I hadn't initially been planning on buying the anniversary edition of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. I mean, whatever pithy sonic nuances are revealed by the remixing will probably be lost on my tinnitus-ravaged ears, and -- honestly -- how often does one really re-visit a bonus disc of outtakes and demos?
I've already owned (and still own) the original on pretty much every medium it's been available on (I believe my mom used to own it on 8-track). Do I need it? No. But, in the wake of this hatchet job in Salon, I'm tempted to buy multiple copies just to piss off its author.
Also, call "She's Leaving Home" forgettable in front of me, and you'll wear my beer.
Last summer, for those of you who keep track of such things, you might remember an entry I posted about the vanishing of a compelling NYC photo-blog maintained by one Dan Weeks. As I mentioned in that post, I’d first stumbled upon Mr. Weeks’ work (as had several other similarly inclined bloggers) back in 2011. Mr. Weeks’ two sites -– Street View 1982 and Posterous -– documented and showcased his stunning panoramic photographs (such as the one above, click to enlarge) of various Manhattan avenues from long bygone 1982, an era when capturing and producing such images was obviosly a great deal more labor-intensive than it is today.
And then, suddenly, he took it all down without any explanation. All that was left on the web of his work were screengrabs on blogs like Jeremiah Moss’ Vanishing New York and West Side Rag and a few others. Otherwise, it was almost like it had never existed.
I was particularly bummed, as Weeks had managed to capture the front of an old Disc-O-Mat on East 58th and Lexington Avenue that I used to frequent in the late 70’s and early 80’s. Spotting it amidst Weeks' pictures was like stumbling on a photograph of a long-lost friend, as histrionic as that sounds.
Dan Weaks' world journey began when he was only eighteen, photographing Ecuador's rural marketplaces in a project for the Peace Corps. Since then, he's traveled to fifty-five countries, whetting an insatiable appetite for history, architecture and anthropology.
In the early '80s, Weeks embarked on photographing New York City's streets in panorama. "I thought, Wouldn't it be great to show space as it really exists, to observe all the fascinating details at once?" Weeks recounts. He gathered a crew, mounted a camera on top of a truck, and, inch-by-inch, photographed a thousand blocks of New York's midtown area. "I'm obsessive-compulsive," he explains happily. The images were spliced together by hand and rephotographed to create panoramas as long as seventy-eight inches.
Years later, Weeks returned to the project, using a shutterless camera he built himself. The camera was again mounted on a car; aerial mapping film fed backwards through it at the car's rate of speed. The resulting cityscapes capture a New York City that is oddly distorted, as surreal as in dreams.
Strangely, when you click around on Meter’s pages devoted to the photographer (like when you hit “view bio”), he is then referred to as Weeks. I don't get it.
I’m not going to lie. I found Harmony Korine and Larry Clark’s “Kids” to be profoundly depressing when I first saw it in 1995. Sure, cool soundtrack, boffo skateboarding and blah blah blah, but the narrative, the protagonists like “Telly” and “Casper” and whomever else just did not resonate with me. I mean, maybe that was the point?
I wasn’t a teen in the 90’s. My teenage years in New York City (a decade and change earlier) were markedly different. My interests, priorities, actions and experiences, outside of some common geography, bore no resemblance to the brutal antics and priapic exploits depicted in that film. I found it less like an insightful cautionary tale or more like a sensationalized horror film. But, again, times change. Maybe that’s what it was like, and I was just sheltered from it and blithely unaware. Regardless, I felt absolutely zero empathy for its characters.
That said, I did once meet the late Harold Hunter. Harold played one member of the central gaggle of n’erdowells in the film, but was also a renowned professional skateboarder. In any case, I was in a weird ersatz-antique store on Lafayette Street circa 1998 or so (before SoHo had fully transformed into what it is now), and eyeing this strange, beat-up metal dentist’s cabinet while the shop’s comely assistant was giving me a needless hard sell. Harold sauntered in and starting chatting with the shop assistant and jovially joined in the hard-sell proceedings “That would look really cool in your living room, man!” Sucker that I am, I caved and said cabinet now resides in our living room (and, to Harold’s prescient observation, it does indeed look very cool).
Anyway, in not an entirely different way that flagrantly nostalgic bloggers like myself lionize our own ever-distant experiences on these NYC streets, photographers Mel Stones and High (that’s it…. just High), the folks responsible for helping inspire “Kids,” have put together a decade-spanning book of their photographs dubbed “That’s a Crazy One.” While it may not be my New York City (I remain frankly underwhelmed by talk of Supreme gear and rapturous invocations of blunt-smoking), who am I to decry a later generation’s lament for their own lost city.
Find out more here, and order your own copy (and see some more pics) here.
I shouldn't have been surprised, but my friend Chung Wong (a name you might recognize from similar photo quizzes I've posted here) connected the dots on this one, aided considerably -- one assumes -- by the fact that he can read traditional Chinese characters.
After posting this on Facebook, Chung dove right in to discern that the signage in between punkily pulchritudinous Wendy and implausibly tall Richie Stotts translated to: Shanghai New China Barber Shop. He then noted that there was a Chung Wah Barber Shop by Joe's Shanghai down on Pell Street. An initial Google search on my part brought this up.
This didn't quite match up, however, given some minor architectural discrepancies and the more telling lack of a fire hydrant in front (although, conceivably, a fire hydrant might have been removed since 1982).
Chung then chimed back in, saying that there had been a restaurant called Temple Garden, The Best Szechuan, Hunan & Mandarin Cuisine in New York's Chinatown at 16 Pell Street. If you look above the beret of drummer T.C. Tolliver on the far right, you can see the neon letters EMP GARD, which leant Chung's hunch some serious credence.
I did a Google Map search from 2011, and came up with this image...
This looks more likely, but ... again ... no hydrant.
Chung then hit me with this...
Look hard, and you can see the barber pole...
...further noting that the area around the poll looks like a complete match...
Lastly, Chung found that errant hydrant in front of 18 Pell (then called Ester Eng) and the barber pole. This photograph is by Christian Skrein, snapped in 1966. The hydrant in question is on the bottom right hand.
Look closely, and you might notice a giant cigarette in the background. Evidently, that's because there was an initiative, at the time, to christen the neighborhood as "a smoking district" of town. Make of that what you will.
Today, 16 Pell is a foot-rub joint. 18 Pell, meanwhile, is still a hair stylist's place, called Hair Le Pell. How fancy!
As far as the Plasmatics, towering guitarist Richie Stotts still works in rock, albeit in a different capacity -- he's a geologist. Rhythm guitarist Wes Beech works in music retail and production. Drummer T.C. Tolliver is still a gigging musician. According to Wikipedia, bassist Chris "Junior" Romanelli is now a practicing attorney.
Wendy O. Williams took her own life in 1998 at the age of 48.
Here's the lone music video made during the Coup d'Etat era, "The Damned" (no relation to the British punk band), which naturally features Wendy driving a school bus through a wall of television sets .... as one does.
I didn’t think I’d be unveiling another post about the Plasmatics so soon after the last one, but I spotted a photo on Facebook that just begged for greater extrapolation, so here we go.
I know I just hinted about another impending photo quiz (involving The Misfits), but this is not that. Like I said, that one’s a little more complicated, but all will be revealed. This one is pretty tough too, but for different reasons. Enough preamble.
It’s 1982 when Capitol Records unleashes Coup d’Etat, the third full LP by the Plasmatics, on a largely disintered world. Capitol themselves would also lose interest, dropping the band almost immediately after the record’s release. Showcasing a pointedly more metallic side to the band's oeuvre, the record makes previous efforts by the Plasmatics sound like easy-listening. Frontwoman Wendy O. Williams’ vocal chords are virtually unrecognizable in their larynx-shredding attack. Despite the legitimately bold new direction (the metal/punk crossover hadn’t officially been much of a thing, as yet, at least not here in the States), some of the same problems remain, and Coup d’Etat essentially becomes the band’s final album. There will be a later record with the legend Plasmatics stamped on it, that being 1987’s Maggots: The Record, but that will not feature original members like guitarist Richie Stotts. For all intents and purposes, Coup d’Etat is the largenly unsung band’s swan song.
Meanwhile, sequestered out amidst the leafy, Long Island byways of Quogue that summer, the petulant, 15-year-old me special-orders a copy of Coup d’Etat from a tiny, long-shuttered record store on Main Street in Westhampton Beach called Sam’s Record Shack. They order two copies. I bike over there and buy one, and they display the other copy in their window, and there it remains -– telllingly untouched and unpurchased -– until the shop’s demise about two years later.
While not quite as captivating, for me, as previous records like Beyond the Valley of 1984 and the Metal Priestess E.P. (their finest hour, as far as I’m concerned), I routinely blast tracks from Coup d’Etat in the house my family’s renting that summer, notably the suitably lumbering cover of Motorhead’s “No Class.” This practice does little to endear me to the rest of my family.
Around this same era, however, as alluded to in this post, I’m becoming less enthused by more conventional punk and metal bands and immersing myself more and more in hardcore punk. Stripped of the sensationalized shock-rock/showbiz antics of bands like The Plasmatics, hardcore punk is a leaner, faster, angrier form of expression that speaks directly to the frustrated adolescent psyche. Ultimately, it renders stuff like The Plasmatics obsolete.
Anyway, blah blah blah … why am I bringing up any of this ancient history now? Well, again, I spotted a certain photo of the Coup d’Etat-era Plasmatics on Facebook today in a larger format than I’d previously seen, and it begged a few questions.
I can’t find anything to verify this on the web, but if I’m not mistaken, the eye-catching cover of Coup d’Etat was shot on Charlotte Street in the South Bronx, although I cannot say I know who the photographer was. The particular location was allegedly chosen not because that neighborhood was the most conducisve to a big fuckoff tank, but rather because then President Ronald Reagan had made an appearance on that very spot (or in the vicinity) a couple of years earlier to chide his Democratic predecessor, Jimmy Carter, for failing to curb the encroachment of urban blight. I also want to say that KISS shot the frankly ludicrous video for “Lick It Up” on the same location, though probably not for the same reasons.
The photograph below, meanwhile, was presumably taken during the same shoot (given that the band is depicted sporting the same fetchingly distressed togs), but I’m going to speculate that it was snapped in Manhattan, specifically in -– WAIT FOR IT -– Chinatown.
I immediately assumed that shot was snapped on iconic Doyers Street. And while there is still a barber shop on that distinctive lane (notice the spinning barber’s pole above Wendy’s upstretched right arm?), it doesn’t visually match up, nor is there a hydrant nearby in 2017.
So, I’m putting it to you lot.
Now, there are several barber shops scattered around Chinatown, but 1982 was a long, goddamn time ago.
Spend even a fleetingly nominal amount of time perusing my Instagram, and it becomes readily apparent that I’m an ardent fan of street art. I always have been. I mean, not the bullshit chicken-scratch variety of simply ego-based tagging ala “R.D. was Here,” but the more arrestingly colorful, illustrative stripe that famously turned subway platforms into kinetic art galleries back in the day.
I used to thrill to walk through SoHo back in the 80’s and most of the 90’s (i.e. before it devolved into solely a high-end shopping district), as seemingly every, rust-colored wall along its narrow, cobblestoned streets featured disarming arrays of street art of every kind. Huge murals, cryptic insignia, ubiquitous stencils and, later, waves of sticker campaigns and wheat-posted art were everywhere.
In time, “Street Art” became a more of a recognized form, invariably due to cats like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Kenny Scharf, Richard Hambleton, Peter Missing, “Cost & Revs,” Shephard Fairey and, yes -- wait for it -- Banksy (among, of course, many others). I still remember when Fairey’s “Obey Giant” campaign was still in its seeming infancy. Now you see d-bag tourists from Pataskala, Ohio sporting his t-shirts. His became a merchandising empire.
Like Shephard Fairey (whose success I am not at all begrudging -– he’s earned it, and his heart’s in the right place, as far as I’m concerned), lots of street artists have become hugely successful (i.e. rich), and –- to my mind -– that phenomenon has sucked some of the novelty out of it. Like cloying season after season of preening “SNL” cast-members strenuously striving to coin a catch-phrase and launch a career as a recurring sketch, too many street artists seem to be trying to get high-profile name recognition. I suppose one can’t begrudge them from trying to make some cash out of it. I guess I just miss the clandestine, guerilla element of it.
If there’s a thriving street art scene in NYC anymore, it sure isn’t in Manhattan. I mean, yeah, that isn’t to say there’s no street art left here, but I’d suggest -– much like music -– you’re more likely to find the good stuff in the other boroughs, by this point.
Anyway, set aside an hour or two and check out Michael’s article here. And next time you covet a piece of street art, why not just take a photograph and leave it for other people to similarly discover?
Over the years, I’ve posted a few “time-lapse” videos of NYC here. They usually slow things down to a somnambulistic pace and score it with some suitably moody music. Well, my friend and former colleague Ken just put the one below up on Facebook, and it refreshingly dispenses with those clichés, amplifying the sound, space and speed of NYC to its more appropriate extremes. As such, “A Taste of New York” is a jarring, loud and visually frenetic sprint around the city. It owes more to the equally manic Rick Liss short, “No York City,” than any ambient chill-out clip.
Sorry for the relative slowdown in service here, and I promise –- three posts about the late Mr. Cornell is indeed enough.
We’ve hit another busy patch, although our much-alluded initiative to find a new place to live has been put on ice for a little while as my wife prepares to acclimate to a new job, after which point we’ll revisit the perplexing dilemma.
In the interim, I do have another long-percolating photo quiz ala last year’s Lunachicks saga hopefully coming your way quite soon. It recently hit a few snags, but I hope to have something to put about it shortly.
Below is a tantalizing hint. Well, it’s only tantalizing if you give a shit about such things. Here’s hoping you will. Stand by…
I had one other thought that I’d love to throw out there about all this, and this is more of the music-geekery I was reticent to wade into in that first post. I’ve been reading so many hack-scribbled “think-pieces” and social media posts that broadly sum up Cornell as a “pioneering grunge rocker.” I’ve also seen Soundgarden’s name lazily lumped in alongside similarly pigeon-holed acts like Stone Temple Pitols and Smashing Pumpkins, bands with only a tenuous connection to Soundgarden.
Could we maybe stop judging bands through the filter of their dubiously appointed genre. When I first heard Soundgarden, they were being touted as a metal band. Moreover, they were an evolving, organic unit. While their sound remained burly and expansive, marked by Cornell's amazingly elastic voice, you cannot suggest that all Soundgarden albums sounded the same.
I’d take that a step further and assert that even within their own immediate peer group, Soundgarden didn’t really sound anything like their fellow Seattle bands. Beyond the tonsorial/sartorial aesthetics and sensibilities, is there really that much common ground between the music of Soundgarden and, say, the music of Nirvana or Mudhoney?
It's a lofty comparison, I realize, but in the same way The Clash were so much more than simply "a punk band," Soundgarden was more than simply "a grunge band."
I realize it’s unavoidable that certain folks will look to Chris Cornell’s lyrics to provide some clue as to why he took his own life, and for those searching for tidy conclusions, titles like “Let Me Drown,” “Pretty Noose,” “Fell on Black Days,” and, yes, wait for it, “Like Suicide” probably tell them everything they think they need. While I’d concur that the lyrics of such songs might provide a glimpse into his overarching sensibility, I’d also like to cite the concept of poetic license. Put simply, art – much like life -- is not always literal and linear. Just because someone invokes certain themes in their creative work, that doesn’t equate with espousal or confession. If it were that simple, certain favorite songwriters of mine, like Nick Cave and Michael Gira, would be permanently incarcerated and we’d be posthumuosly charging Bob Marley for shooting that poor sheriff.
I don’t pretend to comprehend the motivation that drives one to commit suicide, but I don’t believe it can be neatly explained. I’ve had conversations with peers who were struggling and even openly entertaining the prospect. I’ve also known people who suddenly took their own lives that had given no real, telling indication that anything was wrong. I don’t believe it’s easily grasped, nor is grappling with it an exact science. That’s not a cop-out, though. By no means am I suggesting that there’s nothing to learn or be done about it. Just don’t expect to have all your questions answered.
In this particular case, I think the strangest aspect is that Cornell was perceived, by all accounts, as both a proud, loving father and deeply insightful individual. As a father of comparable age, I cannot wrap my head around how he would have been able to do what he did without taking into consideration the irreparable damage it was going to do to his family. The theme from fuckin’ “M.A.S.H.” is complete bullshit – suicide is not painless. The indescribable hurt inflicted by Cornell’s decision on his wife and children is doubtlessly indelible, and it’s something they will carry with them for the rest of their days. I suppose that speaks to what I was alluding to in the previous paragraph – for Cornell to take this step, he must have been grappling with something that far exceeds simple explanation.
No matter how you try to sum it up, it’s terribly sad, but to chalk it up as a dead alt.rocker who wrote gloomy songs about death is a lazy, ignorant and unduly insulting disservice. Don’t do it.
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