Flaming Pablum

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Status Report

I’m just starting the busiest part of the year, at work, so please bear with me if there’s a bit of a slowdown in posting here. I just have to bear down and get through it. I’ll resume normal activity as soon as I am able. I’m sure you understand.

Meanwhile, there’s lots of speculation about the possibility of Trump being indicted tomorrow. My office is in great proximity to the Civic Center, down in lower Manhattan, where all the court houses are, and there’s lots of preparation for the threat of violent protest ala January 6. As such, Tuesday could be very interesting.

Meanwhile, just to clear up any lingering misconceptions, here’s how I’m feeling about it.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

A Sound of Thunder

I thought this was pretty cool.

As I understand it, "Thunder" is an experimental film from 1982 made by a Japanese director named Takashi Ito. I shan't do it any semblance of justice, so here's Wikipedia's description.

Thunder features a series of photographic slides of a woman repeatedly covering and uncovering her face with her hands, projected onto the interiors of an empty office building. The images bend and distort against the interior surfaces. Additionally, a long ribbon of light is seen curling and oscillating. The effect of the ribbon of light was produced using long-exposure photography, created frame-by-frame by a person with a flashlight moving throughout the building's rooms during long single-frame exposures.

Well, an intrepid YouTuber named Artomo Sardanapale got a little experimental on his own, and decided to score those cryptic visuals with one of my favorite b-sides by my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, that being "Transmission," which appeared on the 1995 CD single for "Any Day Now." A slow-burning, dystopian narrative of paranoia with a suitably encroaching sense of dread imbued deep within its buzzing, dissonant core, "Transmission" builds to a head when drummer Phil Puleo punctuates the refrain ..."WHAT IS YOUR POSITION? REPEAT TRANSMISSION!"... with jarring strikes of a snare drum, as the ominous intonation fades into the noise. It's not exactly a peppy dance number.

Anyway, here is the spot-welding of those two disparate elements. The title of this post, meanwhile, comes poached from a great Ray Bradbury short story from 1953 about a man who travels back in time to shoot a Tyrannosaurus Rex, only to unwittingly alter the trajectory of time in the process. 

Punk Not Punk: Robyn Gets Raw

Frequent Flaming Pablum favorite Robyn Hitchcock (mentioned several times in the last few weeks, notably here, here, here and here) is the most recent guest on an episode of Damian Abraham’s Turned Out a Punk podcast, and while I agree with Damian that Robyn is a sorely underpraised songwriter of the highest caliber, I’m not entirely sure he belongs on this podcast … and, clearly, neither was the great man himself.

While certainly born of Punk Rock, Robyn’s first proper band, The Soft Boys – by his own, oft-repeated admission – were not really Punk Rock by any tangible standard. Their influences were comparatively arcane and unfashionable, their hair was too long, they messed about with harmonies and melodies, and, by and large, they weren’t very aggressive (or at least not compared to, say, Sham 69 or the Stiff Little Fingers). In any case, it’s still a great episode, as Robyn’s knack for effortlessly surreal wordplay and whimsically sardonic observations (one favorite being that his native England is simply a nation of “thugs and grannies”) keep proceedings lively.

This all said, I think some of my very favorite bands of the era, and of the era just afterwards, were those that didn’t completely adhere to the rigid doctrine of Punk Rock – bands such as the Stranglers, XTC, Killing Joke … Hell, even The Police. The bands that dared the disregard the dogma.

With regards to Turned Out a Punk, though, I would say this, though: Damian’s intros to each episode need to be significantly shorter. There’s really no need to repeat the same, lengthy schpiel every time. Still, it’s a pretty consistently entertaining podcast.

Robyn’s actually playing here in New York City in a few weeks. I may or may not go, although I’m disappointed that I cannot find a way to smuggle my 17-year-old son Oliver into the gig. I’m sure he’d quite dig it. Below is the Soft Boys at the arguable height of their punkiest hour. You be the judge.

Seventeen Years Old

As clichéd as it may sound, It verily seems like only yesterday that I posted this, but here we are, now, at 17.

Happy Birthday, Oliver.

A Fighting Chance

Spotted some sad news, today, regarding the welfare of a member of New York City’s own punk royalty and one of the preeminent figure of the “No Wave” scene. Not that he’s every seemed especially well, but the legendary James Chance is having a pretty tough time of it, these days. Beyond the death of his longtime girlfriend Judy Taylor back in October of 2020, Chance’s health and circumstances seem to be in perilous decline.

Back in January, one David Siegfriend, the organizer of this GoFundMe page designed to help Chance out, gave this update…

Dear Friends and Fans of James Chance, I need to update everyone on James's current status. His health issues of severe abdominal pain and spinal stenosis have not improved. But thanks to you, the GoFundMe donors, we have been able to keep James at his apartment at The Dorothy Ross Friedman Residence for the past three years. But now I have been informed by building management that they have decided to take legal action because they want to force James to move out of there and into an assisted living facility. A Medicaid assisted living facility would be a real downgrade in living conditions and he is vehemently against having to move, but we will have to see what happens and will have to abide by whatever the court decides. I hope everyone is doing well in the new year, and if you can find it in your heart to donate again, even a small amount, it will help a lot as the funds are running quite low and we're still hoping to reach our goal. Thanks, David S

Please checkout Siegfried’s GoFundMe page and donate if you can.

My friend Miles and I actually went to see James Chance perform, a few years back, when he was promoting his 2016 album, The Flesh is Weak at Bowery Electric, but I seem to remember having to leave early, inexplicably (Too crowed? Too hot? Too late to the stage? School night? Who remembers?), so I regrettably can never say I saw the great man play.

That said, I did once spot him being interviewed, circa 2017, on the stoop of 77 White Street, the former site of the Mudd Club. See that here. 

The picture up top of James Chance in his prime, meanwhile, was taken by none other than the great Julia Gorton, a truly remarkable and prescient photographer who captured an amazing swathe of images from New York City’s thriving underground scene in the late `70s and early `80s. Her striking, black-&-white photographs of folks like Chance, Lydia Lunch, Richard Hell, Debbie Harry, Tom Verlaine, Anya Phillips and a host of other notable downtowners have recently been collected into a stately coffee-table book called “Nowhere New York: Dark, Insulting + Unmelodic Photos by Julia Gorton.” Appended with essays, quotes and testimonials from period-specific luminaries, participants and spectators, “Nowhere New York” is a truly rare glimpse into the whole “No Wave” scene that – unlike some of its comparatively esoteric and textbooky predecessors – provides an illuminating and genuinely warm angle to proceedings. Portrayed by Gorton’s lens and embellished by personal anecdotes, fabled figures once locked in starkly grainy punk rock mythology became relatable, human individuals. Gordon’s book is a captivating vista into that whole era.

Find out more about it here.

Meanwhile, here’s a taste of James Chance in his prime….

Siouxsie in The City

I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times, but I’ve been continuing to enjoy listening to “Curious Creatures,” the podcast hosted by former Slits/Banshees/Creatures drummer Budgie and Lol Tolhurst, ex of The Cure. Not only are their insights and recollections of “Life After Punk” compelling and often hilarious (“You May Think You Know The Territory … But We Drew The Map!”), but they’ve had a slew of really great guests like Miki Berenyi of Lush, Kevin Haskins of Bauhaus/Love & Rockets, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem (who never shuts up), Juliane Regan of All About Eve, Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, Martin Atkins of Pil/Killing Joke/Ministry/Pigface and loads more. Find out more about it here. It’s well worth your time, if you’re a fan of this sorta stuff.

In any case, it regularly puts Siouxsie & The Banshees back into my brain, despite said band having largely called it quiet eons ago (although I did go see them on the bare-bones Seven Year Itch reunion tour, some centuries back, and then a solo show at the BB King Blues Bar on Times Square on the Mantaray tour in 2004, of which I honeslty remember absolutely nothing … although you can see pics of that gig here). Now divorced, Sioxsie and Budgie now live separate lives (he’s in Berlin, now, and started a family). Sioux is about to embark on her first tour (only over in Europe and the UK, so far) in decades, although she is slated to appear Stateside in May at the Goodbye Cruel World festival in California, alongside a host of her former peers like the Bunnymen, Love & Rockets, Billy Idol and several others. I am curious as to how that’ll go.

But in terms of their legacy, the music of Siouxsie & the Banshees still completely holds up, and I’ve been revisiting their catalog in depth, of late, notably singles like “Song from The Edge of the World” (which oddly never made it onto any of their LPs), their strange covers album Through the Looking Glass (which contained great treks through Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough..” and Iggy’s “The Passenger,” but also an ill-considered rendition of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”) and other favorites. I’m also a big supporter of their album that came after that, Peepshow, which featured a host of great songs beyond the “big single” that was “Peek-a-Boo.”

” In any case, in the course of all this, I stumbled upon this old shot of Sioux and bass player/co-conspirator Steve Severin, and it immediately struck a familiar chord with me. While an otherwise perfectly banal photo of these two British Punk veterans, some eagle-eyed downtown New Yorkers might recognize the mural they’re standing in front of.

The pair are pictured in front of the south-facing façade of what used to be a Sloan’s supermarket on West 3rd Street between Mercer Street and Broadway in Manhattan, which featured a whimsical depiction of fake window filled with fresh produce and delectable comestibles. In later years, it looked like this

Today, that Sloan’s is long gone, and the space it occupied has been dormant and shuttered for years. After being repeatedly tagged up with graffiti, the mural was also painted over. Today, it looks like this.

The Lost Greasy Spoon of Metropolitan Hill

...or Lucklessly Looking for One Loyola Loser’s Lost Lunch Counter

As I’ve invariably mentioned on many posts prior to this, I was kind of an awkward high schooler. Upon my arrival at Loyola School in 1981, I was pretty much a shy, self-conscious, nervous, argumentative and needlessly sensitive kid. Certain other factors didn’t help. I was also a slump-shouldered nerd. I hated sports, collected comic books, played “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” and listened to a steady diet of Devo, screechy metal, pugnacious punk rock and other music entirely predicated on hostility toward all things popular and mainstream. I was jittery and barely approachable, a lot of the time.

Mercifully, I did manage to accrue a small coterie of very patient and understanding friends who tolerated my thorniness, but I had what I considered a lot on my plate, at the time – my parents’ impending divorce, my at-the-time middling grades, various strenuously unrequited, heroically improbable and forever unmentioned crushes and regular run-ins with various bullies both in and out of school. At Loyola, I was an easy target for some likely lads in my class, given my inability, at the time, to laugh anything off. I didn’t make things easy on myself. Out on the mean streets of the Upper East Side (don’t be fooled, you could get into trouble there, too -– as floridly documented here), my failure to project any semblance of confident toughness made me an all-too-likely victim.

But recently, I’ve been thinking about it, and I now suspect that a major reason I was so tightly wound and on-edge in school, most of the time, was that I was basically perpetually HANGRY.

I first mentioned the roots of this condition in this unlikely post. As an ancillary anecdote to explain the significance of a certain old, since-vanished neighborhood landmark I’d become preoccupied with finding visual evidence of (that being the white, grinning, plaster whale that used to sit atop the awning of a seafood joint on Madison Avenue called Moby Dick), I mentioned my rigidly observed high-school lunch routine, which essentially consisted solely of a worrying paucity of French fries. But let me back that up with some extra context.

At the time, upperclassmen were permitted to step off the school premises for forty-minute free periods. Freshmen were, for whatever reason, not let out, and -- if they didn't bring their own homemade lunch (something I never did) -- had to make do with the very slim array of offerings in the basement-level Student Commons, the heartiest of which being probably the “pizza,” which were frozen rectangles that a genuinely well-meaning lady named Alice blithely chucked in a toaster oven for unevenly inconsistent amounts of time. The end results were invariably mouth-scaldingly hot on the outside, but still frozen on the inside. This entrée was generally accompanied by a can of soda from the battered White Rock soda machine (presumably a gift from a benefactor alumnus) and a Drake’s Cakes selection like Ring Dings or Funny Bones,… vile confectionary products which, in retrospect, were terrible things to put anywhere near your mouth.

But from sophomore year on up, you were allowed to go out. Now, forty minutes isn’t a whole helluva lot of time, but it more or less sufficed for popping over to nearby Madison Avenue to procure one’s lunch at a small selection of concerns. A lot of – if not most – of my schoolmates went to a nearby Greek deli called Neofytos, which sold your basic fare of bagels, egg concoctions and sandwiches. For whatever reason, I wasn’t a big Neofytos fan, as it was usually too crowded and/or filled with individuals I didn’t want to see or talk to. Instead, after I’d swiftly soured on a full school year of one-too-many mouth-scarring slabs of Alice’s “pizza,” I started very regularly repairing to a venture just two or three storefronts up from Neofytos called -– if my own dimming memory is to be trusted -– Jackson Hole Burgers.

Now, look, I don’t claim to be infallible. Ironically, the location of Moby Dick’s, for example, that, in that first post, I placed directly across the street from the establishment I’m now discussing, was actually a block up between 84th and 85th. I am entirely capable of obscuring facts or flatlly misremembering things, and take pains to correct myself, here, when I do. But as I remember it, and this from loyally giving them my patronage for three solid school years from 1982 until 1985 (although I’d imagine it well pre-dated that era), I remember Jackson Hole Burgers, which I’ll describe in greater detail below, as being basically in the middle of the block on the west side of Madison Avenue between East 83rd and East 84th Streets. If you know better and can prove it, now’s your time so speak on up.

While the name Jackson Hole may conjure images for any longtime New Yorkers reading of various other outlets of that same chain around town (there used to be one in nearby Carnegie Hill on 91st Street and Madison, another on Second Avenue, just south of East 86th and a third, across town, on Columbus Avenue just south of West 86th), this was nothing quite so expansive. More of a “lunch counter” than a proper diner or lunceonette, this joint was the quintessential greasy spoon. Imagine, if you will, a cramped, tiny space divided by a lunch counter wide enough, from south wall to north, to accommodate about six patrons, sitting elbow-to-elbow. Behind them there was a narrow space, with another small table for two in the front window. It was not a big place. 

Behind the counter, meanwhile, was a tightly confined (but deceptively efficient) kitchen set-up manned by at least four sullen-but-talkative Greek gentlemen who helmed proceedings as if from inside the claustrophobic iron bowels of a German U-boat. Lined up behind the counter – in their matching short-sleeved, white-collared shirts in various states of needing to be laundered -– they relentlessly toiled and talked continuously in an odd patois best described as Greeklish while manning an incalculably busy grill, a bubbling deep-fryer, a food-prep area and a small sink. From that tight, maddeningly restricted and probably not entirely spic’n’span space, they managed to crank out a truly miraculous amount of (admittedly very greasy) food.

On the far left, against the southern wall, was a register operated by a stout, mustachioed gent who’d ostensibly take your order, if you managed to catch his attention while sharing the inevitably crowded, narrow space behind the folks seated at the counter. It was always hot in there, as was amply evident by the appearance of the kitchen staff. At any point, it seemed likely that this venture’s incredibly busy, productive system might throw a greasy spoke and messily implode, but somehow it all worked. As I recall, true to the concept of “the lunch counter,” they closed up shop by the mid-afternoon. They were predominantly there for your hasty lunch needs, although I suppose they might have served ill-considered breakfast, as well.

If you’re having a hard time conceiving of such a venture, all you really need to do is go to YouTube and search the “Olympia Restaurant” sketches from vintage “Saturday Night Live.” While John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd composed that series of sketches based on a beloved Chicago diner, the same, basic kitchen dynamic was at play at Jackson Hole Burgers and completely spot-on.

Anyway, during my alloted midday lunch periods for five days a week, for 36 weeks of every school year from about 1982 to 1985, I would enter this tiny, smokey closet on the otherwise well-heeled expanse of Madison Avenue, brave the restless rugby scrum of fellow patrons and request an order of French fries to go. That’s it. Just French fries.

I have no recollection of ever eating in-house at the counter – where there was never any space, anyway -- or at the tiny table in the front window. They’d put a batch of fries fresh out of the aforementioned deep-fryer (though Lord knows how infrequently they bothered to change the oil therein) into a cardboard tray with the red-checkered pattern and wrap it up in foil. I’d pay them -- probably no more than a dollar and a half, this being the mid-`80s – and back to school I’d go. Once back in the dank, wood-panelled confines of the Student Commons, I'd dependably pair my starchy spoils with a can of tepid White Rock cola. I’d spend the next several minutes swatting away classmates trying to prize one of my fries. My response was always “no” and/or, more likely, “Fuck OFF,” as, truthfully, when all you’re having for lunch is a side-order of French fries, EVERY FRY COUNTS! 

The photo below, from my junior-year yearbook, was clearly staged for arguably comedic effect, but it was a disarmingly accurate portrayal of my daily struggle. That's my friend Gianni posing as a marauding fry-poacher.

So, as you can probalby surmise from my needlessly verbose portrayal of the eatery above, the place left a pretty indelible impression in my memory. It was verily a huge part of my high school experience

But, … in the same way it probably doesn’t occur to you to take a picture of your favorite lunch spot today, I never took a picture of it. I mean, honestly, why would I? Why would anyone? I should point out, here, that the building that formerly housed this lunch counter was razed, at some point, after I went off to college in 1985. 

But after I posted the follow-up entry last week about Moby Dick’s, I was suddenly struck by an impulse that has driven so much content on this stupid blog. Periodically, I become preoccupied with finding visual evidence of the existence of any number of former concerns around my native Manhattan, usually of a fairly banal and/or super-niche variety. Prime examples of this, beyond the aforementioned Moby Dick posts, include posts about the nearby Trans-Luxe theater on Madison Avenue, the original site of Forbidden Planet on the west side of Broadway at East 12th Street, the Disc-O-Mat on East 58th and Lexington Avenue, Second Coming Records down on Sullivan Street, Freebeing Records on Second Avenue, SoHoZat on West Broadway, Rocks in Your Head on Prince Street in SoHo, Supersnipe Comics on the corner of East 84th and Second Avenue, the New York Comic Arts Gallery on East 58th Street, King Karol Records and Musical Maze on Third Avenue and, of course, the super-elusive Plasmatics mural at the Graffiti Hall of Fame on Upper Park Avenue. There are some that have continued to elude me, of course, like any pics of The Madison Pub on Madison Avenue just north of East 79th Street, any exterior shots of the toy store Rappaport’s on Second Avenue and any evidence at all about a great record store on Madison Avenue near both Grand Central and the former flagship outlet of Brooks Brothers. It’s like they never existed, according to the internet.

In that same way, when it comes to the Jackson Hole Burger place on Madison Avenue between East 83rd and East 84th, I cotinue to come up empty. In my extensive Googling, I haven’t come across a shred of any mention of even the slightest possible existence of such a business. I then thought I might have a shot of finding it on 80s.NYC, a somewhat comprehensive collection of building phototgraphs from the 1980’s, but didn’t realy hit paydirt. There is the VERY slight chance this picture below captures its exterior …

I mean, it’s exceptionally hard to discern, but it might be that storefront with the white signage on the left.

Anyway, my frustration building, I then took my query to the Facebook group, Yorkville East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Now, this was probably destined to fail from the get-go because the greasy spoon in question wasn’t actually in Yorkville, but I figured some folks from Yorkville might’ve been familiar with it. But no real dice. They made several suggestions, but I assure you, I am NOT referring to The Viand or the New Amity (which recently closed) or Soup Burg or Nectar, the place at 1090 Madison where Meryl Streep stalks her little boy in “Kramer Vs. Kramer.” Those were all nice ideas, but they’re all comparatively proper roomy diners, not a cramped little hole in the wall like this place.

What I did learn, during these travels, however, is that just like Carnegie Hill to its north and Yorkville to its east, this particular patch of real estate between East 86th and East 77th between Fifth and Third Avenues has its own neighborhood identity – Metropolitan Hill – thus named, one presumes, for its proximity to the statelly Metropolitan Museum. Who knew? I don’t know why I’d never heard that before, but there ya go.

Anyway, that’s kinda where I am in my stupid quest. I have no proof, as yet, that Jackson Hole Burgers (or whatever else it actually might have been named or informally called) was actually ever there, but I’d swear on my cherished stack of Killing Joke CDs that it completely existed.

And, as asserted in the second graf of this Old-Testament-sized post, I also indirectly blame this establishment for my fraught emotional state during much of my tenure at Loyola School given that, indirectly, they enabled my very worst dietary inclinations and helped me subsist on a dubiously steady regimen of solely starch, salt and sugar, leaving me doubtlessly bleary-eyed and ornery on the best of afternoons.

Regardless, if there is indeed evidence that this spot existed, trust me … I’ll find it. Treat yourself to an order of fries and watch this space.

Meanwhile, Neofytos Deli closed in 2018. Loyola kids (of whom my son Oliver is one) -- to say nothing of Regis boys and Marymount girls -- have precious little in the way of lunch options, these days. 

ADDENDUM: For the benefit of regular reader G (that's it ... just G), herewith the White Rock machine (at left) in question, next to suitably malnourished-looking me:

 

Lame Laundry

When it comes to band t-shirts, a lot of folks have a lot of rules and hang-ups, and, let’s just face it, I’m very much one of them. I have always been of the very firmly brandished and needlessly antagonistic opinion that if you’re not an actual fan of the band in question (and yes, that means being able to cite at least three goddamn songs), you really shouldn’t be fucking wearing the shirt. I honestly do not give a single, rolling rat fuck if that makes me a "gatekeeper" or whatever. Just don’t do it.

I’m also not a fan of the pre-distressed variety, or the ability to procure band t-shirts at places like The Gap or American Eagle or shit retail outlets of that ilk. It still irks the snots out of me that Brandy Melville — a strangely exclusive clothiers for teenage girls that only sells their duds in one single slim size — formerly sold Ramones t-shirts with the original (and comparatively very rare) artwork from Road to Ruin before Punk Magazine’s John Holmstrom re-rendered it in a more suitable style. The notion of selling a super specific bit of obscure Ramones ephemera to a demographic that is almost guaranteed to be entirely disinterested in it practically keeps me up at night. Yeah, I’m that guy. Deal with it.

For petty, idiotic shitheads like myself for whom the art and iconography of certain artists means a great deal more than it probably should, t-shirts emblazoned with certain symbols, insignia or signifiers are still a means of broadly telegraphing tribal affiliation. If I see you walking down the street in, say, a t-shirt with the album art from the first Fields of the Nephilim album on it, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that you and I are kindred spirits with common interests. If I discover, however, that you’re only wearing it because you think it “looks cool,” or some variation thereof, you should expect scorn.

So, yeah, I’m a jerk, especially considering I’m in my mid-50s and probably should have stopped wearing band t-shirts about a decade ago. But, y’know, whatever.

But, I think we can all agree — as silly as I may be — that this relatively new spin on the band t-shit, modeled after the visual user experience when one plays a track on a streaming platform like Spotify is fucking abjectly sad on a level that borders on tragedy.