Flaming Pablum

Oh Yoko

I noticed a bizarre little news item, this morning, that Yoko Ono is evidently planning on covering the entirety of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. I passed that along on social media (it's not true, incidentally, but rather "parody"), but felt obligated to preface it by saying I have nothing but the utmost respect for Yoko Ono, not just for her own oft-overshadowed status as a groundbreaking artist in her own goddamn right, but also because she once single-handedly saved me from being fired from a gig at LIFE Magazine. This, somewhat predictably, raised larger questions, and it occurred to me that I’d never spun this particular yarn here on this stupid blog, so here goes.

In the very early 90’s, I was working at LIFE Magazine as a copy clerk/editorial assistant while simultaneously working on a book project with an editor I shan’t name here. The book was bascially a collection of evocative photographs augmented with ruminations about the meaning of life. Some were from oridnary people like your local green-grocer or mailman, whereas others were from prominent public figures and celebs. In many instances, people would cite song lyrics to sum up their feelings. My job was two-fold; Secure head-shots of the participants from their publicists for the back of the book (I had to get a head-shot of Italian pornstar/parliamentairan Cicconlina, and she sent me an envelope of lurid nudes) and secure figures for the use of reprinting any song lyrics.

Being that the editor in question was a massive Beatle fan, he somehow cajoled Yoko Ono into participating. In her passage, Yoko cited a line from a – WAIT FOR IT – John Lennon song, that being “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans” (from “Beautiful Boy” off Double Fantasy, pedants). I reached out to the pertinent parties to secure financial figures for the re-printing of same. That was the job.

Weeks went by. I diligently collected all the afore-cited assets as was my duty and submitted them to my editor. The book was laid out and the budget was finalized. Suddenly, the parties representing the Lennon lyrics – I cannot remember if it was Blackwood Music or not, it’s a long time ago – got back to me with a SECOND cost regarding a proposed second printing, and it was a sizable sum. I nervously brought this to the attention of my editor. “Alex, the budget is already finalized!” he yelled, understandably upset. “We can’t afford this! I’m going to have to pull Yoko’s section from the book!” This was not a good development. Again, as a massive fan of all things Bealtes/Lennon/Ono/etc., this seemed like his very favorite part of the project, and here I was fucking it up. I felt like shit, and starting to rightly assume that it was probably time to start clearing out my desk. Before I could do that, he called me into his office for the call with Yoko Ono. I’m not sure why I had to be in there for it, but there I was going to be for when he was going to break the news to her. Punishment, maybe? I’ll never know. Anyway, as I remember it, he put her on speaker phone and unspooled the weepy saga, shooting me a few angry glares along the way, and then, from the other end of the line, I heard. “Oh, please – don’t be ridiculous, I’ll happily pay for it.”

Yoko Ono saved my hide.

Does He, Though?

I spotted this cartoon in The New Yorker this week, and it made my brow furrow.

Just as I warned before the Midterm Elections (the ones that, while encouraging, still failed to be the inarguable referendum I was naively hoping for), we should collectively take NOTHING FOR GRANTED.

After all, popular consensus practically laughed in the face of the notion that Trump was ever going to beat Hillary in 2016. Yeah, look how that turned out.

And while it’s ultimately a completely different investigation, today news came down that the Senate Intelligence Committee’s own examination into a potential involvement between the Trump Campaign and Russia has bore no fruit and is swiftly coming to a completion.

I realize Mueller is playing his cards much closer to his chest, and it remains to be seen what’s going to be happen next, but I still think it’s a huge mistake to be bullish about that assumption that this is all a done deal and that Trump will be taken down by it. I certainly want that to be true, but there are no guarantees.

We’ve all been surprised before, and not in a good way.

Rush to Judgement

As you’ve doubtlessly gleaned by now, it doesn’t take much to get me to sound off on stupid shit.

While obviously some c-grade trolling, there was a cheeky little article posted in SPIN Magazine (an alma mater of mine, of sorts) this week, taking rapper Travis Scott to task for wearing a 90’s-era Rush shirt during his performance on the Grammy Awards. Further fuel was blithely poured on the fire when it was revealed that said garment was actually borrowed from the rapper’s girlfriend, Kylie Jenner. The thrust of the SPIN article -– penned by one Andy Cush -– was cynically framed as a warning to impressionably young readers not to fall for the notion that Rush is “cool,” despite an at-best-iffy espousal by a rapper-of-the-moment.

Now, I’ve written about my ironclad affinity for Rush here many times (notably here and, more recently, here). But, be it the work of a troll or not, I do not take kindly to the pervasive reinforcement of ill-informed opinions.

Put simply, SPIN “hating on” Rush for “not being cool” is like getting angry at the fucking ocean. Rush established themselves without your awareness, endorsement and/or validation, well before most of the disrespectful millennials currently on the payroll of what currently passes for your magazine were even born. Rush are practically their own genre, and their acolytes are legion. Their music exists in a realm beyond your rinkydink scrutiny. If they are even aware of your insignificance, do you honestly believe Rush cares about what a generation that celebrates weedy piffle like Greta Van Fleet and Weezer cover albums and gives accolades to Cardi B deems cool? Rush’s music was here before you, and it will be here long after you.

You don’t get to decide of THEY’RE cool, THEY get to decide if YOU’RE cool.

More Grammy Failure

Having watched the whole bloody thing last night (largely done for the purposes of informing the recap I’d have to write this morning for my organization), I was originally thinking of posting an invective-speckled takedown of the 61st Annual Grammy Awards. But then, I figured, what’s the point? Anyone who is familiar with my tastes is already invariably of the understanding that -- with precious little exception -- most of the artists I care about have never been nominated for a Grammy Award. More to the point, as encapsulated far more eloquently by the incomparable Nick Cave in the video below, the merits of music are not meant to be quantified like points at a sporting event. While some may tout Grammy nominations and wins as rock-solid acknowledgement of certain music’s greatness, it’s ultimately still all completely subjective. Even if those accolades are distributed based on how many units were shifted, they’re still largely meaningless. Sales and popularity are absolutely zero indication of actual quality.

So, yeah, watching the pageantry last night held little fascination for me, given that my tastes skew rather sharply towards genres and styles popularly considered to be in decline, in recent years. Adding insult(s) to injury, the Best Rock Album category wasn’t even featured in the broadcast and, more irritatingly, went to the cloyingly empty vessel that is Greta Van Fleet. As mentioned elsewhere on this blog, there is indeed still viable, exciting music being made for people who enjoy guitars -– must I again mention IDLES and Daughters? --- but if you’re looking for Greta Van Fleet to restore your faith in rock, you’re ultimately part of the problem. And, believe me, the less said about the Red Hot Chili Peppers sharing a stage with Post Malone, the better.

But, y’know, the Grammys have pretty much always been something of a joke. I’m hard pressed to genuinely remember an instance when I haven’t wanted to defenestrate my television while watching it.

So, no, the fact that it was a rinky-dink clusterfuck of vacuous bullshit was not surprising. The only thing that did really bum me out was the failure to mention Mark E. Smith of The Fall and Pete Shelley of the Buzzcocks in the In Memoriam section. I posted a virtually identical post to this one when, in 2017, they similarly failed to recognize the passing of Alan Vega of Suicide. Late millennial rapper Mac Miller got a mention, but did two crucially influential figures in British Punk and Post-Punk get even the slightest nod? No, and that failure to respect them earns the Grammys get my eternal scorn. So, fuck them.

Here’s Nick Cave being classy and wise about award-show bullshit.

"The Warriors" at 40

I’ve talked about Walter Hill’s “The Warriors” a bajillion times here before (notably here, here and here). In any event, the movie is evidently now 40 years old, which is somewhat staggering.

In tribute, here’s the slavishly overwritten review of the abortive “Ultimate Director’s Cut” I wrote back in 2005 for Culture Catch. Let’s get down to it, boppers…

Ask your average American male in his late thirties about Walter Hill's 1979 film “The Warriors” and in all likelihood, he'll reply with either a robustly barked "CAN YOU DIG IT?" or a strenuously whined "WARRIOOOORRSS....COME OUT TO PLAAAA-YAAAAAAYYY!" I was a paltry twelve years old when “The Warriors” hit theatres in 1979, but even being too young to get in, I can vividly remember the sensation it caused. The movie poster alone was enough to capture my rapt, wide-eyed attention. "These are the Armies of the Night," it screamed, "they are 100,000 strong. They outnumber the cops five to one. They could run New York City."

Preying upon the justified phobia of urban upheaval in a bankrupt, crime-ridden metropolis, Hill's highly stylized depiction of New York City as a violent street-gang battleground struck a major chord with audiences not just in New York, but nationwide. Despite the film's inarguably over-the-top cartoonishness, it was still perceived as a potential powder-keg, resulting in cries for its banning reminiscent of the furor over Stanley Kubrick's similarly inclined “A Clockwork Orange” eight years earlier. Twenty-six years later, “The Warriors” portrays a New York City that is barely recognizable in its desolate, graffiti-ridden squalor. That said, Hill's painterly, apocalyptic vision wasn't especially indicative of late `70s NYC either. Rife with dated lingo, elaborate costuming, and an almost utopian innocence (Hill's gangs are harmoniously integrated and there isn't the slightest allusion to racial strife or drug abuse), “The Warriors,” in its original form, now cannot help but look quite campy and almost quaint. Apart from the odd homophobic and/or misogynist epithet blurted out by James Remar's character, Ajax, there is little to be actively offended by. “The Warriors” strove to display a vista of savage lawlessness, but its power to shock has long since dissipated. But to this ardent fan's mind, that's part of its charm. The failure of the film to achieve timelessness isn't a flaw but rather grounds for its inclusion in a pantheon of great films of a bygone age.

The director, however, seems to disagree. In the just released "Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD, Walter Hill takes great pains to re-cast “The Warriors” as a purposely cartoony fable. Perhaps smarting from his studio's refusal to let him cast the gangs as exclusively African-American and Latino and subsequent accusations of the end result's irrefutable campiness, Hill now claims that he purposefully strove for a comic book approach. To this end, Hill has severely re-edited the film to include comic book elements such as paneled segues and even thought balloons. Key scenes are truncated in order to facilitate these effects, diffusing crucial atmosphere and robbing the film of any semblance of dignity.

Prior to this heavy-handed approach, the film's more fanciful aspects were legitimized via passages of genuine tension-building. In the new cut, the film loses cohesion in a spliced-up mess of unintentional self-parody. Yet another unfortunate example of revisionism, "The Ultimate Director’s Cut" of “The Warriors” joins the ranks of the noxious "Greedo-shoots-first" version of “Star Wars.” As DVDs go, this is also a bit of a cheap affair. While the "Special Features" packaging boasts "four featurettes," they essentially comprise one documentary with the same cast of interviewees in four brief chapters. Along with the film's original trailer and a relatively unnecessary new introduction by Walter Hill (laboriously emphasizing the comic book element and force-feeding the viewer, Oliver Stone-style, the narrative's roots in Ancient Greek history), the finished product comes off as strikingly less than "ultimate." To his arguable credit, Hill does offer in his new introduction that he's perfectly fine with some viewers preferring the original version. Since he's given us that option, might I emphatically suggest skipping "The Ultimate Director's Cut" DVD in favor of its original incarnation (released on DVD in 2001) instead. - Alex Smith

Mr. Smith is a native New Yorker who lives in downtown Manhattan with his wife and daughter, works for Time Magazine, and writes for The New Yorker and other periodicals.

Foggy Notions

I was going to pen my own, needless take on this, but this article by Ben Yakas of Gothamist really hits all the salient points pretty squarely. Suffice to say, real estate developers — by their very nature — go out of their way to bulldoze history. As such, laughable errors like the one cited in the article shouldn’t be surprising.

Depressing? Sure, but not surprising.

Last Night

Chelsea Mourning: Coda

While many were prepping for "the Big Game" (insert pungent, damp fart sound here) yesterday, the wife and I spent most of our Super Bowl Sunday attending to various errands of varying significance. Since our age-old oven range started literally belching smoke and flame last week, we had to bite the bullet and repair to the antiseptic confines of Home Depot on 23rd Street to begrudgingly procure a new one. Following that strenuously expensive undertaking, Peg headed east to take our 12-year-old to an arguably long-overdue haircut (Oliver's forelock was starting to look a bit Danziggian), while I was dispatched to the Apple Store in the Meatpacking District to replace an Apple TV remote rendered inoperable by my own zealous impatience. 

Along the way, I passed by the Chelsea Hotel (very recently invoked here), and appearances look unforgivably tragic. 

"You Put Me in the Deep Freeze!"

Cold enough for ya?

Yeah, it's still brutal out there, although I guess we here in NYC should count our blessings, as it's like the temperature of deep space in Chicago, or so I gather.

Back a week or so ago, when it was in the twenties, I posted a video on Facebook for "Coldest Day of the Year" by my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, thinking it was ... y'know ... somewhat topical. Then, of course, came yesterday, when it was three degrees, at one point. 

It's a little better today. It's in the teens, last time I checked. As such, herewith another tenuously appropriate song, albeit sort of from the other side of the "taste fence," as a friend of mine used to say.

In re-watching this, though, it occurred to me this video is essentially the VERY SAME video as "I Ran" by A Flock of Seagulls, replete with cheap effects, bad hair, pouting band shots and footage of the lead singer walking around a confusing mirror maze with eerie robot girls. Both songs were released in 1982. 

Coincidence? 

Bundle up, campers.