I can't say what prompted its rather brusque, indelicate removal, but --- following up on a post from last December -- it seems the demolition of street-art mosaicist Space Invader's homage to the Ramones on Thompson Street between Broome & Grand has come to its stark fruition -- which, frankly, broke my heart a little bit.
I mourn.
As a tireless proponent of the physical manifestation of music , I have devoted what some might consider an inordinate amount of bandwidth on this here silly blog to eulogizing great, iconic and even –- in some instances -– frankly mediocre record and CD shops that formerly speckled the map of Manhattan. Today, if you’re trying to put your hand to a specific compact disc or slab of vinyl here in the city, suffice to say your options are pointedly fewer and shittier (especially if you refuse to subject yourself to the bowel-worrying indignity of shopping at shoddy purveyors of putrid offal like Urban Outfitters). Yes, you could, of course, order whatever it is online, but -– really -– where’s the fun in that?
In any case, following in the tradition of this post, herewith three quick additions to the roster.
I’ve already devoted a few posts to Freebeing Records (notably here, here, here and here), but I spotted this shot and thought I’d invoke it again. It was posted on Facebook and dated as having been taken in 1983, but that’s clearly incorrect, being that the sleeves for the Damned’s Phantasmagoria, The Mekons’ Fear and Whiskey and OMD’s Crush -- among others – are featured in the shop window. All three of those albums came out in 1985. Look a little closer, and there appears to be a Live Skull flyer on far right. In any case, it’s a cool shot. No idea who the dude is. Today, the space that was Freebeing on this stretch of Second Avenue is now a Mexican food joint called Tanqueria Diana
As mentioned elsewhere, before I discovered the fabled network of independent record shops way downtown, I used to routinely avail myself to certain midtown spots like Disc-O-Mat on Lexington Avenue, Crazy Eddie on East 57th and a few spots further down like the one I detailed here and this other one right near the Brooks Brothers flagship store on Madison Avenue (long, long gone). Additionally, there was Record Explosion on Fifth Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets. I have vivid memories of routinely hitting this outlet in the mid-80’s. For some reason lost in the mists of time, I immediately associate this place with the Paul Young’s 1983 cover of “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home).” I want to say it’s because I remember watching one of the shop’s clerks emphatically “air-bass” along with that blue-eyed-soul ditty’s signature fretless bass line (played by the great Pino Palledino). In any case, Record Explosion is unsurprisingly very long gone, but see it below on the right hand side of the picture. Today, I believe it’s footwear place called NYC Sole.
The last one isn’t a photo but rather a business card. I spoke about Musical Maze quite a while back, notably the one on Third Avenue that was initially – according to Dean Wareham of Luna/Galaxie 500 – the shop where Lux Interior and Bryan Gregory of the Cramps allegedly worked (before the latter decamped to King Karol a few blocks to the north). That Musical Maze location later became a short-lived Crazy Eddie outlet staffed by Brian “Damage” Keats of Genocide and –- fleetingly -– The Misfits who I befriended in the mid-80s.
This card isn’t for that location, but rather for one that was formerly on Third Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets. True to the legacy above, this iteration of Musical Maze counted Peter Holsapple of the dB’s as an employee (as documented here). Not sure when it closed -– and I have no recollection of it, honestly -– but in more recent years, it was a venture called The Pizza Bar, and is now, if I’m not mistaken, vacant.
If you're excited by this type of ephemera, do please check out...
Don't Bother Lookin' For'Em: Great Since-Closed NYC Record Shops
Where the Music Used to Live: Slight Return
As laboriously extolled in this post from 2016, I’ve always been a huge fan of Cortlandt Alley, that dark, thin canyon stemming south into TriBeCa off Canal Street. I love its slightly forbidding aura, its back history as the narrow strand of pavement that once led to the Mudd Club, a storied venue I was never old enough to attend. I love its periodic bursts of street art, its weathered exteriors and rough-hewn, industrial trappings leftover from bygone eras. In every season, Cortlandt Alley takes on a new vibe. I never find it boring or unpleasant to walk down, even if I’m hopscotching over random dollops of (human?) excrement, dead rats and pigeons flattened the night before by delivery trucks, or evading the suspicious eyes of furtive weed-smokers in its darker recesses.
And I walk down it a lot. After I drop my son off at school in the Gramercy neighborhood, I hop on a downtown 6 train and get off at Canal to walk the rest of the way to my office at the bottom of Manhattan, taking a hard left down Cortlandt Alley on each and every one of those commutes. I’m now so familiar with that particular strip that I practically notice each and every change to its topography on a daily basis.
As was seemingly inevitable, however, there’s been a recent uptick in renovation and refurbishment in the Alley (as I mentioned just last summer). Scaffolding appears and disappears with some regularity, as certain addresses endeavor to spruce themselves up. While a wholesale facelift of the stretch seems unlikely, certain patches of it are very definitely changing. At its southernmost segment between White & Franklin Streets, a pricey-but-seemingly-dormant condo vainly tries to keep up appearances. But the real big activity is happening on the portion between White and Walker Streets. A few months back, a series of light fixtures were installed along its easterly wall, decimating a bit of this byway’s signature gloom. Beyond that, there was clearly something brewing in that building. Sure enough, just last week, some signage went up. Evidently, Cortlandt Alley is now home to a new venture called the Au Cheval Diner.
Here’s how the official website describes it…
An eclectic diner hidden down Cortlandt Alley with a passion for eggs, Au Cheval elevates traditional diner fare. Guests can indulge in dishes ranging from chopped chicken liver and roasted bone marrow, to traditional sandwiches, egg-focused entrees, and griddled cheeseburgers. The bar program showcases strong, classic cocktails including the Negroni, Vieux Bonal, and Hemingway Punch. A robust draught beer list offers a wide range of neighborhood, domestic, and international selections. The dimly lit restaurant, pulsating with an eclectic and resonant soundtrack, features leather booths, reclaimed wood paneling and a zinc bar that wraps around the open kitchen.
If my high school French still serves me well, Au Cheval means “by horse” …. a particular species of mammal that very rarely graces Cortlandt Alley, these days. While I am wary of Cortlandt Alley becoming further gentrified, it’s a bit late to lament the damage of that particular tsunami in 2019. I do, at least, appreciate Au Cheval’s relative discretion. Yeah, they’ve brought a bit of polish to the pathway, but we’ll see where it goes. I’d be curious to hear what constitutes their “eclectic and resonant soundtrack.” I want to believe they’d play geographically-appropriate stuff like DNA, The Lounge Lizards, Teenage Jesus, The Cramps and the like, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Still, I might try to check it out. Watch this space.
Here's a bit of DNA playing just down the way from Au Cheval's front door. Today, this space is someone's doubtlessly well-appointed, private and expensive apartment.
...but you'll never be as cool as these two dear, departed fellows. Photograph by Curtis Knapp.
Back in 2014, my friend Ned Raggett wrote a nice piece for the Quietus on the 20th anniversary of Aphex Twin’s breakout collection, Selected Ambient Works II. Actually, I don’t know that I’m correct calling it a “breakout” collection. Richard James -– the enigmatic electronic musician behind Aphex Twin -– wouldn’t really achieve genuinely wider renown, I don’t think, until 1997’s “Come to Daddy” single a couple of years later. But unlike that pummeling, harrowing single (watch the video for the harrowing part), Selected Ambient Works II was a very different listening experience. Today, someone re-circulated Ned’s article on Facebook -– the album now approaching its twenty-fifth anniversary -- and I felt compelled to address it here with a specific anecdote I’d originally posted on the music discussion board Ned alludes to in his first line.
I still remember the first time I heard this record. My friend Sean and I were dropping off a gorgeous friend of ours who had just started seeing this sleazy Scandiweigan guy named Sven who lived is a seemingly cathedral-sized loft in Brooklyn and did lots of drugs. We'd been imploring with our friend all day not to date this guy, but she was smitten (he later knocked her up and abandoned her -- went back to whatever Nordic rockpile he climbed out from under, but I digress...) In any case, we pulled up to the guy's building -- in a then-desolate area of Brooklyn (not so anymore), and decided to escort our friend inside. So, that's what we did.
On the way up the stairs, there was this HUGE sound emanating from the floors above....just a bizarre and otherworldly brand of music. We walked into Sven's huge, cavernous loft, and it was like a scene out of "Excalibur.” There was just weird shit all over the place -- incense burning, dim lighting and candles everywhere, and this intensely beautiful but somewhat disconcertingly foreboding music playing. Sean and I stayed for a few moments. Our friend immediately vanished into a back area somewhere -- no goodbyes or anything. I was too busy being creeped out/intrigued by the music. Before I could ask Sven (who hadn't gotten up when we came in, sitting in a throne-like chair at the end of a long wooden table in a bizarre stupor) what was playing, Sean had grabbed my arm and was pulling me to the door. We left feeling hugely weirded out.
A couple of days later, I got a package from Sire records (I was writing for a few periodicals at the time, and used to be on several labels' mailing lists). At the time, I'd never heard of the Aphex Twin, but the cover art to this strange looking album looked like some ancient artefact prized from some interdimensional time capsule. I slipped the disc into my player and hit play, and instantly knew what it was and where I'd heard it.....and it instantly gave me the same sort of creeps. It still does. And I love it.
That was 1994. I’ve since lost touch with Sean and I’s “gorgeous friend,” although I ran into her a few years back in a restaurant somewhere. The last time I saw Sean was about two years ago. I don’t remember the neighborhood of Brooklyn Sven’s loft was in, but have a suspicion it was somewhere in Greenpoint. I’m sure it’s nigh on unrecognizable today. I’ve no idea where Sven is today, nor do I care.
I still have Selected Ambient Works II though … and it’s still remarkable … and not just a little creepy.
Look, it's a pair of deeply horrible fuckin' creeps!
Yet another post that reinforces the notion that despite my best intentions, Flaming Pablum is little more than a loose aggregation of NYC nostalgia-porn and a rogues gallery of musician obituaries.
I was genuinely shocked and saddened to read, this morning, that Keith Flint of The Prodigy had taken his own life at the age of 49, especially so shortly after news of the respective deaths of Talk Talk’s Mark Hollis and World Domination Enterprises’ Steve Jameson.
While rave culture was never really my particular thing, I’d always loved electronic music in its myriad forms, be it the crude, assaultive battery of Suicide, the magisterial precision of Kraftwerk or the elegiac minimalism of Wendy Carlos. By the dawn of the 90’s, however, I cannot say I was as invested in electronic club music (house, techno, rave, etc.). I was -- and remain -- simply more of a rock guy. It was for this reason that I warmed to the rise of Big Beat, a subgenre of electronic music that cribbed elements of rock song structure and swagger. One of said subgenre’s biggest proponents was The Prodigy.
I’d heard of the outfit –- not really a “band” per se, at the time -– from my days working at SPIN, but it wasn’t until 1993’s Music for the Jilted Generation that I started to take an interest, largely based on the profanity-laced number “Their Law,” featuring members of bedraggled Grebo beatboxers Pop Will Eat Itself. I mean, what’s there not to love about a pounding beat punctuated by periodic bursts of ”FUCK’EM, AND THEIR LAW!”?
But it was the next album, The Fat of the Land, presaged by the two crucial shots across the bow that were “Firestarter” and “Breathe,” that really solidified The Prodigy as a bona fide band, or at least a close approximation thereof.
While ostensibly a bristling document of electronic dance music, The Fat of the Land is also just a great, big dumb rock record in the same vein as, say, Electric by The Cult, Destroyer by Kiss or Kings of The Wild Frontier by Adam & the Ants. While most of my favorite records make an assertive statement of one form or another, there remains something to be said about music that just sounds cool and fun. That’s what big dumb rock records are for. Not everything has to be a po-faced manifesto. Silly, hollow and/or objectionable lyrics notwithstanding, The Fat of The Land revels in its own giddy vacuity. It pumps, pounds and prods, but it ultimately has nothing to say … and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Dance to it. Bang your head to it. Leap around to it. But don’t bother overanalyzing it. Beyond its infectiously pugnacious pulse, there is no there there.
It was his turn on this album -- particularly on those two afore-cited singles, but also the similarly ridiculous “Serial Thrilla” and “Fuel My Fire” -– that vaulted Keith Flint’s status to vocalist. Today’s headlines frame him somewhat astonishingly as the band’s “frontman,” when in truth he’d originally been relegated to “dancer” and/or mascot, not unlike Bez in the Happy Mondays, only on a different variety of stimulants. Keith’s performance in the video for “Firestarter” effectively changed all that, cementing him in the firmament, in the grand tradition of Sir John of Rotten, as the next great threat to the impressionable youth of England.
I knew “Firestarter” and “Breathe” were completely silly records the first time I heard them, but -– as mentioned above -– that didn’t stop me from falling completely in love with both of them. As I mentioned in an early post, both songs were put into maddeningly regular rotation on my sound system when I moved into my apartment on East 9th Street. When the full album landed in 1997, I of course snapped it right up, thrilling to the carefully cultivated imagery (ooh, look – he’s wearing a Varukers t-shirt!) and the pavement-cracking, beat-heavy production (for my money, the best track on the album, in the beat capacity, is “Diesel Power”). Certain tracks -– notably “Smack My Bitch Up” -– haven’t aged quite so well, for exceptionally obvious reasons, not that there were especially a-okay at the time, either.
As I mentioned of Facebook this morning, I vividly remember putting “Firestarter” on the jukebox at the late, lamented Stoned Crow on Washington Place about five or six times in a row. This prompted a fellow patron to get exceptionally cross with me and threaten to take my life. In retrospect, given my actions, this was actually a reasonable response to six or seven airings of the song. What can I say? Beer might have been involved.
The following June, the Prodigy came to the Hammerstein Ballroom here in NYC, and I happily attended. Much like the album it was still promoting, the live Prodigy production was an endearingly ridiculous circus of smoke, volume and overall ludicrousness. You can read Ann Powers’ very serious review of it here.
At this stage, I was going to post something about how strange I thought it was that the words “legendary” and “iconic” kept popping up in headlines regards to Keith, and how, while I very much count myself a fan of this particular era of The Prodigy, I don’t necessarily agree that these words are necessarily appropriate. Then, I thought better of it.
While “iconic” is inarguably overused these days, who am I to diminish the impact Keith Flint and The Prodigy had on their fans? Am I disappointed that said terms weren’t brandished as zealously with regard to the passing of Mark Hollis? Absolutely, but this isn’t a competition. It’s frankly tragic, regardless.
Rest in peace, Keith Flint. By all accounts, regardless of your bug-eyed stage persona, you were roundly regarded as a kind and decent human being in an industry not especially renowned for same. One only wishes that was enough to quell your inner conflicts and convince you to stick around.
Once again, it’s odd how certain things stay with you.
I can’t remember where I was, who I was with or how I old I was when I saw it, but I remember watching a film on television -– a black-&-white mystery, possibly “noir” -– involving a protagonist haunted by a recurring nightmare or vision. In that mysterious scenario, he’s in some clandestine chamber that holds some horrible secret –- a murder, perhaps? The thing that makes it distinctive, however, is that there is music playing -– a strange, lulling, creepy dirge. Again, the protagonist is driven to distraction by this eerie vision, but cannot connect the dots as to where it happened or its significance.
Later in the film, he's at some social function, and there is music playing via an old-time record player. At one pivotal point, a woman near that turntable bumps into it with her elbow, inadvertently changing the speed of the turntable to a slower revolution-per-minute, like dropping from 45 to 33 1/3. When she does this, the music playing suddenly replicates the creepy music in the protagonist’s recurring vision, and he becomes convinced that the clandestine chamber with the horrible secret is immediately nearby.
Like I said, I wish I could cite more specifics, but I cannot. For the life of me, I’ve never been able to figure out the film. Much like the tortured protagonist, I cannot figure out the mystery.
Does this film sound familiar to you?
Weigh in.
The following anecdote was prompted by an invocation by my friend John Darnielle (of Mountain Goats fame) on Facebook. How’s that for name-dropping?
While my high-school listening habits were largely dominated by stentorian thrash metal, pugnacious punk, splenetic hardcore and histrionic goth rock, I was by no means immune to the charms of the pop music of the day. My favorite, go-to bands may well have been the Circle Jerks, Venom and the Lords of the New Church, but I was as versed in the sonic outpourings of populist favorites like Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, Thomas Dolby and Run-DMC as anyone, largely thanks to our collective fascination with the then-still-nascent MTV. I can safely say that the first few years of MTV’s video rotation burned themselves firmly into my cerebellum. I doubt I am alone in this assertion. I can’t remember whole volumes of bullshit I allegedly studied in high school, but I can pinpoint a fleeting, trivial bit of a Thompson Twins video without so much as blinking.
This is a true story. About fifteen years ago, I was sniffing around the Apple Store in SoHo (on Prince Street, above) trying to figure out how to buy a digital camera. My daughter had just been born, and for the purposes of sharing photographs of my newborn little cherub, I figured it was time to make the jump to digital. But, by the same token, I had no fucking clue what I was doing. So, I was perusing around the tables, and looking at different models and being clueless, but there was this guy next to me basically doing the same thing, with an endearingly equal amount of cluelessness. The weird thing, however, was that he looked CRAZY familiar. I found myself staring at him, trying to divine the reason why.
It finally dawned on me.
I tapped him on the arm. "Excuse me, man," I said. "This is going to sound SUPER weird, but are you the lead guitar player for Tommy Tutone? Like, not the curly-haired lead singer I always assumed was Tommy Tutone, but the guitar-player dude in the skinny tie & blazer in the video for '867-5309'"?
There was a long pause.
He looked me dead in the eye.
"Whoa .... you're good."
It was indeed Jim Keller, erstwhile guitarist for Tommy Tutone, who I recognized from a music video from 23 years earlier.
Meanwhile, I can barely remember my own social security number.
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