Flaming Pablum

Tensing Up with the Jim Carroll Band

Cruelly, even in proper punk rock circles, the Jim Carroll Band seem relegated to “one-hit-wonder” status. And while, yes, that one “hit” – the ecstatic “People Who Died” – is a stone-cold classic by every concievble standard (unless you talk to my brother-in-law), it’s true that the JCB never really meaningfully bothered “the charts” (it made it to No. 103 on Billboard’s “Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart … for whatever that’s worth) a second time. The public can be fickle.

Of course, music was really never more than a dalliance for Jim Carroll, whose primary passion was as a writer and a poet, having penned “The Basketball Diaries,” a gripping memoir about growing up in New York City amidst drugs and prostitution, when he was still in his teens. I believe he was lured into rock’n’roll via his friendship with folks like Patti Smith, Keith Richards and the Max’s Kansas City crew, but I’m ultimately just projecting. He always seemed more comfortable behind the pen than the mic stand.

Regardless, Carroll formed a band, signed with Atlantic Records and released three LPs of music, the first being Catholic Boy in 1980, which featured the classic “People Who Died” as well as equally incendiary (if lesser celebrated) songs like “Three Sisters,” “It’s Too Late” and the title track. As a taste of the era, Catholic Boy is required reading, so to speak.

The JCB’s other two records, meanwhile, seem to be rarely discussed. 1982’s Dry Dreams (and how’s that for a title?) didn’t produce any comparably notable numbers -- although I still quite dig “Lorraine.” Those expecting another grim novelty number (although “People Who Died” was so much more than that) didn’t get it.

When I Write Your Name followed in 1983, the world seemed to have moved on. Even the inclusion of a cover of “Sweet Jane” by the Velvet Underground failed to move the needle (although Lenny Kaye and Lou Reed made a nice cameos in the video for same). In the wake of that record, while Jim Caroll would continue to write and even record, his days fronting a band were over.

I never got to see the Jim Carroll Band perform, but I did go to a couple of readings by the great man before he sadly passed away in 2009. “People Who Died” continues to inspire, finding placment in countless films, and getting covered by everyone from my friend’s band The Cryer Brothers to the Hollywood Vampires (the less said about that, the better). Suffice to say, you’re best off sticking with the original.

As mentioned in some earlier, ancient post, I first heard the Jim Carroll Band back in grade school via the preternaturally hippper taste of my classmate Zach. I dutifully ran out and bought myself a copy of Catholic Boy, and the whole album swiftly becme a favorite. That said, it was years before I bothered to snap up Dry Dreams and I Write Your Name to get the whole picture.

More recently, however, a lost studio track of the band’s surfaced. As recounted here, the studio rendition of “Tension” was prized out of the closet of some dude named Earl McGrath, and it’s genuinely revelatory slice of the Jim Carroll Band at the peak of their powers. I believe the track was later re-arranged/re-written as the track “Voices” that appeared on the final LP, I Write Your Name, but I am uncertain of the chronology.

You can here the studio versioh of “Tension” here, but some time ago, a former founding member of the Jim Carroll Band put up this live clip from their final ever appearnace. This is what bassist Steve Linsley said about this…

I am a founding member & the bass player. This is The Jim Carroll Band, playing the last gig, ever. This is the original band, with founding members. Brian Linsley, Terrell Winn, Wayne Woods, Stevie Linsley, and Jim Carroll. This final gig followed the final tour of what was the second incarnation of the Jim Carroll Band with Stevie and Wayne still on bass and drums and Lenny Kaye and Paul Sanchez on Guitars. Anyone else claiming to be a Jim Carroll Band member is fucking looking to open a can of asswhoop!

Asswhoop!!!

Anyway, here’s the clip in question. Also check out Legs McNeil’s epic-length interview with Jim from his days interviewing for “Please Kill Me.”

"Great Bars of New York City"

While I do not know them personally, James & Karla Murray are renowned in the amorphous community of NYC-centric bloggers, vloggers, photographers, nostalgists and digital storytellers of which I am also a member. Over the 19 (jeezus!) years I’ve been “keeping” this silly blog, I’ve doubtlessly mentioned their name, evangelized their work and re-purposed their striking images countless times.

James & Karla's lovingly composed photographs of New York City corner shops, bistros, pizzerias, record stores, taverns and mom’n’pop concerns of all stripes have become a crucial part of the documentation of our ever-(d)evolving city, and their magisterial books like “Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York,” “New York Nights,” and “Broken Windows: Graffiti NYC” make any coffee table they are placed on that much goddamn cooler. I’ve frequently spied them out and about — Karla’s signature shock of punky, bleach-blonde hair is hard to miss. On the occasions in which I’ve accosted them (“hey, it’s James & Karla!”), they seem to be in a constant state of buoyant, infectious joy. They clearly live their entwined lives like one long, curious adventure, and are insatiable in their quest to see, go, do, experience, capture and create. I find them quite inspiring, in that way. 

Imagine my own joy, then, when I was contacted out of the proverbial blue by a publicist representing a new project for Prestel Publishing, that being the forthcoming book by James & Karla titled “Great Bars of New York City.” I relayed an enthusiastic “yes” to the publicist before I’d even finished reading the pitch.

Beyond my tireless affinity for waxing rhapsodic about the New York City of my growingly distant youth and/or my favorite willfully obnoxious, listener-hostile music, I am somewhat sheepishly notorious for my penchant for putting away many a pint of beer, and I quite relish doing so in any number of establishments — from the endearingly seedy to the stuffily stately — across the five boroughs (yes, dear readers, I have consumed beers on Staten Island). “Great Bars of New York City” speaks directly to that ….uhh…. unquenchable thirst with 239 pages of James & Karla’s brilliant photographs, augmented with text by food & culture scribe, Dan Q. Dao. The pictures are crisp, colorful and packed with nuanced detail, matched by Dao’s meticulous historical research and illustrative prose. It’s entirely splendid. If you harbor any of the same predilections as myself, you will not be able to put this book down, as I haven’t.

“Great Bars of New York City” is available on September 10th. Click here for more information. Also, don’t sleep on James & Karla’s Instagram page.

What's Your Hurry, Now? The End of Summer Survey for 2024

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.

Word That Best Describes of Summer 2024

Stealthy.

Exhuming The Stencil

I’m always amazed when someone writes in about something I posted eons ago. I mean, I am still routinely fielding comments about the whole Radiohead/Chuck Kolsterman thing (a story that will seemingly never go away), but when someone zeroes in on something a little more fleeting, I always get a tiny jolt of validation.

Case in point: In 2013, I posted a trio of entries speculating on the origins of a specific pair of stenciled depictions of an artist that were formerly spray-painted virtually all over SoHo. The original featured the head of an Asian man with spiky hair, framed by the legend, “There’s a New Kid Town.” In due course, meanwhile, someone started spray-painting a morbid parody of that, featuring a replication of the head, but with smoking gun next to it under the unfortunate declaration, “End the Joke!”

I did eventually track down photographic evidence of each, but never really got the whole backstory. Eleven years later, meanwhile, I just fielded a note from a reader named Uli, who is a – wait for it – “ stencil graffiti researcher.” In response to those two posts, Uli wrote:

"I got some news for you. Did you find the artist yet? I found a good photo where you can read the slogan next to the portrait: “There's a new kid in Town.”

He then linked to a frankly remarkable trove of street-art photographs, which you can see here, saying:

“Those photos were shot by late stencil Polish artist Tomaz Sikorski on his visits in NYC in the mid 1980s. Here is the one. I think you did not mention that yet. Also interesting: In a French book, “Pochoir a la Une,” Paris 1986 on page 99. There is an illustration of that very stencil. Another photo of the suicide parody of it is here, and a nearly untouched version of the suicide version is in David Robinson's book SoHo Walls from 1990 on page 72.”

So, there’s a little more information about those stencils. Below are just a couple of shots from Sikorski’s amazing street-art page, though. Check them out!

The shot captured above is almost undoubtedly the work of the late Fran Powers of Modern Clix. The figure with the oddly pointed head was his de facto insignia, as can seen on this post. 

I couldn't begin to tell you with the stoop above is (somewhere in the East Village, I'm assuming), but it's the same stairs that served as the location for this MTV News spot on the great Lydia Lunch. 

The above is, of course, the former exterior wall of The Gas Station, aka the Space 2B Art Yard, where GG Allin gave his final performance. 

Above the former entrance to 9 Second Avenue, otherwise known as The Church of All Nations and/or the Taoist Temple of the Ancestral Mother, which there was an excellent documentary about. See that here. 

 

 

Release The Brats

It wasn’t something I was going to address here, but since Meg and Jessica of Desperately Seeking the `80s are devoting two episodes to it, I thought I might as well weigh in, as well.

The topic, of course, is “Brats,” the new(ish) documentary by Andrew McCarthy that seemingly seeks to reconcile the revered actor/author/director’s roiling misgivings about being branded, during his `80s heyday, a member of the celebrated “Hollywood Brat Pack,” a term somewhat unimaginatively coined by New York Magazine journalist David Blum. As floridly expressed throughout the film, McCarthy feels that the tenacious tag ultimately undermined his credibility as an actor, painted him (and his amorphous cabal of famous peers) as undeserving upstarts and torpedoed the promise of a longer, more expansive career. In this documentary, he strives to find empathy among his contemporaries and … in a thinly veiled way … exact a bit of revenge on Blum.

As you may have gleaned from the tone of that description, I didn’t really think too much of “Brats.” Frankly, I found it insufferably self-indulgent and lazy. The burdensome umbrage that McCarthy has been practically fondling since :::gasp, shock, horror::: being tarred a “brat” has practically rendered him incapable of entertaining any other possible perspectives on the matter.

As he flailingly reaches out to peers like Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe and Demi Moore, he somewhat laboriously tries to goad them into validating his persecution complex, but none of them really take the bait. The whole segment with Emilio evokes an uncomfortable “let’s wrap this up” vibe. Similarly, Sheedy, Lowe and Moore politely indulge McCarthy, but each fellow Brat Packer seems to stop short of corroborating his take on the whole thing. I also think each other those actors, unlike McCarthy, is acutely aware of the uncomfortable dichotomy of lamenting perceived slights and vocational ruin while sitting at the poolside bar of a palatial home. Kind of a bad look, that.

But McCarthy presses on. Unable to land choice targets like Molly Ringwald and the elusive Judd Nelson (probably the Brat Pack alumnus most likely to resonate with McCarthy’s premise), the director goes after Blum, showing up at the scribe’s home to put him on the spot for birthing the albatross that’s hung from McCarthy’s neck for the last forty years. This whole scene seems a bit stiltedly performative – culminating with a not-especially-convincing hug – and comes across like an unsuccessful ambush. Suffice to say … spoiler alert, by the way… Blum doesn’t really apologize.

By the end of the piece, while McCarthy sort of dresses up proceedings to suggest that he’s resolved a few issues, one doesn’t really come away with any grand revelation. He fields a final phone call allegedly from Judd Nelson, but the viewer gets no insight into what is imparted. The credits roll.

So yeah, I kinda wanted my hour and 32 minutes back, after that.

Let’s clear up a few things, shall we? Firstly, McCarthy should thank his lucky goddamn stars to have been fortunate enough to bask in the serendipity of that particular moment of pop culture, and I’m sure tens of thousands of actors of the same generation would have killed to have accomplished as much. He’s a veritable household name that, comparatively speaking, has done pretty well for himself. Not to sound callous, but, fuckin’ get over it, Andrew!

Secondly, McCarthy seems to weather the term “brat” as a pejorative that cuts his very soul, diminishing his talent and mocking his youth, when – let’s face it – it was simply a lazy and not especially clever allusion to the Rat Pack ala Frank Sinatra, Joey Bishop, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. In fact, beyond the fact that “brat” rhymes with “rat,” the two respective “packs” don’t really have that much in common. It was a lucky play on words by Blum that simply stuck, not some sort of grand, Machiavellian scheme to vanquish anyone’s career. Again … do please get over it.

Two voices you don’t hear from in “Brats” include the aforementioned Molly Ringwald and, to my mind, a much more prominent member of the Brat Pack, that being Anthony Michael Hall. Both of these actors have appeared on podcasts -- specifically Marc Maron’s WTF podcast and Dana Carvey & David Spade's Fly on the Wall --  in recent weeks, and harbor significantly different feelings about the whole experience. Hear those respective episodes here and here.

As for “Brats”? I wouldn’t call it essential in the slightest.

Holiday in Hell's Kitchen

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…

Whoops,That's Not Jim

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.

 

A Max’s Kansas City Mystery

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.

Busy Week

So, for the last eight years or so — apart from during COVID — I’ve been lucky enough to attend the annual Songwriters Hall of Fame induction ceremonies at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Times Square.

Basically, the organization I work for volunteers its services to capture video of the inductees and presenters, so I go with a small crew and set-up in the “production corridor,” hoping to catch various luminaries as they’re coming offstage to try to get them to share a few words about the honor and the experience, and all that. It’s usually a very long night, but it’s quite fun and I’ve gotten to meet and talk with a pretty wide array of songwriters.

Last night was this year’s ceremony, and —as you may have read — among this year’s class of inductees came R.E.M. There were other names on the list, of course, like Donald Fagan of Steely Dan, SZA, Timbaland, Hillary Lyndsey, Dianne Warren and Dean Pitchford, but R.E.M.was the big fish I was looking to reel in.

We did pretty well, although Donald Fagan blew us off, as did SZA. But, pretty much everyone else came down, including the fellas in R.E.M., who truly couldn’t have been nicer. After asking my requisite questions, I broke from the script and mentioned how much their music had meant to me, over the years, and each of them broke into a wide smile and shook my hand. Bill Berry took it a step further and complemented my tie. So, yeah, that happened.

Meanwhile, on Monday, I was incredibly flattered by my fellow writer/music journalist/bug-eyed rock freak Joel Gausten for having me on his YouTube channel on Monday to discuss our respective professional trajectories, some mutual favorite bands whose names I probably don’t even have to invoke (you can probably guess) and other geeky fanboy minutia.

Personally, I have a very hard time watching/hearing myself speak, but if you can tolerate my seemingly constant fidgeting, strange hair and ponderous bloviation, there’s a chance you might enjoy….

Pete Missing Speaks

I've mentioned him a few times before, but Jesse Rifkin is an excellent young writer and a friend of mine whose work routinely blows me right off the fuckin' porch. His lovingly researched book, "This Must Be the Place: Music, Community And Vanished Spaces in New York City" is something I completely consider fucking required reading, right up there with "Please Kill Me" by Legs McNeil & Gillian McCain and "Our Band Could Be Your Life" by Michael Azerrad. 

In any case, Jesse just recently landed an interview with Peter Missing of Missing Foundation. I've you've been paying any attention at all to regular proceedings on this stupid blog, you'll know that Missing Foundation is something of an obsession of mine. So, while I am privately seething with envy (I've interviewed former members Chris Egan and RB Korbet, but never got to Missing, despite some near-misses), I have to say that that Jesse did an AMAZING job. Another piece of the puzzle is in place.

Even if you're unfamiliar with the music and the minutia of Missing Foundation (click here for some of that), it's a great read. 

Find Jesse's interview with Peter Missing here.