Flaming Pablum

Yorkville Calling: Back to Private’s and The 80s

Here’s a companion piece to my last post about Ungano’s on the Upper West Side. It's a bit more meandering, so strap in. 

In much the same way I didn’t consider the Upper West Side a haven for wanton rock’n’roll shenanigans, I would similarly have been reticent to cite the far reaches of the Upper East Side as one either, it having long since morphed into a comparatively staid, residential and affluent patch of the island. Of course, as pointed out in this post, not all of this portion of Manhattan is the posh enclave of monied exclusivity that is Carnegie Hill. East of Third Avenue, you had Yorkville, which had historically been a more ethnically diverse, middle-class neighborhood, although gentrification has largely diminished those identities, much to the detriment of the neighborhood’s character and much to the ire of those pockets of descendants who still live there.

Growing up, I lived in a few spots around the Upper East Side, first on East 90th Street just off Lexington, before moving up to East 93rd Street for a long spell, and then over to East 86th between York and East End, in the heart of Yorkville, during my latter high school years, after my mother and step-father divorced. As mentioned in this ancient post, my grandparents had lived just down the block, originally, from what became our 86th Street apartment, although they’d decamped to Florida years before we moved there. But, as such, I’d known that neighborhood from my childhood as Germantown, with the broad expanse of 86th being peppered with festive beerhalls, German bars and restaurants, specialized delis catering to all stripes of Eastern europeans and Teutonic types. By my high school years, many of those ventures were already gone, but some hung on, and one or two are even still there today, but what once was commonplace gradually evolved into nostalgic novelty. By and large, the German flavor of East 86th Street is long gone.

Again, in my experience, East 86th Street — as recounted way back here — was the Upper East Side’s epicenter of fun, it being home to several fast food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken, Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips (who remembers?), and the inevitable titans that were McDonald’s and Burger King. It also was home to several record shops (I’ve talked about the pictured-above King Karol, notably here) and at least four or five multiplex movie houses. There was also the neighborhood favorite, Papaya King (soon to be razed), the iconic Woolworth’s (I bought so many crucial, cut-out bin LP’s there) and this restaurant on the corner of 86th and Lexington called Leo’s who sold a variant of cheesecake-to-go that my step-father regularly consumed as if his life depended on it.

Not for nothing, however, it was also a great strip on which to encounter belligerent members and/or satellite acolytes of the 84th Street Bombers, as mentioned here and here, who were always willing to scare, intimidate and/or brutalize you, should you not be fast enough to get away. There’s a lot of legend and lore about them, but they were no joke — they put my late friend Danny (also referred to as Rocky on this old post) in Lenox Hill hospital with a broken nose, at one memorable point.

By the time I was in my senior year of high school and into my college years, however, I considered my home turf on the easternmost edge of Yorkville to basically be cripplingly devoid of hipness. As a budding music fiend, I’d discovered the myriad charms of downtown, and headed there at every opportunity, whether to avail myself to the then rich network of independent record shops (largely all gone, here in 2023), drink in witheringly cool, seedy bars like Downtown Beirut, the Scrap Bar, King Tut’s Wah-Wah Hut and Alcatraz, or to see bands at any number of suitable downtown clubs like Danceteria, CBGB, The Ritz, The Cat Club (later The Grand), The Marquee, The Limelight, Wetlands Preserve, Coney Island High and several others. As far as I was concerned, our home in the hinterlands of Yorkville was an exile to yawnsville.

Little did I know, of course, that just like over on the other side of town in the early `70s, there’d actually been a thriving, punky club scene right in my own neighborhood.

I certainly didn’t realize it at the time, but as mentioned on this post, over on Lexington Avenue on the northeast corner at 150 East 85th Street, there was a little joint called Private’s. I’d first heard about it in 2016, when trying to track down the location of Joan Jett & the Blackhearts’ video for “I Love Rock N’ Roll,” and was hipped to the answer by longtime comrade Bob Egan. Amazingly enough, just two short blocks away from my high school, Private’s played host an array of bands I’d have killed to see, at the time (although I’d have been too young to get in — this being 1981, I’d have been a fresh-faced, acne-speckled, 14-year-old high school freshman) like the Lounge Lizards, Lene Lovich, David Johansson, Madness, Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys, The Rockats, The Cramps, OMD, Joe “King” Carrasco & the Crowns and even my beloved XTC, Bauhaus and The Stranglers. I mean, who fucking knew?

Regrettably, outside of what is depicted in the aforementioned video for Joan Jett’s “I Love Rock N’ Roll,” there is no pictorial evidence for Private’s, my biggest source of info about it being this website, although I did find a few mentions of it in the New York Times, like this article, also from 1981, that says it hosted the American premiere of the second-wave Ska documentary, “Dance Craze.”

I have no idea when Private’s officially opened, much less any concept of when it closed, but as my high school years soldiered on, I imagine I’d have noticed it being there. In later years, the building it occupied was razed to accommodate a towering new condo.

But as I mentioned in those posts about Joan Jett’s video, there was evidently this other Upper East Side club, around the same neighborhood and era, I kept reading fleeting allusions to. As with Private’s, dates of operation are very fuzzy, at best, but it was evidently called The 80’s, and it was right there in the veritable crotch of Yorkville on East 86th Street, the strip I called home from 1983 to 1996.

Since first hearing about it about a decade ago, I have long kept my eyes and ears open to learn more, but invocations of the venue and the bands who may (or may not) have played there have been few, far between and maddeningly low on details. From what I could both glean from approximated accounts and my recollection of the north side of 86th Street between Second and Third Avenues (before numerous cosmetic changes to that strip between the mid-1980’s and today), I would want to guess that the clunkily named club — The 80’s — would have been situated somewhere between a somewhat seedy little bar called Little Finland and a larger bar called Barney Google’s. Little Finland had been there for seemingly a century, but Barney Google’s had been a former beer hall from the neighborhood’s Germantown heyday that had turned into some kind of performance space. I found the ad at the right for it which advertises an appearance by no less that Ike and friggin’ Tina Turner, two names I’d have never expected to have set foot on East 86th Street. As far as The 80’s — the club — was concerned, I’d only read of four crucial bands having played there — The Soft Boys (who I wrote about here quite recently), Bad Brains opening for the Dead Boys, and another all-time Flaming Pablum favorite, The Plasmatics. I forget where I learned about those alleged gigs, but they stuck in my memory, as just like the notion of XTC, The Stranglers and Bauhaus playing over at Private’s on 85th Street was weird, the concept of Robyn Hitchcock’s punk-era band, the splenetic hardcore fury of Bad Brains, the slovenly caterwaul-punk of the Dead Boys and the chainsaw-wielding havoc of The Plasmatics (who I’d have been completely obsessed with, at that time) playing in the sleepily genteel environs of the Upper East Side was almost too bizarre to conceive of.

But, it did happen, …. and I’m happy to say, there is ample evidence.

First up, my friend Jeremy, who’s a little older and, frankly, was way hipper, cooler and less uptight than I was in 1980, actually attended the seminal Bad Brains/Dead Boys gig and wrote about it in some detail for Rock N’ Roll Globe (you can read that here), thoughtfully appending his ticket stub below.

Similarly, I recently came across some photographs by a gentleman named Donald Salvatoriello. Like myself, Donald is an avid Plasmatics fan, and contributes to several Plasmatics discussions on Facebook. Unlike myself, however, Donald actually got to see the band perform no fewer than 29 times. On a few of those doubtlessly high-decibel occasions, he had the wherewithal to bring his camera. I’m happy to report that one of those gigs was the Friday, March 14, 1980 performance at The 80’s at 231 East 86th Street. He, too, kept his ticket stub.

Jibing with Jeremy’s account of the Dead Boys show from a month earlier (February 22, 1980), you can see the ceiling over the stage remains in disrepair after Stiv Bators had his way with it.

When the Soft Boys played there six months later, I doubt there was any wanton property damage, although who knows? Evidently there is a bootleg of their show out there, somewhere. Of the Soft Boys gig, the excellent Doom & Gloom from the Tomb Tumblr posted the following about this picture shared on Robyn Hitchcock’s Instagram:

Onwards with the Summer of Robyn! In September 1980, The Soft Boys traveled across the pond for their first U.S. shows. Curiously, every one of those shows took place in the NYC area. One of them was at a spot called Club Eighties — a name that must’ve sounded forward thinking and futuristic at the time, but now sounds quite retro. The Soft Boys, on this tape, sound timeless naturally.

The recording itself is a bit boomy and bass heavy, but very listenable (turning it up helps), and the Underwater Moonlight-era band is in extremely fine form across two sparkling sets. More melodic and less manic than the early days, but still revved up and ready to go. The late/great Matthew Seligman grooves mightily with Morris Windsor, while Hitchcock and Kimberley Rew soar high above — truly one of the great twin-guitar teams of all time, a perfect match. Since this New York City, the Boys treat the crowd to not one but two Velvet Underground covers — an appropriately chooglin’ “Train Round The Bend” and a scuzz-tastic “Run Run Run.” We also get a nice double-shot of Syd-era Pink Floyd. Otherwise, the Moonlight stuff is absolutely majestic — 40+ years later, those songs hold up, and then some. Give it to the Soft Boys!

Robyn Says: It was hot. We were English. The world was younger, but not young. Dread hung in the air, and we channeled it, with harmonies and a few choice riffs.

Curious as to the origins of the club beyond these four performances, and armed with an exact location (handily placing the venue, as predicted, right between the aforementioned Barney Google’s and Little Finland), prior to its presumably brief tenure as The 80’s, 231 East 86th Street had a longer history as a German beer-&-music hall called The Lorelei. As I’ve been able to track it down, the main ballroom (which would later play host to all those snotty, violent punks above) looked like this….

I cannot help wondering if, during their tenure on East 86th during the heyday of the Germantown era, my own grandparents ever dined and/or danced at The Lorelei. It seems entirely plausible.

Regardless, by the time I landed in Yorkville in `83/`84, The 80’s club was gone, as was Private’s over on East 85th. Today, both of the buildings that housed these two concerns are long gone, razed to accommodate newer, more modern structures. The footprint that had been Private’s, today, is a Starbuck’s. Back over on East 86th, there no longer is a 231, just brickface between a dormant storefront at 225 and a photography studio at 233.

For whatever reason, my projection is that the main ballroom of what had been Lorelei/The 80’s was downstairs, which raises the question if that space is still accessible today, although I kind of doubt it. In both a literal and figurative sense, The 80’s are very much over.

Back to Ungano's

PREAMBLE: I actually started this post quite a while back, but it required a bit of legwork, and then I got sick, so I’m trying to re-visit it now, but it may not be as robust as I was once planning it to be.

POST: Options for witnessing live music of a certain stripe, in Manhattan, are in pretty paltry shape, here in 2023. I mean, sure, there are still a handful of decent clubs and a few comparatively antiseptic live-music venues, but the glory days of legendary hotspots like Brownie’s, Wetland’s Preserve, the Limelight, The Ritz, Roseland Ballroom, Danceteria, the Mudd Club, Hurrah’s, Tier 3, Great Gildersleeve’s, Max’s Kansas City and – oh yes, do please wait for it – CBGB are all but sepia-toned memories of a vanished age in practically a different city.

But there is one more significant place that seems rarely invoked when folks rattle off names of celebrated rock clubs and live-music venues as I just did above. It was only open for business for about seven years and was perched on the otherwise unassuming byway of West 70th Street between Amsterdam and West End Avenues.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I rarely consider this patch of the Upper West Side when I think of carnal rock n’ roll bacchanalia. My knee-jerk associations with this area conjure more of kind of Jerry Seinfeld/Woody Allen/Steve Martin/Tina Fey vibe more than anything else, but as I ventured up there, a few weekends back, several of the neighborhood’s pop-cultural hotspots did reveal themselves to me.

For a start, to the south, there was the Tower Records on the northwest corner at West 66th Street & Broadway. While arguably not as iconic as the flagship store down on East 4th & Broadway, the UWS Tower played a major role for me when I was ravenous music-consuming high schooler. It’s long gone, of course … replaced by a Raymour & Flanagan, of all things. For those who scoff, at the invocation, Woody Allen shot a scene from “Hannah & Her Sisters” in the UWS Tower, so put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Just a few blocks up, of course, there was the similarly inclined HMV megastore, another great music outlet that shut up shop around 1999. I’ve not as many rose-tinted memories of that place, but I was glad it was there, at the time. There’s also that statue in Verdi Square that Blue Oyster Cult posed under (worrying close to “Needle Park,” a block or two to the south in Sherman Square, immortalized in “Panic in Needle Park”). There’s also the iconic Beacon Theatre and the former site of the P&G Bar, where Joe Jackson was once photographed drinking and that fleetingly appeared in the video for “Policy of Truth” by Depeche Mode. Of course, there’s also the subway station and surrounding corners that acted as the location of the first sighting of The Baseball Furies in Walter Hill’s 1970 classic, “The Warriors.” Then, of course, a few blocks up, there’s the Ansonia, which played host to `70’s swinger club Plato’s Retreat and, a few blocks to the East, there’s the Dakota, where “Rosemary’s Baby” was filmed and where John Lennon was shot. Not too far away was also the club, Hurrah, as well. Again, there is absolutely no shortage of pop cultural reference points in this neck of town.

But if you stroll down that stretch of West 70th today, you shouldn’t expect to get a whiff of any of that sorta vibe. Right now, at 210 West 70th, which shares a wall with stately Café Luxembourg to its east (where my mom met my wife’s parents, for the first time, about twenty years ago), you’ll find a dormant space which, until recently, was an Italian restaurant called Tavolla Della Nona. Back in 2015, meanwhile, the space was a steakhouse that called itself Lincoln Square Steak. Prior to that, in 2014, it was a venture called Marka. In 2012, it was an Asian eatery called Loi. In 2009, it was a bar called the Compass Lounge. Earlier than that year, things get a little harder to research, although I did discover that in 1976, the space was a cabaret named Grand Finale, where flamboyantly jazzy piano-botherer Bobby Short once played.

But from 1966 until about 1971, it was Ungano’s. One website I came across described it like this:

Brothers Nick and Arnie Ungano opened their club in 1966—or perhaps earlier, since singer/producer Genya Ravan recalls gigging there in 1964. Rock critic Mike Jahn described the 250-capacity basement venue as "an average-size club with a big back room checked off by four mirrored pillars. The stage is along one wall. Opposite it is a small, raised gallery for the press." Ungano's closed in 1971.

According to the period-specific print ads, Ungano’s played host to a wide array of bands including no less than Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Seger, The Kinks, The James Gang, The Grateful Dead, The Nice, Van Morrison, Mountain, NRBQ, Joe Cocker, The Amboy Dukes, John Lee Hooker, Dr. John, Badfinger and The Nazz. What really caught my attention was that it also hosted Parliament/Funkadelic, The MC5, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath and The Stooges.

I first got wind of it via the widely circulated recording, Have Some Fun: Live at Ungano’s by the Stooges, which was captured shortly after the band had issued the greatest rock record of all goddamn time, that being their sophomore effort, Fun House. Three weeks later, meanwhile, Black Sabbath … fresh from releasing their own iconic album, Paranoid, graced the stage of Ungano’s, only to – legend has it – plug in their equipment and blow all the fuses in the building out … which, y’know, is fittingly METAL!

Anyway, romanced by the ideas of bands like the Stooges, Sabbath and the freaks in Parliament running amok in a 250-capacity club, I felt the need to go check the place out. Amazingly, even though it’s currently dormant (and, as mentioned, has been about nine-dozen concerns since its Ungano’s days), you can still get a basic feel for what the room was like. Check out my pics below.

Almost Neighbors

Today, it seems Genesis Breyer P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV would have turned 73, had that individual not passed away in 2020. As such, I thought I’d share my one and only P-Orridge-centric anecdote.

In about 2018 or so, both of my children were streadily growing, and the small bedroom they shared was swiftly becoming too small to accommodate them, not least in that they were (and remain) of different genders. The wife and I had long put off finding a new apartment, as the travails and curve balls of life kept getting in the way. Despite the fact that we loved the building we were living in, we dutifully started to go check out a few places that might better suit our family.

Most of what we saw was pretty dispiriting – glum apartments in dreary post-war buildings, or grim, ground-floor railroads with unnerving proximity to whatever was happening on the sidewalk, mostly in neighborhoods we had no connection to, much less any desire to live in. We were getting pretty discouraged in very short order.

We then heard about an opportunity in “Two Bridges,” which is sort of the most southeasternly portion of the Lower East Side (or, more accurately, Lowest East Side), thus named for its placement near the bases of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge over the East River. We have some friends who live over there, and while quite remote (fifteen minute walk to the nearest subway entrance), their home is lovely.

In any case, we went up an looked, and while the buidling itself seemed a bit off-the-beaten track (the lobby faced the roar of the FDR Drive, looking east toward Brooklyn), when we checked out the apartment, it was bright and roomy. We paced around the rooms for a while before feeling satisfied, and then made our way out the door.

We stood in front of the elevator discussing the prospect for what seemed like a half an hour, waiting for the lift to make multiple stops on its way up to whatever floor we were on. When the doors finally opened, the elevator cab’s lone passenger stepped out and onto the landing we were standing on – one unmistakable Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who gave us a polite smile before passing and then vanishing behind a door down the hall next to the apartment we just left.

Despite having been an avowed fan of Throbbing Gristle’s more experimentally visceral forays into confrontational, proto-industrial music, I said noting, more shocked than anything else by the sudden appearance of that band’s primary instigator. I knew he lived on the Lower East Side somewhere, but never in a million years would I have guessed this particular building, much less next to an apartment that I was considering moving into.

My wife didn’t get it. “Are you alright?” she asked as the doors of the elevator closed behind us. I explained who the garishly attired (camouflage and hot pink) “pandrogyne” was who we just passed us in the elevator bank, and she stared at me blankly. Having grown up in England in the `70s and `80s, Peggy knew her share of British punk and post-punk, but Throbbing Gristle was still a bit too left field for her.

In the end, we didn’t move, but rather did some slight renovation to the kids’ room to make it a bit more conducive to a more amenable configuration of beds and desks. But I’ll never forget briefly entertaining the prospect of moving in to the apartment next door to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Who knows? We may have become fast friends.

….but I kinda doubt it.

Caving In

In the wake of the unimaginable deaths of two of his sons, Nick Cave has undergone a profound transformation. In his latest book, “Faith, Hope & Carnage,” he concedes that he’ll most likely never make another noisy, guitar-based rock’n’roll record ever again, suggesting that he wouldn’t even know how to begin. And while I do appreciate his more recent elegiac works like Skeleton Tree and the sprawling Ghosteen, I cannot help but mourn the departure of the more feral, bloodthirsty exhorter that was the Nick Cave I first discovered in the late `80s.

Meanwhile, Nick's Red Hand Files continues to be a great source of inspiring discourse. Find that here. 

Back to The Met

I’ve already privately evangelized it to a few select individuals, but if you’re an acolyte of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for ANY reason (childhood nostalgia, its tireless capacity as a sanctuary of solace or simply …duh… the art contained therein), you need to go track down the new book, “All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me” by Patrick Brinkley.

Ultimately the memoir of a journalist who loses an older brother to prostate cancer, Bringley recuses himself from a plush job at The New Yorker in order to become a guard at the Met. I’m only half way through, but his poignant ruminations on the art and the location and the magical power of the institution are well worth your time, if you are similarly inclined.

Find out more here.

Curlycues in ‘Casablanca’ - a Mission Mystery

Here’s one strictly for music geeks of a certain stripe, so ready thyselves.

As discussed in this post from last year, when the First and Last and Always incarnation of the Sisters of Mercy fell apart circa 1986, departing conspirators Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams made more than a few deliberate attempts to stick it to Sisters’ Mother Superior Andrew Eldritch on their way out of the convent. For a start, their initial plan was to name their new project The Sisterhood, an uncomfortably comparable name to the former order, that is until Eldritch beat them to it with a hastily released EP (recently re-issued on CD). Unfazed, the new band re-christened itself The Mission, also a dig at Eldritch, being that plans for the follow-up album that never transpired were to call it Left on Mission and Revenge.

But the jabs didn’t end there. The Mission wholly made off with the tonsorial/sartorial aesthetic of the Sisters, with Wayne adopting Eldritch’s shades-on-absolutely-all-the-goddamn-time and big-fuckoff-black hat flourish. A sharper sting was naming their debut LP’s lead single “Wasteland,” blithely cribbed from the title of an epic modernist poem by Eldritch’s beloved T.S. Elliot. It seemed as if the new band was going well out of its way to mock and taunt their former taskmaster at every opportunity.

Of course, the mighty Mish went onto find a grand amount of success on their own accord and soon defined their own identity, largely shaking off the shackles of their former association and, I want to believe, burying the bitter baggage along the way, although a full-scale reunion with Eldritch has yet to happen, and I’m not holding my breath.

But there was one more thing from the Sisters that the Mission kind of adopted that always intrigued me - the curlycue cross.

A big part of the early Sisters of Mercy was their bold iconography. Even before they’d properly honed their chops as a functioning band, they’d established themselves with a stark design scheme, a proper logo and even a preferred font, not unlike the template-founders in hallowed Motorhead before them. As the band developed, Eldritch basically assigned the now iconic head/star motif to the band’s label, Merciful Release, and soon adopted the so-called "Chinese Chop,” another cryptic design that graced the sleeves of the singles and the eventual release of the first LP, First and Last and Always, although when that line-up dissolved from attrition, Eldritch retired the “Chinese Chop” for good.

Doubtlessly recognizing the value of that type of readily identifiable insignia, the Mission, too, sought to similarly brand themselves, and settled upon the curlycue cross you can see at the top of this post, a sort of suitably baroque rune that hints at arcane lore. It was just vague enough to conjure any number of gothy connotations, and looked fuckin’ great on the back of a black leather jacket. One friend of mine always thought it looked like four condoms, ... a decidedly more pruriently priapic suggestion than I'd believe the band would prefer to espouse. 

Personally speaking, I’d always been curious about the curlycue cross — what was its origin? What did it actually mean? Where did the band first find it? What was its true provenance?

I’d always assumed it was appropriated from some Celtic, pre-Christian art or swiped from some esoteric medieval source, and figured that, short of directly asking Wayne (which I actually had the opportunity to do, at a couple of points, in the early `90s as a fledgling "rock journalist"), I’d never actually solve the riddle.

And then came yesterday.

My wife and I had a dinner plan with one of her siblings on the Upper East Side later in the evening, but decided to go uptown early for a mild mid-winter stroll and maybe a quick museum trip. We settled on the Neue Gallery, a poshly teutonic little institution on the corner of East 86th and Fifth Avenue that, despite my having grown up in the same neighborhood, I’d never actually visited. The Neue is a comparatively tiny museum next to its stately neighbors like the Metropolitan Museum of Art to its south and the Guggenheim to its north. Its humble succession of rooms features treasures like several iconic paintings by Gustav Klimt, an impressive-if-random array of medieval arms and armor, some Austrian illustrations from two centuries ago and — quite incongruously — a tiny alcove filled with trivial ephemera from the classic film, “Casablanca.” The private collection of one wealthy German art-collector and rampant cinephile Ronald Lauder (of the Estee-Lauder gang), this trove of memorabilia featured a wide selection of movie posters, stills and promotional materials from the film, as well as the prop passports used by protagonists Rick, Ilsa and Victor Lazlo. It’s pretty impressive, if completely out of nowhere, even if you’re only a passive fan of the film.

So, I’m standing there, admiring Lauder’s collection and listening to Louis Armstrong’s throaty rendition of “As Time Goes By,” when I suddenly spot something that just about blows me out of the alcove. In a promo shot from the film, there’s a scene of the great Claude Rains, portraying French officer Captain Louis Renault, conversing with Humphrey Bogart’s Rick. Claude is attired as the jaunty policeman, and has his head cocked at an angle, revealing the top of his fetching chapeau — adorned with, mais, oui — qu’est-ce que cest?? Why, it’s the Mission’s curlycue cross!!! Here’s that shot now….

Further scrutiny reveals that the curlycue cross was something of an ongoing motif in the French military. Here it is on the the top of a cap from World War I.

Now, as far as I’m aware, the great Wayne Hussey doesn’t have a solitary drop of French blood in his person. He was born in Bristol, moved to Liverpool and cut his musical teeth in the local punk scene in bands like The Walkie Talkies, Pauline Murray’s Invisible Girls and then Dead or Alive before decamping to Leeds to join the Sisters. So, why the curlycue cross, and where did he first see it? Was he covertly a student of the sartorial finery of the French military or did he indeed swipe it from Claude Rains in “Casablanca”?

As has always been the case, probably only Wayne has the answer.

A Package from Abroad

This is a meandering one, so maybe go get yourself a drink before reading any further.

In the summer of 1986, I was a college student between my freshman and sophomore years, spending half my break working as a surly dishwasher out in Westhampton Beach at Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa. It was by no means a glamorous job, sequestered, as I was, in the dishwashing station in the rear of the kitchen, just a stone’s throw from the outside dumpster and the canal. Outside the kitchen, it was celebs, `80s fashions and teenage wildlife, but back where I was, it was stacks of soiled baking sheets, filth-encrusted mixing bowls, sharp knives hidden in murky sink water and tireless airings of Black Flag and Iron Maiden. My family routinely got a tremendous kick out of bringing friends by the rear of the kitchen, on busy Friday nights, to watch me toil. I failed to see the humor in this and responded accordingly.

It wasn’t all drudgery, though. I made several friends and often spent nights out drinking my wages with them. One early August evening, we repaired to nearby Sag Harbor to a club called Bay Street to catch UB40 perform. I realize this wins me precious few points in the cool department, but we went with what we got. It’s not like New Order or Love & Rockets were swinging out to play gigs on the East End of Long Island … although we did also get INXS and the Fine Young Cannibals, if memory serves.

I’m not gonna lie, though — while UB40 are largely maligned in credible reggae circles for their paucity of authenticity (I’m trying to be diplomatic, here), I did quite enjoy Labor of Love from a year or so earlier, which my (now late) friend Danny had been a huge champion of. Maybe they lacked the ganja-toasted edge of Peter Tosh or the righteous indignation of Steel Pulse, but as a roundly reggae-ignorant rockhead, at the time, I was just fine with it. And hey … it was a night out with beer and girls. Who was I to complain?

To be honest, I don’t actually recall that much about the show beyond more or less enjoying it. I do remember spotting a long-lost childhood friend in the crowd — a kid named Jimmy Rothwell, who I’d formerly played “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” with a decade earlier — and having a beery reunion. UB40, for their part, played the hits, including the big ones off Labor of Love, and their then-new single “Sing Our Own Song,” seemingly oblivious to the irony of performing an anthem about the hopeful emancipation of apartheid-era South Africa to a club full of privileged, white Hamptonites. They closed, as I recall, with a rousing trek through the title track of their new record, Rat in Mi Kitchen (which, oddly enough, was retitled Rat in the Kitchen, here in the States).

As one does, despite my lukewarm affinity for the band, I dutifully bought a t-shirt, which was white with a cartoonish rat posed in front of a hypnotic black spiral, and the band’s logo on the back.

I wore that shirt for a little while, albeit not with a great deal of zeal. At some point, I believe I farmed it off to one of my nephews. The last time I saw it, it was on the back of my beach-lifeguard nephew Tristan, who’d chopped off the sleeves to showcase his guns, which are admittedly impressive.

Around the same time all of the above was going down, over in the UK, my wife (who I’d obviously not met, as yet) and her sisters also latched onto UB40. Peggy’s older sister Lizzie bought the 7” of “Rat in Mi Kitchen” (that’s me holding same, up top) and evidently played it with alarming frequency. To this day, it remains her favorite song.

At virtually every family event, Lizzie finds a way to play “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” It was kinda funny, at first, but now it’s just kind of predictable and, of course, annoying. At one recent point, I indulged Lizzie by treating her to the anecdote above, which made her squeal with jealousy.

After hearing the song played at so many family get-togethers, my daughter Charlotte has now been indoctrinated into the faith. When I told her that I’d seen UB40 on that tour and bought a shirt, her eyes bugged out. “WHERE IS THAT SHIRT NOW?” she demanded, although she was under the impression UB40 was a solitary individual, and not a band. I told her that it’s probably back at her grandmother’s house, if it’s anywhere, at this point.

The next time I was out at my mom’s, I searched the basement for the UB40 shirt, but came up empty, assuming that Tristan might still have it. As a lark, I hopped on the internet to see if I could track a version of the shirt down. I came up empty on eBay, but did manage to snag one off a website called Grailed. It wasn’t entirely cheap, but I figured Charlotte would love it, so I ponied up and ordered it.

Weeks went by, and I kinda forgot I’d ordered it …. until a mystery package arrived.

From a battered envelope covered with odd, unfamiliar stamps and odd lettering, the shirt was mine again. Closer scrutiny revealed that my seller was mailing the UB40 shirt from that 1986 tour … from war-torn fucking UKRAINE.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this instantly put things in a new perspective. Now matter what sort of stupid-ass strife you have going on in your life, I think you’re hard pressed to compete with some dude off in the wilds of Ukraine, busily stuffing a vintage concert t-shirt of little or no value into a mailer while the fucking Russian army is busy shelling his town. It certainly took the sting out of the higher-than-preferable price I paid for this silly garment. The guy even wrote to me asking if the package arrived safely and lived up to my expectations. What a true salesman.

A few days later, I packed the UB40 shirt, which has now crossed ocean after ocean, into a new mailer and bundled it off to my daughter’s college in Scotland as a surprise package. As expected, she was elated.

It's Okay, I'm Okay....

Hi again, all. Sorry for the cryptic silence. My fever finally broke this past Friday AM. That was a great relief, of course, but it's still taken a while to get back to normal.

I'm back at work and re-acclimating, but it may take a little while, so please bear with me. 

Back in a bit. 

Day 12

I have now been stuck at home, sick as a dog with -- we think -- a viral infection that manifests as a maddeningly persistent low-grade fever and an unshakeable headache for TWELVE DAYS. I am losing my self and losing my mind. I have crossed the threshold of wondering if I will ever feel anything like "normal" again.

I fleetingly felt optimistic, yesterday afternoon, when the headache abated. I went outside and felt the sun on my face (Vitamin D!), but sure enough, ... come 5pm, the fever came roaring back.

I went to see my primary care physician, on Wednesday, who took about a quart of blood out of my arm and sent me to get x-rays. The x-rays came back as "unremarkable" (gosh, thanks), and I am still waiting for word on the blood work.

It's not COVID. It's not the Flu. 

I don't know what happens next. 

You Give Me Fever...

I’d like apologize for yet another delay in regular service. Mercifully, the vexing broken-image problem I was bitching about in the previous post has been (for now) rectified, but I’ve been sidelined in a different capacity.

Around just this time last week, I suddenly came down with a persistent, low-grade fever. Having only just had COVID in December, I didn’t expect it could be that — and, sure enough, it wasn’t. I kept my temperature in check with some Tylenol and hoped it would swiftly pass. It didn’t.

With no other major symptoms other than frequent chills, perpetual aches and feeling trapped in a sort of a zonked-out stupor (more so than usual), I’ve endured the fever swiftly returning like clockwork every six hours. By Wednesday, it climbed to 104, which prompted me to go to urgent care. Mercifully, I have one right down the street.

They believe it’s this viral infection that’s been going around, and basically told me to stick with my Tylenol regimen, which I’m reluctantly doing.

Concentration is hard. Comfort is impossible. Energy is fleeting. Moods are sombre. I should be so lucky that I can even be this marginally coherent. And if you're bummed out about it, imagine how my office feels.

Bear with me.