Flaming Pablum

Christadora House Through The Trees

Earlier this afternoon in Washington Square Park...

The Gatekeeper Says 'NO!'

It’s probably not a new term, per se, but I’ve been seeing it invoked more and more, recently, in discussions about my favorite music, and it’s not a complement. The word is gatekeeping.

Gatekeeping, as I understand it, is sort of on par with mansplaining — it springs from a sort of exclusionary claim to be more vested in a specific artist or sub-genre to the extent that newbie novices need to be properly vetted and schooled before they’re allowed to fully appreciate said artist/music themselves. The Gatekeeper is the guy that demands that you name three songs by the band whose t-shirt you’re wearing. The Gatekeeper is the guy that cites the record just prior to a band’s breakthrough album as that band’s greatest achievement. The Gatekeeper put in his hours, and now expects you to follow suit, … if you’re worthy. The Gatekeeper’s motto, invariably, is “Fuck do YOU know about it?”

Unsurprisingly, given my oft-unsolicited opinions, I have been credibly accused of gatekeeping. Fair enough. I can own that. There are myriad examples here on this blog, be it my affinity for the Circle Jerks or my penchant to safeguard the iconography of the Plasmatics, to name but two.

To my mind, however, my tendencies to “gatekeep” stem from my ever-distant youth, when deviation from popular convention was more often treated with derision and contempt rather than admiration. To put it bluntly, If you’re 13 years old and your classmates give you shit for wearing the t-shirt of a band they don’t know or can’t understand, that experience is gong to stay with you. Years later, when everything is post-ironic and retro-philic and, thanks to the internet, all most music is accessible to everyone at all times, and no one has to put any time or effort into seeking it out, you can bet your bottom goddamn dollar I’m going to demand you cite three songs by fucking Flipper before I let you blithely walk around wearing their shirt just because friggin’ Kurt Cobain once did.

But I digress.

Today, on Facebook’s excellent No Wave group page, someone posted a video that speaks to the very thing that ignites one’s inner Gatekeeper. Entitled “5 Albums to Get You Into No Wave,” this clip is exactly the sort of content I ranted about back in 2017 on this post.

To my mind, videos and articles of this kind make me grind my teeth because they’re so inorganic. Music discovery should be a natural process. You need to listen and discern for yourselves, not cut corners with some half-assed “get hip quick” scheme. Videos like these seem like lazy “how to” manuals for people who want to create the right impression, rather than folks who might be genuinely interested in hearing and learning about new music.

But, in terms of the specific musical phenomenon of the fleeting No Wave scene, though, videos like this are a genuine disservice, as they kind of give everything away. For me, a big part of my affinity for No Wave came after the initial jolt of shock and confusion. That MUST be a part of it.

I vividly remember first dropping the needle on my college radio station’s long-neglected copy of the fabled Brian Eno compilation, No New York, which culled together tracks from a handful of pertinent bands from that tiny, insular scene. Being that the radio station in question was more renowned for playing yawnsome crap like Little Feat and Hot Tuna, the mere fact that they had a copy of No New York at all was reason enough to play it.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting upon that first listen (live on the air, no less), but it sure as shit didn’t sound like the Punk Rock I was enjoying at the time. In a nanosecond, it made records by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the like sound positively quaint and conventional (which, in retrospect, they basically are). It was such a stark strike of renunciation. Fuck your rock’n’roll rules! Fuck your precious melodies and danceable rhythms! Fuck playing these instruments the “right way!”

Without experiencing that jarring epiphany, I don’t think you can really absorb what No Wave was all about. You can’t skip to the last chapter and spoil the impact like that.

You have to be punched in the face by No Wave before you get to like it.

If believing that makes me a Gatekeeper, so fucking be it.

Decide for yourselves…

Sakuran Zensen!

Stop whatever stupid shit you're currently doing and watch this immediately.

Thank me later.

John's Bag

I first came in contact with John Darnielle via Ilxor, which — as Urban Dictionary so succinctly describes it — was “a rather fine but occasionally tempestuous, pretentious and easily-distracted internet-based message board, initially conceived as a music forum.” I should’t say “was” as, technically, it’s still going today (find it here). John and I were both regular fixtures there for a great while in the late 90s through to the late-2000’s. Or at least that’s when I largely dropped out. John might still regularly participate there, I’m not sure.

While it might seem like heresy to some, I must admit that upon first engaging with John, I was entirely unfamiliar with his status as the singer/songwriter in the Mountain Goats. As far as I knew, John was just some similarly inclined music head with just as much of a passion for discussing all facets of the subject, and given his predilections for several of the same hoary goth, punk and metal bands that I voluminously espoused on a regular basis, we became fast friends in that forum. From where I was standing, John and I spoke the same language, and he managed to jovially overlook my pugnacious penchant for contentious overstatement (something not exactly everyone in said forum was inclined to do, much to my continued embarrassment, this many eons later). As the years went by, we bonded further over a mutual affliction (John and I both suffer from Tinnitus, although I haven’t heard an update from him on the subject in some time) and both became doting dads.

The funny thing, though, is that while I just sorta considered him this super-knowledgable music-geek pal o’ mine, it only gradually dawned on me that he was critically revered in several significant circles. Beyond being an established musician of some renown, John’s also a burgeoning author, having now published a couple of well received novels. Not too long back, another friend of mine was looking at my contact lists and spotted John’s name. “Dude, you know John Darnielle?” For some reason — inarguably to John’s credit as a regular, approachable human being — it still never occurs to me that he’s this crucial figure.

In any case, the last time I saw John in person, I believe, was actually the first time I saw John in person. I was walking up Thompson Street in SoHo and he suddenly shouted my name (see pic above). To this day, John and I are in fairly regular contact on Facebook, but I just spotted something that showcases both the bottomless depth of John’s affinity for music and his perpetually inclusive, affable nature. John was featured on “What’s In My Bag?”, Amoeba Records’ excellent web series I wrote about back on this post. To my mind, despite his numerous accolades and notable cameos (he was a featured guest on Damien Abraham’s “Turned Out a Punk” podcast, last summer), this is a true honor befitting his vast wealth of knowledge and his convivial, big-hearted nature. Way to go, John! 

I am in awe and roiling with envy.

Enjoy….

Word on The Street

This Week

Like many Americans, I suspect, the events of this past Wednesday have left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never been an especially zealous flag-waver to begin with, but it’s been a long damn time since I felt the degree of shame and embarrassment on behalf of the nation that I’ve experienced in the wake of Wednesday, and all the pusillanimous bullshit that has come in its wake.

There’s simply not enough bandwidth on the internet to accommodate everything that needs to be said about it, but I spied these two missives making the rounds on social media, and they both fit the bill nicely.

Also, if you get pepper-sprayed, clubbed or shot at for breaking into a federal building, please don't expect any sympathy.

New Sensations: Exhuming The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

Regardless of what side of the Atlantic you’re currently perched on, spend any time in the company of music geeks of a certain age, and sooner or later, you’re bound to get caught up in the age-old, laborious and eye-roll-inducing debate about the true point of origin of Punk Rock. Yanks like m’self will calmly point to iconoclasts like the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, the MC5, the Stooges, the Ramones and the New York Dolls, usually qualifying the latter with the irrefutable bit of minutia that future svengali Malcolm McLaren briefly attempted to manage them in their death throes as a band (the infamous “red patent leather” era) and that when he returned to England, endeavored to graft the look and sound of New York City’s burgeoning Punk scene (specifically Richard Hell’s tonsorial/sartorial aesthetic and his signature anthem “Blank Generation”) onto the tabula rasa of the fledgling Sex Pistols.

If you’re of the British persuasion, you’ll usually click your tongue and wearily point to the seismic differences in theme, sound and aesthetic between New York’s more artsy contingent and Britain’s more volatile wellspring of anti-establishmentarianism. It’s poetry vs. politics, they’ll say. There is indeed some validity to that point, but all it takes is one rafter-shaking barre chord from Johnny Ramone — the sound that launched a thousand bands on both sides of the water — to truly settle the debate.

In all honesty, though, it’s really not all that cut and dry. While it can be argued that England’s take on the phenomenon was hugely informed by New York, the UK had its own class of proto-punk ensembles that were just as influential as the afore-cited Yank bands listed above. Foremost among those outfits was rollicking pub-rock band, Dr. Feelgood. Practicing an amped-up blend of rhythm & blues marked by the rough-hewn, self-taught guitar theatrics of bug-eyed Wilco Johnson and the gruff, confrontational delivery of vocalist Lee Brilleaux, Dr. Feelgood not only paved the way for Brit bands like The Clash, The Stranglers and Gang of Four, but none other than New York punk architect Richard Hell himself admitted to being a huge fan of Dr. Feelgood’s records in Julien Temple’s amazing documentary, “Oil City Confidential.” “We stared New York in the face,” exclaims Jonnson in same about Dr. Feelgood’s brief visit to the U.S. (a market they’d never crack), suggesting that the streams of influence may have flowed in both directions.

There is another such band, however, that, of late, I’ve kind of become sort of obsessed with, much as I’d done with Dr. Feelgood a few short years ago, although — by comparison — this band is even less well-known here in the States, and finding their incredibly rare albums plays right into my penchant for latching onto things the are hard to put one’s hand to.

The band in question is The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

While ostensibly grim Glasgow’s answer to early `70s glam rock, there was actually precious little that was actively “glamorous" about the so-called "SAHB.” A bedraggled gaggle of hirsute, unshaven pirates, Harvey’s ensemble featured a burly bassist with a robust mullet and a penchant for wearing codpieces onstage, as well as a guitarist named Zal Cleminson who inexplicably dressed like a mime… as you do, I guess. Harvey himself, meanwhile, looked like the sort of gap-toothed fellow who’d gladly introduce your unsuspecting teeth to his bruised knuckles for daring to occupy his stool at his favorite pub. The Bay City Rollers they weren’t.

I first heard of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band when they were name-checked as a primary influence on my favorite band, Killing Joke, who used to use the SAHB’s peculiar instrumental track, “Booids,” as their walk-on music. I managed, several years back, to track down the album that song was on (that being their final 1978 album, Rock Drill, for those of you playing along at home), but it featured none of Harvey & Co.’s more "well-known” songs, which is a generous descriptor indeed.

If the Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a signature track, it’s inevitably “Faith Healer” from their 1974 record, Next, which isn’t particularly catchy or hook-laden, much less easy to describe. Here it is now…

If you’re listening to the Killing Joke correlation, you might notice the oscillating tone that starts the track being strikingly similar to the opening ominous synths of the Joke’s “Requiem.” Also, Zal Cleminson’s chugging guitar definitely informed Geordie’s style, particularly on the Joke’s “Are You Receiving?" Beyond this track, however, I’ve been starting to delve further into Harvey’s music, warming to songs like “Midnight Moses,” “Action Strasse” and oddball covers of Tom Jone’s “Delilah,” Jacques Brel’s “Next,” Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” and … err… “Crazy Horses” by the Osmonds.

For a little further historical context, it’s also worth noting that The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were allegedly a huge influence on AC/DC, particularly fellow Scotsman Bon Scott. It’s not hard to draw a correlation between the two bands, both boasting leering-lad frontmen and disarmingly kinetic guitarists.

In short order, I became hungry and curious to hear more. As such, I’ve been intent on hunting down further bits of their discography. And, to be clear, by that I mean obtaining the physical manifestations of their music, not just listening to it on shitty Spotify and/or YouTube. I want to own the albums, read the liner notes, check out the cover art and file them alongside my other discs.

The trouble there, however, is that albums by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band — led by a hard-drinkin’ Scotsman who passed away from heart failure at age 47 — ain’t exactly easy to turn up. As an ancillary problem, I’m also generally more inclined to buy my music in brick-and-mortar stores than order it online. I mean, I certainly do when no other options are open to me, but I’d rather give some independent shop my money than go through fucking Amazon. You can call me old fashioned and go fuck yourself, while you’re at it.

Anyway, to wrap all this up, in the paltry few remaining record and disc shops left in New York City, I was unable to put my hand to any albums by the SAHB. As far as the New York City of 2020 is concerned, it seems the Sensational Alex Harvey Band simply did not exist. No one knows their songs, much less their name. With that, I’ve indeed had to turn reluctantly to the internet to sate my needs.

In any case, while I heartily endorse seeking out this music yourselves, procuring further records by the Sensational Alex Harvey band has prompted a burning question … one best addressed by OCD record hoarders and pedantic music geeks…

Would you file The Sensational Alex Harvey Band under S ... or H?

Own a Piece of Gem Spa

For this inclined towards this sort of thing, an organization called Workhouse has put together an auction (culminating on January 7) for various original artifacts from Gem Spa, the iconic corner shop on St. Marks Place. Want the sign? Bid on it. Want the Egg Cream display? Bid on it. Want the Kostabi-painted gate? Bid on it. Want the milkshake machine? Bid on it. Etc.

Here's the official statement:

"Due to Covid, we were forced to close like so many beloved New York City businesses. To honor the special spirit of the shop, we are auctioning off memorabilia, egg cream equipment, and signs from the store. These are the last remnants of an iconic institution and we hope that with this auction, they will find a new home with someone who loves old New York and wants to preserve a piece of precious history."

- Parul Patel, Gem Spa 

 

The Lost Murals of CBGB

Chris Stein of Blondie shared a photo on his social feeds today of some original artwork that adorned the wall behind the bar at CBGB (see that photo above). Here’s what he had to say about it.

These murals were behind the bar at CBGB’s at the far end near the stage. I took this the last week after it was closed . Hilly said he knew some of these guys names, they used to come into the place in the old days. Painted by a local artist in the early seventies, a woman. That’s all I’ve got on it. I’m not sure if they’re still there in Varvatos store, may have been covered up.

I’m assuming that by “the old days” he means prior the venue’s flashpoint as the birthplace of Punk Rock, when it was still a Bowery bar for the skid-row set.

When CBGB was being dismantled, I was still working at MTV News Online, and I *seem* to remember my colleague Chris Harris working that beat, and reporting that much of the original artwork on the walls of the place being painstaking removed and put into storage somewhere. I’m not sure that could really apply to this art, however, as the triptych looks like it was painted directly onto the actual wall.

One imagines they were covered up when John Varvatos moved it. Despite the clothier’s recent financial troubles, his business is still in operation on the Bowery, although I’m rarely in the mood to step inside. Anyone want to volunteer and go check it out?

B L O G S T R I K E !

PLEASE KNOW: Since friggin' EARLY NOVEMBER, 2020, my blogging service, Typepad, has been grappling with a recurring cacheing issue that is manifesting itself with multiple broken images across fifteen plus years of posts, here. In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a huge deal, but it’s really burning my fuckin’ toast.

I’ve been liaising with Typepad for weeks and weeks, now, but they don’t yet seem to have a grasp on the magnitude of the problem, much less a timeline as to when it might be solved. All I know is that it’s a bad user experience for you, the reader. Please just know that I’m aware of it, and trying to remedy the issue with all stealth, although it’s largely out of my hands.

Thank you for your patience & understanding.