Just re-surfacing this for no real reason other than a colleague just asked me what I got for my birthday. I told her and she was surprised that there were no items of, as she called it, “dumb rock shit” (as she knows that’s the type of stuff I like). I told her, though, that buying “dumb rock shit” presents for me is a perilous endeavor, being that, by and large, nobody really knows what I’m looking for. I mean, yeah, certain key friends of mine might know, but my wife and kids aren’t going to know some weird bit of arcane ephemera from one band or long-lost bootleg recording of another. They wouldn’t even begin to know where to track that kind of thing down. Nor should they, really.
More to the point, at this late stage of the proceedings, if anything, I should be getting rid of my stupid stuff and not accumulating more of it. I did make certain efforts towards that end, recently. I parted with a lovely-albeit-long-neglected Iron Maiden box set, giving it to a friend of mine who’ll doubtlessly appreciate it more than me. I mean, yeah, I still love Iron Maiden, but I hadn’t touched the thing in about twenty years. It’s been largely locked up in my front hall closet, untouched and unplayed. The friend I gave it to just got a fresh Iron Maiden tattoo on his friggin’ back, so he is clearly more deserving of it than I. I’d do well to continue parting with such items.
In any case, though, I conceded to my workmate that there is still one item I’m obsessed with finding. Here’s that backstory (last invoked on this post)…
As first mentioned in this ancient entry, I first became aware of New York City’s own Cop Shoot Cop back at the dawn of the 90’s. I’d initially been assigned to interview the then-notorious ensemble by a free weekly called New York Perspectives (long dead). Contrary to their fearsome reputation, I found the guys in the band to be thoughtful, grounded and funny individuals, and I became a swift and ardent fan of theirs, catching their shows at a variety of since-closed divey music venues. This being back during a more fertile age for music, the East Village and the Lower East Side in general were awash in gig flyers (much like the ones I collected from the Rock Hotel).
Anyway, around the release of their second album, White Noise, Cop Shoot Cop played a gig at CBGB. The band was renowned for their eye-catching, provocative gig posters — often utilizing bits of striking, inflammatory imagery, and the poster for this particular show was no different. I remember a tattered copy of it being pasted up on a disused notice board outside the forbidding edifice of that since-condemned public school on East 4th between First Avenue and Avenue A. The art utilized a bit of an Anime/Manga cartoon of a screaming, angry face behind bars, with COP SHOOT COP and CBGB displayed in a bold, angular font. It was quite a striking bit of art, and I coveted it.
The trouble was, they were gone almost overnight, either ripped down or covered up by other posters. That shredded one on East 4th Street was impossible to prize (and actually stayed up for several years before the notice board itself was dismantled for whatever reason).
I became friends with the guys in Cop Shoot Cop, and former vocalist/bassist Tod [A] even gave me an armful of old posters and flyers of theirs at one point, but this one was not among them, frustratingly.
In the ensuing years, that single Cop Shoot Cop poster became something of a holy grail for me, but I simply never saw it again. Tod [A] didn’t even remember it (and he did most if not all of the poster designs).
Maybe I’d dreamt it??
But then, as I’m watching “Sound and Chaos: The Story of BC Studio,” there comes a discussion of a particular happening at the studio wherein Cop Shoot Cop and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion partook in some sort of jam session. In a bit of archival footage from the event, they show a snippet of an interview with Spencer, and what’s on the wall behind the couch they’re sitting on?? THAT GODDAMN POSTER!!
The jam session in question (filmed in Martin Bisi's Brooklyn studio on the Gowanus) was later released as its own DVD entitled The New York Post-Punk/Noise Series Volume 1. Regular readers might remember me alluding to same in last summer's piece about annoying one's neighbors with loud music. In any case, that DVD even features the members of the band being interviewed underneath same. The shot above is actually members of the Blues Explosion and the program's host, not any of the C$C boys.
Anyway, that really blew a new part in my hair. If you have a copy of this poster — get in touch, `COS I WANT IT AND WILL PAY HANDSOMELY FOR IT!
Recent Comments