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No Place Left to Dance: Back to The Roxy, The Fun House and Beyond with Frankie Bones

I was never really that into “dance music” as a genre. I mean, I like a lot of electronic music, and I certainly enjoy dancing if I’m feeling properly motivated, but “dance music” in and of itself was never my bag. Not only am I generally more predisposed to rock music of the guitar-as-weapon variety, but I also just tend to like songs. With the rise of house music and everything that followed, it just felt like the human element was kind of syphoned out of it. House music and Rave and techno and drum’n’bass and all that can certainly be cool in certain circumstances and in small doses, but it seems more purely functional than anything else, although that’s only my largely dilettantish opinion.

Whole nations disagree with me, on that point. Dance music in New York City has always had a thriving subculture with denizens of all stripes taking the genre myriad different directions in much the same manner Punk Rock and Hip-Hop similarly splintered into different subdivisions. I was tangentially privy to a lot of that in the late `80s and early `90s, when I was more ensconced in music journalism, first as an intern at SPIN and, shortly after that, during my tenure at a periodical called The New York Review of Records, which I’ve discussed here a few times.

That latter magazine, the NYROR (although no one really called it that), was helmed by this editor named Brad, and Brad was always hustling. Beyond his own magazine, he was freelance writing for a host of other outlets and was also a deejay. He had steady gigs at The China Club on the Upper West Side and, if I recall correctly, a multi-floored place called M.K. on Fifth Avenue and 25th Street, but he also “spun” in weird one-off spaces and at some clothing store in SoHo. Not only would I be subjected to whatever newfangled dance music Brad was playing at these places when he commandeered the sound system at the magazine’s “office” (i.e. his diminutive apartment on the northern border of the Upper East Side), but he frequently had me delivering him copy while he was deejaying.

I’ve mentioned this before, but one ancillary bonus to working at this `zine was the sudden access to guest lists not only of the rock clubs of the era like the New Ritz, The Cat Club, The Marquee, Roseland Ballroom, Tramp’s, Wetlands and the like, but also the dance clubs like The Sound Factory, the Limelight, The Tunnel, The Palladium and arguably lesser-known spots like Big City Diner, The Lovesexxy Lounge, Nell’s, Building and a few others. Between going to these places and hearing what Brad insisted on playing back the office, I was soaking up a lot of this music, while, at the same time, far more preoccupied with noise-rock, post-punk, hardcore, British indie pop and metal. But that was me.

Brad actually brought a few of these cats to the “office,” sometimes, as well, which meant I had gents like A Guy Called Gerald and Acid House progenitor D Mob hanging out while I was trying to do some inane editorial tasks.

As a result, some of this music wormed its way under the battlements of my usual taste, prompting me to seek out singles by select acts like 808 State, Mysterious Art and … I’m aghast to admit it, I event sprang for that Technotronic single, when it was still a big new thing.

Despite these dalliances, while I was now fully aware of burgeoning dance music scene, I still wasn’t all that into it. I respected it, but it wasn’t really for me.

Cut to 2024, and New York City is a markedly different place from what it was in the `80s and `90s. Much as with so many of my favorite rock clubs, so many of the dance clubs of yore are now all gone, long shuttered and squeezed out by the tirelessly spreading spill of gentrification. Dance music itself has sort of morphed further into EDM, a seeming catch-all term for all variants of electronic dance music that is no longer some furtive underground pursuit or niche subculture. It seems to evolve at a furious pace, rendering the dance music acts I liked from later years like The Prodigy, The Orb, Orbital, Underworld seem ridiculously dated. I couldn’t tell you much about the EDM music of today, but then, what little I’ve heard of it doesn’t suggest I’m missing too much. So much of it seems now dominated by DJ douchebags like The Chainsmokers, whose music I wouldn’t play at a dog, but hey … that’s me.

In any case, I stumbled upon the video below, and while it again is exclusively devoted to the music and the nightlife of a community I wasn’t really involved in, I found it to be really fascinating. Here is New Zealander podcaster Shae Sterling taking a walking tour of the westerly reaches of Chelsea in Manhattan with legendary Brooklyn DJ Frankie Bones for a tour of lost dance clubs like The Roxy, The Fun House and beyond. Enjoy…

Lights …. Camera …. Abjection: My Big Screen Debut in Catherine Araimo’s “B-Sides”

I spoke about this not too long ago, but 2024 has found me twice contributing to documentary films. The first one — which has yet see the light of day — was for a film about the divining of Charly Garcia Corner in TriBeca at Cortlandt Alley and Walker Street. I’m hoping that surfaces soon, but we’ll see.

The second one, meanwhile, was for my great friend Rob’s niece, Katie Araimo. Longtime readers might remember an entry I posted in 2018 wherein Katie, for a school project, put together an extensive, interactive website that mapped out the since-vanished network of independent record shops in Manhattan that her uncle and I used to frequent. Taking the project a step further, Katie — now a film student and budding documentarian at The New School — put together a short film on record store culture then and now. She approached me to participate, and given my affinity for pompously bloviating on that very subject, I obliged.

This is the finished product. I’m delighted to also relay that at the film’s premiere screening a couple of weeks back at the New Screen Fest at the DCTV Cinema for Documentary Film, our Katie won the Audience Award for her film.

I was bemused to see myself appearing throughout the short film, including discussing the Piece, Man single by Cop Shoot Cop during the end credits. I’m a very silly person.

In any case, please enjoy the fruit of Katie’s very hard work and overlook my idiocy:

B-Sides from Catherine Araimo on Vimeo.

NYC Summer `97

While waiting for some work documents to arrive on Friday morning, I stumbled upon this video on YouTube. Essentially just a short snippet of a summer day in Manhattan in 1997, the video is nothing very special, but I still found it kind of striking.

At the time this was filmed, I’d have moved into my apartment on East 12th Street, and was still working at the TIME Magazine News Desk. The news cycle, at the time, wasn’t exactly the jam-packed Hellscape it is today. The biggest stories would have been the return of Hong Kong to China, Wimbledon tennis matches, Autumn Jackson found guilty of trying to extort $40 million from … er… Bill Cosby, the debut of “South Park” and the …. ummmm … birth of Kylie Jenner (i.e. the antichrist). Giuliani was still mayor and still quite a dick, but hadn’t quite lost his fucking mind, yet. Towards the end of this particular summer, Princess Diana would be killed in a car accident while being feverishly pursued by paparazzi.

On the streets, you’ll notice no Citibikes. No cannabis emporiums. No sidewalk sheds. No 5G towers. No hedge-fund bros with golf bags. There are several businesses depicted like Crunch, Tower Video and Gaseteria that no longer exist, but also old school mom’n’pop ventures like since-vanished bodegas and pizzerias. Things are a little rough around the edges and not quite so squeaky clean, but no one’s really in a hurry. No influencers are gabbing into their smartphones. No one’s posing for selfies.

Travel from lower Fifth Avenue to Lafayette Street and then Second Avenue before you’re down on the Lower East Side for a lulling spell in Hamilton Fish Park off East Houston Street before repairing to the sleepy streets of Two Bridges and Chinatown.

Theoretically, It Happened on Grand Street

This post was inspired by the most random thing – a quote from President Jimmy Carter, that being..

If you have a voice and an instrument, you are welcome in my home.

A lovely sentiment, right? My friend Frank Coleman posted that on Facebook, and I … being a cheeky fucker … responded with the video below, appended with the legend, “Mr. President, there’s a Mr. Branca here to see you!?...”

I’ve posted that particular video here a number of times, and it always makes me smile. I mean, yeah, sure, on a superficial level, it seems entirely absurd – watching the late Glenn Branca take a battered, long-suffering six-string to task like a man positively on fire in the name of untethered experimental noise ain’t exactly everyone’s cup o’ concrete, but there’s also something so completely beautiful about it.

As a musician, Branca could be a polarizing figure, although I’m fairly sure he felt more alignment with avant-garde conceptual artists than with comparatively conventional musicians. As I mentioned back on this post, I came to own a couple of his records by way of a big crate of LP’s undeservingly bequeathed to me by this hepcat named Arthur who was courting my mother, back in the mid-`80s (he claimed, at the time, that he was “going digital,” and had evolved beyond vinyl, or some ridiculous bullshit like that, and I happily obliged that evolution). It was a gift – albeit with an agenda – that I’d assuredly done nothing to genuinely deserve.

But while I immediately pounced on Arthur’s former copies of beloved albums by Siouxsie & the Banshees, The Fall, SWANS and Public Image Ltd., these oddball records like The Ascension and Lesson No. 1 by this enigmatic Branca figure were just, for lack of a better word, … confusing. I mean, they were certainly compelling, given the sheer expanse of enveloping sound they packed, but a wall of detuned electric guitars playing movements like an orchestra was invariably too heady a horse pill for me to digest, given my stubborn affinity for more traditional rock. I wouldn’t grow to truly appreciate Branca’s music for several years, largely prompted by name-drops and accolades from folks like Sonic Youth and David Bowie.

I think I genuinely decided to give his stuff another shake when I saw a few interviews with the man. I mean, not only was he this strangely hirsute, unshaven, and irascible badass, but he was also completely hilarious (his moments in Don Letts’ “Punk: Attitude” and the otherwise truly abortive “documentary” on No Wave, “Kill Yr Idols” are snide comedy gold). Like his contemporaries like James Chance, Suicide and Lydia Lunch, as well as obvious acolytes like Michael Gira and the late Steve Albini, Glenn Branca suffered no fools, made no compromises, and gave absolutely zero fucks.

I soon learned that, prior to recording and releasing the records I’d come to own via “Going Digital” Arthur, Branca had been part of the whole No Wave phenomenon, given his membership in a band called Theoretical Girls. I’d first become intrigued by the music of the deliberately user-hostile No Wave scene from reading about it, but actually tracking down the records, at the time (this was the mid-`80s, let’s remember) was no small feat. Fate fleetingly smiled on me, however, when I happened upon a long-neglected copy of No New York, arguably the quintessential primer on all things No Wave, curated and “produced” by self-appointed No Wave ambassador Brian Eno, while I was deejaying at my college radio station. Being that the station in question largely accommodated the stridently unwavering listening habits of classic rock retrophiles hopelessly addicted to a steady diet of the Allman Brothers, Joni Mitchell, and the Grateful Dead, it was safe to assume no one was going to miss the LP if I “borrowed” it in perpetuity. Sure enough, when I played its opening track on the air, that night – that being “Dish It Out” by the Contortions, featuring a positively splenetic explosion of saxophone insanity courtesy of James Chance – I believe listeners called in with death threats.

But Branca’s band, Theoretical Girls, didn’t make it onto No New York. Allegedly, Eno’s choice of who made the cut unwittingly drove a wedge into the No Wave community, given that inclusion on the record seemed to establish a sort of tenuous hierarchy. Given that Theoretical Girls were SoHo-based and not Lower East Siders like most of the other bands (in retrospect, a kind of ridiculous distinction, given their geographical proximity), Theoretical Girls were arguably even perceived as outsiders by the outsiders.

For the longest time, the only song I’d ever heard by Theoretical Girls – who also included Jeff Lohn, Wharton Tiers and Margaret Dewys – was a fittingly discordant number called “You Got Me.” Contrary to what one might assume given such a comparatively banal song title, “You Got Me” is not a romantic testament of any kind, but rather a frenzied admission of homicidal mania (“I’m really scared when I kill in my dreams”) that kicks off with a series of staccato bursts before settling into a pounding, jackhammer rhythm flanked by chugging guitars, jittery keyboards and Branca’s anxious bark. Suffice to say, it ain’t yacht rock, but hear it for yourself…

Being one side of a 7” single, the only official, self-issued release by the Theoretical Girls during their brief existence, “You Got Me” went onto be included on myriad punk, post-punk and no wave compilations, over the years, including great ones by Atavistic and Soul Jazz. I don’t think I even heard the flipside of the single, “U.S. Millie,” until more recently, and it is somewhat surprisingly nothing like its counterpart, largely abandoning Branca’s murderous guitar skronk for some stiff-backed, tinny keyboard doodling under Jeff Lohn’s bizarre poetry and a martial rhythm. Hear it for yourself…

In any case, other bits and pieces documenting the brief, noisy existence of the Theoretical Girls surfaced over time, not least Ericka Beckman’s 2010 documentary, “135 Grand Street New York 1979,” which featured footage of Branca & Co. (also in the guise of Branca & Lohn’s pre-Theoretical Girls band, The Static) playing in a cramped little space in – wait for it – 135 Grand Street. Here’s a tantalizing bit of that now. I believe the footage was first intended as part of a German television program…

Ever since first seeing that footage, I’d always meant to seek out more. I can’t remember when I first spied that clip of solo Glenn going bonkers in black n’ white at the top of this post, but I remember being struck that said explosive performance also happened on Grand Street, albeit a few blocks further to the west. I decided to go back to the scenes of the crimes. 

The space at 135 Grand from Beckman’s documentary is today a concern called R. Swiader, a business that describes itself as a “gender-optional, Made in New York clothing line from designer Raf Swiader. It is his vision of a future when everybody feels at home in in their body, starting with their clothes.” If the R. Swiader folks are even remotely aware – let alone if they’d even care – that their space once played host to the racket-raising likes of Messrs. Branca, Lohn, Tiers, etc., they're not interested in discussing it, and there's no mention of it on their website.

The space that played host to Branca’s solo freakout, meanwhile, was at Jeffrey Lohn’s old storefront loft at 33 Grand Street. Lohn would allegedly use the loft as a performance space and invite other neighborhood envelope-pushers like Laurie Anderson and Tim Wright to hang out, watch stuff and be cool. About a decade later, that space would be re-imagined as a bar called Naked Lunch with a William S. Burroughs theme. It was hard to miss their signature metallic cockroach sculpture that hung on the corner of the building at the southwest intersection of Thompson and Grand.

Like all genuinely cool stuff in New York City, Naked Lunch closed in 2013, and was slated to become a more cloyingly chic endeavor (in keeping with the then-devolving character of Soho of the era) called the Regent Cocktail Club, but instead morphed into yet another transient-looking delicatessen. The metallic roach stuck around for several years before mysteriously vanishing during COVID.

Here in 2024, once again, the Theoretical Girls are an element from the past, mourned predominantly by a dwindling nation of record collectors and pedantic music nerds (although original editions of the “U.S. Millie”/”You Got Me” single are asking $150-$200 on eBay). I am unfortunately unfamiliar with the circumstances of the band’s dissolution, but certain sources have made vague suggestions about “external pressures and internal politics.” Make of that what you will.

Branca, of course, went on to cultivate a revered career as an avant-garde composer, continuing to make music until his death in 2016 from throat cancer. Jeff Lohn continues his pursuits in conceptual art and composition, but largely demurred from the public eye. Somewhat ironically, Wikipedia says that he's since moved from SoHo to the East Village. Keyboardist Margaret De Wys devotes her life to being a composer and sound-installation artist and her works have been performed in prestigious venues like MoMa and the Whitney Museum. She apparently lives between Upstate New York and Southeast Nigeria. Drummer Wharton Tiers went onto become a respected musician, audio engineer and producer, performing both as a solo artist and with Laurie Anderson, as well as producing albums by Sonic Youth, Das Damen, Helmet, Dinosaur Jr., White Zombie, Quicksand, Unrest, and Gumball, among many others. As a special note to this stupid blog, it should be noted that Tiers engineered Headkick Facsimile, the debut EP by my beloved Cop Shoot Cop.

In the ensuing years since Theoretical Girls’ fleeting tenure, there have been two distinct compilations devoted to them, strangely divvied up – like their lone 7” single – between Branca’s music and Lohn’s music, almost like they’re two different entities. Personally speaking, I find it hard not to project some hint of acrimony between Branca and Lohn as the reasons behind this arrangement. Regardless, Songs: `77-`79 on Atavistic covers Glenn Branca’s material, with eight suitably bracing tracks by both Theoretical Girls and The Static. Jeff Lohn’s take, meanwhile, is represented on Acute Records' Theoretical Record, a comparatively sprawling collection of tracks. For those who don’t like to get their hands dirty tracking down the physical manifestations of music, I should note that you can find both collections on Spotify. Of the two, only Theoretical Record can be found on Bandcamp. Being the dweeb that I am, I had to have physical copies of both.

While the sound quality on each of these releases bounces between varying degrees of what audiophiles would probably consider entirely untenable, I find both discs to be really exciting, and way more accessible than I’d been expecting, striking a compelling balance between bare-bones punk sneer and art-damaged downtown weirdness. Unsurprisingly, Branca’s tracks tend to be less conventional and more cacophonously pugnacious, but that was kinda his shtick. This is not to say Lohn’s songs aren’t equally challenging (Lohn’s instrumental diversion “Polytonal” is just as headache-inducing as Branca’s “Fuck Yourself”), but when Theoretical Girls lock in together and play as a cohesive unit, like on “Don’t Let Me Stop You,” “Lovin’ in the Red,” “No More Sex” and their Ramones-baiting titular theme, “Theoretical Girls – Live,” the end results can totally hold their own.

To walk up and down Grand Street today, though, with this music in my headphones, it’s hard to reconcile that it all happened here.

CODA: Having fleetingly bribed my approval via an avalanche of post-punk vinyl, “Go-Digital” Arthur did indeed end up briefly dating my mother, but I believe he may have harbored an affinity for certain stimulants that my mother just wasn’t down with, and their short-lived fling fizzled out. Mercifully, he never asked for his records back, although I strenuously doubt that he was ever able to fully replicate his collection on compact disc. I believe he has since passed away.

A Great Day in Alphabet City

Reverent jazzbos will doubtlessly know what I’m talking about, but in 1958, a storied photographer named Art Kane assembled 57 jazz musicians – including legendary players like Gene Krupa, Count Basie, Art Blakey, Horace Silver, Dizzee Gillesie, Sonny Rollins, Thelonius Monk, Charles Mingus and a whole lot more -- to pose on and around the stoop of 17 East 126th Street for a centerfold spread in Esquire Magazine. The resultant photograph was titled “A Great Day in Harlem” and is deservedly considered an iconic artifact of jazz’s rich history. See it here.

Now, I can’t believe that legendary photograph wasn’t fully on the minds of organizer Katherine Ludwig and photographer Dub Rogers when they assembled this aggregation of East Village noise-rock practitioners for a periodical called NY Talk in March of 1985. Venerable SWANS guitarist Norman Westberg shared it on his Facebook page, and it kinda blew my mind. That's it at the top of this post. Click on it to enlarge. 

Convened in the La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez Community Garden on East 9th Street between Avenues B and C, here are gathered members of Sonic Youth, Rat at Rat R, Steppin Razor, In The Vines, the Blowtorch Boys, Live Skull, Carbon, Details at 11, 3 Teens Kill 4, SWANS, and Missing Foundation (referred to here as “The Peter Missing Foundation”).

I love the tag line: Nothing homogenous here – no formula, no idols, no rules to break or follow. Their association is by location.

I have to confess that while I would have been a high school senior at the time of this photograph, I have absolutely zero recollection of ever seeing a copy of NY Talk. I’m curious to check it out, but back issues go for princely sums on eBay.

Most of these folks left the Lower East Side years ago, but, more recently, the terraced steps those musicians were pictured on looks like this….

Greenwich Village `64

This has been making the rounds, so I thought I'd share it here, too...

Step Into The Light: Pressing Play on the Debut EP by Light of Eternity

PREAMBLE:
It’s practically impossible to avoid prefacing a review of the debut EP from Light of Eternity without first addressing the tragic and untimely death of Killing Joke guitarist Geordie Walker, who passed away unexpectedly last November. The loss of the inimitable guitarist pulled the plug on an iconic band that was still enjoying a remarkable third (or was it fourth?) act and some strenuously well-earned acclaim after decades of iron-willed perseverance and resistance to compromise. Killing Joke unwittingly played their final show just a few months earlier on the exalted stage of London’s Royal Albert Hall, and a new chapter seemed poised to begin. Sadly, it was not to be.

Much as he did with his first two excellent solo forays, erstwhile Killing Joke drummer/founder Big Paul Ferguson had begun working on the project that would become L.O.E., prior to Geordie’s sudden demise, simply as a comparatively relaxed, extracurricular outlet beyond Killing Joke’s notoriously tempestuous working parameters. A guitarist named Paul Williams (not to be confused with the soft-rock singer/songwriter and ASCAP chairman of the same name) from a Durham, England band called Chaos 8, had approached Big Paul about possibly playing on some material he’d started writing. In short order, a creative collaboration flourished and gained momentum, with Big Paul recruiting vocalist/bassist Fred Schreck into the burgeoning fold. Big Paul and Schreck had previously played together in a band called Crush back in the early `90s, but Schreck had originally served in the ranks of a revered New York City band, The Ancients. Things were starting to gel.

In the immediate wake of the stymied plans and deep emotional upheaval of losing his longtime friend and bandmate, Big Paul immersed himself into this project with Williams and Schreck as less of a dalliance and more as a veritable lifeline, devoting himself to the galvanizing music of this new band – now named Light of Eternity – as a means of healing and recalibrating as he mourned Geordie’s sudden absence.

Armed with all that foreshadowing, this reviewer continues to find it difficult to listen to L.O.E.’s first recordings without reading deeply into them.

REVIEW:
I cannot honestly say what I was expecting after being sent L.O.E.’s debut EP, given the particulars. The last music I’d heard by Schreck was his work with Satellite Paradiso, an impressive musical collective helmed by former Psychedelic Furs guitarist John Aston that specialized in a sort of lushly modern psychedelia. Conversely, guitarist Paul Williams’ past music with Chaos 8 offered more of the bottom-heavy crunch of punky, industrial rock with an endearing abundance of snarl and sneer. Taking into account Big Paul’s versatility as a musician and the many stylistic turns he’s taken with various bands over the years, not least with Killing Joke, I was quite curious as to how L.O.E’s music would hit me.

But hit me it did…

Pressing play on the EP’s first track, “Edge of Fate,” as I was lazily meandering to the office, one sleepy morning earlier this week, I certainly wasn’t prepared. A single, monolithic note from a dreadnought-sized synthesizer confirmed that it was entirely too late to dodge the scud missile about to hit my ear pods. Williams’ corrosive guitar and Big Paul’s drums simultaneously drop into the mix for a concussive half-minute that establishes the full, widescreen presence of the band before BOOM, we’re off on a chugging gallop when Schreck assumes the mic as the pavement starts cracking all around me.

As a brief aside, some full disclosure: When I first listened to this EP, I immediately assumed that the vocal duties were being divided between bassist Fred Schreck — whose primary role in previous bands was as vocalist — and guitarist Paul Williams, leaving Big Paul free to bash the bejeezus out of his drums. I jumped to this conclusion given the pronounced dichotomy between verses delivered in a fiery, higher register cackle and a lower, magisterial baritone. I have since been informed, however, that all vocal detail on the record was handled by Fred Schreck, a revelation that is frankly astonishing, and a striking testimony to the breadth of his abilities.

Straining at the inherent tension that essentially comprises the trio, Schreck basically … schrecks the Hell out of this song, buffered by Williams’ strafing guitars and the signature thwomping wallop of Big Paul behind the kit. The fury of the man pounding the crap out of these intricate rhythems is palpable, but, at the same time, this explosive sound never boils over into simply bombast for bombast’s sake. The song is taut and burly, but controlled, muscular but melodic. While Williams seems hellbent on pushing proceedings into the red, Schreck wrestles control of the track’ s middle-eight with a sonorous refrain before we’re again racing at a breakneck pace towards a detonative climax.

Crawling breathlessly out of the smoking crater left by that first track, I brace myself for another bowel-worrying barrage, practically hugging a lamp post on lower Lafayette Street for stability. Instead, I am met with the stately opening notes of an elegiac hymn called “Lament,” which, while rendered similarly sinewy by Williams’s hefty guitars and Big Paul’s emphatic drumming, is a far more nuanced affair than its pugnacious predecessor. Schreck’s resonant croon rises above the brewing storm to not-so-obliquely recount what can only be Big Paul’s innermost sentiments regarding Geordie Walker’s passing, the end results being as poignant as they are powerful.

From there, it’s back to the carpet-bombing with, suitably, “Explode,” finding Schreck reverting to his hellion wail for a shouty barnburner with yet another stomping riff.

The final cut of the EP is “Tipping Point,” a lyrically scathing, gaping-jawed takedown of a flaccidly weak-willed target (a single entity or society as a whole?) vainly preoccupied with consumption and self-gratification. This doomy disavowal is fulsomely fleshed out by fat, chunky chugging underpinned by Big Paul’s gigantic beats and a wash of minor-key synths.

And suddenly, it’s all over. While the word “Light” may indeed be in their appellation, rest assured that Light of Eternity’s music is about as bright and sunny as a forbidding cumulonimbus ready to soak you senseless and flatten your home. But as dark and dense as it can be, it’s also the sound of pure, propulsive catharsis and a bracing first shot across the bow.

I, for one, cannot wait for more. This first EP is unleashed on June 1st. Go get it. 

Find them on Bandcamp and Facebook. 

 

Exhuming The Moondance

I was beginning to slowly piece together an entry about some comparatively ancient doings along the stately byway of Grand Street (which may still see the light of day) but got sidetracked by another item about a former location near the westerly end of that street, namely the Moondance Diner.

Read any write-up of the Moondance Diner on the web, and you’re likely to see many of the same invocations about how the iconic eatery was featured in episodes of “Sex & the City,” “Miami Vice” and “Friends” and in movies like “Spider-Man” and “After Hours.” I can’t speak for those other dumb-ass titles with any authority, but I’d really like to (again) clear up the misconception that the Moondance Diner ever appeared in “After Hours,” a film which is something of a preoccupation of mine

While, yes, the Moondance Diner was very definitively in SoHo -– the geographical heart of “After Hours” -- not that far from various other neighborhood-specific locations in that film, Scorsese actually filmed the diner scenes (both the interior and the exterior shots) at a diner in Hell’s Kitchen called the River Diner on West 36th Street on 11th Avenue (where John Lennon was once photographed). It certainly would have made more sense to film them at the Moondance, but for whatever reason – he didn’t. So, when you read that bullshit on WikiPedia and/or in any other articles on the subject -- don’t believe the hype!

Now, of course, I already addressed this inanely trivial bullshit in this post from back in 2010, wherein I lamented the absence of the Moondance Diner with juxtaposing photos of the deeply shitty hotel that was erected on its former site. One would think that was the end of the story, right?

One would be wrong.

The way it shook out, the Moondance Diner was allegedly forced to close its doors circa 2007, when they could no longer realistically meet the demands of lower Manhattan’s spiraling rent. The physical diner itself – complete with ornate, rotating-moon signage – was sold and shipped to the wide-open spaces of a town called La Barge in Wyoming, of all places.

That should have been it, but, tragically, the winter climate of Wyoming (where, one assumes, they get a significantly greater amount of snowfall than Sixth Avenue & Grand Street ever does) spelled a comparatively quick demise for the Moondance diner, which closed again in 2012.

On a personal level, the Moondance Diner was a longtime favorite of mine from both when I was a single, beery rock pig on the hunt for greasy food after an evening of ill-advised high decibels and from when I became a doting dad to two little, tiny people. Not only was it an iconic spot on the map, but the food was spot-on. Since its departure, I always envisioned some grand road trip I’d take upon retiring, wherein I’d drive around the continent, visiting bits and pieces of downtown Manhattan’s past like the Moondance Diner, and the bar from the Cedar Tavern (now in a bar in Austin, TX) and the giant lizard from the top of the Lone Star Café (now also located in Texas). That expedition probably won’t be happening.

As of this time last year, as reported in this story in the Cowboy State Daily, the dormant diner was being eyed for re-opening by various parties, but I don’t know if any of that has come to pass since the publishing of this article.

Once again, click on that link for the full story of the fate of the Moondance, … along with dispiriting pictures like the one below.

Lastly, here's my little daughter in front of same circa 2007...

Word on the Street