Flaming Pablum

Pee Wee...

I really didn't expect this one. Rest In Peace, sir.  This is still one of my all time favorites.

Remembering The Rickster

Regular readers may recognize the name Ricky Powell, who I’ve invoked several times here, over the years (notary here, here, here, here, here and this post, wherein the man himself chimed in on the comments). In Downtown NYC circles, he was a known quantity as a photographer, graffiti tagger, personality, and erstwhile comrade of the fledgling Beastie Boys. That latter association probably provided him with the most renown, but he was very much an established figure in his own right.

In any case, Ricky sadly passed away in 2021. Shortly after his death, Showtime released a documentary on the man titled “The Individualist.” Being that I don’t subscribe to that service, I was unable to ever see it.

Until now….

A regular reader named Crawford kindly wrote in …. with a link.

Enjoy it while it’s up. Thanks, Crawford! 

Sinead at Sin-é

There used to be this great little, practically hidden-away café/bar/intimate performance space on St. Marks Place, in the early-to-mid `90s, called Sin-é, which was run by this eccentric Irish gent named Shane. In very short order, it became a very hip spot, and it was not at all uncommon to run into suitably cool celebs hanging in or around it. From local scenesters to rising stars and established luminaries, everyone seemed to mix and mingle at Sin-é without a great deal of fuss. It was just that type of place. 

My favorite memory, though, was giving some out-of-town friends a sort of ersatz East Village tour, one drizzly evening. As we were walking west on St. Marks Place out of Tompkins Square Park, I started unspooling the backstory of Sin-é, and explaining that it was not at all unlikely to run into Irish rockstars like Bono, Gavin Friday and … as I pulled open the door, who came walking out as if on cue but … “ladies and gentlemen, Sinead O’Connor.”

She flashed a quick smile our way and walked out into the rain.

Sinead O'Connor was troubled, but absolutely preternaturally gifted. May she finally find peace. 

This Must Indeed Be The Place

While I’m currently committed to finishing “Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics,” a sprawling oral history by Dylan Jones all about London's fertile synth-pop scene in the late `70/early 80s spawned from fabled clubs like The Blitz (I’m about a third of the way through … it’s kind of slow-going), I popped into the Barnes & Noble near my office for a quick browse, yesterday, only to have the book pictured above practically leap out and grab me by the jugular.

Penned by one Jesse Rifkin, a historian who also conducts a varies series of music-themed tour of New York, “This Must Be The Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City” seems verily tailor-made to my particular predilections. And given that, after a swift perusal of the index, I spotted invocations of names like Agnostic Front, SWANS, Missing Foundation and – OH DO PLEASE WAIT FOR IT – Cop Shoot Cop, I snapped it up and bought it on the spot. Expect a full, florid book report in relatively short order.

I want to say that I’ve encountered Mr. Rifkin in one instance or another, but cannot seem to find any record thereof. In any case, while I’m quite fired up to read his book, his Instagram account is entirely worth your time, touching on many of the same topics as my blog. Witness just two examples below.

Back in 2015, I posted an entry wondering aloud about a short-lived venue called Chase Park Lounge that fleetingly played host to the ferocious likes of The Birthday Party. From a post of Jesse’s on his instagram, here’s an antiquated show schedule from the venue that discloses its location at 599 Broadway, on the south side of Houston Street. Today, that space is the American Eagle Outfitters wherein I spotted that beach-ready, day-glo bastardization of the Unknown Pleasures sleeve.

Back in May of 2022, meanwhile, I posted a piece about Michael Gira’s fabled “bunker” at 93 Avenue B, a SWANS rehearsal space which doubled as his windowless crash pad. Via his Instagram page, Rifkin hosted a glimpse of that fearasome stronghold’s interior…

Anyway, find more amazing images like these here and tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya. Enjoy.

But Still I Fear And Still I Dare Not Laugh At the Madman: The Power of “The Prophet’s Song”

In May of 1976, my older sister Victoria was given a copy of A Night At The Opera, the fourth album by Queen, by her schoolmate Nancy Kinsella (I can’t believe I remember her name) on the occasion of what would have been Vick’s 12th or 13th birthday, if I recall correctly. This was invariably due to the inclusion of its sprawling hit single, at the time, the even-then-already-iconic “Bohemian Rhapsody.” The LP went into swift, regular rotation on our family’s stereo, alongside my sister’s favorite album, at the time, that being the also recently released Mothership Connection by Parliament.

As summer arrived, both of these records started to play hugely informative roles for my nascent, music-hungry ears, and I completely adored both of them. While, as the sniveling nine-year-old I was, I’d predictably become otherwise inexorably besotted with KISS, both A Night At The Opera and Mothership Connection boasted dynamic sonic palettes that were -– with all due respect to my beloved KISS -– a thousand times richer and more diverse than anything I was ever going to get from my battered copies of Dressed to Kill and Destroyer, although one could argue that latter KISS record certainly tried.

I’ve already spoken about the impact of Mothership Connection, and being that today is hirsute Queen guitarist Brian May’s birthday, I thought I’d devote a little space to what is criminally the band’s most under-appreciated work, despite the fact that it’s equally ambitious to its more celebrated sonic sibling in “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I’m talking about “The Prophet’s Song.”

There’s a pervasive, year-zero mentality that arrived during the advent of Punk Rock -- brewing to a foamy head that very same summer of 1976, although my ears wouldn’t really hear about it for another few months -- that Queen were one of THEM -- an overtly arty ensemble of avariciously excessive musos whose penchant for elitist, noodly proficiency was everything this angry new guard was seeking to destroy, but fuck all that. Queen were inarguably consummate musicians and certainly guilty of some extravagant silliness, but they still fucking ROCKED. I am reminded of the oft-repeated anecdote from some short years later when Queen and the Sex Pistols were both ensconced in the same recording studio (the `Pistols were recording Never Mind the Bollocks while, down the hall, Queen were working on what would become News of the World) and Sid Vicious and Freddie Mercury, legend has it, “exchanged words.” The story goes that Sid popped in and tried to cartoonishly deride Queen (which certainly sounds in character for Sid) and Freddie literally tussled the gangly “bass player” right out the door by his collar, blithely brushing him off as “Simon Ferocious.” The resultant Queen record, it should be noted, did feature the track “Sheer Heart Attack” (not to be confused with the title of their third LP), which arguably strove to emulate the adrenalized stealth and raw aggression of Punk, one-upping these younger upstarts at their own game. To this day, slip “Sheer Heart Attack” into a playlist between tracks by, say, The Exploited and Discharge, and it doesn’t sound wildly out of place, if a touch more slickly produced.

But, once again, A Night at the Opera predated all that and arrived like a sumptuously grandiose wedding cake of unrepentantly sophisticated musicianship of the very variety the punks had an alleged grievance with. But, again, I didn’t know anything about that stuff, as yet. All I knew was that A Night at the Opera contained moments when the band made sounds that were positively explosive to my little mind, and never was this more the case than during the first track of the second side, that being, once again, “The Prophet’s Song.”

A sprawling and ominous tsunami of a track (the band’s longest, I’ve read), “The Prophet’s Song” was the brainchild of Brian May and, again, an equally complicated endeavor as “Bohemian Rhapsody,” boasting a comparably intricate middle-section based around a dizzying, tape-delayed a cappella performance by Freddie Mercury. Bookending that surreal vocal workout, though are some doomily ponderous guitars underpinning a cautionary tale about a coming tempest brought about by man’s forsaking of empathy for avarice. It’s as hoarily windswept an epic as can be imagined, highlighted by several instances of multitracked avalanches of guitar heroics and a fulsome sonic heft that rivals the weightiest moments of then-standard-bearers like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. “Another One Bites the Dust” it is not.

I can’t actually recall if my sister was as enamored of A Night at The Opera’s deep cuts as I was. I believe she was pleased with the big singles like “You’re My Best Friend” and the aforementioned “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Regardless, in short order, I basically absconded with Vick’s copy of the album (I still have that well-loved, original vinyl edition to this day) as she moved onto stuff that I wasn’t really that into like Brass Construction and Evelyn Champagne King, although, to be fair, “Peekin’” by Brass Construction is alternately pretty hilarious and unsettling, when heard through the prism of 2023.

To this day, “The Prophet’s Song” is still my very favorite song by Queen, encapsulating their myriad strengths in a single track. It was never released as a single and doesn’t appear on any of their more celebrated compilations, and if you dare to plug the song into your local saloon’s jukebox, you should probably expect to hear complaints once Freddie’s vocal acrobatics in that middle-section kick in. I felt vindicated, today, when I read in Vulture’s feature about “The Best and Most Spectacular of Queen, According to Brian May” that May himself considers “The Prophet’s Song” to be the song he wishes “wasn’t eclipsed by the hits.” It’s filled with as much power, drama, depth and rage as some of my favorite songs by Killing Joke (yeah, I said it) and is a colossal achievement.

But, weirdly, “The Prophet’s Song” also sounds like, well, my childhood. Like I said, for a while, A Night at The Opera was seemingly always playing in our home. Even when I hear the sinister intro plucks of the koto or the most histrionic passages of “The Prophet’s Song” (like when Mercury’s vexed voice rises above the maelstrom with lines like “The Earth Will Shake, In Two Will Break, Death All Around, Around, Around….”), I am instantly reminded of sunlit days at the summer house we owned in the late `70s out in Quogue, lolling around on our overgrown lawn, running around with the kids from across the street and the smell of the interior of our shitty Volvo, with floormats caked with sand from the beach. The little lane we lived on doesn’t look even slightly like it did in 1976, but I recently drove back down it, a few weeks ago, searching for that elusive “sense of place,” and as I did, “The Prophet’s Song” roared doomily out of the car stereo.

It's the best Queen song there ever was.

Crank it.

It's All Happening in The Park

I'm not sure when he posted or completed this particular chapter, but our good friend Bob Egan of PopSpots now has a truly sprawling collection of all his minutia-laden detective work re: images and album covers of various luminaries in and around Central Park, like this great shot of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley fraternizing with some old ladies at the Central Park Zoo (snapped originally by photographer Warring Abbott).

It's entirely worth your time. Find it here.

Still On Fire: Flaming Pablum at 18

It's hard to write these entries without dramatically lapsing into hoary cliché, but it does genuinely seem like only yesterday that I launched this blog. That fateful date was eighteen years ago today, believe it or not. Were this blog a sentient human being, it would now be legally eligible to vote, run for political office, enter a contract and/or make a will. 

Marching up hills of eloquently inspired fecundity and down into deep valleys of yawnsome, derivative drivel, Flaming Pablum has doggedly soldiered into its petulant late teens, with the pronounced penchants for willful obnoxiousness, door-slamming obstinance and acne-speckled histrionics that customarily come with that ill-mannered age. But I wouldn't expect a course-correcting dose of responsible maturity any time soon. 

As I've said in previous anniversary messages, I still legitimately feel, each and every time I post something here, that it could be my very last entry, as I have no earthly clue when I might be next inspired to share something. But, I don't think I'm ready to hang it up just yet. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, got involved and contributed, this year, notably the Desperately Seeking the 80's ladies, Inaki Rojas of Pop Secret for including me in his epic series about Charly Garcia's corner, Flaming Pablum interviewees like Brooke Smith and Tod [A] and everyone who took the time to leave a constructive, informative or even simply encouraging comment. 

The image at the top of this post, by the way, in case you can't decode it, is one of my stickers. This particular one was affixed to a light pole on East 10th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues (just a bottle's toss from the site of Jesse Malin's old Black & White Bar). I don't remember when I first slapped this one up, but where often they get covered, painted over, peeled off or amusingly defaced (my favorite being that one that replaced the word Pablum with the word Scrotum), someone actually tried to BURN THIS ONE OFF, with only middling success. 

But, technically, it's still there.

Back To The Clubs of The Late `70s

No sooner do I post a self-pitying entry about how uninspired I am during my boot-imposed exile than I stumble upon something truly worth evangelizing. My friend Joe Bonomo posted the below on Facebook and it’s quite cool.

Originally posted by one Rick Johnson, here’s the preamble:

Photos of NYC bars at the end of the 70s. From the January 1980 issue of New York Rocker. I’m jealous I wasn’t there to hang out then. There is no better feeling than being in a rock and roll club when the band starts playing! CBGB, Max’s, Mudd Club, Gildersleeves and more…all frozen in time. Check them out! All photos by Steve Lombardi.

These are the photos, with locations names in lower right-hand corner. There are a couple I don’t recognize. Who remembers Tomato?

Puttin' The Boot In

I wasn’t going to post anything further about my stupid foot, but events took an unexpected turn, this week. Originally, you might remember, I was tasked with only having to wear the thing for three weeks. At the start of this ostensibly final week, however, I got in touch with my podiatrist to check in and he suggested that I should “stick with it for another week.” I was initially going to respond as to where he could stick it, but calmed down and thought better of it. I mean, after wearing it for 21 days, what’s another seven, right? It’s not that big of a deal.

Since last addressing the subject here, I’ve also started the “bone stimulation” treatments, which are in no manner as exciting as they might sound. It’s basically a little electronic device that I hook up to a strap around the “problem area” on my foot. I smear a little of this translucent jelly on its accompanying “transducer,” clip that into the strap and then sit with it for twenty minutes, ideally once a day. The device counts down the minutes, but I’ll be damned if I can feel it actually doing anything. I’m supposed to do that for about a month. We’ll see what happens.

Beyond all that bullshit, it’s pretty much business as usual. I’m not walking to work, during this phase, rather I’m taking the subway. While this is arguably less strain on the foot, it does mean humping it up and down a few flights of stairs, every morning, which is no fucking picnic. But, y’know, needs must.

I’m just really focussed on wrapping this up and moving forward, but the novelty has truly warn off. In terms of this blog, being that I’m not spending nearly as much time as I normally do walking these New York City streets, I’m not fielding the usual daily onslaught of random stimuli that regularly prompt any number of stupid entries I’d be posting here. Riding the R train four stops downtown and four stops back uptown just doesn’t inspire me in the same way. As such, I don’t have too much to share, at the moment, beyond frustrated banalities.

Watch this space.

Stuff Ya Might Have Missed

Being that you’re probably as bored reading about it as I am talking about (let alone living with it), I’m going to forego yet another update about my stupid broken foot. Instead, here’s some stuff ya might have missed.

I’m dead certain I devoted at least five or six posts to it when it was happening in real time, but when CBGB was finally being disassembled and gutted upon its hotly contested shuttering circa the latter months of 2006, I probably hadn’t set foot in the actual building in several years (I might be mistaken, but I think the final show I ever witnessed at 315 Bowery was either a Kraut reunion show or a secret Firewater gig around 2001). Put simply, while inarguably a New York City institution, CBGB, in its declining years, ceased being a nurturing ground for exciting, new music.

Then, of course, it closed for irritating reasons and suddenly, this revered cultural flashpoint was gone, shortly to have its footprint co-opted by a fatuously bespoke haberdashery, which I’ve covered here ad nauseum.

While I’ve posted countless weepy paeans, pics and video of CBGB when it was still a going concern, my friend Emily posted something on Facebook that provided a refreshingly more granular view. While there are countless photographs of CBGB’s endearingly grotty exterior, its disarmingly intimate stage and its notoriously un-private bathroom, a gent named DJ Jason posted his snaps of the interior of CBGB taken, presumably, at points in either the late `90s or early `00s, and they are refreshingly thorough. That’s one of his above but you can see the rest here. You can almost smell the stale beer.

I was dispatched, quite recently, by the Mrs. with another load of old clothes we’d decided (or, really, she’d decided) that we should part wit. Per usual, I walked over to the Goodwill outlet on the west side of West 8th Street between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue with the intention of dropping it off, only to find the place permanently shuttered.

This particular strip of West 8th has been in pretty rough shape, for a little bit. The squat buildings on the norther end were razed some time ago to accommodate some new development, but that has yet to come to any fruition. South of that, the storefront that formerly played host to concerns like the ill-fated Mainline Records and comparatively storied Disc-O-Rama before that later morphed into some sort of pet-centric business before becoming yet another cannabis dispensary called City Vibes, but that, too, has now closed. The curio/head-shop joint called 8th Street Gifts seems to be hanging by a thread. Goodwill is now gone. Covert restaurant Frevo (it looks like a gallery on the outside, but there’s a secret door) and posh stationery outlet Goods For The Study are holding their own, but the derelict storefronts to their east are attracting a much less salubrious crowd than their businesses would probably prefer.

Just south of there, of course, is an urgent-care facility run by Mount Sinai. Seemingly a million years ago, this space was TLA, a comparatively sprawling and esoteric video store (remember those?). Of course, before all that, it was the site of the fabled 8th Street Playhouse, which stood there from about 1929 until its somewhat seedy demise in 1992. I remember seeing films like “Liquid Sky,” Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” and “Repo Man” for the first time in that theater. Below is a little “before and after” of the Playhouse’s heyday. It’s striking how “distressed” the theatre and the surrounding environs look in the bottom shot.

Next up, I picked up a copy of “Nöthin' But a Good Time: The Uncensored History of the `80s Hard Rock Explosion,” a great oral history by Tom Beujour and Richard Beinstock. While it’s no “Please Kill Me,” I devoured it whole (it isn’t exactly Tolstoy) over the course of the holiday weekend and have to say that I enjoyed it thoroughly. Sure, the era of so-called hair metal was inarguably a very stupid time, but I can’t say I was immune to the charms of early records by bands like Mötley Crüe, Twisted Sister and a select few others. If you ever spent any time banging your head to truly idiotic anthems like “Fuck Like a Beast,” “Burn In Hell" or “Looks That Kill,” you will eat it right up.

In any case, towards the latter pages of the book – documenting the hotly contested “death by Grunge” days when bands like Warrant, Dokken and Winger were getting the short shrift in the wake of the rise of all things Cobain – a New York City band called Spread Eagle gets invoked as one of the hair metal scene’s late-comers. Now, even as an avowed rockhead and self-appointed knowitall regarding New York City bands of certain stripes, I have absolutely ZERO recollection about Spread Eagle. I mean, while New York City did have a small-but-stubborn hard rock/hair metal scene formed around bands like Circus of Power and the like, I cannot say I ever encountered Spread Eagle, who apparently were based in the East Village. Who knew? 

Here they are runnin' from the cops, man!!

I looked'em up and sure enough ... here they were stomping around Avenue C and Tompkins Square Park etc. It's not really my cup o' tea, but see what ya think...