Flaming Pablum

“Summer of My Wasted Youth”

A video trailer for her book, here’s the video for “Girl to City,” the memoir of downtown chanteuse Amy Rigby. I first encountered Ms. Rigby via black and white photographs of her striking visage (some of the most iconic ones, like the portrait below, taken by Julia Gorton) that lead me to the conclusion that she was some sort of tempestuous No Wave vixen ala Lydia Lunch, Lizzy Mercier Descloux or Anya Philips. This wasn’t entirely the case, as Miss Rigby’s own music owed more to classic pop, folk and country, albeit practiced with the D.I.Y. aesthetic of the era. Suffice it to say, Amy Rigby was punk before the term became so rigidly codified.

In any case, this visual snippet of the great lady’s days on the downtown Manhattan scene – hanging in the East Village, playing at venues like Tier 3 and Folk City, etc. – leads me to believe that her book-- which came out only a couple of months back --  is something worth checking out.

Lost in “New Rock City”

Nostalgia, once again, is a weird thing. For every period or era or, in musical parlance, “scene” that one person laments, there are individuals from before and after that particular passage of time who harbor entirely different affinities and associations. Witness the ongoing dialogue in the comments in some of my posts about NYHC, as one example. Everyone has their own period, their own perceptions of same, obviously, and their own attachments.

I was certainly around for the boom of new New York City bands that manifested around the turn of the millennium and just afterwards, with acts like The Strokes, Interpol, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and genuinely liked a bunch of them (well, not so much The Rapture), but it was clearly no longer my class, so to speak. I was still carrying torches for earlier acts like Skeleton Key, Pussy Galore, Surgery, Barkmarket, Prong, Helmet and, yes indeed, Cop Shoot Cop. One alumnus of the latter -- Tod [A], of course --  formed Firewater, which almost bridged the chasm of those eras, going so far as sharing members with comparative upstarts like Gogol Bordello, but Firewater don’t often get a namecheck when discussing that next generation. I’m biased, of course, but I think that’s an oversight.

I’ve written about my issues with the whole “Meet Me In the Bathroom” generation of bands before, most windily here and also here. If you click on that first post, you’ll notice I appended a post-script to clarify that I didn’t mean to sound so grumpily prejudicial about Lizzie Goodman’s magisterial book on that era, but rather that I’d hoped for acknolwedgement of the continuum of great New York bands – which was actually kinda stupid, as that would have made poor Ms. Goodman’s already-quite-lengthy book much lengthier. What I need to do, simply, is acknowledge what I asserted in the first paragraph here – everyone is entitled to their own period, their own perceptions of same and their own attachements.

All this weighty preamble is to highlight the video below, which I stumbled upon on Vimeo. The clip was uploaded eight years ago, but seems to date back further than that (2004, maybe?). Dubbed "New Rock City,” this thirty-minute documentary attempts to capture the post-millennial/neo-post-punk (how’s that for a complicated descriptor?) generation by profiling bands like the afore-cited Gogol Bordello, FischerSpooner, Le Tigre, Blonde Redhead and some others, augmented by ruminations by rock journos like Sarah “Ultragrrl” Lewitinn and Joe Levy, two fellow (sorta) former SPIN alumni.

I think the thing that struck me about this film, however, is how the city and scene depicted therein already seem so long ago. That may have more to do with my own advancing age and perspective on things, but in the same way I look at books about New York's hardcore scene of the early-to-mid 80's and think “how is this even the same city?”, I get a comparable vibe from this. I am also reminded of “Goodnight Brooklyn” The Story of Death by Audio,” a compelling documentary that essentially told the story of an even more recent dyng scene that makes “New Rock City” look like friggin’ “The Decline of Western Civilization.”

Time passes. Things change. Scenes come and go and get replaced by new ones you won’t be privy to -- let alone endorse or understand -- because you basically get old and in the way.

I guess that’s just the way it is.

In any case, enjoy “New Rock City.”

Keef in the Streets

Down here in Greenwich Village or – as I’m frequently heard to describe it – the veritable crotch of NYU, there’s a certain ground-floor apartment in the much, much nicer building across the street from mine that has always sparked a bit of speculation. Easily spotted from the sidewalk outisde, one can see a robust selection of handsome electric guitars hung around the high-ceilinged peremeter of a stately sitting/media room. I remember spying it sometime shortly after moving onto the street circa 2002 and becoming immediately curious as to the resident. At the time, I knew of certain celebrities like Julian Casablancas from The Strokes and Chris Noth from “Sex & The City” (and other roles, of course) living in the neighboring environs, but this room looked to be owned by someone at a more elevated level of affluence. The doorman of the building in question has, unsurprisingly, never been forthcoming about it (and, yes, I did ask). Lots of people in the `hood have theories.

“Keith Richards lives there,” is the one I’ve heard the most, although I furrow my brow every time it’s suggested.

For a start, while it had long been said that the storied Rolling Stone guitarist -- captured above by Timothy White -- “kept” a home somewhere in downtown Manhattan, it never struck me that the street-fighting man would have taken an apartment with a street-facing window. That just didn’t add up. He’s a Rolling Stone, for cryin’ out loud. Surely, die-hard Stones-heads would’ve figured it out and set up shop outside his window. But somehow, that theory persisted.

I also pooh-poohed the notion as -- however fun it would be to have Keef as a neighbor -- in the roughly seventeen years I’ve lived on this street, I have never once spotted the Midnight Rambler arriving or departing from the address in question. I’ve never even spotted a vehicle worthy of transporting same parked nearby. The whiff of Richards’ singular brand of louche badassery is nowhere to be smelt on my strip between University Place and Broadway. Given my own preoccupations, I assure you – if Keith Richards was living that close by, I’d damn well know about it.

Now, this not to say Keith hasn’t been spotted around, even if the spotting hasn’t been done by yours truly. As lovingly documented in Christopher McKittrick’s new book “Can’t Give It Away on Seventh Avenue” – which I’m currently reading – the Rolling Stones have an inexorable relationship with New York City, with all the band members having lived here at one point or another. Keith was said to have had a an apartment in the East Village until about 1983, although I’m uncertain as to where. And beyond periodically appearing on small stages across town to jam with certain notables, Keith was said to be a regular customer at Myers of Keswick, the traditional British grocery store over on Hudson Street in the West Village.

The rumors about Keef living in the buildng next door to me were officially dispelled in 2016, meanwhile, when it was reported that the great man was selling his Manhattan residence – an iconic duplex penthouse at One Fifth Avenue – for a tidy $12.2 million. Apparently, the Richards family barely owned that apartment for two years, having bought it some time in 2014, but they didn’t find a buyer for the place until last year.

This all begs two questions…..

Where was Keith Richards’ pad in the East Village?

…and…

Since it’s not Keith, who DOES live in the pricey guitar apartment across my street?

Coming Up from "Somewhere Below..."

Just to close the loop on this, I finally got my copy of Karen O'Sullivan's "Somewhere Below 14th & East," and it is indeed astonishingly compelling.

In the grand tradition of Bri Hurley's "Making a Scene" and Drew Carolan's "Matinee," this collection of photos provides a striking glimpse into the NYHC scene of the early 80's, one that showcases the breadth of this particular comnunity, the pertinent topography and myriad characters from therein, both obscure and renowned. As I've laboriously observed on similar posts in the past, it's hard to reconcile that we're living in the same city that fostered this scene. 

The last time I did that, of course, I was called out by a regular reader for being a boujie ex-punk (or something to that effect) who'd divested, seemingly oblivious to the the next generations' iterations that picked up where this earlier scene left off. To that point, I'd suggest that I'm not negating the idea of a thriving New York hardcore community here in 2019, but rather pointing out that it doesn't operate as this one did, nor around the same environs. My point is less about the continuing existence of hardcore and more about how much this city has changed. 

Anyway, should you be interested, I recommend ordering a copy with the "bonus zine," which simply gives you more images to look at, including this cool shot of Jack Natz (then of The Undead, later of Virus and my beloved Cop Shoot Cop). 

Sade Behind The Bar?

Ironically, I prefaced the last post with a preamble asserting that I didn’t like getting things wrong, but….

Shortly after posting the last entry about Sade’s alleged stint bartending at Danceteria, my scrupulous pal Miles (you may remember him from this post and that post) weighed in…

Not wanting to knock your latest post but... I’m highly skeptical that Sade bartended at Danceteria. Nothing in any of the books / posts I’ve ever read mention her living in NYC pre-record deal. Certainly the first US show was there, but I just googled the shit out of it and only the Vice post you linked to (which seems to be written by a teenager whose just discovered the downtown scene), a further post from a year later that makes the briefest mention and your post come up. Wikipedia says nothing about her living in NY. Everything I’ve read before is that she was part of the London post-Blitz club scene like Le Bear Route, the Kilt, etc while she was at fashion school then which is where she joined Pride who morphed into Sade... was the Vice article where you originally heard she bartended in NY?

As it happens, the Vice piece was not the first source of this legend/rumor/myth for me, although I’m hard-pressed to define what was, at this late stage of proceedings. With my own Google search, I can point out that in a piece in BoweryBoysHistory from five years prior to the Vice piece, Sade’s Danceteria-barkeep tenure is also fleetingly mentioned.

While exhaustive, Wikipedia posts aren’t always that reliable. I did find further fodder for Miles’ argument, however, in this excerpt from Paul Simper’s book, “Pop Stars in My Pantry” which – while not ruling out a later possible stint as a bartender – does seem to suggest Sade never called NYC home for any sizable period.

By the same token, the Wikipedia page does mention her early relationship with English writer/broadcaster Robert Elms who, in the `80s, was a club DJ in New York. Conceivably (and without any evidence), one could maybe suggest that during one of those periods, Sade went with him and took a gig at Danceteria, but this is strictly wafer-thing projection.

Compounding all this, the stately Miss Adu is not especially versed to giving interviews, nor has she – as yet – written an exhaustive memoir.

So, … is it simply an urban myth?

Weigh in.

This, meanwhile, is my favorite track of hers.

Oasis in Manhattan

If I’m being honest, I was never especially blown away by Oasis. I mean, they were certainly quite capable of cranking out a series of perfectly respectable-albeit-derivative singles that were loaded with catchy hooks and reminiscent of various well-established rock motifs, but I couldn’t quite understand why they enjoyed such a robust amount of popularity when – to my mind – some of their more musically adventurous fellow countrymen in bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and several others were stalled on lower rungs of the ladder. I mean, despite what short-lived NYC indie band Thin Lizard Dawn suggested, I never believed Oasis sucked, but I just didn’t think there was anything especially exceptional about them. I also never really warmed to Liam Gallagher’s voice, a sort of whiney amalgamation of Lennon and Lydon. I also never understood his penchant for basically standing stock-still when performing.

But, y’know, what the Hell do I know? Oasis went onto become one of Britain’s biggest musical exports, for a while, until the wheels fell off and the Gallagher brother could no longer stand each other. I’ve frequently suggested that if their music was as entertaining as their endearingly contentious interviews, I’d have been way more into Oasis. At the very least, Liam and Noel were quite handy with their pithy quips.

I’m only invoking their name here for a couple of reasons. I was recently discussing them with some work colleagues, and I came across the shot above. Somewhat famously, Oasis’ New York City debut performance was at Wetlands Preserve down on Laight Street in TriBeCa, a storied venue most renowned for spawning the neo-hippy jam-band scene comprised of bands like The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blues Traveler, et al. To be fair, while that was indeed Wetlands’ whole shtick, most of the bands I went to go see there had nothing to do with that vibe. From ska to funk to hardcore punk, Wetlands’ booking policy was refreshingly open-ended with regards to genre, so Oasis playing there wasn’t all that out of left field. More to the point, one could argue that Oasis’ music was no less retro-philic than the club’s more celebrated acts who were continually invoking the spirit of Woodstock, et al.

Regardless, while it was a decent-sized, bi-level club, the actual performance space was fairly intimate. I seem to always remember it being oppressively loud, as the sound bouncing off the back room’s concrete walls (floridly painted with pastoral scenes of flower-children dancing in leafy glades) had nowhere to go. That said, it was always a fun space to see a band. I never had a bad time there.

In doing research for this post, though, I discovered that the band actually graced the Wetlands stage twice on their debut American tour – first in July of 1994, and a second time three months later in October. You can see their full performance from the October date here.

I’m including the photo above from the July gig not just because it seems like a typical shot of the band, finding Liam in his signature stance, but also because it’s so telling of its era. Not only does no one have their fucking phone out, but I just love the guy pictured in the background just under Liam (the bespectacled gent in the Failure t-shirt). Dutiful rock journalist that he must have been (and given my own involvement in that vocation, I believe I might know the dude in question – Jon Wiederhorn, is that you??), he’s staring intently at Liam and actually taking notes with a pen and pad. That’s some goddamn dedication, right there. Here's another take...

The July gig was actually part of an annual music industry convention called the New Music Seminar, a string of dates every summer devoted to music showcases in various venues around town and schmooze-opportunities and panel discussions at a hotel in Times Square. I attended a few New Music Seminars, but I think I sat 1994’s out. I didn’t go to this Oasis gig, in any case. My former colleague Neil Strauss did, though, and wrote this little bit about it for the New York Times.

Just to bring things up to date as a side note, in the ensuing 28 years since this event, Wetlands Preserve is long, long gone. It closed in 2001, following the death of its founder-owner Larry Bloch. The building that housed the club, 161 Hudson Street, was converted into a luxury condo (of course) in 2004. The ground-floor space formerly occupied by Wetlands became an expensive bedding emporium of some kind for a while. Last time I walked by it, that concern had closed and it was awaiting a new tenant.

Both Jon Wiederhorn (if that's indeed him above) and Neil Strauss went further with their careers. I would later work alongside Jon during my tenure at MTV News Online circa 2006, and he’d go on to pen several books, including an authoritative guide on heavy metal called “Louder Than Hell.” Neil Strauss, meanwhile, who I’d worked with in 1990 at The New York Review of Records, later went on to write – as cited above – for The New York Times and other prestigious outlets. After writing some memorable profile pieces for Rolling Stone (including one where I believe he got into bed with Jewel), Neil was drafted to orchestrate (and presumably ghost-write) the fabled Motley Crue oral history, “The Dirt.” From there, Neil’s career took an interesting turn and he became an accomplished pickup artist, ostensibly for the purposes of writing a book on same. That book, “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” took Neil to a whole new level, so to speak. The last time I saw him was at a Cocteau Twins concert at the (since demolished) Roseland Ballroom. He was wearing leather pants.

Lastly, I stumbled upon this ancient video of Oasis and swiftly determined that it was shot here in New York City, possibly during the same stay as the first Wetlands gig. Herein we see the brothers Gallagher and cohorts playing in the Central Park bandshell, just steps to the south of Bethesda Fountain. There are also several shots of the band glumly burying their drummer in a makeshift public garden of the sort one used to encounter around certain portions of the Upper West Side and Lower East side. Can anyone identify the spot?

Stupid Musical Opinions I Have Held

My great friend & fellow insufferable music geek Steve Holtje initiated this idea on Facebook last week, and it was sort of the logical progression from this post of last year, so here goes.

As I said in that post, while I no longer really believe in the concept of “guilty pleasures” (as an almost-52 year old, I think life is far too short to worry about what other people might think of my listening habits), there are still certain records and artists I’m quite surprised I devoted so many hours listening to. By the same token, as I think back, I cannot say I really feel any regret about digging certain music. I mean, with the benefit of hindsight, I can look back at specific records I purchased like Walkin’ the Razor’s Edge by the deeply stupid Canadian metal band Helix and/or maybe See You in Hell by the deeply stupid British metal band Grim Reaper and think I really ought to have known better, but hey … I was young, impressionable and deeply stupid myself, at the time.

So, while I don’t lament thinking, at one point or another, that certain music was worth my time (let alone my money), there were certainly moments wherein I harbored significantly misinformed opinions about particular artists. Here are some of those.

Stupid Musical Opinions I Have Held

1. Tom Waits' voice is unlistenable

For a long while, I found Tom Waits’ voice impenetrably cloying and affected. I couldn’t imagine how anyone could voluntarily subject their ears to his gruff, labored delivery, regardless of what he was wheezily crooning about.

Waits' brilliance, meanwhile, was forcibly imposed upon me by repeated airings of Swordfishtrombones and, more effectively, Frank’s Wild Years via my friend Rob D. From that latter record, I particularly warmed, somewhat ironically, to the track, "Cold, Gold Ground.”

But the song that really changed my tune on Waits was "Philippino Box Spring Hog” by way of my comrade, Tod Ashley. About a decade and a half ago, I used to work two overnight shifts a week at the TIME Magazine news desk in midtown. Tod, meanwhile, was a chronic insomniac routinely up past everyone’s bed time at his then-home down in TriBeca. In the small hours when newly broken news didn’t need attending to, I would instant-message songs back and forth with Tod. We would try to change each others’ opinions about certain sacred cows and unsung gems. One late evening, while I was unable to convince him of the brilliance of “Her Head’s Revolving” by paisley underground stalwarts, The Three O’Clock, his submission of “Philippino Box Spring Hog” from Tom’s Mule Variations album practically blew a new part in my hair. I was duly schooled, and it was all over, after that.

2. Steely Dan were just noodly jazzbos who made music for fern-bar-loitering divorcees

I don’t really know why I took such an immediate disliking to Steely Dan in my younger years, but I suppose they just struck me as so pretentious and sophisticated in a manner most of my favorite bands weren't. They were yawnsomely adult. Their album covers seemed arty and opaque (although, in retrospect, the sleeve for The Royal Scam does seem kinda metal). Their songs were about complex scenarios and filled with nuance, finesse and accomplished filigree. To my mind, Steely Dan just didn’t rock, so I made a series of exceptionally lazy assumptions about them.

Of course, Steely Dan were so much more than the soppy yacht rockers I myopically demeaned them as. While certainly jazzy with musical chops for miles, they were also arch, wry, sardonic, bitter as the punkest of the punks and very funny. They also wrote some perfectly flawless tunes along the way.

I didn’t have an epiphany with Steely Dan. I think I just wised up one day, and still feel stupid for ever selling them so short.

3. Patti Smith is only worthy of contempt

I kind of already covered this sore topic on this blog here way back when, but to summarize…

As emphatically stated here and then earnestly recanted here, my relationship to the music, legend and lore of Patti Smith has always been a troubled one. In much the same way I conjured several dim preconceptions about Steely Dan, I leaped early on with similarly myopic aplomb to the impression that Patti Smith was nothing but a pretentious opportunist whose music owed more to the hoary melodrama of Meat Loaf than to the distilled, cut-the-crap vitality of Punk Rock. I could not fathom equating her mannered, laborious incantations with the incendiary songs of the Ramones or the Dead Boys. I didn’t hear it. I didn’t see it. I didn’t get it. So I judged and dismissed accordingly.

As mentioned in those posts, I took my indifference about her music to a more vitriolic level when I penned a probably-too-zealous chapter in a friend’s “humorous” book about toppling sacred cows. From that period on, I went from a passive non-fan to an active detractor. That was unfortunate for anyone within listening proximity of my big, stupid mouth.

For me, the wake-up call came via my reluctant reading of Smith’s justly celebrated 2010 memoir, “Just Kids,” which recounted her early years in New York alongside her muse and partner, Robert Mapplethorpe. While Smith’s prose didn’t necessarily change my appreciation for her music, it did completely decimate several presumptions I’d been harboring about her backstory and how she conducted herself. Suffice to say, she was not quite the shrill, avaricious starfucker I might have made her out to be. I continue to feel like a dopey heel about that.

That said, while I own a couple of Patti Smith albums, I still don’t really listen to them very often.

Okay, those are mine — WHAT ARE YOURS?

The Summer 2019 Survey

Since, as mentioned, I'd suggest it's fair to say that Summer 2019 is officially over and done with, I thought I'd exhume this Summer Survey that I haven't done since 2016. Here goes...

Defining Moment of Summer 2019:
I would say that the defining moment, for me, would be --- after months of fretting about the prospect of our son, Oliver, departing for his first time away at sleepaway camp for four weeks -- arriving back up at the camp and seeing him bounding out of his cabin looking happy, healthy and filled with tales to tell about how much he enjoyed his time there, completely exceeding our expectations about the endeavor. The whole experience ending up being all that we'd hoped for him, and more. 

Best Purchase of Summer 2019:
Overlooking stuff I procured for my kids, I'd say the most rewarding purchase would be the pair of ridiculously indulgent YETI 10 Oz Rambler Wine Tumblers I bought to celebrate the wife & I's eighteenth wedding anniversary. Nothing says "marital bliss" like needlessly expensive outdoor lifestyle products. 

 

Best Book You Read of Summer 2019:
It was initially a toss up between Wayne Hussey's memoir, "Salad Daze" and Joe Doe & Tom DeSavia's continuation of their oral-history-styled documentation about the trajectory of L.A. punk, "More Fun in The World" (which I'm currently finishing), but if I'm being honest, it was re-discovering H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories" (which I discussed here) that really brought me the most joy.

Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2019:
I honestly cannot recall the last film I went to, as in sat down in a movie theater to watch. I saw plenty of decent movies in the past couple of months, but I did not have the experience of attending a movie in its intending setting. I mean, yeah, I guess I enjoyed "Avengers: Endgame," but I feel like that's the lamest of possible answers. 

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2019:
For Fathers Day, my son Oliver gave me a fetching red Forbidden Planet t-shirt that I was quite pleased with. Also, my friend Rob B. surprised me with a copy of the sprawling, live Wonder Stuff boxset, Upstaged, for no readily apparent reason other than that he'd heard me mention how curious I was about it. Damn nice of him. 

Biggest Loss of Summer 2019:
I spoke about it here already, but I was quite sad to see the final demise of Manitoba's on Avenue B. 

Song That Best Sums Up Summer 2019:
Honestly, while I'm inclined to cite the new single by IDLES, "Mercedes Marxist," which arrived back in June, I can't say it's the song that defined my summer. For whatever reason, my family found itself repeatedly playing the 1978 best-of by Paul McCartney & Wings, Wings Greatest with some inexplicable regularity, although no one else seems to enjoy "Live & Let Die" as much as I. Realistically, I think the song that is destined to always remind of this summer is one by a guy named Spencer Ludwig. As mentioned elsewhere, at my job, I am tasked with putting together a fiscal-year-end highlight video, scored by various pop hits of the day by my organization's affiliates. Spencer Ludwig's "Best Life" is factoring heavily into that video -- whether I like it or not -- and it has been an inescapable ear-worm. Here it is: 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2019:
After initiating a dialogue with an estranged best friend (which I spoke about here), he suggested reconvening with another since-inexplicably-distanced friend at a Murphy's Law gig on a boat. The evening in question was far and away the happiest I've been and the hardest I've laughed in a long, long time. 

Saddest Memory of Summer 2019:
This might sound pretty histrionic, but I found the failure of Robert Mueller's beleaguered testimony to congress to really move the dial in any meaningful capacity to be pretty damn tragic. To my mind, it was a blown opportunity to make a crucial course correction, and I kinda blame Mr. Mueller for that. You may beg to differ, but so be it.

Scariest Memory of Summer 2019:
In early July, I showed up for jury duty and narrowly escaped being selected for placement on a case they'd informed me would take "at least three months," which would have fallen squarely in my busiest period at work. Suffice to say, I vehemently protested, but was called in to talk to a roomful of lawyers to explain my situation anyway. I was probably a little needlessly belligerent about it all, but managed to convince them I would very much not be an asset to either side of the dispute. I had no problems serving at the time, but this was a commitment that would have severely messed up my life. 

Word That Best Describes Summer 2019:
Intangible.

 

The Arrival of "Somewhere Below 14th & East"

I first reported about it back in January of 2018, but after a long quiet spell, photographer Karen O'Sullivan's documentation of the early New York hardcore scene (much like this one I recently invoked) is finally coming to fruition. 

Slated for an October release, "Somewhere Below..." promises another gritty look at a scene and a subculture that, for all intents and purposes, is now virtually extinct on these New York City streets.

Find out more here. 

Get Yourselves Back to Your Own Garden

Fifty years ago yesterday was the final day of a certain “Aquarian Exposition” that allegedly featured three days of peace & music, which most folks commonly refer to as Woodstock. Beyond the original event already being irretrievably cemented in the firmament of pop culture, it spawned a couple of spin-off anniversary events, the last of which, in 1999, being marred by poor planning, wanton property damage and sexual assault. Perhaps in an attempt to extinguish the bad taste left in many mouths by that iteration, the festival co-founders endeavored to stage a fiftieth anniversary this past weekend but that, too, came plagued with shoddy planning and was nixed at the eleventh hour.

Personally speaking, I’ve never given much of a rat’s ass about Woodstock. Sure, I like the Who, Hendrix, CSN and several other of the bands that played the original richly rhapsodized event, but it was obviously not my generation’s thing. It was just this sacrosanct cultural happening we were all informed had changed the course of history and blah blah blah. Disinterested at first, I became an open detractor of the whole Woodstock shpiel by the time I got to college in the mid-80s. To my mind, there was so much great new music going on in real time in the mid-80’s -– of every conceivable stripe, not just the stuff I liked -– that I was pointedly put off by classmates my own age still banging on about Woodstock. To quote an applicable legend stamped on the gatefold of Alien Sex Fiend’s 1985 album, Maximum Security, “Fuck the Sixties, … Let’s Bring Back the Eighties!”

Don’t get your tie-dyes in a twist, my tender Deadhead friends … there’s a point to all this.

So, while I was posting deliberately provocative “Never Mind Woodstock” quips on Facebook last week, it stealthily occurred to me that practically every generation has its own watershed warhorse. While I may sneer at the revisionist purple prose that elevates the happenings at Yasgur’s Farm to some sort of cultural epoch, I still get weepily reverent about, say, the musical and cultural phenomena spawned by CBGB -– a touchstone no less laboriously bandied about than Woodstock, and -- for all intents and purposes -– probably just as cloyingly over-rhapsodized in the minds of today’s younger folks. The average teenager on the street is probably just as bored by the concept of the Ramones, Blondie and the Dead Boys (or, for that matter, Kraut, SWANS and Cop Shoot Cop) in 2019 as I was bored by Canned Heat, Janis Joplin, Richie Havens and Jefferson Airplane in 1985. Who am I to be pooh-poohing Woodstock when I’m still carrying a torch for the stuff that touched my life?

So, yeah, I’m sorry. Maybe we should all just get on with it. Not everything requires an anniversary event.

But while we’re on the subject…

There’s already been an unwieldy host of backwards-looking books, oral histories, magisterial memoirs, handsome coffee table tomes, minutia-laden box sets and photographic collections about the varying scenes of CBGB, from the early days of Richard Hell and Patti Smith through the No Wave era of James Chance and Lydia Lunch to the NYHC days of Agnostic Front and Murphy’s Law to the serrated noise-rock of Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore. I should know. I have way more of them than any sentient adult should own. But I just spotted one that came out relatively recently that slipped by me.

Published in November of 2016, “Rebels: Punks and Skinheads of New York’s East Village 1984 - 1987” by photographer Lilian Caruana is another glimpse into a scene and indeed a part of New York City’s past that is hard to fully reconcile in 2019. By and large, Caruana’s photographs show a softer, more human side of their subjects, not just the limb-flailing melees like the one she captured in the shot above.

Here’s how the photographer describes the book:

This book began when I moved to New York’s East Village in the early 1980s. In its dirty, rubble-strewn streets among the graffiti and the garbage, I found creative energy—poetry readings, graffiti art, and music flowing from the multitude of bars and performance spaces. Most interesting were the young people who hung around the legendary CBGB, an exotic and forbidding-looking “tribe,” sporting torn clothing, body metal and shaved heads or spiked hair. I began photographing them in the clubs and soon was invited into their “squats” in abandoned tenement buildings. Poverty, drugs and crime had fueled the decline of the area and these buildings slid into decay and were gutted or burned down. Here they lived as a collective, mattresses on floors, rigging electricity from adjacent buildings, taking showers with fire hydrants. As we talked, they expressed a profound alienation from mainstream society as well as a wish for freedom, purpose and integrity. They had a “do it yourself ” ethic — forming their own bands, writing their own songs, making their own records, creating their own magazines and their own style. I chose to photograph them in their daily lives, not just the clubs, so that the viewer can look beyond the forbidding social markers—skulls, swastikas, studs, chains and spiked hairdos — beyond the defiance and see their humanity and vulnerability.

At the risk of belaboring the very obvious, to walk around the East Village today, it’s getting harder to believe it’s the same place as captured in Caruana’s photographs.

To see some more of the Lilian Caruana’s photos, click here,  and to get your own copy of the book, click here.