Formed well prior to the Stay Cats, The Rockats were British progenitors of a neo-rockabilly sound that was a little more accessible than the deliciously libidinous horror show of their forebears in The Cramps. The Rockats’ deft amalgam of rockabilly twang with punky panache was inarguably a huge influence on the similarly ambitious Brian Setzer, who later took an admittedly more reverent and arguably more authentic version of the Rockats’ formula right to the friggin’ bank. But as The Stray Cats took off, the Rockats were being persuaded to ditch their initial sound and style in favor of a more polished pop approach as Secret Hearts (this by label boss Tommy Motolla, the same horrible shithead who foisted Mariah Carey on the world). It failed. They broke up. People suck.
While never a big rockabilly guy one way or the other, I first heard the Rockats on the dancefloor at Danceteria one heady night in 1985, specifically “Make That Move,” as played in a set that also featured “How Soon Is Now” by the Smiths, “Master & Servant” by Depeche Mode,” “Kings & Queens” by Killing Joke, “World Destruction” by Time Zone, the Lords of the New Church’s priapic cover of “Like a Virgin” and “Ball of Confusion” by Love & Rockets -- British indie rock, synth-pop, post-punk, hip-hop, flagrant gothic rock and neo-rockabilly all rubbing elbows and sounding fucking great together.
Underpinned by an urgent pulse and heroically bequiffed Smutty Smiff’s insistent bassline, “Make That Move” came iced with reverberating guitars and a rousing, repeating refrain that wouldn’t have sounded out of place in “West Side Story.” It was a great, fun single that would unfortunately be the Rockats’ first and only brush with chart success.
The only reason I’m bringing The Rockats up now is because of this genuinely extraordinary story in yesterday’s New York Times. As my fried Mac asserted, it’s really a screenpay waiting to be written about New York City, rock’n’roll, theft, mystery and recompense that spans decades and the globe. I won’t give it away, but my feelings are best expressed by the title of this post.
Meanwhile, here’s the suitably bawdy video for “Make That Move,” which – now that I’m watching it again for the first time in eons – is also suitable for inclusion in that last post, although I can’t name any specific NYC landmarks, can you?
This post was started several times over the past four months but was regularly abandoned over the maintenance required to plug in all the links. It was almost aborted entirely in the wake of the week of September 11th, when nostalgia for the way New York used to be reached fever pitch. But since I started it, I figured I might as well finish it. So, here goes. We’ll see if I bring it to fruition this time.
If you’e anything of a regular reader, you might pick up on my frequent allusions to having interned at SPIN Magazine back in the balmy, comparatively carefree days of 1989 (that all started on this post). While entirely true, it should be noted that in the grand scheme of things, I was only at the magazine in its then-grotty office on West 18th Street from about July 1989 until January of 1990, when the managing editor who’d implied that he was going to hire me on full-time was fired. Overall, my tenure at SPIN — while certainly informative for me — didn’t really make too much of an impression on the magazine itself. While formerly toiling paylessly under its auspices, I contributed one small news item about Public Enemy. Big whoop.
But prior to my short-lived, star-crossed few months at SPIN, the magazine had been hugely influential on me. I remember picking up its third issue (with Sting on the cover) in July of 1985 under the misapprehension that there was a feature on one of my then-favorite bands, 7 Seconds (there wasn’t), but becoming totally hooked anyway. Unlike shitty Rolling Stone, here was a magazine that dared to discuss and review bands like Scratch Acid, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, the Sisters of Mercy, Squirrel Bait, the nascent Beastie Boys and the Butthole Surfers. The writing was assertive and irreverent. Their approach was fresh and different — they had Pia Zadora interview Joey Ramone and Lydia Lunch interview Pat Benatar. They periodically gave Henry Rollins the back page to talk about his impressions of Madonna or wax rhapsodic about his then-two favorite records (White Light, White Heat by the Velvet Underground and Funhouse by The Stooges). It was amazing stuff, and for many years afterwards, I was a dutifully loyal reader, even after my brief internship.
In time, SPIN started …er…spiraling, shedding long-time staffers left and right and eventually even jettisoning its longtime editor-in-chief and founder, Bob “The Gooch” Guccione Jr. The magazine lost whatever voice and edge it once had and started following the curve as opposed to staying ahead of it. While everyone I’d originally known from my intern days were long gone, certain other people I’d worked alongside from various other outlets came and went through the outlet’s perpetually revolving door. The last physical issue came out on 2012 before it became a strictly online affair.
Here in 2021, the online iteration of SPIN admirably strives to compete in a vastly different landscape from the one it first launched in, but I don’t know anyone who writes for or edits it anymore, as far as I know. I cannot say that I read it often enough to have a credible opinion about whether or not it’s worth checking out, these days, but I somehow doubt that it pushes any envelopes in the way it used to do.
In any case, blah blah blah …. enough of about me and my experience at SPIN. This post ostensibly had nothing to do with all that, but I’m so damn narcissistic that I couldn’t help dredging all that bullshit back up. No, this post was about how friggin’ anaemic much of SPIN’s more recent ….. or, Hell, not even that recent ... content has been.
What triggered it was a listicle they first posted in 2013 called “The 40 Best New York City Music Videos.” Longtime readers know I used to spend an inordinate amount of time and bandwidth documenting same, so I was of course curious to learn which ones made their list. Somewhat predictably, said list was both rife with cliché and pandered strenuously to certain demographics, although still somehow managed to omit some truly obvious choices like, say, “Waiting on a Friend” by ye olde Rolling Stones. I was, of course, appalled, and planned to compose my own, authoritative list to combat SPIN's blinkered myopia at once.
The trouble was, as mentioned earlier, while I had a fever for the subject matter (however ridiculous), it was going to be a labor-intensive post … all that cutting and pasting of links and whatnot. I kept a running list of clips I thought were worthy of citing, and that seemed to stretch on for days. I’d be out running an errand and something I’d see would remind me of, say, the video of “We Want the Airwaves” by the Ramones (shot on Joey’s rooftop on East 9th Street) or the slow trek through Chinatown in “Coming Down” by the Dum Dum Girls. After a while, the list got pretty long, if not unwieldy, completely dwarfing SPIN’s pathetic list of 40.
But when the task seemed too laborious, I set it to one side and then got back to my life, only to fleetingly invoke it a little while back in this post. It seems laughably unlikely, but perhaps SPIN spotted my invocation of it, because now when you go to their link, all that remains is their one-paragraph preamble. Their list is strangely gone.
So, when you go through my list and wonder where, say, “Love is Strong” by the Rolling Stones, "New York, New York" by Ryan Adams, “Steppin’ Out” by Joe Jackson and/or, good lord, “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keys are, know that I left them out because they were on SPIN’s list, and I didn’t want to be duplicative. Also, “Empire State of Mind” completely fucking sucks and makes me want to destroy the earth.
Here’s my list. Enjoy it or not. I did it alphabetically by song title. There is no hierarchy, although, personally speaking, I like some of these way, way more than others.
ADDENDUM: Some new clips were added on Tuesday, October 12 and Wednesday, October 13.
“All or Nothin” by Madball - Tompkins Square Park, East Village, Lower East Side
“All That I Wanted” by Belfegore - Pier 25 in TriBeca, West Side Highway
"Ana Ng" by They Might Be Giants - Randall's Island
“My Kinda Town” by The Undead - World Trade Center, Times Square, Medical Corridor, East Village
"New York City" by Joey Ramone - Lower East Side, East Village, The Bowery, Chinatown, Cortlandt Alley, TriBeCa, Times Square, Midtown, Central Park, West Village, Flushing, Queens, Brooklyn Bridge, Civic Center
“Where I’m From” by Digable Planets - East Village, TriBeCa
"Why I Drink" by The Candy Snatchers - East Village
"World Order in New York" by World Order - Central Park, Midtown, Grand Central Station, Rockefeller Center, Wall Street, Williamsburg, The Dakota, Times Square, Brooklyn Bridge, Washington Square Park, Flushing Corona Park, Queens,
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.
Ostensibly, 1997 doesn’t *sound* that long ago, to me, but when you do the math, it’s actually a long goddamn time ago. In 1997, my kids had not been born yet, I was not married and I had not even met the woman I was going to marry, yet. I was living on East 12th Street, working two overnight shifts a week at the TIME Magazine News Desk. I was still young, fleetingly solvent, single and indeed ready to mingle. On my days and nights off, I was likely found darkening the doors of many an establishment on Avenue A and its surrounding environs, many of which pictured on that post (including the noxious Korova Bar, which I re-invoked not too long back). It was a different age.
Accidental CD’s was a tiny little hole in the wall just to the north of St. Marks on the westerly side of the expanse of Avenue A. If I’m being honest, it was not a regular stop of mine. I mean, sure, I was routinely to be found rummaging around in any number of the once-numerous record and disc shops downtown, but true to its name, Accidental CD’s never seemed especially concerned with presentation. Titles (used and otherwise) were simply put in boxes haphazzardly and put out front for your perusal. If you came across something you were actually looking for, it was something of a miraculous accident – hence the name, I guess.
But beging the fastidious and exacting music consumer I was (and remain), I usually wanted a bit more attention to care and detail, so rarely stopped by to examine Accidental’s wares, such as they were. If they couldn't be bothered to do some rudimentary organization of their stock, I thought, why should I bother spending my money there?
Around 1996 or so, I became consumed with finding a copy of a live album by Husker Du called The Living End, mostly because of its feral airing of “Divide and Conquer” and a blistering cover of the Ramones’ “Sheena is a Punk Rocker.” While the disc had only been released a couple of years prior, it had become something of a strangely elusive item. I honestly can’t remember if Amazon was selling music, at this point, but that wouldn’t have been one of my usual channels anyway. Finding nothing amidst the, again, still-plentiful network of downtown disc shops, I reparied to the still burgeoning eBay to see if the disc could be had there.
Sure enough, in no time at all, I found a seller, placed my bid and won the disc for a relatively modest sum. Upon completion of the auction, the seller reached out over email, noting that we were both in the same neighborhood, and suggested I just come and pick up my disc instead of getting the post office involved. I said fine, and mindlessly trotted out my front door to go fetch my copy of The Living End, a stroll that led me directly to the address of …. Accidental CD’s. Turns out they were quite aware, thank you very much, of what they had in stock. I started to give them way more consideration and business after that.
Today, the space that had been Accidental CD’s in a entirely shun-worthy 99-cent pizza joint.
Now, as I understand it, there really was a Club Berlin somewhere in Manhattan in the `80s, although it was invariably before the era wherein I was nocturnally out and about, roaming these New York City streets. The first time I’d ever heard about a nightclub called Berlin was, of course, via my laboriously over-cited favorite film of all time, that being “After Hours.” I’ve devoted more space on this stupid blog to the minutia of that film, so if you genuinely care, please just do a Google search.
In any case, in the film, insouciant, topless sculptress Kiki Bridges asserts that Berlin is on the corner of West Broadway and Grand Street. Today, that particular corner is a douchey restaurant called the Sola Pasta Bar, but back in the `80s, I honestly don’t remember it being anything other than a wall whereupon fabled SoHo artist Renee extolled the merits of his own work (see below as captured by photographer Leo London). That doesn’t mean it wasn’t there, though. More to the point, I’m lazily assuming for no discernible reason that we’re talking about the southwest corner of that particular intersection, and who knows if that’s even accurate?
In 2015, meanwhile, I interviewed my friend Fran Power, who had a memorable cameo in “After Hours” during the scene in which protagonist Paul Hackett gains brusque entry to Club Berlin and almost gets his head shaved. Here’s what Fran had to say about that.
Where was it filmed?
It was filmed in an empty space that they had made into a club in what is now Tribeca. It was a really dead neighborhood at the time …not a real club.
Wasn't there an actual Club Berlin?
Yes there was a real Berlin club…a girl from one of my bands worked there but it wasn't where we filmed at.
Here it in the film, as spotted from looking south from Spring Street, just a few steps to the west of Hudson.
From at least the early `90s on, that space had become a deli. I took a shot of my kids in front of this same strip pictured above in 2013.
And, as resourced from the great new cinema blog NYC in Film (which I discussed here), here’s a shot of the exterior from 1984, taken from across Hudson Street, looking southwest. Note the checkerboard paintjob. Was that simply during Scorsese’s filming?
Today, my friend Chung Wong posted a great photo on Facebook from 1976 by a photographer named Bevan Davis. This is that same space that would later play host to Scorsese’s location of Club Berlin and that deli, then a bar called JJ’s West, as looked at from Hudson Street looking West.
Today, that particular space is all boarded up with a sidewalk shed. Something in in the works, but not sure what.
For a really great, recent breakdown of the "After Hours" locations, check out NYC in FILM.
ADDENDUM:I did a little further searching around, and came up with some information from this site. For a start, it seems JJ's West was a topless bar (back when New York had such establishments), but prior to that, it was a storied jazz club called The Half Note Club. Says the archives site....
The Half Note Club was one of the premier places to hear jazz in the 1960s, and at least a half-dozen records were “live from the Half Note.” John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Cannonball Adderly, Billie Holiday, and Judy Garland all performed here before it became a topless bar in 1974. It’s now a deli.
Over the past several months, there have been a few posts that I'd started composing that, for whatever reason, I abandoned. Either because I was distracted by other commitments at the time or simply because I lost the momentum, each of the posts below failed to reach fruition. In their dormant limbo state, they are as follows…
1. Back to the New York Comic ArtSGallery - A trip back in time to my days as a sniveling, comic-collecting grade schooler scouring the less salubrious corners of New York City for vintage comic books.
2. Spinning Out: Updating SPIN’s “40 Best New York City Videos” List - a needlessly lengthy and link-heavy aggregation of the best music videos shot in New York City.
3. Revisiting the 84th Street Bombers - A further rumination on a notorious gang of Yorkville toughs from the early `80s.
I actually made a fair amount of headway in each of these.
Given the option, which of these would YOU actually want to read … if any?
As first mentioned in this ancient post from 2008, I first latched onto the music of Kraftwerk around 1981, after first hearing The Man-Machine and Computer World via the record collection of an older, intimidatingly punky, teenaged daughter of a friend of my mom’s. Seamlessly meshing the crisp precision of chilly, cutting-edge electronics with warm, instantly memorable melodies, Kraftwerk’s music was truly unlike anything I’d ever heard. Paired with their carefully cultivated image of sharp, Teutonic uniformity, they seemed to be this entirely unique entity.
I’d later learn that they didn’t arrive as a fully-formed squad of nattily-dressed robots, but had evolved into this vision from their roots as forward-thinking, experimental Krautrock band. This all said, a friend of mine unearthed this very early track of theirs from 1971, when they were still a foursome of hirsute dudes, and it sounds like full-tilt Black Sabbath. Paired with some frankly disquieting stock footage of children dressed as apes getting into grisly bike accidents, it’s bound to leave you scarred.
ADDENDUM: Turns out that genuinely weird footage is from a 1963 bicycle safety film called, ...er.... "One Got Fat." Read all about that here.
Surreally enough, my daughter is now a senior in high school. This means that our lives are currently ruled by the looming prospect of college. Our downtime is largely spent discussing the finer points of the application process, unspooling that tangled ball of red tape that is financial aid and visiting as many college campuses on my daughter’s list of “Likelies,” “Targets” and “Reaches” that we can get to. To say that this is an intimidating process is a herculean understatement.
This coming weekend, the four of us (we’re bringing Charlotte’s little brother Oliver along, as he’ll be in this same position before we know it) to go visit my alma mater, Denison University out in Central Ohio. We made the plan some months ago after the school reached out to my daughter about her fencing. In a strange coincidence, the weekend we planned to visit also turned out to be my reunion weekend. Being that I was already going to be there, how could I NOT go to that? It was turning out to be quite a point on my calendar to look forward to.
But, as fate would have it, much like the Devo show I was all excited about last night, my reunion ended up getting cancelled over COVID-19 concerns.
We’re still going, of course. Actually, the more I think about it, it’s probably for the best. We can now focus on my daughter’s visit and keep our eyes on the prize, so to speak. I’ll still get to wander around the campus and probably freak out.
In any case, while I don’t normally use Spotify, for the purposes of beefing up this post, I made a needlessly sprawling playlist of the music I concerned myself with during my four years at Denison as a gormless, chicken-chested college dork. Enjoy.
I’ve twicewritten here about SoHoZat, an odd sort of magazine/comic eporium on West Broadway just above Canal Street in SoHo. Back in the `80s, it was a joint I’d regularly pop into for copies of various curious periodicals. They had a wide-if-frenetic selection of reading material, and you were always bound to stumble across something new and different. It was also a great hangout. No one was chasing you out the door for not buying something. It was a safe haven for freaks, geeks, artists, weirdos, artists and the like.
As mentioned in those older posts, SoHoZat’s rent took a steep climb and they were forced to close their doors in about 1992 (now amost 30 years ago, …. jeezus). Following SoHoZat’s departure, the space it formerly occupied became a deli for a while. The surrounding strip also became significantly gentirified and built up to the extent that it’s incredibly hard to fathom that a cool, relaxed, bohemian concern like SoHoZat ever existed on that block, considering it’s now populated by pricey bistros, lavish hotels, exclusive haberdasheries and their ilk. The only real remnant of SoHoZat is their sister concern across the street, that being the graffitti emporium Scrap Yard (formerlly called Bomb The System, in less sensitive years).
There’s much more hustle and bustle on this patch of West Broadway than there ever was, although the pandemic has taken a bit of the shine off. The space that had been the deli following the depature of SoHoZat is now an animal shelter/hospital, oddly enough.
In any event, whilst trawling around the internet today, I came across this image of the old SoHoZat, taken by one Susan Kleckner in 1987. Click on it to enlarge.
About five days ago, there were reports that in the wake of a music festival on Randall’s Island – something called Electric Zoo – a cluster of at least 16 confirmed cases of COVID-19 had surfaced, and attendees were being advised to go get tested immediately, regardless of their vaccination status. This event happened outside and was attended by tens of thousands of people with deplorably bad taste in music EDM fans. According to the festival’s official website, attendees had to provide proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 test before they would be allowed to enter. Those with neither had the option of taking an on-site test (for a tidy $99.00). It had appeared that the organizers were being responsible, proactive, were all buttoned up and ready to … uhh …rock (well, not really).
But, alas, not so.
As weepily reported yesterday, my beloved DEVO – despite having themselves played the Riot Festival in Chicago just last weekend – cancelled their grand return to Radio City Music Hall this evening over COVID-19 concerns, although bitter rumors persist that it was more about poor ticket sales. People are also actually wagering as to whether this coming weekend’s Governors Ball -- another Lollapalooza-styled annual music festival also on Randall’s Island -- will get a similar last-minute plug-pulling.
If you go to the official websites of both Radio City Music Hall and the Governors Ball, both operations plainly lay out their COVID-19 protocols, just as the organizers of the Electric Zoo did.
While I’m still super bummed about the DEVO postponement/cancellation (the band is saying they’ll reschedule, but Ticketmaster are already saying I’m getting a refund), there was another gig I was planning on going to tomorrow night, that being Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus at St. Vitus in Brooklyn.
Neither a stately, art-decco Manhattan institution nor an airy, outdoor festival ground, St. Vitus is a comparatively intimate, grotty rock club. Its walls are painted black and it has no windows. It plays host to an endearingly unsavory amalgam of heavy metal, punk, industrial and gratuitous noise rock. In other words, it’s fucking perfect. I’ve seen a handful of shows within its forbidding confines, and I’ve always had a fucking marvelous time.
But while entirely unlike the other concerns invoked in this post in every conceivable fashion, St. Vitus also has a proactive and starkly worded COVID-19 policy, just like Radio City Music Hall, Governors Ball and Electric Zoo. If you want to darken the already-dark doors of St. Vitus, you have to observe the protocol – proof of full vaccination in order to gain entry. It’s reassuringly worded and suggests a heightened awareness that this struggle is about the collective, not the individual.
Regardless, I’ve decided that I’m not going.
I wrestled with it for a bit, but in the grand scheme of things, it just doesn’t seem prudent. As has been alluded to in the graphs above, even the best-laid plans and intentions have gotten this wrong. While I may be encouraged by St. Vitus’ precautions and would be super keyed-up to see Retrovirus play, I regret to say that it’s just not worth the risk for me, right now. This will actually be the second show at St. Vitus I’ll be opting out of since the arrival of the pandemic, the first being Human Impact’s gig there in March of 2020, which I wrote about here. That performance indeed happened, but was an odd evening out, by all reports.
Look, everyone has their own comfort level with this situation. I don’t mean to dissuade anyone from going, nor am I shaming the venue for hosting the event nor the band from performing. Given my responsibilities and schedule of activities, it just doesn’t seem like the right move for me to make at this time. If you want to go, by all means do and have a great fucking time.
While I’m absolutely always game to see Lydia Lunch speak/read/perform/castigate in any permutation, I am especially bummed to be missing this particular iteration of Retrovirus, which features Sonic Youth/Pussy Galore/Bewitched drummer Bob Bert, rock-solid bassist Tim Dahl and explosive guitarist Weasel Walter of the Flying Luttenbachers. Flanked by these accomplished players, Lydia delves into her sprawling back catalog to reinterpret old works with strenuously muscular results. It’s damn hard to imagine ANYone being able to upstage Lydia Lunch, but Weasel Walter comes really damn close in the clip below. These motherfuckers can really play.
Here’s hoping they’ll be back.
ADDENDUM: For those of you, like myself, who opted out of attending last night's Retrovirus show (for whatever reason), they've since hosted the whole thing on YouTube. Enjoy ....
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