Hey again, all. Apologies for the relative slowdown in posts this week, but it’s been a busy one. Lots of stuff going on. Maybe more about that in the days to come. Or not. We’ll see. Fate is a fickle bitch, so who knows what she has in store?
Anyway, in the interim, I’m always setting aside little items that I think are of interest. Here are a few topically-relavant things that caught my eye.
Nick Carr’s routinely spectacular Scouting New York blog recently set its sights on Flaming Pablum favorites, The Ramones (pictured above in 1979, as captured by Alan Berkovitz), charting their trajectory back to their geographic roots. I believe this is only the first installment of The Ramones Guide to New York City, but it’s well worth your time if you’re a fan (and if you’re not, …. what’s wrong with you?)
I almost found this article too depressing to finish, but the great Oliver Sacks wrote a lengthy piece for The New Yorker on the unexpected tribulations and heartbreaking final days of the great Spalding Gray, pictured at right circa 1986 by Susan Shacter.
Also gleaned from The New Yorker: Frequent Flaming Pablum target-of-rididcule, Chloë Sevigny, is evidently celebrating her crossing of the perilous Rubicon of her 40th year by publishing a fan book about herself. No, nothing lamentable or abjectly ridiculous about that at all.
It’s not a new article, but The Quietus published an excellent round-up of its writers’ favorite live albums back in 2013 that really caught my eye. Not only was I pleased to see several of my favorites cited, but their encapsulations (notably Julian Marszalek’s summation of It’s Alive by, once again, the Ramones and my friend Ned Ragget’s thoughtful handling of Earth Inferno by Fields of the Nephilim) more often than not are entirely spot-on.
My friend Chung Wong unearthed a great vintage clip of David Johansen interviewing his former bandmate Johnny Thunders in front of CBGB on the eve of the star-crossed Anarchy tour Thunders’ Heartbreakers would take with the Sex Pistols and the Damned in 1976. Lots of punk history crammed into 2:29 minutes of video. Check it out....
Speaking of vintage punk, Dangerous Minds exhumed a long-lost promo video The Cramps’ shot for “Human Fly,” featuring some grainy footage of lovely Poison Ivy Rorschach strutting around what looks to be the L.E.S. of the late `70.s Read Dangerous Minds’ piece here, but here’s the video in question.
Staying with the vintage punk theme, here’s a nine minute trailer for a documentary about Punk Magazine, featuring Legs McNeil and John Holmstrom. This seems to have been uploaded onto YouTube in 2012, so I’m not sure of the status of the doc at this stage of the proceedings. What’s striking to me is the footage of Legs and Holmstrom sitting together, as last I remember they’d fallen out with each other.
More stuff comin' soon. Stay tuned!
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