Flaming Pablum

Lost in “New Rock City”

Nostalgia, once again, is a weird thing. For every period or era or, in musical parlance, “scene” that one person laments, there are individuals from before and after that particular passage of time who harbor entirely different affinities and associations. Witness the ongoing dialogue in the comments in some of my posts about NYHC, as one example. Everyone has their own period, their own perceptions of same, obviously, and their own attachments.

I was certainly around for the boom of new New York City bands that manifested around the turn of the millennium and just afterwards, with acts like The Strokes, Interpol, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, LCD Soundsystem, The Rapture and genuinely liked a bunch of them (well, not so much The Rapture), but it was clearly no longer my class, so to speak. I was still carrying torches for earlier acts like Skeleton Key, Pussy Galore, Surgery, Barkmarket, Prong, Helmet and, yes indeed, Cop Shoot Cop. One alumnus of the latter -- Tod [A], of course --  formed Firewater, which almost bridged the chasm of those eras, going so far as sharing members with comparative upstarts like Gogol Bordello, but Firewater don’t often get a namecheck when discussing that next generation. I’m biased, of course, but I think that’s an oversight.

I’ve written about my issues with the whole “Meet Me In the Bathroom” generation of bands before, most windily here and also here. If you click on that first post, you’ll notice I appended a post-script to clarify that I didn’t mean to sound so grumpily prejudicial about Lizzie Goodman’s magisterial book on that era, but rather that I’d hoped for acknolwedgement of the continuum of great New York bands – which was actually kinda stupid, as that would have made poor Ms. Goodman’s already-quite-lengthy book much lengthier. What I need to do, simply, is acknowledge what I asserted in the first paragraph here – everyone is entitled to their own period, their own perceptions of same and their own attachements.

All this weighty preamble is to highlight the video below, which I stumbled upon on Vimeo. The clip was uploaded eight years ago, but seems to date back further than that (2004, maybe?). Dubbed "New Rock City,” this thirty-minute documentary attempts to capture the post-millennial/neo-post-punk (how’s that for a complicated descriptor?) generation by profiling bands like the afore-cited Gogol Bordello, FischerSpooner, Le Tigre, Blonde Redhead and some others, augmented by ruminations by rock journos like Sarah “Ultragrrl” Lewitinn and Joe Levy, two fellow (sorta) former SPIN alumni.

I think the thing that struck me about this film, however, is how the city and scene depicted therein already seem so long ago. That may have more to do with my own advancing age and perspective on things, but in the same way I look at books about New York's hardcore scene of the early-to-mid 80's and think “how is this even the same city?”, I get a comparable vibe from this. I am also reminded of “Goodnight Brooklyn” The Story of Death by Audio,” a compelling documentary that essentially told the story of an even more recent dyng scene that makes “New Rock City” look like friggin’ “The Decline of Western Civilization.”

Time passes. Things change. Scenes come and go and get replaced by new ones you won’t be privy to -- let alone endorse or understand -- because you basically get old and in the way.

I guess that’s just the way it is.

In any case, enjoy “New Rock City.”

Joking on The Steps

I posted this on Facebook today, but I might as well share it here, too, because … well, why not?

According to several reports, notably this recent one in Vulture, certain fans have discovered the location of an evidently crucial scene in “Joker” and started to make touristy pilgrimages to the site in the Bronx. I say “evidently” as I still have not seen the film, and have no real desire to. To my mind, as I may have stated here before, we don’t need another telling of the Joker story, in much the same way we do not need another James Bond, or another goddamn “Star Wars” installment. Shouldn’t we all be bored to tears with these mythoses by now? How about new stories, new heroes and new anti-heroes. Just a thought.

In any case, while I might not give a rat’s ass about “Joker,” I really cannot get mad at folks for getting excited about tracking down those stupid Bronx steps, given the fact that I’ve undertaken countless pilgrimages of similar intent to any number of significant locations from photographs, album covers and films, usually in the company of my very patient kids. Many long-time visitors to this blog may remember same.

Here are some you might remember, should you care….Click on them to enlarge. 

 

Downtown `52

Word arrived last week that a newly restored version of Glenn O'Brien's "Downtown 81" was about to see the light of day. I think I first saw the film in question at the since-recently-razed Screening Room theatre in TriBeCa in about 2000, or so -- and it immediately made a huge impression on me.

As a time-capsule-worthy document of early 80's New York City, it is, of course, invaluable. Secondly, its soundtrack is entirely awesome -- particularly the live stuff from Kid Creole/Coati Mundi, to say nothing of the vintage footage of bands like Tuxedomoon and DNA. But, speaking in strictly cinematic terms, the film itself is frequently laborious and plodding. While definitely worth checking out for the points expressed above, one should be prepared to be bored to absolute tears during certain passages.

A new restoration of the film also seems a bit odd, as it strikes me that a deluxe, 30th anniversary digitally remastered edition of the DVD only just arrived in 2017. It feels a bit like Francis Ford Coppola's fixation with trying to wring further life from "Apocalypse Now" for the umpteenth time. 

As much as I do genuinely love "Downtown 81," there is also sort of an uncomfortably fetishistic quality about regularly revisiting the film in that it plays right into accusations of a variety of brazenly idealized nostalgia for the Lower East Side's "bad old days." Personally speaking, in 1981, I was an Upper East Side teenager who was indeed suitably captivated by all things downtown, but I sure as shit wasn't venturing further east of Avenue A (where much of the film takes place). I do not have that much first-hand experience of the downtown Manhattan suggested in "Downtown 81" beyond what I saw from behind the relative safety of bus windows. 

It's certainly easy to fancifully think back to that largely lawless era as some sort of halcyon period, but those who lived through them in real time don't always agree. Michael Gira of SWANS appeared in a podcast this week, and briefly mentioned his time living on East 6th & Avenue B in the early 80s, and doesn't recall it with any degree of fondness.

While times have certainly changed, and many of us do indeed miss the Lower East Side's former identity as a neighborhood more clearly defined by free expression and less staid sensibilities than were found throughout the rest of the city, it's prudent to remember that the L.E.S. already had a character and richly robust history that dates back much, much further than the punks, the poets, the pushers and the provocateurs.

Here's a tantalizing little glimpse of same....

Hardcore Under Glass

I had a reader named Michael write in, quite recently, in response to an entry I posted back in June about the Circle Jerks. I’m always heartened to connect with folks who are just as invested in the minutia of these things as I still am, as it makes me feel like I’m not wasting my time documenting all this stuff.

In any case, while I was writing back to Michael to address a point about the changing membership of the band throughout the middle part of the `80s -– specifically when the rhythm section of, first, drummer Lucky Lehrer and then bassist Roger Rogerson left the ranks to be fleetingly replaced by Earl Liberty and the mighty Chuck Biscuits -- I was trying to illuminate the point that, at the time, news about hardcore bands was pretty threadbare. Detailed reports about the hardcore scene weren’t exactly that readily available. Maybe there’d be the odd mention of a certain band or two in SPIN, but Rolling Stone wouldn’t really touch the stuff with any meaningful credibility. You either heard about developments via word of mouth (living uptown, as I did, I got reulgar tips from my contact Brian, an older punk rocker who worked at a nearby Crazy Eddie, who I mentioned here and here) or through zines like MaximumRocknRoll, Forced Exposure and/or Flipside (to name three), and those weren’t always that easy to find either, unless you want to specifc downtown shops like See/Hear, etc. You had to genuinely stay invested to know what was going on.

The first time I ever saw the Circle Jerks at the Ritz in 1985, I remember being surprised to see that Roger was gone. Lucky had split in, I think, 1983, but don’t quote me on that. Regardless, again, if your only reference for information was what you found on the back of pertinent album covers, you were doubtlessly going to be behind the times, so to speak.

Anyway, in trying to piece the specifics back together, I did a Google search – something you obviously couldn’t do in 1985 – to try to find out who might have been on drums at that specific Ritz gig. I want to say it was the great Chuck Biscuits, but it very well might still have been this guy John Ingram, who stepped in after Lucky left. Incidentally, for a much more authoritative breakdown, I highly recommend David Markey’s excellent documentary, “My Life As a Jerk,” which I wrote in greater detail about here.

While I didn’t find out that particular bit of info, I did unearth something pretty striking, specifically something that speaks to the same sentiment I expressed in my post about The Museum of Arts & Design punk graphics exhibit last April. Back on that post, you might remember I expressed the strange sensation of seeing things that formerly hung on my own walls throughout high school and college suddenly being displayed under glass like priceless, ancient Egyptian antiquities. I’m reminded of that scene in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” wherein Indy and Belloq have an exchange in a Cario café, and the duplicitous French archaelogist mentions burying a worthless watch in the sand, only to have it become something future achaelogists will kill each other for thousands of years later. Technically speaking, 1984 was only 34 years ago, but that might as well be a thousand lifetimes ago, to some minds.

Sure enough, with that single Google search, up came the signature flyer for the gig in question (above), presented as part of Chris Williamson’s Rock Hotel series (which I spoke in detail about way back here). What was striking about this, however, was that the lovingly presented image of the flyer was not being hosted by some equally pedantic shrine to all thinks punk, but rather by a much loftier outlet entirely. Now evidently part of the Architecture & Design collection of no less than The Musuem of Modern Goddamn Art (that’s MoMa, to you and me), Chris Williamson’s flyer for this very show is considered a bona fide work of art.

That kinda blows my mind.

Check out the specifics of this piece – Object 310.2012 – by clicking right here.

Just as a side note, I did not bring a camera with me that night, and have never spotted any photographs of the Cirlce Jerks, D.O.A. or Toxic Reasons from that evening, but I did prize photos of the mighty Redd Kross (captured between their Teen Babes from Monsanto and Neurotica iterations, specifically) from that very night at the Ritz.

 

Six New York City Diners in 1974

Blondie on The Bowery in `76

From "Blank Generation." It's hard to believe it's the same city...

The Summer 2019 Survey

Since, as mentioned, I'd suggest it's fair to say that Summer 2019 is officially over and done with, I thought I'd exhume this Summer Survey that I haven't done since 2016. Here goes...

Defining Moment of Summer 2019:
I would say that the defining moment, for me, would be --- after months of fretting about the prospect of our son, Oliver, departing for his first time away at sleepaway camp for four weeks -- arriving back up at the camp and seeing him bounding out of his cabin looking happy, healthy and filled with tales to tell about how much he enjoyed his time there, completely exceeding our expectations about the endeavor. The whole experience ending up being all that we'd hoped for him, and more. 

Best Purchase of Summer 2019:
Overlooking stuff I procured for my kids, I'd say the most rewarding purchase would be the pair of ridiculously indulgent YETI 10 Oz Rambler Wine Tumblers I bought to celebrate the wife & I's eighteenth wedding anniversary. Nothing says "marital bliss" like needlessly expensive outdoor lifestyle products. 

 

Best Book You Read of Summer 2019:
It was initially a toss up between Wayne Hussey's memoir, "Salad Daze" and Joe Doe & Tom DeSavia's continuation of their oral-history-styled documentation about the trajectory of L.A. punk, "More Fun in The World" (which I'm currently finishing), but if I'm being honest, it was re-discovering H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories" (which I discussed here) that really brought me the most joy.

Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2019:
I honestly cannot recall the last film I went to, as in sat down in a movie theater to watch. I saw plenty of decent movies in the past couple of months, but I did not have the experience of attending a movie in its intending setting. I mean, yeah, I guess I enjoyed "Avengers: Endgame," but I feel like that's the lamest of possible answers. 

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2019:
For Fathers Day, my son Oliver gave me a fetching red Forbidden Planet t-shirt that I was quite pleased with. Also, my friend Rob B. surprised me with a copy of the sprawling, live Wonder Stuff boxset, Upstaged, for no readily apparent reason other than that he'd heard me mention how curious I was about it. Damn nice of him. 

Biggest Loss of Summer 2019:
I spoke about it here already, but I was quite sad to see the final demise of Manitoba's on Avenue B. 

Song That Best Sums Up Summer 2019:
Honestly, while I'm inclined to cite the new single by IDLES, "Mercedes Marxist," which arrived back in June, I can't say it's the song that defined my summer. For whatever reason, my family found itself repeatedly playing the 1978 best-of by Paul McCartney & Wings, Wings Greatest with some inexplicable regularity, although no one else seems to enjoy "Live & Let Die" as much as I. Realistically, I think the song that is destined to always remind of this summer is one by a guy named Spencer Ludwig. As mentioned elsewhere, at my job, I am tasked with putting together a fiscal-year-end highlight video, scored by various pop hits of the day by my organization's affiliates. Spencer Ludwig's "Best Life" is factoring heavily into that video -- whether I like it or not -- and it has been an inescapable ear-worm. Here it is: 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2019:
After initiating a dialogue with an estranged best friend (which I spoke about here), he suggested reconvening with another since-inexplicably-distanced friend at a Murphy's Law gig on a boat. The evening in question was far and away the happiest I've been and the hardest I've laughed in a long, long time. 

Saddest Memory of Summer 2019:
This might sound pretty histrionic, but I found the failure of Robert Mueller's beleaguered testimony to congress to really move the dial in any meaningful capacity to be pretty damn tragic. To my mind, it was a blown opportunity to make a crucial course correction, and I kinda blame Mr. Mueller for that. You may beg to differ, but so be it.

Scariest Memory of Summer 2019:
In early July, I showed up for jury duty and narrowly escaped being selected for placement on a case they'd informed me would take "at least three months," which would have fallen squarely in my busiest period at work. Suffice to say, I vehemently protested, but was called in to talk to a roomful of lawyers to explain my situation anyway. I was probably a little needlessly belligerent about it all, but managed to convince them I would very much not be an asset to either side of the dispute. I had no problems serving at the time, but this was a commitment that would have severely messed up my life. 

Word That Best Describes Summer 2019:
Intangible.

 

Dancing Around Midtown

Things are shitty. The news is all depressing. Everybody’s on edge. The economy’s in peril. The planet is roiling. There’s an overall vibe of hostility and fear. Everything sucks. Our president is an evil, fucking moron.

Still, it’s Friday, … and it’s still summertime.

If possible, find a reason to be joyful.

Tommy Lee for the Win!

Full disclosure: As unseemly as it may sound from the lofty perch of 2019, I was fully on-board with the 1983 iteration of Mötley Crüe. Upon my first viewing of the heroically ridiculous video for “Looks That Kill” -– finding the band looking and sounding like a louder & stupider KISS, if such a concept is imaginable -- I immediately rushed out to buy myself a copy of the album that spawned same, that being the not-just-a-little-stupid Shout At The Devil. As I mentioned on this post last year, while this album and –- yea verily -- the band that spawned it are, for all intents and purposes, roundly indefensible on pretty much every quantifiable level (musical ability & execution, taste, basic human conduct), I will never part with that record. I’d guess one could call it a “guilty pleasure,” but as a crotchedy almost-52-year-old guy, I no longer feel the compulsion to harbor any guilt about my listening habits. While we’re at it, I also quite enjoyed the band’s first record, that being the equally idiotic Too Fast For Love, and think they had some fine mid-career moments like “Primal Scream,” “Kickstart My Heart” and the title track to Dr. Feelgood. Don’t agree? Too bad. Go listen to your Joni Mitchell discs and leave me alone.

In any case, despite my stubborn affinity for the Crüe, I have always been well aware that the gentlemen in the band didn’t exactly qualify for membership in any think tanks. The descriptor “cerebral” is not an adjective frequently used in tandem with the likes of Vince Neil, Nikki Sixx, Mick Mars and Tommy Lee. That’s not an indictment, but rather just a fact. While I’m sure each of those guys might be happy to oblige, one wouldn’t normally seek out Mötley Crüe to ruminate on pertinent issues of the day. That’s just not what they were renowned for.

Beyond their music, the band was quite renowned for its cartoonishly prurient antics as captured in epic style in the oral history, “The Dirt,” partly ghost-penned by an old colleague of mine, Neil Strauss and later turned into a needless film I did not see. Beyond what’s detailed in “The Dirt,” the boys’ extracurricular activity used to serve as frequent fodder for low-grade tabloids. By all accounts, Mötley Crüe personified a certain hirsute variant of rock idiocy. That’s what they did.

As such, I stopped paying attention to the Crüe’s doings some time ago, perfectly content to relive their hoary glory days via the occasional spin of Shout At the Devil. As of 2019, I believe they’ve officially retired after numerous farewell tours, but am not entirely certain -– nor do I really care.

This all said, when I spotted the below tweet from Crüe drummer Tommy Lee, this morning, I felt compelled to dust off the complete Mötley Crüe discography.

Enlightened words come from unlikely sources, sometimes.

Scarred for Life: Looking Back at “Heavy Metal: The Motion Picture”

It’s a frequent and overused descriptive flourish to suggest you were “scarred for life” by a bit of pop culture, but I have the rare honor of asserting that I was literally scarred for life as a result of my viewing of “Heavy Metal: The Motion Picture.”

Released 38 years ago today, the movie was already the subject of much discussion for the 13-year-old me and my friends, at the time. It being “rated R,” it was uncertain whether we’d be able to attend, but our collective suspicion was that it was unlikely. That didn’t stop each of us from snapping up the official soundtrack, a sprawling double-LP with a lovingly illustrated gatefold sleeve, featuring great tracks by Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick, Devo, French metal band Trust and …. err….some not-quite-as-great stuff by Sammy Hagar, Don Felder (he of the Eagles), Journey and a few others. Still, it being the seemingly perfect marriage of loud rock’n’roll, science fiction bullshit and soft-core sexytime, it seemed like everything we’d have ever wanted to see wrapped up in one package. We simply HAD TO FIND A WAY!!!

In this capacity, fate deceptively smiled on myself and my good friend Charlie. Somehow, we managed to coerce Charlie’s mom to take us. I don’t remember if she was unaware of the film’s rating, or blithely oblivious about the film’s alleged undercurrent of libidinous titilaton or if she simply didn’t care, but she said she’d take us. That’s all that mattered.

We were out in Long Island, at the time. Charlie’s mom had to go drop off his little sister at a playdate, after which time she was going to swing back home, pick us up and take us to the movie. Suffice to say, we were AMPED UP!

I believe we were repeatedly cranking “The Mob Rules” from the afore-cited soundtrack at neighbor-worrying volume. I was standing on Charlie’s bed, emphatically air-guitaring with Tony Iommi’s signature riffage on same (which I spoke about way back here). We were seriously ready for this movie.

From below, we heard Charlie’s mom’s car pull into the driveway. It was officially GO TIME! I litearlly leapt off of Charlie’s bed, aiming for a nearby chair. The plan -– such as it was – was to vault from bed to chair and then out the door. That was my plan. In retrospect, it was an ill-considered one.

As it happened, the chair was a folding chair. Upon landing on said piece of unfortunate furniture, it did just that -– folded, significantly altering my already-not-entirely-well-conceived trajectory. I ended up slamming my head -– or, more precisely, my FACE -- against the side of a nearby suitcase.

Instantly, there seemed to be blood everywhere.

Charlie’s mom rushed in and started talking about taking me to the hospital, but –- even in my bloodied shock -– I was adamant. "WE ARE GOING TO 'HEAVY METAL'!!!!"

Quite unbelievably, in retrospect, I managed to make a convincing argument. Charie’s mom put one of those flimsy butterfly bandaids over the gash below my mouth, tenuously closing the NEW HOLE IN MY HEAD, and …. took us to the movie.

Charlie and I sat in one of the front rows of the Hampton Arts theatre in Westhampton Beach, bug-eyed with excitement. I remember tasting lots of blood mixed in with my popcorn.

And, ….that was basically that. As far as Charlie and I were concerned -– we had WON! We got to see the movie that none of our other friends had managed to. And we thought it was awesome.

Time, as it is known to do, passed.

For one reason or another –- presumably due to the complexities of music licensing -– “Heavy Metal” was glacially slow to ever arrive on VHS.

There was no official release for years. Tied up, for some reason -– of prurience? Taste? Pending litigation? -– one was not able to view it outside of grainy, distorted bootleg copies. I did not lay eyes on the film again for well over a decade.

Then, at some point in 1996, the movie was finally released on VHS and DVD. In the ensuing years, the scar left by my heroically stupid pre-movie stunt essentially became part of my permanent physiognomy. As such, I figured I should own the film, right?

So I bought it, took it home, unwrapped it, opened up a beer, and sat down to watch the thing for the first time since that fateful summer afternoon in 1981.

Lemme tell ya ….

It’s basically crap.

While my evidently easily-impressed 13-year-old mind might have been blown by the dazzling visuals, allegedly lifelike animation and sensory-engulfing experience of the original 1981 film, the scarred and cynical 29-year-old me was not quite as wowwed. If anything, I was wowed by how lame it was. The animation was fairly rote, the writing was trite, the plot was wafer-thin, the perceived risque elements were juvenile and insipid and the overall execution was essentially unexceptional. And for this, I wear a scar.

So, yeah, not everything ages like wine.