Somewhere between the Mudd Club and Danceteria, there was Hurrah on the Upper West Side. I never went, of course, being too young and unaware of such things at the time. It shut its doors in 1981, when I was only 14 years old. Its story, however, is now being told in a new book by a gentleman named Tim Lawrence called “Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor, 1980-1983” (read an excerpt here). I’m quite looking forward to checking the book out.
As discussed here, meanwhile, Hurrah played host to a dizzying array of crucial bands, from The Cure to Iggy Pop to the Feelies to the Specials to Mission of Burma to the Lounge Lizards to Gang of Four to Bauhaus to XTC to New Order to the Bush Tetras and hundreds more. If, like myself, you were too young to ever attend, here’s, evidently, what it was like entering the venue.
In any case, the only reason I’m bringing any of this up are the clips below, one of which my friend Cory unearthed and slapped on Facebook. While certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, all of this footage is pretty remarkable. Here’s the inimitable James Chance and the Blacks playing at Hurrah in 1980.
Before you ask, I have no idea who Chance’s co-vocalist in the first two videos (“Money to Burn” and “Melt Yourself Down”) is, but she tackles the impressive feat of almost upstaging the mighty James Chance. The last two clips feature Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of Blondie, helping Chance’s band cover “Good Times” by Chic and “I Feel Good” by James Brown. Debbie looks suitably luminescent.
Hard to believe this all went down on West 62nd Street.
As a frustrated, ersatz writer, I’m prone to laboriously spin a weepy yarn with some frequency about how I once came within shouting distance of a credible book deal. This was based on the tenuous-at-best idea of composing the authoritative story of Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers. You may remember an epic-length post about that endeavor from several years back. Long story short: It didn’t happen.
In a nutshell, it all fell apart as someone had capitalized on the very same idea a year before me (with frankly underwhelming results), but –- more crucially -- the notoriously private and arguably eccentric Richman is pointedly guarded about his privacy and not at all interested in re-hashing the past. He hadn’t cooperated with that previous book, and wasn’t likely to entertain the notion any further. Without his participation, it was a stillborn effort, and –- thus -– abandoned.
I remember having a deflating discussion about it with an agent over lunch at a pricey TriBeCa bistro, and he tried to turn things back around by suggesting that, instead, I write a book about Radiohead, a notion that prompted me to ask for the check and get the Hell out of there.
Over the years, I’ve had several well-intentioned and supportive friends tell me I should write a book, but I’ve always said that I haven’t been sure if I actually have a book in me, so to speak. I harbor zero interest in writing fiction, and continue to feel that I need to be resonantly struck by that one, solid idea in order to make a book even conceptually feasible. Beyond that Jonathan Richman one, until recently, I haven’t felt that inspiration.
More to the point, after writing this silly blog for over a decade, the impetus to get a book going became even less of a likelihood. I’d found both my outlet and -- when I managed to not alienate or bore them – my audience, however select.
Anyway, you might be wondering, at this point, why I’m bothering to draw out this self-indulgent preamble. Well, as it happens, I’ve been tapped to write a book, and it looks like it’s actually going to happen.
Spend a random week reading this blog and you’ll doubtlessly comes across at least one or two florid invocations of two specific bands. One of those bands, of course, is Killing Joke. The other is the now long-defunct ensemble I’ve penned myriad posts about, that being Cop Shoot Cop.
It’s sort of a complicated backstory, but the gents approached me, given our long-standing friendship, my ardent fandom and the numerous bits and pieces I’ve already written about them, and asked if I’d be game to supply the text to what can only be described as a “coffee table book” about the band.
Now, before you click your tongues and remark about how a coffee table book packs all the insouciant, underground rock fury of a fastidiously curated collection of decorative ceramics, it should be underscored that Cop Shoot Cop was a band with a finely honed visual aesthetic. Pairing the do-it-yourself approach of hardcore punk with the jarring graphic style of early Foetus, early Cop Shoot Cop flyers and gig posters (some of which pre-dated the actual existence of the band beyond a mere concept) could literally stop you dead in your tracks (pardon the unfortunate pun). I myself was entirely preoccupied with one of their early posters for a 1989 gig at CBGB (as discussed --- and partially revealed –- on this post). With that in mind, to do that aspect of the band’s legacy justice, a full-paged, garishly illustrated, large-sized format is required. After a a brief period of consideration, I took the bait. So clear off those coasters, ornamental tchotchke and distressed stacks of Garden & Gun Magazine, `cos goddamn COP SHOOT COP IS COMING TO YOUR MOTHERFUCKIN’ COFFEE TABLE, BITCHES!
To that end, being that I’ve been the surreptitious webmaster of the unofficial Cop Shoot Cop Facebook page (hey, I told you I was a hopeless fanboy), I composed the following call-out to similarly inclined acolytes of the band. Follow the directions to the pertinent link.
YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE, C$C NATION!
There’s something in the works over in the long-dormant cabins of Camp Cop $hoot Cop. I'm working — in conjunction with members of the band — on their official history. It’ll be a handsome tome rife with myriad images spanning Cop Shoot Cop’s oh-so-illustrious career. It’s still in its early stages, but we need your help!
If you’d be good enough to share your photographs, artwork, posters, flyers, anecdotes, tattoos, homemade t-shirts and any other related ephemera with us, you — *YES, YOU!* — might be duly immortalized for your efforts for the great cause in some indeterminate fashion in the conceivably not-too-distant future. We promise it’s something cool. Have we lied to you yet (as far as you know?) If you’re sending us images, please note that we are looking for an ideal scan resolution of no less than 300 dpi at 100%. As is often suggested, bigger is indeed better.
To insure that you get the proper credit for your time and effort, please do include photo credit information, date and location that we properly acknowledge your contributions.
Anyway, so while it's still in its very early stages, the project is still very much underway. Part of the reason I'm posting about it here is not only to solicit more possible content for it, but also to cement the deal. It's put up or shut up. Now that I've invoked it, it has to happen, right?
Regular readers here might remember a trioofposts I put up last April regarding the location pictured on the iconic sleeve of the first album by my beloved Killing Joke, that being an otherwise workaday wall in a neighborhood colloquially referred to as “the Little Diamond” in a section of town known as the Bogside in the city of Derry (a.k.a. Londonderry) in Northern Ireland.
At the risk of rehashing all of that, the album cover in question – designed by one Michael Coles of Malicious Damage – essentially repurposed and manipulated an image by celebrated photographer Don McCullin. Here are both images now….
You can get the whole saga here, basically (along with a mea culpa-of-sorts here). Basically, my friend Dub (a.k.a.) Paul) -- who lives in Ireland (although not in Derry) -- did nine-tenths of the sleuthing in this case. I just assembled it in a relatively neat, concise package.
As it happens, a relative of Dub’s – let’s call him Dub Jr. – was actually in the good city of Derry quite recently, and did us a favor by taking a few more contemporary shots of the fabled wall in question. Evidently, in the years since those last Google Maps shots were taken, the no-longer-especially ominous wall – which, in truth, never was emblazoned with the words “KILLING JOKE” in hastily scrawled paint – has been painted a lustrous shade of burnt umber.
Another factoid illuminated via Dub Jr.’s snaps – evidently the address where the original events McCullin captured on film transpired on Frederick Street, which later becomes Abbey Street down the road.
I never got to see Madness, alas. In terms of British Ska bands, I did see the Specials when they came back (albeit without Jerry Dammers) a few years back, and I caught the English Beat several years back at a somewhat depressing club gig.
Here’s my favorite, arguably less-celebrated Madness `choon….
I regret to say that I cannot remember where I first spied this photograph -- taken by one Jill Furmanovsky -- but found it somewhat remarkable, and thought I’d share it here and ultimately try to glean more about it. Click on it to enlarge.
This is, of course, storied London ska ensemble, Madness, posing with suitably nutty aplomb on the mean streets of Manhattan in 1980.
At first glance, I’d suggest this was snapped somewhere on Fifth or Sixth Avenues, given the looming facade of — I *think* — 30 Rockefeller in the background. There’s also a building in the middle-ground under construction.
That said, I am frankly at a loss as to determine the specific spot they’re depicted goofing around on.
Can you name it?
Go to it. To inspire you to take that extra step….
In under a month’s time, I will cross the perilous Rubicon of my 49th year. It should come as little surprise to learn that I am not at all enthused about this particular milestone. I expect that I shall enter into my 49th year burdened by the same amount of neuroses and anxiety with which I entered my 29th … preoccupied by the stark reality that, it being my last year of that particular group of ten, I’ll need to “make it count.” Inevitably, by the time I turn 50, I’ll probably just be resigned to it …. not that it makes a big difference or that I can actually do anything about it.
But one’s twenties were the years that really "counted," in that respect. That was the era wherein one was supposed to sew their wild outs, experiment, live vicariously and experience all that could be experienced. The forties aren’t like that. Honestly, I’m not sure what is supposed to really transpire in one’s forties … a refinement? A mellowing? A gradual metamorphosis into something more distinguished (or, alternately, more wizened)? I can’t say. I’m not sure if I accomplished all the things I was supposed to accomplish throughout my forties. It’s certainly been a fraught almost-decade for me. John Lennon once famously said that “Life Begins at 40.” Yeah, look what happened to him.
Anyway, while searching for something totally different, I found this enchanting little filmstrip of New York City in 1967, the year of my birth. Hearkening back to that recent post about photographs from my childhood, it’s somewhat striking to look at this banal stock footage and realize how much looks relatively the same. For all the grousing so many of us do about how things have changed — invariably for the worse — it’s worth remarking how recognizable so much of this still is.
There are some major exceptions, of course. The first incarnation of World Trade Center, for example, hadn’t even been built yet. Shots of the downtown skyline arrive without those signature towers.
But scattered amidst the nine plus minutes you’ll see the 59th & Fifth Avenue, the Pan Am Building, the observation deck of the Empire State, Van Cortlandt House in the Bronx, Wall Street, Trinity Church, Fraunces Tavern, City Hall, Gramercy Park, the National Arts Club, Irving Place, Cooper Square, St. Mark’s Church, Washington Square Park, Liberty Island and more.
Those of you who’ve hung around here for a great while might remember a series of posts I put up back in 2010 about a short, silent film by a gent named Lowell Bodger. At some point in the very early 70’s, Bodger filmed a simple walk down a fairly crowded West 8th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. In this post, I re-exhumed Bodger’s film and “updated” it with a video of my own, wherein my cherubic little kindernauts and I replicated Bodger’s journey, only to find a markedly less populated street peppered with myriad empty storefronts. Click back here to see that, should you care.
In ensuing years, other folks have been similarly inspired by Bodger’s film. By way of example, a somewhat mysterious YouTube user dubbed 12319gp manipulated Bodger’s film to act as a hazily surreal music video for a song called “The Role These Years Have Played in My Life.” Check that out…
Cool, right? Bodger’s visuals really meld with the song’s dreamy, hypnotic vibe.
Meanwhile, another YouTuber named Jonathan Cronin took at stab at “stabilizing” Bodger’s original film, put off — I suppose — by the bounces and wiggles caused by the filmmaker’s gait. Here’s that “stabilized” version…
Seven years later, I may try -- at some point -- to re-update Bodger's 8th Street walk with my kids, but we'll see.
Meanwhile, Lowell Bodger is also responsible for thisothersilent film, featuring a sleepy period around Astor Place and Broadway, which I first wrote about here (noting its vibe of “languid tranquility”). It’s a seductive slice of downtown’s past before the area got so busy.
And, once again, some enterprising soul repurposed Bodger’s footage to score a homemade video for “Down on the Street” by the mighty Stooges, which is dead cool, despite the fact that the Stooges were from Michigan, not NYC.
Lastly, here’s one last excerpt of another film by Lowell Bodger, dubbed — mysteriously — “Favorable Conditions.”
In my development as a fervent music geek and ardent appreciator of the tactile manifestation of it, there were two big shipments of records that arrived into my life that made huge, respective impacts. I wouldn’t be half the insufferable knowitall I am today without either of them.
I’ve spoken about both of them here before. One arrived, in the summer of 1986, courtesy of an otherwise largely ill-considered suitor of my mother’s named Arthur (although I believe I referred to him as Angus on this post), filled with a dizzying selection of rare, esoteric and seminal LPs by bands like the Fall, New Order, Public Image Ltd., Rip Rig & Panic, SWANS and several others. While I’d originally written-off the bestower (read this post, again, if you care) as a clueless opportunist trying to win points with me so he could date my mom, this was a gift far beyond anything I’d done to deserve, and it literally opened up whole new worlds for me.
The other box came several years earlier, circa the summer of 1977, also from a largely ill-considered suitor of mother’s — this one being my actual father. A decade after divorcing my mom (and my birth), he was living in London as a correspondent for Forbes Magazine. While there, he’d evidently befriended someone from Epic/CBS/Columbia Records, and that friend passed onto him a big box of promo LPs to send back home to my sister and I. Now, I don’t routinely give my father — who passed away in 2011 — a great deal of credit, given that he made a long series of dubious choices throughout his life, many of which at the expense of his loved ones. That all said, this was — to my mind — inarguably the greatest gift he ever gave to me, as it inadvertently served as the gateway to virtually everything I now hold dear.
Okay, that’s enough weepy preamble…
In that box from 1977, as I’ve mentioned before, came a slew of forgettable albums by ridicule-worthy names like REO Speedwagon, Heart, Ted Nugent and Joan Baez. There were also LPs by a lot of soul, disco and funk artists that my sister grabbed. For me, I immediately snatched the first Boston record (which rocks, by the way, and if you think differently, you’re just an idiot), a copy of Pure Mania by the Vibrators and a curious little artifact by a band I’d never heard of that ended up being the seminal debut (British edition, no less) of the motherfucking Clash.
With the covetable stuff officially divvied up, however, there were still several LPs that neither my sister nor I — nor my mother or step-father, for that matter — recognized. As a result, we spent much of the rest of the summer experimenting with the mystery LPs and discovering new music. One of those records was Heavy Weather by a band called Weather Report.
There were already several jazz LP’s in the house, thanks to my mother and my step-father, but those all seemed to be made by clean-cut, short-haried white dudes wearing ties. Weather Report, at first glance, looked more like a bunch of hirsute rock n’ rollers (actually, I more recently think lead Weather Reporter, Joe Zawnul, kinda looks like Holger Czukay from those crazy Krautrockers in Can). Dropping the needle on side one of Heavy Weather, the entire family warmed to the opening track, that being “Birdland.” In no time at all, it became one of those rare bits of music that everyone in the house enjoyed. We would play it and then, yea verily, play it again.
This was, of course, technically fusion jazz, a descriptor that seems to have since gone the way the wooly mammoth. Regardless, it retained enough melodic mellifluousness to appease my mom and my sister, but also it also kinda rocked, largely thanks to the contributions of their curious cat of a bass player, that being one Jaco Pastorius.
His was a sound you instantly recognize. Playing a fluidly resonant, fretless bass, Jaco’s playing — even to my nascent, untrained, KISS-loving ears — was something special, something distinctive. Hyperbole aside, like Hendrix before him (albeit on a instrument with a different number of strings), Jaco Pastorius did things with that bass that no one else thought possible.
I didn’t really know that latter part at the time. I only knew he played like a madman, and that it sounded amazing. That said, as I was nurturing my love for all things Punk and Heavy Metal, the notion of voluntarily listening to something that involved wind instruments seemed like a big ol’ waste of my time (I was young and stupid), so while I enjoyed Heavy Weather with the rest of my family, I never really gave it much more thought.
In later years, I befriended a guy named Brent Butterworth during my star-crossed tenure as a intern at SPIN Magazine. Brent, a copy-editor at the time, was a sharp, big-hearted Texan with an infectious laugh, a similar sense of humor and an encyclopedic knowledge of all things audio. Musically, he was an avowed fan of extreme metal like Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, as well as — to my ears — crazy jazz shit like James “Blood” Ulmer, Ronald Shannon Jackson and this almost metallic combo called Last Exit. As such, we checked out lots of live music, and my horizons were duly broadened.
At one point, we got on the subject of Jaco Pastorius, and Brent started regaling me with tales of his tragic story (I not knowing anything more than his participation on Heavy Weather by Weather Report). I’d no idea he’d pursued such a tragic road. I seem to remember some strange anecdote Brent passed on — allegedly from one Jaco bio or another — about the celebrated bass wizard driving a motorcycle into a hotel lobby, wherein he promptly struck a column, fell over and passed out. People rushed over to the unconscious Jaco to see if he was alright and ripped open his leather jacket to discover a live octopus hidden beneath. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s quite a story.
Just recently, I’ve started watching the Jaco Pastorius documentary on Netflix, although I’ve yet to finish it. Finishing movies that not everyone in my apartment is enthused about is a difficult task, sometimes. In any event, the film is both wildly illuminating and heartbreaking so far. I already know how it ends, unfortunately.
Jaco Pastorius left us in 1987. Sadly, a year before his death, he was homeless on the streets of New York City. I was shocked to find these two photos on the `net from that period — shot right here in the Village (on 6th Avenue, across from Cornelia Street, just up the road from what is now the IFC theatre), allegedly by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here's one of the greatest bass players the world has ever known busking on the streets of New York City.
Seek out the Jaco documentary, as his is a story worth knowing and a music worth hearing. Here’s the track that still does it for me. Pour one out for Jaco.
Remember the Verve? Sure ya do. “Bittersweet Symphony”? Yep, that’s them. They were sued by the Stones for the use of sampling a symphonic version of “The Last Time”? Yeah, that happened. They had a few other decent singles off that album, 1997's Urban Hymns (co-produced by Killing Joke’s Youth), and then broke up. Guitarist Simon Tong later played with the Killing Joke side-project, Transmission, while vocalist Richard Ashcroft went on to pursue sort of middling solo career.
In any case, I was a quasi-fan of the band before they hit the Britpop big-time with Urban Hymns. Back in the early 90’s, I was steeped in fandom of legions of British indie bands of that very fertile era — from The Wedding Present, Lush and the Wonder Stuff through Swervedriver, James and the Senseless Things and all points in between. The Verve were arguably a part of all that, and were originally a much messier affair than the band that would go on to court legal action by the Stones. I was sent a promo copy of their odds-&-sods collection, No Come Down and developed a passive affinity for their shambolic psychedelic guitar-pop.
Around 1992, they apparently took another page from their litigious forebears in the Stones and shot a video of themselves playing while being driven around Manhattan on the back of a flatbed truck (ala this fabled Stones stunt). I stumbled upon that clip recently, and thought I’d share it here.
Somewhat annoyingly, the clip seems to be fairly hazy …. which may or may not have been on purpose, given the similarly hazy, fuzzed-out nature of their sound at the time (still light years from the comparatively crisp, introspective pop of Urban Hymns). In any case, if you wince close enough, you’ll see the Verve lads exiting the Chelsea Hotel and then being driven around town some evening. Those hungry for specific landmark-spotting won’t be too thrilled, but it’s still worth a viewing…
Despite changing their sound and their style later on, the Verve’s love affair with NYC, didn’t end with the video above, as several single sleeves from the Urban Hymns era found the band posing in and around SoHo, Greenwich Village and the then-still-endearngly-seedy Times Square.
As much as I utilize this blog as a means of sharpening my arguable writing skills, showcasing my interests or venting my spleen, it’s ultimately meant to start conversations. These are topics I care about and feel compelled to expound upon. I post about them to share my perspectives and experiences in the hopes that like-minds or similarly interested parties will benefit and join the conversation. It’s meant to initiate an exchange of ideas.
Too often, I get excited about something, do a bunch of research, write something up and publish it here, only to have it die on the vine, so to speak — uncommented upon. Now, this may be due to any number of factors — low traffic (never surprising, given my incomprehensible URL being entirely at odds with the blog’s stupid name), my unwieldily wordy prose and highfalutin pretty talk, my frequent disregard for proper copy-editing or simply that the subject matter fails to engage with anyone other than myself. It’s a bummer, but it happens.
Then, of course, there are posts that, for whatever reason, invite a bit of scorn. If you’ve ever tried to leave a comment here, you’ll know that they don’t just magically appear when you hit the “post” button. After a few instances, several years back, wherein someone was leaving a string of potty-mouthed invective in the comments section, I reluctantly decided to alter the functionality so that I’d have to vet the feedback before it went live on the blog. I say reluctantly as I wish it hadn’t had to come to that, but my hand was forced.
That said, when readers post things that I don’t necessarily agree with, or take me to task for being an idiot about this or that, I still usually go ahead and approve and post their remarks. I could rattle off the names of a few regular commenters who routinely rake me over the coals for any number of grievances. Like I said, it’s meant to be a conversation, and I strive to make the exchange frank and transparent. I may not agree with your opinions, but I don’t begrudge your right to express them, even if they fly in the face of my own.
By the same token, though, it’s still my blog. All are welcome to join the discussion, but if you’re just doing it to wind me up, take the piss, act like a troll or just generally be a dick, I’m under no obligation to acknowledge your comment.
I’m not saying you have to strictly adhere to Thumper’s rule, but if you’re not here to engage in a meaningful — and preferably respectful — discourse, I’m not going to be interested in reading what you have to say, let alone letting you use my blog as a platform to say it.
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