Flaming Pablum

2020: My Year in Pictures

This post is invariably going to cause me a lot of heartache, given my oft-cited blogging service's ongoing problem with broken images. But, here's hoping that'll abate. In any case, as you may have noticed, I take a lot of goddamn pictures. You may have seen several of these on this blog over the past 12 months, or you may have spotted them on my Instagram page, if you follow that. Whichever the case, here are some of my favorite images of the year in chronological order.

If possible, enjoy...

 

 

The Mystery Song

I used to have a problem with Patti Smith. I just never heard what everyone else claimed was so groundbreaking about her music, and I found her records to be sort of mewlingly overwrought. I did not equate her with her storied peers in bands like Television and The Ramones, etc. This opinion did me no favors.

Were that not enough, I was then asked by a rock-writer friend of mine, a German gent named Sky Nonhoff, to pen a chapter in a book he was putting together about sacred cows. Sky wanted me to address Patti’s oft-celebrated album, Horses, and give it the redressing it allegedly deserved. So, I did that, pulled no punches and went from being a passive non-fan of Patti Smith to an open detractor. The book came out — albeit only in Germany (I have a copy, but I’ll be damned if I can tell how Sky edited my copy) and the deal was sealed. Just for posterity, I re-posted my original English text here on my stupid blog. This was was even later sourced, much to my embarrassment, in Eric Wendell's 2014 book, "Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist." Again, this did me no favors. 

After years of alienating friends of mine with my continued reluctance to capitulate to the cult of Patti Smith, I started to suspect that my position was becoming an untenable one for lots of folks who otherwise liked and tenuously respected me (I had a similar problem with the Grateful Dead). As if on cue, Patti Smith published her memoir, “Just Kids.” I didn’t race to the bookshop for a copy, but — being unemployed that summer — I had lots of unsolicited free time, so eventually picked it up and read it, almost devouring the book whole in a only a couple of sittings.

In that rarest of instances, Patti’s book completely upended my preconceptions about her, and I suddenly felt like a world-class jackass for shooting my mouth off about her for all those years. I recanted with another post on my stupid blog, for whatever that was worth.

This all said, while I took back all the mean, dismissive thing I’d written about Patti Smith, I still didn’t really enjoy her music. I still found so much of her vocal delivery to be sort of cloying and affected — not unlike the same problem I’d formerly had with Tom Waits. But where I was able to overcome my Waits problem, I still had a hard time getting past Patti’s cadence and histrionics. I respected her way more than I’d ever used to, but I still didn’t want to hear her music, if I could avoid it.

Last night, I was coming home from visiting a loved one in NYU Langone Hostpial on 34th and First Avenue, zig-zagging my way slowly to the southwest through the bitterly cold and dark streets of the Medical Corridor. For whatever reason, this stretch of Manhattan always makes me think of New York City in the grim late 70’s. Sure, much of it has been re-built and radically gentrified like the rest of the island, but there’s still a bit of that dour, function-over-form, brutalist aesthetic that makes it feel depressing and charmless. As such, whenever I’m on that stretch, I tend to flip my iPod to listen to bands like the Jim Carroll Band, Richard Hell & The Voidoids and the afore-cited Television — artists whose music defined Manhattan’s vibe back then. In the middle of listening to a playlist I’d made in 2015, filled with those bands and others like Missing Foundation, The Feelies, The Lounge Lizards and the Dead Boys, this one song suddenly filled my headphones and almost stopped me in my frigid track right on Second Avenue.

It sounded like Patti Smith being backed by a way-less-indulgent ensemble, anchored by a taut, pugnacious groove and a suitably Television-like riff. Holy shit!! How did I ever miss this? Listening intently as I walked further, I couldn’t recognize the track as ever having been on Horses, nor later records like Easter or Radio Ethiopia. Was it from the “Piss Factory” era? Wracking my brain to identify the true provenance of the song, I simply hit play again without looking. How did this song even get on my iPod? Where did I get it, and how have I never appreciated it in all these years?

When I could no longer unspool the riddle and still without a flicker of an answer, I gave up and looked.

It wasn’t Patti Smith at all, but rather a comparatively obscure band from the original CBGB set called The Erasers. I’d gotten the song off the Numero Group’s truly excellent 2015 box set of the Ork Records stable. Prior to this cut, the only Erasers song I was even aware of was their fleeting turn in Amos Poe’s movie, “The Foreigner,” where they play a song called “No Se,” while the film’s protagonist Max gets beaten up by members of The Cramps. You can see that here.

Removed from the context of all their esoteric, historical minutia, when I heard “I Won’t Give Up” by the Erasers, I *immediately* assumed it was Patti Smith, which makes me wonder if others made that same assumption at the time.

In any case, today is Patti Smith’s birthday. If you are so inclined, cue up a bit of her music and raise a toast, but maybe also enjoy this taste of the Erasers, who probably wouldn’t have recorded anything were it not for Patti knocking down the original doors. For more about them click here.

 

Lame Duck Soup

In the (almost) wake of the bona fide “American carnage” of the Trump Administration (333,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, at most recent count), as we plod through the disgruntled soon-to-be-ex president’s Lame Duck period, it seems a disarming swath of the nation still clings to the fallacy of Trump’s oft-propagated greatness. While, yes, I do indeed live in the allegedly enlightened bubble of New York City (trust me, we still have our fair share of idiots here), I do still have a reasonably varied spectrum of individuals in my social-media feeds, and one of them forwarded on the letter below, appended with a earnest “thank you” at the top.

See if you can get through it without laughing out loud...

I thought it might be prudent to do a bit of fact checking. My notes are in red.

Dear President Trump, - He’s not dear to me, but to each their own.

I want to take a minute to say thank you. - I don’t. Neither should you. 

Regardless of the outcome of this election (Biden won, just to be clear, and there really ought to be a comma after “election,” so I’m putting one in), you deserve my gratitude (no, he doesn’t. He deserves your scrutiny and your ire).

Thank you for not plunging my brothers and sisters into another war - Ummmm…. Trump did more needlessly impulsive saber-rattling than any modern President in my lifetime, going well out of his way to threaten key countries with bellicose bombast. That we managed to escape military escalation in those instances is more a testament to the restraint of the global community than of any prudent diplomacy on Trump’s part.

Thank you for walking through HELL and back for the American people. - Yeah, he didn’t do that. If anything, he blithely strolled in the opposite direction while letting the American people languish in it. Be ashamed.

Thank you for doing it for free. - Nope. As of September, it was reported that Trump raked in $1.9 billion in revenue during his first three years in office, maintaining ownership of his assets when he informed the nation he was recusing same.

Thank you for working through the night while my family was tucked safely in bed. - As reported by Business Insider, last Thursday was Trumps’ 317th golf-course visit during his presidency — he was on the putting green instead of addressing the terrorist explosion in Nashville and letting crucial unemployment insurance benefits lapse before finally signing the relief bill.

Thank you for standing strong and staring adversity in the face. — Yeah, that didn’t happen.

Thank you for keeping GOD in the country I love — I don’t believe faith was ever in any significant danger of subsiding in the country during Trump’s four years, although cognition seems to have taken a sharp dive.

Thank you for not backing down when the weight of the world was against you. — Trump’s abject failure to comprehend the concept of political compromise is not to be applauded, as it is a cornerstone of diplomacy and crucial in the sustainment of a functioning democracy. Trump’s penchant for not backing down has more to do with petty stubbornness and narcissism, and less to do with any laudable convictions.

Thank you for putting your family in the line of fire when you didn’t have to — For a start, it’s called nepotism, and it ought to be illegal. Secondly, the fact that Trump would giddily throw any of his own family members under the bus at the slightest whiff of trouble is hardly worthy of commendation.

Thank you for standing up for women. — Bahahahahahahaha. As if.

Thank you for not being a politician. - Well, he certainly wasn’t an effective politician, if that’s what you’re implying.

Thank you for being raw and even sometimes too much. - You’re seriously thanking him for this?

Thank you for standing up or the unborn. - If you genuinely believe Trump’s advocacy for the so-called “Pro-Life” agenda is anything more than brazenly shameless pandering to the Right, you are strenuously gullible.

Thank you for caring about the little guy. — This may be the most egregious line here.

Thank you for working harder than any president in my lifetime ever has. — Once again, last Thursday was Trump’s 317th golf-course visit.

Thank you for your service to this country. - You’re joking, right? After he has maligned veterans, POW’s and Gold Star families (going so far as to insinuate that he caught COVID-19 from them), you thanking him for his service?

Need I continue? Roll on January 20!

Forgiving Foreigner

Unlike, say, The Cars, who had the cache of membership in the so-called “New Wave,” Foreigner were never quite so fortunate. Though they’d made a positively titanic impact on FM radio, crafting hit after maddeningly ubiquitous hit for a sizable span of years, their shaggy-haired origins in the mid-70s (the same era The Clash got started — ironically also featuring a member named Mick Jones) forever tethered them to the venomously maligned “them” that the “us” of Punk Rock ostensibly strove to destroy. There was no escape from that. Like their AOR peers in Journey, Boston and Styx, there was absolutely never going to be a time when Foreigner were going to be credibly perceived as “cool" after the rules of the game were changed.

Personally speaking, at the time, I didn’t own any Foreigner records. They lacked the juvenile spectacle of KISS, the pomp and circumstance of Queen, they elegiac expanse of Pink Floyd, the doomy heaviosity of Black Sabbath, the clangy quirkiness of Devo and blunt force of The Ramones — thus, I did not require their services. But, at the same time, I was still a slave to FM radio, so — of course — knew virtually every single of theirs (and there were quite a few) by heart without even making an effort. Like the afore-cited Cars, you didn’t really need to own any of their records to know and routinely hear their music. Foreigner were everywhere. In that sense, they won.

As much as it’s easy to reduce them to some sort of punchline, though — here in 2020, it must be acknowledged that Foreigner were a fucking force to be reckoned with. No, they didn’t rawk with the same giddy abandon as, say, Cheap Trick or Thin Lizzy, but they had fiercely sharp hooks, augmented by rousing choruses and instantly unforgettable song titles (“Cold as Ice”? “Feels Like the First Time”? “Double Vision”? “Hot Blooded”? “Head Games”? — tell me you can’t sing along with each and every one of these, and you are fucking lying). Propelling that seamless pop/rock hybrid was the inimitable and soulfully emphatic tones of Lou Gramm, a singer more versatile and distinctive than he ever seems to get credit for. You hear that plaintive voice demanding to be schooled on the intricacies of love, and you instantly know it’s him.

Like many kids of my generation, I used to keep a blank cassette in my boom box and tape certain songs off the radio. I remember slamming my fingers down on the record/play buttons when WPLJ’s Carol Miller announced that she was going to be playing “Private Idaho” by the B-52’s and inadvertently capturing the song below, "Long, Long Way From Home," which Carol cheekily played just before the B-52’s. After that, I was unable to hear one without anticipating the other, and while I first resented WPLJ’s awkward pairing of the two tracks — a sandwiching of seemingly disparate sub-genres that would later be unthinkable — I swiftly came to genuinely appreciate “Long, Long Way from Home,” so much so that, upon the era of the compact disc, I went out and bought that first Foreigner album.

Several years later, I remember embarking on a snowy road trip with my then-new lady friend (later to be my wife) and two of her college besties, bound for a third friend's house in some remote corner of Massachusetts. After spending several hours fighting over control of the radio, we pulled into a gas station to fuel up and purchase some much-needed munchables. In a crucial point-of-purchase position, this rest stop saw fit to hawk compact discs right near the register. I snagged a long-neglected copy of Foreigner's audaciously titled Complete Greatest Hits, and restored harmony to the expedition. The rest of the perilously snowy drive was scored by lung-straining sing-alongs to Foreigner chestnuts, notably needless repeated plays of "Urgent" and, once again, the song below. 

Foreigner -- they were never cool. They were never hip. They were never punk. They were never ironic. They did not encourage you to question authority and smash the patriarchy. But they wrote some great goddamn songs. Today is lead guitarist/songwriter/mainstay Mick Jones’ birthday. Give it up for him and play this loud.

Back Into The Night

Back in the early 90’s, my friend Roxanne (not her real name) had this completely bonkers gig in “club promotion.” She being younger, more energetic and significantly more fabulous than myself, it was literally a job of hers to hit six or seven hopping night clubs during the course of a single evening, handing out flyers for upcoming parties and events. On a couple of occasions, she dragged me along, opening up a whole new world to me. I was certainly familiar with a few of the major clubs, but mostly from going to see bands. Going to a club for the sheer sake of going to a club wasn’t something I was normally inclined to do, so this was a true learning experience.

On a few of those evenings in early 1991, I remember breathlessly trying to keep up as we hit long-vanished places like the LoveSexxy Lounge, Big City Diner, The Tunnel, The Palladium, a place, I think, called Morrissey’s (no relation to the Smiths) and about a half-dozen more hotspots. We’d glide past the velvet ropes, thanks to Roxanne's clout (her good looks didn’t hurt, either), and I’d wander around the place looking lost, drinking overpriced beers and listening to bad house music for fifteen to twenty minutes before she’d grab me and we’d swoop off to the next venue. We covered a lot of ground.

Between missions, we’d frequently repair back to the cavernous interior of the Limelight, which was the de facto base of her operation. I vividly remember one particular evening doing just that. Roxanne had to re-stock her supply of invites and check in with her boss, with dopey, uncool me tagging along behind her. I remember following her through the dark to what looked like a rugby scrum of garishly dressed characters. Roxanne marched right up to this one individual who was wearing a particularly bizarre ensemble involving clown make-up and assless pants. Through the ample rear portals on said pants, he had bright, electric blue teardrops painted on his buttocks. Despite the …er….”festive” nature his of attire, when he and Roxanne spied each other, he was all business, sternly rattling off a laundry list of directives for her to dutifully absorb and execute, as if he was the chief operating officer of a very important organization. Between blunt orders to Roxanne, I think he gave me a withering glance or two, but then turned with dramatic aplomb and vanished into the crowd, with the rugby scrum dutifully following his posterior teardrops. I felt like I was trapped in an NC-17 version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Roxanne grabbed me again and we headed off into the night. “What was up with that?” I asked as we slipped out some secret exit and onto West 20th Street. “Oh, that’s just my boss,” she sighed, “he can be kind of a ridiculous jerk, sometimes.”

That boss was Michael Alig.

Goodbye & Go to Hell, 2020

I'd suggest it’s fair to say that 2020 was a year like no other. That said, just because we are approaching the end of the calendar year, that doesn’t mean that the problems of 2020 are necessarily over. Hopefully, 2021 will provide the remedies we so sorely lacked in 2020. In any case, here’s the annual survey, for whatever it’s worth.

What did you do in 2020 that you'd never done before?
Instead of citing a host of predictable unpleasantries, I’ll kick this off with a light-hearted answer: I carved my first turkey.

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Nope, I rarely do and probably won’t until they are mandated by a medical professional.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Yes, my sister-in-law gave birth to a lovely little boy.

Did anyone close to you die?
Mercifully, despite the carnage of the crisis, no one in my immediate circle passed away.

What countries did you visit?
Surely, you jest.

What would you like to have in 2021 that you lacked in 2020?
Vaccinations.

What date from 2020 will remain etched upon your memory?
Probably March 15, the day both my wife’s office and mine issued the “work from home” directive.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Staying gainfully employed, reasonably healthy and marginally sane.

What was your biggest failure?
Failing to note or anticipate a duplicitous vendor’s reluctance to remind me about a certain contractual clause. This was an expensive oversight.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
I managed to dodge COVID-19, but I did somehow still find time to zealously bruise my ribcage whilst trying to exit a bathtub. My wife declared it “the least Punk Rock thing, ever!”

What was the best thing you bought?
For some reason, getting it delivered was a Bataan Death March of false starts and delays, but we got a new Casper bed, which is indeed quite nice.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
Health care professionals, essential workers and my two excellent children, who've gotten through this difficult experience with a minimal amount of complaint and are both thriving as high school students and exemplary individuals. 

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
The Trump Administration, the Republican party and embarrassingly large swaths of the American electorate (but mercifully not large enough).

What did you get really, really excited about?
Election 2020 was pretty compelling, all things considered.

Where did most of your money go?
School tuitions.

What song will always remind you of 2020?
For whatever reason, during the summer months, we kept a certain Rolling Stones compilation in the car’s disc player, and I was prone to frequently play “Bitch” at irresponsible volumes.

Compared to this time last year, are you happier or sadder?
Honestly speaking, despite the tumult of this year and the state of the world, at the moment, I feel it would be remiss of me to do any complaining. I’m fine. My wife and kids are fine. Our extended family is fine. We’re getting on with it. Not everyone has been so lucky.

Thinner or fatter?
Absolutely fatter. The pervasive attitude of “fuck it, it’s a pandemic!” -- when applied to consumption and imbibement -- became unfortunately de rigueur, after a while, and I’m now feeling it’s time to put that back in check. Wish me luck.

Richer or poorer?
Well, certainly not richer, but as mentioned above, I have no right to complain when others have suffered much greater losses than I have.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
I’m having a hard time answering this, as options were pretty slim, for the most part. There was a freelance project that I participated in that, in retrospect, I wish I’d contributed more to. I’m happy with my part of it, but I now feel I should have given it more time and done a bit more for it.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
Stressing out.

How did you spend Christmas?
Just the four of us at home. Kept it simple.

Who did you spend the most time on the phone with?
Normally, I don’t know the answer to this, but in the COVID era, I believe I spent an inordinate amount of time on calls (and Zoom conferences) with my team at work. Honestly speaking, we’re the better for it, in many ways. We’ve become a more efficient unit.

Did you fall in love in 2020?
I was already in love, and we marked our 19th wedding anniversary in the summer.

How many one night stands in this last year?
I didn’t, given that -- despite many flaws -- I am a faithful husband. That said, who would actually answer this question?

What was your favorite TV program?
It seems like I watched it a million years ago, now, but I quite enjoyed “Ozark,” which has totally redeemed Laura Linney for me, after her godawful turn in the indefensible "Love Actually." That, and a French series called “Call My Agent” (or “Dix Pour Cent” in French).

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Well, I don’t know if I hate any new people, per se, but my roiling hatred for Donald J. Trump has only increased, especially now in his petulant and destructive lame-duck period.

What was the best book you read?
Probably “Waiting for Another War” by Trevor Ristow. Rise and reverberate!

What was your greatest musical discovery?
I answered this in sweeping detail on this recent post.

What did you want and get?
A Biden/Harris win.

What did you want and not get?
Trump removed from office prior to serving his full term and locked behind bars.

What were your favorite films of this year?
I cannot honestly remember seeing any “new” films. There were a few documentaries I enjoyed, like “Where Does a Body End,” about SWANS (the band).

What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 53, which is a shitty number, and I had a lovely dinner with my wife and kids.

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Trump leaving office in disgrace and in handcuffs.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2020?
Normally, I write something pithy here, but I had no personal fashion concept this year. It was not, as they say, “top of mind.”

What kept you sane?
The hope of Trump losing the election and of the imminent arrival of a COVID vaccine.

What celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I normally don’t have a good answer for this one, either, but I have to say I think Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is kinda damn sexy.

What political issue stirred you the most?
The fact that it was a political issue at all is astonishingly appalling, but the mask debate.

Who did you miss?
I continue to miss certain departed members of my family, but am very grateful they didn’t have to deal with the bullshit of this year. Beyond that, … Terry Jones, Andy Gill, Florian Schneider, Dave Greenfield, Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart, Hal Wilner, Bill Withers. I’m sure I’m forgetting others.

Who was the best new person you met?
I don’t know that I met anyone new, this year, other than my new little nephew.

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2020
WEAR A FUCKING MASK AND BELIEVE IN SCIENCE, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES!

Song lyric that sums up 2020
Well, I believe Cop Shoot Cop may have said it best…

It's making me sick,
I want no part of it
Stop waving that flag
All you idiots bought right into it
And who's left holding the bag?
Surprise, surprise.
Surprise, surprise.
The government lies.

My Christmas Injury, or "The Least Punk Rock Thing, Ever!"

I turned 53, back in October — a somewhat ignominious number I didn’t really know what to do with.

The big one was obviously 50, but after that, it all gets a bit vague. Regardless, here in my fifty-third year, I have started to notice certain crucial things. First and foremost is my vision. Where before I kept a pair of “readers” handy in the event I needed to study items on a menu, I now practically need them to see just about anything, suggesting that it’s high time to graduate out of mere “readers” and go see a goddamn optometrist for a proper eye exam and a genuinely effective pair of glasses.

Second is the laundry list of things I should have taken care of about three years ago — various medical tests, and whatnot, that one is supposed to tackle when one crosses the rubicon of a certain age — that I haven’t yet fit into my schedule. I was indeed on the path to taking care of some of those things until the pandemic turned everything upside down. Various appointments were cancelled that, as yet, have not been rescheduled.

Third has been the effects of the pandemic itself. I don’t mean the daily stress, inconvenience and alleged “freedom”-impairment of having to wear masks and maintain social distance whilst walking amongst the potentially infected, but rather the comparatively insouciant attitude towards eating and drinking that has become inherent during the COVID crisis. Where once mindfulness may have been the order the day, the coronavirus ushered in a new era of indifference towards such po-faced propriety. That was certainly fun for a while, but inevitably it comes with a price.

That price is, of course, weight gain. I haven’t stepped on a scale in the last ten months, but I’m reasonably certain I don’t need that apparatus to credibly deduce that I’ve put on a few pounds since March.

I’m fully aware of all these things, and do have at least a loose plan to remedy them, but I was abruptly served with another reminder of my advancing age, this week, that has left me literally wincing.

On Saturday night, we made a plan to get together with a pair of my wife’s sisters and their families for a de facto holiday celebration. Trying to be as responsible as possible, we all met a local favorite restaurant and sat in the frigid outdoors, largely masked and duly distanced. Under the glow of a couple of frankly middling heat lamps and buoyed by the Dutch courage (or, in this case, Greek) of a few Mythos beers, we made the most of it, but — after a while — the unrelenting chill of the mid-December climate rendered itself impossible to ignore. Halfway into a genuinely compelling true-crime anecdote unspooled by my brother-in-law John, I suddenly started feeling my extremities going numb. Game as we all were to support the restaurant and spend at least a modicum of the holiday time together we otherwise normally would have, it simply got just too fucking cold. We all paid up, waved goodbye to each other and all went home.

By the time we walked in the door, I was feeling cold, congested and miserable. I tried to fight the good fight for a bit on the couch with (another) beer, but after a moment, suggested that I should probably take a shower to warm up and then go to bed. I then dubiously decided I would take a bath, instead. As if on cue, my wife asked “will you even fit in our bathtub?” This was less a remark about my encroaching girth or freakish height and more about the diminutive size of our apartment’s facilities. I waved her off and adjourned to the bath.

As is so often the case, I should have listened to the wife.

Technically, I did indeed “fit” in our tub, but it was by no means comfortable, much less relaxing. After a soaking for a spell, I decided to hoist myself up and out. That’s when it happened.

In a split-second miscalculation of how slippery things were, I lost my grip and slammed my side against the unrelenting cast iron wall of the tub, giving my ribcage a massive jolt that knocked the wind out of me. When I was no longer seeing stars, I sat back up and immediately knew I’d sustained some sort of injury, but whether it was a cracked rib or simply bruised one was still uncertain. When I hobbled out of the bathroom like Ebeneezer Scrooge a few moments later, acute with pain, my wife gave me a look that was sympathetic, but iced with a bracing patina of “told ya so.”

“That’s, like, the least Punk Rock thing, ever,” Peggy chuckled, knowing how to effectively kick a man when he’s down.

Anyway, that was Saturday. It’s now Thursday, and while the pain has subsided to a degree, it’s still very much with me. Sitting up proves to be sharply painful, but not nearly as painful as when I happen to sneeze. My chiropractor took a look and assured me that it was just a bruise, recalling that classic Yuletide anthem by the Happy Flowers, “If It Was Broken, You’d Be Screaming.” In time, it will heal.

In the short term, I’m trying to look at the bright side … It could have been a lot worse.

Eighteen Years Gone

I've mentioned it here a few times before, but a large box of records arrived at our door in the summer of 1977, courtesy of my father, who was based in London, at the time, as a correspondent for Forbes magazine. He’d befriended someone from CBS/Epic Records, who gamely passed onto him a crate of promo LPs to send home to my sister and I.

 

Victoria and I divvied up the albums by artists we were already aware of, and then spent the rest of the summer gradually investigating the newer stuff we were unfamiliar with.

 

I gravitated towards one particular LP that featured a trio of pugnacious-looking troublemakers on the the cover. It sounds quaint to suggest in 2020, but when we dropped the needle on the first track below, it was like our speakers exploded and the concussion blew a hole in the living room wall.

 

Life, as they say, was never the same.

 

Rest in peace, Joe Strummer — eighteen years gone today.

A Prophecy Fulfilled

Back in the summer, when author/archivist Chris Bryans reached out to me across the Atlantic via email to solicit a testimonial for a book he was putting together on my beloved Killing Joke, I regret to say that my first reaction was empathetic skepticism.

Many ambitious book projects on the subject have been launched — including one by yours truly, some years back — only to be dashed on the rocks of the band’s iron-willed reluctance to let anyone into their inner circle. I was going to warn Chris of this, but thought better of it — not wanting to derail his enthusiastic momentum. Deep into the brow-furrowing travails of the working-from-home dynamic, at the time, I strung together some pertinent anecdotes about my affinity for Killing Joke and shot them off to Chris worryingly close to the deadline. With that, I wished him my best, half-expecting the spectre of futility to lay waste to his endeavor much as it had done all those other projects that never reached fruition.

Months went by when suddenly I started spying signs of the book’s progress. Driven by both my desire to see Chris achieve the heretofore unachievable and by my vain hunger to see my own name in print, I gamely pre-ordered a copy of the stately tome, now officially dubbed — fittingly enough — “A Prophecy Fulfilled” — and yet still wondered if it would still ever actually see the light of day. Once again, given the volatile nature of this particular subject matter, even the best laid plans tethered to Killing Joke — tour dates, albums, spoken-word projects, deluxe box sets, etc — frequently seem to go pointedly awry in a manner that suggests the clandestine intervention of external and — possibly infernal — forces.

To be fair, there is an elite coterie of individuals who *have* pulled it off. Photographer/author Mont Sherar graphic artist Michael Coles and photographer Frank Jenkinson have each put out handsome books rife with striking images of the band and, in Coles’ case, their distinctive iconography, but all three of these gents could be construed, more or less, as inner-circlers, if you will. I would also be remiss not mentioning Shaun Pettigrew, the intrepid filmmaker that attempted to tell Killing Joke’s story in his 2013 opus, “The Death & Resurrection Show.” While said documentary was an unprecedented glimpse — one that took over a decade for Pettigrew to complete, and that allegedly threatened to implode on several occasions — it would not be offsides to suggest that however sumptuous a finished product it was, it did not genuinely give its viewers the full picture.

Chris Bryans, meanwhile, was attempting an oral history — a recounting the band’s myriad hills and valleys through the recollections of figures from both within that secretive cabal and folks from the world outside. Despite being friends with certain folks, I still fall into that latter demographic.

In any case, Christmas came early for me, today, as a big fuckoff box containing Chris Bryan’s magisterial work arrived safely on my coffee table. A bright and colorful artifact to behold, “A Prophecy Fulfilled” is a strikingly rich and heavy text, replete with all sorts of period-specific photography and artwork. No hastily assembled fanboy vanity project (like mine probably would have been), this book is clearly a labor of love by a fellow Killing Joke acolyte with a dutiful adherence to professional presentation. That he saw fit to include my messy tangles of pompously overwritten drivel is testament to his big-hearted, inclusive nature.

I cannot wait to dive into it.

Rapture Restored: Debbie Re-Debuts on Bleecker & Bowery

First appearing in 2017 (above), taking the place of a mural depicting Joey Ramone incongruously sporting a pair of boxing gloves (a hollow allusion to Overthrow Boxing Club just steps away — part of the noxious corridor of fitness that had largely taken over the neighborhood), Shepard Fairey’s Blondie mural depicted the preternaturally gorgeous Debbie Harry gazing unblinkingly to the north from an original photograph by Bobby Grossman, flanked by allusions to their breakthrough 1979 album, Parallel Lines and images from the art of their then-new album, Pollinator, which Fairey had also designed.

Ostensibly conceived as a tribute to the neighborhood’s sadly fading punk roots (the site of the former CBGB is but a cheap beer-can’s toss to the east), Fairey’s painting remained largely unblemished for the past few years, until sometime this summer, when an increasingly less-relevant street artist saw fit to scribble his signature space octopus (or whatever it’s supposed to be) on Debbie’s comely neck.

Following that unsightly blemish, less finessed taggers went to town on the whole thing….

I’m happy to relay, as first reported by EV Grieve, that Fairey’s original work has been fully restored (below) to its sharp-lined glory, and Miss Harry’s distinctive physiognomy is back to being untainted by the sloppy doodling of bottom-feeding graffiti trolls. We’ll see how long that lasts.

I was half-thinking it might be time to mix it up, again, and put someone new on that particular spot. Richard Hell? Stiv Bators? Jayne Country?

Who would you suggest?