Well, the day I've been so conflicted about is finally upon us. On Monday, the wife and I escort Oliver across the pond to Dublin where he'll be attending his first year of college.
We are so tremendously proud of him and know he's going to further flourish and thrive there, but as mentioned here, we are quietly dreading the looming reality of the empty nest. I'm quite sure we'll get through it, but I'm expecting maximum waterworks by this time next week when it's finally time to say goodbye to our boy and board our plane home.
I first heard the beguiling voice of Liz Fraser when Robert Plant used a recording of This Mortal Coil's "Song to the Siren" as his intro music on his tour stop at the Nassau Coliseum in the late spring of 1985, its lulling mellifluousness melding seamlessly with the opening notes of his opening number, "In the Mood." It left an impression.
I didn't hear it again until a few months later during my freshman year of college, on a mixtape my friend Charlie sent me from a semester in England. The only trouble was that Charlie misidentified the track as being by the Cocteau Twins, which prompted me to rush out and pick up a copy of The Pink Opaque by the Cocteaus ... which, while a truly delightful album, does not contain "Song to the Siren."
Some time after that, a widely neglected copy of This Mortal Coil's It'll End in Tears landed at WDUB, the college radio station from whence I unsolicitedly played music, in the dead of night, to a largely disinterested campus otherwise besotted with the Grateful Dead, Little Feat and the Allman Brothers. As such, I *may* have liberated that copy of It'll End in Tears - which does indeed contain "Song to the Siren" -- from the station's porous archive after a late shift, never to return it (guilty as charged, your honor).
Regardless, to my ears, it's one of the single greatest recordings ever, and it's Liz Fraser's birthday, so go celebrate ethereally.
But I *DID* see: Blur, Pulp, Elastica, Echobelly, James, Gene, The La’s, Happy Mondays, The Verve, The Charlatans, Inspiral Carpets, Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, The Sundays, Mansun, Kula Shaker, Lush, Ride, Chapterhouse, Curve, My Bloody Valentine, The House of Love, Levitation, Kitchens of Distinction, Pale Saints, The Wedding Present, Eat, The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself, Senseless Things, Mega City Four, Teenage Fanclub, Milltown Brothers, Therapy?, Silverfish, Ash, EMF, Jesus Jones, Birdland, Fatima Mansions, The Primitives, New Model Army, Gene Loves Jezebel, Flesh for Lulu, The Cult, The Mission, The Sisters of Mercy, Pigface, Cornershop, PJ Harvey, Tricky, Portishead, Massive Attack, Laika, The Lo-Fidelity All-Stars, The Futureheads, Joe Jackson, Gavin Friday, Julian Cope, Robyn Hitchcock, Billy Bragg, Adam Ant, The Buzzcocks, New Order, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Jesus & Mary Chain, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Big Audio Dynamite, The Soft Boys, The Chameleons, Billy Idol, Squeeze, The Psychedelic Furs, The Fixx, General Public, The Damned, Still Little Fingers, GBH, Theatre of Hate, The Stranglers, Depeche Mode, Duran Duran, The Cure, U2, Love & Rockets, Bauhaus, Cocteau Twins, The English Beat, The Specials, Gang of Four, Motorhead, Public Image Ltd. and fucking KILLING JOKE.
Regardless of what revisionist pop culture might otherwise assert after 30 years, there was way, way more music on offer in the `90s than just Grunge. Simply put, not everyone was a flannel-clad acolyte of all things Seattle, despite the Grunge scene’s readily identifiable style and signature sound. Some people consider the `90s to be the golden age of Hip-Hop, the glory days of BritPop or the rebirth of teen-oriented pop ala Brittney Spears and N’Sync. The `90s was also the era of Nu-Metal (may God forgive us), Drum’n’bass, neo-Pop-Punk ala Green Day, Shoegazery ala Lush and Ride, Grebo, Third-Wave Ska and the sort of lazy (and ultimately meaningless) catch-all term alt. rock. Suffice to say, there was a lot going on.
Personally speaking, while I was very much in thrall to Grunge bands like Soundgarden and Mudhoney (Nirvana were never quite my thing, fine little combo though they were), the first half of the `90s, for me, was largely defined by British indie bands like The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Pop Will Eat Itself and The Wedding Present, as well as noisey local ensembles like Pussy Galore, Prong and my beloved Cop Shoot Cop. But as those scenes fractured and mutated, there was one burgeoning subgenre that really grabbed me by both ears and went on to become, to my mind, the actual sound of the decade, and that was Trip-Hop.
And just like Grunge, Trip-Hop’s essence can usually be distilled down into the ouevres of a small handful of distinct names – those being Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead. As progenitors of this very particular sound, I’d suggest that this triumverate spawned an avalanche of similarly inclined (and, let’s be honest, frequently lesser) artists in their wake, but the same could very easily be said about Grunge.
Right at the top of that triumverate is Massive Attack, whose atmospheric mix of hip-hop beats, dubby effects, lushly cinematic soundscapes and whispered, unconventional rapping effortlessly birthed Trip-Hop with the release of their seismic first LP, Blue Lines. I mean, if I ever had to point to a single recording that sums up all things Trip-Hop, I’d go right to the source with the deliciously menacing “Safe From Harm.”
But while Blue Lines may have indeed set the template (also serving as the springboard for Tricky, nee Tricky Kid, who contributed to several tracks on both that LP and its follow up, Protection, before launching his solo career), the record that genuinely and literally stopped me in my tracks was a non-single cut by Portishead called “Wandering Star.”
A trio of studio producer Geoff Barrow (who’d acted as a tape-op assistant during the recording of Blue Lines), guitarist Adrian Utley and enigmatic vocalist Beth Gibbons, Porthishead – named after a fittingly grim industrial port city in southwest England – indeed mined a similar vein as Massive Attack, but took proceedings in an incalculably deeper direction.
While it seems easy to quantify the ingredients of Portishead – hip-hop beats paired with a frigid flood of minor keys (samples, treated keyboards), spy-movie guitars and Beth Gibbons’ tortured torch songs – the effect of actually hearing that incongruous combination for the first time was bracing and indelible – the veritable “What the fuck is THIS? moment. Between the brittle beats, the ponderously dark tones and Beth’s hushed, haunted and harrowed delivery (her fragile voice is really the wounded heart and shattered soul of this band), Portishead perfected a sound on their debut album Dummy -- released 30 years ago today -- that was entirely their own.
Many have tried to replicate it, but all have failed to duplicate it.
Yes, I know – technically, the summer has another whole month left to it (the official end of summer is September 22, I am told), but most folks sort of chalk up Memorial Day Weekend as the last gasp. Personally speaking, as noted in the previous post, now that my daughter has left and we’re leaving in about ten days to drop Oliver off for his first year of college, Summer 2024 certainly feels over and done with. As such, I guess it’s time to dust this off. Here we go…
Defining Moment of Summer 2024
This is going to sound super boring, but I can’t really say that there was one. I’d suggest it was either my son’s graduation from high school, signaling the next big step for him or possibly meeting my daughter’s new(ish) boyfriend from London (he turned out to be a nice kid). That’s about it, really.
Best Purchase of Summer 2024
Time for another super boring answer, but I bought a Mag Charger for my iPhone at ye olde Apple Store, and it’s been a complete delight. On a slightly less practical level, I bought myself a new coffee mug I’m quite fond of.
Best Meal of Summer 2024
On the evening of July 13, the same day that someone took a shot at Trump, the wife and I were out at my mom’s place on Long Island and repaired to nearby Baby Moon Pizza in Westhampton for a late-night meal (where Marky Ramone is a regular). We sat at the bar – under a widescreen television endlessly repeating the news of the day – and ate some truly excellent pizza … while politely refraining from any audible commentary about the big story.
Best Concert of Summer 2024
I don’t know if mid-May counts as the summer (I’m pretty sure it doesn’t), but the last show I saw was the mighty Part Chimp at Bowery Electric. They put on an endearingly loud and slovenly performance, and I was very pleased to run into various similarly inclined friends of mine also in attendance.
Best Book You Read During Summer 2024
I didn’t plow through as many books, this summer, as I normally do, but I very much enjoyed Robyn Hitchcock’s memoir, “1967: How I Got There & Why I Never Left,” and I’m currently three-quarters of the way through Griffin Dunne’s “The Friday Afternoon Club.” I also re-read Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain’s magisterial “Please Kill Me” over the course of a weekend, … just because.
Best Movie of Summer 2023
Not a big movie summer, for me, but if I had to pick one, I’d suggest that I quite enjoyed finally seeing “Have You Got It Yet?,” the documentary about Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, and his slow descent into oblivion.
Best Gift You Received of Summer 2024
For Father’s Day, my wife put a recent New Yorker cover in a frame for me that features an iconic neighborhood fixture.
Biggest Loss of Summer 2024
The passing of musical iconoclasts like James Chance, Pat Collier and Steve Albini knocked the wind out of my sails, especially Albini. I was crestfallen to learn of the incredibly myopic dissolution of the MTV News archives, and I was depressed and disappointed (but not surprised) to learn just recently that St. Vitus in Brooklyn is shuttered for good.
Song That Sums Up the Summer of Summer 2024
I don’t have a grand explanation for either of these, but it’s either “Adrenaline” by the excellently named French trio, We Hate You Please Die, or possibly “Fear is a Man’s Best Friend,” by John Cale. I mostly slept on Cale’s solo career after he was ousted from the Velvet Underground, and lemme tell ya – that was a big mistake. Cale provided the lion’s share of the sneery abrasion and overall weirdness to the Velvets, and they were absolutely never the same without him. He went onto produce fucking crucial records by The Stooges, The Modern Lovers, Nico and Patti Smith, among many others. I’ve only started exploring his sprawling solo catalog, and there is some real gold therein. A friend of mine posted the clip below on Facebook, earlier this summer and it blew me away. Flanked by storied Womble/erstwhile Sex Pistol producer/guitarist Chris Spedding, Cale – dressed like a mid-`70s tennis pro – delivers an emphatic rendition of the title track to his 1974 album that starts off reasonably and slowly becomes droolingly unhinged. Wait for it.
Happiest Memory of Summer 2024
Beyond just spending loads of time with my excellent little family (it’s becoming rarer for us all to be together for very long), I got to meet and chat with R.E.M. at the Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremony back in June. That was fun. I was also super pleased to appear in Catherine Araimo’s award-winning “B Sides” documentary.
Saddest Memory of Summer 2024
It hasn’t happened just yet, but I’m expecting to be quite verklempt when we have to say goodbye to Oliver in two weeks.
Scariest Moment of Summer 2024
For a while — not that we’re out of the woods just yet — it was seeming like a fucking given that Trump would be our 47th President. It remains to be seen, but it’s no longer in cement, I’d suggest.
Hey there, all, and apologies for the late-summer slowdown. Not only is there the usual amount of work-based shenanigans going on (always a factor – frenzied is the new normal), but we’re also readying for the departure of both of our children as their respective school terms beckon.
My incomparably wonderful daughter Charlotte closes out her time in New York City, today, bound for points across the globe for a few days with her friends before returning to Scotland for her – good grief — Junior year. I have suggested that the fact that Charlotte is so happy at her school takes the palpable sting out of her being so very far away from home, but when her little brother follows suit and begins his freshman year at a school in Ireland in just two weeks’ time (and the reality of the dread empty nest sets in), I may be nigh on inconsolable.
Just a warning -- it might be a very melancholy autumn.
And now, a very silly companion piece to the last post.
It’s been a really long time since I thought of this, but since exhuming “Suburbia” in that last post, I was reminded about a tiny detail that really used to bug the Hell out of me.
Not too long into the film, the T.R. gang attends a show by T.S.O.L., and the viewer is treated to two songs from the Long Beach band, namely “Wash Away” from 1983’s Beneath the Shadows and an otherwise unreleased song called “Darker My Love.”
Here’s their big cameo...
Now, for a start, one could make the very credible argument that T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty) was a band that liked to deliberately flaunt the narrowly encroaching parameters of hardcore punk. Unlike many of their peers, at the time, the band’s music zig-zagged between relatively straightforward, guitar-based punk to histrionic goth rock, especially with the provocative addition of synthesizers. This didn’t necessarily go over well with a lot of their original audience.
As a result, you could assume that their evolving music might be attracting a different sort of crowd. That's all well and good, but it doesn’t really explain the stage invader at exactly 01:06. While vocalist Jack Grisham – resplendent in his black leather jacket and ruffled tuxedo shirt – croons away, stalking the stage like a Death Rock hearthrob, a young man bearing something of a resemblance to not-especially-punky Anthony Michael Hall, assumes the stage for a little disjointed skanking before leaping off into the pit. Here he is now….
It should be noted that, then as now, many – if not most -- of the people who go to hardcore shows don’t necessarily “dress up” for the occasion. Not everyone’s going to look like an extra from “The Road Warrior.” As I mentioned, this kid looks like your average teenager (although I woudn’t suggest wearing sunglasses while stage-diving). But there is one particular sartorial flourish that has literally bothered me for decades.
Take a look at his t-shirt.
For those that might not recognize it, that’s the cover of Captured, the 1981 album by those combat-booted, mohican roughnecks in …. Journey, the biggest single from same being the lilting, soft-rock ode to San Francisco that is “Lights.”
Can you imagine the sheer BALLS to wear a fucking JOURNEY t-shirt to a hardcore show in 1983?
Somebody buy that kid a beer!!!
Here's a frankly disquieting AI-generated video for "Darker My Love," referencing the original "Suburbia" footage...
I think the first time I ever saw Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” -- the 1983 “punksploitaion” epic about a gaggle of runaway hardcore kids living in a squat in the forbidding tract-housing district off of Southern California’s Interstate 605 -- was at the 8th Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village with my friend Spike (forever immortalized here), very possibly as a midnight double-feature with Alex Cox’s “Repo Man,” although I might be fudging that timeline. In any case, Spheeris’ rough-hewn and stiffly acted study of teen angst, familial dysfunction and youthful rebellion immediately left an impression on me, not least for its depictions of the Southern California punk scene and volatile performance footage of bands like D.I., T.S.O.L. and The Vandals. I believe I picked up the soundtrack to “Suburbia” the very next day.
While half of the record was taken up with composer Alex Gibson’s score of spartan, post-punky fragments and moody soundscapes, the other side was all of the live music featured in the film, namely “Richard Hung Himself” by D.I., “Wash Away” and “Darker My Love” by T.S.O.L. and a fittingly anarchic take on “The Legend of Pat Brown” by The Vandals. While all of these tracks immediately went into heavy home-stereo rotation and on many a mixtape, my hands-down favorite of the bunch was “Legend of Pat Brown,” which prompted me to seek out The Vandals’ debut album, Peace Through Vandalism. Here’s the live version from the movie:
It should go without saying that, in 1983, there was no internet, so no immediate access to any and all information. As such, I searched out and absorbed all the disparate ephemera about these bands that I could find. I picked up a VHS copy of “Suburbia” when it became available, replete with incongruous cover art that suggested more of an art-house movie like “Liquid Sky” than the comparatively gritty Spheeris opus.
Beyond finding that copy of Peace Through Vandalism, the only info I had to go on, about the Vandals, apart from what I’d hear in likely record shops and the bits and pieces I tracked down in zines like Flipside and MaximumRocknRoll, was threadbare at best. I remember studying the back cover of the “Suburbia” soundtrack (see below) and zeroing in on the photo of the band, standing in front of what looked like a prehistoric diorama of the same variety one might find here in New York at the American Museum of Natural History.
Unwittingly, we did sort of stumble upon a comparable site. Appropos of nothing, Rob decided that we should go check out the musuem at the La Brea Tar Pits, which is something of a revered local curiosity and geological anomaly, in the Los Angeles area. I quite enjoyed the lifelike models, out front, of the robustly tusked, prehistoric pacyderms incapacitated in the bubbling tar. When we walked inside, however, I was immediately struck by the notion that it must the origin of that photograph of the Vandals from the back cover on the “Suburbia” soundtrack.
But after circumnavigating the interior the museum, I couldn’t seem to pinpoint the mural in question. Rob immortalized my feverish quest with the photograph below. That’s me circa 1995, oblivious to the wooly mamoth about to trample me.
In later years, I learned that the Vandals photo in question was taken by Edward Colver, a crucial figures resonsible for iconic images of the SoCal hardcore scene. The photograph was indeed taken inside the La Brea Tar Pits museum. Maybe this particular exhibit was off limits that day,… or maybe I just walked right by it. Either way, here it is….along with Colver’s original.
Shortly after recording their follow-up to Peace Through Vandalism, the cheekily titled When In Rome, Do as The Vandals, lead singer Stevo Jensen left the band, and I sort of lost interest in them. Stevo sadly passed away in 2004 of a prescription medication overdose.
The rest of the “Suburbia” cast – a.k.a. T.R., or ‘The Rejected’ – didn’t really go on to big things, apart from “Razzle” (played by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and “Jack Diddley” (Chris Pederson), who later appeard in “Platoon” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.” Wade Walston, the guy who played “Joe Schmo” ended up playing bass for the U.S. Bombs. Various iterations of D.I., T.S.O.L. and The Vandals all exist today. For a while the T.S.O.L. guys were acrimoniously estranged, leading to two separate versions of the band making the rounds. The Jack Grisham-led version continues to this day.
Invoke Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” today, and many might confuse it with the Richard Linklater film of the same name from 1994. Spheeris, who’d initially found renown via her preeminent L.A. punk documentary “Decline of Western Civilization,” went on to bigger and more successful fare like the “Wayne’s World” films, along with two more installments of the ”Decline” series, among other things. While frequently cited alongside her name, “Suburbia” isn’t widely considered her crowning achievement.
Be that as it may, the film does still have its champions. Beyond idiots like myself, other people have been simillarly fixated with its minutia. As evidence of same, check out the exploits of the gentleman below…
There are a few, ridiculously trivial “Holy Grail” items out there that I’d still donate an organ to track down. Foremost among them is the poster above, one of only a limited run, posted around downtown Manhattan in the summer of 1984, advertising two neighborhood gigs by The Sisters of Mercy. It's lovely, isn't it?
Sadly, while I’d just recently become a fan of the Sisters, by 1984, I was unable to attend this show, as I believe I was with a bunch of teenaged strangers on a bicycle trip, zig-zagging across the state of Massachusetts with the American Youth Hostel group, that summer, and invariably doing a whole lot of complaining, as was my wont, at the time.
Not only were these gigs notable as early appearances by the Sisters (they’d played New York prior to these gigs, notably at Danceteria), the second of these NYC shows was significant as it was an incongruous opening slot for ill-matched headliners, Black Flag, also a favorite of mine, at the time. So, yeah, I didn’t get to go to that.
But as with quite a few gigs I’ve alluded to before, my comrade Greg Fasolino (recently invoked in my eulogy to Steve Albini) did, and – as was his wont – took pains to record the show, god bless him. As this week marks the – good fucking lord -- FORTIETH -- anniversary of this show, Greg posted the below on Facebook.
40 years ago today: The Sisters of Mercy and (yes) Black Flag double bill at NYC’s Ritz, after a nice daytime record shopping trip to Slipped Disc. It was only the second time I’d been to The Ritz, and the first and only time I saw the Sisters live (and as you can see from the pics, I was front and center) An absolutely riveting performance. The smoke machine was stupendous. As I’ve written about in the past, it was also the weirdest bill in my concert-going history. They played with Black Flag as the headliner! So what you had here was an audience of half proto-goths and half hardcore punks. The punks were visibly and audibly hostile to the Sisters from the beginning of the show; on my tape of the show, you can hear Andrew Eldritch walk out and tell them to “settle down.” As for Flag, I worshipped their early records but by this time they’d gotten plodding and metallic and I wasn’t as into it as I’d hoped, though Henry was clearly a force of nature. August 9, 1984.
Nice, right? I’m taking the liberty of sharing a couple of Greg’s shots from the proceedings…
Here is Greg’s recording of the Sisters’ set…and you can indeed hear Andrew admonish the punks in the room…
So, yeah, even though it was by no means a normal show, given my adoration for both outfits (I’d go on to see both bands perform – separately, of course), it seems like a nexus point I should have been present for.
In any case, much like that elusive Cop Shoot Cop flyer I continue to scour the globe for, I’d happily pay handsomely for the poster pictured up top, fleetingly available on Etsy, some years back, for a suitably lofty amount of money. I am not holding my breath.
As a testament to his resourceful creativity, his own affinity for the Sisters of Mercy and consideration for his dear ol’ dad, my son Oliver mocked up a replica of the poster on his computer, which was damn swell of him.
Today, the Sisters of Mercy are still a going concern, albeit in their umpteenth line-up, finding vocalist/mother superior Andrew Eldridge as the only original member. They're slated to slither back into town next month to play Radio City Music Hall.
Ostensibly, Black Flag also still exists, although only as a sporadically touring vehicle for founding guitarist Greg Ginn and a rotating cast of largely anonymous henchmen. Henry Rollins left the ranks of Black Flag in 1986. I was actually privileged to witness one of that iteration of the band's final performances at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, OH, but it was honestly not that memorable a show. Henry went onto pursue a wide range of other projects, not least the Rollins Band. He has since given up performing music entirely, but still tenaciously tours as a spoken-word performer. He's also a far more approachable, thoughtful and considerate figure than he ever was back in the `80s.
Irving Plaza, despite a brief, confusing stint as the Filmore East at Irving Plaza, is still in full operation here in 2024. The Ritz technically moved uptown to West 54th Street at the tail end of 1989 for a short few years before closing at some point in the middle of the `90s. The original space that had been The Ritz morphed back into Webster Hall and became more of a dance club. Webster Hall closed for a spell, but is currently back in full swing.
To my mind, part of the brilliance of the Beastie Boys wasn’t so much that they were super talented or preternaturally innovative (although, they kinda were), but rather that they just went ahead and did stuff only if they happened to find it amusing, whether the rest of the world was in on the joke or not. Their oeuvre seems exclusively predicated on making each other laugh – I always loved that.
I've spoken about it before, I believe, but the recording below was done for the twentieth anniversary of the release of Paul's Boutique and used as the special bonus commentary, but it’s basically just the three of them sitting in a studio, listening to the record, and unspooling ridiculous anecdotes, again primarily for the purpose of making each other laugh.
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