Just a quick one. Now that the holidays are upon us, I thought I'd evangelize some pertinent links, should you be on the hunt for Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/whatever presents for the little n'erdowells in your own family.
Just a quick plug. I was tremendously blown away, yesterday, to receive my copy of filmmaker/archivist/musician Drew Stone's excellent new book, “The New York Hardcore Chronicles Vol. 1 (1989 - 1989): A Flyer Oral History.” I've invoked Drew several times here before (notably here, here, here and here, among others) but he gamely asked me, some time back, to pen a piece for this project, and I am truly honored to see my contribution so prominently placed as the forward to the book. While probably a niche concern to most, this book is a genuine labor of love and a crucial document for any fan of New York City's rich and vibrant history of underground music and culture. I was thrilled to be a small part of it.
As recently invoked in this post, I am reviving this sprawling entry, which I originally started … and then summarily abandoned again … back in June….
This is a somewhat irritating post, as I’d already written about a third of it, only to have my MacBook Air experience some sort of inexplicable purge and lose it all. Not that I can’t piece it back together, but I’d been quite pleased with what I’d written, and now I have to start from scratch again. C’est la guerre.
Suffice to say, while on the surface this seems like just another post about yet another vanished spot, it’s really more about my associations with the place than the place itself. I guess all my posts take that approach. Hopefully, that’ll ring true.
In any case, I should preface this all by talking about my friend Shawn. Shawn was a kid I’d known since pre-kindergarten (or, as it was called at the time, “Nursery School”). My mother would be very quick to point out, at this stage, that Shawn was the grandson of a very prominent author whose last name carries an extraordinary legacy, but honestly speaking, when I was friends with him, that never entered into it. I wouldn’t go onto read any of that author’s works until much later in life and, while impressive, they had absolutely no bearing on my friendship with Shawn. We were just two, similarly inclined little boys.
Shawn lived nearby me in the Carnegie Hill section of Upper East Side and, even then, was a profound aficionado of the deeper dive. Where we both harbored interests in nearly identical subject matter, Shawn would cultivate rich understandings in said subjects’ minutia. Never was this more the case than with comic books. We both bought them in maddening bulk, but Shawn’s investment went very deep. I remember going over to his house after school, one day, and noting that he meticulously stored his comics in crisp, thin plastic sheaths with stiff white boards behind each to preserve and protect each issue. Suffice to say, this was in stark contrast to the messy piles of dog-eared comics that lived under my bed. I immediately felt ashamed of this and quickly started to emulate the care with which Shawn looked after his collection. In doing so, I also developed a rich appreciation for the artwork, the narratives and the mythology of the titles I collected. In no time at all, I was a rapturous comic geek, just like Shawn.
During the course of that indoctrination, Shawn and I — still both in our grade school years — turned our fandom for comics into an excuse to explore our native New York City. Whereas prior to this I’d simply been blowing my allowance on comic books at a local newspaper joint on Madison Avenue called Epstein’s (long, long gone), I was now accompanying Shawn on treks to further-flung concerns like Supersnipe on Second Avenue and 84th Street, a tiny corner shop that catered to the more discerning comic book fan. That was alright, for a while, until Shawn learned of another venture a little further downtown. As I’d go onto remember it for the next several decades, that place was called the Comic Art Gallery.
That’s where we need to pause in the preamble.
I’ve alluded to the Comic Art Gallery on this blog more than a few times. For a start, it was located on the relatively nondescript strip of East 58th Street between Lexington Avenue and the magisterial sprawl of Park Avenue. As it happened, it was located directly across the street from the office of my family’s dentist, Dr. Herman J. Bossboom (now presumably long dead). By this point, I would have been in about seventh grade and only about twelve years old. While my mom was not entirely keen on me wandering around parts of town that were thirty-plus blocks away from our neighborhood, she trusted me enough to be able to navigate the mass transit system (usually via bus, at this stage) to get to and from Dr. Bossboom’s office, and was actively relieved that I could get myself there and back on my own. I was already sporting a retainer by this point (which I was sorely derelict in regularly wearing), so I was frequently going to East 58th Street, ….which means I was also frequently going to the Comic Art Gallery.
Had my mom ever seen the place, however, I doubt she’d have been very enthused. Through a nondescript front door and tucked onto the second floor of a frankly seedy looking building, the Comic Art Gallery was up two flights of dark, seriously dodgy, graffiti-slathered stairs that looked like a great place to be jumped, mugged, stabbed and/or abducted. Upon entering the space — a somewhat spartan couple of rooms outfitted with boxes and boxes of comics and framed prints by noted comic illustrators — Shawn and I would immediately start rifling through the boxes, looking for our favorite titles.
Strenuously low on frills and amenities, the space didn’t exactly exude an air of permanence. In the winter months, I seem to remember the staff — a gaggle of beardy, ashen-faced gents usually looking strung-out and embittered — all wearing down vests to keep warm.
…
It was at this point where the original post stopped. Like I said, I don’t recall why I left it there, as there are other things that need to be said and show, so let’s try and do that now, shall we?
…
I cannot say how long the Comic Art Gallery lasted, as I knew it, on East 58th Street, but it seemed like a fairly lengthy amount of time. Then again, all time spent as a youngster seems lengthy. At the very least, I certainly remember the place still being open beyond November of 1979. I only know that, as I would have been deeply ensconced in my fixation with Pink Floyd The Wall (still only an album, at that point, not a film), and I seem to remember the place selling some ephemera from same (tour program, maybe?) I remember it being out of my price range, in any event.
At some point, however, the endeavor shut up shop. I cannot remember the last time I went, but Shawn and his family moved out of New York City around the same time and decamped to the wide-open spaces of Bozeman, Montana, of all places. I can’t remember if I stopped going to the Comic Art Gallery because Shawn was no longer around or because the place shut, but regardless, that was the end of it. I kept going to Disc-O-Mat around one corner and Fiorucci around the other, and even kept going to Dr. Bossboom’s office well into my college years, but comics were no longer an item to be had on that street.
From there, specifics get fuzzy, but I believe some or at least one of the dudes from that iteration of the gallery later opened a sprawling new comic shop on Sullivan Street, just down the ways a little from my beloved Second Coming Records. That operation was a much more expansive, bright, airy and presumably lucrative affair that lasted at least into the late `90s, but — again — I’m not quite sure of the specific affiliation to the East 58th Street spot.
The frustrating thing about all this was, given my pronounced penchant for nostalgic rumination on the pivotal landmarks of my distant youth, for the longest time, I could never find any semblance of any indication at all that, once again, a venture called the Comic Art Gallery ever existed on East 58th Street. I mean, sure — everybody remembers Supersnipe or the original Forbidden Planet — but I found zero evidence to support that this place I’d spent so much time traveling back and forth with Shawn to in the late `70s ever actually being there.
… until this past summer.
I don’t remember what I was actively searching for, at the time, but I stumbled upon a video clip with a gent named Mark Rindner, who was disclosed to be the founder and owner of the … FUCKING WAIT FOR IT…NEW YORK COMIC ARTSGALLERY!
For years and years, my failure to append an “s” to the word “art” made searching for details about the, ahem, New York Comic Arts Gallery moot.
In any case, you can find that video below, but ready thyself. Shot in January of this year, it's yet another laborious interminable zoom-chat interview. Suffice to say, if you're not super-invested in the subject matter, it might be a bit of a chore. And poor, self-effacing Mr. Rindner doesn't exactly discuss the era of the New York Comic Arts Gallery with a pronounced amount of glee, despite the significance the place had on impressionable young snotnoses like myself and Shawn, at the time.
For the sake of context, here's what the former site of the New York Comic Arts Gallery looks like today. Exciting, right? `Twas not alway thus. And for the full, authoritative story about the back history of the New York Comic Arts Gallery, I defer to the video below.
While many may know her from stints in television shows like “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Ray Donovan,” “Big Sky,” “Law & Order” and several others, actress Brooke Smith is invariably *BEST* known for her memorable portrayal of star-crossed Catherine Martin, the hapless senator’s daughter who is repeatedly posited to put the lotion in the basket lest she get the hose again in Jonathan Demme’s 1991 classic, “The Silence of the Lambs.” For better or worse, it was a breakout role that she will probably never entirely shake.
But beyond her acting, there’s a side to Brooke Smith many may not know. Now in her early 50’s, Brooke grew up in the suburbs of New York City, but became deeply ensconced in the nascent New York Hardcore scene of the early 1980s, hanging out with bands like Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, the Cro-Mags and Cause For Alarm. I wrote about her back in 2011, when her photos of the Lower East Side punk community came to light, and they were and remain a real revlation. As an added bonus, Brooke was also, for a time, the roommate of the late singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley (it was Brooke who first introduced him to the music of Bad Brains, whose “I Against I” he’d later cover). Back when the Earth was young, I posted an MP3 of that recording to a music discussion board in the wake of Buckley’s passing and bizarrely got in a really heated email exchange with the late singer’s mother, but that’s another story.
In any case, Brooke was recently a guest on Turned Out a Punk, the podcast of Fucked Up lead singer Damian Abraham I’ve mentionedbefore. Brooke is quick with some great anecdotes about the CBGB matinee scene and so much more. Plus, she’s got a book coming out about the whole thing. If you’re a fan of of this stuff as I am, it’s well worth your time. Check it out here.
Ahoy from the unstable eye of Tropical Storm Henri (formerly Hurricane Henri) out here in Quogue, on the south shore of what Public Enemy used to call “Strong Island.” For the past several days, we’ve been bracing for the arrival of this weather event, but now that it’s finally here, it’s sort of mercifully anticlimactic, … or thus far, I should say. We haven’t gotten any heavy winds, yet, but the torrential downpours have been pretty steady since very early this morning. We’ll see what the rest of the day brings.
In the interim, being that my family is basically packing up and heading back to the city for good, later this week, I’m inclined to suggest that Summer 2021 … a heady cocktail of hope, expectation, cynicism and disappointment, is basically over. As such, I’m exhuming the annual summer survey, … like it matters. Here we go...
Defining Moment of Summer 2021:
While there were plenty of news events from the past couple of months that could act as pivotal moments to sum up the season — from our nationwide failure to contain the advance of the Delta Variant to the inevitably botched withdrawal from Afghanistan — I’m going to scale this question down to a personal level. For us, we spent much of June, July and August traipsing around the Eastern Seaboard, from Upstate New York to Vermont to Massachusetts to Connecticut to Maine and back again, depositing and fetching one child from summer camp and touring prospective college campuses with the other. On one particular evening in the sleepy town of Westport, New York on the shores of Lake Champlain, I both broke a tooth eating shrimp cocktail (no small feat) and, on the creeky front porch of a dilapidated inn we were inexplicably staying at, heard a roughshod husband-&-wife acoustic folk duo launch unexpectedly into a melody-free rendition of “Naked Girl Falling Down the Stairs” by The Cramps. I’d say that bizarre evening pretty much encapsulated Summer 2021, for me.
Best Purchase of Summer 2021:
I actually don’t recall buying that much of anything, this past summer, but I did snag a truly crucial beer-can-chicken stand from True Value in Westhampton that did a magisterial job of keeping our poultry dutifully erect during the indirect grilling portion of the preparation. I was quite pleased with that.
Best Book You Read of Summer 2021:
I really lucked out, this year, as with only one minor exception (a memoir I neglected to finish by a certain noted photographer that I’m sure I’ll go back to), everything I read was pretty compelling. I started off with “Fallopian Rhapsody: The Story of the Lunachicks” by Jeanne Fury, then dove right into the stately “Substance: Inside New Order” by the mighty Peter Hook and then into the suitably grisly “Chaos: Charles Manson, The CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties” by Tom O’Neill. All were entirely excellent. Right now, I’m almost a third into “The History of Bones,” the long-awaited memoir by musician/actor/painter/perennial cool cat (and sometimes Flaming Pablum reader and commenter) John Lurie, and it’s totally engaging, thus far.
Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2021:
I have yet to re-enter any movie theaters, but I did see a clutch of new films — mostly documentaries — over the past couple of months. I, of course, watched “Roadrunner,” the doc about Anthony Bourdain. While quite compelling, it was inevitably crazy depressing. I realize there was a big stink about some A.I.-enhancement of Bourdain’s voice, but I was more put off by the editorial slant in the final third of the film regarding the man’s fraught relationship with Asia Argento. I would recommend it, but that aspect kind of put me off, a bit, as it not-so-subtly sought to assign a convenient villain to story far too complex for such a tidy conclusion, … in my opinion.
I neglected to watch “Val,” the documentary about notedly eccentric actor Val Kilmer as, upon watching the trailer, it, too, seemed irretrievably depressing. The Music Box doc on “Woodstock `99” was also both wildly engaging and wholly dispiriting, so much so that I had to cleanse myself with “We Are Twisted Fucking Sister,” a great film from 2014 about … well, take a guess … that was way better than it had any right to be.
But probably the best thing I saw all summer was earlier this week, when my friend Rob C and I were invited to a private screening of “The War is Never Over,” Beth B’s long-in-the-works documentary about the inimitable Lydia Lunch. Shown in the incongruously plush penthouse apartment of a cinema-benefactor I shall not name, it was a somewhat striking dichotomy to watch Lydia’s unflinchingly visceral story play out in front of this select audience of cloyingly young invitees mostly comprised of aspiring-film types who had zero idea who Lydia Lunch is. The film, of course, pulls few punches, so it was fun catching a few attendees visibly recoiling at certain points. If you’re a fan of the great lady, you need to see it. Lydia herself actually showed up at the end for a Q&A. I got to ask a few questions of her, which was fun. In typical form, she minced no words and got worked up a few times in her own signature manner. I’d have loved to get a picture with her, but I didn’t want to hassle her like a fawning fanboy. My friend Rob, meanwhile, came face to face with her at one point in the kitchen after the film, and somehow managed to get both a hug and a polite kiss from her. Cheeky bastard.
Best Gift You Received of Summer 2021:
Somewhere in Maine, my wife found me a pair of socks with depictions of ducks and the legend “FUCK OFF” all over them. Priceless.
Biggest Loss of Summer 2021:
I was genuinely pretty sad to learn of the passing of ZZ Top bassist Dusty Hill. I don’t care if you’re a punk or a metalhead or a hip-hopper or a rudeboy or a Deadhead or whatever — if you can’t appreciate the singular majesty of ZZ Top, you’re a fucking dolt.
Song That Best Sums Up Summer 2021:
As mentioned back on this post, I listened to a whole slew of different stuff over the course of the summer. I don’t know that I can cite a single tune, however, that ties it all up for me. For whatever reason, here at the cottage, my wife had a habit of playing a whole bunch of Neil Young whenever we were routinely over-imbibing on the back deck. She likes the mellower stuff like “Harvest Moon” and “After the Gold Rush,” whereas I much prefer the angrier fare like “Southern Man” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” the latter usually finding her scrambling for the remote.
Happiest Memory of Summer 2021:
While this summer certainly had its share of discouraging moments, I will say that it was, by and large, a happy season. We quite enjoyed our car trips around the wilds of New England. I had a great catch-up with my old friend Rob D. (not the same Rob as mentioned above) at a great outdoor bar in New London, CT on our way to collect Oliver from camp, which found me laughing out loud more than I’ve done in a long damn time.
Saddest Memory of Summer 2021:
Ah, why dwell on it?
Scariest Memory of Summer 2021:
I don’t know that I felt any genuine fear over this summer, but the encroaching dread brought on by embarrassingly large swathes of the American populace continuing to stupidly ignore the recommendations of the medical community gives me concern for what the next few months might bring.
Longtime readers might remember a series of weepyentries I posted here about being recruited to compose the text for a lavish coffee-table book about Cop Shoot Cop (above, as captured by one Geoffrey Nicholson), as unlikely as that sounds. The project was conceived as an incentive to prospective Kickstarter donors to help finance a film called “Underground, Inc.,” an in-depth deep-dive into the alternative rock boom of the early-to-mid 1990s. Being that C$C were sizable contributors to the film, it made perfect sense. I, of course, leapt at the opportunity, got to work at once, and we were off and running.
Regrettably, that Kickstarter campaign failed to meet its intended goal, and suddenly all the financial lattice-work, if you will, that was supporting the book project snapped apart like brittle strands of dry pasta. Despite having already conducted several interviews with many of the key players and amassed all sorts of pertinent ephemera, this ancillary endeavor ground to a halt.
The film, however, is another story.
The brainchild of one ambitiously determined director named Shaun Katz, “Underground, Inc.” finally achieved completion and was released to widespread acclaim and finally get a Stateside wide-release fairly recently. I have long intended to pen a follow-up post regarding the film, but life, parenting, work and a little thingy-thing called COVID-19 kinda got in the way.
Suffice to say, at this late stage of the proceedings, if, like me, you harbor even the slightest affinity for the more viscerally adventurous music of the 1990’s — that unlikely convergence of disparate sub-genres loosely aggregated under the umbrella of “alternative” and/or “alt.rock” — you need to see this film.
And for those few of you who are similarly obsessed with my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, you really need to see it, as it features lots of great footage of the boys recounting some not-entirely salubrious anecdotes of their incongruous ascent into major-labeldom and their slimy decline into acrimonious entropy.
I am currently halfway through Tom O’Neill’s illuminating “CHAOS: Charles Manson, The C.I.A. & The Secret History of The Sixties,” which essentially asserts — through O’Neill’s exhaustive reporting — that everything Vince Bugliosi suggested in “Helter Skelter” was a big bowl of hickory-smoked crapola. If you’re a true crime buff, it’s a really great read. I’d slavishly enjoyed “Helter Skelter” when I first read it 15 or 16 years ago, which sent me on something of a Manson kick, for a while. Two more books on the subject later (neither of any great note -- one expounding on Bugliosi’s premise and the other looking at the murders’ tenuous ties to the Beatles’ White Album), I believe my wife was starting to get concerned. I moved onto other stuff after that, but I’ve always been fascinated by the grisly story and its accompanying fallout on the American pscyche, so leapt at this book when I spotted it.
It would have been something of a tremendous leap towards the trivial, given the otherwise scrupulous nature of the book, but I was hoping that O’Neill might have reached out to Trent Reznor, who famously (and, allegedly, unwittingly) rented the star-crossed Cielo Drive address in the early 90’s, but it doesn’t get a mention. Trent might have initially not known about the house’s infamous history, but he certainly capitalized on it when he got wind of it, rechristening his home-studio set-up there as “Le Pig” (a nod to the word painted on the front door in Sharon Tate’s blood). Trent later conceded that the bad karma and iffy appropriation of the Manson mythos was too much for him after Sharon Tate’s sister accused of him exploiting her sibling’s murder, but that didn’t stop him from taking that front door as a souvenir when he left (which later served as the entrance to his Nothing Records studio in New Orleans). Trent may sheepishly downplay the whole chapter, these days, but I dusted off this clip recently, and they’re really not making any secret of it (not least by also featuring a cameo from a pre-notoriety Marilyn Manson … something ELSE Trent sheepishly downplays, these days).
Shortly after Trent moved out (again, with that front door), the Cielo Drive house was razed.
Just a quick word to evangelize the new oral history about New York’s own Lunachicks, “Fallopian Rhapsody,” penned with the aid of the mighty Jeanne Fury (a fellow rabid ILX’r from back in the day). Even if you’re not a fan of the band (and, if so,…. fuck is the matter wit’ you?), it’s yet another amazing taste of an era of New York City that — WAIT FOR IT — does not exist anymore. It's excellent -- I devoured it whole over the course of a weekend.
The concept of worth is an elusive thing. There are things out there in the world, somewhere, that probably mean next to nothing to the individuals who own them, but that I would consider positively invaluable. I’ve mentioned it several times here before, but there’s a certain elusive Cop Shoot Cop gig flyer circa 1990 at CBGB that I would gladly pay a handsome sum for, but I’ve just never been able to put my hand to it. Very recently, I came across a photograph of a lost bit of graffiti that I’ve been preoccupied with finding for literally over three decades, but when I asked the photographer’s representative how much a print of same might cost, the answer was in the thousands (translation: ain’t gonna happen). Why would someone pay handsomely for an old gig flyer? Why would someone pay for a photograph of old graffiti? Why ask why? Why do you like and pursue the things you do?
Then, of course, there are things that I happen to possess and don’t give a great deal of thought to that have gone on to become arguably valuable. I have a couple of books about No Wave and paperback copy of “The Stranglers Song by Song” (as mentioned here) that have gone out of print and strangely since become evidently rarified and summarily pricey artifacts. I have stacks of compact discs that might have been worth more than I’d originally paid for them, but the bottom has basically fallen out of that particular market.
Then there are things that may have once been entirely incidental that have ascended in perceived value to such an extent that they’re now shown in fuckin’ museums and prestigious collections. That will never cease to amaze me.
Another example of that revealed itself to me today when I stumbled upon the website of Gallery98. As I was perusing through their collection of party notices, gig flyers and nightclub invites, I noticed they featured a few of the distinctive cards for GREENDOORNYC. For the uninitiated, GREENDOORNYC was this series of regular parties, back in the mid-to-late 90s, in the East Village and Lower East Side thrown by Jesse Malin of D Generation. Originally, they were held at a variety of different locations until finally coalescing at the space on St. Marks Place that Malin would later commandeer as Coney Island High. These events were well-attended and raucous gatherings of East Village rock’n’roll types and went on for hours on end. I was lucky enough to go on three or four occasions, and always had a damn good time.
As such, I have a number of these silly cards, usually depicting period-specific antiheroes like Stiv Bator, Johnny Thunders, KISS, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Debbie Harry and the like. They formerly adorned my fridge on East 12th street or were pinned up to any number of bulletin boards at any of the several different jobs I’ve had since that era as mementos of my misspent semi-youth. They now live in a selection of battered envelopes of ephemera hastily amassed when I was leaving any one of those afore-cited jobs. They’re no longer pinned up and displayed, but I still have them, buried in the closet.
As a lark, I reached out to Gallery98 to inquire as to how much these cheaply printed and thinly produced scraps of cardboard are currently selling for.
Apparently, they’re currently selling for $100…. EACH!
Once I gleaned that the original site of the elusive Plasmatics mural from my distant memory was the tellingly-titled Graffiti Hall of Fame on 106th & Park Avenue (this discovery coming courtesy of an uncredited photo on “Graffiti Database”), I started to wonder if I could find any other — and/or preferably better — photographs of the art in question, but tireless Google searches were giving me nothing further on the subject. I mean, Hell, I was lucky to find that first photo to begin with.
Branching my search out further, however, I noticed that there is a very robust subculture of reverent graffiti-centric publishing. As such, when I spotted a fetching, paperback coffee-table book on Amazon that was exclusively dedicated to the very spot where the original mural was, I figured there was a sporting chance it would include another shot of it. And even if it didn’t, I was intrigued enough by the story of the place and its accompanying images that it would be cool to own. Tweny-something bucks later, it was mine. It arrived today.
Much to my delight, fourteen pages into the book comes a beautiful wide shot of the wall in question that was obviously snapped at least a year or two earlier, as the artwork is still vibrantly colorful and unsullied by other tags. This photo was taken by maverick shutterbug Martha Cooper. I remain mystified as to why these artists chose to immortalize the Plasmatics in this manner, but, again, perhaps they were just simply fans.
As a lark, I have reached out to Ms. Cooper to see if she’s consider selling me a print of the photo. We’ll see.
Incidentally, you can check out more of Cooper's amazing work on her Instagram page. Tell'em Flaming Pablum sent ya.
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