Flaming Pablum

Lunachicks Through the Lense

Back in 2016, I posted an inordinate amount of entries detailing my frankly ridiculous search for the location of a photo of the Lunachicks, which culminated here, should you care. The photo above of the band above was not the photo in question, but taken from the same shoot. This shows the Lunachicks on the Bowery at Bond Street, just steps away from the former site of CBGB, and was snapped by one Joe Dilworth in 1990.

The charts may not be chock full of actual rock bands, anymore — their place taken by poorly-enuciating hip-hoppers and tempestuous pop twits — but flip on the streaming service of your choice, and you can avail yourselves to any number of hoary rockumentaries from all over the rock spectrum. In doing so, you're bound to hear lots or purple-prosed hyperbole and/or wildly exaggerated anecdotes about the band’s antics from a previous, more hedonistic age (and probably a soundbite or two from Dave Grohl), but lemme tell ya – the Lunachicks ain’t stretching the truth, in this trailer below.

Being a fellow native New Yorker, I had the immense privilege of seeing The Lunachicks perform many times, back in the `90s, but the show that …er… “sticks out” the most (this is an awkward turn of phrase, given the anecdote I’m about to unspool) was their opening slot circa 1990 for the Rollins Band at the Marquee Club on West 21st street in Manhattan. ADDENDUM: I just learned, via the Instagram page of Michael Wingerm, that this particular show was 34 years ago TODAY!!!!

In the trailer below, you’ll hear bassist Sydney “Squid” Silver mention a host of indignities the band had to weather during their dues-paying years, and I caught some of that firsthand, that night. Already a curious anomaly for the times (even at the dawn of the pre-Riot Grrl `90s, the notion of an all-female punk/hardcore/grunge/noise/metal/scrumrock band was still largely diminished as something of a lesser novelty), the Lunachicks usually had to do way more than simply “win over” a blithely disinterested audience that was otherwise there to see the headliner. They had to leave an indelible impression, which they usually did. Later that evening, in fact, Henry Rollins would endearingly thank the Lunachicks for allowing the Rollins Band to “to close for them.” Rarely did anyone walk away from a Lunachicks show feeling indifferent.

But in the middle of the Lunachicks’ own rollicking, high-voltage performance, that night, there was a bit of a commotion in the crowd (and not just the usual pit scuffle). The band even stopped mid-song to get involved. I was standing over on the right, and only saw what looked like a wolfpack of skinheads suddenly close in on someone and beat him senseless. The guy was pulled out of the scrum ... strangely with his pants around his ankles, and roughly frog-marched/dragged out of the venue and tossed onto the unrelenting concrete of the sidewalk. It was quite a scene.

From the stage, one of the Lunachicks called out thanks to the skins. As it turned out, the recipient of that rigorous beat-down was none other than one Dino Sex, erstwhile naked drummer for GG Allin's band, The Murder Junkies. As detailed in disquieting minutia in Todd Phillips’ excellent-if-repulsive documentary, “Hated: GG Allin & The Murder Junkies,” Dino could charitably be described as being not quite right in the head and was deeply obsessed with the Lunachicks. Dino had shown up at the Marquee that evening and was so caught up in the erotic rapture from watching the mightly Lunachicks play that he felt obliged to drop trou and commence masturbating right in front of them. Neither the band nor the skinheads in the crowd were especially enthused about this display and -- as they were wont to do – the skinheads responded accordingly.

While bloodied upon his forced exit from the Marquee, Dino did survive the experience more or less intact. The last time I saw him was years ago. By this point, he had taken up a side-hustle as a bike messenger. Calling it a “side-hustle” is actually kind of generous, being that playing drums for the Murder Junkies — naked or otherwise — probably wasn’t the most lucrative of vocations. In any case, Dino had taken to dying his hair — both on his scalp and his now bushy handlebar mustache — jarring shades of flaming orange and neon green, making him fairly hard to miss. 

I went on to see the Lunachicks quite a few times after that, and — again — it was never just another gig. I don’t believe they ever got their proper due, but I’m super psyched they’re finally getting recognized with this doc.

Check it out. 

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.

“Suburbia” Coda: An Unlikely Stage Diver's Journey

And now, a very silly companion piece to the last post. 

It’s been a really long time since I thought of this, but since exhuming “Suburbia” in that last post, I was reminded about a tiny detail that really used to bug the Hell out of me.

Not too long into the film, the T.R. gang attends a show by T.S.O.L., and the viewer is treated to two songs from the Long Beach band, namely “Wash Away” from 1983’s Beneath the Shadows and an otherwise unreleased song called “Darker My Love.”

Here’s their big cameo...

Now, for a start, one could make the very credible argument that T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty) was a band that liked to deliberately flaunt the narrowly encroaching parameters of hardcore punk. Unlike many of their peers, at the time, the band’s music zig-zagged between relatively straightforward, guitar-based punk to histrionic goth rock, especially with the provocative addition of synthesizers. This didn’t necessarily go over well with a lot of their original audience.

As a result, you could assume that their evolving music might be attracting a different sort of crowd. That's all well and good, but it doesn’t really explain the stage invader at exactly 01:06. While vocalist Jack Grisham – resplendent in his black leather jacket and ruffled tuxedo shirt – croons away, stalking the stage like a Death Rock hearthrob, a young man bearing something of a resemblance to not-especially-punky Anthony Michael Hall, assumes the stage for a little disjointed skanking before leaping off into the pit. Here he is now….

It should be noted that, then as now, many – if not most -- of the people who go to hardcore shows don’t necessarily “dress up” for the occasion. Not everyone’s going to look like an extra from “The Road Warrior.” As I mentioned, this kid looks like your average teenager (although I woudn’t suggest wearing sunglasses while stage-diving). But there is one particular sartorial flourish that has literally bothered me for decades.

Take a look at his t-shirt.

For those that might not recognize it, that’s the cover of Captured, the 1981 album by those combat-booted, mohican roughnecks in …. Journey, the biggest single from same being the lilting, soft-rock ode to San Francisco that is “Lights.”

Can you imagine the sheer BALLS to wear a fucking JOURNEY t-shirt to a hardcore show in 1983?

Somebody buy that kid a beer!!!

Here's a frankly disquieting AI-generated video for "Darker My Love," referencing the original "Suburbia" footage...

Vandals in the Tar Pits: Back to "Suburbia"

I think the first time I ever saw Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” -- the 1983 “punksploitaion” epic about a gaggle of runaway hardcore kids living in a squat in the forbidding tract-housing district off of Southern California’s Interstate 605 -- was at the 8th Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village with my friend Spike (forever immortalized here), very possibly as a midnight double-feature with Alex Cox’s “Repo Man,” although I might be fudging that timeline. In any case, Spheeris’ rough-hewn and stiffly acted study of teen angst, familial dysfunction and youthful rebellion immediately left an impression on me, not least for its depictions of the Southern California punk scene and volatile performance footage of bands like D.I., T.S.O.L. and The Vandals. I believe I picked up the soundtrack to “Suburbia” the very next day.

While half of the record was taken up with composer Alex Gibson’s score of spartan, post-punky fragments and moody soundscapes, the other side was all of the live music featured in the film, namely “Richard Hung Himself” by D.I., “Wash Away” and “Darker My Love” by T.S.O.L. and a fittingly anarchic take on “The Legend of Pat Brown” by The Vandals. While all of these tracks immediately went into heavy home-stereo rotation and on many a mixtape, my hands-down favorite of the bunch was “Legend of Pat Brown,” which prompted me to seek out The Vandals’ debut album, Peace Through Vandalism. Here’s the live version from the movie:

It should go without saying that, in 1983, there was no internet, so no immediate access to any and all information. As such, I searched out and absorbed all the disparate ephemera about these bands that I could find. I picked up a VHS copy of “Suburbia” when it became available, replete with incongruous cover art that suggested more of an art-house movie like “Liquid Sky” than the comparatively gritty Spheeris opus.

Beyond finding that copy of Peace Through Vandalism, the only info I had to go on, about the Vandals, apart from what I’d hear in likely record shops and the bits and pieces I tracked down in zines like Flipside and MaximumRocknRoll, was threadbare at best. I remember studying the back cover of the “Suburbia” soundtrack (see below) and zeroing in on the photo of the band, standing in front of what looked like a prehistoric diorama of the same variety one might find here in New York at the American Museum of Natural History.

Ten or so years later, as floridly detailed in these two posts, my good friend Rob D. (the same Rob D. who’d later live in The Deuce in the heart of Hell’s Kitchen, as detailed on this recent post), started living, for a spell, at his step-mother’s vacant bungalow in Costa Mesa, California – more or less in the same neck of the woods where these specific favorite movies like “Repo Man” and “Suburbia” were filmed. As such, when I went out to visit him, we spent lots of time trying to divine landmarks like the site of the deli Otto frequents in the former and the location of the legendary punk club, The Cuckoo’s Nest, which was informative to the latter. We never found either, but liked to kid ourselves that we were on the right track.

Unwittingly, we did sort of stumble upon a comparable site. Appropos of nothing, Rob decided that we should go check out the musuem at the La Brea Tar Pits, which is something of a revered local curiosity and geological anomaly, in the Los Angeles area. I quite enjoyed the lifelike models, out front, of the robustly tusked, prehistoric pacyderms incapacitated in the bubbling tar. When we walked inside, however, I was immediately struck by the notion that it must the origin of that photograph of the Vandals from the back cover on the “Suburbia” soundtrack.

But after circumnavigating the interior the museum, I couldn’t seem to pinpoint the mural in question. Rob immortalized my feverish quest with the photograph below. That’s me circa 1995, oblivious to the wooly mamoth about to trample me.

In later years, I learned that the Vandals photo in question was taken by Edward Colver, a crucial figures resonsible for iconic images of the SoCal hardcore scene. The photograph was indeed taken inside the La Brea Tar Pits museum. Maybe this particular exhibit was off limits that day,… or maybe I just walked right by it. Either way, here it is….along with Colver’s original.

Shortly after recording their follow-up to Peace Through Vandalism, the cheekily titled When In Rome, Do as The Vandals, lead singer Stevo Jensen left the band, and I sort of lost interest in them. Stevo sadly passed away in 2004 of a prescription medication overdose.

The rest of the “Suburbia” cast – a.k.a. T.R., or ‘The Rejected’ – didn’t really go on to big things, apart from “Razzle” (played by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and “Jack Diddley” (Chris Pederson), who later appeard in “Platoon” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.” Wade Walston, the guy who played “Joe Schmo” ended up playing bass for the U.S. Bombs. Various iterations of D.I., T.S.O.L. and The Vandals all exist today. For a while the T.S.O.L. guys were acrimoniously estranged, leading to two separate versions of the band making the rounds. The Jack Grisham-led version continues to this day.

Invoke Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” today, and many might confuse it with the Richard Linklater film of the same name from 1994. Spheeris, who’d initially found renown via her preeminent L.A. punk documentary “Decline of Western Civilization,” went on to bigger and more successful fare like the “Wayne’s World” films, along with two more installments of the ”Decline” series, among other things. While frequently cited alongside her name, “Suburbia” isn’t widely considered her crowning achievement.

Be that as it may, the film does still have its champions. Beyond idiots like myself, other people have been simillarly fixated with its minutia. As evidence of same, check out the exploits of the gentleman below…

“New York City is Always Busy”: Forty Minutes in 1970’s NYC

Yes, it’s another one of these travelogue films about vintage NYC.

Here’s forty minutes of period-specific footage of Manhattan from the early-to-mid 1970’s. This thing that stuck out to me, in this clip, is the portion between 7:52 and about 10:44, wherein the sound suddenly comes on, and you see a pack of kids playing on East 90th Street between Park Avenue and Lexington, which – oddly enough – was the block my parents lived on when I was born.

From there, one of the youngsters starts narrating specifics about the city, while showing footage of the tykes playing in around around the Carnegie Hill area of the Upper East Side, where I spent my formative years.

Elsewhere, it's the usual hodgepodge of stock footage of predictable locales like Central Park, Times Square, Washington Square Park, Sixth Avenue, etc., but still a compelling trip back in time. Why it says "2002" on the upper left corner eludes me. 

SANE on the Train

I found a fascinating companion piece to Henry Chalfant’s “Style Wars” that profiles two notorious gents from Washington Heights. It’s a deep and often confusing dive, but it’s quite well done. Unfortunately, it's not embeddable, but you can see it here. 

Also -- it's in three parts, but each one unspools a compelling saga. It's really great stuff.

Auf Wiedersehen, Club Berlin

It might seem inconceivable that I’ve found yet another reason to write about “After Hours” (the last time, I believe, being this recent post), but here we go.

The reason is the somewhat sad news that 296 Spring Street, the building on the southwest corner of Spring and Hudson Streets that served as the location of Club Berlin in “After Hours” (as lengthily discussed here) is no more. As mentioned in that earlier post, there was an actual Club Berlin in SoHo back in the day, but it was over on West Broadway and Grand Street, I believe. Today, there’s a subterranean club on Second Street and Avenue A called Berlin NYC, but that’s not really related, I don’t believe.

In any case, 296 Spring was originally a bar called JJ’s West. Circa the filming of “After Hours,” Scorsese had its exterior painted in a checkerboard fashion to stay in tune, I guess, with the edgy fashion of the times. In later years, that corner became one of the neighborhood’s few delicatessens. It was seemingly the only spot for miles around to procure sundry items like beer and sandwiches in the dead of night.

My most vivid memory of that deli involves a late night in about 1990 at McGovern’s just down the block on Spring Street. Myself, my friend Sam and a young Australian lady named Madelene had gone to go see age-old noise-rock weirdos Alice Donut play. We stepped into that deli, after the show, and --- for whatever reason – bought three more beers with the intention of consuming them while we walked. We did so, but then just stood outside the deli – awkwardly – drinking those beers. The only reason it was awkward was that, at the time, Sam and I were sort of both courting fetching Aussie Madelene, and it was gradually becoming apparent that Sam had “won” this little competition.

The trouble was that he was having kind of a tough time conveying that information. As something of an ice-breaking punctuation, Sam gave the top of my beer bottle a tap with the bottom of his bottle, an annoying little stunt we were wont to do that usually resulted in the recipient’s beer foaming over. As the suds washed over my fingers, I managed to figure out what he was trying to imply, and I retaliated in kind, unwittingly using too much force as I brought the bottom of my bottle down onto his. The narrow rim at the top of his bottle quietly snapped off, leaving behind a sharply edged shard that no one initially noticed.

I stammered out some anemic comment like, “okay, well, I guess I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” leaving them to what I imagined would be doubtlessly amorous shenanigans. As I was turning to walk away, I watched Sam obliviously raise his now-broken bottle back towards his mouth, and time started to move in slow motion. I frantically flung my arm out to intercept the sharp end before it reached Sam’s face, slamming the bottle to the ground where it shattered, and practically tripping over myself in the process. Not knowing that he’d been about to puncture his face (which also would have been entirely my fault), Sam was understandably confused and angry, compounding the already embarrassing circumstances of the whole scenario. I explained the whole sequence of events, which frankly sounded dubious at best, and I’m not entirely sure either of them believed me.

I started skulking in the direction of the subway back to my then-home on the Upper East Side, until I realized that in only a few short hours’ time, I’d have to come back down to SoHo to open up at the art gallery on Mercer Street where I was working, at the time. I ended up drearily walking to the gallery at about four in the morning, unlocking the door and sleeping on a narrow bench behind the rickety metal desk until opening time. It was not a great evening.

Be that as it may, that deli lasted well into the new millennium. I’m not sure when it officially closed up shop, but in the last few years, the façade was all boarded up.

Sure enough, here in late July of 2024, all that remains of the deli and the location of Club Berlin is a hole in the ground.

Today, 296 Spring Street is gone. McGovern's closed at some point and became a club called Sway, although the McGovern's sign still hangs out front. Madelene ended up breezily fooling around with both Sam and I before repairing back to Australia, never to be seen again. Sam moved to Portland, Maine, then to Seattle, got married, had kids and moved to Portland, Oregon, where he still lives today. 

This, meanwhile, was Club Berlin....

Glad to See You Go, Astor Place Starbucks

I'm seeing a surprising amount of weepy teeth-gnashing on social media about the closing of the Astor Place Starbuck's, which -- to my mind -- as a single establishment, almost singularly typified the disemboweling of the original character of the neighborhood (later further eroded by Kmart, CVS, Raising Cane chicken, Wegman’s, etc. etc.). I still lovingly remember the Astor Riviera (which you can see here, courtesy of the amazing Glenn Losack) that held court on that corner well prior to the arrival of the Seattle coffee chain.

Someone commented in response to this same topic on a friend of mine's Facebook page: "Vampire landlords are sucking the blood out of this city." While, true, yes, they are, the notion of a fucking Starbucks being indicative of "the blood" of this city made me wince.

I’ve wrung this rant-rag dry, by now, but New York City used to be comprised of an amazing network of independent mom’n’pop ventures, not plagued with endless fast-food franchises and big-box retail outlets. That shit was for the strip malls and the suburbs.

But, sure enough, largely thanks to the efforts of this fucker, Starbucks moved into town in the mid-`90s, and proceeded to spread faster than a spilled cup of pumpkin spice latte.

My favorite memory of the Astor Riviera involves a friend of mine and I ordering a pair of milkshakes there, once, on a hot summer day. An endearingly surly waiter brought them over and plunked them down on our table, only without straws. When we spoke up about needing straws, he took two out of his apron and blithely tossed them in our direction from about a yard away, which reduced us to hysterics. So, yeah, maybe the service wasn’t exactly top notch, but I’d take the Astor Riviera over a Starbucks every single day of the apocalypse.

ADDENDUM: Someone on what used to be Twitter actually typed this with a presumably straight face:

End of an era. For old NYU grads, Starbucks on Astor place and the Kmart by it felt like forever places. St. Marks is also not what it used to be. 

It almost goes without saying that the next occupant of that stately space will be another bank, a fucking cannabis dispensary or yet another addition to the maddening proliferation of fitness outlets that now define "activewear alley" or the "fitness corridor." Fuck all that.

You can see “coming soon – the Astor Riviera” (misspelled as “reviera”) in this clip from “Downtown `81,” starring Jean-Michel Basquiat and, in this scene, man-from-the-past David McDermott.

Meanwhile, my feelings about the departure of Starbucks are best summed up by this clip of the Brothers Ramone.

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. 

 

 

Uptight in Connecticut: The Velvet Underground in New Canaan

I was working on a ponderously lengthy and needlessly detailed entry for this stupid blog about the first time I ever heard the Velvet Underground in college in 1985, and ended going down sort of a YouTube rabbit hole, only to discover the unlikely clip below.

Fifty-someodd years on from their active heyday, it’s easy to fancifully project that the Velvets were indeed this rarefied entity that only played a select handful of super-hip happenings exclusively attended by a furtive cabal of precocious urbanites and leather-clad nogoodnicks in downtown Manhattan. While that certainly sounds cool, it’s simply inaccurate.

Even at their most sonically inaccessible, the Velvet Underground was a functioning band hungry for exposure … and money, which found them playing all over the map for any venue that would have them.

While not at all the type of burg you might normally associate with the arty avant garde, the leafy byways of New Canaan, CT actually played host to the Velvet Underground in the summer of 1967 (a few short months before my birth). This groovy event went down at the Philip Johnson Glass House Museum, and -- quite amazingly -- parts of this performance were captured on film.

As excised from a longer German documentary called “498 Third Avenue” (I have no idea), here’s a snippet of the Velvets’ set. Unfortunately, you do not actually see the band within the clip – the camera focuses exclusively on the gathered throng of well-heeled, mid-sixties prepsters – frugging with endearing emphasis to “Waiting for the Man” and “Venus in Furs” (songs about scoring heroin and sado-masochism, respectively).

Here's a bit more information from the YouTube post:

Excerpt from a German documentary called '498 Third Avenue.' by Klaus Wildenhahn, showing an audience dancing to The Velvet Underground playing 'I'm Waiting For The Man' and 'Venus In Furs' live (off-camera) live during a Benefit for Merce Cunningham at The Glass House, New Canaan, Connecticut, on June 3rd 1967. This clip is shortened to exclude the voiceover audio from the documentary and include only the VU audio, but if you go to the full documentary - - skip to 45:14, and look VERY closely, you can JUST about see the band playing on stage in the background as the camera pans over to the right during the voiceover section - it's difficult to make out, but it appears Sterling was on the left playing bass, Lou in the centre playing guitar and singing next to Maureen who is just behind/next to him (you can see her mallet whacking down on the bass drum a few times), and John on the far right (visible behind the tree in the foreground) playing his viola.

Check out some of these dance steps.