My friend Don sent me a great clip on Facebook today from the archives of local NYC television station WPIX of former commentator and erstwhile New York Post contributor Doris Lilly, whom I vaguely remember from childhood. Doris was essentially a flatulent, loudmouth gossip columnist whose biggest claim to fame was dating Ronald Reagan for a time. In any case, in the clip in question, she’s loudly opining about the scourge of British Punk Rock that was then about to hit New York City in the infernal personification of Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious and their merry band of Sex Pistols. It’s essentially just another bit of classic, alarmist pop culture propaganda from a “news” outlet that really should have had bigger fish to fry at the time.
Unfortunately, the clip itself is unembeddable (it originates on Facebook), but you can see it by clicking right here and scrolling down on the WPIX Archives Facebook page.
Of course, Doris’ colorful ire was unfounded, as that fateful `Pistols tour imploded messily before it could ever reach New York, culminating in something of a damp, druggy fart at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in 1978. See the bottom of this post for those details.
While none of this is new news, I was struck by one thing. Evidently prior to the tour falling apart, the band had been booked to play in New York City not at, say, CBGB or Max’s Kansas City or even the Palladium, but rather at a venue that rang absolutely no bells called the Elgin Theater.
Unlike my still-unresolved quests to verify the existence of Downtown, Underground and --- WAIT FOR IT -– the Lunachicks’ wall, one tidy Google search revealed that the Elgin Theater was an old movie house that is now the Joyce Theater on 8th Avenue and 19th Street in Chelsea. Here it is in more recent years...
Evidently, as the Elgin, the room played host to “adult films” as well as culty midnight movies like “Freaks,” “Eraserhead,” and “Pink Flamingos.” In that respect, the Sex Pistols would have been something of an appropriate fit. But, alas, `twas not to be.
I HOPE YOU’RE HAPPY, DORIS!
Speaking of ol’ Sid, however, on a totally different tip, I spotted a visual invocation of the late, cartoony bass “player” recently that struck me like a bolt out of the blue.
I’m bound to screw up the specifics of the anecdote, but back in the balmy days of mid-`80s hardcore, I remember being at a gig with my friend Rob D. at the Ritz (invariably as part of the Rock Hotel series) –- might have been the Circle Jerks or the Cro-Mags or even a Bad Brains show –- and Rob running with beery enthusiasm up to a fellow gig-goer in the crowd and rapturously extolling the mirthy merits of said gig-goer’s t-shirt. I agreed that it was entirely funny, but Rob took it a step further and either offered the gent money for the shirt right then and there or they traded shirts or something. In any case, in very short order, Rob was wearing the shirt in question, and beaming accordingly.
That same t-shirt came to pretty much define Rob’s casual attire from then on. He wore it to countless shows after that, along with myriad everyday shenanigans to the point that the garment became as porous and thin as the Shroud of Turin. While I prided myself (and still do) on my richly cultivated selection of dumb punk rock shirts, apparently Rob only needed that single one, and he wore it for a few years until is basically fell apart.
Today, during a random search, I found it (albeit not for sale, sadly). I’d never seen it before on anyone else nor anywhere else until I spied it again today. This is that shirt.
ADDENDUM: Rob still has it....
No Future for you!
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