Flaming Pablum

The Search for the White Whale

I went to high school on the Upper East Side, back in the early-to-mid 80’s. It was a Jesuit high school in much the same vein as those depicted in books like Jim Carroll’s “The Basketball Diaries” or in the 1985 Andrew McCarthy comedy, “Heaven Help Us” (only without as much gratuitous corporal punishment). And while the Jesuits prided themselves on being an order of cut-the-crap hard-asses (kinda like the Marines of Catholicism), it was still a comparatively permissive environment. As upper-classmen, kids were allowed to smoke in the student commons (a glorified, basement-level cafeteria with battered, wood-paneled walls and a decrepit White Rock soda machine) and we were allowed out during our respective lunch breaks, relatively free to walk around the neighborhood for those forty-minute periods.

My personal lunch routine was to walk west to Madison Avenue and buy an order of French fries --- that’s it, just French fries -– at a tiny greasy-spoon diner called Jackson Hole. I’d then bring that back to the student commons and consume it, vainly swatting away classmates who’d try to swoop in to swipe one of my precious fries (hey, when all you‘re having for lunch is an order of French fries, EACH ONE MATTERS!). In retrospect, it’s somewhat astonishing that I survived on such a limited diet of greasy starch and tasteless-but-surgarful White Rock soda.

In any case, across the avenue from the fine epicurean establishment wherein I procured my daily order of French fries was a long-standing restaurant called Moby Dick’s. Given the literary allusion of its moniker, I assume it was a seafood joint, but I can’t confirm, as I never darkened its doors. Despite that, Moby Dick’s remained noteworthy as it featured a rather distinctive entrance. Perched precariously atop its ocean-blue awning was a ---- WAIT FOR IT – relatively large, grinning white whale. I don’t know for how long that presumably plaster whale had been holding court up on that awning, but it certainly dated as far back as I could remember, and was a bit of a neighborhood landmark. I always kind of enjoyed it. I mean, it didn’t make me want to eat seafood or anything, but it was cool bit of artful frivolity.

Dates get hazy here, as we’re talking about long goddamn time ago, but I want to say it would have been at some point during the tail end of my junior year (which would make it about the spring of 1984). A slave to my habits even then, I was making my daily trek to Jackson Hole to fetch my regular order of fries (although perhaps I’d branched out by that point, and augmented proceedings with an actual burger). While waiting for the light to change, I looked up to find something not quite right. It then struck me. The whale atop the blue awning at Moby Dick’s was missing. I mean, the restaurant still looked open for business, but their signature flourish was gone. It made no sense. Why would the whale have been removed?

Later that summer, I got the full scoop.

Back at school, we had a certain English teacher who – for the sake of this narrative -– I’ll refer to as Mr. Humbert. Humbert was a much admired fellow, as he boasted a quick wit, a youthful, rebellious demeanor and an endearingly insouciant regard towards the school’s administration. His classes were informative, engaging and even fun, and many of us looked up to Mr. Humbert, as he felt like “one of us,” so to speak. Members of my class weren’t the only ones who appreciated Mr. Humbert – who, given the humble income of educators at the time, moonlit in the summer months at the Baskin Robbins just up the street, as it happened, from Moby Dick’s. It was certainly odd to see one’s English teacher dispensing ice cream to snot-nosed Upper East Side youngsters, but I believe we all respected Mr. Humbert’s work ethic.

Now, honestly, I don’t recall if it was specifically prompted by some quip he might have uttered about it, or perhaps because it was such a prominent and obvious character from Humbert’s slavishly beloved American literature, but the missing white, plaster whale was allegedly liberated from its long-tethered moorings atop the awning of Moby Dick’s restaurant by a resourceful coterie of upperclassmen -- whose identities have never been confirmed, or at least not to me – and given to Mr. Humbert on behalf their entire class as a token of their collective esteem. Legend further has it that in order to successfully remove the unwieldy replica of the fabled aquatic marine mammal, they had to cut it in two. One wonders how this feat was achieved with any semblance of stealth, efficiency or finesse, but – somehow – they managed this bit of petty larceny and wanton vandalism.

There may be more to this particular story, but, honestly, it’s so long ago, that it’s hard to dig that far back. Last I heard, Mr. Humbert – who left our school shortly after my class graduated a year later – still possessed the two halves of the white whale, although I don’t know if he still does. After an umpteenth reunion a couple of years back, Mr. Humbert made a bit of a histrionic statement about needing to sever ties with us, for whatever reason, and move on with his life. So be it. Again, there may be more to this story.

Anyway, the only reason I’m discussing any of this here is because for the longest time, I’d searched the internet for an image of that stupid whale. I figured there had to have been some sort of documentation of it somewhere out there, but my search always came up empty. That is, until last week.

As I’m wont to do, I was perusing through YouTube and stumbled upon a curious clip titled “Impressions of Manhattan.” The description for same reads as follows…

Here are the first images committed to film by Joe and Hernan, while students at Elizabeth High School in Elizabeth New Jersey circa 1985-1987. This sequence features a look at New York City, part of a class trip organized by our "filmmaking" teacher (she was a photography teacher who was dumped into the fledgling film program by an administration that couldn't care less about the difference between still imagery and the moving kind). Whatever. We were 15 or 16 years old. While our friends were back in NJ doing algebra, we were let loose in NYC with movie cameras.

Now, I’ll argue with those dates, as I am fairly firmly certain that the events described in the paragraphs above happened prior to the end of 1984. Why do I say that? Well, because during the course of this video, not only is the viewer treated to a great array of images of NYC from that particular era, but the camera also ventures inside the very same Baskin Robbins Mr. Humbert worked in, then walks outside to capture … WAIT FOR IT … the white whale still sitting atop the blue awning of Moby Dick’s….

Watch the full clip here.

In 2017, the space Moby Dick formerly occupied is a Le Pain Quoditien. The space that was the Baskin Robbins Mr. Humbert served up scoops in is now part of a TD Bank. The Jackson Hole I regularly procured my French fries in is long gone, its building razed to accommodate a new one that is now a clothiers of some kind. My school is still there.

Smoke & Flame in the Village

“Aren’t you on East 9th?”

Thus read a text from my college friend, Toomey. It was a weirdly specific query, one that came with a something of a jolt.

“Well, I’m at the office at the moment, but yes, I live there --- why?”

“Did you hear about the fire? Just west of Broadway??”

It was chillingly reminiscent of a text I’d gotten two years earlier from a friend from high school that read “Dude, your neighborhood just exploded,” wrongly assuming I lived closer to the corner of East 7th and Second Avenue, wherein a gas explosion killed two restaurant workers and essentially brought three separate buildings down.

In this instance, the calamity was indeed much closer to home -– literally and figuratively, but it was mercifully not my building that was on fire. The five-alarm blaze is believed to have spread from a fire in the ventilation system of Bully’s Deli on Broadway just north of 8th Street. E.V. Grieve snapped and posted the photo at the top of the post, looking west down 8th Street from Astor Place.

I’d like to thank those who’ve reached out. Our kids are at their grandmother’s out on Long Island. When my wife and I got home later in the evening, we found Broadway closed off from Union Square to 8th street. I don’t believe I’ve seen that many fire-engines since September 11th.

In any case, we've since lost our landline, cable service and WiFi, so apologies if you've been trying to get in touch. But we're all fine, which is sadly more than can be said for the poor residents of 60 East 9th. I have one friend who lives in that building. He and his family are okay, but spent the night at a friend’s in Brooklyn. It remains to be seen if their apartment was damaged.

This morning, the air in the neighborhood was still acrid, and the damage to the upper floors of the block-long building (the Broadway-side twin, of sorts, to my University Place building) looked harrowingly substantial.

Anyway, without any internet service at home, there may be a slight delay in regular updates here. We’ll see.

In the interim, be safe, have a happy 4th, be with your loved ones and count your blessings.

Can't Happen Here!

Rainbow saw it coming. But did anyone listen to Rainbow? No. No one listened to Rainbow. And now look where we are!

Apologize to Rainbow! 

Never Another Other

Not to get too melodramatic about it, but Other Music closed a year and two days ago. You may remember I wrote about it here and here. Its closing emphatically pounded a nail into the coffin of Manhattan’s once-thriving network of independent music shops. A paltry few remain (Generation Records, Academy, Record Runner and Downtown Music Gallery, to name my personal favorites), but the loss of Other Music was a real body-blow, given its lovingly curated stock and authoritative staff. It wasn’t just a spot to purchase goods, it was a place to hang out, browse, discover, discuss and experience.

Regardless, because, of course, everything sucks now, Other Music was pushed off its perch. The space it occupied (above as of last August) has remained dormant ever since, although I believe I recently saw some activity therein. I shudder to think what venture will take its place.

In any case, for those of us, like myself, who mourn the loss of Other Music, a very optimistic congregation of filmmakers who call themselves Production Company Productions is looking to raise a whopping $70, 000.00 for the purposes of making the definitive documentary about the lost shop and its significance to New York City’s community of slavish music geeks.

If you click on over to their Kickstarter page, you’ll see a nice trailer, featuring appropriate luminaries waxing rhapsodic about Other Music like Daniel Kessler of Interpol ... which is slightly odd being that he worked at the comparatively unsung Route 66 Records before hitting the big time. Personally speaking, I’m a little wary of establishing a connection between Other Music and the generation of new millennial indie bands like the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Interpol (currently being lionized in Lizzie Goodman's "Meet Me in the Bathroom"). I mean, sure, those bands and their contemporaries were certainly a part of Other Music, but the shop also offered so much more than stuff like that. I certainly wasn’t going in there looking for Animal Collective records, and I was in there several times a damn week.

I first heard about this, however, by my curmudgeonly metalhead friend Phil (he of Burning Ambulance, and the gent that drafted me last year to write about the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion). While I do miss Other Music, Phil does raise a valid point, in his own acidic way.

You know what America really needs right now, while we're in literally life-threatening crisis mode on multiple fronts? Another fucking documentary about a fucking record store. Donate today!

The Song Retains The Name

DNA covering Led Zeppelin at CBGB, 1982.

Back to the Misfits' Corner

In the wake of posting the solution to the Misfits quandary, I was going to leave it at that, but then I learned that today is Glenn Danzig's birthday, so figured I'd go the extra mile, especially since I had the afternoon off. As such, here, once again, is the cover of the Max's Kansas City bootleg (featuring a distortion of Lowit's original shot...

And here's that spot -- West 11th at Washington Street -- today. The concrete lip and steps are gone.

And here is the original head-on shot. Here's me this afternoon in approximately the same spot.

There ya have it. Happy b-day, Glenn.

Soundtrack of My Life

I was perusing through the NME site not too long back, and they had a compelling feature called Soundtrack of My Life, wherein they quiz various luminaries about the records that scored, impacted and/or changed  their lives. It’s by no means that original an idea (I’m reminded of The Quietus’ regular featured “Baker’s Dozen,” which I discussed way back when). In any case, I thought I’d take a crack at it myself. Here we go...

The first song I remember hearing
Long before discovering rock, pop, punk, metal, whathaveyou, there was always music in our home when I was growing up. Between them, my mom and step-father had amassed a wide collection of records, including such perennial parent favorites by Herb Albert & the Tijuana Brass, the Baja Marimba Band, the Windjammers, Stan Getz, Dave Brubeck, Astrid Gilberto and the like. My mom brought a bit more pop and rock to the proceedings with her selection of early Beatles albums, James Taylor and Carol King, while my step-father clogged up the place with loads of classical music, including everything from the kinda-metal “1812 Overture” by Tchaikovsky through Switched-On Bach by Wendy Carlos. They met in the middle with their mutual appreciation of Simon & Garfunkel, Cat Stevens and Abba. Futher adding to that mix, my grandparents were big fans of Broadway showtunes, Calypso records and cabaret favorites like Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel. Overall, my sister and I were exposed to a great deal of diverse stuff, for which I am eternally grateful. I do believe that the seeds for my life-long music fandom were sewn by all that music my family loved.

This all said, I think the first song I remember being played with some regularity that goes way back for me is “Mas Que Nada” by Sergio Mendes & Brazil `66, which -– I believe -– was a big ol' favorite of my mom’s. And, in retrospect, it does actually fucking rock. Here `tis now.

The first song I fell in love with
Once again, well prior to hearing pop on FM radio or rock’n’roll, I had the records in my parents’ and grandparents’ collection, and as I mentioned way back on this post, I was particularly smitten by this one Calypso record my grandparents owned by a gent named Blind Blake. Yeah, there’s an old blues guy named Blind Blake, as well, but this ain’t him. This is a gent who my grandparents saw perform during some ancient trip to the Bahamas. They thought he was wildly entertaining, so they bought the record (I want to say they saw him play at the airport, which is odd), and then proceeded to play the crap out of it on a regular basis. As such, I heard it quite a few times, and grew to find it entirely hilarious. This was my favorite song of his, being that it goes into grisly detail of how Blake is going to exact bloodthirsty revenge on old Jones for makin’ off with his girl. It’s awesome. Crank it.

The first album I bought
I was fortunate enough to have an older sister who routinely brought great new music into the house, including crucial records by The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Parliament, Blondie, The Police, The Buggles, The Vapors and ... err... Supertramp. But when I started branching out on my own, the first record I spent my own dubiously-earned money on was Dressed to Kill by KISS, lovingly procured from a long-shuttered record shop called Sam’s Record Shack. It was on Main Street in Westhampton Beach, two towns over from where we were spending our summer in Quogue. I used to furtively play the crap out of that single slab of wax, and -– say what you will about KISS -- it verily opened up a whole new world for me. I still own it and play it today.

The song that reminds me of the 70’s
I believe I more than covered this question on this old post from last year, but for some reason, the first songs that come to mind are “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress” by the Hollies, and then, of course, this one … which wins.

The first gig I went to
The first proper concert I went to was DEVO. It was Halloween night of 1981, and they were playing the grand and glorious stage of Radio City Music Hall on their New Traditionalists tour. I don’t remember there being an opening act. I went with my grade-school chum Spike (not his real name, immortalized here). I bought a t-shirt and an energy dome. I still have the latter.

This is that show…

The song that reminds me of the 80’s
The notion of picking a single song to sum up the entire decade seems fairly ludicrous, especially given the wide array of pivotal experience in those ten years. I mean, the decade started when I was in about 7th grade, and I graduated college in the last year of the decade, so to pick one, solitary tune the sums my adolescence, my high school years and my college years seems laughably unlikely. But, okay … I think this one sort of nails it…

The song that makes me laugh

The song I can no longer listen to
I don’t know that I can “no longer listen” to anything (a bit melodramatic, that), but there are certain songs that no longer retain the significance for me that they may have once held, for any number of reasons. This is one of those songs. It’s not that I don’t like it anymore, but it fails to summon the same feelings it once did.

The song I can’t get out of my head
This song has never left my head, and plays on a continuous loop…

My favorite new song

The song that changed my life
Without a moment’s hesitation

The song I do at karaoke
I don’t regualrly do karaoke -- and that's really not an accident -- but did only just a few weeks ago, with some other families from our kids’ school. The evening was exceptionally rough on my tinnitus-plauged ears, but I joined in all the same. I wanted to do “Lust for Life” by Iggy Pop, but felt that the length of the song might cause some in attendance to revolt, so I inexplicably went with this one…

The song that makes me dance
If any explanation is necessary, you are devoid of the funk.

The song that reminds me of home

The song I want played at my funeral
I don’t want my funeral to be mawkish and maudlin. Play this loud.

SOLVED: Misfits in the City

Hey again, all…

Sorry for the delay in closing the loop on this one, but it actually ended up coming together faster than I’d expected.

After doing that rudimentary stroll around the West Village with my kids and coming up empty (although, it turns out, we were very close), Flaming Pablum-friend Chung Wong got on the case and landed the plane. Once again, I’m respecting the wishes of photographer Roxanne Lowit and not posting the original photos, but if you click back on my original post on the subject, you can see where those images have been posted elsewhere on the `net. For the sake of reference, though, you have my daughter's rendering of the spot above, and the sleeve of the Max's Kansas City bootleg below.

Long story short: The spot in question is West 11th Street at Washington Street.

In any case, here’s Chung’s take:

After Bob backtracked to Duane Park for Walter Steding location ID (similar background today, but different foreground today), I got inspired to backtrack to places on Washington St again that had similar background buildings where the foreground was different today. 

I too at first did not think the corner entrance was at 341 W 11th st at Washington St.

The background buildings on 11th St looked similar. 

The only old NYPL photo i found with corner "steps" only showed a partial view.

Breakthrough came with the Edmund V Gillon Jr photo from 1970-85 showing the old entrance below. 

As can see in the Gillon photo above, even the graffiti matches up. My kids and I had walked past this building and discounted it because the steps are now gone, the door is now a window and it’s gate off. That’s what happens over the course of forty-something years, I guess.

Oddly enough, I’ve actually been inside that building. The little sister of a college friend once rented a studio apartment in that building circa 1992, and I remember getting in a very heated debate about the merits of Adam & the Ants therein.

More recently, a latter iteration of the Misfits reconvened for two dates last year, and are rumored to be considering further reunion shows. Guitarist Bobby Steele, last I heard, is still living in the East Village and still fronting the umpteenth version of The Undead. Drummer Joey Image left the Misfits after the Night of the Living Dead EP, and later played with The Whorelords (who I fleetingly discussed here) and later played with bands with chuckle-worthy names like Human Buffet, The Mary Tyler Whores, Jersey Trash and The Strap-Ons. He currently plays with an outfit called Forever Horror/Horror Forever.

I never heard back from Roxanne Lowit’s assistant. Lowit, meanwhile, was the subject of her own documentary in 2015, although I don’t believe the Misfits were ever mentioned. I don’t know if she still lives/works in the West Village.

And, just because... 

Taking Care of (Horror) Business: Finding the Misfits’ Corner

PREAMBLE:

This post ended up being a great deal more complicated than I’d originally envisioned.

As with so many other “photo quizzes” I’ve posted before (like The Stranglers in Gramercy Park, Kraut on East 7th Street, Tom Verlaine on Vesey Street, Joe Jackson’s bar-booth, that long and agonizing search for that Lunachicks shot, to name but a few), there had been a notable couple of images by a certain photographer that had captured my imagination, specifically — just as with the examples above — featuring a favorite band of mine depicted in what I assumed was a location right here in Manhattan. When I felt I had enough of a narrative in place to flesh out a proper backstory and launch another sleuthing investigation for the purposes of a post, I figured I’d cut right to the chase. I gleaned that the photographer in question was still among the living, so I reached out to her by way of her official website. Given the inanely trivial nature of my query (something only the truly geeky fanboy might care about), I did not expect a reply. Imagine my surprise, then, when I got one.

Seemingly amused by my interest in the specificities of the images in question, a representative of that photographer wrote back and confirmed that yes, indeed, the photographer remembered the shoot and counts those images as some of her favorites. The rep also gave me some massive clues as to where the shots may have been taken. That said, he mentioned that he was out of the studio, but that he’d do a little research when he got back. Greatly encouraged and thankful, I wrote back to see if it might be okay if I repurposed a couple of the original images for the purposes of establishing context here on my stupid blog.

There, as Shakespeare’s Hamlet famously exclaimed, was the rub.

As is entirely her right, the photographer in question does not give me permission to publish her images on my blog.

Now, that is, of course, a huge bummer, but I totally get it. They are her pictures, no one else’s. As such, I’ve had to be a little more resourceful and employ a few workarounds, while still respecting the wishes of the photographer.

END OF PREAMBLE

Back in 1979, an intrepid photographer named Roxanne Lowit was drafted for a shoot with an outfit named The Misfits. While they’d only been active for a couple of years, by this point, the band’s ranks had already gone through a number of changes. The iteraiton Lowit was intent on capturing –- featuring vocalist Glenn Danzig and bassist Jerry Only, flanked by guitarist Bobby Steele and drummer Joey Image -– had only congealed in December of the previous year. In January of 1979, that line-up would record three songs, released the following June, that would arguably become the band’s finest hour, that being the “Horror Business” single (above). Shortly afterwards, drummer Image would split, and guitarist Steele would be axed (thus freed to start his own similarly inclined combo, The Undead). But, at the time of Lowit’s photoshoot, the “Horror Business” version of the Misfits was, more or less, a solid unit of happy little punky campers.

Now, as fate would have it, the reason for Lowit’s shoot remains undetermined. Was she drafted by a magazine? Was she recruited by Plan 9 (the band’s own indie label, which was ultimately just Danzig and Only) to shoot promo photos? I’m not sure. Regardless, Lowit ended up taking several photographs of the band during that session that have since gone on to become iconic images. Presumably captured over the course of one evening, Lowit’s pictures of the Misfits perfectly capture the band’s richly cultivated sensibility.

As I mentioned in the preamble, upon reaching out to Ms. Lowit, it was relayed to me that she does not give permission for me to post said images on my blog. That said, those images are out there. From the Lowit shoot, there are shots of the boys fooling around with a child’s toy car, a shot of them standing in front of a gate (standing on what looks like a brain), a shot of them mugging for the camera in attack mode, a shot of them jumping around, a shot of them standing on top of an actual car, and a few others. There are two specific photos from the event, however, that have haunted me.

I cannot remember when I first spied the first captivating shot, but more recently, one can see a distorted representation of it on the cover of the “Max’s Kansas City” bootleg vinyl 7”. Here’s a shot of me holding same.

The image is of the Misfits standing on the concrete lip of a sharp, city corner. I remember originally thinking it looked like a scene from a film from that very year, that being Walter Hill’s urban gang epic, “The Warriors.” They boys are all in black leather, with Only and Danzig dressed up in their undead finery, and drummer Joey Image wearing some rather incongruously frivolous stripy trousers. You can see a slightly better representation of the original photo here.

What’s haunted me about this photograph is, of course — the location. It looks like a familiar spot — maybe a loading dock? — but I have yet to pinpoint it. There’s a bit of graffiti scrawled behind Jerry Only (which is invariably long gone) and some very weathered steps beneath them.

Then, I found a bigger clue. A straight-on shot by Lowit at the same spot. You can see that picture here, but for the purposes of this post, I drafted my daughter to illustrate a rendering of the photo.

This photo has way more information to work with. Note the distinctive trim on the step Danzig’s boots are resting on, and the flat, almost shiny plane on the wall behind the band, around the corner from the concrete lip they’re pictured standing on in the other shot?

After I found this photo, that’s when I reached out to Roxanne Lowit, explaining my curiosity as to where the shoot took place. Was it even in Manhattan (given that the band are technically from Lodi, New Jersey)? Did Ms. Lowit — who is now a renowned fashion photographer — even remember taking these pictures? At the time, the Misfits would not have been that that well known. 

In surprisingly short order, an assistant of Lowit’s wrote back, saying:

Roxanne Lowit absolutely remembers this shoot as these are some of her favorite photo's. Hopefully I will be back in the studio next week and will look at the originals and should be able to give you an exact location...for now I can tell you West Village around Washington street near Bethune Street where Roxanne had her studio.

Armed with that information and a print out of the straight-on photo, I set out one Saturday afternoon a few weeks back with my kids to try and find the spot. We trekked all around the area of the West Village in question, but nothing really revealed itself. Granted, in the in almost-forty years (!!!) since these photographs were taken, downtown Manhattan has changed somewhat radically and it’s entirely conceivable that the building in question has been razed to accommodate any number of new developments.

As such, while my suspicion that the spot in question is somewhere around the Westbeth Artists Community, I was unable to find the exact location.

As such, I’m throwing it open — WHERE IS THIS LOCATION?

Get cracking, shot-spotters.

Somewhere 'After' the Rainbow

I'm not sure I totally agree with every point of this analysis, but anything that deals with my favorite film of all time is a-okay with me. See what you think.

SURRENDER DOROTHY!