy summer afternoon. Prior to that, the only proper hardcore I’d really heard was “Too Drunk to Fuck” by Dead Kennedys. As I wrote in this overwritten entry back in 2006, Let Them Eat… turned me onto a slew of new bands and new sounds. It really was a veritable “gateway drug” of an album.

One of those bands, of course, was Vancouver’s D.O.A., whose bracingly taut track, “The Prisoner” was easily one of the highlights of Let Them Eat Jellybeans. Bitten by the bug, I immersed myself in other hardcore records. I picked up a great live compilation called Rat Music For Rat People, which featured some of the same bands from Let Them Eat.., including D.O.A. tearing through “America the Beautiful” and “Fucked Up Ronnie.”

As if by fate around this same era, my sister sent me a care package from college. She was a student at Georgetown University and had become something of a regular patron at Commander Salamander, the Georgetown equivalent of Trash & Vaudeville. Picked up solely on the strength of the block capital letters spelling out “DESTROY TRADITION,” my sister unwittingly sent me a D.O.A. t-shirt. It swiftly became my favorite article of clothing.

Anyway, blah blah blah, I snapped up D.O.A.’s early recordings like Something Better Change, Hardcore `81, War on 45 and Bloodied But Unbowed. In `85, they released Let’s Wreck the Party, a comparatively slicker affair which found them playing to the center and moving away from their hyperkinetic roots. I still liked it, but started to tune out after that. By the same token, those first experiences hearing those early D.O.A. records remain some of the most indelible listening experiences of my life.

News came down today, meanwhile that D.O.A. guitarist Dave Gregg has passed away at the chillingly young age of 54. The details of his death are still unknown, but it’s a sad day regardless.

Pour one out and crank this way up.

Back to Record City

Okay, so yesterday, I posted the call-out for readers to name the address of Record City, as depicted in 1981's "The Fan" (see above). Honestly, I have no recollection of the place at all (although let's be fair -- 1981 was damn long time ago). It was definitely a genuine shop (if you watch the film, or even go back to Jonathan Hertzberg's latest montage, you can see shots of the interior). Look hard enough and you can spot specific album covers in the window display, notably Peter Gabriel's third eponymous LP from 1980 (the one with "No Self Control" and the melting-face art).

In 1981, I was a 14-year-old living on the Upper East Side. I'd begun exploring downtown by this point, but hadn't yet committed every conceivable record shop to memory.

In any case, shortly after posting, a reader named Allan wrote in. Here's what he had to say:

(Robbie's) Record City was on Broadway just south of Astor Place. I worked at 738 Broadway and he was one or two buildings to the south of us. I briefly worked at his other store in Newark, NJ. The New York store probably closed around 1981 or 82? It was a long time ago and memory fails.

Fascinated by the proximity of this address to my current address (I moved downtown in the mid-90's), I went out this morning to try to divine the exact spot. I've scoured the `net looking for other citations of the store's address, but have come up empty thus far. It appears that Record City might have occupied the space that is currently playing host to Foot Locker in the image below from this morning.

After that, however, I made another fun discovery. Check out this bizarre clip from 1980. I must confess that I've never heard of Colette Justine of Justine and the Victorian Punks, but evidently, she posed in a window display at Record City for a Valentine's Day promotion in 1980. Watch the clip below, and after about a minute and a half, they shoot from the window looking out at Broadway, and you can see Waverly Place and the old deli (that is now a Fresh & Co.) next to Warehouse Wines & Liquors. It's an interesting slice of street life circa 1980.

If you're curious about Justine and the Victorian Punks, you can find out more here.

Where was Record City?

Last July, you may remember, I posted a piece about the "Dirty Old New York" project by Jonathan Hertzberg, which is a series of videos that exhaustively aggregate clips of New York City footage from the pantheon of modern cinema. If you're a fetishistic NYC nostalgist like myself, Hertzberg's clips are an absolute *MUST*. He just put up a new one as well. It's 25 minutes long, but it's awesome.

Anyway, back in August, I put up a sprawling post that collected various images of since-vanished and/or forgotten record stores around New York City, and Hertzberg himself weighed in, citing an obscure shop called Record City. Said shop made a cameo appearance in the 1981 film "The Fan," starring Lauren Bacall and a very youthful Michael Biehn (prior to his turns in "The Terminator" and "Aliens"). The film is about a creepy stalker in New York CITY who gets fixated with Lauren Bacall, but ends up getting stabbed as a result (it's a bit more complicated than that, if I'm being honest). In any case, during the course of proceedings, Biehn's character is depicted working in a happenin'-looking shop called Record City. If you don't feel like suffering through "The Fan," you can actually see it in the afore-cited 25-minute video from Mr. Hertzberg.

So here's my question: Does anyone out there remember Record City? Where was it? When did close? What was it like? Weigh in, won't you?

 

Maron Misses Missing Foundation

I noticed a striking spike in traffic on this here silly blog this afternoon and was suddenly suspicious. Someone was linking to an old entry I’d posted on the infamous Missing Foundation, a band I’ve written about several time here. The last time I wrote about them, though, lead strategist/ringleader Peter Missing himself weighed in, taking a bit of exception to my wording. I was wondering if this was his resumption of that discussion.

It wasn’t. Strangely enough, it was comedian/tv personality Marc Maron. On his Twitter account, he postulated the following…

As it turned out, a gent named Evan ‘Funk’ Davis clued him in that it was Missing Foundation, and linked to my afore-cited piece. Cool.

Since then, it’s been click city.

Weird, right?

In any case, seems as good a time as any to dust off this ol’ favorite…

The Mouth of Downtown

I’ve spoken about University Place several times here, but as a native of the Upper East Side, University Place always seemed like the “mouth” of downtown (that is unless your southbound 6 train bypassed Union Square and went straight to Astor Place).

Shortly after moving into the neighborhood in 1996, I shot the photograph above, for no especially notable reason. At the time, it didn’t seem like a particularly remarkable vantage point. Sure, the World Trade Center was visible, but you could get a much better, centered view of the towers from the top of LaGuardia Place. In any case, I snapped it and filed it away.

The other day, meanwhile, I happened upon a shot on Flickr taken by one Brian Biggs from about eleven years earlier of pretty much the same spot, more or less (he framed the Twin Towers a little better than I did). Here’s his shot below.

In the wake of this discovery, I thought I’d try to recapture the same spot today. Obviously, the World Trade Center is no longer what it was, but check out how much else has changed (notably the newer, taller condos on the southwest corner of University Place and 14th Street, where Patterson’s Silks -- later an Odd Lots -- used to stand.

Back to 67 Vestry Street

Back in 1989, I befriended a guy named Sam I was working alongside of at SPIN Magazine, where I was toiling paylessly as an intern in the vain hopes of entering the fast-paced and oh-so-lucrative world of “music journalism.” Sam was originally from North Carolina, but was pursuing his own dreams of working at SPIN while also acting as a house-sitter for his alma mater, Appalachian State University. His school owned a massive loft down in TriBeCa. The address was 67 Vestry Street.

Despite being a native of the Upper East Side, I was pretty versed in all things “downtown” by this point, but TriBeCa still mystified me. Believe it or not, in 1989, the notion of TriBeCa being the exclusive hotbed of bespoke affluence that it is today seemed pretty laughable. Sure, there were some intrepid folks who’d taken full advantage of the neighborhood's expansive industrial spaces by converting them into cavernous homes, but the area was still largely amenity-free, whisper quiet and forbiddingly desolate in the small hours.

In any case, in short order, I was soon regularly boarding the downtown 6 train from my perch up in Yorkville on the Upper East Side to Sam's sprawling loft-space at 67 Vestry (the trip from the Upper East to Lower West took an eternity). I remember several evenings procuring beer at seemingly the only deli for miles around (one block north from Wetland's on Hudson Street), and then Sam and I would repair to the roof of his building with a boom box and a couple of sixes to hang out and drink irresponsibly while staring across the river at New Jersey (or watching the furtive cruising action along the still undeveloped promenade of the Hudson River below). Getting home after these evenings wasn't always that fun, given the sheer amount of real estate I had to traverse, but I was young, spry, reckless and stupid.

Sam ended up moving to Portland, Maine after a year or so there. Even by the time of his departure from that sleepy area of TriBeCa, though, I noticed things slowly changing. More restaurants were opening up. Apart from a random party at some neighboring loft within 67 Vestry after Sam had left, I figured I'd probably never set foot in that building again, which kinda made me sad. I'd had some good times there.

Strangely enough, however, by the second half of the 90's, another friend of mine moved into 67 Vestry. I'd initially befriended Tod [A] during his days fronting the mighty Cop Shoot Cop at the dawn of the `90s, but by the middle of the decade, he'd jumped ship from that outfit to explore more expansive musical pastures with an amorphous new outfit called Firewater. Firewater signed to an indie label called JetSet, and Tod ended up getting romantically involved -- and then married -- to the label's founder Shelley. The couple set up shop at 67 Vestry as both their home and JetSet headquarters, from whence they issued albums from bands like 16 Horsepower, Elysian Fields, The Go-Betweens, Prolapse, Mogwai, The Jesus Lizard and Luna (along with, of course, the excellent Firewater). All of a sudden, I found myself again darkening the doors of 67 Vestry. You can actually see the interior of the building's stairwell (and the surrounding neighborhood) in the criminally rarified video for "Green Light" by Firewater.

Tod and Shelley stayed at 67 Vestry for a few years. I remember speaking with Tod on September 11th. He'd gone to that same roof that morning and seen proceedings first hand from a horrifying vantage point.

In ensuing years, Tod, Shelley and JetSet ended up departing 67 Vestry. All the same, whenever I am downtown in that neck of the woods, I cannot stop myself from strolling by or pointing it out. Those are my kids up top, standing it its doorway from a couple of years back. It will always be a favorite locale of mine.

So why am I bringing all of this up now? Well, in the wake of a post I did a little while back wherein I tried to replicate certain iconic photos of various rockstar types, a reader named Paul wrote in about 67 Vestry. Here's what he had to say.

I and 67 Vestry Street Tenants came across your blog and your search for 67 Vestry Street and Laurie Anderson's photo shoot.

I live at 67 Vestry and actually knew the creators of Jet Set Records as at the time they were just above me on the fifth floor. Here is why I am writing to you. This building has enormous history attached to it. Many artists have lived here such as Andy Warhol John Chamberlain Bob Wilson and Marisol just to name a few and Wim Wenders shot and filmed part of the film American Friend on sight outside and inside. if you look at the 58th minute you will see our building 67 Vestry Street. Watch from 58 minutes to 2:00.30 Nicholas Ray and Dennis Hopper.

Well this beautiful building which was built in 1896 by Frederick Philip Dinkelberg (the A&P building) 67 Vestry Street New York -- the same architect who was involved in building the flat iron building, may no longer be and torn down by its currant landlord.

I myself am an artist and have been living and painting here since 1988.

Here is the story: We Vestry Street tenants found out recently that our Landlord is actively planning on building a new building where our building is. North TriBeCa and NY is going mad with developments of soulless buildings !!!! Our building may soon be next on the list of monstrous developments, if we do not act fast. Our building is Landmark worthy and that is why we are applying to Landmarks to get it Landmarked.

Tribeca Trust has made a petition for our building and we need as many signatures as possible.

I am hoping you maybe able to add your name to the petition to save our building from the fate of so many other buildings!!!

There are about only 4 original warehouse left on the TriBeCa waterfront (two of the four will most likely be demolished as they belonged to Pontes). For the most part, the rest are new, disastrous constructions by developers. There is a campaign to request for our building an evaluation for Landmark, as our landlord/real estate mogul has filed an application for construction of a new building, first step before demolition. Below is the petition and history of the building.

Protect the Historic A&P Warehouse at 67 Vestry St. in Tribeca Truly hope you will sign the petition as we need as many signatures we can get. Hope you are well,

Protect the Historic A&P Warehouse at 67 Vestry St. in Tribeca

 

Check out this article for more details on the situation.

East Village Reckoning

 

Just a quick one.

I'm a member of a group of Facebook called Manhattan Before 1990, which aggregates posts and pictures about just that (as you'd expect from such a title). In any case, through this group, I encountered the photographs of a woman named Susan Fensten, who has posted a few choice images she's taken over the years. I reached out to her to see if it would be okay if I put up some of her work here, and she very graciously consented. 

Above is the shot of hers that first caught my eye. I can't put an exact address on it, but Ms. Fensten says it was in the East Village in 1984. I'm particularly fond of the R.E.M. flyers. By this point in their career, they'd have been promoting their second long payer, Reckoning (although for my money, their finest hour remains the Chronic Town e.p.). I can't quite make out what venue they were playing at, can you?

ADDENDUM: Heard back from Ms. Fensten. Turns out it was actually 1985, and the venue was Radio City Music Hall, with The Three O'Clock opening.

Jonathan Says

Back in 2008, some of you may remember when I posted a suitably windy entry about my love for The Modern Lovers, Jonathan Richman's proto-punk outfit, and how I arguably came whisper-close to writing a book about him, until the futility of that notion became too big to ignore. The problems were twofold. Firstly, someone had attempted same just a year before (with frankly middling results) and -- more crucially -- Richman himself has little-to-no interest in sifting through his past and talking to journalists.

This will probably sound like a rationalization in the wake of the incident, but I was kind of relieved at the time. The thought of devoting two plus years to documenting the story of the notoriously eccentric Jonathan Richman (with or without his participation) seemed frankly daunting.

Anyway, blah blah blah. Why am I re-addressing all of this now? Well, Legs McNeil's Please Kill Me page of Facebook recently exhumed a rare interview Jonathan did with SF Weekly from 2012, wherein he lifts a bit of the veil on this thoughts about his legacy (and other things like the internet and the volume of air conditioners ... as one does). It's pretty interesting, and only confirms that my book-writing task would have been nigh-on-insurmountable. If you're as fascinated by him as I am, it's well worth checking out.

More on Jonathan Richman on Flaming Pablum:
Massachusetts, Give It to the Modern Lovers
Cracking in `76

And if you're unfamiliar with the band or what I'm talking about, here's a taste... 

The One They Never Pick

I’m not one to decry someone else’s interpretation of a particular work of art. I mean, isn’t that what makes art so special? That we can all derive our own significance and meaning from it? Yeah, that’s great, but there are exceptions to that rule. Here’s one of them.

I’ve never read PolicyMic before (and probably won’t again), but I gather it’s yet another Buzzfeed-wannabe hell bent on cranking out pithy lists rife with desperate allusions to the zeitgeist. Earlier this week, they published a piece presumptuously titled 22 Songs Only True New Yorkers Will Understand. First of all, fuck you. Don’t tell me what “true New Yorkers” will or will not do, especially if you’re under the age of friggin’ 30. What the hell do you know about it?

In any case, while there’s plenty to snort derisively about with this listicle, I was particularly peeved by the entry on “53rd and Third” by the Ramones, reprinted here…

It's New York City in the '70s, amidst war protests, drugs, crime and the heyday of CBGB. Tough, unvarnished and full of anger, this song is the ultimate "fuck you" to the police, the Manhattan glitterati and even the "city of dreams" itself. There's no harsher reality than NYC when you hit bottom.

But even on 53rd and 3rd, when you're down and out, there's some love for the city to be found.

Ummmm…no.

“53rd and Third” is the semi-autobiographical tale of Dee Dee Ramone’s days as a male prostitute, augmented via poetic license with the flourish of an elite military background. The song’s title is a specific allusion to a once-thriving strip for cruising, and the lyrics are ultimately about desperation, self-loathing and homicide. There is absolutely no love expressed for New York City – or anything else -- herein, nor is there much for any “true New Yorker” to specifically identify with.

The actual locale of the narrative hasn’t played host to the sort of activity detailed in the song in decades. In 2014, it is a staid, antiseptic and trouble-free quartet of corners as can be imagined, and has been for a long time.

Try again.

To The Disc Shops of Williamsburg!

Given the laborious amount of time I spend here lamenting the demise of Manhattan's once-thriving circuit of independent, mom'n'pop record and compact disc shops, there's always someone quick to point out that there are still a few choice locales worth checking out over the river in the borough of Kings. I realize that, and -- as I've said before -- I've made a vow to always buy something at Park Slope's Music Matters whenever I'm in that neighborhood. But, y'know, I don't live in Brooklyn. Not yet, at least. I'm a native, dyed-in-the-wool Manhattan snob, and always will be, even if I eventually re-locate.

In any case, ever since the long-fabled opening of Brooklyn's first Rough Trade outlet in Williamsburg, I've wanted to go make a pilgrimage to the place to check it out first hand. So, this past weekend, with my little boy Oliver in tow, I did just that.

I used to frequent the byways of Williamsburg back in the early-to-mid`90s, when I had a few friends living in that neck of the woods. Back in those days, it wasn't quite the hipster Mecca it is today (although gentrification was still well already underway, I assure you). That said, it used to sort of resemble Belfast during the troubles more than a haven for ironic sunglasses, bushy beards and artisinal microbrews.

Beyond live music venues like Northsix and Galapagos (both since-vanished, if I'm not mistaken, or at least entirely re-christened), my other regular stop in Williamsburg back then was a little record shop called Earwax. Earwax wasn't especially distinctive (beyond the fact that they didn't have a phone at the time for some reason), but it was a solid little stand-by where you were bound to find something to catch your eye and, er, ear.

Earwax held court on Bedford Avenue for quite a few years (you can catch a fleeting glimpse of its old interior on this post). More recently, it moved to a new spot off that now ridiculously well-traveled strip. It's now tucked neatly on the eastern side of North 9th Street.

I first stopped into the new Earwax back in October, when I came to Williamsburg for the US premiere of “The Death & Resurrection Show,” the fabled Killing Joke movie, at the strenuously douchey Wythe Hotel. While I wasn’t looking for anything particular, I’d noticed Earwax had a copy of the now-super-rare 1990 edition of Filth by SWANS, notable for its inclusion of the four tracks from their eponymous 1982 e.p. Fearing I was late for the movie, though, I foolishly didn’t snag it. As it turned out, the movie itself never happened. The CBGB festival -– who were “curating” the event -– never received the DHL package containing the print of the film. I was immeasurably bummed. But, I digress.

Though we’d come to Brooklyn specifically to check out Rough Trade, I couldn’t resist popping into Earwax again. Unfortunately, that copy of Filth was no longer in the racks, somewhat unsurprisingly. As such, Oliver and I repaired back out into the vast sea of hipsters to find our way to Rough Trade.

Despite what Morrissey has to venomously say about founder Geoff Travis in his recent “Autobiography” (an illuminating read, if something of a chore to page through), I’ve always admired Rough Trade as both a record label and a chain of shops. I vividly recall stepping into the Rough Trade on Talbot Road in the Notting Hill section of London back in the early 90’s and feeling like I was walking into a shrine. As such, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from its Brooklyn incarnation, beyond the fact that it made the t-shirt I’d procured at the London shop feel not quite so special anymore.

As the East River slowly came into view, Oliver began to get skeptical that this big record store Daddy was excited about actually existed, until we spotted the massive sign.

Once inside, all doubts I’d been harboring vanished. Regardless of the hipster patina, Rough Trade NYC is nothing short of a godsend. If that Talbot Road shop in London was a shrine, this place is a cathedral. Lovingly presented vinyl and compact discs – painstakingly subdivided by genre specificity --- rule the sprawling main floor, an area I immediately started to peruse. Wanting to expedite the mission, little Oliver immediately sought out Devo and SWANS amidst the racks, while I assured him that we were in absolutely no rush. Pretty much all of my favorites were well represented and dutifully stocked. After circumnavigating the room, I settled on a copy of Crazy Rhythms by the Feelies (an album I’d only ever owned on cassette) and a criminally cheap re-release of Squeezing Out Sparks by Graham Parker & the Rumor.

We ambled further about the big building, checking out the live music area in the back, the ping pong tables (!!!) up on the second tier, the book section and a chamber dubbed “The Room,” which featured an exhibit of old moog synthesizers and theremins (which proved to be a bit too loud for my little boy).

All in all, I was pretty wowed, but I fear for Earwax. Not sure how it’s going to compete with such a behemoth just down the street.

Hop on the L train and check it out. Tell’em Oliver and I sent ya!