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If you enjoy laughing to keep yourself from crying, Jon Stewart was absolutely ON FIRE last night ....
Personally speaking, did I think Biden did even a half-decent job last night? Absolutely fucking not. That said, I'd still support him over the alternative EVERY DAMN TIME.
Patient longtime readers might remember a short series of entries I posted starting in 2015 wherein I was trying to divine the precise location of a photograph by storied Dutch shutterbug Anton Corbijn of one of my favorite bands, Gang of Four. That’s the photo in question above.
I had a few theories in mind, most of them placing Messrs. King, Allen, Gill and Burnham in the East Village/Alphabet City area, but none of them really synched up. There was always one or two details that failed to match – like the placement of a particular window or the direction of a set of fire-escape stairs. I eventually figured I’d never figure it out and gave up in early 2016.
Eight years later, I have found my answer.
While scrolling through the photos of the Facebook page, Dirty Old 1970’s New York City, I stumbled upon the photo below by one Robert Mulero.
Everything matches up, including the ground-floor canopy and the tell-tale “BAR” sign.
According to Mr. Mulera, this location puts the original line-up of Gang of Four much further south than I’d posited.
The location depicted is South Street at Peck Slip.
Go figure.
Here, meanwhile, is Gang of Four playing at Hurrah on the Upper West Side in 1980.
Rest in peace, Andy Gill.
In the grand scheme of things, I only worked at MTV News Online for a comparatively brief instant -- a mere (barely) two years in the mid-to-late 2000's, but it was easily one of the most informative experiences of my career (albeit, sadly more for what I failed to do than for what I actually accomplished, but that's a weepy saga to be shared over an ill-advised sequence of beers). Those who were reading this blog, at the time, might remember several posts wherein I expressed a good deal of frustration.
This all said, I learned a helluva lot in exceptionally short order and met (and still maintain) an army of incredibly smart, funny, creative and ambitious friends. I only got to write a paltry few pieces myself (one story about -- WAIT FOR IT -- Killing Joke and small news item about The Stranglers), but as of this week, those minor pieces -- and literally countless other amazing stories, features, interviews and video packages lovingly put together by my former colleagues -- have all been completely scrubbed from the website, which -- beyond being frankly fucking horrible, inconsiderate, insensitive and indefensible – is astonishingly short-sighted of Paramount (formerly Viacom). An incredible resource of information has been set on fire and dumped down the chute, presumably as a means of nominal cost-cutting.
It was unclear, last I checked, whether the MTV News archives were deleted/erased or simply made inaccessible to the public, but popular consensus seems to be suggesting the former. If that’s the case, that means that all that work by all those individuals covering myriad subjects spanning whole decades has been obliterated and is now, ostensibly, gone forever. The whole endeavor has basically been negated -- almost as if to suggest that it had never existed. While, again, personally speaking, I was only involved for a comparatively brief hiccup, there are friends and former colleagues of mine for whom this week’s event amounts to all evidence of their entire professional career going up in smoke. Suffice to say, people are enraged.
There seems to be the pervasive notion that things last on the internet in perpetuity, but even with helpful (and reportedly endangered) tools like the Wayback Machine, that’s just not the case. Whether you maintain a ridiculously niche blog (like, say, this one) or have built a stately portfolio of your life’s work online – do yourself a favor right now ... and make yourself hard copies of your work.
You can read more about the deletion of the MTV News archives here.
If I’m not mistaken, the below video is technically taken from the deluxe Criterion edition of “After Hours” that was released in 2023. I actually own that but being that it’s exclusively an “Ultra/4k Blu-Ray” – a medium my system is unequipped to play – I’ve never actually been able to watch the thing. Yes, I know … tragic.
In any case, here’s a spirited chat between Martin Scorsese and Fran Lebowitz about the fabled director’s experience bringing “After Hours” to the big screen. If you’ve spent any meaningful amount of time reading this stupid blog, you’ll doubtlessly know how preoccupied with this film I am. As such, I figured I’d share it here.
Enjoy.
And, since you've made it this far, here's another feature from the Criterion set ... this is the "Making Of Featurette"...
And, finally, "The Look of 'After Hours'"..
In about 1997, one of my best friends, Rob D. – then still a freshly-minted husband to my friend Joanne (I unwittingly introduced them, some years prior), decided that he and his new bride were swiftly outgrowing the five-story walk-up in the East Village they’d been renting. Technically, Rob had moved into Joanne’s apartment on East 9th Street after hopscotching around between Manhattan and his original home turf in Pleasantville (where, we were fond of pointing out, Ace Frehley had allegedly lived). Prior to all this, Joanne had lived in an apartment on East 4th Street that, we learned well after the fact, had also played host, at an earlier point, to unlikely neighbors Madonna and Peter Missing of Missing Foundation.
Regardless, they needed more space, so Rob & Joanne said goodbye to the East Village and decamped to Hell’s Kitchen, right off the “The Deuce” at 303 West 42nd Street, just a few steps to the west of 8th Avenue. The building’s biggest claim to … er … fame was that it played host to the notorious Show World Center, an age-old “sex emporium” from the neighborhood’s fabled bad old days.
Circa `97, while the surrounding area was sharply in the throes of some seriously intense gentrification (largely courtesy of the authoritarian reign of Mayor Giuliani), I believe Show World was still conducting its usual business, which largely consisted of live-sex shows (I shouldn’t have to explain to you what this entails) and floors lined with these strange adjoining booths (see pic below, courtesy of Jeremiah Moss' Vanishing NY).
“Dancers” – for want of a better term – would wait outside of these closet-sized booths, and when a patron expressed an interest, they would each enter their respective halves (kind of like confessionals in a church). The patron would summarily enter tokens he’d have procured upon entry to the premises into a slot, and a hatch would ascend like a curtain between the two halves of the booth, revealing the “dancer” on the other side of a doubtlessly smeary windowpane. To keep the hatch from descending and obscuring full view of whatever the “dancer” might be doing, the patron would have to keep pumping tokens into the slot. Eventually, he’d either run out of tokens … or steam, so to speak, … and the hatch would slam shut. End of show.
Here's a great shot of the 8th Avenue entrance, as captured by Gregoire Alessandrini.
While all that was going on, meanwhile, Rob and Joanne were setting up their new home in a comparatively spacious and bright one-bedroom several flights above. Right off the living room/open-kitchen area, there was a wide fire-escape, where we’d often hang out for hours, drinking beers and talking nonsense. If you climbed those fire escape stairs, you were treated to an amazing roof-top with a full, birds-eye view of the entirety of the surrounding Hell’s Kitchen. That part of it was legitimately magickal.
Newly enamored of Hell’s Kitchen, I picked up a copy of “The Westies” by T.J. English, an exhaustive -- but truly excellent -- history of Hell’s Kitchen’s era under the reign of the titular Irish mob, led by colorful figures like Mickey Featherstone, Jimmy Coonan, Mickey Spillane and their bloodthirsty cohort. That book loosely served as the inspiration for the similarly inclined 1990 film “State of Grace,” starring Sean Penn, Gary Oldman and Ed Harris. Like a pair of green-gilled dilettantes, Rob and I started exploring many of the neighborhood’s less salubrious drinking establishments like Mr. Biggs (formerly owned by mobster Jimmy Coonan as the 596 Bar, where Coonan had rival mobster and loan shark Carles “Ruby” Stein murdered and beheaded), The Savoy, McHale’s, Siberia Bar, The Bellvue Bar, Druids, Rudy’s, The Holland Bar and several others, grimly romanced by the neighborhood’s already swiftly eroding character.
As it happened, however, Rob & Joanne’s stay in their adopted Hell’s Kitchen ended up being pretty short. After only about a year and a half, they decamped to City Island in the Bronx (right across the water from haunted Hart Island) and then, very shortly after that, to New London, CT, the former stomping grounds of Rob’s literary hero, Eugene O’Neill. In the grand scheme of things, Rob & Joanne had only been in Hell’s Kitchen for barely an instant, but the changes to that neighborhood (from a grimy sleaze Mecca in a lawless badlands into a Disneyfied tourist trap) during their brief tenure were pronounced.
Once R&J had split, my journeys into the heart of Hell’s Kitchen decreased in frequency until I took a job – briefly, as it would turn out – at MTV News Online in neighboring Times Square in the mid-to-late 2000’s. Now, almost two decades later, I barely recognize Hell’s Kitchen when I’m back in it. The very name itself – Hell’s Kitchen – has come under fire, in more recent years, from real estate developers trying to re-christen the neighborhood in an arguably more inviting/less inflammatory manner.
Since those days in the `90s, most of the bars I cited have vanished, notably The Savoy, McHale’s, Siberia, The Bellevue Bar and Druids. I believe the Holland Bar might also have closed but am not sure. Rudy’s and Mr. Biggs are still there, last I checked. In the summer of 1998, just prior to meeting the lady who I’d later marry, I had a truly surreal and disastrously Kafka-esque blind date that culminated in Mr. Biggs. Suffice to say, that ridiculous experience left me disinclined to ever want to return to that undoubtedly cursed space (even though, today, it’s just another douchy sports bar). Bad vibes, to say the least.
But, again, this is just my experience. For a more nuanced, detailed and authoritative take on Hell’s Kitchen, check out this documentary below…
Honestly, there’s really no way of discussing anyone from New York City’s original No Wave gang without lapsing laboriously into a viscous thicket of ponderously Christgauan rock-critic psychobabble. Before you know it, you’ll be brandishing words like “iconoclastic” and “skronk” and alienating whole swathes of your friends on social media by revealing yourself to be just the sort of insufferable music nerd that scrutinizes your purchases at record stores and asks you to name three songs when you dare to wear a band t-shirt. (Guilty as charged, your honor).
Suffice to say, No Wave proponents like the newly late James Chance (and Lydia Lunch and Arto Lyndsay and Glenn Branca, etc.) made bold, uncompromising music that made heretofore “iconoclastic” records by the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Ramones sound about as daring as The Partridge Family. To this day, albums like BUY by The Contortions, DNA on DNA by DNA and the hotly divisive No New York compilation (“produced” by Brian Eno) *STILL* sound jarringly, aggressively discordant, ugly and confrontational, .... whereas you’re now more than likely to hear Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols at your local Starbuck’s.
James Chance was an incredibly unique performer who harnessed the preternatural funk brilliance of James Brown and the unpredictably volatile pugnacity of the Stooges in one bugfuck-insane amalgam that was funky and scary and confusing and exhilarating. It was never easy listening and it’s assuredly not for everyone, but there was genuinely no one like him, and there never will be again.
So pour one out and contort yourself. A legend is dead.
As I was strolling home from work on the evening of May 2, 2017, I glanced over at 77 White Street, and who should I spy sitting on the storied stoop of the former Mudd Club but the great James Chance himself. He was taking part in what was doubtlessly an awkward interview. I tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, but I could not stop myself from snapping the picture below.
Rest in peace, James.
Well, the answer to this one came quickly for master-sleuth Bob Egan of PopSpotsNYC.
He found it in the very book I'd been looking for but had given away to Goodwill -- "High on Rebellion."
I don't know who this is, ... but it ain't Jim Carroll.
Over the weekend, I took a stroll down to Fulton and Water Streets, i.e. the Seaport, to check out an outdoor retrospective entitled “Punk’s Not Dead,” featuring several iconic (and some not-so-iconic) photographs of all things punk by fabled shutterbugs like Roberta Bayley, Godlis, Bob Gruen, Ebet Roberts and a few others. Honestly speaking, most of the images in question are widely celebrated and circulated, so I wasn’t really expecting to see anything I’d never seen before, but several of them were blown up to maximum size, so I wanted to check that out. Also, it was a lovely, early summer day wherein I had nothing to do, so, it was a fun excursion.
In any case, after snapping a few pics of my own (and asking a Polish tourist to capture a shot of me standing in front of Godlis’ famous portrait of Joey Ramone on St. Marks Place), I ambled around the seaport and then eventually walked back home to Greenwich Village.
When I was going over my pictures back at home, however, I started to examine a legendary photograph that I’d never really studied that closely before, and I suddenly noticed a detail I’d never spied. But now, I have a suspicion, and I can’t seem to be able to solve it.
Despite being named after the arguably preeminent flash point of all things Punk Rock, the 1976 compilation album, Max’s Kansas City, was rife with significant omission. That same year, that storied club’s biggest rival, CBGB, also put out its own compilation record that also largely dropped the ball, in that very same respect. While both LP’s remain great, period-specific documents of the gestating New York City punk scene of the mid-70’s, both records are almost more notable for who they failed to include (like, say, the Ramones and Blondie) than for the class of largely lesser celebrated acts (like, say, the Tuff Darts and The Fast) who made the cut.
On the strength of Wayne (now Jayne) County’s homage to the premier punk club of New York City, I picked up a used copy of the vinyl LP of Max’s Kansas City in, somewhat ironically, Columbus, Ohio, at a shop on High Street called, inexplicably, Magnolia Thunderpussy, during my sophomore year of college. Truthfully, while I liked that song, Suicide’s “Rocket USA" and Pere Ubu’s original recording of “Final Solution” (before owning this LP, the only version I’d ever heard was Peter Murphy’s cover), the rest of the Max’s album kinda failed to excite my imagination. A passing glance at Bob Gruen’s class photo on the cover depicted a gaggle of individuals who didn’t so much resemble punky iconoclasts as shaggy haired, denim-bedecked refugees from the staid, beige decade they were supposedly renouncing. But, y’know, I was young and stupid. I filed the LP away and spun the tracks I liked, from time to time, but rarely gave it further thought … until this past Saturday.
Blown up to about seven feet tall (see pic at the top of this post), the details of Gruen’s portrait really popped, and I captured a few shots accordingly. Strangely enough, while it’s easy to pick out Jayne County because of her massive red hair, the Suicide guys are harder to spot, tucked discreetly in the back, in front of Max’s ground-floor storefront window. Paul Zone of the Fast also cuts a distinctive profile by the hydrant, with his long black locks and garish sunglasses (atop his head), not to mention his self-promoting t-shirt. But the rest of the gathered scenesters seem to blend together in a manner that’s hard to identify.
But as I scanned the picture, for the first time looked at the couple depicted sitting on the curb. Again, I’d never scrutinized this photo this closely, prior to this, but now maximized in sharper detail, the angles and contours of the face the gent on the left suddenly struck me.
Is that Jim Carroll?
Certainly, looks like him, right?
A certifiable regular at Max’s Kansas City, as well documented in both his writings and on his amazing spoken-word album, Praying Mantis, it would not at all be surprising or uncommon to expect Jim Carroll to be hanging out with the Max’s crew. While Carroll wouldn’t release his debut LP with the Jim Carroll Band, Catholic Boy until four years after the release of the Max’s Kansas City album, he would have already made a name for himself as a budding writer, poet and perennial cool cat.
Unable to find any credible who’s-who guide to Gruen’s photograph (neither on Gruen’s own website nor the Morrison Hotel Gallery site, who currently offer prints of the work), I did some inventive Googling, but came up empty. I then remembered a book I’d prized off the TIME Magazine discard pile back during my days at the news desk, that being Yvonne Sewalll-Ruskin's (Max’s proprietor Mickey’s widow) beefy coffee-table book, “High on Rebellion,” which documented the club with over 200 photos. Unable to put my hand to it, I suddenly remembered that I’d parted with the book in a bag bound for Goodwill about two months ago, and cussed in exasperation.
I even found another shot from the same session, but it doesn't really shed more light...
My copy of the old LP currently resides in a flight case in my mother’s all-too-flood-friendly basement out on Quogue, but I don’t remember a breakdown of who’s who on the cover included in the LP anyway. In 2017, meanwhile, a concern called Jungle Records re-released Max’s Kansas City as a deluxe, two CD/LP set, re-titling it Max’s Kansas City: 1976 & Beyond, now including recordings from the folks they should have had the first time around like Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Johnny Thunders and Sid Vicious. If they included more information about the cover photo on that release, however, I’m still shit out of luck, as it’s already out of print.
As a going concern, Max's Kansas City itself on 213 Park Avenue South closed for good in 1981. In more recent years, it was a deli called Bread & Butter (as I captured in 2013, with my kids standing in for the punks), and later as a concern called Fraiche Maxx, but that, too, has closed.
Jim Carroll tragically left us in 2009. Photographer Bob Gruen is still around. Next time I spot him on the street (which does happen), I'm going to ask him, unless, of course, YOU know?
Is that Jim Carroll sitting on the curb? ADDENDUM: FIND OUT THE ANSWER HERE.
Weigh in.
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