Ahoy, all. Sorry for the slowdown, but as mentioned on that last post, I spent about a week and a half being sick as a dog. I’m also racing to get a few projects into better shape at the office, as I’ll be going away for a few days next week. Beyond that, it’s summer, so that means lots of kid-wrangling issues. More to the point, though, being stressed out and not feeling tip-top don’t really lend themselves to prolific posting. I shall re-find my footing shortly. I’m just feeling a bit out of sorts, at the moment.
Making matters slightly more complicated, the wife & I are going abroad for a few days next week, so I’m playing beat the clock in getting those afore-cited projects in working order to hand off to colleagues while I’m away. As a combo anniversary/birthday present for my wife, we are bound for, well …. see if you can figure it out.
Apologies for the relative slowdown in posting here, but I’m afraid I’m currently sick as a dog. Who, exactly, gets sick in the middle of July? This idiot, evidently. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice to say, they’re not pretty.
In any case, over the course of the weekend, there was a development that prompted a flurry of outrage all over my social media platforms, with lots of folks tagging me for, I imagine, the sole purpose of triggering my frothy-mouthed incredulity.
I’m talking, of course, about the new Target on Avenue A lamely appropriating the surface-level iconography of CBGB for their grand opening. You can read that whole sorry story here.
Now, once again, I’m currently achey, feverish and wheezing like an asthmatic leper, so summoning the energy, over the past few days, to furiously slam away at my keyboard about this affront was just not on the menu. More to the point, however, we’ve all been here before, and as recently as this past February, when the same new building, I believe, branded its residential complex EVGB (“East Village’s Greatest Building"…..dicks). What I had to say in that instance is pretty much the same as what I have to say in this instance. Just leave it alone, already.
Appropriating CBGB and/or other vestiges of the East Village’s former character/sensibility/cool cache is assuredly nothing new, and I totally get why people are upset about it. I certainly know why it bothers me. But as the story started making the rounds, I was struck by some of the different reactions. Over on Facebook, I’m friends with Bliss Blood, the former lead singer of the Pain Teens, who had this to say:
CBGBs was a dump. Why act like it was cool? It was shitty and filthy with terrible sound and their policy of booking totally different bands to get "turnover" on the door is one reason why there was little scene cohesion in NY. I've toured the world and practically any other venue anywhere was better than CBGBs. And their policy of not having a backline and making all the drummers set up their kits in the hallway leading to the bathroom—stupid!
Now, in my particular tenure of darkening the doors at CBGB, I was never more than a patron, while Ms Blood was a performer (and a feral one, at that — check her out on that very stage, below), so I cannot speak to her grievances about backline and drum-kit concerns with any authority, although don’t remember ever thinking the sound was that bad. But, I tried to counter her statement by suggesting that there were really two issues at play here.
Regardless of the actual, arguable merits of CBGB (versus its rhapsodized legacy), the club itself was indicative and symbolic of a place/culture/sensibility/aesthetic that has been wiped off the map by gentrification. While Target is certainly not the first entity to lamely exhume its signature trappings (see also John Varvatos, Daniel Boulud, etc.) its failure to appreciate why the appropriation might upset a few people is telling. It essentially makes mockery of something generations of NYC folks hold sacrosanct. If that feels histrionic, so be it. Dump or not, the place was signfificant. It's not for Target to trivialize.
In terms of her point about CBGB being a “shitty,” “filthy” “dump,” I really do think one would be strenuously hard-pressed to make a credible argument to the contrary. But, of course, for many, that was part of its charm. I do vividly remember seeing certain acts play CBGB for the first time and make a few telling remarks on the state of the place. I remember Gavin Friday making his solo debut in 1989 there and being particularly uncharitable. That always struck me as odd, though. I mean, the place really was a rundown hole in the wall. That’s not praise nor vilification — that’s just an observation. What had they been expecting?
The by-now-belaboured takeaway, once again, is the recognition of what CBGB launched, and what it came to represent, regardless of its sorry state of affairs towards the end of its tenure at 315 Bowery.
But in pedantically parsing and reverently re-hashing all this for the umpteenth time, I realized something pretty vividly.
I am getting kinda bored with talking about CBGB.
I don’t mean the bands and the stories and the amazing music that still sounds so vital today, but I’m tired of having to take umbrage every time something like this happens. Yes, I’ve devoted countless, weepy posts to the place here on Flaming Pablum over the past thirteen years, but let’s remember — it’s now been gone for, what, twelve years? I would indeed like to see the corporate entities trying to cheekily mine its enduring cool to cease, desist and fuck off, but also — maybe it’s time we ALLjust left it alone.
It was great. The scenes it fostered, the careers it launched and the music that came out of it were all legitimately the stuff of legend. But, things changed, and mistakes were made. The club, arguably already in a downward spiral, closed. It’s gone, and it’s never coming back. It should be celebrated, yes, but let’s also look to the future.
Of course, this could all be the Tylenol talking.
Here, meanwhile, are the Pain Teens at CBGB in 1992.
This will probably only matter to folks who are fascinated by the visual effects of aging, but whatever.
Back in the late `60s and into the early `70s, my grandparents owned a house out on the East End of Long Island on a leafy byway called Bayfield Lane. From the years of my infancy through to about age 4, or so, my mother, my sister and I spent our summers in the house. Most of my memories of the place are faint and fleeting, largely informed by old photographs, but I do still have some fairly vivid impressions of the place. Its front was ringed with a stately porch, it had what seemed like an endless, green lawn out in front, a small studio behind wherein my grandmother used to paint, and then a big, wooden barn in the very back. That’s myself with my mother and my sister standing in front of the studio. I’m the little twerp in the black sweater.
By the time I was about 4, I suppose, my grandparents ended up selling the place and relocating to a smaller home two towns over. For years and years, the big house at Bayfield Lane lived only in my memory and in the few photos we had of it. At some point during my teens in the early 80s — and I only remember this as it involved my purchase of Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind album, which came out in May of 1983 — I pedaled my bike from Sam’s Record Shack on Main Street to where I thought the old Bayfield Lane house was. By this point, now obscured by a big hedge, I couldn’t really get a proper visual on the place, but I could see the top of the old barn in the back. That’s as close as I thought I’d ever come to seeing it again.
Forty-five (!!!) years later, my mother befriended a British author in Florida, and invited her to do a reading at the local library, also out on the East End. I’m not quite sure how it came up, but during the course of that discussion, it was gleaned that this author now lives in the big Bayfield Lane house that we’d “summered” in with my grandparents all those decades ago. Mom asked if we could possibly come by and have a look at the place, and she very gamely said yes. So that’s what we did.
As someone who spends a great amount of time here ruminating on the elusive “sense of place” and/or the intangible pangs of hiraeth, the opportunity to re-enter this particular space to re-experience it was a true gift. While there’d been a few cosmetic changes made to the surrounding environs (that’s what happens in the course of four decades), it largely looked more or less how I remembered it. While the author’s family had certainly spruced up various elements of the home, they didn’t radically alter the overall appearance (which sort of defies the current trend, out there). Apart from the tantalizing addition of a beautiful pool in the back (transforming the painting studio into a pool house), it was otherwise like stepping back in time.
My sister and I even tried to replicate an old photo. The wrought iron railings have since been replaced with wood beams.
Here’s me in front of the barn from that top photo.
Every now and then, maybe you can actually go home again.
Today, I noticed three arguably alarming developments.
While it's always been in a shifting state of repair, the stretch of Cortlandt Alley between Canal Street and White Street is covered with the lattice-work of scaffolding, suggesting a rigorous makeover is underway, and probably one that will further erase the byway's signature mystique
Evidently, there is a fuckin' musical about the halcyon days of the Mudd Club in production. Stop me if I'm wrong, but commemorating the Mudd Club in the form of musical theatre seems like the swiftest possible means of sucking any semblance of remaining coolness out of it.
It seems that Seymour Stein, the music industry pioneer behind Sire Records and the forward-thinking individual who singularly fostered the careers of Mudd Club-regulars like Talking Heads, Madonna and the B-52s (among many, many others) is out of a job at Warner Bros. after 51 years.
If you use the term “starchitect” in earnest, you are my enemy.
Obviously, as an alleged “nostalgia blogger,” that might be my predictable, go-to position, but hear me out. This isn’t about nostalgia. This is more about appreciating and respecting what we already have and not seeing the need to fuck with it further.
According to this giddy piece in Curbed from last week, “The Starchitect-Led Projects That Will Transform NYC’s Skyline, Mapped”, the topography of New York City is poised to get a rigorous makeover somewhere between the opening scenes of “Blade Runner” and the backdrops on “The Jetsons.” The map of Manhattan will shortly be plagued with more artless rods, spindly spires, giant-sized shampoo bottles and other shrines to monied exclusivity to complicate the symmetry, clog up the cityscape and, of course, blot out the sun. Scrolling through this sprawling article, I felt the need to adjust the headline. This variety of vulgarly luxurious, structural priapism isn’t so much “starchitecture” as it is “devourchitecture.” It will eat Manhattan whole and render it unrecognizable.
I do not fear progress, nor do I detest innovative architecture. I just don’t think we need this much further development, especially when the streets below these gleaming towers are peppered with countless empty storefronts and “FOR LEASE” signs.
As recently noted, for the past thirteen years, I’ve devoted a sizable swathe of this blog to documenting my native Manhattan’s vanishing network of music shops (and by that I mean outlets that sell records, tapes and compact discs, not places that sell instruments). While most of the rest of the world seems content to fully embrace digital streaming technology for their listening pleasure, for those of us who still hold the tactile manifestations of our favorite music dear, the swift erosion of this city’s community of independent record shops has been legitimately painful to witness. If you’re a regular reader here, you know it’s a topic I frequently return to.
But apart from the hallelujah choir of pedantic music geeks and fellow downtown nostalgists, the rest of the world -– and specifically the younger generation of millennials I all-too-frequently lambast –- probably isn’t especially bothered by these sorts of developments. The loss of yet another dusty, old CD shop for me might mean the end of an era, while -– for them –- it means the potential of another pricey sneaker emporium or vaping establishment or tony fitness joint or whatever mindless bullshit that generation is excited about. Yeah, I’m not bitter at all.
A college student who’d heard Rob’s comparable laments about the sad state of NYC”s once-thriving music shop scene, she decided to make a “story map” of these lost shops as a school project, and asked if she could use some of my photos. I said sure, of course, and didn’t really think more of it
Well, a week or two back, she wrote in to thank me for my input and show me her work. I asked if I could share it here, and she said ‘sure,’ so please avail yourselves to…
It's official. Flaming Pablum is thirteen years old today, and each entry I post still feels like it could be my last. But, something always seems to strike me, and I perpetuate it. That's pretty much been the model for all these years. Hard to believe.
This will matter to pretty much no one, but I'm going to go ahead and cite it anyway, because why not? It's my blog, etc.
I've spoken about it here a few times, but starting in about 1989, I started writing and performing editorial triage for a tiny, independent music mag here in New York called The New York Review of Records. I wrote about it at greater length on this post, if you genuinely care. It didn't really pay at all, and it never really took off, but I made a lot of great friends and connections out of it, learned a bunch of stuff and heard tons of great music from it as a result.
In any case, along the way, I was afforded the opportunity to regularly contribute content to the magazine, providing me with a multitude of bylines. That our distribution was piss-poor was another matter, but at least my stuff was getting published. That was a genuine bonus. As a result, I conducted numerous interviews with artists like Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, Wayne Hussey of the Mission UK, Andrew Eldritch of the Sisters of Mercy, Matt Cameron of Soundgarden, Shaun Ryder of the Happy Mondays, all four member of Sonic Youth and a slew of other folks. That was always pretty exciting. I also penned countless reviews of the albums of the day, unleashing my slavishly overwritten opinions in bona fide print.
In time, however, the NYROR and I started moving in different directions. I still wrote for them, but I needed a steady gig that actually paid. Eventually, I moved on to other things. At some point in the mid-90s, the New York Review of Records simply stopped publishing, and that was pretty much that.
Being that the magazine's overall impact was pretty damn modest, I'm always amused, these days, when I see its unlikely invocation here and there. As I mentioned back on that other post, I was pretty shocked to find that someone was trying to sell old issues of it on eBay, at one point. Actually, as of right now, someone is trying to pawn an issue of same for $25.00. See that Buzzcocks interview cited on the cover? That was one of mine.
Anyway, this long and needlessly winding preamble is basically all just to set-up that while I usually regard my involvement with the magazine as a pivotal experience, in the grand scheme of things, I believe the rest of the world regards it as something of a footnote, and that's being exceptionally generous. Imagine my gobsmacked surprise, then, when my ex-patriated Londoner pal Miles (you might remember him from this post) shot me the photo below...Click on it to enlarge.
In Joe Gross' new edition to the excellent 33 1/3 series about Fugazi's In on the Kill Taker, my review of same is actually quoted ... and before an invocation of Rolling Stone's review, no less. I thought that was somewhat remarkable. Hooray.
If I am being entirely candid, however, I have the sneaking suspicion that I may have liberally helped myself to the colorful flourish "brutal stride" from another source, albeit not one regarding the merits of Fugazi. It's a descriptor that certainly applies to this album's tightly-wound, frenetic battery, so I can see why I might have chosen to borrow it, but I do not think I can claim its true provenance as my own. While I cannot be sure, twenty-five years after the fact, I feel remiss for appropriating it (if that's indeed what I did).
I’m seems like a thousand depressing news cycles ago already, but I’m relatively sure you remember that jackass lawyer from back in May. You know the one I mean, … the guy who threw a hissy fit in a midtown salad joint because he heard several members of the staff speaking Spanish. While he was hardly the first to do this (and it was later learned he had a history of behaving this way), it seems like in the subsequent weeks, there’s been a pronounced uptick in flagrant, racist, intolerant assholery of this variety. Individuals of all different stripes have been accosted, harassed and/or flat-out assaulted over their ethnicity and/or perceived status as “undocumented.” The videos of these multiple instances are frankly alarming, and seemingly becoming part of the “new normal.” If you think I’m being “politically correct,” you’re absolutely goddamn right. As I’ve mentioned here before, "Political Correctness" is basically shorthand for being culturally cognizant, considerate and inclusive. You’d do well to look into it.
In any case, while I’m repeatedly dumbfounded by the motivations of the aggressors in these instances (“you’re not from here,” “You’re not gonna change The United States!,” “Get out of my country!” etc.), I unearthed something yesterday that fleetingly restored in my faith in humanity. Time was when America was considered a “melting pot,” a monocultural metaphor for heterogeneous society becoming more homogenous, the different elements “melting together” into a harmonious whole, and nowhere was this greater evinced than here in New York City. As culturally diverse a metropolis as can be imagined, New York City has always been a richly complicated tapestry of ethnicities and –- as I kept saying back in May during that lawyer story --- THAT’S THE WAY ACTUAL NEW YORKERS LIKE IT! Walk down any street in the any of the five boroughs (even Staten Island, though I don’t necessarily recommend it), and you’re bound to hear languages pointedly other than English being spoken. It’s not out of the ordinary. It’s not new. It’s always been this way. It shouldn’t be considered offensive. If you are offended by it, you are in dire need of checking yourself.
Anyway, in the wake of posting that great Yul Bryner PSA yesterday, I came across this other PSA from my ever-distant youth. This is from 1968. This is how it was, and this is how it should be. Coexist!
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