Flaming Pablum

Back ... Again ... to Privates on East 85th

I’ve spoken here before about Privates, the long-lost cutting-edge live-music venue that formerly stood on the strenuously unlikely corner of East 85th Street and Lexington Avenue. Don’t go looking for it now, as the venue closed in June of 1981 and the whole building was torn down sometime after that. Today, a big yucky condo called The Ventana stands in its footprint, with a Starbucks occupying the space that would have been Privates, back in the day.

But, as mentioned in this post and that post, as Privates, the space played host a slew of at-the-time cutting edge bands like Joe “King” Carrasco & the Crowns, the Revillos, Cyndi Lauper’s Blue Angel, Richard Lloyd from Television, a late, Frampton-less iteration of Humble Pie, and even Flaming Pablum favorites like XTC, The Stranglers and Bauhaus. The whole concept of that last trio of punky bands playing on my childhood home turf of East 85th Street completely blows my mind.

Jessica over at Desperately Seeking the `80’s devoted her half of a podcast episode to an event at Privates wherein the club hosted a special screening of hallowed cinematic ska opus, “Dance Craze,” which doubtlessly prompted scads of skinny-tied Upper East Sides to partake of some skanking in the streets.

Of course, arguably the most famous act to have ever graced the presumably intimate stage of this club in Metropolitan Hill (note: contrary to my dubious reporting in previous missives, the southeast corner of East 85th Street and Lexington Avenue is not technically part of Yorkville, although it is mere footsteps from its westerly border) would have been Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, who recorded the arguably iconic video for “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” within Privates’ four walls.

I talked all about that, of course, on these two posts from 2016.

Apropos of nothing, however, I recently dialed up the video in question, only to discover that, circa 2022, someone had uploaded a new “Full HD (Remastered and Upscaled)” version which swapped out the original’s grittily grainy black-&-white patina in favor of sharpened, vibrant color and enhanced proceedings with disquieting dollops of AI.

The results restore the full experience of the original music video, complete with preamble and coda, revealing the full interior of the empty club and a tantalizing 180-degree vista of the surrounding neighborhood beyond Privates’ windows at the end. Having never set foot in the place (I would have been a sniveling 14-year-old upon its closure), the ability to see the former interior in such detail is something of a revelation.

It also got me thinking, who are all these kids in the crowd scenes? Were they members of a Joan Jett fan-club? Rockheads bussed in from some outer borough? Any representatives of the 84th Street Bombers? Are there any local NYC punk luminaries to be spotted hidden in the throng?

Weigh in if you know.

Needlessly Parsing "Dazed and Confused"

After watching the genuinely excellent Redd Kross documentary, “Born Innocent,” I caught the last half of Linklater’s “Dazed and Confused” on IFC, last night, which seems to be in regular rotation on that channel. I remember digging it when I first saw it back in … 1993? But I hadn’t really revisited it in a while.

While ostensibly an homage to other period-specific coming-of-age flicks like “American Graffiti” and “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” (although the latter was released in real time without a thought for its power as a piece of future `80s nostalgia), “Dazed…” can’t help but feel a bit forced, at points, in its presentation of `70s-era-signifiers (bell-bottoms, side-burns, center-parts, etc.), and never is this more the case than with the music.

The soundtrack to “Dazed and Confused,” as far as I can surmise, became something of a CD collection staple. I believe I even still own a copy of it, somewhere. But watching the film again last night, my pedantic streak (never far from the surface) kicked in, and I started wondering if it wasn’t just fancifully projected revisionism that the same kids who’d drive around cranking “Rock N’ Roll Hoochie Koo” by Rick Derringer, “Tush” by ZZ Top, “Low Rider” by War and “Slow Ride” by Foghat would have even known about “Cherry Bomb” by the Runaways, who by and large, didn’t get any recognition outside of their native Los Angeles until years later. I mean, correct — the first Runaways album was out, so the chronology checks out, but would Houston, TX kids have ever even heard it?

I should point out, of course, that in 1976 — when this film is set — I was 9 years old, attending a grade school on the Upper East Side and invariably not-at-all versed in what pot-smokin’ teens were listening to in the Lone Star state.

Which ushers in my question: What period-specific film or television series really gets it right, to your mind?

Back Through The Mill

Okay, this one's a bit odd, ... and I thought I'd already evangelized this new aspect of it (see below), but evidently not. Or, if I did, I just can't find it.

In any case, back in 2015 ... which is astonishingly a decade ago .... I wrote up a little reminiscence of a long-lost attraction in midtown called, or so I thought at the time, Burlington Mills. The trouble was, despite the vividness of my recollections about the exhibit, I couldn't seem to find any evidence of its existence, despite all my inventive Googling. Eventually, I did track down the correct appellation, and up came everything I needed (I had this same quandary when trying to trace back to the old and endearingly grotty Comic Arts Gallery on East 58th Street). It wasn't Burlington Mills, it was The Mill at Burlington House.

If you're curious, you can read all about it here. But, a short time after I posted that entry, I stumbled upon actual video evidence of the exhibit, which blew me right off the porch. For whatever reason, however, I apparently never got around to sharing it here, so I'm rectifying that now. 

I found it quite surprising to learn that the full ride took upwards of eight minutes. That seems like kind of a lot, but I'm sure my mother was happy to keep us occupied, if only for those feeling eight minutes. 

If you're a Manhattan kid of a certain age that wants to re-experience The Mill at Burlington House, I'm afraid the exhibit in question closed circa 1980. But now, thanks to the magic of archival video, you can turn back the clock...

Enjoy.

Godspeed, Crocus Behemoth

Pere Ubu was arguably the nerdiest nerd band to ever walk the earth. They made records so rife with oblique oddness as to make offerings by comparatively more celebrated weirdos like Devo and Talking Heads sound as daring as Supertramp. And like both Devo and Talking Heads, while Pere Ubu was certainly born “of” Punk, one would be hard-pressed to call them a Punk Band, or at least not in the more codified manner the term now implies. By the same token, you’d be equally hard-pressed to find a more Punk Rock opening line to a song than “Girls won’t touch me `cos I got a misdirection,” which ushered in their signature single, the unfortunately titled “Final Solution.”

The first several times I heard them – usually courtesy of fellow geeks – I found them difficult and shrill. I’m not sure when the penny finally dropped, but I finally managed to de-code Pere Ubu, and became a reverent acolyte, seeking out their further-flung recordings. Suffice to say, you couldn’t always find their stuff at your local Sam Goody.

I eventually tracked down copies of Ubu records like The Modern Dance, Terminal Tower and Dub Housing, each one sounding completely different from the album that preceded it. I remember putting a couple of Pere Ubu tracks – notably “30 Seconds over Tokyo” and “Sentimental Journey” -- on a mixtape for my friend Ed, and his girlfriend commenting, shortly afterwards, that “Alex only loves serial killer music.”

Pere Ubu never had a hit single. Their albums can’t be found on most jukeboxes. Their songs are not immediately suitable fare at your local karaoke bar. I only got to see them play once – in 1993 at Central Park’s Summerstage, of all places, opening for their fanboy upstarts in They Might Be Giants. They closed with the song, which compelled me to go buy one of their shirts, which I still have.

Their newly late lead singer Dave “Crocus Behemoth” Thomas was, by all accounts, a complicated character, but he was a strikingly unique artist the likes of which we invariably will not see again.

Go buy this Pere Ubu record today. You won’t find it on Spotify.

 

 

Clix on Wax

I had a nice surprise, today.

The daughter of some dear friends of ours just got back from spending a semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Back over Labor Day weekend, we’d all gotten together and Ella — the daughter in question — heard me laboriously bloviating about the whole Clics Modernos saga. It’s a long, convoluted story, but if you’ve not been following this blog for very long, I played a small role in determining the exact location of the cover of the landmark 1983 album by preeminent Argentine rock star, Charly Garcia — via an old photograph by a Swedish tourist of Cortandt Alley at Walker Street in TriBeCa. It’s actually way more complicated than that, but you can read more here, if you’re curious.

In any case, I posted that all that here on my silly blog, back before the days COVID, and intrepid Argentines Inaki Rojas and Mariano Cabrera went a bit berserk, suggesting it was like determining the precise location of Abbey Road.

In 2023, a plaque was put up on the corner to commemorate it, which was a very big deal indeed. It’s now a spot that thousands of fans flock to in order to pay homage. Don’t believe me? Click here and scroll down,

Anyway, prizing a vinyl copy of the record (let alone from its native Argentina) is no easy feat, but thanks to Ella, I now possess it.

Yay for Ella!

Christmas with Fishbone at The Ritz, 1987

Fresh in my head since doing this post, I strolled by the Ritz … or, more accurately … Webster Hall of East 11th Street, over the weekend and snapped the photograph above. I’m trying to think of the last time I was actually inside the building, and I think it must have been when I saw the Secret Machines and …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead there in … cripes… 2009. So, yeah, it’s been a minute, but it’s still near and dear to my heart.

In any case, some may remember a post I did back in 2017 wherein I recounted some of my favorite shows there, notably a pair of shows featuring the triple bill of The Toasters, Murphy’s Law and Fishbone in December of 1987. Here’s what I had to say about it in 2017…

My favorite anecdote about The Ritz, however, involves one of a pair of shows in December of 1987, which featured Fishbone, The Toasters and Murphy’s Law. My friend Rob D. and I attended both of these Christmas gigs (hot on the release of Fishbone’s holiday EP, It’s a Wonderful Life), and the room was jam-packed with an army of punks, skinheads, rudeboys, rockers, hardcore kids, college types and all points in between. It was, as they say, the event of the season.

On both nights, each band whipped the capacity crowd up into a complete frenzy, but on the first of the two evenings, I remember being amidst the pit during Murphy’s Law’s frenetic set. The heat coming off the crowd was intense, and the action was nonstop. I managed to weave my pipe-cleaner-like physique through the merry melee to the western side of the room, clinging to the bar as if it was the side of a deep pool. Sweaty and exhausted, I petitioned the bartender -- via a variety of complex hand-signals, given the stentorian din of Murphy’s Law at full throttle -– for a COKE! As if on cue, right as the barkeep was completing my order, lead singer Jimmy Gestapo (a moniker he has since tastefully renounced, truncating to simply “Jimmy G.”) heroically vaulted from the Ritz stage and onto the very bar to which I was leaning. Just as my cup of ice-laden Coca-Cola was put down in front of me, Jimmy started enthusiastically skanking down the bar, with limbs akimbo, flailing in time with the music. Just as I was reaching for my beverage, Jimmy brought his battle-weathered Doc Marten down on my cup with a splattering-STOMP. Fittingly or unwittingly, no soft drinks were going to be consumed on his watch.

Indeed, it was quite an occasion, and while it was over three decades ago, those memories are still quite vivid, for me.

I started sniffing around the internet, recently, looking for any comparable accounts of those shows. I do this periodically, and usually come up empty handed, but I struck oil today.

The first find was an auction site called VNTG Shop, who are selling an original shirt – XL no less – from those shows.

Cool, right? Well, as delightful it would be to own that, VNTG wants $375 for it, so … suffice to say, that’s not happening, for me. If you want to surprise me with a gift, someday, you now have all you need to know and act on.

The second thing I found, meanwhile, was this site, Fishbonelive.org, who hosted photos from the event!!! Here are just a couple...

Murphy's Law...

..and here's Fishbone...

I’m in there somewhere…no shots of the Toasters, sadly.

Tragically, as far as I'm aware, there is no video of either of the two show in question, but here's a little taste of what was on offer.

Here's Murphy's Law at the Ritz, at some indeterminate point. They're opening for someone here (notice the covered drum kit behind the drum kit?), but no idea of when and for whom..

This, meanwhile, is the Toasters circa 1987...

Lastly, this is the mighty Fishbone, as captured around the same era in Tokyo...

Just For Clix: Whorelords on the Corner

Here’s a curious one.

The shot above comes from the ever-excellent New York Hardcore Chronicles Facebook page. The ensemble depicted therein was a band called The Whorelords, who were fronted by a gentleman named Bobby Snotz. I spoke about there about eleven years ago. Here’s what Misfits Central tells us about them…

Bobby Snotz formed this band in 1978 with Tarik Schapli. Because Tarik hadn't been playing guitar for long, Barry (and later Bobby Steele) joined the band as second guitarist. The Whorelords performed live several times while Bobby Steele was in the band; he left when he was asked to join The Misfits. Along with The Whorelords came a group of Whorettes (Charlotte Harlotte, Diedre, Carry Hamilton, and Rachel Rage) who did background vocals. Some members of The Whorelords went on to form Hell Sent, who opened for The Misfits in September 1979. A Whorelords reunion show took place that weekend when Bobby Snotz showed up and replaced Hell Sent's singer Kate K-Mart to perform a set of Whorelords songs. After spending a few years in jail, Snotz reformed the band in 1982. At some point during this time, they recorded a demo tape (with Pete Marshall on guitar) that has never been released. Bobby Snotz and Tarik also recorded as The Fiends on the New York Thrash compilation. Snotz was beaten to death in 1992.

There are two other small things of note, her. First up, the gent on the far left is depicted wearing a Blitz Benefit t-shirt (which I wrote about back here). Secondly, and this is really what initially jumped out at me, the tag behind the band is none other than MODERN CLIX, Fran Powers’ old band, and the impetus behind Charly Garcia’s Clics Modernos and Charly Garcia Corner.

For more on Fran Powers, click here and here.

For more on Charly Garcia’s Clics Modernos and Charly Garcia Corner, click here and here. 

I shared this back in 2014, but here were the Whorelords in action:

Bad Brains on Jane

The originally appeared, early last year, on Howie Abrams’ excellent No Echo site, but sheerly for the sake of evangelizing it, I’m sharing it here, too.

For backstory, check out Howie’s account, but this is Bad Brains just prior to I Against I as captured in the original Rock Hotel, over on Jane Street (which I’ve spoken about several times here, most recently here).

It’s remarkable stuff. Enjoy.

Exhuming Carter Stevens' "Punk Rock"

Here’s something I was entirely unaware of until last night, for whatever that’s worth.

Searching on our maddening Apple TV box for something to watch, I believe I was on Amazon Prime when an option titled, rather simply, “Punk Rock,” appeared on the menu, immediately piquing my curiosity.

Shot in 1977 by a notorious director named Carter Stevens, this endeavor was apparently a slavishly low-budget, exploitative porn flick with an anemic plot about a hardscrabble detective that tries to break up a sex-trafficking ring in the seedy underbelly of late `70’s New York, with, presumably, lots of needless and grainy coitus along the way (I’m projecting – I didn’t actually end up watching it, as I didn’t think it would have been a grand idea to have my wife walk into our living room to find me watching unseemly vintage porn). I did, however, watch the trailer, which I’m sharing with you below. You’re very welcome.

Here's a bit of the promotional text, as prized from IMDB:

Filmed on location at New York's legendary underground clubs such as Max's Kansas City and featuring original music and appearances from bands THE STILLETTOS, THE SQUIRRELS, SPICY BITS and THE FAST! On the track of a teenage runaway, a trail of murder, sex, and drugs leads private eye Jimmy into the decadent New York City night world: from massage parlors to penthouses and after-hours nightclubs; from sex slavers and pimps to the dangerous members of a killer rock'n'roll band!

Sounds almost promising, right? Well, don’t get too excited. What little I’ve seen of the film looks pretty dire, but the Max’s Kansas City footage is interesting. In terms of the names cited, the only bands of those I recognize are The Fast (who I spoke about here and here) and The Stillettos, a band that later spun off bassist Fred Smith to Television and Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, who went onto form – wait for it – Blondie. The Squirrels and the Spicy Bits? One can only guess. Suffice to say, it makes the infamous "punk rock" episode of "Quincy M.E." seem like a reverent documentary, by comparison. 

There’s a great, comprehensive book, from a few years ago, that someone gave me called “Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film” that I meant to remove from one of my bookshelves and look this film up in, but time got away from me. In the interim, enjoy the trailer…featuring blink-and-you’ll-miss’em cameos of the original MacDougal Street iteration of Bleecker Bob’s (just off Eighth Street) and the St. Marks Place location of Trash & Vaudeville.

Incidentally, if you also possess a copy of “Destroy All Movies,” hold onto it – it’s out of print, and now can fetch between $180 to $300 on eBay.

Goodbye, Clem Burke

I know I already addressed it in this post, but I have to share a few more words about the passing of Clem Burke, and so hot on the heels of the deaths of folks like Al Barile of SSD, Dave Allen of Gang of Four/Shriekback, Brian James of The Damned, Rick Buckler of The Jam and David Johansen of The New York Dolls. We’re only a quarter into it, and 2025 has already been pretty catastrophic for all things Punk Rock.

I first heard Blondie, along with so many other crucial bits of music, via an older sibling. My sister Victoria brought home a copy of Parallel Lines at some point in 1978 – inarguably prompted by its inclusion of “Heart of Glass” -- and it was yet another epiphany. Our first tastes of proper Punk Rock had landed a summer earlier, courtesy of a big box of promo LPs our father had sent us from London. That pacakge included the first Clash album and Pure Mania by The Vibrators, but Parallel Lines seemed like planets away from that sort of sound.

Between the sleek, unabashed disco of “Heart of Glass” to the nervy, more conventionally punky numbers like “Hanging on the Telephone” and “One Way or Another” to the sparking pop of “Sunday Girl,” Parallel Lines was really a tour de force, and we both ate it right up. I was already immersed in fandom for the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Devo and Adam & The Antz, but, in later months, it would be Victoria who brought home further informative records like the first album by The B-52’s, Outlandos D’Amour by The Police, and New Clear Days by The Vapors, all gradually weaning me away from stodgy old standbys like KISS, Boston and Pink Floyd. An older sibling who shares music with you is the best type of sibling to have.

For any number of deeply stupid reasons, lots of folks wrote off Blondie as also-rans from the CBGB scene, largely thanks to their -- shock, horror -- major label success with "Heart of Glass," negating their chops as a bona fide rock band, let alone proper PUNKS. But spend even thirty seconds watching/hearing Clem Burke smack the shit out of those drums (while still looking untouchably cool), and that's all some moot, misguided bullshit. Blondie fucking rocked, and Clem Burke was their propulsive engine room. Respect is due!

Shot in 2018, here’s a great little mini doc about Clem, featuring loads of archival footage of Blondie and the New York City of his era. It’s very well done and worth your time.

Rest in peace, Clem.