Flaming Pablum

Seven Days of the Seventies

See that surly, snot-nosed punk at the right in the incongruous sartorial ensemble of life-jacket and fetching engineer’s cap? That’s a roughly 11-year-old me, circa July of 1978. It was snapped during a family vacation wherein we went white-water rafting down the Green River in Colorado. Yes, that’s the same Green River later used to identify both a certain serial killer who strangled a bunch of women in the ‘80s and dumped their bodies in same and, a little while after that, a certain Seattle punk band that later fractured into Mother Love Bone, Mudhoney and, a little later still, Pearl Jam. But, at the time of this photo, none of those things had happened yet.

As histrionically alluded to in my last post, the 70's were a long, long time ago. I lived through their entirety, but still emerged at the tail end of them as a pre-teen. Nowadays, whole decades seem to pass while I’m popping out to drop off my dry-cleaning, but, as mentioned in that last post, the years move slowly when you’ve only been around for a few of them. As such, the 70’s seemed to last forever. Here I am again in the midpoint of the decade. I'm the squirt at the top.

At the tail end of last week, a friend of mine I’ve never actually met (i.e. a fellow rabid music geek who lives in the Jesus & Mary Chain’s hometown of East Kilbride, Scotland) posted one of those annoying Facebook challenges (well, it’s only annoying if you’re simply a passive user of social media and don’t give a damn about nerdy minutia) called the Seven Days of the Seventies Challenge. As its name suggests, the mission is to post clips of music, over the course of a week, pertaining to the decade in question. I actually believe it was intended to be genre-specific (i.e. all disco, or all punk, or all glam rock, etc.), but when I undertook it, I chose to disregard that particular codicil, as no sane person only listens to a single genre of music.

I started off playing by the rules with “1970” by the Stooges (a song I didn’t actually hear for the first time until 1985), but gradually figured I’d sculpt my unwieldy list of selections -– much like most of this here blog -- to be predominantly specific to my own experiences. As I mention later in this post, while I was alive and more or less sentient during the 70’s heydays of iconoclastic bands like Suicide, Neu, Dr. Feelgood and Glenn Branca’s Theoretical Girls, I was still only 12 years old by the decade’s end, and thus only had a limited amount of exposure to more adventurous music than one might have encountered on the radio and/or via the record collections of older siblings -- although my big sister Victoria served me well in that latter capacity, as you’ll read below .. should you not have abandoned this post by now.

In addition to side-stepping the one-genre-only stipulation, I also cheated by posting more than a single track a day -- invariably much to the consternation of many a now-former Facebook friend. Ah, well. Be that as it may, I was still forced to leave out a wide swathe of songs by artists like the Rolling Stones, Elton John, the Ramones, the Jim Carroll Band, Cat Stevens, Frank Zappa, Abba, Queen, Bon Scott-era AC/DC, Traffic, Roxy Music, David Bowie, James Taylor, Judy Collins (yes, you read that right), Supertramp, Deep Purple, Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Boston, Al Stewart, Yes, Gil Scott Heron, Curtis Mayfield, Cheap Trick, Mike Oldfield and many more. Seven days isn’t enough, really, to sum up the sounds of my Seventies.

Anyway, since I put something of an inordinate amount of time and effort into my stupid list, I figured I’d save it from being swallowed down the black hole of my Facebook feed, and post it here as well. You’re welcome, I guess.

Day 1

I was nominated by Kerr to do the Seven Day Seventies Classic Challenge. While I could be happy just to be nominated, I won't be until I take home the actual award. Thus, challenge accepted. Seventies, eh? There is only one (1) place to start...

Once again, I was nominated by Kerr to do the Seven Day Seventies Classic Challenge. Herewith entry #2. I honestly didn't hear this track until 1985, courtesy of my comrade Warwick Carter's incendiary late night radio show on WDUB (91.1 FM in Granville, don'tcha know). Recorded in `78 and certainly born of Punk, while not exactly sonically akin, "Power in the Darkness" is as righteously on point today as it was then -- if not more so. For the easily offended, it should be noted that the spoken-word bit in the middle is satire of the sharpest variety. Turn it UP.

DAY 2

Okay, Day 2 of the Seven Day Seventies Challenge (blame Kerr). I think he naturally assumed I was going to do all punk bands, but for me, the 70's weren't about a single genre. As such, you're going to get a mixed bag. I don't believe Sweet were as big a deal here in the States as they were in Europe, but I vividly remember this track blaring out of the shitty radio of my family's pea-soup-green Volvo station wagon (I would have been about 11 years old) and imploring my otherwise-disinterested elders to turn it up, a request that was blithely ignored. To my ears, it really captures a time and a place.

Yes, it’s still Day 2 of Kerr's Seven Day Seventies Challenge. He wants me to stay genre-specific, but I shan’t be doing that. This selection is about as 70's as you can get, as far as I’m concerned, and this particular track brings me right back to a period wherein I was living on East 93rd Street. Across the avenue lived Spencer Gillen and around the corner lived Billy Kaynor, and for a fleeting moment, we three seemed to be united in our allegiance to all things KISS, culminating with the much feted release of 1976's Destroyer. Both Spence and Billy moved on (Billy, if memory serves, was an early champion of Patti Smith), but I remained slavishly loyal to the KISS Army longer than might have been advisable. Still rocks, though.

Day 2 of Kerr’s Seven Days of Seventies Challenge plods ever onward. Switching gears again. This 1975 classic is amazing for at least two reasons: 1. The awesome piano/synth intro, which sounds like the theme song to a badass cop show. 2. The fact that the lyrics are so incredibly creepy. I mean, Trent Reznor WISHES he could pen so effortlessly catchy an ode to seething, unrequited love and flagrant stalking as “Nights On Broadway.” “I WILL WAIT — EVEN IF IT TAKES A LIFETIME!! ... MAKE IT LIKE IT WAS BEFORE!” It’s completely bonkers *AND* incredibly funky.

Day 2 of Kerr's Seven Days of the Seventies keeps on truckin'. I'll get back to the hard stuff in a bit, but if ever there was a single track that sums up the decade in question, this would be it (if you asked me). Visuals aside, it remains a remarkable bit of music, I think -- especially the slightly creepy middle-eight.. "big boys don't cry...big boys don't cry..."

DAY 3

Like the decade in question, Kerr's Seven Days of the Seventies Challenge seems to go on for years. It's now Day 3, and a new opportunity to flip the bird at convention. Zamfir's haunting theme to Peter Weir's frustratingly unresolved "Picnic at Hanging Rock" bears all the hallmarks of a certain era of 70's cinema that was gorgeously steeped in experimental weirdness (see also "Don't Look Now," "The Wicker Man," "The Valley [Obscured by Clouds]," etc.) Sure, it's the pan flute, but it's crazy creepy and memorable (for me, anyway).

Day 3 (Cinema Day) of Kerr's Seven Days of the Seventies Challenge continues. Normally, I'd have waited a bit, but some friends were snatching up some of my picks, so I have to act fast. As such, here's Giorgio Moroder's inimitable score to the classic, "Midnight Express," essentially prefiguring and defining the sound of the decade that would follow. `Cos, y'know, nothing says "Happy Easter" like the soundtrack to an escape from an oppressive Turkish prison. Enjoy. 

Cinema Day of the Seven Seventies Days Challenge from Kerr continues. My estimable comrade Tod Ashley took a big runny dump on electronic music pioneer Giorgio Moroder, but if he says even the slightest negative word about Jerry Goldsmith's score for "The Wind & the Lion" (which featured greatest human alive Sean Connery as a Bedouin pirate with an inexplicable Scottish accent), he faces a bleak and unlivable future of suffering the eternal torments of the damned.

DAY 4

It's Day 4 of Kerr's Seven Days of the Seventies challenge. For those who haven't unfriended me as yet, that means it's time for some Sabbath inna mellow styley.

Day 4 of Kerr's Seven Days of the Seventies won't be stopped. The Tubes should have been massive. Not quite Punks, Not quite New Wave, Not quite Prog, Not quite Glam, Not quite Metal, but a messy collision of all of the above. Sure, they had a few tidy pop singles in the 80's, but their best songs were from their entirely insane period in the 70's, this single being arguably foremost among them (narrowly rivaled by "Mondo Bondage" from the same LP).

Day 4 of Kerr's contentious Seven Days of the Seventies Challenge, and it’s already caused a number of spats among the flock. Can’t we all get along? Anyway, my next track is by the abjectly uncool Alan Parsons Project. When I was in fourth grade circa `76/`77, I had a teacher named Tom McLellan (who is heroically on Facebook) who had a vision of our class play that year being an exceptionally loose adaptation of William Golding’s “Lord of the Flies,” dubbed, I believe, “The Island.” What set this ambitious production apart (beyond some strenuously liberal deviations from the script) was the implementation of music. At one point in the somewhat dubious proceedings, there was to be a dance sequence set to this very track, a proto-goth prog-rock rumination on Edgar Allen Poe’s signature work (courtesy, if memory serves, of the record collection of my classmate Zachary Towbin). I want to say that on the night of the performance, the needle skipped across the vinyl quite severely, and dramatic havoc ensued. Regardless, I still have a soft spot for this song.

DAY 5

It’s Day 5 of Kerr’s laborious Seven Days of the Seventies Challenge. It’s almost over … kinda. In any case, I think the first time I ever heard or saw Devo was via an episode of "Saturday Night Live." We were up at my cousins’ place in the Berkshires and, by some lapse of parental judgement, I was allowed to stay up late (I being about 11 at the time). Fred Willard was the host and introduced them, and no one in the room seemed quite sure whether they were a real band or simply another surreal sketch. I was later fully indoctrinated into the faith at Great Oaks, a camp up in Maine, via the prescient musical tastes of an older schoolmate (hello Andrew Romeo), and there was no going back. I’m citing the album’s opening track, but every nanosecond on that first LP is entirely, bracingly, life-affirmingly crucial. Are we not men?

Day 5 of Kerr's insidious Seven Days of the Seventies challenge lingers like a tenacious infection, but hang in there -- only two days left. This is just a great song. No big extrapolation necessary.

DAY 6

Kerr’s deathless Seven Days of the Seventies challenge is almost over! It’s Day 6! In the summer of 1977, my father was serving as a London correspondent for Forbes magazine and made the truly rare, good-footed move and sent my sister, Victoria, and I a giant crate of promo LPs after making in-roads with some dude at Epic Records. In it was a lot of predictable bullshit, but there were some choice slabs vinyl as well. Scattered amidst records by acts like Boston, the O’Jays, the Isley Brothers and a needlessly sprawling double-live album by REO Speedwagon (featuring a flatulent trek through “Ridin’ The Storm Out”) were two curious LPs that immediately gave us pause: PURE MANIA by the provocatively-named Vibrators and a jarringly-sleeved debut LP (the elusive Brit edition, no less) by a little band called The Clash. Dropping the needle on this first track off the latter changed everything. REO Speedwagon this was NOT! **WELCOME TO PUNK ROCK!!!**

It's still Day 6 of Kerr's Seven Days of the Goddamn Seventies Bataan Death March Challenge, but we're in the home stretch. How's this for `70's? We had an eight-track tape player when I was a kid! I don't remember a grand selection of titles, but we had a lot of singery-songwritery shit like Cat Stevens, Carole King, James Taylor, the Partridge Family (not sure how that one got in there), Paul Simon solo and this album by Simon and his hirsute nemesis Art Garfunkel. This album seemed to be in constant rotation in our living room out in Quogue, ... until one day, the stoner teen who sometimes mowed our lawn broke into the house and ripped off the eight-track player. I always liked the somewhat shrill horn section going bonkers at the end of this ....

Yep, still Day 6 of Kerr's plague-like Seven Days of the Seventies. We're almost done, and you'll probably miss it when it's over. This next one is another rapturous shout-out to my older sister, Victoria, who routinely brought home a slew of great albums -- this one foremost among them (although `twas also she that introduced our household to the B-52s, Earth Wind & Fire, Brass Construction and the Police). This album, though, totally blew a new part in my hair. We listened to it constantly ... much to the pointed chagrin of our mother. If you can't appreciate this, you're living a life dimmed by a paucity of funk excellence.

DAY 7

It’s the last day of Kerr’s soul-immolating Seven Days of the Seventies. Deliverance is at hand. Look, I lived through the entirety of the 70s, but was still only a snot-nosed 12-year-old by the end of 1979. So, while it would be fun to say I spent the decade listening to cool, prescient shit like Faust, the Modern Lovers and the New York Dolls, apart from a few chance discoveries and random instances, I didn’t discover most of that sorta stuff until a few years after the fact. I was a child through all of the 70’s, which meant I largely listened to crap that is now considered classic rock. This is why I’ve always loved Paul McCartney and/or Paul McCartney & Wings, and not in any ironic hipster, guilty pleasure sorta way. Choosing a single song by same was a veritable “Sophie’s Choice” scenario. Do I go with a canonical favorite like “Maybe I’m Amazed” or the insufferably poppy “Silly Love Songs” or the inarguably finest Bond theme ever recorded (“Live & Let Die,” bitches). No, I choose “Uncle Albert,” as the palpable *STENCH* of the decade in question is all over it, and it sounds like my childhood. Deal with it.

Once again, it’s the last day of Kerr's cursed Seven Days of the Seventies challenge, so before you unfriend me for unspeakable crimes against good taste, know that it all ends after today. Just because I’m citing a song here, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I espouse everything about it. There’s actually a “proper video” for this song, but the visuals are just too aesthetically disturbing that I thought I should spare you. While it’s true that ELO was more or less the hirsute embodiment of everything that Punk Rock strove to destroy, that doesn’t mean they didn’t write some indisputably memorable pop tunes along the way. The windswept strings on this number instantly hearken back to the warm summer breezes of the late `70s.

Nope, you’re not quite out of the woods yet. It’s still the last day of Kerr’s ponderously oppressive Seven Days of the Seventies Challenge, and I couldn’t possibly go on living with myself if I failed to include anything by the `Floyd, a band I spent a large swathe of time adoring during that decade (as well as the decade that followed, despite diminishing returns in quality on their part). It was once again my sibling Victoria who first brought Dark Side of the Moon into our apartment, indoctrinating me into the cult via its lushly expansive atmosphere of mild-mannered, existential dread. With apologies to Roger Waters, this track has always been my favorite, largely due to the contributions of Dave Gilmour (who sounds uncharacteristically pissed-off throughout this track) and his inimitably lyrical guitar solo, which soars, waxes, wanes and weeps at all the right moments. I went on to adore Animals, Wish You Were Here and The Wall quite significantly as well, but this song on this album was what kicked it all off. This colorful, effects-laden video rendering of same is also suitably trippy.

Alright, last one. Herewith the arguably predictable final selection in Kerr’s abominable Seven Days of the Seventies challenge. At the risk of courting cliche, my first hearing of the Sex Pistols was indeed a revelatory moment. I believe I first heard the scathing entirety of Never Mind the Bollocks courtesy of my late comrade Ralph Menapace (may he rest in peace), who — musically speaking — was always several steps ahead of the rest of us (and the first one of my little friends to dye their hair a different color — citrus orange, in Ralph’s case). While the `Pistols ultimately weren’t really pushing any envelopes, their endearingly finesse-free attack and the palpable, gob-soggy vitriol of Johnny Rotten made the Pink Floyd and Boston records I’d been listening to sound wheezy, corpulent and obsolete. In the wake of everything that’s come since, Never Mind the Bollocks doesn’t quite inspire the hysteria it once did, but it’s still rife with amazing songs (like this one) and still packs the signature pugnacious punch of PUNK, full fucking stop.

This Was Happening

I read two things this week that re-planted the notion in my head of giving this up.

The passage of time is, by its very nature, an elusive thing. It’s been widely suggested that, as you age, time seems to speed up. One year to a small child can seem like a vast swathe of time. That very same year, to an adult’s perspective, meanwhile, can seem to flit by like a gazelle being pursued by a famished cheetah. It make sense, I suppose. When you’re young, you’re still in a chrysalis stage of development, and the world is gradually lengthening and expanding with you. Once you’ve crossed the Rubicon of adulthood and you’ve stopped growing, however, the process seems to reverse. Time itself seems to contract.

Before I spiral down a rabbit hole of histrionic introspection, let me put that in context. When you’re in your :::cough::: late, goddamn 40’s, five years is not a long time. Five years ago was 2011. That seems like last Wednesday to me. It’s really not a big deal at all.

Be that as it may, LCD Soundsystem –- a band I actually quite like -– returned this week, playing a warm-up show at Webster Hall (a venue which old farts like myself like to wax nostalgic about in regards to its comparatively ancient tenure as The Ritz). You may remember, LCD hung up their instruments five years ago with great dramatic aplomb, culminating in a big, sold-out show at Madison Square Garden that was recorded for posterity and released as a grandiose film called “Shut Up and Play the Hits.” The notion to be celebrated, I assume, was that the band was admirably going out on a high note, and not subjecting their legacy to waning enthusiasm, eroding quality and diminishing returns. Whether you appreciate them or not, you have to admit that it takes a sizable pair of balls to pull the plug on a venture when it’s at its height. I was certainly surprised by the decision.

Well, fuck all that. After a few short of years of being bored and pursuing projects that evidently weren’t as satisfying as making music as LCD Soundsystem, primary singer-songwriter-strategist James Murphy decided to re-assemble the band and go on tour and record a new album and blah blah blah. They’re certainly not the first to do that. When was the last time a band really stuck to the tenets of a “farewell tour”? It’s almost a given that it’s a hollow conceit.

I have no problem with that. Many of my own favorite acts have done it. And I liked LCD Soundsystem the first time around, and I’d probably like the band now. No, what bothers me about the whole thing is the RAPTUROUS, BUG-EYED AND INCREDULOUS RECEPTION the band’s return has prompted, as if to suggest they verily came back from the goddamn dead. I mean, for Christ's sake, they parted amicably and they were only really gone for about ten minutes. Get ahold of yourselves, everyone.

But, y’know, that’s the old man taking. I suppose that if you were 11 when you enjoyed your older sibling’s copy of 2010’s This Is Happening, a veritable ice age of growth, experience and development has transpired and you’re now a budding teenager less concerned with “Harry Potter” and more concerned with …er… teenage concerns (something that a 48-year-old like myself no longer has much of a grasp on).

I’m sure there’s a perfectly legitimate and commensurate equivalent from my era, but looking back through the eyes of someone arguably already too old for a proper midlife crisis, it seems like an overstated amount of enthusiasm for an unsurprising return after not-that-long an absence. Perhaps my failure to glean why this is so significant is an indicator that I need to vacate the sandbox.

The second thing I read that hit me on more or less the same level was via an outlet I’m starting to have a long history of getting upset by, that being Vice’s music site, Noisey (who I bitched about, most recently, here).

In a post from late in 2014, a Noisey writer by the name of Kim Taylor Bennett wrote a review of a performance by Interpol in the hallowed Temple of Dendur wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Now, for a start, I have absolutely zero recollection of ever hearing about this, but I’ll admit that it’s a cool idea (although Interpol wouldn’t have been the first band I’d have cited to play such an august venue). Again, be that as it may, Interpol played there, and I’m sure it was quite an occasion. Good for them, and all that.

No, the part of this review that really stuck in my craw, so to speak, was the purple-prose-laden passage below.

Until [Interpol then-bassist] Carlos I didn’t even know basslines in indie rock could be so powerful or inventive. Along with The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, The Walkmen, and countless acts from that era who emerged, burned bright and flatlined, Interpol glamorized the grit and romance of New York City. Now those streets are just another sanitized metropolis, but back then it was the capital of everything where gangs of cool kids were making music informed in part by a post-9/11, edge-of-it all intensity. They partied hard and drank till dawn—at Lit, at 2A, at Black & White, at The Dark Room, at Don Hill's.

Once again, LET’S DO PLEASE GET AHOLD OF OURSELVES, shall we?

Beyond Miss Bennett’s flagrant disregard for proper usage of the comma (I really had to stop myself from inserting a few), the perilous leaps in perception here made my eyebrows practically arch right off my head. While, yes, the early 2000’s were a comparatively fertile period for New York City bands of a certain pointedly derivative stripe, it should be noted –- nay, emphatically carved in cement -– that, in the grand continuum of rock-related music in this city, the eras of those bands’ storied forebears from the 70s, 80s and early 90’s -- from the percolating scene at Max’s Kansas City to the Bowery punks at CBGB to the No Wave noise-merchants at the Mudd Club to the hardcore matinees at A7 to the multiple genre-splicing floors of Danceteria to the riots in Tompkins Square to the insurrectionist metal-against-metal mutation of pigfuck cacophony at the Lismar Lounge to ________ (insert your favorite bit here –- I fully realize that I am leaving out of whole volumes of stuff) -- far exceed and positively DWARF the relative blip on the radar that was the already quite staid and antiseptic 2000’s. Sorry, but there it is. Sure, Interpol, the Strokes and the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s were fun and cute, but they didn’t make as comparable an impact as, say, Television, DNA and the goddamn Ramones. Not even close.

But then I hear myself figuratively uttering that last sentence above, and I think -– holy shit, I’ve become that guy. The very guy my friend RK was strenuously admonishing me about gradually becoming in this ancient post from 2010 (y’know, back from when LCD Soundsystem were still a going concern).

Sure, it’s easy to get all uppity about the relatively inarguable significance of places like CBGB to the history of rock music, and I don’t think anyone’s arguing against its rightful place in New York City history – whether one gives a damn about the Ramones or not. But so much of this other stuff is all relative. It’s almost a given that for every time I sang the praises of bands from my era like Cop Shoot Cop or Kraut (above), there was some grizzled reader gnashing his teeth and asserting that neither of those bands would’ve existed had it not been for the earlier contributions of, say, Von LMO or Suicide or the Fugs or _____ (insert your favorite obscure-albeit-canonical counterculture-rock luminary from NYC here).

I suppose it’s the simple fact that I’m spending so much time lionizing the 70’s, 80’s and 90’s that I’m having a tough time swallowing the fact that we’re now entering an inevitable age of a particular brand of nostalgia that pines for the New York City (and its accompanying music, art and culture) of the 2000’s. Are we really there already?

Lest I become the blogging equivalent of one of those cloying hippy types in Washington Square Park still earnestly playing woefully out-of-tune renditions of Don McLean’s goddamn “American Pie,” maybe I should bow out now.

Oliver All Over

I have two kids. And a camera. And a head filled with ultimately meaningless rock trivia. Put those elements together, and you have the recipe for a fine Saturday of wasting time on these mean Manhattan streets.

I’ve certainly done it before, so why not again?

On Saturday, my little boy Oliver (a newly-minted 10-year-old, above) and I had the day to ourselves (with my wife and our daughter Charlotte off in New Jersey visiting family). It being a lovely, early Spring day, I suggested we get up and out and hit the streets for a walkabout. And that’s just what we did.

Along the way, of course, we passed by a few spots of strenuously arguable significance that I simply could not resist commemorating via my long-suffering Instagram account. Herewith some of the fruits of our labors. You’ll be relieved to hear that Oliver was rewarded for his efforts via an unwieldy and expensive visit to the Madison Square LEGO store later in the day.

Our first destination was a subway stop on 8th Avenue and West 23rd Street. Now, ask any rock jerk worth his or her salt why the southwest corner of 23rd & 8th is significant, and they should swiftly inform you that it’s the location for the sleeve of Dressed to Kill by KISS (and if they give you any other answer, you should snort derisively and walk away). Oliver and I have already paid homage to this site (here and here, if you care). That’s all fine –- but there is another spot right nearby that even the die-hards may not know about.

As I understand it, the original sleeve for Dressed to Kill, which was shot by the great Bob Gruen, wasn’t necessarily intended as an album cover, but rather as part of an elaborate fumetti for Creem Magazine. In case you’re unfamiliar with the term, a fumetti is basically a photographic comic book. National Lampoon used to do them all the time (usually involving someone being topless, but that’s another story). In any case, the fumetti in question portrayed the boys in Kiss as a gaggle of superheroes. Upon hearing a distress single, the mind-mannered, plain-clothed members dash into a phone booth –- Clark Kent-style -- and emerge in their flamboyant stage gear circa 1975. The shot in question of them doing so are below…

As it turns out, these shots were taken just downstairs from the corner that graces the sleeve of Dressed to Kill, at the 23rd Street platform serving the A, C and E lines.

Now, 1975 was a long goddamn time ago. As such, things have changed a little bit since the Kiss lads stomped down into this station in their ridiculous stacked heels. Those phone booths, for a start, are long gone. That said, we tried our best, and I think we did a decent job of replicating the second shot of the boys emerging in their leather duds. We may have put Oliver too close to the wall, there. 

Anyway, moving on, we then headed back east, bound for a spot on Broadway in the 20's. Some years back, you may remember, I devoted a number of posts to divining the precise location of a photograph of the nascent Beastie Boys I'd originally spied in an issue of SPIN Magazine. Here's that original photo...

I later learned that the photo in question, snapped by one Josh Cheuse, was taken on West 26th & Broadway. Here's another shot from that session...

Upon completing that challenge back in 2011, I took a celebratory tribute pic of then much-littler Oliver...

Here, five years later (and five years older), is Oliver in the same spot...

 

A little bit beyond there, we stopped into the not-quite-a-year-old incarnation of Rizzoli. Sure, Rizzoli trades primarily in big, glossy and expensive coffee table books, but I'm damn happy anytime New York City actually gains a book store. They're not exactly plentiful, these days. Here's Oliver pointing out a book I'm thinking of adding to my "to read" stack.

Anyway, from here we scooted back home to cool our heels for a bit. After  some lunch and a needless change of t-shirt on Oliver's part (not entirely sure why), we set out again, this time to points east. Originally, I thought it would be fun to try to pose Oliver in the location of the original Ramones sleeve, but that particular slab of concrete is now behind a locked garden gate. As such, we cheated a bit. This isn't that same location, rather it's the north-facing facade of a building on Houston between Broadway and Crosby. Right above Oliver's head used to be that giant DKNY mural (long gone). The two green pigs are filling in for the missing Ramones.

Speaking of the Ramones, our next stop was 6 East Second Street, just off the Bowery. This was the home of Arturo Vega, the Fifth Ramone and visual designer for the band. 

Here, meanwhile, is a shot of Vega with da brudders supposedly in front of same, but I'm not convinced it matches up. This was taken by the great Roberta Bayley. 

From here, Oliver and I swung south to East First Street. Now, once upon a time, this street felt like verily the end of civilization. There was a huge open lot at the western stretch of the south side (between Bowery and First Avenue), with the remnants of 285 Bowery (i.e. McGurk's Suicide Hall) at one end, and the fabled Mars Bar on the eastern end. I went into more detail about this street on this post, but suffice to say, it's a very different place in 2016. It's now a canyon of glass and steel and business ventures of all stripes. Apart from the Howl Arts Gallery at 6 East First, it's all pretty dreadful. 

In any case, on the south side of the street, there used to be a variety of posters from graphic designer Mike Joyce from the Swissted series. Joyce replicated actual gig posters from various punk and post-punk luminaries and re-imagined them in Swiss Modernist style. I'm doing a shit job of describing them, so click here to learn more. In any case, that was a few years ago, and they've since started to erode and peel. Here's Oliver channeling his best Glen Danzig in front of them.

Lastly, we found ourselves on the eastern end of Jersey Street between Lafayette and Mulberry. Cinema-heads might recognize this strip from the opening scene of Jim Jarmurch's "Permanent Vacation" (below). The building on the left hand side is the Puck Building, while the building on the right (which now houses a library on the Mulberry Side) is the apartment complex Bowie lived in. 

And after that, it was chocolate milk and a trip to the LEGO store.

Post-Punk Riot at Roseland

Even while living with the frustratingly finite amount of wall space of a cramped Manhattan apartment (let alone one also occupied by a wife and two children who don’t necessarily share my particular proclivities), I still find myself hungrily seeking out frame-worthy rock ephemera. I frequently cannot resist from procuring vintage photographs of punky luminaries or lovingly preserved posters from gigs from eons past. My front hall closet and basement storage unit are filled with countless cardboard tubes containing innumerable posters from long-since broken up bands like The Plasmatics, Cop Shoot Cop, the Jim Carroll Band (I have a cherished and pristine promo poster for the Catholic Boy album) and droves of others. One of the perks of why I was so damn excited about my new job – beyond the obvious reasons – was that I suddenly had a new expanse of wall space upon which I could hang and display stuff. Yes, I’m that guy.

Most of the time, I’m seeking out posters from shows I actually attended, given that they have an extra level of meaningful association, but there are others that are significant for other reasons. The one above from December of 1981 is one I’ve coveted for a long while. Sadly, I didn’t attend the show in question (being only 14 years old, at the time), but it’s a line-up that’s an almost perfect encapsulation of everything I hold dear. I mean, seriously, you have the viscerally funky and angular Gang of Four at the top, the infectiously arty post-punk of the Bush Tetras (almost representing both No Wave and Mutant Disco in one fell swoop) and kicking off proceedings, the versatile hardcore frenzy of the Bad Brains? I mean, holy shit – what a show!

In retrospect, it seems baffling to me how anyone would dare attempt to follow the Bad Brains onstage. There were actually two little write ups about the show in the New York Times, a place-setter penned by estimably open-minded critic Robert Palmer and a post-mortem that’s a little sniffily dismissive (and vaguely sexist) to the Bush Tetras that doesn’t even mention the Bad Brains (maybe he got there late?) by Stephen Holden.

I’ve looked, but I’ve found no major documentation on the show. No videos, photographs or recordings. I wonder if anyone recorded the whole evening? Anyone? Anyone?

As such, only the poster remains. I don’t have it, but I’m sure to snatch it up should I ever encounter the opportunity.

Here are all three bands from around the same era.

Roseland Ballroom, meanwhile (which I wrote about here), is no more….

Chillin' with Dylan

Okay, this post probably makes me a bit of a hypocrite, as I've absolutely never been a fan of Bob Dylan. I mean, I respect his place in the history of rock n' roll and all that, but -- personally speaking -- I just don't enjoy his music. I don't wish him ill or anything, I just do not like the man's voice. I've gotten over that hump with other storied performers before, but I've never been able to get past ol' Bobby's adenoidal wheeze. Whatever. Different strokes...

In any case, a friend of mine on Facebook posted the below GIF (and yes, I still pronounce it with a hard "G" like Gag that Gopher!), and it made me wonder -- where is Bob (dressed here like the hepcat precursor of obvious Dylan acolyte John Cooper Clarke) depicted dancing? It could be positively anywhere, obviously, but given his much feted roots in various downtown locations (I'll defer you to the great Bob Egan's page for details on same), it seems more than likely that it's somewhere here in NYC. Maybe one of you knows?

I'm going to hazard a guess and blithely suggest that it's in what my kids still call "The Dinosaur Playground," but that is in actuality named Winston Churchill Square, which divides Bleecker, Downing and Carmine Streets. But, again, that's just a guess.

Meanwhile, because no one asked for it, here are my favorite Bob Dylan tunes as performed by other people with less cloying voices...

1. "All Along the Watchtower" by XTC
2. "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" by Echo & the Bunnymen
3. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" by the Sisters of Mercy
4. "Death is Not the End" by Gavin Friday
5. "Wheel's on Fire" by Siouxsie & the Banshees

ADDENDUM: Call off the dogs. It ain't New York City. My friend John cited the source. That looks pretty definitively like somewhere in the U.K.

Beats, Rhymes & Phife

You may have heard that Phife from A Tribe Called Quest passed away this week, after a long struggle with diabetes. He was only 45.

As I posted on Facebook, the Hip Hop acts I still care about in 2016 are significantly few and far between, but I was always a fan of A Tribe Called Quest, and saddened by this news, as – to my mind – Phife had one of the most distinctive voices in the genre. It’s a yarn I’ve spun here many times, but I got to see the band perform at a private staff party at SPIN in 1989 (when I was an intern there). I remember thinking they were fun and entertaining, but none of us knew they were going to be such a pivotal act, arguably the most enduring branch of the whole Native Tongue movement (alongside De La Soul, the Jungle Brothers, Monie Love, etc.)

In any case, apart from regularly extolling the merits of the Beastie Boys, I don’t post a lot of Hip Hop stuff here (the last full scale post on same was a decade ago). In terms of contemporary Hip Hop, I can’t say I really comprehend – let alone enjoy -- that much of it. I think Kanye West is fatuously objectionable, ridiculous and entirely overrated. Tyler, the Creator just strikes me as yawnsomely juvenile and I have absolutely zero interest in Drake or anything he might have to say. What little of Kendrick Lamarr I’ve heard intrigues me. He I should probably investigate further.

But it’s also seemingly been a million years since I heard a Hip Hop track that packed that same immediacy one used to hear in the music of Public Enemy or the Wu-Tang Clan or, indeed, A Tribe Called Quest. It also strikes me that, with the exception of the afore-cited Kendrick Lamarr, the majority of contemporary Hip Hop doesn’t have quite as much to say. I’m probably not looking hard enough for the good stuff, though.

But – I should shut up, as I ultimately don’t know what I’m talking about. Hip Hop is still a dominant cultural force and invariably still in its infancy, so we’ll see where it’s headed. In the short term, however, the loss of Phife from A Tribe Called Quest is a huge one. His band was one of the first truly original Hip Hop acts I remember hearing – totally dispensing with cliché, and lyrically exploring themes and subjects that were light-years ahead of their contemporaries. Their first two album (Peoples Instinctive Travels.. and Low-End Theory) are entirely magnificent pieces of music that transcend genre. Go get them.

The track below, meanwhile, is from the band’s third album, Midnight Marauders. I wasn’t as wild about this effort, but I’m selecting this clip, as it’s a loving portrait of NYC in the mid-90’s. It also features some great footage of Tribeca’s Square Diner, which – refreshingly – is still there, and still serving exemplary burgers.

Pour one out for Phife.

Back to the Pattern Walk

If one thinks back to the more rhapsodized iterations of East Village (i.e. the one that was significantly less safe and pointedly more interesting than today’s incarnation), one of the most pervasive images that spring to mind is the wide, open, rubble-strewn lot. Often compared to London after the Blitz, the East Village used to be pockmarked by these vacant spaces, the remnants of tenement fires set by arsonists. Just so we’re clear, this phenomenon was not something to be celebrated. It was the very real fruition of urban decay -– a city feeding on itself.

Peruse through any cinematic depiction of the neighborhood during that era – from “Smithereens” (right) to “Downtown `81” to “Permanent Vacation” to “Mondo New York” – and you’re likely to spot these forbidding, lonely spaces.

In many instances, however, various enterprising and resourceful local artists made full use out of these lots, either turning them into gardens, sculpture parks or massive canvases for street art. One such artist was a gentlemen named Scot Borofsky.

I stumbled on Borofsky’s work by accident, but I want to say I dimly remember some of his paintings, but I may just be entirely projecting. In an case, Borofsky made use of his gritty, urban surroundings by creating what he called “The Pattern Walk.” Here’s the official description…

Scot Borofsky's Pattern Walk: an outdoor site-specific installation of more than 25 original designs rendered in spray paint in NYC's East Village. Created by the artist working at night with spray paint and folding ladder, between the years 1982-1985, during the East Village art movement in Alphabet city. Find out more at virtualeastvillage84.com.

Cool, right?

For the sake of illustrating this post, I’ve taken the liberty of utilizing one of Borofsky’s photos at the top, but to see the full range of his work, be sure to click here and here.

Today, of course, most of the vacant lots are long gone, and any available lots certainly don’t stay dormant for long. I sincerely doubt there are any traces of Borofksy’s work left on the walls of the East Village, but maybe if you look hard enough … you might still find a trace of the Pattern Walk.

'There Are Dolls in the Jazz Section!'

I’ve written about the old Tower Records space on 4th and Broadway many times, here (most recently on this post). As recently documented in Colin Hanks’ great documentary, “All Things Must Pass,” Tower Records was a great, maverick organization, and the one they opened in the heart of the Village did indeed become a local landmark. Like many others, I was a fiercely loyal, regular customer, and I was — of course — duly crestfallen when all the Towers in New York City closed in the early 2000’s. The above quote comes from an old colleague of mine, who was incredulous when the storied, expansive space became utilized as a Toys ‘R’ Us pop-up outlet.

Shortly after that, of course, it was announced that the massive space Tower formerly occupied on that memorable corner was to transform into some fatuous promotional facility called the MLB Mancave – a sort of biodome created for sports-obsessed hermits who could watch their precious sportsball tournaments all day in a ridiculous fish-tank of sorts. It seemed like a real waste of space.

The hue and cry from folks like myself, however, came with a backlash from gentrification proponents who wanted to see Greenwich Village move with the times. A memorable commentator on EV Grieve tore us all a new one for daring to speak out again it (as documented here).

In the ensuing years, the MLB Mancave never really seemed to serve any discernible purpose. Nothing ever seemed to actually be happening inside the place, despite the curvy slide, the air hockey table, the electric guitar and the wall of televisions.

On Sunday morning, meanwhile, I went out for an early AM walkabout with my son, Oliver, and I couldn’t help noticing that evidently, the MLB Mancave seems to be no more. The space is empty and gutted. So much for that great leap forward.

Bring back Tower!

Tomorrow Never Snows

I found this image on Tumblr last week and it made me chuckle. And in honor of tomorrow's impending snow, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to share it.

Rejected titles for this post: "Abbey Snowed," "Snow! Darling," "Maxwell's Silver Shovel," "Here Comes the Snow," "Snow King," "All You Need is Salt," "Snow-bla-di, Snow-bla-da," "While My Guitar Gently Shovels," "Happiness is a Warm Snowblower," "Why Don't We Do It in the Snow?," "And Your Bird Can Sled," "Snowhere Man," "You Won't Ski Me," "Paperback Reindeer,"......

Trash at CBGB

Mention the fabled name CBGB, and a number of artists are instantly conjured in one’s head, foremost among them usually being Television, The Ramones, Talking Heads, Blondie, Patti Smith, Richard Hell, The Cramps and the like. If you’re a wee bit younger, you might sooner cite the Bad Brains, Kraut, Agnostic Front or maybe the Cro-Mags. You also wouldn’t be wrong to maybe think of Sonic Youth or Teenage Jesus or SWANS or Cop Shoot Cop. While they vary in style and intensity, all of these names ultimately stem from a common thread, that being Punk Rock.

While it’s inarguably true that CBGB was the flashpoint of all things Punk, this isn’t to say that Punk Rock was all said venue played host to. It’s prudent to remember that the initials originally stood for owner Hilly Kristal’s preferred brands of music, that being Country, Bluegrass and Blues. But, as they say, sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Personally speaking, I saw a number of different acts at CBGB over the course of the latter half of the 80’s and into the 90’s. While nine tenths of those shows had something to do with punk, there were certainly exceptions to that rule. I believe I saw a friend's girlfriend perform some kind of acoustic folk act there one night. I also believe there was booing involved.

A fine –- if extreme -– example of this might be that scene in “Staying Alive,” the abortive sequel to “Saturday Night Fever” wherein lunkheaded Tony Manero’s girlfriend –- played by Cynthia Rhodes --- gets up at CBGB to sing strikingly banal, middle-of-the road balladry alongside a scowling Frank Stallone on the same, grotty stage that was simultaneously home to bands like the Dead Boys, Cause for Alarm and Letch Patrol.

I wrote a post about this strange cameo way back in 2007 (in a post in dire need of paragraph breaks). Find that post here, if you care, but here’s a clip of that scene now…

Hard to fathom, eh?

In any case, the only reason I’m bringing this up is because of the clip below I stumbled upon from as recent as 1992 (for some of us, at least, that year still illogically seems recent). As further ample proof that CBGB didn’t have some kind of absolute “punks only” rule, here’s arguably indefensible mainstream metal act Law & Order zealously flipping their hair around within the atmospherically divey interiors of CBGB.

I’m assuming either they were aiming to capture some kind of gritty, street vibe… or maybe the Cat Club and the Scrap Bar were closed the day of the shoot.