Flaming Pablum

Flaming Pablum Is Now A Thing!

At some point in the summer of 2005, I hastily changed the name of this stupid blog from the frankly ridiculous House of Vassifer (which, essentially, meant nothing) to the equally stupid Flaming Pablum. In the ensuing twelve years, I have been repeatedly posed the following query:

“Dude, fuck does that even mean?”

It’s a fair question. As I attempted to explain here, I just sorta came up with it as pretentious shorthand for needlessly provocative -- albeit poorly composed -- writing. The fact that the name seemed pompously verbose, knowingly contentious and self-deprecating all at the same time made me fleetingly chuckle. For better or worse, the name stuck, and this blog has been saddled with it ever since.

While not quite as consequential as, say, choosing a permanent tattoo or naming a child, the fact that I made the decision so blithely without a great deal of thought has continually caused me embarassment. When my wife or friends of mine infrequently cite my blog in conversations, I sheepishly downplay the whole thing. Having to explain its stupid name (despite the fact that said moniker appears nowhere in its URL … which is also kinda problematic) always makes me privately groan.

In any case, a friend of mine recently shot me a screengrab from Twitter (not a social platform I really spend any time on, although I do have an account). Evidently, the phrase “flaming pablum” was used in a tweet by an indidivual named J. Doyle in a context that has nothing to do with my silly blog.

Now, this could mean that I’ve effectively penetrated the zeitgeist and my blog’s title is now part of the common vernacular … or it’s simply a coincidence.

I’m sticking with the former.

Locating the Lizard

Just a quick follow up from that post from the other day regarding the former Lone Star Cafe on Fifth Avenue and 13th Street.

While it's true that the fabled giant-sized reptile that formerly held court on the roof of the Lone Star eventually ended up in Texas, for a little while, he was somewhat inexplicably re-located to a TriBeCa pier just off N.Moore Street (where the Yankee, a since-disused Block Island ferry, was docked). Here's photographic evidence of same, which I snapped at some point in 1997.

Yes, that's the WTC is the background.

Club Unplugged: Razing Giorgio's Red Door

I was very sad to learn, this morning, about the impending fate of 140 West 24th Street.

You may remember a post from a little over year ago here about an obscure hardcore punk venue at that address called The Plugg Club, which had fleetingly played host to bands like the Misguided and, more prominently, Sonic Youth. Well, as explained in that post, the Plugg Club was basically just a synonym for The Red Door, the fabled original venue of rock visionary, Giorgio Gomelsky.

A tireless music fan, scene-maker, songwriter, producer and manager (he counted the Rolling Stones as early charges), filmmaker and all-around-hepcat, Giogrio Gomelsky — who passed away, last year — was famous for exuded an ageless appreciation for rock n’ roll in its many permutations, setting up the Red Door as a haven for the similarly inclined.

My good friend and fellow music geek extraordinaire Steve Holtje posted this article on my Facebook feed this morning, and it took a big shit on my day.

140 West 24th is being razed. The development company who owns the building and its neighboring structure say there are no current plans about what will come next, but one can help feeling that it’s inevitable that a gaudy condo will shortly sprout up in its place.

Because that’s how New York rolls now.

A little more about Gomelsky and the Red Door…

A Living Multimedia Tribute to Giorgio Gomelsky in New York City, May 2015 from Hyphen Hub on Vimeo.

We All Need Control

In recent weeks, for relatively obvious reasons, I’ve been drawn to elements of art, music, pop culture and entertainment that may have heretofore felt overtly doomy and dystopian, but now seem slightly more relevant.

Reports of spiraling sales of copies of Orwell classics like “Animal Farm” and, of course, “1984” amply broadcast that I am not alone in this capacity. Conceivably, by seeking out depictions of dictatorial opprsession, tyrannical federal incursion, reckless global antagonism, saber-rattling, armageddon and apocalypse, we are able to put current events in some sort of context. Maybe it’s comforting? Maybe it’s preparation? Who knows?

Speaking strictly of music, suddenly songs like the foreboding paranoia-disco of “1984” by David Bowie, the nuclear-doomsday skank of “Living Through Another Cuba” by XTC, the decptively joyful “We Don’t Need This Fascist Groove Thing” by Heaven 17 or even the sombre reflection of George Michael’s “Praying For Time” don’t seem quite as histrionic as they may once have.

In thinking of other examples of this particular theme, I remembered the video below, and gave it another watch.

Regardless of how shitty things are and how ass-backward of a direction the Trump Administration is taking us, this video seems just as ridiculous today as it did in 1983.

Go Ohgami Go Nuts in NYC, 1984

Here’s an odd one.

I honestly have zero idea who Japanese rock band Go Ohgami are –- or, more likely, were -- but here’s a video they shot in 1984 for a tune called “Kids On the Street.”

While I don’t personally think the actual song is all that much to write home about, the video is notable for a couple of reasons.

For a start, it was written by erstwhile Patti Smith guitarist/fabled Nuggets archivist and all-around nice guy, Lenny Kaye. He’s actually the first guy to appear in the music video. ADDENDUM: Correction! According to Mr. Kaye himself, Okapi Tsuyoshi actually brought this song with him from Japan. 

This was apparently culled from an antiquated cable access music show called Videowave, which prefaced the clip with its host standing in front of the old Life Café on the corner of 10th Street and Avenue B. To say that this corner today is no longer even remotely recognizable from how it appears in this video is a herculean understatement.

From there, Go Ohgami vocalist Okami Tsuyoshi and cohorts (including a few breakdancers in period-specific finery) are seen cavorting all over Manhattan, passing through what looks like Chelsea, Battery Park, the East Vilalge and possibly Riverside Park on the Upper West Side, as well as radom locales like the old mural wall on East Houston, a pizzeria and a fish market … as one does, I guess.

Like I said, the song didn’t really blow a new part in my fashionably feathered hair, but as a period-piece, it’s an interesting glimpse of NYC circa 1984.

See what you think…

Back ... Again ... to 61 Fifth Avenue

I’ve written about the old Lone Star Café space at 61 Fifth Avenue a few times here (notably here, and more recently here). Honestly speaking, while I certainly remember its iconic roof-lizard (that now lives in Texas, incidentally), I don’t believe I ever set foot in the place during that particular incarnation. I did visit the Lone Star Roadhouse in midtown (right near the Roseland Ballroom, if memory serves), which was an ancillary operation, but I was largely too young to have visited the Lone Star Café during its allegedly rollicking heyday. My father worked across the street at Forbes Magazine for several years, and I believe he enjoyed going to the Lone Star. Decades later, the Lone Star is gone, as is the building that housed it. By that same token, Forbes Magazine is no longer anchored on that strip of Fifth Avenue (they’re now based in Jersey City). My father, too, is no longer with us, having passed away in 2011.

In any case, prior to being the Lone Star Café, of course, that stately space on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 13th Street was a majestic Schraft’s ice cream parlor. The image up top of its interior comes from that particular era.

Meanwhile, I didn’t start darkening the doors of the place until its time in the early `90s as a bar called Mr. Fuji’s Tropicana.

I honestly don’t remember why we started going there, but as I’ve alluded on older posts, my good friend Rob D. briefly dated a young lady who bartended there (in true `90s fashion, we may have initially met her on the inaugural Lollapalooza tour with Jane’s Addiction, but I may be thinking of someone else). Regardless, in short order, we started hanging around Mr. Fuji’s Tropicana, as she let us drink for free. I do seem to remember that this woman lived in a windowless, basement-level apartment on Mulberry, just south of Bleecker Street (in a building that Jean-Michel Basquiat tagged the exterior of in “Downtown 81,” … incidentally).

Strangely enough, my one vivid memory about hanging around Mr. Fuji’s was of Rob and I sitting at the bar (surprise!) and head-banging in unison to the mellifluous strains of “The Immigrant Song” by ye olde Led Zeppelin. After we enjoyed that hammering of the gods for its glorious two minutes and twenty-five seconds, whomever was deejaying saw fit to immediately play it again. We did not protest. This continued for at least three or four more inexplicable airings, until one of us – probably me -- let out an emphatic “ONE MORE TIME…!” as if on cue prior to its fifth spin. For whatever reason, this was not well received, and I believe we may have been labeled as a couple of “wiseasses.” Guilty as charged, your honor.

Anyway, Mr. Fuji’s Tropicana did not last all that long, and it closed at some point in the mid-`90s, although I believe Rob’s dalliance with its comely barkeep ended well prior to that. The next operation to set up shop in the space was a deli, which seemed somewhat tragic, given the lavish architectural aplomb of the joint. That lasted into the new millennium before it, too, closed. After that, the space was left to rot for several years before it was eventually razed to make way for the condo that stands in its footprint today.

So, why I am bringing any of this up? Well, no one seems to remember the space’s fleeting tenure as Mr. Fuji’s Tropicana. Ultimately, one cannot blame them – it wasn’t exactly a hotspot of any genuine note. The building seemed to forever be referred to as either “the old Lone Star” or “the old Schraft’s,” which would invariably prompt me to laboriously dust off the anecdotes that you just suffered through above. With this in mind, you can imagine my glee upon finding the video below.

Ostensibly a music video by a kitschy local trio called The Gloo Girls (where are they today, one wonders?), several shots within “Barbie USA” were filmed on the unmistakable upper floor of Mr. Fuji’s.

Enjoy…

One Month In

It’s not about “butthurt” Democrats being sore losers.

It’s not about Hillary or Bernie or Obama.

It’s not about being partisan.

It’s about the United States being in very serious trouble and being steered in a direction it was absolutely never meant to go.

The Empty Box

You may remember a post from back in 2013 wherein I lamented the impending closing of Bleecker Street’s Pizza Box, a humble little pizzeria that had been serving up slices on that partiular strip since 1957. I pointed out that it had been a regular stop for my friend Rob and I during our regular sorties hitting downtown’s formerly robust network for independent record stores. Well, just as all those music shops were picked off one by one as if by a sniper, the Pizza Box, too, closed to make way for a tapas joint called 100 Montaditos that sought to exude at atmophere of “affordable elegance.”

Evidently, "affordable elegance" didn't sell.

100 Montaditos has apparently been closed for some time now (at least since last June), but I only noticed it this morning on my walk to work. 100 Montaditos only lasted about two and a half years or so. Meanwhile, it displaced a concern that had been there for 56 years.

And now? Now there’s nothing there.

The Rolling Stones Under Glass

The whole notion of rock ’n’ roll in a museum has never sat especially well with me. For a start, I think the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame is a fatuous catastrophe and utterly devoid of any semblance of merit or meaning. Similarly, the Metropolitan Museum’s Punk Fashion exhibit of a few years back was equally ridiculous. Trying to capture the essence of that which is fundamentally a youth-oriented art form defined by vibrance and rebellion seems completely antithetical. This, of course, must sound a bit rich coming from someone working on a friggin’ coffee-table book about Cop Shoot Cop, but, by most accounts, rock music was never meant to be commemorated in such a fashion.

That said, there have been times when it’s been handled with a modicum of success. Last summer, for example, you might remember my account of the Ramones exhibit at the Queens Museum. While it seemed jarringly incongruous to see Ramones paraphernalia behind ropes and under glass like some rarified Egyptian antiquities, it was a lovingly curated and admirably reverent presentation (especially for a band who never got all the much respect when they were a going concern, much less alive).

I wasn’t originally planning on attending the similarly-inclined Rolling Stones Exhibitionism exhibit currently happening at Industria in the West Village. It’s not that I’m not enthused by the subject matter, but it seemed like a pricey and gimmicky undertaking. Then, my wife went with a friend and gave it a glowing review, and she’s not nearly as much a sucker as I am for this type of stuff. As such, with a day off for President’s Day, I figured today was the right day to check it out — especially considering it’s only up for another couple of weeks.

Let me just say this: It’s awesome.

Granted, clinging to the notion that the Stones are still an insouciant gaggle of rock ’n’ roll cut-throats is basically a sad anachronism. Much like their big-name brethren in Pink Floyd and, to a degree, KISS, they are more of a brand than a band, these days, which is another reason I was initially wary. You’ll see their fabled tongue logo everywhere to this day, but as rock iconography goes, it’s lost a bit of its punch (although it still makes my mom wince, enjoyably). It was for this reason that my expectations for this show were pretty low. I figured it was going to be mannequins sporting Mick’s old stage-wear while “Start Me up” plays on a loop.

While, yes, there is a degree of that (you do indeed see mannequins sporting stage-wear), Exhibitionism is a refreshingly deeper dive. From replicating the band’s early London flat in Edith Grove, Chelsea (endearingly besotted with cigarettes and empty beer bottles) to boasting a dizzying array of the band’s gear (complete with annotation about what songs specific guitars were played on) through robust galleries devoted to their album art, stage production, style, film projects and video, culminating in a ridiculous-by-enjoyable 3D concert experience, it was clearly designed with minutia-crazed rock geeks in mind.

All eras of the band are covered, which will probably make some of the purists who discount everything the band’s done since Tattoo You (still regarded by many as their last “credible” album) less enthused. As I’ve stated elsewhere, as much as i adore their early material, I have a lot of time for their comparatively maligned `80s albums (I think Undercover is ace!). Regardless of your favorite era of the band, Exhibitionism has something for you.

And, of course, just like a ride at Disneyworld, you are encouraged to visit the inventively stocked gift shop upon your exit, rife with the requisite t-shirt selection and everything from luggage-tags to fanny-packs and infant onesies stamped with the afore-cited Stones logo. I’m not going to lie — I sprang for a t-shirt.

So, is it all a crass money-making scheme designed to fill the coffers of an organization that’s already wealthy beyond rational thought? Maybe so, but for those for whom this music, this art and this phenomena matter, it’s very well done. If that makes you feel old …. that’s probably because, let’s face it, you probably are.

Deal with it.

Steppin' Out with Kraut

Hey all.

It’s been a long week, and I’ve had ideas of stuff to put up here, but I haven’t had many opportunities.

In the very short term, however, here’s a fun clip of proto-NYHC band and Flaming Pablum favorites, KRAUT, powering through a set somewhere in the wilds of New Jersey (specifically Haledon, home of the Feelies) in 1984. The video quality isn’t especially great, but it’s a spirited performance nonetheless.

More on KRAUT:

High Steppin' with Kraut
Kraut It Out Loud
Krautspotting