Flaming Pablum

Goodnight, Shane MacGowan

It was never my intention for this blog to be a succession of eulogies, but `tis the season … of death, evidently, as news came down today – hot on the heels of the passings of Mars Williams of the Waitresses and Psychedelic Furs, Geordie Walker of Killing Joke (see previous two posts) and Scott “Top Ten” Kempner of The Dictators -- that iconic Pogues frontman, Shane MacGowan (above with signature ciggie and pint in hand), had lost his battle with viral encephalitis and died. He was 65.

I first heard the Pogues during my freshman year of college in 1985, when my long-suffering childhood comrade & future best man Keith (also known as Charlie … very long & boring story) was sequestered away in Northern England for a turbulent semester abroad.

Out of the blue, a package showed up in my mailbox at Denison University in Ohio, stuffed with a mixtape Keith had made for me, rife with some of the music of the moment, including several atmospheric tracks by This Mortal Coil (wrongly credited to the Cocteau Twins), a clutch of dissonant songs by the Jesus & Mary Chain (wrongly credited to the band’s debut album title, Psychocandy -– details were never Keith’s strong point) and various tunes by punk bands like The Stranglers and Peter & The Test Tube Babies.

Practically the whole second side of the tape, meanwhile, was occupied by early songs by The Pogues, a feral and innovative collective that messily fused traditional Celtic folk music with the adrenalized sprint and pugnacious invective of Punk Rock. Upon a single spin, I dispatched *WITH ALL HASTE* to nearby Threshold Audio on the glorious suburban planes of Newark, Ohio to fetch myself a copy of the band’s debut LP, Red Roses for Me (above), and have been a fan forever since.

Here's a bracing taste of that now….

Of course, later efforts by the Pogues found them streamlining their aesthetic for a more accessible sound. Never was that more the case than on what would become a perennial-yet-contested song from their third LP, If I Should Fall From Grace with God called “The Fairytale of New York.”

If I’m being honest, despite it being the goddamn Pogues and despite it being topically rooted in my hometown, I was never a tremendous fan of the track. Too much treacle and sentimentality for my taste, and not enough of MacGowan’s untethered venom – although the song would go on to court divisive notoriety for its usage of a homophobic slur, which many considered brazenly offensive, and others interpreted as simply an accurate application of just the type of vulgar vernacular the song’s inglorious characters would have employed. Over thirty years after the song’s release, that debate continues.

Over the years, some have called for the song to be edited, censored and/or banned, while others have defended songwriter Shane’s justifiable usage of poetic license. Quite unfortunately, the track has gone onto become a de facto anthem for the SantaCon set – resulting in hordes of drunken frat-bros beerily singing along and loudly accentuating the offending noun when that verse – trilled by the tragically late Kirsty MacColl – arrives. Absolutely no one is well served by this.

As much as I would otherwise staunchly defend the concept of poetic license, as a hetero white male who has never experienced any genuine form of prejudice, intolerance, bigotry, or hatred first-hand, I really have no place in blithely determining what is and what isn’t credibly offensive. To assert that those objecting to the usage of the term in this song are simply “overreacting” is to diminish any strides made in the past several decades towards a more inclusive and tolerant society. Because I’m a spineless Libra, I can understand both side of this argument.

But I’ll tell you one thing for certain. Regardless of how offensive the original 1988 composition may or may not be, one thing its storied songwriters (MacGowan and fellow Pogue Jem Finer) did not deserve was to hear their song irreparably befouled by the insidious likes of Jon Bon Fucking Jovi, who last year released a simply indefensible cover of the song. Talk about “offensive.”

As mentioned above, later albums by the Pogues found them moving away from their original sound and experimenting with other styles, though they were still always ultimately rooted in their folky core (although the jazzily swingin’ “Gridlock” from 1989’s Peace & Love is a million miles away from the Celtic tradition as you can possibly get). The band officially called in quits in 1996, but then reformed in 2001, but by then Shane’s health was already spiraling. I only got to see them perform early on, circa their celebrated second album, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, and it was fittingly chaotic. I was also a fan of Shane’s side project, The Popes, which he famously started during a spell wherein he’d been ejected from the Pogues for being a perpetually out-of-control madman.

But beyond Shane MacGowan’s famously lackadaisical attention to his own health, his penchant for booze and amphetamines, his cartoonishly bad teeth and his fabled, punky snarl, I feel it’s important to assert that he should best be remembered for his songwriting, which was truly in a class of its own.

To this day, I still regularly play The Pogues – from the early, frenzied tracks like “Waxie’s Dargle” (above), “Boys from The County Hell,” the sprawling stomp of “Transmetropolitan” and the giddily morbid reverie of “Sick Bed of Cuchulainn” through to the bonkers “Fiesta,” the fiercely bitter “Young Ned of the Hill,” the genuinely lovely “Summer in Siam” and their moving rendition of “The Boys Played Waltzing Matilda,” and all points in between.

Just leave “Fairytale of New York” out of it.

Goodnight, farewell, thank you and rest easy, Shane.

The Gathering Mourns: A Killing Joke Fan's Lament

Sorry, yes....it's another post about Killing Joke and the death of Geordie Walker. There might be a bit of this, for a while. 

When I learned that John Lennon had died, I’m not sure, but I want to say it was a Monday morning. I remember life coming to something of a standstill. I was in Eighth Grade, at the time, and don’t believe classes at school were cancelled, but I remember every teacher abandoning the script and addressing the event in some detail. I remember a heated debate being waged over whether “assassination” was the right term to apply, given that Lennon wasn’t a titled political leader. I remember thinking, then as now, that said debate was pointless. He was clearly a leader to many. I also remember watching footage of the vigil that went down outside of The Dakota and how a certain teacher of mine commented on how people seemed to burst into tears conveniently right when the cameras hit them.

That point struck me as pretty damn cynical even then, but the whole bursting-into-tears thing over the death of someone you'd never met always did seem a bit strange to me. That said, John Lennon’s music and message clearly touched innumerable lives (and continues to). I certainly don't remember crying, although it did strike me as an incredibly senseless, unnerving loss. In retrospect, though, it seems easier to believe. When you consider how vast Lennon's influence was and, once again, continues to be, it's easy to understand how some could be moved to absolute tears. Hell, about two decades later (well, 2002), I remember getting genuinely misty upon learning of Joe Strummer's death, and I'd certainly never met him.

But the loss of Geordie from Killing Joke took me entirely by surprise. As I’ve recounted here many times before, I was 17 years old when I first heard Killing Joke, and that first taste of their music instantly made them my favorite band, and I mean that very literally. Like, not just my favorite punk band, or my favorite band of the moment or whatever -- my first hearing of "Eighties" in my friend Spike's living room in the Spring of 1984, indelibly marked me as a Killing Joke acolyte for life. Every other music I’d ever experienced was immediately rendered lesser than this incredible sound. I literally ran out the door and across the street to a tiny shop on Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village called Subterranean Records and bought the 12" on the spot, and then feverishly combed NYC's then-thriving network of indie record shops, snapping up every bit of their music that I could put my hand to.

I have loads of "favorite" bands --- bands I'm slavishly devoted to (you may have noticed several posts here about, say, a little beat combo called Cop Shoot Cop), but none of them -- N O N E – have ever come close to Killing Joke. Their music speaks to me like no other, and I have been sworn to them for 39 years. It sounds presumptuous to say, but they have become a part of my very identity. To have lost such an integral component of that life-affirming element that has enriched my 56 years like nothing else is a genuine, palpable ache in the heart.

I cannot say that I truly knew Geordie. I met him -- and interviewed him, disastrously -- a few times, but in the dizzy scrum of post-gig euphoria, I was usually just another sweary, overserved rock pig in a Killing Joke t-shirt under a black leather jacket. Geordie probably had too many of that crowd in his orbit already. I never had the lucky opportunity with him that I've had being able to befriend and genuinely get to know his bandmates Big Paul Ferguson and Paul Raven (I've similarly met Jaz Coleman several times, but I doubt he has the foggiest clue who I am). As for Martin “Youth” Glover – and one mustn’t forget Martin Atkins,  I've interviewed both and spoken to them each quite a few times, and they are both incredibly affable, warm gents. While not technically in the band -- but as vital to the whole aesthetic of Killing Joke as its core members -- visual artist Mike Coles, whose iconic work graces the sleeves of most of Killing Joke’s most impactful work, is a gentleman I’m very proud to now call a friend.

As one of the devoted flock, I would be remiss not to also note that I have been blessed with a collective friendship with similarly inclined individuals in thrall to Killing Joke from literally all over the globe. There are “Gatherers” I can with confidence call genuine friends throughout the States, the UK, France, Germany, Australia and even Japan. I have been offered airport pick-ups and accommodations from certain members of the fold that I did precious little to deserve, and I would happily do so for them, should they ever require it.

The sound, imagery, ethos, mythos, lore, essence, and force that is Killing Joke has informed, enlivened and empowered me for literally every day since that day in the spring of 1984. To think that that's all over is almost too much for me to fathom. With that gone, the lattice-work holding the amazing community I was just invoking together could quite conceivably collapse. Not only can I not believe that I shall never watch the band conjure their alchemic brilliance onstage again, but I cannot believe I’ll never convene with all those like-minded souls again.

So, yes, tears have been on the menu, and that no longer strikes me as an odd or inappropriate overreaction. While many might dismiss it as silly fanaticism or a manifestation of a middle-life-crisis, music does matter. Maybe not to everyone. I’ve seen people weep openly about sporting events – something I’ll never comprehend, but I don’t condemn, dismiss, negate, or ridicule it. Sports, music, art, literature, cinema – these things do matter. It’s not solely entertainment. Killing Joke certainly wasn’t.

After a particularly fraught week involving the contentious fruition of a long-simmering project (it is now behind me, mercifully), I dialed up a playlist of Killing Joke standards I made for my son a few years ago as I walked home from the office, and I’ll be damned if right in the middle of Sixth Avenue in the harried crush of early-evening traffic that tears didn’t start streaming down my face. I am incredulous that this supernatural force that made the music that has enriched my life so much has been extinguished.

I’m going to feel quite sad about that for a long while.

Fire from Heaven: Goodnight & Goodbye, Geordie Walker

I woke, this morning, to some sad and shocking news, that being that Geordie Walker, guitarist of Killing Joke, had passed away last night, following a massive stroke he suffered on Friday. He was 64 years old. I’ve devoted so many entries to Killing Joke here over the past almost-19 years, that I shouldn’t need to spell out how significant this is for me.

It seems incorrect to refer to Geordie as a “celebrity” or a “rock star.” Even in his native England, he was probably able to walk the streets without causing too much of a stir outside of the the odd zealot. By all accounts, he lived and died as a man of humble means. Easily the hardest member of the tightly-knit band to get to know, Geordie shied away from doing interviews (he preferred to let the music speak for itself) and wasn’t notoriously receptive to feverish entreaties from bug-eyed fanboys (trust me on that one). He behaved like neither a celebrity nor a rock star, but to certain circles, he was positively a God. An integral — and utterly irreplaceable — component to the signature sound of the band he steadily played in for over 46 years, Geordie’s contribution to Killing Joke cannot be overstated, and without him, I dare say that they cannot possibly continue, nor do I expect they will want to.

I was fortunate enough to meet the man on several occasions, usually backstage after gigs, or via the auspices of rock journalism, but as stated above, he was the most elusive and enigmatic member of Killing Joke. My favorite incident, of a sort, involved interviewing him circa the release of 1994’s Pandemonium. Seated at the bar of the No-Tell Motel, a long-vanished bar on Avenue A, Geordie and I ran through the motions of the conventional interview. As we spoke, a television set over the bar played an endless reel of vintage pornography, a constant distraction that routinely prompted Geordie to deviate from his already somewhat dispassionate responses with a lively “Ooh, she’s got a nice one!” At a certain point, I made the colossal mistake of setting my portable tape-recorder — the one ostensibly documenting this conversation —on the bar. Not missing this cue, Geordie —with the stealth and nonchalance of a seasoned pickpocket — somehow got hold of it and rewound the tape — handily wiping clean about 85% of our chat. I, of course, was furious and incredulous upon discovering this, but it was certainly true to character and so impressively executed that it was very hard to fault him for it. Cheeky fucker.

I can no longer remember how many times I’ve seen Killing Joke perform, but I have been lucky enough to do so very many times, crossing oceans to do so on more than a couple of occasions. When they played London’s Royal Albert Hall back in March of this year, I struggled to secure a way for my son and I to fly over and catch the show, but funds, work demands and school schedules forbade. I took solace in the fact that they were threatening to head back into the studio to start the cycle all over again, so the chances seemed promising that they’d return to the States. Sadly, not only will they not be touring ever again, but Geordie passed before they could even start properly recording.

There are certain public figures you never really expect to die. Geordie Walker, resplendent behind his thick, hollow-bodied Gibson ES-295 (the “Golden Harp”), nonchalantly conjuring a veritable maelstrom of twanging harmonics with seemingly the slightest of possible hand movements, was one such figure. The sound he created with that instrument — notoriously characterized by bandmate Jaz Coleman as “fire from Heaven” — cannot be duplicated. I realize that sounds like hyperbole, but suffice to say, many have tried and all have failed. There was only one Geordie, and now he is gone.

But Geordie will never die as long as his music plays, and play it damn well will, if I have anything to say about it. On the bus home from the Thanksgiving weekend at my mother’s house today, I dialed up Killing Joke’s most recent live album, 2022’s Honour The Fire LIVE on my headphones. Unlike most of their more recent live albums (the band mined a new avenue of revenue, in these lean times, by regularly releasing tour recordings for the ardent completists like myself), this particular disc positively crackles, with Geordie’s guitar pushed prominently high in the mix, cruelly underscoring that there was so much fire left in his playing. I would have loved to hear what he’d have done next.

Rest in peace, Geordie. Thank you for the music.

Killing Joke Forever.

Happy Thanksgiving from Flaming Pablum

"Ten Words!"

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, in my primary and elementary school years, I was ridiculously privileged enough to attend Saint David’s, a private boys’ school in the Carnegie Hill section of the Upper East Side. While I was rubbing blazered shoulders with the sons of powerful executives, diplomats and other movers, shakers and captains of industry (various schoolmates, along the way, included the late John F. Kennedy Jr, the late Ali Reza Pahlavi, the youngest son of the exiled Shah of Iran, and … umm ... Robert Chambers), I can’t say the intra-student dynamic was especially different from any other school. Boys will indeed be boys. There were as many cliques and tribes of posh preps, knuckle-dragging bullies, gormless nerds, perpetually sweaty jocks, insouciant class clowns, anti-social weirdos, high-browed brainiacs and unhinged juvenile delinquents as should be expected (I’ll let you guess which group I was a member of). Somehow, though, we all more or less harmoniously coexisted.

In sixth grade, I had a homeroom teacher I’ll refer to here as Mr. Kozlowski, a gentleman who’d accrued a reputation for both his intolerance for shenanigans and his inventive and scrupulously thorough signature punishment, that being the dread “Ten Words.” Basically, were one foolish enough to test the parameters and incur the wrath of Mr. Kozlowski, one would be swiftly admonished with the laborious task of writing out ten different lengthy definitions from a particularly wordy, antiquated dictionary. In retrospect, that’s not really that big a deal, but try telling that to a sixth grader. Mr. Kozlowski was so adept at administering this unsavory sanction that he even devised a system. Every couple of weeks, he would distribute “Ten Word Passes,” which acted as sort of “Get Out of Jail Free” cards. As such, if you were zapped with a “Ten Words” for being late or interrupting a discussion about Homer’s “Iliad,” you could absolve yourself from the sentence by coughing up a Ten Word Pass. I seem to remember chronically naughty classmates furtively bartering with each other, exchanging baseball cards for extra Ten Word Passes. It was deathly serious.

From Monday to Thursday, around 2:30 pm or so, we’d all repair downstairs to the locker rooms and change into our gear to head out to the verdant expanse of Central Park to go play soccer or softball on the Great Lawn, which, at the time, was neither especially great or even really a lawn so much as just a wide, dusty oval with spotty patches of withered grass. We’d all line up, in pairs, in front of St. David’s and then march west towards the park, invariably testing the patience of whatever unfortunate coach was looking after us. As we approached Fifth Avenue, to our left was the boldly innovative architecture of the Guggenheim Museum. On the northeast corner of that museum was a little walled-in garden wherein they’d periodically exhibit sculpture. During my sixth grade, the sculpture in question was this sort of metallic, inverted mobile that featured two oblong, rectangular panels which moved with the wind. As if it were yesterday, I vividly remember my classmate Theo, a preternaturally funny individual, probably still to this day, marching past it and loudly exclaiming “Lookout for Kozlowski’s Radar!” Given that Mr. Kozlowski was indeed always tuned in, and always listening, it made perfect sense that he’d employ such a surveillance device to monitor our idiocy when we weren’t in his classroom. I remember giggling about that all the way to the Great Lawn. From that point forward, that sculpture was known to everyone as Kozlowski's Radar. 

I graduated from St. David’s in 1981 and started attending the Loyola School down on East 83rd Street. I graduated from there in 1985 and then flew off to Denison University in Ohio, from which I graduated in 1989. I can’t readily say how many sculptures have graced that garden on the northeast corner of the Guggenheim since I was in sixth grade, or for how long they stay there, but I’m imagining it’s quite a few. I haven’t been up in that neck of the woods in a long, long time, but I’m pretty sure Kozlowski’s Radar is no longer there.

Cut to 2023... My friend Susan is a writer and a photographer who frequently posts pictures on Facebook that she’s taken around New York City from decades past. Today, she put this one up, and it immediately smacked me in the face, almost getting me to scramble dutifully for a dictionary.

This is Kozlowski’s Radar.

Angstgiving in Helsinki: The Complete Cop $hoot Cop Collection from Peeter from Finland

Again, this is a fairly niche post, tailored more or less exclusively to Cop Shoot Cop fans, but for the past year, an adolescent superfan of Cop Shoot Cop – based in Finland, of all places – has been on a feverish frenzy to upload as much rare, out-of-print and/or otherwise unavailable sonic ephemera from the band as possible, and has done a pretty damn good job of it. I thought I’d take a moment to aggregate it all here for the purposes of convenience. Wasn’t that swell of me?

The image at the top, meanwhile, comes from Derek Hess’ Facebook page, it being a rough sketch that would later turn into his celebrated poster of Cop Shoot Cop, Soul Coughing and a band named Hucklebuck (whatever became of them?) at a storied Cleveland venue called the Euclid Tavern.

Here's Peeter’s haul. Please enjoy.

Live in Vienna 1991 (Full Shows from Phil Puleo's CDR)

VPRO Sessions from 1994 - Netherlands (including covers of Nine Inch Nails, Johnny Cash, Hole and more)

End Transmission - Full Album from 1996 - Unofficial/Updated - (Compilation of b-sides, demos, rare tracks, unreleased material ... a goldmine of stuff)

Red Expedables Live at Irving Plaza, NYC from March 12, 1996 (I wrote up my one post about this one here)

"Where Do We Go From Here? (Palookaville)" - Lost track from the aborted final sessions that would later re-surface on the Red Explandables album

"What Have You Teached?" (Lost track from aborted final sessions)

"Honey Why" (lost track from aborted final sessions ... later repurposed in a live context by Tod [A]'s next band, Firewater) 

Piece, Man EP from 1989 (the pig's-blood-splattered 7")

Cop Shoot Cop Interview (1993) - (This is taken from the DVD, New York Post Punk Noise Series 1: Cop Shoot Cop)

"Got No Soul" Live from The Grand in NYC on July 24, 1993 - (I was at this show, and wrote a bit about it here)

Cop Shoot Cop Live | Lounge Ax, Chicago - May 12, 1991

"If Tomorrow Ever Comes" ... live from the Tegentonen Festival in 1991

"Surprise, Surprise" .. recorded at the New Ritz on July 17th, 1992 (they were opening for KMFDM ... I was this show, too)

Live at Martin Bisi's BC Studios 1991 (this is basically the performance footage fro the DVD, New York Post Punk Noise Series 1: Cop Shoot Cop)

Headkick Facsimile EP from 1988 (their debut on Supernatural Recordings)

Studio Session Outtakes 1994-1995 - (a nice collection of b-sides, lost tracks, etc.)

ADDENDUM 11/27/2023: While we feckless Yanks were gorging ourselves on poultry and potatoes, arguing about politics and alienating our loved ones around the Thanksgiving table, this past weekend, our Baltic buddy Peeter in Finland was busy continuing his tireless uploading. Check out the new titles he's put up ... IT'S LIKE CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY, GODDAMMIT!!!

Live at Moderne in Bremen, Germany - March 6, 1992

LIVE DEMONSTRATION Demo from 1988

Live at Peabody's Down Under in Cleveland, OH - March 12, 1995

Live at the Tegentonen Festival - February 21, 1991

Live at The Grand on East 13th Street in NYC - July 24, 1993 (whole show)

Tension `94 (Full) - Formerly available from Phil Puleo's official site

Live at The Ritz - July 17, 1992 (full set, opening for KMFDM)

As an ADDED BONUS, he also added some vintage LIVE FIREWATER ....

Firewater Live - Paleo Festival 2001 (Pro-Shot) 

Firewater Live - Flex, Vienna - March 21, 2002

Flaming Pablum en Piedra Rodante

I honestly really didn’t see this coming, but in the wake of last week’s naming ceremony and plaque-unveiling at the corner of Cortlandt Alley and Walker Street, I pretty much thought that was that. As a final coda on my part, I reached out to my friends over at the TriBeCa Citizen and pitched a short piece about it, being that it happened in their back yard. They posted that and it actually garnered a lot of negative comments, specifically ones questioning why Charly Garcia deserved such an honor when, say, Robert DeNiro doesn’t have his own street. Apparently, there’s a healthy degree of myopic xenophobia in TriBeca, but I digress….

In any case, once that story moved off the TriBeCa Citizen’s front page, after a week, I figured that saga was complete.

Well, imagine my surprise, then, to find that Rolling Stone en Espanol devoted its cover to the story, and further augmented their coverage with an ancillary piece that concentrates on how the location of the fabled corner was determined, as well as the crucial story behind the very name Clics Modernos, that being my friend and storied New York City punk rocker, the late Fran Powers of Ultra Violence, Whole Wide World, East of Eden, Box of Crayons and – oh yes, do please wait for it – Modern Clix.

Guess who gets mentioned in that story. I do, that’s who.

Being that I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, however, I’m pretty much relying on Google Translate to make head or tail of it. But you can read it here. 

The Secret Punk Rock History of Yorkville

 

A couple of weeks back, my lovely comrades over at the Desperately Seeking the `80s podcast solicited anecdotes from their listeners about Yorkville, the neighborhood just to the east (well, everything beyond Third Avenue) of the Upper East Side. Being that it's a turf I spent most of my teenage years on, I gamely contributed. But, seeing as both the Desperately ladies and myself have kinda milked the whole 84th Street Bombers cow dry, for the moment (most recently here), I figured I'd focus on a different aspect of my years growing up there. The laboriously windy story below is what I submitted. Regular readers might recognize bits and pieces from others entries here, from over the past few years, so, y'know .... don't be alarmed by that.

 

By most accounts, Punk Rock was a downtown concern. The punk clubs, record shops and hangouts – they were all downtown. The membership of Blondie, for example, all shared a squalid loft-space above a ramshackle restaurant-supply shop on the Bowery (that shop is still there, but Blondie moved out some time ago). The Talking Heads lived in a similar dump a few blocks away on the forbidding byway of Christie Street. Richard Hell lived – and still lives – in a modest apartment on East 12th Street. The Ramones hailed from Forest Hills, Queens, but operated out of their graphic-designer pal Arturo Vega’s loft just east of the Bowery. Harley Flanagan of the Cro-Mags lived for a while in an amenity-free squat in Alphabet City and bathed himself via open fire-hydrants. The Plasmatics had their headquarters in a far-flung walk-up in Tribeca and Thurston & Kim of Sonic Youth lived in a railroad apartment in a tenement in Chinatown. Bobby Steele of the Undead still lives around Tompkins Square Park, and his old bandmate Jack Natz of the Black Snakes used to sleep in Pussy Galore’s roach-ridden rehearsal space in a basement on Avenue B. I could go on and on, but you get the point – by and large, downtown was where the punk rockers were.

Yorkville, on the other hand – while only technically up the island from the punky Lower East Side – seems like it might as well be on a whole different planet.  While it’s significantly gentrified, over the last several decades, then as now – Yorkville has remained a comparatively quiet, stable residential community, tucked, as it is, just to the east of the posher enclaves of the equally sedate Upper East Side.  One might be hard-pressed to find any semblance of that particular aesthetic that far north of 14th Street.

 

One, however, might be entirely surprised.

For a start, as I expounded on over on my blog, not too long back, Yorkville actually had a pair of dueling, forward-thinking rock clubs, for a little while in the early `80s. There was Private’s on the otherwise unlikely corner of East 85th Street and Lexington, which played host to a slew of bold new bands like The Stranglers, XTC, Bauhaus, The Cramps, The Rockats and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who even filmed the video to their breakout hit, “I Love Rock & Roll” at the intimate club. Just a block or two away, meanwhile, there was also a club called The `80s on East 86th Street between Third and Second Avenues. This short-lived club – formerly a subterranean German beer hall called The Lorelei – welcomed envelope-pushing acts like oddball accordion-botherer Phoebe Legere, The Dead Boys, the Bad Brains, The Soft Boys and even the chainsaw-wielding Plasmatics onto its cramped little stage. Who needed to hop the 6 train to the East Village when those names were coming to Yorkville?

 

As exciting as that all sounds, however, neither venture stuck around for very long. I’m not sure when either club officially closed, but neither made it out of the midpoint of the decade. The corner that Private’s called home is now a Starbuck’s, while the building that housed The `80s has been replaced by a monolithic condo with no evidence of its former iteration.

But Yorkville’s ties to Punk Rock don’t end with those two clubs. 

Towards the westerly border of Yorkville, on Third Avenue between East 84th and East 85th Street, there used to be a record store called Musical Maze. Don’t bother looking for it now. The building that housed it was razed decades ago. I first remember waddling into Musical Maze in the late `70s when I was about 12 or 13 and being blown away by the interior — the walls were covered with psychedelic “black light” posters. I also vividly remember spotting all these KISS records (my main concern, at the time) that weren’t familiar at all to me. Turns out these were bootlegs — illicit live concert recordings. 

 

 

Regardless, Musical Maze was a very groovy place, especially for the Upper East Side of Manhattan. But beyond that, it was also the birthplace of a crucial punk band. Upon decamping from his native Akron, OH, oddball Erick Purkhiser and his similarly inclined wife Kristy Wallace moved to New York City (somewhere on East 73rd street), reaching out to Erick’s pen-pal Dave Schulps (co-founder of the underground rock mag, Trouser Press). Schulps was working at Musical Maze, at the time, and being that he was as equally besotted with the unconventional, Erick got in touch to get the scoop on where to go in NYC, being the newbie that he was. As it turns out, Dave was about to quit his gig at Musical Maze, so Erick swiftly moved right into his spot, selling rock n’ roll records to Upper East Siders. That's him doing just that, in the shot above.

 

Once there, Erick met one Gregory Beckerleg, something of a dead-ringer for a young Boris Karloff with an equally macabre sensibility. Erick and Kristy, in very short order, decided to form a band with Greg and his sister Pam — pairing their adoration for schlocky American pop-culture, b-movie horror kitsch and stripped-down, rockabilly twang with a razor-sharp, contemporary edge. Regularly rehearsing and honing their boldly innovative sound in the basement of Musical Maze (see them practicing in the shot below), Erick changed his name to Lux Interior, Kristy to Poison Ivy Rorschach, Pam Beckerleg to Pam Balam and Gregory Beckerleg to Bryan Gregory — and The Cramps were born … out of a Third Avenue storefront in Yorkville. 

 

 

By the dawn of the `80s, meanwhile, that Musical Maze went out of business and replaced by the more expansive music retail outlet, Crazy Eddie. By this point, my tastes had developed, largely forsaking KISS, Pink Floyd and shaggily mustachioed classic rock for all things Punk Rock and New Wave. I first walked into this new iteration of the Third Avenue shop in search of the then-newly-released single by my beloved Devo (that being ”Peek-a-Boo,” a suitably bizarre slice of electronic pop that failed to sustain the waning popularity they’d surprisingly earned via “Whip It” just two short years earlier). Given Devo’s diminishing returns in the album-sales department, it was surprising to find the single prominently displayed, but I later learned this was thanks to a certain Crazy Eddie’s employee. By this time, Lux and Bryan of the Cramps were long gone, but there was a new, young, spiky hooligan working the floor with tastes seemingly identical to mine. Over the course of my next few visits to this Crazy Eddie, this guy — also named Brian, as it turned out — would regularly complement me on records I was bringing up to the cashier (titles that included Stukas Over Disneyland by the Dickies, My Beach by the Surf Punks and the first eponymous LP by the Lords of the New Church). In turn, Brian started hipping my clueless Upper East Side ears to great records like the seminal Group Sex by the Circle Jerks, a band I’d soon come to worship. Unsurprisingly, Brian himself had played in a local band. He played drums — under the moniker “Brian Damage” in a charming little combo called Genocide. I vividly remember him beaming with pride as he displayed a compilation called Hardcore Takes Over that Genocide were featured on. 

 

By the end of 1983, however, Brian had vanished, and Crazy Eddie actually moved two blocks up to East 86th without him, right next to the big Loew’s Orpheum movie theatre. 

 

I later learned that in October of 1983, Brian “Damage” Keats (his full name) had been recruited to become the umpteenth drummer for The Misfits, a storied and notorious Lodi, New Jersey horror-core ensemble who had been hugely and indelibly influenced by, ironically enough, the Cramps. Brian had evidently spent weeks rehearsing with the band just prior to their Halloween show in Detroit. At that show — his first, and LAST with the band, Brian played thirteen songs at the band’s breakneck pace, but was purportedly too drunk to keep up. Burly Misfits guitarist Doyle (that’s it …. just Doyle) allegedly picked Brian up from behind his kit and forcibly threw him offstage, replacing him with the drummer from The Necros to finish the set. The Misfits broke up on stage that night. 

 

 

Bryan Gregory of the Cramps abruptly and acrimoniously quit the Cramps in 1980 and died of heart failure in 2001.

Lux Interior of the Cramps died of aortic dissection in 2009.

Nick Knox of the Cramps (who replaced Miriam Linna, Pam Balam's replacement) died of cariogenic shock in 2018.

Poison Ivy Rorschach is still alive and well, living somewhere in Glendale, California. 

 

Brian “Damage” Keats later played with a host of diverse musicians before succumbing to liver cancer in 2009.

 

To hear the episode with this story, click here. 

The Rise, Fall & Inevitable Demise of the Red Expendables

As first mentioned in this post, there’s currently a 15-year-old kid in Finland named Peeter who has become something of a super-fan of Cop Shoot Cop. While that sounds strenuously unlikely, Peeter has been hard at work exhuming C$C rarities from the nether regions of the internet, and those proud, few die-hards like me could not possibly be more pleased about it.

In the wake of digging up super-rare tracks like the studio rendition of “Honey Why” and a track I’d genuinely never even heard of before called “What Have You Teached,” Peeter struck oil, this week, with a full, live recording of the one and only show by The Red Expendables

I’ve mentioned this chapter before, but for those unfamiliar, commanding officer/songwriter Tod [A] (above, center) acrimoniously split from the ranks of Cop Shoot Cop about a year earlier to concentrate on the band that would become Firewater. Undeterred, the remaining, newly-former members of Cop Shoot Cop – now including new guitarist Mike Kaminsky (above, far right), who had been recruited to replace Steve McMillen, who’d jumped ship to change vocational trajectory and go study law -- salvaged the fruits from their final recording sessions with their estranged leader for what would have been Cop Shoot Cop’s fifth proper studio LP. Songs were then largely stripped of Tod’s contributions, re-worked and re-rendered with low-end bassist Jack Natz (above, second from right) taking over all vocal duties. The finished product was brought to the bigwigs at Interscope Records, the major label who’d released Cop Shoot Cop’s last couple of albums, but Interscope showed zero interest in a band now without its former lead singer/songwriter and dropped them on the spot. That’s life in the music biz, baby.

My chronology gets a bit fuzzy, at this point, but the record ended up on a tiny indie label named GrimmWerks, and was available to be prized off the internet circa … 1997, maybe? By this point, the quartet had re-christened themselves the Red Expendables (or RedEx, for short), the name a self-deprecating allusion to their diminished status. Sci-fi nerds might already get the joke, but the name refers to the lower-ranking crew members of the Starship Enterprise who invariably die first -- and die horribly -- on episodes of “Star Trek.”

If I’m right, that record was not yet available to the general public when the Red Expendables made their live debut opening for Foetus at Irving Plaza one chilly March evening in 1996. Without Tod, the band eschewed any/all Cop Shoot Cop tracks and played exclusively new material … which no one in the crowd was even remotely familiar with. I was there, that evening, and remember being struck by the fact that drummer Phil Puleo -- until then renowned for playing standing up in a sort of cage – was playing sitting down in a more conventional way. While I’m dead certain the boys were happy for the opportunity to play out, I don’t remember the mood being entirely festive. Oddly enough, MTV News … where I’d go onto work ten years later .. even did a story about the show.

Discouraged by their prospects, the Red Expendables disbanded. In the following years, Jack Natz briefly played in few bands with Stu Spasm, including CrimeWave, Mercy Killers and, I believe, Crux before joining Lubricated Goat for a spell. These days, he’s a painter and a mixed-media collage artist, but he briefly reformed with Phil and Jim as ExCop for a Martin Bisi tribute. He has a new a project called EXP. Jim and Phil, meanwhile, briefly formed a project called Audio Dyslexia before pursuing other things. Jim has never stopped making music, doing solo work and soundtrack work before reuniting with Phil for ExCop and then Human Impact. Phil largely continues to play drums for SWANS, these days, despite serving in the ranks of the original line-up of Human Impact. He’s back with SWANS, at the moment.

Michael Kaminksy, meanwhile, had a sensationalized fall from grace when a botched robbery attempt backfired horribly. I’ve no idea what happened to him after that.

In any case, here they were in 1996. And while the Red Expendables' era is long over, you can still find their album on Spotify.

Better Late Than Never: The New York Never List Strikes Back

Back in the sepia-toned days of 2015, when I was still “between jobs,” I killed off a large swathe of a long afternoon in a dismal coffee shop with free WiFi, banging out a post, inbetween firing off desperate emails to disinterested media outlets, about all the super-fabulous, quintessentially New York-y things I’d ever done. I closed with a stately list of equally celebrated NYC-things that I’d never actually done, despite being a lifelong native New Yorker. I called this post The New York Never List.

Four years later, I updated that list with another list of places and things conventionally considered essentially New York that I’d also never done.

Well, here we are, almost five years after that…..

Last weekend, I was sitting in the library of the fabled Gramercy Park club, The Players, following a nice dinner in their downstairs bar, The Grill. I should point out that I am not a member of this establishment, but my wife and I were there as guests of a couple who are. For those who might not know the place, The Players is a storied Manhattan institution, founded by Shakespearian actor Edwin Booth – older brother of Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth, don'tcha know – as a club for arts and the arts lover. Its membership includes thespians, musicians, writers, artists, and folks from all over the creative community. As such, the building – situated on the southern side of park, abutting the National Arts Club to its west – exudes a formidable aura and every room in the place seems veritably caked in history. I sat across a table from my friend Brian, and over the course of a couple of beers that I really don’t believe we were supposed to be consuming whilst in the stately library, we returned to this topic of places and things that are supposedly singularly New York, that we’d each experienced and a list of things we hadn’t. I rattled off several items from the posts cited above, and Brian countered with his own roster. In the wake of that conversation, it dawned on me that I was due for an update.

Since composing that last update in 2019, …

I have been to the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn. I was there to see my beolved Killing Joke open for the band Tool. The place is massive, antiseptic and largely devoid of any charm whatsoever – like an airport without planes.

I have walked around Hudson Yards and while I did not enter it, I have stood underneath the Vessel. Nothing about it is compelling to me.

I have been to the new Whitney Museum in the Meat Packing District. I went with my family during the latter stages of the Pandemic, and then again earlier this year to see the Hopper exhibit. It’s alright.

I have now finally eaten at a Momfuko. I can’t lie …. it was indeed delicious.

I have now shopped at Russ & Daughters on East Houston Street on the Lower East Side. I went to buy some chocolate babka for my family, and it’s indeed quite a place, although agoraphobes beware – it gets very crowded in there.

While I’m on the subject, I’d also like to point out that – in addition to the long list from the first post -- I’ve also wandered through the sepulchral gloom of “Sleep No More,” I’ve sampled the slices at Defarro’s Pizza in Midwood, I’ve bought fresh fish at Aqua Best in Chinatown, I’ve said rude words into the Whispering Gallery in the downstairs concourse at Grand Central, I’ve wandered around the grounds of the former Roosevelt Island smallpox hospital, I’ve replicated the cover of David Bowie’s The Lodger in the bathroom of a bar on Staten Island, I’ve uncomfortably watched strippers perform at Scores, Show World and the Baby Doll Lounge, I’ve had too many beers at the White Horse Tavern, gotten into an argument about Scottish pop music at Fraunces Tavern, unwittingly happened upon Alexander Hamilton’s grave in the Financial District, toured the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, participated in a sing-a-long at fabled piano bar, Marie’s Crisis, watched a jazz combo noodle at Kettle of Fish, took a dispiriting stroll through the Freak Show on Coney Island, watched two drag queens fight with each other at Save the Robots, put quarters in the jukeboxes of Max Fish, the Mars Bars and Alcatraz, visited the miniature model of the city at the Queens Museum, admired the graffiti at 5 Pointz in Queens, strolled around the grounds of the World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows/Corona Park, felt deeply uncomfortable watching someone get a disarmingly emphatic handjob at the Cock in the East Village, and had my sneakers scrutinized at the Campbell Apartments.

Apart from those, however, I still haven’t ridden a Citibike, been to the 9/11 Museum, been to the top of World Trade Center 1, taken an open-door helicopter ride, attended a show at the Apollo Theatre, shopped at Zabar’s, dined at Sylvia’s, watched the ball drop in Times Square, partaken of high tea at the Russian Tea Room, rented a boat at the Central Park boathouse, gone to Elaine’s (which I believe is long-gone, anyway), attended the Christmas Spectacular at Radio City, been on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, stepped foot in the Dakota or Ansonia, stood online for Magnolia Cupcakes or ever perused the galleries at the Frick Museum.

Additionally, however, I have also never seen “Phantom of the Opera,” “Cats” or “Book of Mormon” on Broadway, never consumed the pasta at Rao’s, never visited the raw bar at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. on Times Square, never viewed the city from the deck of The Edge, never had a burger at Junior’s in Brooklyn, never been to the Little Island in Hudson River Park, never been to the Russian & Turkish Baths, and have absolutely never waited patiently for the alleged privilege of eating a cronut.

What about you?