Flaming Pablum

The Kids in the Park

If you’re of a certain age, you probably remember the 1979 musical film “Hair” (or, if you’re a bit older, you might remember it as a Broadway play). Essentially, this fanciful production revolved around a gaggle of carefree hippies in the late 1960s, who live a jobless, perma-partying life around various New York City parks, doing any number of illegal substances, burning draft cards and running merrily amok in between big, visually striking song-&-dance scenes like this one…

Eventually, they cross paths with a hapless Midwesterner named Claude (played by John Savage) who’s bound for Vietnam, but not before catching sight of a doe-eyed debutante (played in the film by Beverly D’Angelo) and summarily falling in love. Hijinks and shenanigans ensue when the hippies attempt to help Claude realize his romantic dreams, unwittingly sending their hirsute ringleader, Berger (played by Treat Williams), off to die in Vietnam in Claude’s stead. Roll credits.

I never saw the play, but I do kinda still dig the richly ridiculous film, not least for its depiction of New York City in the 70’s (see also “Godspell”). I also sheepishly remember enjoying the soundtrack more than I probably should’ve, and not just for the prurient lyrics.

In any case, while “Hair” was ultimately a highly stylized bit of fiction, there were indeed communities of hippies that chose to live in the city’s parks. The harsh realities of their circumstances and existence, however, were hardly indicative of a harmonious age of flower-power, in much the same way the reality of the East Village’s community of squatters was wildly misrepresented by “Rent” a couple of decades later.

Earlier this week, around the same time I found that clip of old slides from 1969, I stumbled upon a curious pair of clips from 1968. Somewhat derisively titled “Acid Head Street People in New York City – 1960s,” the first clip is essentially a profile of a group of drop-outs living within the starkly bleak confines of Washington Square Park. Sure, it’s hard to reconcile the gritty scene herein with the comparatively idyllic setting in that park today, but it’s the same spot -– you can catch a glimpse of the old Catholic Center on Thompson street (torn down in the 2000’s) at about 00:38. Here’s that clip now…

There’s no singing, there’s no laughing, there’s nothing light or funny about it. It’s a grim portrait, but it turns out that it’s from a bigger project. Here’s the official description from the filmmaker, David Hoffman…

This is a portion of a documentary I made for television in 1968. The documentary was called “Bridge Over Troubled Water” and used Paul Simon's famous tune. It looked at some of the people having a hard time at that time. I am proud of my street interviews and camera work and wanted to share this with my colleagues.

You can see all of that film by clicking right here.

It’s striking to think that the kids depicted in this film were probably only about 20 or so when this was filmed. Presuming they survived this ordeal in 1968, they would all be in their seventies today. Here’s hoping they all made it that far.

Sliding Back to `69

Remember slide projectors? I sure do. My grandparents had one, and they used to routinely wheel it out on a rickety card table and re-visit fading slides from family vacations from the 1950’s, or even some from my grandfather’s days in WWII (I remember one of him in his fatigues – like an extra out of “M.A.S.H.” -- standing outside of a bar somewhere called, if memory serves, “the Bucket O’ Blood”). There was always a sense of occasion when their ol’ Carousel was dusted off and brought out (as memorably lionized in that early episode of “Mad Men”). It took time to set up, but in those days before the ubiquity of immediate gratification, it always seemed worth it. Nowadays, people carry volumes upon volumes of photos with them in their phones at all times, ready to share’em at a moment’s notice. No assembly required.

In any case, I stumbled upon this clip of old slides of New York City and thought they were worth sharing here. While, no, you won’t get that satisfying clicking sound when you go from image to image, there is indeed some gold buried herein.

These were taken in 1969. Nixon was in the White House, “Vietnamization” was in full swing, “Easy Rider” and “Midnight Cowboy” were in movie theaters, The Beatles had released Abbey Road, the Stones had released Let It Bleed, Bowie’d released Space Oddity, and more adventurous types might have found the first Stooges album, Monster Movie by Can and the third Velvet Underground album in their local record shops. I was all of two years old, at the time, and living on East 90th Street, just off Lexington Avenue.

Not sure if it’s the aging film or just that colors in general in New York City at the time just seemed so flat and drab. Incidentally, you’re better off ignoring the captions, as too often, they’re just entirely wrong (for example, around the nine minute mark, they wrongly identify East 86th Street as East 8th Street). Regardless, it’s an interesting trip back through time.

Somebody get the lights and sit back.

Ramones Ascending

Surprise!! It’s another post about the Ramones. Don’t like it? Too bad. Why not go read an Old Testament-sized breakdown of the new Beyonce opus and suck a carton of rotten eggs?

Anyway, my friend Greg posted a nice piece from the Observer today penned by Tim Sommer of “Noise the Show”/Hugo Largo fame (I could also point out that `twas Sommer who was instrumental in making Hootie & the Blowfish successful, but why dwell on that?). In the piece, Sommer waxes rhapsodic about the greatness of the first Ramones album, citing it as the “Best Punk Record of All Time.” It’s not a difficult argument to defend, but I’ll let you all debate that one.

The unimpeachable merits of the Ramones’ debut LP, however, is not the thrust of this post. Personally speaking, I think Rocket to Russia was a better album, but my favorite, all-time Ramones album remains It’s Alive, which is essentially the first three albums (including Leave Home) played harder, faster and sloppier. It was the first proper Ramones album I ever owned, and I plan on being buried with a copy, because it’s fucking perfect from start to goddamn finish.

Anyway, blah blah blah. The reason for this post is the inclusion of a photograph in the Observer piece, that being the one at the top of this post. Snapped by the legendary Bob Gruen in the now very distant days of 1975, it shows da brudders emerging from a New York City subway like the gaggle of leather-clad nogoodnicks they so very much were. It’s a photo that’s long haunted me in that its precise location always struck me as being impossible to identify. I chalked it up to being one that I’d never be able to track down.

But then I started to think about it again.

Gruen took another shot of the Ramones during that same day, that being the more iconic one below. You don’t even have to look closely to glean that it’s the same session — Dee Dee is sporting the same striped shirt, Joey’s got a black shirt on and Johnny Ramone — like the proud Yank he was — sports the inimitable image of Captain America on his chest. This photo below finds the boys in front of their erstwhile home turf of the Bowery at Bleecker Street. It’s a legendary shot.

Given that the shot up top and the shot just above were invariably taken on the same day, it made sense to me that they were summarily taken in the same area. That’s when a lightbulb went off above my head.

I remembered a certain afternoon a few years back when I was boppin’ around with my kids, taking pictures. I do this a lot. They’re less enthused about it now, but they used to get well psyched-up for our little photo safaris around Manhattan. In any case, I vividly recalled a day wherein I snapped some shots of them cavorting around the subway entrance and phone booths around East Houston and Second Avenue. This is basically the southeastern corner of the same block that was once home to the Mars Bar (gone), the Taoist Temple of the Ancestral Mother at 9 Second Avenue (gone) and 295 Bowery, a.k.a. McGurk’s Suicide Hall (gone). It’s also simply one block away from CBGB, the spot at which Gruen shot the more iconic photo of the boys above.

The subway entrance in question there is for the F train. Here’s one of the shots I took in 2012 of my children, Oliver & Charlotte (then 6 and 8 years old, respectively). Compare and contrast it with the Ramones photo — pay special attention to the pattern of the metal fencing around the stairwell.

I can’t verify it, but it looks like the same exact spot, no? I'm taking a leap and chalking this one up as solved.

To celebrate, here’s a bit of “Pinhead.” Gabba Gabba Hey!

Julie Below Canal

I really don't know much about this (very) short film, other than that it was allegedly shot at some point in the 90's by a gent named Alex Nahon, finding lovely Julie Delby sauntering around Lower Manhattan.

Watch as Miss Delpy emerges from the A,C and E stop at Lispenard Street, right adjacent -- oddly enough -- to the Nancy Whiskey Pub (also featured in this recently unearthed clip featuring the Pogues). From there, she wanders to points south, across largely empty, sunlit TriBeCa streets in something of a dreamy haze. 

A Very Short Thinkpiece

Initially prompted by all the earnest “thinkpieces” about the new Beyonce album (and its accompanying kerfuffle), but also handily applicable to the following, in no particular order…

“Hamilton,” Father John Misty and anything he might have to say about absolutely anything, “Game of Thrones,” Drake, Sia, Kanye, Cait, Kim and any/all Kardashians, Adele, Rihanna, Justin Bieber, ASAP Whomever, Tidal, Coachella style reports, the Guns N’ Roses reunion, Kelly Ripa vs. Michael Strahan, morning television in general, Ted Cruz’s love for “The Sound of Music,” Tom Brady’s “Deflategate” problems…

The late, great Bryan Gregory of the Cramps sums it all up for me.

Take it away, Bryan…

Damned If Ya Do,...

The Damned were and remain, of course, a British punk band. Some might say the British punk band, being that they were the first act of that era to issue any proper vinyl, but I’ll let the pedants fight that one out.

Personally speaking, fate introduced me to the music of The Clash and The Vibrators early on (via a crate of records sent home by my dad, then stationed in England, in the summer of 1977), and friends and classmates hipped me to the Sex Pistols, Generation X, the Stranglers and, oddly enough, 999 shortly afterwards. But I don’t think I really laid ears on the Damned until shamefully later in the proceedings. But, a bracing introduction to both “Neat Neat Neat” and “New Rose” changed all that, and I was thereafter hooked for life.

In any case, despite being Brits, the Damned were no strangers to these shores, and there are numerous pictures of the band cavorting mischievously around New York City (just as you’d expect them to do). Hell, the original sleeve of their uproariously excellent third album, 1979’s Machine Gun Etiquette, features a shot of the boys manfully obstructing traffic in Times Square.

My favorite shot of The Damned in New York, however, is invariably the one below, as taken by NYC Punk documentrix, erstwhile CBGB employee and presciently cool shutterbug, Roberta Bayley. Here are Messrs. Vanian, Sensible, James and Scabies in front of … well, you know…

Presumably during this same trip, Bayley shot the band around NYC, as well as their typically chaotic performance at CBGB. Those pictures are all well Googleable.

This is all why when my friend Tim posted a picture of the poster of the forthcoming documentary on the band, Don’t You Wish that We Were Dead, I suddenly thought … hmmmm… maybe that shot was also taken in New York City?

BUT WHERE?

Sure, there are loads of churches that boast similar arched entryways like the one seen in the picture, but the ornate metalwork on the hinges of that giant red door looked so distinctive. I had a hunch that maybe it was that church on Park Avenue South just west of Gramercy Park (where Iron Maiden were photographed in front of). My mind raced ahead, presuming that the Damned must have stayed in the Gramercy Park Hotel like Maiden and the Stranglers, and were then photographed in the neighborhood.

A nice theory, that, but the church doors didn’t match up. Then I made a crucial discovery … the original photograph…

Notice anything different? There’s a big red plaque behind Dave Vanian’s head that was evidently photoshopped out of the version on the poster.

Zoom in and it says “St. Stephen’s”

Thrilled by this development, I started Googling St. Stephens around NYC. There are indeed a couple of them, but none of them seemed to match. Then, of course, I looked a little closer at the sign…

The St. Stephen’s in question is actually on Westbourne Park Road which is, of course, in fucking London.

….`cos, y’know, what are the odds of a British band being photographed IN FUCKING BRITAIN?!?!.

Just to complete the picture, here’s what is most likely that same door today. It might not be the exact door, but it's certainly the same church … once again, not in New York City (much like this one wasn’t in New York City).

Oh well.

In any case, here’s the preview for “Don’t You Wish That We Were Dead,” which I have high hopes for…

Clash on the Waterfront

Some of you might remember a couple of posts I did about Japan and Judas Priest not too long back, all of which concerning photographs of the respective bands by one Michael Putland. Well, in doing a bit of research for those posts, I came across a series of shots he did of the Clash circa 1978, most notably this one of them above, depicted standing manfully on a New York City pier, looking quite literally like they just got off the boat moored behind them. It’s a cool shot, but with the exception of the cover of Combat Rock, one was hard pressed to take a bad photo of the Clash. Love them or hate them, you can’t say they weren’t effortlessly photogenic.

In any case, I started thinking about that photo, wondering which pier it might have been snapped on, and then almost resigning myself to giving it up. There are hundreds of piers around the island of Manhattan — it could pretty much of been any one of them.

Then I was struck by a particular detail.

If you look on the left hand side of the photo, right behind the late, great Joe Strummer’s head, there’s a bit of industrial latticework on the neighboring pier to the band’s right that sort of juts out suddenly. I'm talking specifically about this....

I then remembered a photo my kids had snapped of me in about 2009. This was taken on the pier that extends into the Hudson just off Christopher Street in the West Village. Here’s that picture now. Look to the right of my head.

See it? It’s that same bit of latticework.

As such, the kids and I tried to replicate the Clash shot today … with middling success. Suffice to say, the pier in question has changed considerably since 1978. Here's our then & now...

Whoohoo.

Here, meanwhile, is The Clash circa the same era....

Unsound on St. Marks

I posted several posts about St. Marks Sounds over the years and when it was revealed that it was on the way out (see below). Like so many other vanished locations from my youth, I was still drawn to the place, even after it was gone. Only last week, for example, I had my kids reprise the photo above from a couple of years back with this update.

But today, whilst walking east to pinpoint the Tony Conrad spot, I glanced up and notice that not only was the big "FOR LEASE" sign gone, but so were also all the old record covers that used to cover the windows.

I assume this can only mean that a new business — or possibly just a new resident — is ready to take possession. I guess we'll see what happens next.

Sigh.

Earlier bits about Sounds....

Fishing in a Warm Place (2/2009)
Sounds of St. Marks Place (5/2013)
Where Wendy Still Waits (6/2013)
Faked-Out at Sounds (12/2013)
The Silence of Sounds (2/2014)
Plugged into the Matrix (2/2014)
No More Sounds on St. Marks (9/2015)
Punked Out: Goodbye to the Old St. Marks (9/2015)

 

Two-Wheeled Tony in Tompkins Square Park

Just to circle back on this … or should that be cycle back on this? I would’ve done so sooner, but the Prince news kinda let all the air out of my tires. TWO BIKING PUNS IN ONE PARAGRAPH! SOMEBODY STOP ME.

In any case, after first posting this, I slapped it over on Facebook, and within moments, my comrades Bob Egan and Paul/Dub (whom you probably remember from the Bogside Chronicles) identified the spot as East 9th Street, east of Tompkins Square Park. Here’s the composite Dub put together...

At first I didn’t buy this, as I was convinced the edifice of the school you see on the left hand side of the original photograph was on the wrong side of the street.

Then it hit me. Bob and Dub are right — I was just looking at it the wrong way. In the photograph, our Tony is biking west …. towards Tompkins Square Park.

Here’s that spot today…

And, fittingly, here’s a snippet of Tony talking about Pythagoras in that very park circa 2009...

Lastly, on my walk home I stopped into Other Music, and true to that original post…look what I spied on the racks (newly re-released)….

...and here's me on that spot.

ADDENDUM: My creative comrade Dub made this new composite with my photo from today.... lovely work.... 

Life Without Prince

I can’t necessarily wax rhapsodic about Prince the way I did with Bowie or Lemmy. I was indeed a fan, but not someone who was as invested in his music as others. That said, news of his untimely death yesterday afternoon did indeed take the wind out of my sails. Like Bowie and Lemmy, Prince wasn’t someone you expected to die, especially not at 57.

As I mentioned back on this ancient post, my first brush with Prince was seeing the breathless video for “Why U Wanna Treat Me So Bad?” which, if I’m being honest, did not make me a fan. I then remember staring at the back cover of… I guess it was Controversy or Dirty Mind and not getting it either. My sister then developed an affinity for “Little Red Corvette,” which also failed to really win me over. Bear in mind, however, that when that single came out, my favorite albums were Plastic Surgery Disasters by Dead Kennedys and Killers by Iron Maiden.

Then I heard “1999,” and it all clicked.

I think the most profound impact Prince’s music had on me, however, was seeing how it affected others -– specifically girls.

For the most part, the music I gravitated to as a kid was usually described with adjectives like “angry,” “noisy,” “dark,” “sardonic,” “difficult,” “anguished,” “histrionic,” “melancholy,” “off-putting,” “disturbing,” “juvenile” and variations thereof. Some might suggest that some of those adjectives could be applied to me as well, but that’s a whole `nother story. But while I certainly grew up enjoying my older sister’s Parliament, Brass Construction and Earth Wind & Fire records, funk wasn’t always my go-to comfort zone. I preferred the fang-bearing wrath and gratuitous power-chords of metal, the splenetic intensity of hardcore, the bug-eyed vitriol of Punk and the doomy posturing of Goth. I liked music that grabbed you by the lapels, slapped you around and dragged you across the room. I liked music that made you want to punch the walls red and defenestrate furniture. Still do. But Prince’s music does none of that. What it does do, however --- more so than the music of virtually any other artist I can name -– is inspire the most amazing movements in the opposite sex … something the adrenalized gallop of Iron Maiden and the amphetamine-fueled frenzy of the Exploited never could and never will. Prince’s music seemed as close to sex as one could get without removing their Levis.

This dawned on me in a manner of ways, notably from watching a certain pair of girls a couple of grades above me (and multiple light-years out of my league) grind with each other at a high school Halloween dance to the lulling, electronic strains of “The Beautiful Ones” off Purple Rain. It was the music that made them do that.

I saw that same scene play out quite a bit.

I remember, back in the summer of 1987, being in a somewhat schlocky disco in Florence, Italy called – if I recall correctly – Central Park, funnily enough, and hearing the signature bass lick of “Sign ‘O’ the Times” come throbbing out of the sound system. I was in Europe as one member of a 21-teen bicycling gaggle (six guys … I being one of them … and sixteen girls). When that title track to Prince’s then-latest opus came on, each of those ladies started grooving in a way that beguiled my 19-year-old self and my five fellow males, prompting us to follow suit with all speed.

I recall being at a mid-90's New Year’s Eve party in TriBeCa in a loft that belonged to a then-boyfriend of a friend of mine. Proceedings seemed to be winding down (it being well after midnight, by this point), so I appointed myself as de facto disc jockey. Certain tracks like “Fool’s Gold” by the Stone Roses and something or other by Blur were somewhat enthusiastically received, but when I put on “My Name is Prince” from 1992’s unpronounceable symbol album, it was as if the whole room had been administered a weapons-grade shot of libidinous adrenalin. The joint, as they say, started jumping.

This is all why when I spotted this outstanding piece in the Onion, I couldn’t help but laugh.

No –- just like with Lemmy and Bowie –- we shan’t see Prince’s like again. Let’s just be thankful we still have his music.

To borrow a poetic turn of phrase by my friend Erik, … Rest in Paisley.