Flaming Pablum

Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance

Chasing Bees on North Border Island

Mercury Rev’s debut album. Yerself is Steam arrived in my mailbox seemingly during the height of the British indie “shoegazer” boom of the early 90’s. Despite being not at all British (the band hailed from Buffalo, originally), Mercury Rev were touted by many as being spiritually akin to the shoegazers, given their hazy, murky, fuzz-laden sound. Honestly speaking, as a big fan of bands like Ride, Lush, Curve, Chapterhouse and the like, I didn’t really hear it. To my ears, Mercury Rev just sounded like freaked-out, acid-damaged psychedelic rock that wasn’t particularly tethered to any particular scene or sound. Later albums found Mercury Rev totally changing up their music (following the departure of original lead singer David Baker), and the invocations of all-things shoegazer sorta went away.

While it wasn’t entirely my cup of tea, I did kinda dig that first album, slipping tracks from same onto mixtapes for various friends. Incongruously sandwiched between comparativley straightforward rock, songs from Yerself is Steam usually prompted confusion and annoyance, which I found rewarding. I never bothered to pick up another record of theirs, especially as they started to leaaning toward alt.country. They since released nine more albums, and I couldn’t tell you much about any of them, but I still think Yerself is Steam is pretty entertaining.

The only reason I’m bringing them up today, however, is that I only recently learned that the video from the album’s first track, “Chasing a Bee’ – a suitably bizarre slice of meandering psychedelica flecked with avalanches of guitar noise -– was filmed within the forebidding confines of North Border Island, the fabled leper quarantine off the Bronx that once counted Typhoid Mary as an occupant. You can read more about the infamous location here.

Last I heard, North Border Island was still strictly off-limits to the public, so how the freaks in Mercury Rev were able to shoot a (typically surreal) video there is a bit of a mystery.

In any case, here it is. It’s weird. You’ve been warned.

Behind The Bowie Bouillabaisse: The Montage That Fell to Earth

I realize I’ve already posted my largely-complaint-driven review of the soon-to-vanish David Bowie Is exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum (read that here, should you care), but I heard something a few days ago that reminded me of something I’d forgotten to mention. So, I’m going to mention it now.

But let me preface this by first saying that I have a pathological distaste for the term “mashup.” I can’t tell you why, but it bothers the Hell out of me. Montage, Collage, Hybrid, Amalgam, Bouillabaisse, Fusion… there’s a veritable glossary of terms one could employ before resorting to fuckin’ mashup. Like mic drops and slow clapping, it really needs to be retired with all speed. Help me with this.

Anyway, while I believe I suggested that the amount of information on offer during the course of David Bowie Is frequently bordered on the overwhelming, one aspect I was particularly struck by was the music. Now, obviously, an exhibit devoted to David Bowie demands discerning representation of the great man’s work, but trying to divine what select tracks to cull from the sprawling Bowie canon (let alone what to omit) would surely be a Sophie’s Choice. To present the widest spectrum of music to serve as interstitial content between specific points in the show, longtime Bowie producer/collaborator Tony Visconti was recruited to compile a montage of suitable Bowie songs, a task which turned from a spartan three track concept into a --- WAIT FOR IT -- mega-“mashup” that featured elements from 49 different compositions, meticulously woven with reverence and subtlety into a single, compelling piece.

More sophisticated that simply a “Stars on 45”-style medley, Visconti’s Bowie Bouillabaisse (hear how much better that sounds?) discreetly wove together different lyrics, refrains, riffs, choruses, middle-eights and flourishes that touched on virtually every point of the catalog. The end results exuded the same reverent reimagining as on the Love remix album from 2006 for the Beatles. Both enjoyable as a single work and as spot-the-ingredient puzzle, it really intrigued me. 

Evidently, I was not alone in the is appreciation. Studio 360 devoted a segment, sitting down with Visconti to walk listeners through the process of compilation. You can hear that compelling podcast here:

I was truly hoping that end of it, they’d say the montage would be available for separate purchase somewhere, but so far… no dice.

Also, I couldn’t help but think about this, the whole time…

Mystery in Nu York City

I wish I could find a cleaner, clearer version of this, but it’s still pretty cool.

This is a promotional clip of some kind, although not the official music video, for “We Take Mystery (To Bed)” by Gary Numan. Herein we say Gary and band driving around New York City in a Thunderbird convertible, visiting notable locales like ….um….the West Side Highway, the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue and 89th Street, Central Park, Park Avenue, Sixth Avenue around Rockefeller Center and Studio 54, disembarking on West 54th Street to adjourn to a studio wherein they proceed to lip-synch to the robotically funky track in question. As one does. 

All this would have been transpiring circa the fall of 1982, or so. Evidently, he played the Ritz on East 11th on October 26th of that same year, so perhaps this was filmed during that same visit? That show, incidentally, was later released as a bootleg called Living Ornaments `82, should you care.

It’s not going to change your life, but it’s enjoyable…

Pleasantville Calling: Dave Marin on Why He'd Rather Be the Right Profile Than the Wrong'Em Boyo

I’ve been down this road before. I posted about Missing Foundation, and Peter Missing wrote in. I posted a couple of times about the great John Lurie, and he wrote in. I posted about SWANS, and Jarboe weighed in. I posted about Alien Sex Fiend, and drummer Johnny Ha Ha wrote in.  It never fails to surprise me, but it does happen.

Imagine my surprise, then, when after posting, last week, about the Wall Street Journal profile of one Dave Marin and his quest to correct an error on the sleeve of the Clash’s iconic London Calling, who should get in touch but Dave Marin himself.

Now, as I stated on that earlier post, I am the VERY LAST PERSON ON EARTH who should be taking Mr. Marin to task for his scrupulously detailed pedantry, as he is clearly my brother in that capacity. Witness the fact that in 2016, I devoted no fewer than four separate, long posts about pinpointing the location of the original photograph by Don McCullin that Mike Coles manipulated to grace the cover the Killing Joke’s debut album. Also in 2016, I penned a whopping NINE goddamn posts here about my own feverish quest to divine the location of a 1990-era photograph of the Lunachicks. Like Dave Marin, I am absolutely no stranger to this variant of geeky mania. Here’s what our man had to say.

Thanks for picking up on the WSJ article. I’m a fan of your site (we’ve connected in the past over some photos and locations). Don’t worry I have not been all consumed by my Clash Smash quest. The “life’s goal” is obviously a bit overblown. I’ll admit I do need more hobbies. And I think in the 4 years since I created the YouTube video I’ve come to realize, especially in this day and age, that FACTS ARE IMPORTANT. Facts are, well, FACTS! Sure, the date doesn’t really matter but the exercise was fun and it’s interesting to discover just what’s available on line. Am I any more looney than people that remember the pitch count of a particular hit during a particular at bat during a baseball game 70 years ago (listen to WFAN any day to hear those recited) or those that care about vintages of wines and differences in tastes?! Who cares!!!!! But facts shouldn’t be argued-facts are facts. And today they’re more important than ever. Be Best. Dave

I am relieved that Dave has both retained his sense of humor about the whole thing, and doesn’t think I’m a complete a-hole for calling his obsession “tragic.” And while his name didn’t ring a bell, I looked back and he has indeed weighed in on a few entries here in the past. Go figure.

More to the point, I cannot agree more with his assertion that FACTS ARE IMPORTANT, especially in an era when our flatulent warthog of a president brands the press “our country’s biggest enemy.” As someone who spent about 23 years of his career in journalism, I am especially vexed about this comment. Fuck Trump. I so look forward to his administration’s inevitable unraveling and to see the man removed from the White House in handcuffs.

But I digress.

Anyway, cheers to you Dave Marin. No hard feelings. I salute you. Beers aloft. This one’s for you.

Wish You Weren't President

Courtesy of the inventive minds at Why The Longplay Face. 

Flowers for Bourdain

Les Halles on Park Avenue South, where Anthony Bourdain famously worked as a chef, has been closed since 2016, and the space it once occupied has been dormant since shuttering in March of that year. 

Since news broke on Friday of Bourdain's passing, mourners have been leaving flowers, notes and mementos in a makeshift memorial. My kids' school is a couple of blocks away. After dropping them off this morning, I looped back around to the former Les Halles to take a look.

Click on it to enlarge.

Greene Street Gallantry

Once upon a time, it seemed like you couldn’t walk through Washington Square Park without unwittingly stepping into the frame of some hapless NYU film student’s cinematic opus. I always used to imagine some weary film professor viewing the results. “Oh, great…..another one done in Washington Square Park!" In a city rich with visually dynamic locations, their dependable tendency to shoot in Washington Square always struck me as myopic and lazy. But just as the swallows used to return to Capistrano, you’d continue to see them flock to that iconic park to grapple with the rudimentary tools of cinema.

Nowadays, it seems I don’t see them there as much. Maybe I’m not looking hard enough, or maybe the leaps and bounds of digital technology have rendered some of that process obsolete? Who knows?

In any case, I recently stumbled upon the student film below — notably not shot in Washington Square, but in its neighboring vicinity. Filmed in 1972 on Greene Street between Waverly Place and 8th Street, the mechanics of the short film are explained by its student director, one Craig Highberger ...

Made when I was 19 in "Sight & Sound" class at NYU Film School, we were issued a World War II vintage Bell & Howell Filmo which was a wind-up 16mm film silent camera with a three lens turret and a 100 foot (about 3 minute) roll of Kodak Plus-X B&W reversal film - the assignment was to tell a story in two minutes! My professors were Charles T. Milne and Haig Manoogian.

Now, I'm personally intrigued by this, as this particular strip is practically my backyard, and really doesn't look all that different today. There's no longer an easily accessible door at 255 Greene wherein to make a hasty getaway into that dorm -- the same dorm, incidentally, that Rick Rubin was to launch Def Jam records out of some years later. 

Take a look.

Rest in Peace, Anthony Bourdain

It pains me that apart from a few passing allusions to the man, I only really devoted one single post to Anthony Bourdain in this blog’s almost-thirteen-year existence, that post being a cheekily petty potshot at him for supporting a fellow chef’s dubiously named (and since shuttered) venture. In all truth, Anthony Bourdain was a bona fide hero of mine. His style was the perfect blend of smart, funny, cool, discriminating and outspoken, and he was a master storyteller and, obviously, pretty handy in the kitchen. Beyond being cool, funny and insouciant, he wrote from the heart, spoke truth to power and was a frequent champion of the underdog. He was a tireless advocate for doing, seeing and trying new things and broadening horizons. News of his suicide, this morning, completely took the wind out of my sails. I’m sure I’m not alone, in that capacity.

Like most, I first came across Bourdain via his now-iconic culinary tell-all, “Kitchen Confidential” at some point in the `90s. While a great read by any standard, having toiled for several summers as a dish-dog in the rear kitchen of the Westhampton iteration of The Barefoot Contessa (long gone), I immediately warmed to not only Bourdain’s acerbic wit, but could completely relate to the context. He captured the dynamic perfectly, but also lifted the veil on a whole culture. Dare I suggest it, Anthony Bourdain –- more so than any other so-called “celebrity chef” -– single-handedly made working in the food industry credibly cool.

His star continued to ascend from there, of course, and I was totally onboard. I dutifully dined in homage at Les Halles on Park Avenue South (his former employer), and followed his trajectory like a fanboy, snapping up each successive book of essays, and even his first weighty cookbook. I even picked up his first crime novel, which was just as entertaining as you’d expect. Shortly afterwards, television snatched him up and he was off and running on a number of different series for various channels until he landed the gig at CNN.

And now, he’s gone. This larger-than-life character who seemed to lead such a singularly charmed, remarkable life, and who spoke so candidly and eloquently, and with such a zest for experience -– takes his own life. It is yet another testament, let alone in the same week as fashion favorite Kate Spade, that we should not be so quick to trust our preconceptions. Fame is clearly no panacea for depression.

As I noted when Chris Cornell of Soundgarden took his own life last year, the knee-jerk reaction upon hearing about such fatalities is “how could they have done this to their own children?” That unanswerable question might lead many to label the act callous and selfish, but as far as I’m concerned, it only underscores the magnitude of the pain the individual must have been in to pursue that otherwise unthinkable path.

I don’t know why Anthony Bourdain killed himself. As much as we all may feel like we knew him, we cannot begin to speculate what he was privately grappling with. I grieve for his loved ones and hope that he has attained peace and realizes how very much he will be missed.

New Pedantic: The Quest to Correct London Calling

As has been long and laboriously established, I am something of an insufferable fanboy for a lot of silly pop-culture things. I revel in minutia, seek out the furthest flung iterations, feverishly scrutinize the incidentals and celebrate the accompanying ephemera. I have still-sealed copies of certain cassettes (!!!) and multiple copies of certain albums based solely on miniscule cover-art differences and track-listing. In some instances, I refuse to part with obsolete versions of certain media despite being no longer able to play them on anything. Yeah, I’m that guy. Sorry.

For whatever reason, I take exception to folks getting their facts wrong about comparatively silly, stupid shit that, ultimately, doesn’t really matter as much as the amount of exasperation I display might suggest. Don’t believe me? Back in 2012, I devoted a post to an error Time Out New York made in identifying a certain location in my favorite movie, “After Hours.” I took Getty Images to task for misidentifying Marky Ramone as Arturo Vega. Hell, I even railed at the New York Times for getting their facts wrong about the various lead singers of Journey …. I don’t even really LIKE Journey!

A big part of this particular syndrome, of course, is the giddy ability to chime into certain conversations to deliver roundly unsolicited corrections (usually prefaced with the cloying adverb, Actually….). In my circles, this sort of irritating behavior involves predominantly music, cinema and New York City trivia, but you’re likely to find equally noxious pedants in virtually every field of human interest. From sports to the stock market and bird-watching to trainspotting, there is doubtlessly a variant of precious nerd, geek or knowitall to suit every subject. I’m sure you know a few.

As I expounded on here, however, I try to stay full aware of these tendencies and keep them more or less in check. This blog, for example, has become instrumental in exercising these demons, as it’s better to use this platform to rant about this type of idiotic bullshit than anywhere else. By doing it here, and keeping it all in perspective, I try to keep it at least amusing and informative, and not misguided and obsessive.

Enter Dave Marin.

As profiled recently in the Wall Street Journal, Marin is a 59-year-old retired salesman from Pleasantville, NY (erstwhile home of Ace Frehley) who is singularly obsessed with an alleged inaccuracy on the sleeve of the Clash’s celebrated third album, London Calling. He is steadfastly devoted to correcting this perceived mistake. “It’s my life goal,” he remarks. Incidentally – and that’s the perfect adverb to start this next sentence, as the subject is the quintessence of incidental -– the correction in question involves the cited date of the album’s iconic cover photo. I’ll let you read the whole article -– which really belongs in The Onion -- but Marin contends that the photo, shot by Pennie Smith at the Palladium on East 14th Street, was taken the day before the notes of the sleeve would suggest. He takes this position because he says he was there and still has the ticket stub.

Now, again, I am the fucking last person in the world who should be ridiculing this guy, but I just find this whole story so tragic. I mean, let’s say he manages to achieve his, once again, “life goal,” and get it officially corrected, resulting in any and all future, tactile re-issues –- should they ever happen -– reflecting his scrupulous amendment. Where does he go from there? I can hear him now. “At last, I can finally sleep at night, now that this great inaccuracty has been righted. Many nights have I tossed and turned, thinking that thousands upon thousands of oblivious Clash-fans were going about their lives blithely believing that Paul Simonon’s bass felt the unrelenting wrath of the Palladium floor on the 21st, when it was actually on the 20th! Those poor, deluded fools!”

It's not even that much of a quibble. I mean, if you’re going to get all super-dupe pedantic about something, at least make it something more substantial than a calendar error. That’s just fucking dull.

That did not stop him from making a video about it…

The thing is, he’s very possibly -– if not probably -- correct in his assertion. But why can’t he just have fun with it?

Speaking of having fun with it, my friend Ned on Facebook suggesting mass knockoff of Marin’s pose. I could not resist, making due with my colleague Peter’s vintage 3D copy of the Stoness’ Satanic Majesties Request.