Flaming Pablum

"If It Was Broken, You'd Be Screaming!"

…so sang the inimitable noise rock duo, Happy Flowers on their 1987 album, My Skin Covers My Body, which also featured timeless chestnuts like “I Wet the Bed Again,” “Jenny Tried to Kiss Me at Recess” and, of course, “Why Didn’t You Tell Me You Were Bringing Home a Baby!” While the `Flowers wrote blackly comedic songs from the perspective of a vexed, psychotic four-year-old, there was indeed an element of foundational truth to “If It Was Broken, You’d Be Screaming.” An expression widely shared in the wake of sudden injury, it's essentially conventional wisdom. When you break a bone, it’s usually pretty obvious.

Alas, as it turns out, and in doubtlessly many-if-not-most instances, you shouldn’t really rely on the medical counsel of the Happy Flowers.

But let’s back up, a little….

Well over a goddamn year ago, if not more, I started feeling an odd sensation in my left foot (with apologies to Daniel Day Lewis). Initially it felt, while walking around on it, like my sock was bunching up around the toe, and the “ball” of my foot was being uncomfortably compressed, in some way. Closer scrutiny routinely revealed this not to be the case, but my foot continued to feel different. With each step, it didn’t fall and land the way it previously did. It didn’t hurt — but it didn’t feel right. An expensive chiropractor I was consulting, at the time, indeed agreed that the foot appeared to be “rolling” a little. That guy ended up prescribing a pair of very expensive and roundly uncomfortable orthotic insoles that I maybe wore for a few weeks before abandoning.

But the weird foot problem continued.

I then consulted my primary care physician, who upon examining the exterior of my foot, said he couldn’t detect any readily discernible problems. It was also around this time that I was experiencing, as recounted in this brow-furrowing episode, this weirdly recurring blood-rushing-in-my-feet sensation. I speculated to my doctor that I might have gout, given my heroic intake of beer and such. He basically laughed that off, underscoring that — much like “if it was broken, you’d be screaming” - if I was experiencing gout, I’d fucking know it (gout is reportedly mega-fucking painful). “Alex,” he sighed, "you think you might have gout because, let’s face it, you think you deserve gout.” He has my number.

I never got a concrete explanation as to why that blood-rushing thing was happening, and it eventually went away. But not the ball-of-the-foot problem. That continued.

I then went to see an allegedly proper podiatrist recommended by my primary care physician. For the sake of this fraught narrative, this podiatrist will henceforth be referred to as Dr. Quip. I went in to see Dr. Quip who, as his alias might suggest, was quick with the wisecracks. I started explaining to him my problem with my left foot, and he basically interrupted my typically epic-poem-like saga, blithely informing me that what I was experiencing was “in all likelihood” a condition called “second toe capsulitis,” which, if I understand it correctly, is basically inflammation of the soft tissue in the ball of the foot. That certainly sounded plausible, and I was heartened by his immediate recognition of the problem.

In terms of next steps (pardon the pun), he said that a confirmation of that diagnosis would probably require both x-rays and an MRI, but being that it was probably capsulitis, I should just go ahead and order this other pair of orthotics (“you can get’em easily from ol’ Jeff Bezos" … hilarity) and, along with regular stretching, it’ll most likely clear the problem right up. I hit up Amazon and got a pair the very next day.

I dutifully inserted these new insoles -- considerably more affordable that my chiropractor’s ones -- into my sneakers and started basically wearing them exclusively while also regularly stretching my left foot. Unlike the previous insoles, I acclimated quickly to the new ones. The theory was that it should take about five or six weeks to alleviate the issue.

Despite my really wanting this treatment to clear up the problem — it just didn’t. Six weeks after first wearing them, my left foot was still inexplicably stiff, sore and frequently numb. But, at the same time, life was suddenly very busy again, with family issues, work demands and other stupid shit vying for my time and attention. As a result, I didn’t get the opportunity to get back in touch with Dr. Quip until a few months later.

I told him that the insoles weren’t really getting me where I needed to be, and that I was still experiencing this regular discomfort (that was actually getting incrementally worse). Again, he repeated that an MRI would really be the deciding factor, but I couldn’t do that until I’d had x-rays, so … x-rays were next on the docket.

Despite the predictable pushback dance from my frankly shitty insurance company, I managed to get coverage for x-rays and hobbled over to NYU Langone to get those radioactive pictures snapped. Those, in turn, were sent to Dr. Quip, who leisurely got back to me a few days later saying that they basically told him nothing new, and that the MRI was, again, the ticket.

As before, my insurers were pronouncedly reluctant to cover this cost, and issued disarmingly swift notices to this effect, cruelly asserting that, after supposedly reviewing the specifics, they didn’t see any tangible necessity for an MRI. In a rare moment of professional tenacity, Dr. Quip made a more compelling case to them and secured authorization, and we were off to the races.

After breathlessly showing up at the specified radiologist’s office for an after-work appointment on the other side of town, however, it was gleaned that giggly Dr. Quip somehow forgot to send them the prescription order, bouncing the appointment to the next day. Oh joy.

I eventually did get that MRI — and hoo-boy, I don’t know when the last time you had an MRI was, but that shit is LOUD — and those results were also then sent to Dr. Quip. After two or three days of my peppering his inbox with questions via the Patient Portal (or, in my case, the Impatient Portal), he wrote back the following…

“hey, it appears you have an avn, which means one bone in the bottom of the foot most likely was broken at some point and stopped healing/doesn’t have enough blood supply.”

Johns Hopkins has a slightly more grave-sounding take, as is their wont,…

"Avascular necrosis is a disease that results from the temporary or permanent loss of blood supply to the bone. When blood supply is cut off, the bone tissue dies and the bone collapses. If avascular necrosis happens near a joint, the joint surface may collapse.”

So, all that capsulitis stuff? That was basically a big fuckin’ snipe hunt.

I walk a lot. I walk forty-five minutes to my office every morning, and forty-five minutes home from my office every evening. On the weekends, I walk all over the goddamn map. I don’t run. I don’t go to the gym, and I only really ride my bike during the summer. My biggest physical outlet is walking, and I’ve apparently been walking around with broken bones in my left foot that are slowly eroding for, again, well over a year or more. While I’m completely capable of heroically injuring myself in any number of stupid instances (this one springs to mind), I have absolutely zero recollection of ever doing anything to, with or on my left foot that could have possibly resulted in the breaking of a bone therein. Once again, I figured that, if it was broken, ….I’d be screaming, but nothing like that ever happened.

Limping forward, the next step is a new kind of pad beneath the problem area in the short-term (and I’m about to depart on an invariably walk-heavy vacation, in a couple of weeks), followed by — in the long-term — probably a “cam boot” or “walking boot” for god knows how long.

Rant over.

Just remember …. just because you’re not screaming doesn’t mean it ain’t broken.

Vinyl Summers

It’s been said that, should you be of a certain sensibility, a friend that routinely introduces you to new music is one of the best friends you can have. I’ve been very lucky to have a few of those types of friends, over the years. While this post is ostensibly about punk rock records, it’s really more those friends. 

As mentioned back on this recent post, my grade-school classmate Brad — who was basically a bigger, (way) more athletic and (way, way) more popular kid than myself — first bonded over our mutual love of music. At first, it was KISS, which was a very common, bonding element in the late `70s. As mentioned in this post, then as now, you either loved KISS or you loathed them vehemently, and Brad and I — despite being polar opposites in practically every other capacity — both entirely loved them. Our respective mothers were great friends, so we would be regularly thrown into social situations, early on -- an awkward pairing of beefy soccer star with scrawny sci-fi nerd. But when our mutual KISS fandom was fully disclosed, that seemed to bridge the major gaps between us.

But Brad was almost always one step ahead.

Here we were some unfathomable years earlier … at some grade-school Christmas pageant (or something). Brad’s sitting in the forefront. I’m the little dweeb in the back. To my right is my great friend Danny, eulogized here (and first immortalized as Rocky here).

Again, recounted on this post, by the summer of 1979, Brad had largely abandoned KISS (who were pushing their widely-maligned Dynasty album, at the time, which I’ll continue to defend) in favor of immersing himself into his preoccupation with the Beatles and, more specifically, the “Paul is Dead” conspiracy theory, and dragging me right along with him. We spent the entirety of that summer and much of the following months playing records backwards and freaking ourselves out. But that horse was only going to run so far, it being the precipice of the 1980s.

By the time Punk Rock had arrived in force, Brad was typically a few miles ahead of me. We’d all heard the Sex Pistols and The Clash, by this point (I’d been gifted the first albums by The Clash and, oddly, The Vibrators, in a cache of promo LP’s my father had shipped to my sister and I from London while on extended assignment for Forbes Magazine). I was into it, and starting to explore other bands like Devo, The Jim Carroll Band, Blondie, The Ramones, The B-52's and Adam & the Ants, all of whom I loved. But Brad had typically done a much deeper dive.

I remember arriving at the house Brad’s mother had rented out in Quogue, in the summer of 1981, and being practically blown right off the porch by the fire-power of the stereo that came with the place, a bit of consumer electronics that Brad was fully availing himself to. Feeling woefully out-of-step in my Pink Floyd The Wall t-shirt, I found Brad in the living room, steadily giving the speakers a worrying workout (and his mother a splitting headache) via weapons-grade airings of Nobody's Heroes by a band called The Stiff Little Fingers, So Alone by an unhealthy looking gent named Johnny Thunders and the double-album of The Great Rock N’ Roll Swindle, which featured a hilariously sloppy cover of “Johnny B. Goode” by the Sex Pistols. I don’t know how he was first hearing this stuff, but Brad was unwittingly showing me up to be a total punk-rock dilettante.

Of all the records we spun, that summer, however, there were two in particular that really sank their hooks into me, and both continue to be all-time favorites today, regardless of era or categorization. Those albums were the eponymous debut LP by Generation X and Concrete by 999.

With the former, all it really took was a solitary play of “Ready Steady Go” to get me onboard. Where their relative forbears in the Pistols and The Clash repeatedly sang about destroying all things “rock n’ roll,” Generation X remained avowed fans, proudly name-checking outfits like the Beatles, the Stones and Bob Dylan in this ode to a mid-to-late `60s pop music television program. But that reverence was brazenly offset by this amazing sound — the sheer tone of Derwood Andrews’ guitar -- a brash, electrified roar that was at once densely melodic and unthinkably distorted, and it was all over this LP. Coupled with suitably yobbish choruses, Tony James’ insistent bass, Mark Laff’s pugnacious drums and the distinctive vocals of a gent who was shortly to take over the world, that being the endearingly sneery Billy goddamn Idol, Generation X was fucking unstoppable. While dismissed by many of the punk orthodoxy for being unapologetically poppy, there was just no arguing with that first album, allegedly recorded in a single week with finished cuts often culled from manic, single takes. To this day, it sounds like precious little else, and Derwood’s guitar still gets my blood rushing (especially the intro clang of "Kleenex"). 

Here they were lip-psyching to “Ready Steady Go" on “Top of The Pops”…

Even the album cover was awesome — a smeary, over-saturated, sepia-drenched portrait of a bunch of leather-clad nogoodnicks from an explosive future.

The other big record, Concrete by 999, wasn’t quite as overt, but matched Generation X in its insistency and attitude. Kicking off with energetic “So Greedy” (the first song Brad played for me), Concrete boasted a taut, musical finesse you probably weren’t going to find on records by their punky contemporaries. Where Generation X's songs sounded feral and deliberately rudimentary, 999’s playing was tight, urgent and sharp, but with more of an airier sonic dynamic than a lot of their peers. I didn’t know this, at the time, but 999 was formed by a gent named Keith Lucas, who’d honed his chops some years earlier as a guitarist playing in the pub rock band, Kilburn & the The High Roads alongside fellow proto-punk rocker Ian Dury (later of the Blockheads). Swept up in the energy and impact of the era, Lucas quit the High Roads, changed his name to the punkier Nick Cash (as in: to steal), and formed 999 — named after the British emergency telephone number — with his brother Guy on lead guitar.

Somewhat ironically, by the time Concrete was released in 1981, 999 were being perceived, in British Punk circles, to be second-stringers pretty much on their descent, following their more well-received albums like 999 and Separates, featuring incendiary singles like “Emergency” and “Homicide.” But back in Quogue, we didn’t have that context. All I knew was that this 999 record sounded liked an explosion of pure adrenalin that could not be found on most of the rock albums of the day, when the rest of the world was determined to keep listening to Journey, the J. Geils Band and Billy Squier.

Beyond the hiccupy freneticism of “So Greedy,” there were covers of garage nuggets like “Little Red Riding Hood” by Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs and “Fortune Teller” by the Rolling Stones, as well as stomping chant-alongs like “Public Enemy No.1,” “Break It Up" and “Don’t You Know I Need You.” Beyond that, alongside some filler like “Silent Anger” and “Mercy Mercy,” the Nines tried their hand at more exotic fare than most of their safety-pinned peers via atmospheric workouts like “Bongos on the Nile” and “Taboo,” but the “big single” was “Obsessed,” a frantic homage to the Spaghetti Western scores of Ennio Morricone, replete with “hoo-hah” chants and suitably twangy guitar hooks, all framing a song about Nick Cash’s fiery libido. Here they are performing it (well, miming along to it) with great, pogo-y enthusiasm, on a children’s show (!!!) called “Cheggers Plays Pop”

At my first opportunity, back in the city, I hungrily sought out both Generation X and Concrete, but they were not entirely simple to track down. This being just prior to my discovery (via my pal Spike) of the myriad joys of record shopping in Greenwich Village, I took Brad’s tip and checked out the Crazy Eddie’s on East 57th Street, just off of Third Avenue, who had a surprisingly enviable selection of imported vinyl. This shortly became a regular stop, for me. 

By the following summer, all things Punk had given way to all things Hardcore Punk, and Brad was still ahead of the pack, along with our mutual friend Rich, who’d turned me onto bands like The Mob, Flipper and the fabled New York Thrash cassette. Brad, meanwhile had moved on from late `70’s British Punk to evangelize homegrown hardcore outfits like Dead Kennedys, Minor Threat, Bad Brains, Black Flag, DOA, the Circle Jerks and this amazing compilation called Let Them Eat Jellybeans, which opened up a whole new world of options. Things were happening in real time, now, and life was getting genuinely exciting.

Funnily enough, about a year earlier, I’d been taken to a dude ranch in Wyoming wherein my family befriended a family from Washington D.C. named the Blows. The youngest of the Blow clan (and yes, that was their real name) was this kid named Wendel, who was slightly older than myself. Wendel mopily stomped around with a shaved head and combat boots. As I recall, Wendel also had a habit of spitting at my feet when we crossed paths. In any case, he was allegedly a bass player in a local band called S.O.A. (which stood for State of Alert, although I almost had my lights punched out when I questioned whether it would be more grammatically correct to say Alertness). Unsurprisingly, Wendel and I never became friends, but one of the bands Brad was touting that following summer was none other than S.O.A., whose music on the Flex Your Head compilaton (another sterling Brad recommendation) was truly bracing. As a footnote for the non-record geeks amongst you, S.O.A.’s lead singer was one Henry Garfield, who later changed his name to Rollins, joined Black Flag and the rest is blah blah blah.

As further and further summers went by and we all assumed our respective trajectories of adulthood, our paths and our tastes naturally diverged. I remember running into Brad a few years later, and he’d started listening to bands I’d consider unthinkable, like Lynyrd Skynyrd. Rich, meanwhile, became a full-time Deadhead, for a while, although I can’t say I have any idea what he’s into these days. I pretty much stayed the course, and invariably take my preferred music way more seriously than I arguably should. I still listen to records like Generation X and Concrete to this day (although you won’t find the latter on Spotify, for those of you addicted to lazy convenience).

But I will absolutely never forget how these friends -– and countless others like Zachary T, Billy K, Ralph M, John C, Sean H, Rob B, Rob D, Jay F, Charlie F, Walter W, Tim R, Ben K and several more -– opened those initial doors for me, infusing and enriching my life with those sounds that retain the freshness and intensity of the feelings I experienced when I first heard them.

For that, I will always be grateful.

ADDENDUM:

Brad and I in the summer of 2001, just prior to my wedding...

Some of the original vinyl discussed in the paragraphs above....

Goodnight, Andy Rourke

It sounds too perfect now, but the very first time I ever heard "How Soon is Now?" was on the dance floor of the 21st Street iteration of the fabled Danceteria in the spring of 1985.

I'd graced the venue a week earlier in the wake of my otherwise abortive senior prom when, at the suggestion of my significantly hipper classmate Liz Robaina, we ditched the increasingly maudlin interiors of Studio 54 (then in its spiraling death throes) for a markedly cooler destination downtown. That first visit (in a dorky rented tux, no less) proved indelible, and I was back a week later. Coaxed onto the dance floor by a mixture of temporary beery confidence and the airing of "Love like Blood" by my beloved Killing Joke, I was suddenly met with guitarist Johnny Marr's sensory-engulfing, reverb-drenched Bo Diddley beat and Andy Rourke's signature bass, veritably submerging the entirety of the club in a strange, slow-mo collectively swoony sway. Of course, Morrissey's lugubrious bleat was part of that mix, too, but the less said about him the better. Regardless, I bought the 12" single the next day, and life was never the same.

Andy Rourke just died from pancreatic cancer. He never seemed to get his proper due as a truly gifted musician (and he was even in the aforementioned Killing Joke for about five minutes). Rest in peace.

Play it loud...

Well, That's Quite Enough of That

As predicted, my optimistic decision to blithely re-open the commenting channels inevitably turned out to be a mistake due to the tenacity of one particularly bad apple. 

As a result, all remarks you might want to submit from this point forward must again now be vetted before I publish them. And should they come couched in any potty-mouthed invective, personal slights or wingnut agitprop, you shouldn't expect to see them here.  

This is why we can’t have nice things, as they say. C’est la guerre.

Incidentally, nom de plumes may imaginatively change, but IP addresses never lie.

Ginsberg's Lens

The following item comes courtesy of loyal, longtime Flaming Pablum reader Dr. Bop, who regularly sends me curious minutia whether I’m soliciting it or not (let alone responding). Hopefully he’s reading this and knows that I do indeed appreciate it.

Either notorious or beloved, depending on your sensibilities, Alan Ginsberg was one of New York City’s more celebrated beat poets and political activists, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and a figurehead of downtown bohemia (despite actually coming from New Jersey). I remember reading his signature manifesto, “Howl,” in college and being duly captivated. Ginsberg was also renowned for his pronounced appetite for sex, which he explicitly delved into in his writing (specifically pertaining to his own homosexuality), much to the pointed chagrin of the self-appointed guardians of social mores of the time. I seem to remember fellow poet, proto-punk rocker and Flaming Pablum favorite Jim Carroll writing about Ginsberg’s voracious libido, at one point.

In any case, what many might not know (or, at least, I certainly didn’t) was that Alan Ginsberg was also a sort of amateur photographer. Dr Bop forward me a piece published earlier this week in Document Journal that culls together many of Ginsberg’s photos, including portraits of luminaries like Ai Weiwei, Hunter S. Thompson, fellow Beat icon William S. Burroughs, Gus Van Sant and Iggy Goddamn Pop.

Check it out here.

Back to Charlotte Street & Robert Christgau is a Scumbag

It’s been a couple of minutes since I last invoked the Plasmatics, so here goes…

Appropos of nothing at all, I remembered an old story that, for the sleeve of what would be their third album, 1982’s largely-ignored Coup D’Etat, the band (or someone…maybe manager and conceptual svengali Rob Swensen) wanted the cover picture taken on a particular New York City street. That street, again, if legend has it, was Charlotte Street in the South Bronx. 

The alleged decision to shoot on this particular street stemmed originally from a visit to same five years earlier by then-president Jimmy Carter, which resulted in an infamous photograph of the man standing amidst the proverbial rubble. Three years later, as something of a cheap shot, Carter’s GOP rival Ronald Reagan traveled to the very same spot on Charlotte Street as a means of demonstrating how anemic Carter’s efforts had been, suggesting that only he could make the required difference to turn things around, reducing the plight of the South Bronx to little more than a political football and photo-op.

In response to this, the Plasmatics allegedly showed up on Charlotte Street with a big fuckoff tank, and called their record Coup D’Etat.

Great story, right? Well, here’s the thing -– I could find precious little documentation to back up the original story that the Plasmatics specifically went to Charlotte Street. Sure, study the cover of the album and it certainly looks like it could have been Charlotte Street. I mean, those are burned out buildings appearing behind them, after all, but it’s not like the South Bronx was the only place to find distressed urban decay. Flip the album over….

…and the only tangible information about the photography is that it was handled by a gent named Butch Star. Certain folks have suggested the Butch Star is actually the aforementioned Mr. Swenson, but, y’know, who knows? As a result, the trail to verify the location has gone cold.

Oh, as something of a surreal and depressing coda, the following September after Coup D’Etat was released on a disinterested public, the Plasmatics’ erstwhile touring mates in KISS also traveled to Charlotte Street, selecting it as the location for the laughably ludicrous (naturally) video for “Lick It Up.” One can only imagine the already-beleagured residents of the Charlotte Street neighborhood being somewhat bemused by all this attention.

KISS probably chose Charlotte Street because it looked suitably apocalyptic, not for any political reasons (that was never their scene). The Plasmatics chose Charlotte Street very much on purpose as a vague political statement, but then buried and/or abandoned that statement, inexplicably.

Regardless, while the full story may yet be told in some band biography, I could find zero evidence to verify that Charlotte Street was the location for the cover image Coup D’Etat or the video for “Lick It Up.” Ho hum. 

But in my travels around the `net trying to unearth info about the Plasmatics’ shoot, I did come across Robert Christgau’s review of Coup D’Etat for The Village Voice. For those who may not know the name, Robert Christgau is the self-titled “Dean of American Rock Critics.” Some years back, I started reading his book and got suitably turned off by his slavishly masturbatory prose (and this is coming from me). You can read that screed here.

In any case, here’s what Christgau had to say, as documented here:

Plasmatics: Coup D'Etat [Capitol, 1982] Now that they've copped to heavy metal tempos, they could last as long as Judas Priest, although since the HM hordes do demand chops, Wendy O. might be well advised to try singing with her nether lips. Not only can't she carry a tune (ha), she can't even yell. Inspirational Thing She Says Backward on Outgroove: "The brainwashed do not know they are brainwashed." Inspirational Message Scratched on Outgroove: "You were not made for this." D-

Did you catch that?

“She might be well advised trying to try singing with her nether lips”

I mean, seriously, Village Voice, I realize this was still 1982 … but what the actual fuck?

Meanwhile, back on Charlotte Street in the South Bronx, if you go looking to recreate the sleeve of Coup D'Etat with your own big fuckoff tank or try re-enact the priapic preening of Paul Stanley in front of a row of crumbling housing projects, the end results are not going to synch up very well. As documented in this first-person account from 2016, Charlotte Street is now a sleepy bedroom community that now plays host to an unrecognizable plot of suburban-style ranch houses. 

ADDENDUM: For better or worse, I’ve always been a strident Plasmatics fan and apologist, defending them at their silliest moments, which were myriad. I first snapped up a copy of the “official” Plasmatics book, “Your Heart in Your Mouth” circa 1983 from a posh bookstore on Fifth Avenue. In later years, I bought a second copy of it (why I did so now escapes me) at a WFUV Record Fair in Chelsea about twenty years ago. As such, I now own two copies of this  book which, in certain very silly circles, can fetch an admirable sum. I’d wrongly assumed the book was first published prior to the release of Coup D’Etat, but dug out one copy this morning to verify — and lo and behold, I came across this fleeting invocation of the band’s cover shoot for that album, quasi-confirming the notion that it was indeed the same Charlotte Street address, if the book — a band-sanctioned bit of self-mythologizing promotion — is to be believed. 

 

Back to Tier 3

I would love to say I was cool enough to go to Tier 3 was it was a going concern, but I would have 13 years old, at the time. That may not have stopped everyone, but it certainly stopped me.

To walk by 225 West Broadway today, you’d honestly never know anything punky, cool or hip ever occupied the space. Today, it’s a comparatively genteel Italian restaurant named Terra, which used to occupy a space across the avenue. Back back circa 1979-1980, this tiny venue played host to local and/or East Coast bands like Bad Brains, the Beastie Boys, DNA, The Bush Tetras, the Bongos, Glenn Branca, 8 Eyed Spy, The Lounge Lizards, as well as British bands like The Raincoats, Madness, The Slits, Young Marble Giants, The Pop Group and eve Bauhaus. Today, at 225 West Broadway, you’re more likely to find a persnickety TriBeCan complaining about how their pasta primavera is too tepid. Where once this chunk of TriBeCa was a sort of a bohemian frontier, here in 2023, it’s a fairly monied, well-traveled slice of covetable real estate.

I probably first heard the name “Tier 3” in “After Hours,” when Terri Garr’s character, Julie suggests to bedraggled Griffin Dunne’s Paul Hackett, deep into an evening of Kafka-esque turmoil, that “Tier 3 is still open!” It was already long gone by the time I’d ever heard of it, so for me to wax rhapsodic about its absence is a bit rich. Luckily, however, there is Amy Rigby.

I first invoked Amy Rigby here and then went onto interview her here. A veteran of the original Tier 3 scene, Amy recently put the video below together. Here’s what she had to say about it.

I made this short film as an intro for a panel on Tier 3: The Little Club That Could at the 2023 PopCon academic conference held in April at NYU. Holly George-Warren moderated our discussion of this beloved lower Manhattan nightspot that played a big part in our lives. Hilary Jaeger (who brought us in and booked the bands), Cynthia Sley of Bush Tetras who played there many times, and myself part of the Stinky's dance party crew & club coat check girl - we were also joined by my brother Michael McMahon who made many of the club posters, and Angela Jaeger from Stare Kits (our early band - first to play at the club) and later Pigbag and Instinct. Tier 3 was one of the only women-run punk clubs on the East Coast. And it was much more than that: it was a clubhouse for misfits in the land of misfits. With photo contributions from Julia Gorton, Steve Lombardi, Hilary Jaeger, Lucy Sante, Robert Sietsema, Niles Jaeger, Angela Jaeger, Amy Rigby, Pat Irwin, Beate Nilsen, Charlyn Zlotnik Artwork by Amelia Faulkner, Michael McMahon and some uncredited folks, let me know who you are) and Video by Liza Bear and Michael Mclard Thanks for watching - so many bands and artists played and showed their work at the club, would love to expand this to include more of them.

Without further ado, here’s Amy’s video.

Liberty or Desk

News came down, this week, that Paramount Media Networks were essentially scrapping what was left of MTV News, an outlet some here might remember that I worked at for a hot minute (well, almost two years) in the mid-2000’s. As I’ve suggested before, while getting laid off from said gig was certainly no goddamn fun, I genuinely learned a lot at that place and met scores of brilliant, funny and inspiring individuals, most of whom I’m proud to still call friends this many years later. While most of the people I’d worked alongside had also left the auspices of the company, by this point, the news still made me sad.

In tribute, like many of my former colleageus, I posted some pictures online, notably a shot of me and Mr. T (above), who strangely dropped by the office one day. This happened quite often, actually. At various points, I had Sacha Baron-Cohen (in “Borat” mode), Busta Rhymes, Bono, Amy Winehouse, Fat Mike from NOFX (never liked them) and Ghostface Killah from the Wu-Tang Clan loitering around my cubicle while I was trying to work. It was just that sort of place. In addition to the portrait of myself and my BFF, Mr. T, I posted a picture of that old desk there (see below), as did many other folks. My former manager chimed in saying that he’d wished he’d taken a picture of his desk, as these images served as a sort of time capsule.

In any case, prompted by same, while waiting for some crucial assets to arrive at my current office, this morning, I put this silly composite together. Enjoy.

My desk at Denison University during my sophomore year (1986-1987). You’ll notice the surface of the desk uncluttered with any semblance of actual work.

My first gig outside of college was as an intern at SPIN Magazine, where – tellingly – I didn’t really have my own desk. Similarly, my first paying gig at LIFE Magazine … as a copy clerk … didn’t come with its own desk either (as, most of the time, I was busy running around the office delivering copy churned out from a printer – this was all prior to the ubiquity of the internet). I did eventually land a desk as an editorial assistant at LIFE, in a cubicle in the hall outside the News Editor’s office, but I don’t believe I ever captured that on film. After getting laid off from LIFE in 1993, I decamped to TIME, where after faffing about in various administrative positions, I landed a job at the TIME Magazine News Desk, which did come, at last, with a desk. I was basically there from 1993 until the end of 2005.

There came a point, for me, at the News Desk wherein I felt I was long overdue for a change. I’d been there, basically, far too long, and was still working two grueling overnight shifts a week. While I’d branched out, by this point, and actually written a few items for the magazine (notably several contributions to a special music issue, some small news items in the front of the book and Bono’s eulogy to Joey Ramone, which I orchestrated), I was really ready to make a break, albeit with a heavy heart. I loved working at TIME, but when an amazing opportunity opened up for me at the online wing of MTV News over in Times Square, I jumped.

Once again, my tenure at MTV News was comparatively brief. The writing was on the wall, really, when the excellent gent who’d hired me was laid off. It was really only a matter of time before they shook the tree further and I lost my own grip. That said, I will continue to believe that a lot of that was my own doing. I had a great opportunity, at that place, to really distinguish myself and assert my own voice, but too often, I failed to do so. I didn’t make myself essential, and thus paid the inevitable price. Once again, while that was no fun, it was still a hugely rewarding experience to work there, and the friends I made I still cherish.

After getting the keys to the street from MTV News at 1515 Broadway, I waffled about until landing a part-time spot as a homepage editor at MSN.com, the Microsoft portal. This found me working in a bullpen in a building directly across Sixth Avenue from my old stomping grounds at the TIME-LIFE Building. This was a fun-but-nervy position in that, being that I wasn’t technically on staff, so I had to take three months off after every six (or something … I honestly don’t remember), and then hope to God they hired me back after those lean three months. But, I did have my own desk….

From MSN, I somehow cajoled one of our lovely content providers from TODAY.com to consider the heroically unlikely prospect of hiring me on at that morning show’s web concern as an editor. I surprisingly managed to land that position with very little fuss, finding me orchestrating content on the site’s homepage, and writing strenuously incongruous copy for its parenting blog (TODAY Moms), its fashion blog (The Look) and its royal-wedding-countdown blog (The Windsor Knot). I started in 2010 and was essentially catapulted out of my chair in 2014. While I was able to do a lot of fun stuff, there, I was not really of the ideal sensibility for that particular position and never really a good fit, despite, once again, meeting hundreds of great people, there. I was also excised from proceedings in a kind of dehumanzing way, but I gather that was the company’s M.O. Leaving TODAY.com was ultimately a good thing, for me, but that chapter was particularly humbling, at the time. But, y’know, I did have a desk. It was like working in windowless, orange submarine.

After landing with a brittle thud on the cold, hard but worryingly familiar tundra of unemployment once again, I busied myself with lots of temp positions and freelance writing (something I’d done throughout), but being without a stable job with benefits when you’ve got a wife and two still small children was no friggin’ picnic. I entertained some unthinkable options. I came very close, at one point, to lobotomizing myself in order to take a job at FOX News, but ultimately (and rightly) demurred. I was engaged in some very lengthy talks with some outlets that didn’t make me want to spit up, but too often, the numbers were not right, so to speak.

Eventually, I got the right offer from the concern that I’ve now been at for about seven years, and am very happy. Not only did I get a desk, but for the first time, I got my own office (as opposed to another bullpen or a shared space). Huzzah!

I’ve sort of over-decorated it.

Hammer Time

PLEASE BE ADVISED: 

I honestly don't know for how long I'm going to have to keep apologizing for this, but please excuse the periodic preponderance of broken images across this blog. Please know that it's not just me being sloppy, but rather my blogging service, Typepad, experiencing some sort of Old Testament-styled plague. I am repeatedly told that they are working on it and purportedly nearing a solution -- although, honestly, how would they know that? They either have a solution or they don't. Proximity to a solution is entirely moot. 

Anyway, know that I'm aware of it, know that it bothers me tremendously and know that I'm doing all I can to solve it. 

Thanks for your patience at this challenging time,

- The Management

Carnegie Hill Kids & Yorkville Youths

It’s weird to hear yourself speak, if you’re not prepared for it.

I remember, back in college, I was a disc jockey on our radio station (WDUB, 91.1 FM in Granville, OH – now a digital platform in 2023 and no longer a functioning radio station). There was this kid who lived down the hall from me named Preston, and at the end of the year, he suddenly gave me a handful of cassette tapes that he’d recorded of all my shows. It was kind of an odd gift (why did he record them?), but once I had them, I was really thankful, although listening back was always strange, “Do I really sound like that?” being the recurring reaction.

I had that very same reaction again this morning, as I was listening to Episode #61 of Desperately Seeking the `80s, the podcast that graciously hosted me last week for a (very) rambling discussion about growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City in the – wait for it – 1980’s.

As feared/predicted, while I even admit, at one point during proceedings, that I was concerned about coming across like “a babbling brook of idiocy,” I, of course, did just exactly that, unspooling several tendrils of discussion that frequently eschewed the topic of the questions that prefaced them. I go off on unfinished tangents, blithely raise points that are only tenuously related to the main thrust of the conversation, brazenly offer inane observations that do little further the narrative and continually seem to interrupt my two lovely hosts. But, I guess, such is the nature of an organic conversation, which this very much was. While I’m concerned that we probably had way more fun recording it than you’ll probably have listening to it, it was indeed a great, hugely fun experience, now preserved for posterity.

Just as a wee bit of background, I happened to grow up during the same era and, very oddly, in both the respective neighborhoods of the podcast’s two hosts, Meg and Jessica. Much like Meg, I was entirely privileged to spend my formative, grammar-school years in Carnegie Hill on the Upper East Side, and then decamped with my Mom to an apartment in nearby Yorkville – where Jessica lived -- circa 1983 or so, when my parents got divorced. As such, the three of us share a bizarre amount of common experience, which is how/why we first discovered each other (as discussed here).

Anyway, without further ado, if the last few paragraphs haven’t scared you off the notion of actually listening, please avail yourselves to Episode #61 of Desperately Seeking the `80s, wherein I dispense with all semblance of my carefully cultivated mystique and reveal myself to be a haplessly blabby Chatty Cathy. Enjoy!

Find it here, or however you enjoy your podcasts. 

...or just press "play" below...