Yep, I'm still on vacation out here in Long Island (Quogue, again, to be specific). I realize I mentioned that I probably wasn't going to post, but it's a bit of an iffy, overcast and crazy humid day, so I'm here at the library with my laptop while my kids are at day-camp and the wife is working remotely from her laptop on the other side of the library. Thrilling, eh?
In any case, while sitting here, I was struck by how much has transpired since the last time I sat in this very spot. In late August of 2015, I was still gainlessly out of a job. I believe I'd actually fielded an offer from a specific outlet by that point, but the offer was a lowball (significantly less than what I had been making at my previous gig), the job itself sounded a bit dismal and, frankly speaking, I abjectly hated the product (the online operation for neocon talk radio conspiracy mongers, Guy Fieri-rock and Lite FM drivel). So, while, by that time, I'd been out of work for about 13 grueling, dignity-immolating months, I just couldn't bring myself to take that job. Mercifully, the wife understood and supported my decision to turn it down.
More to the point, though, by that same period on the calendar, I'd also had a couple of preliminary interviews with this other organization that I'd been really encouraged by. The process seemed to be taking forever, but I'd had a really positive feeling about it. In the end (about two and a half months later), I was offered the job. I said 'yes,' started just after Thanksgiving, and have been there ever since.
But, again, by this very point last year, that happy ending hadn't happened yet.
As places to be while being unemployed, you could certainly do worse than being out here, chasing after one's kids. Sure, that part was nice, but I was still worried literally all the time, fretting about how I would be able to continue.
Luckily, it all worked out, but not until after a huge amount of stress and heartache.
Hey again, all. As mentioned at the tail end of this surprisingly contentious post (although not, as it turns out, as contentious as this post), I’m taking my first vacation from my new gig next week. As such, you’ll more than likely find me on a beach with my kids somewhere or partaking of some dubious shellfish than sitting here posting inane entries about closed record shops, needlessly provocative rock t-shirts or ancient photographs of old bands posing in random locations.
I can’t promise you I won’t post, but I’ll only have sporadic access to a laptop, and it’s largely unlikely I’ll have anything new to report, although ya certainly never know.
Be good. I’ll be back soon. Get outside and enjoy what’s left of the summer!
You may have already seen this, if you’re patient and tolerant enough to follow me on Facebook, but for the sake of bringing things up to speed here, here’s an update since the last chapter.
Remember how I said I frequently have help when it comes to solving these things? Well, more than a few times, that help comes via the scrupulous eye for minute detail that is Bob Egan of Popspots (who I’ve mentioned here hundreds of times). After I posted the development the other day wherein Richard Moody disclosed the location of photographer Lynn Goldsmith’s former studio, Bob went to work in his inimitable fashion. Here’s what he had to say… and show….
HI ALex, I was at the Strand so I looked thru Lynn Goldsmith's photo book "Rock and Roll Stories." In it there's a picture of Ian Hunter in front of the Cell 54 awning. She mentions it was right after a shoot so I figure it's on her studio block. Her studio according to Google was at 241 West 36th. Adds no clues except the light pole that's to the left in this picture of 223 West 36th which I am 95% sure if the Pretenders location. I can't add more than one photo on Facebook, so I will add them separately., following...
This is a picture of Ian Hunter from the session that also has him outside Cell 54 awning. I think in this he's across the street because the traffic goes the other way.
This shows #241 West 36th where Lynn Goldsmith's studio was, and to the right, #223 West 36th Street where I think the Pretenders were.
This is one of the only old fashioned brick buildings on the block. It's a three story building. Notice that it has the same stoops as in the Pretenders pic and also the same brickwork as to the right of the Pretenders pic. As I said I'm 95% Sure this is it, since some of the other people who wrote you thought it was along this block.. For the other 5% I'd have to look at 223 West 36th Street up in the 1980 reverse phone book, whichI I will next time I'm at the library, and see if there was a luncheonette there, maybe one with an owner whose last name begins with CELL..
I believe I bought my first pair of proper cargo shorts shortly after graduating college. I remember my senior-year housemate Ben sporting an olive drab pair of cargo pants the previous year and I repeatedly remarked at both their functionality (enabling him to smuggle beers into hostile and/or verboten environments with ease) and their utilitarian, military chic. Still greatly enamored of bands like Echo & the Bunnymen and a host of other post-punk outfits who routinely dressed in arguably ridiculous camo gear, I picked up a pair of camo cargo shorts for myself at a since-vanished Army-Navy outlet somewhere on Bleecker Street in 1989, projecting in my youthful naivete that, by wearing them, I’d emulate the war-weary cool of Captain Willard or Lance the Surfer in “Apocalypse Now.”
I wore that pair for multiple summers until they literally fell apart (although the shredded and distressed aesthetic only made them cooler, to my mind), usually paired with equally battered sneakers and some dumb black rock-shirt..surprise!
By this point, however, cargo shorts had kinda caught on. This isn’t to say that I’d been in on the ground floor or anything, but you were suddenly seeing outlets like the Gap and Banana Republic selling them … even camo ones (which I found just as disappointing as them selling Rush, AC/DC and Ramones shirts a few years later). Where before, one had to rummage through the bins at Canal Street Jean Co. or The Trader (both long gone, of course) for cool camo gear, now you could easily find them at your nearest mall, and pair them with a fetching pink polo shirt, I guess.
So, suddenly, everyone from weirdos like me through bike messengers and backwards-baseball-capped bros were sporting cargo shorts, the latter contingent invariably augmenting them with those shitty Adidas flip-flops and filling their pockets with tallboys of Bud Light. Shudder.
Personally speaking, I ended up cherishing my various pairs of cargo shorts primarily for their comfort more than anything else. That said, the multiple, deep pockets are genuinely useful. Actually, they’re perfectly sized to accommodate newly acquired compact discs …now if I could only find a store that still sells those.
In any case, years and years after cargo shorts caught on and became the lazy go-to garment of choice for slobby American males (although I have worn mine with a dapper blazer, on occasion), we now seem to be thick into the inevitable backlash. I keep seeing angry ruminations across social media from various parties (usually female) decrying this sartorial staple. People write fuckin’ think-pieces about them for otherwise respectable outlets like the Daily Beast and the Wall Street Journal.
Just last week, while cluelessly browsing in a shop in a vain attempt at finding my wife a birthday present, a pair of women started openly scrutinizing my cargo shorts (worn `neath a well-loved Beastie Boys t-shirt and a suitably ratty pair of sneakers – I was not dressed to impress at the time), back-pedaling when they learned I was listening by emphatically asserting that they did a visual disservice to my otherwise comely stems. It’s not that I wasn’t buyin’ it, but I just couldn’t discern why they cared so much.
A whip-smart friend of mine, who happens to be female, recently mentioned that the backlash against cargo shorts — camo or otherwise — is so vehement because it riles women that men are blithely afforded the luxury of not having to care about their appearance, while — at the same time — the male gaze constantly scrutinizes every sartorial decision women make like the unblinking Eye of Sauron. I get that. It's entirely unfair and shitty.
But why is that grievance particularly aimed at cargo shorts? I can think of hundreds of more egregious sartorial/tonsorial crimes, from popped collars and man buns to fucking basketball shorts (worn off the court) and sagging, hip-hop pants. Surely these are more of an eyesore than cargo shorts, no?
Regardless, I’m going on my first vacation from work after nine months at my new job. I’m not going anywhere exotic, just my mom’s place out in Long Island, to hang out with my wife and kids on the beach. As such, I’ll doubtlessly be sporting a pair of weathered cargo shorts every damn day.
When it comes to divining the precise locations of these photographs, as much as I’d like to take credit for the solutions, more often than not I have a lot of help. Sure, on occasion, I’ve managed to act on my hunches and close the circle myself, but I frequently field -- and take full advantage of -- any assistance I can find. While it’s fun to find them on my own, I’m actually more concerned with just getting the puzzles solved –- and if that means someone else lending a hand, or even completely solving them by themselves, then so be it. So long as they get figured out and we all learn something, however trivial, I’m good with it.
The quest that took the longest for me, of course, was my recent endeavor to pinpoint the location of that Lunachicks shot. Had I not been fortunate enough to have been put in contact with the photographer who snapped the original picture, I doubt I’d have been able to close the case on my own. In other instances, I’ve had a few people involved in the chase. To awkwardly mangle an oft-cited line from a certain presidential candidate, sometimes it takes a village.
In any case, in the wake of invoking that Lynn Goldsmith photograph from 1980 of the mighty Pretenders striking some precious poses (sorry) in front of an enigmatic eatery called Cell 54, I must admit that my hopes of solving this new puzzle were not especially high. It seemed like the details might be too minute and the period now too remote (a good decade before that Lunachicks photograph). Even in the last ten years, the topography of Manhattan has changed so radically. Entire blocks have been razed. Bricks and mortar have been knocked over and replaced by steel and glass. Bodegas, butcher shops and book stores have been excised like cavity-stricken molars and replaced with condos, banks and antiseptically clean pharmaceutical mega-marts. Whole neighborhood have switched from bleak to chic. If the humble storefront in question is indeed still there, would it look even remotely similar today to its incarnation from 36 (!!!) years ago? Again – the task of pinpointing the exact former location of Cell 54 seemed daunting.
My first guess was that it might be somewhere on or just adjacent to 54th Street, based simply on the name of the place. Not able to just pull up my stakes and go check it out, however (these things are tougher when you have a job to go to Monday through Friday), my only initial recourse was to trawl around the “Street View” function of Google Maps — an exercise that only served to demonstrate how lengthy a stretch of ever-changing real estate that street is. I spotted nothing that matched up.
Shortly after that, a reader named John weighed in with this to say…
I'm almost certain the address in this photo is 54 E. 1st St. It is most recently the location of Prune restaurant. If you do a Google Street view you'll see that the building on the left still has the same architectural details around the ground floor and above the windows.
Could that be? I’ve actually eaten at Prune (and read its owner’s somewhat yawnsome autobiography). It sure looks similar, although there are still some discrepancies. As with 54th Street, however, I haven’t had time to go check it out on foot.
The internet, however, has reduced our troubled globe to something more like a very small town -– one wherein the degrees of separation between individuals are easier to access. It just so happens that another regular reader of my silly blog – one Richard Moody (you may remember me invoking him recently on this post) – alerted me to the fact that he used to work alongside photographer Lynn Goldsmith. He couldn’t promise that she’d remember the shoot, but he gamely said he’d fly it by her.
And that’s just what he did.
According to Richard, Goldsmith — whose studio was on West 36th between 7th and 8th Avenues — says the photo was taken somewhere on the Uptown side of West 36th, … essentially the same strip she shot the great picture of Keith Richards a couple of years later.
Scan your eyes across the lengthy expanse of that street, meanwhile, and you’ll also see a couple of possible matches, but nothing that immediately leaps out at you. Richard Moody had some hunches.
Once again, though, until I can go check it out in person, I’m not sure we can nail it down.
About a million years ago (well, 2009), I wrote a little post about Thurston Moore’s arguably surprising affinity for Black Metal which -– in the grand scheme of things -– shouldn’t really have been too surprising, given both the experimental and noisy elements of that sub-genre,... two epithets that could also be applied to Moore’s own band, Sonic Youth.
Anyway, years and years later, in the wake of his marital tumult and subsequent break-up of his band, Thurston is still enthused with all things Black Metal, which he expounds at great length about in a new interview with Noisey. Once again, that outlet -– despite regularly featuring inanely written articles on hopeless crap like Die Antwoord, Drake and Lil Yachty -– pull the odd rabbit out of their hat with great pieces like this one with Thurston.
In any case, beyond discussing the merits of Mayhem and Gorgoroth, Thurston takes a moment to ruminate on the physical formats of books, tapes and records. When Noisey asks him why he prefers these arguable anachronisms here in the digital age, here’s what he had to say.
Because they’re vibratory; you can touch them. To me, it’s all about the smell. I always say listening to the records at this point of my life is probably the least interesting thing, because I kind of know what that is to such a degree, and I’m certainly interested in it, but what actually thrills me about it is the actual physicality of it—looking at it, touching it, seeing it, smelling everything about that, and then I might even play it [laughs].
The idea of what you’re going to hear is the most common element; that’s what digital offers you. We all share that, we can hear it, so it’s just that content—the audio content is what is available, the visual content is available too, but the whole factory content? No. And the touch content as well; you can download words, but you can’t download a book, per se.
This evening, with my wife and kids sequestered out at my mom’s place on Long Island for the summer, I was free to go hang out and catch up with a good friend I’ve not seen for several months. I first met Jason during my two-year stint at MSN.com, during the now-distant “oughts.” Our mutually overstated penchants for abject rock geekery immediately made clear that we were kindred souls, and we became fast friends. In more recent years, during the hardest of circumstances for me involving deaths and illness in my family and a protracted state of joblessness, Jason has proven to be an always empathetic listener and solid, supportive friend, for which I am ever appreciative.
In any case, Jason now lives near my old stomping grounds on the Upper East Side, so I volunteered to go visit his hood for some after-work beers. As such, we met up at an establishment called Earl’s Beer & Cheese on East 97th & Park Avenue.
Having grown up but a strong-armed stone’s-throw from this spot, I can handily attest that this particular plot of real estate was an unlikely locale for such a venture a couple of decades back. But, y’know, times have indeed changed. While yes — it’s a studiously stylized craft-beer emporium geared towards folks who probably don’t sneer at the adjective “artisanal” (and did indeed feature a staffer sporting an inarguably hipsterish Rollie Fingers mustache), it must be emphatically stated: The “beer cheese” appetizer (New York State cheddar cheese spread on garlic-infused toasted bread) practically blew a new goddamn part in my hair.
Anyway, another reason I was totally game for this expedition was because it would put me right in a spot I recently discussed here just a few posts ago. Some might remember this post, wherein I waxed rhapsodic about a photograph spied on the excellent Tumblr, Old New York. Being that I’d pinpointed the location of that photo — despite it not involving members of the Lunachicks, the Stranglers, Herman’s Hermits or Emerson, Lake & Palmer — I thought it might be fun to pay homage to the image. Sadly, I still don’t know who snapped it.
Below is both the photo in question and my replication thereof, featuring my friend Jason filling in for the smiling elderly gentleman.
Incidentally, Jason is a tirelessly creative musician who currently plays in an ensemble called the Crier Brothers. Here they are in action…
Invoke a well-worn genre tag like, say, Grunge, and you’ll invariably hear invocations of heavy, sludgy guitars, angsty vocals and Seattle. Mention Punk and you might hear citations of New York, London or Los Angeles (depending on who you ask, of course), and inevitable allusions to caustic and frequently speedy music with an accent on nihilism and iconoclasm. Riot Grrl will probably get you the Pacific Northwest and dismissive descriptors like “shrill” and/or “amateurish” (again, depending on who you ask). These instances (and countless others) are usually the result of one or two prescient music journalists’ well-timed penchant for succinct appellation.
It doesn’t always work out as planned, of course. Both the tags for Goth and Shoegazer started off as snarky pejoratives penned by haughty British journalists who probably never imagined that the terms they coined would go on to be embraced, let alone legitimized as stylistic demarcations of music. They may have started off as cheap pot-shots, but they stuck.
But for every genre-specific label that seemed to click -– from No Wave to New Romantic -- there are ones that are a bit more vague and amorphous. One that’s always sort of eluded readily definable classification for me is the term scumrock. Beyond it not necessarily connoting any specific, sonic qualities to the music in question, it doesn’t seem to be rooted in any particular locale. While I’ve always associated it with my native NYC, I have seen it invoked in other parts of the world as well. As far as I’ve ever been able to discern, scumrock was basically a catch-all that encompassed a sloppier brand of post-punk rock, essentially pre-figuring a burlier variety of same in the form of Grunge. This is, of course, entirely subject to interpretation.
Initially, I remember those sorts of bands being branded with the markedly more colorful term, Pigfuck, a choice adjective slapped on names like the Butthole Surfers, Big Black, Live Skull, Scratch Acid and even Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore –- outfits that eschewed the almost militaristic stealth and comparatively cohesive lockstep of hardcore in favor of an artier, more dissonant and willfully transgressive approach.
I think the first time that I actually saw the term scumrock officially applied was via a pair of live ROIR tapes. In case you’re unfamiliar, ROIR was a maverick indie label (prior to “indie” being considered a genre unto itself) that issued a cassette-only line of crucial releases. Their most celebrated release is invariably the Bad Brain’s seminal debut album, but they also put out amazing stuff like the live compilation Lest We Forget by the Buzzcocks, Fuck’em If They Can’t Take a Joke by the Dictators and New York Thrash, which documented the nascent, percolating NYHC scene.
In any case, between 1988 and 1989, ROIR released both The End of Music (As We Know It) and, more specifically, New York Scum Rock Live at CBGB. While I personally preferred the former (as it featured Jack Natz’s post-Undead/pre-Cop Shoot Cop ensemble, The Black Snakes with Richard Kern), both collections offered up a fresh new generation of New York bands that were putting a raucous, new spin on proceedings.
But that’s also where things got confusing. Who was and wasn’t scumrock, and was there really a difference between that and “noise rock” and/or the afore-cited pigfuck? And, more crucially, did it even matter?
If you’re a regular reader here, you might remember a video clip I put up quite a while back featuring the Lunachicks, a band who arguably fell solidly in the initial scumrock camp. Well, that video clip was part of a larger segment on a video compilation from 1989 called “Hard & Heavy,” that devoted a whole swathe of one episode to this new phenomenon of “NYC Scumrock.”
Curiously, there is no mention of bands like Flaming Pablum favorites Pussy Galore, the Black Snakes, Cop Shoot Cop and White Zombie (though each have been tied with the epithet), but –- in addition to the mighty Lunachicks – the program did profile bands like the Reverb Motherfuckers and Da Willys -- two bands also featured on that second ROIR compilation, New York Scum Rock Live at CBGB.
Honestly speaking, while I continue to love the Lunachicks (as evidenced here), I never thought very much of the Reverb Motherfuckers, and even less of Da Willys. Are they wholly indicative of Scumrock? Do they do the evidently roundly misapplied term any semblance of justice? Who knows? More importantly -- who cares? As the Lunachicks themselves admit, it doesn’t necessarily apply to them (especially if that acronym theory -- “Socially Conscious Underground Music” -– has any truth to it). But, for a moment, at least --- it was a term that had resonance for some.
Step back in time to the Lower East Side of Manhattan in 1989 … and enjoy a putrid lungful of SCUMROCK!
A poster on the Facebook group, Manhattan Before 1990 named Lawrence V. posted a Lynn Goldsmith photo I’d never seen before (above), that being a portrait of the crucial line-up of The Pretenders (i.e. the one prior to the untimely, drug-related deaths of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon) posing in front of New York City location (restaurant? bar? club? diner?) called Cell 54.
Personally speaking, the name Cell 54 rang absolutely no bells with me, but it’s prudent to remember that in 1980, I was all of 13 years old, so there’s a very good chance it just passed me by before I was cognizant of such things. In any case, given the largely NYC-centric nature of Lynn Goldsmith’s work, it’s reasonably safe to assume this picture was taken in NYC and not, say, the band’s home turf of London (vocalist/songwriter Chrissie Hynde was actually a Yank from Ohio, but famously ex-patriated to London circa the dawn of UK Punk).
Regardless, it certainly looks like an NYC storefront. Anyone have any ideas? Weigh in, shot-spotters.
This one is almost too easy, too clichéd and too predictable, but I can’t resist.
I wrote about Chumley’s a bunch of times quite a while back, first here and then here, here, here and here. Much like my oft-cited favorite Cedar Tavern, along with myriad other bars, dives, clubs, live music venues, restaurants, etc., the disappearance of Chumley’s served as a milestone-of-sorts in Manhattan’s steep slump towards its currently bland, character-free incarnation. I should point out, however, that unlike most of those other establishments, Chumley’s didn’t close because of high rents, greed, quality of life issues or changing trends, but rather because the place literally caved in on itself.
There were reports, over the years, of it being restored, but after a while, it became pretty evident that the Chumley’s everyone knew and loved was gone forever, regardless of how its restoration and resumption of business manifested itself. Everyone I knew who shared my love of the place (to say nothing of the generations of New Yorkers before me that darkened its doors, including my mom), seemed to make their peace with that.
The Times profile handily points this out early in the piece, but it’s worth repeating that this lamentable assertion and its accompanying execution come courtesy of a man who’d never set foot in the original Chumley’s. Despite this, Borgognone goes on to reinforce his vision of Chumley’s as a pricier, more exclusive affair by disparaging the original bar –- which, again, he never visited -– as ultimately a downtrodden trough from which career alcoholics submerged in beer. “It wasn’t a place people went for dinner,” he claims. “We wanted a place you’d be comfortable coming to on a date.”
For a start, I’d like to wearily point out that Chumley’s handily served both of those needs. I partook of many a meal in its cozy, storied confines. More to the point, it was the quintessential date place. Obviously, taste is all relative, and Mr. Borgognone probably thinks the perfect date involves a snow-shovel -full of dollar bills for it to matter, but trust me on this one – it was a fabulous destination for that purpose. And if your date didn’t appreciate that destination, I might suggest that he/she probably wasn’t the best catch, but hey… that’s me.
Anyway, Mr. Borgogone (and if you can look at his picture on the Times story without wanting to flip him a strenuously emphatic bird, you're made of stronger stuff than I) aims to re-open his “reboot” of Chumley’s in September.
I sincerely doubt I’ll ever visit its interior again.
Recent Comments