Flaming Pablum

Back ... Reluctantly ... To The Korova Milk Bar

Of all the posts I’ve put up here over the last 16 years, pretty much the last one I’d have ever expected to strike a chord with anyone was one I did in 2015 based on the discovery of a fridge magnet advertising a blink-&-you’d-have-missed-it East Village bar from the 2000’s called the Korova Milk Bar.

A strenuously fatigued concept even before its shoddy execution, Avenue A’s deservedly short-lived Korova Milk Bar, as lamented in that post, was an acutely contrived homage to Kubrick’s “A Clockwork Orange,” taking depressingly obvious and hackneyed cues from the ultraviolent, dystopian cult classic in a dim attempt to appeal to self-styled punky patrons who may fancied themselves iconoclastic cinephiles. It was a fairly shallow endeavor.

Regardless of my dismissive portrayal of the Korova Milk Bar, an outlet called Mashed just linked to it for a report on — oddly — “Stranger Things” actor David Harbour’s episode, below, of First We Feast’s “Hot Ones” with Sean Evans (a web series I must confess to loving), wherein Harbour inexplicably cites the bar in question as one he misses from his youth. There's no accounting for taste, I guess. 

Should you care, read it here.

Fifteen years after it closed, the space that was the Korova Milk Bar is now an animal hospital. 

Thanks for EV Grieve for calling all to my attention.

Back to The Ear Inn

It’s been yet another crazy-busy period at work. I have multiple complicated projects on the burner, all requiring heaping amounts of deft navigation, thoughtful strategy and efficient execution. Similarly, I'm vainly trying to plot out my family's summer -- from my youngest's second COVID shot through transporting same back to camp in Vermont again and wrangling fleeting vacation accommodations, to say nothing of my wife and I's looming 20th anniversary. While I do genuinely consider the two posts I put up this week to be interesting and worth your time, I’m always looking to post more substantial things than placeholder entries built around esoteric YouTube videos. But, y’know, we all have our things to contend with.

In any case, I wanted to write about this sooner, but I was let off my leash briefly last weekend to meet an old friend of mine I’d not seen in two or three years. Now that restrictions are easing, it seemed like a fine time to meet up, so we settled on a place I’ve been dying to return to since the pandemic first turned our collective existence into a c-grade disaster movie, the Ear Inn over on the western end of Spring Street in SoHo. 

A longtime favorite bar of mine, I’ve had more memorable evenings within the Ear’s storied interiors than I can count. It’s arguably the oldest bar in Manhattan, although McSorley’s and Pete’s Tavern make comparable claims. Regardless, I’ll take the Ear over both those joints every damn time.

Despite just being informed by my primary care physician —who I’d also not seen since before the pandemic —that I’d gained seven pounds since my last visit, I ordered a cheeseburger and had a few pints with my friend in that great bar. While it, too, boasts the trappings of responsible social distancing, I am very happy to report that its splendor remains undiminished.

What places are YOU ready to return to?

'Night at Downtown Beirut'

It’s by no means a stretch for any blog that concentrates on downtown NYC, but I’m sure I’ve mentioned Downtown Beirut here a few times, the long-lost watering hole on First Avenue. Don’t bother looking for it today, of course. I honestly can’t remember what’s there in 2021, let alone if said venture is even operational, at this stage. But, in any case, as Downtown Beirut, is was practically a holy site for folks of a certain disposition.

I cannot remember the first time I set foot in the bar, but it was invariably at some point around 1988 or 1989, relatively late into its storied tenure. True to its oft-repeated legend, it did indeed have a robustly adventurous jukebox of the old-school variety, and I remember being fairly gobsmacked to find bands like the Buzzcocks and Modern Lovers on it. It was a favorite spot for my fellow paylessly disgruntled SPIN interns and I to frequent, along with being the first place I ever witnessed my friend Dusty’s star-crossed garage-noise band, The Bastards of Execution, perform.

To my recollection, Dowtown Beirut feels like the place wherein the 80s transformed into the 90s, the decade that would eventually turn the bar's lights out. By 1994 or so, it was but a memory. To this day, invoke its name and watch folks who pair their greying temples with increasingly ill-fitting Lunachicks t-shirts get moist around the eyes. Many of today’s bars try to emulate its singular brand of grimy, punky cool, but like the CBGB, Mars Bar and the Lismar Lounge, it is now the stuff of legend.

It’s precisely for this reason that videos like the one below are so special. While you cannot darken the doors of Downtown Beirut anymore, here’s as close a taste to the experience you’re as likely to find, courtesy of one Mike Enright. It has the loose narrative of a student film, but the visual specifics are fantastic. I especially love the sticker on the jukebox that reads "New Missing Foundation - I DARE YOU!"

Site back and enjoy … “Night At Downtown Beirut.” By the way, the lovely photo at the top of this post was taken by one David Vega. 

Night At Downtown Beirut from Mike Enright on Vimeo.

Sad But True

2019:

2020:



2021:

 

Peels Be With You

Quite by accident, I stumbled upon the clip below and was instantly taken back a decade.

The “Peeler Man” was this compelling little character that used to hold court on the northwesterly area of Union Square. This distinguished salesman from the mother country (actual name: Joe Ades) used to sit and regale passers-by with myriad benefits of his revolutionary culinary tool, demonstrating its capabilties on any number of carrots and potatoes. My wife and I used to worry about him. An elderly gentleman like himself should surely not be out on the pavement (literally) plying his wares this way. To the contrary, though, he clearly got a great deal of joy out of it, and probably made a few bucks along the way. I seem to remember my then-future (and now ex) job, The TODAY Show doing a profile about him before he passed, and he was an unrepentantaly happy soul.

As far as his peelers go, we bought one – and we still use it this many years later.

Sadly, Mr. Ades passed away in 2009. But here he was in action…

Charly Clicks With Fran in The Alley

Here’s a convoluted one.

Some of you might remember a couple of posts I devoted to my musician friend Fran Powers, over the last couple of years. He’s based in Okinawa, Japan, these days, but our Fran was previously a figure on the New York City scene, having played in a series of bands, the most notable of them probably being a combo called Modern Clix (pictured above), who played a cool amalgam of punk rock and reggae. You can hear some of their stuff by clicking — pardon the pun — right here.

Not unlike Missing Foundation’s cryptic cocktail glass insignia, Modern Clix had a tenacious presence on the graffiti scene. I recall seeing their symbol, a sort of warrior brandishing a spear, on walls all over the place, back in the day. In fact, a photographer named Tom Langton actually captured one of the ones I vividly remember from a garage door on East 8th Street between Broadway and Astor Place at some point in the mid-80’s. Here it is now…

Sadly, I never got to see Modern Clix perform, but I first got to know Fran from running into him on the street, a few years back, outside a party for Yukie Ohta’s SoHo Memory Project. Fran was waiting for the external elevator I was stepping out of. I recognized him from a series of photographs taken by one Brooke Smith, a former NYHC scenester-turned-actress (you’ll doubtlessly remember her as the poor girl down the well who’ll get the hose again if she continues not to put the lotion in the basket in Jonathan Demme’s “The Silence of The Lambs”) who captured the nascent CBGB scene (which I wrote about here). He and I started chatting and that was that. A few months later, I was sitting at home re-watching my favorite movie of all time, Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours” and — for the first time — realized that my new friend Fran had something of an amazing cameo in the film. As such, I reached out and asked if he’d speak to me about the experience for an interview on this here stupid blog. You can read that right here.

And THEN, you might remember a post from 2019 wherein I posted a NYC-centric video titled “Fanky” by an Argentine gent named Charly Garcia. The video in question found Mr. Garcia performing around various points of downtown Manhattan. The odd thing about that, however, was that some years earlier, Garcia spent time recording in New York, the end results being an album released in 1983 called Clics Modernos or …. wait for it … Modern Clix. Here is the album cover for same below…

That’s Charly sitting underneath one of artist Richard Hambleton’s “shadow men” (who I discussed here). But just to the right of the shadow man is the legend … “Modern Clix.” I am purely projecting, of course, but my assumption is that Charly spotted the words on the wall and just thought they sounded cool. Did he know Modern Clix was actually a band, at the time? Possibly, but I’m inclined to believe probably not.

Okay, so why am I bringing any of this ridiculous bullshit back up again now? Well, because earlier this week, a gentleman on the Manhattan Before 1990 page of Facebook named Bo G. Eriksson posted a pair of photographs he snapped in 1984 on Cortlandt Alley. Now, I have long love affair with this particular strip on TriBeCa, as I demonstrated here, so Mr. Eriksson’s pics immediately resonated with me. But under closer inspection, I noticed something that leapt out at me — the very location of the “Modern Clix” graffiti Charly Garcia posed in front of for his album cover a year earlier. Check out the pics below.

Basically, Charly was sitting on the southwest corner of Walker Street & Cortlandt Alley, just down the way from the Mudd Club at 77 White Street, a venue that was doubtlessly a hangout for Fran Powers and the Modern Clix folks.

Today, this corner doesn’t look all that different. In fact I took a shot of some cryptic graffiti on it just the other day, this is around the corner from where Charly was pictured sitting. Beyond that, there are now a couple of high-end art galleries on this strip of Cortlandt (one, oddly, owned by my former next-door East 12th street neighbor Andrew Kreps), as well as a restaurant called Au Cheval that was been dormant since the beginning of the pandemic.

Here in 2021, there is now a luxury hotel just steps to the west of where Charly sat. The Mudd Club is long gone … reimagined as luxury apartments. Charly Garcia is still at it at age 69. “Shadow Man” artist Richard Hambleton passed away in 2017, and Fran Powers is somewhere in Okinawa, Japan.

Sole Asylum: My Incrementally Futile Quest for Nike SB Black and Tan Dunk Lows

 

PREAMBLE: I’ve never considered myself an especially materialistic person. Sure, I collect a bunch of stupid shit like records, compact discs, vintage rock posters and dumb band t-shirts, but those have more to do with my associations with the music rather than items that assert any impressions of wealth, status or style. I couldn’t care less about luxury goods. I don’t care what type of car I drive, as long as it can get me from point A to point B. Prestigious fashion labels like Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, Fende, Versace … none of that matters to me at all. I have no real brand loyalty other than an adherence to that which has proven long-lasting and practical. I mean, sure, I like nice things as much as the next person, but by and large, the stuff I like is more super geek than uber chic, and that is entirely fine with me.

This post, meanwhile, is something an unwitting exception to all that — a fixation I backed into with oblivious and entirely coincidental parallels to the zeitgeist, something I am otherwise habitually out of step with.

It’s a silly situation, but here it is…

For a million years, all I ever wore was Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars, … and usually the black ones. While completely clichéd and ubiquitous today, their low-tech, retro aesthetic, back in the '80s, set them well apart from the frankly ridiculous, then-newfangled sneakers of the day. Eschewing the garish, boot-like footwear sported by meat-necked jocks, frat guys, mean girls, professional athletes, proto-yuppies and rappers in favor of comparatively cheap, thinly soled, minimally supportive and tonally dour sneakers (originally designed, ironically, as basketball-wear) was a lifestyle choice I embraced based on their alleged espousal by the Ramones.

That said, nine times out of ten, any photo of da brudders usually found them sporting battered, no-name, filthy canvas plimsolls instead of Chucks, the picture beneath being something of an exception.

Regardless, black Chuck Taylors had established themselves as sartorial shorthand for “punk,” at some earlier point, and became the de rigueur shoe of choice for the sneery agent of renunciation I was aspiring to be.

The inherent problem, however, was and remains that Chucks just aren’t all that great. Sure, they look cool, but they’re murder on your arches, don’t really protect your feet, are prone to smell and don’t usually hold together for very long. And God help you if you get them wet -- you might as well walk around with coarse, wet towels on your feet. Time was when sporting Chucks may have equated with making some sort of outlaw, bohemian statement, but you were often courting orthopedic fallout as a cost.

Today, of course, black Chuck Taylors are everywhere, including the feet of our new Vice President. Over time, much like spiked bracelets, ripped jeans and band t-shirts, they stopped serving as signifiers of a specific subculture. But that’s not why I stopped wearing them.

Well, not entirely. I stopped wearing them so exclusively because I fell in love with another shoe.

Back in 2012, I was very dubiously employed as a homepage editor at the website of NBC’s “TODAY Show,” which, in all candor, eventually turned into fraught experience worthy of a whole, horror-filled post in itself, but I digress. In any case, at one point, we reported a story about sneaker titan Nike getting caught in an awkward position after releasing a line of their signature Nike SB Dunk Low sneakers timed for St. Patrick’s Day called “Black and Tans.” Evidently not keen on doing their homework, the brilliant minds at Nike assumed the origins of the term “Black and Tan” pertained exclusively to the cocktail of mixed beers -- usually Guinness Stout with either a Bass Ale or a Harp Lager -– that results in a layered visual effect (hence the colors … black and tan). If you don’t know your history, that might be a perfectly reasonable assumption. The reality, however, is that the name “Black and Tans” actually refers to a notorious British paramilitary force trained to quell the Irish uprising in the 1920s. Suffice to say, the Irish very understandably don’t take that stuff lightly. Don’t order the drink that way in Ireland, either -- call it a Half N’ Half, else you’ll be courting pugilism.

Anyway, we ran the story, and I was so intrigued by the whole chapter that I wrote a follow-up piece for TODAY.com’s short-lived and star-crossed “fashion blog,” The Look. The mere fact that I was allowed to write about fashion for the outlet ought to give you a clue as to the quality and credibility of the finished product. Don’t bother looking for it today, it has thankfully gone the way of all flesh. Once again, I digress.

In any case, so besotted was I with both the design of this sneaker and its troubled (pardon the pun) history, I thought it would be kinda neat to own a pair. Knowing, however, that I couldn’t simply stroll into my local Foot Locker to procure them, I turned to eBay and, in relatively no time at all and for a slightly more than conventional cost for a pair of sneakers, a fetching pair of Nike SB Black and Tan Dunk Lows were mine. In fact, below is a shot of me in that pair at my desk at the “Today Show” website, shortly before I was unceremoniously given the keys to the street by the outlet.

I should point out, at this stage, that I’ve never given the slightest whiff of a damn about Nike, Nike SB (what’s the difference?) or sports culture or anything of that sort. And despite being essentially half-Irish, I wasn’t really interested in the shoes’ botched attempt at Celtic affiliation either. I just thought it was an intriguing story, and I just really dug the color scheme. The fact that they were comparatively hard to find only made them more special. That was really it.

But, once I owned them, I loved these sneakers. They looked great, went well with everything, and were super comfortable. Random dudes would also periodically stop me in the street with assertions like “fresh kicks, bro!” Sometimes I’d lapse into the needlessly convoluted backstory, but most of the time I’d just say thanks and keep movin’ on.

But in seemingly no time at all, I wore them out, wearing holes into the flattened soles from overuse. Aghast by the unspeakable notion of parting with these cherished sneaks, however, I jumped back on eBay to find a replacement pair.

I used to have a colleague at that “Today Show” gig named Phil. Phil used to make it a point that when he latched onto a particular item that suited his needs, he’d buy that item in bulk, sparing himself the trouble of ever having to hunt said item down again in the conceivable future. I used to give Phil shit about that strange habit, but I was suddenly learning why he did it. Upon my return to eBay for my second pair of Nike SB Black and Tan Dunk Lows, the scarcity of the product and its rarefied charms had caused a noticeable bump in its pricing. Undeterred, I ponied up the dough and — boom — the problem was solved. I had a new pair to replace my first pair.

You might start to see where this is going.

Since tracking down that first pair in March of 2012, I have bought no fewer than four pairs of Nike Black and Tans (although, if I’m being honest, I have technically lost count), each successive pair being slightly more expensive than their predecessors. And given that production on this particular design was hastily halted nine long years ago, the prospect of continuing to find further replacements for each ravaged-soled pair has become uproariously daunting and not-just-a-little unlikely. But, like a pathetic junkie, I have gotten myself hooked on a niche commodity in astonishingly limited supply.

Adding insult to injury, two other factors have come into play.

I suppose there was always a furtive subculture devoted to it, but since about 2005 (if not well before), a virulent cult of -- for lack of a better term -- sneaker fetishism has been on the ascent. No longer an esoteric pursuit, rarefied-sneaker shrines like Flight Club on Broadway and Concepts on University Place have gone upscale and above-ground, selling coveted, status-affirming footwear to high-paying fashionistas and style-conscious b-boys. The same cats who used to remark “fresh kicks, bro” at me now stand on long lines to get into these emporiums to drool over lovingly presented, limited-run or discontinued (like mine) sneakers from eons past. Online ventures like StockX and Grailed act as liaisons between rabid collectors and merchants the Beastie Boys once referred to as “sneaker pimps.” Sneaker fetishism is now a big, lucrative concern, and my little predilection for Nike SB Black and Tans has gotten ensnared in it.

Then, of course, there is also the Travis Scott factor.

If you’re not familiar with the name, Travis Scott is an of-the-moment rapper who is widely revered in the hip-hop world. Personally speaking, I cannot say I am very familiar with his music, but I know he carries a lot of clout and exudes a great deal of influence. Some may remember an incident back in 2019 when Travis sported a 90’s-era Rush t-shirt for a performance at the Grammy Awards, which prompted SPIN Magazine to write a cheeky little piece advising impressionable young fans not to get the impression that Rush were actually somehow “cool,” which goaded me to post something of a pointed tirade in response. Disrespect Rush and expect my wrath. 

In any case, it seems Travis and I share a few things in common in that we evidently both like Rush t-shirts and we both like a Nike SB Dunk Lows. Who saw that coming? In fact, that's Travis pictured above in both a pair of Dunk Lows (although not the Black and Tans) and a different Rush shirt. I actually have this shirt, given to me by Geddy Lee himself. My daughter now wears it, and doesn't care about any of this ridiculous bullshit. 

As I understand it, Travis Scott’s stated affinity for the very type of sneaker I’ve spent the past several paragraphs waxing rhapsodic over has even further accelerated and brazenly inflated their already beefy street value. It’s as if the fates are pointedly conspiring against me.

Here in March of 2021 … almost nine years to the day since I got ahold of my first pair of Nike SB Black and Tan Dunk Lows (size 11.5, if you’re curious), new pairs — when you can actually find them — fetch upwards of $450-500, with some sellers audaciously asking twice those amounts for them.

Now, as a sliver-scalped, 53-year-old father of two high schoolers, I can no longer really justify dropping those sorts of sums on pairs of sneakers simply because I like their design and vainly consider them part of “my signature look.” While I continue to peruse the web looking for affordable pairs (although I’m not so hot on the idea of “used”), I am coming to terms that my chances of finding another new pair for myself are strikingly slim.

Right now, I still actually own two pairs of them, although the soles on both are worryingly thin. I have dispatched one pair to a concern somewhere in Florida who claim to be experts in repairing this variety of footwear, although the likelihood of them being able to replicate the specifics of the sole are evidently very slim. I’ll probably get back some sort of mutant-hybridized pair that will technically lack authenticity.

As I type this, I’m currently wearing my other pair, which I took out of cold storage when I shipped off their younger siblings to the Sunshine state. These soles feel like they could give way at any minute, honestly.

Sadly, the time may indeed by nigh to either try something new or get those dusty black Chucks back out of the closet.

"Everyone is Going to be Severely Burned & Naked": Don Rauf of Life in a Blender Looks Forward

I’ve probably spun this yarn here before, but the first time I ever saw Life in a Blender was at some point in the mid-80s. They were incongruously playing the Museum Mile festival on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side (my home turf, at the time), bringing a little Downtown weirdness to the otherwise staid uptown environs. Squeezed between mimes dressed as medieval harlequins and hammered-dulcimer players with ill-considered facial hair, here was this little rock combo playing strange songs about a host of different subjects (ditties later released on their debut LP, 1988’s Welcome To The Jelly Days). I was pretty much immediately hooked.

For any band whose foundation is steeped in a comedic approach, the albatross of predictable descriptors forever hangs heavily on their collective neck. Rarely will one read an invocation of Life in a Blender without encountering adjectives like “bizarre,” “quirky,” “oddball,” “witty,” “wry,” “satirical,” “skewed” and probably one or two “wacky” and “zany” mentions, if you dig deep enough. Sure, all those words have applied to Life in a Blender, at various points over the years, not least for lead singer/songwriter Don Rauf’s unconventional lyrical tangents, emphatic vocal style and penchant for surreal prop use (my particular favorite being a disembodied sheep’s head puppet named “Rugged Rick”).  But to reduce Life in a Blender to merely a “funny” band is a brazen disservice to their finely honed musical chops, their stylistic adventurousness, their wide-ranging field of genuinely emotive songs and their sprawling discography. It may have started off as a gag, but Life in a Blender has evolved into a band that is a versatile force to be reckoned with, if you’re willing to swear off the diet of the insipidly slackjawed soma that currently passes itself off as contemporary pop music.

While I cannot remember the last time he and I were actually in the same room together (although I suspect it was at one of those dusty WFUV record fairs in Chelsea somewhere, wherein we were displaying our respectively idiotic spoils), Don and I have been friends for a while, so when I learned about Life in a Blender’s newest album, the ambitious Satsuma, a lavishly concocted labor of literary love fueled by booze, boredom and books (more about that below) — I figured the time was nigh to add Don to the roster of ignominy that also plagues RB Korbet of Even Worse, Chris Egan of Missing Foundation, Big Paul Ferguson of Killing Joke, Erik Norse Sanko of Skeleton Key and one or two unlucky others. I’m talking, of course, about the Flaming Pablum Interview. Much to his impending regret, Don said yes.

Here’s how it all went down.

Satsuma is something of a departure from Life In a Blender’s normal routine — what prompted the conceptual detour?

It was all a cascading waterfall of circumstances and we were standing directly under it! I had been writing songs for a project called the Bushwick Book Club, in which founder Susan Hwang forces artsts to write songs based on literary works. So the Blenders (Mark Lerner, Rebecca Weiner Tompkins, Dave Moody, Al Houghton, Ken Meyer, and I) had worked up versions of these songs-- “Vacancy for a Bluebird” based on Kurt Vonnegut’s "Man Without a Country," “Soul Deliverer” based on Tea Obreht’s "The Tiger’s Wife," “The Ocean Is a Black and Rolling Tongue” based on Jonathan Ames’s "You Were Never Really Here," “A Party in the Drunken Forest” based on Peter Wohlleben’s "The Hidden Life of Trees" and “Freak of Nature with a Lonely Heart” based on Dean Haspiel’s comic "The Red Hook." Check them out here. 

So we had this unique batch of songs plus one just pure original tune. We might have done more but then the pandemic hit. We might have done a full album but here we were with six great basic tracks and we all said, “Fuck you, Universe. We’ll just make an EP.” Still it’s close to 30 minutes, and if you play it twice, it’s really about an hour long. Then, with all this time in solitary confinement, we decided to make the whole physical package more interesting—We all agreed that the most important thing was that it be abnormally tall for a CD…and so it is. We also feature some bang-up recipes for cocktails based on the songs, and there’s fantastic original art inspired by each song – by James Williamson, Gideon Kendall, Carla Rozman, Nancy Howell, Sky Pape, and Pete Friedrich. We wanted people to have something more than just jewel case and flimsy CD that most artists just poop out in the middle of their sleep.

How did the COVID-19 pandemic inform the recording process?

We started recording before the pandemic and fortunately we had a lot of the major parts in the can. I think we all know what “in the can” means, don’t we? Well it means it was all quite satisfying. One of the main things was –we had gotten all the hornplayers in the can. So there we were….basic tracks done… Al Houghton stark naked..and all Hell broke loose with the virus….and people foaming at the mouth. We were suddenly all turned upside down and torn apart. We were sequestered, banging on our little Zoom windows, and yelling, “For godsakes, what do we do?” So we took our six songs and added overdubs from afar.

Physical editions come with a lavishly illustrated book of cocktail recipes. How did that come about?

Goddammit! It was the virus! We were all running out of oxygen and we knew alcohol was the only answer. So we asked our favorite boozophiles if they wouldn’t mind concocting cocktail recipes insipred by the songs. So Henry Tenney, Bill Tipper, Deb Masocsi and Jason Boyd, Ambrosia Parsely, Franz Teeltlebaum, and Justin Lane Briggs from Barbes all came up with spectacular cocktails, which are all surprisingly healthy and almost potable.

We also know so many great artists. They each made an original piece of art (although I think Peter Friedrich may have just torn a page out of an old Boy’s Life magazine) and if you look at the art while listening to the song, it’s really like living inside your own personal Music Television video.

Where do you stand on the ongoing debate between streaming and the physical manifestations of recorded music?

Streaming on all levels is a horrible situation for musicians. What do the artists get from it? The pay rate is absolutely abysmal. In days of old, we saved our money and bought the music and the musician actually made money that was at least equitable. I feel like there must be some other model that would be more fair. Really the only game in town is Spotify. Our friend Chris Butler of the Waitresses gets so many plays from “Christmas Wrapping” and “I Know What Boys Like,” but he can tell you it adds up to “nanopennies.”  We need to storm the castle with pitchforks and piñatas. Daniel Ek has become a billionaire off of the creative sweat of musicians. The movement asking for at least a penny per stream seems...a step in the right direction. I am twisting Father Time’s arm and saying, “Take Us Back!’ I want pay telephones, vinyl records, calling in to my message machine to find out who might have called, plastering band flyers with wheat paste on to poles, and advertising live shows by printing up and mailing postcards and sending small teams of jockeys into the night with megaphones saying, “ Show! Show tonight! Come and see the live music show tonight!”

How do you listen to your favorite music?

I stream everything I like for exactly .0000003 cents. The vibrations of today’s latest hits are coming through the tree roots if you put your ear down low. I buy the digital downloads and often the CD or vinyl album. There are still a good number of independent record stores in Seattle –so it’s great to go out, and then go in and support them—Sonic Boom, Easy Street, Silver Platters, Fat Cat Records, to name a few.

When was the last time Life in a Blender played in front of a live audience?

We played January 18, 2020 at Rockwood. It’s a great space with a great sound system and the staff is a group of super nice professionals who know how to repeatedly take a kick in the balls. I think Rockwood is accustomed to having bands play there that have a style of music that the great Josh Ozersky called “glummo.” So I think we’re the proverbial snowball down the back of the shorts. They all appreciate the difference and the up-with-people message we bring.

How do you feel about the concept of returning to the live music scenario?

It’s going to be like swimming in lava. Everyone is going to be severely burned and naked. But they will also be a bit cautious as more clubs open because they’re not all certain about the vaccines and the assholes and how safe everything really is. I can picture a performer who tiptoes out in front of a live audience being more reserved. Is Iggy Pop going to sling his torso into the crowd the second clubs reopen? I’m not so sure. And I feel the same way. So….. I think it will be great to get back on stage gingerly!

You’re originally from Poughkeepsie but started the band in Brooklyn, but you live in Seattle, now, right? How often do you regularly convene with the band?

I’ve been lucky to head back to New York a lot. I am a freelance health writer and can do that from anywhere. So I am thankful for that although, you may look at me and say, “Honestly, how can YOU write about health? I mean, look at the condition you’re in.” I can turn my back on the siren call of Poughkeepsie for only so long, and then I must arch my eyebrows and stretch my arms Eastward and give into the irresistible pull. And, again, I think you know what I mean by “irresistible pull.”

I first saw you guys performing in the mid-80’s at a Museum Mile festival in Manhattan. Do you have any memory of that gig? What were your favorite venues to play when you were starting out?

It’s true we somehow managed to play outside along Fifth Avenue for that festival. I think someone from Museum Mile spotted us when we busked in Central Park. Those were fun events because you expose yourself to such a variety of people. And yes, some people don’t enjoy hearing strange musicians exposing themselves, but several passersby would get into what we’re doing. I think it’s always worth putting yourself out there in ways that are not usual.

But of course we played the New York clubs and they were great and many in the 80s. Our home bar and venue was really McGovern’s on Spring Street and I’m still great friends with Steve McGovern (really Greenberg). Steve just let you run wild all night and do whatever you liked. So it was an ideal venue to try out all and everything. (Steve’s quote: “You want to know how to make a small fortune in the music club business? Start with a large fortune.”)

The next best and possibly equal club was CBGBs. Before we ever played there, I was intimidated. Every major artist played there—Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys—and the place looked scary! But Hilly was salt of the Earth, with his big slow bass voice, and the staff were all the best, best people. I am still a friend of Alison Aguiar who was a waitress there. And one day I hope that she will think of me as her friend.

On top of those two venues...I did really love all these: Lone Star, Danceteria, Ritz, Tramps, Lauterbach’s (way out in Brooklyn when there really weren’t any clubs), the Blue Rose (up by Columbnia University). I think Brownies was later but I have major love for Brownies.

At the Blue Rose, the owner was a largish woman who looked like Divine. She had dark hair beehived high atop her head. At the end of the bar was a storage alcove, and the bar owner stored her elderly mother there. Her mother was bed-ridden so the Divine-like bartender set up what looked like a bedroom in the alcove. So when you had a drink at the Blue Rose bar, you’d look down to the end and it almost looked like a diorama or a scene from a museum—there was this old woman lying in bed in a set-up that looked like a cozy bedroom—but inches away from her was all the hooting and drinking and loud music of a dark and—at the times—smokey dive bar. Another great club was Siberia half way down the steps to the subway at 50th and Broadway. There’s a pretty great documentary on the place here . That place was a trip.

Satsuma is your 10th album. When you first started the band, did you expect that you would still be recording this many years later?

The personnel has changed but not in eons. We have probably all been together at least 25 years now.… I can’t stop doing this and I’m glad they don’t have the willpower to stop either. I have been so lucky to play with these super humans, who are just amazingly talented and warm, no matter how or where you touch them or how they look. Sincerely, I am so thankful. I can’t ask for a better, more rewarding creative experience. Everything about the Blender is truly incredible. I know we’re not THE most famous band in the world but having the ability to create with people you don’t dislike and perform in front of people who are unlikely to be violently angry is fantastic. Today, when we wake up and say, “We haven’t wet the bed,” we consider that a major victory.

In 2007, you released what I consider to be one of the finest lamentations about gentrification, that being “What Happened to Smith”? Towards the end of the song, the protagonist (you, I assume) wearily resigns himself to “waiting it out by the Gowanus” and opting for the “stench of the canal” over suffering the changes to the rest of the neighborhood. Since that record was released, Gowanus itself has been “discovered” and colonized, for lack of a better term. Do you ever go back to Brooklyn, these days? What are you feelings about it now?

That song could have just as easily been called “What happened to Alex Smith?” Now the song doesn’t quite work because the Gowanus has been all dolled up and doused with perfume—the perfume of young money! At the same time that Gowanus is getting shined up, Smith may be convlusing and unsure of itself. I know, even pre-pandemic, Smith had seemed to be passing its prime. Retail rents had soared so high that shops were going dark right and left. Then the chain of brand-name drug stores and the top-name apparel shops move in. But may rents dip and the social clubs reopen and everyone be sitting in beach chairs in front of their buildings again.

If/when Life In a Blender returns to the stage in the wake of the pandemic, will Rugged Rick be joining you?

I don’t think Rugged Rick will ever read this, so I think it’s safe to say Rugged Rick is an asshole. I suppose Rugged Rick would think the pandemic is the best thing ever—you know, fewer humans is a concept that Rick would support, but it does seem horribly heartless right now to even say that. What I’m trying to say is, I’m afraid Rick will be back and ready to shout at us all and tell what complete dopes we all are.

 

Own a Piece of Gem Spa

For this inclined towards this sort of thing, an organization called Workhouse has put together an auction (culminating on January 7) for various original artifacts from Gem Spa, the iconic corner shop on St. Marks Place. Want the sign? Bid on it. Want the Egg Cream display? Bid on it. Want the Kostabi-painted gate? Bid on it. Want the milkshake machine? Bid on it. Etc.

Here's the official statement:

"Due to Covid, we were forced to close like so many beloved New York City businesses. To honor the special spirit of the shop, we are auctioning off memorabilia, egg cream equipment, and signs from the store. These are the last remnants of an iconic institution and we hope that with this auction, they will find a new home with someone who loves old New York and wants to preserve a piece of precious history."

- Parul Patel, Gem Spa 

 

Goodbye to Sammy's

I had heard about Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse probably a good decade before ever knowingly setting foot on the Lower East Side, albeit for one of the most ignominious of reasons.

You see, as a Manhattan brat growing up on the Upper East Side in the mid-to-late `70s, we had cable television. As such, when word spread like wildfire around my grade school that there was gratuitous nakedness to be seen on the cable-access channels if you quietly stayed up late enough, my friends and I took very serious note. If you managed the trick of not waking your parents, you could treat yourself to the prurient idiocy of a legendary New York City cable-access program called “Midnight Blue,” the brainchild of iconic “Screw”-magazine founder/publisher, Al Goldstein. While essentially just a half-hour of grainy raunch interspersed with potty-mouth rants from Goldstein himself and loads of commercials for escort services and the burgeoning phenomenon of phone sex, watching “Midnight Blue” felt like the most legitimately taboo activity imaginable, and most of my classmates and I were furtively regular viewers.

How does Sammy’s enter into all of this, you ask? Well, amidst all that low-resolution sleazery, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse distinguished itself by having the solitary non-smut-related advertisement on the program. In between fleeting segments of porn stars Marilyn Chambers and John Holmes flailing their genitalia around, lurid tirades about bad customer service from Al Goldstein and ads informing you that “the extra E is for extra….” (don’t Google it), you’d see footage of giddy, `70’s-era patrons partaking of steaks with schmaltz in the low-ceilinged confines of Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse on Chrystie Street. One imagined that after a while night of unfettered carnality at the oft-cited Plato’s Retreat, the swinger set would put their pants on and go enjoy a fine meal at Sammy’s (this may well have happened, but Plato’s was on the Upper West Side, while Sammy’s was Lower East, so it’s logistically flawed). I can still vividly hear the background music used in that stupid ad.

Years and years later, some friends and I went to Sammy’s and partook of its fine fare — which is strikingly different from anything you’d find in a more conventional steak place, all served with schmaltz — liquified chicken fat that comes in a bottle that you’re supposed to pour over your steaks. It looks disarmingly like orange juice. While we didn’t spot any porn stars, let alone Al Goldstein, we did have the pleasure of sharing the space with none other than David Lee Roth, who was entertaining guests at a neighboring table. For a friend of mine’s bachelor party in the late `90s, five of us had a rousing dinner at Sammy’s that culminated with our waitress emphatically giving us the finger, for some long-forgotten reason.

I had a cherished black Sammy’s shirt (“Schmaltz It Up”) that I wore religiously for decades, usually with a pair of tattered camoflauge cargo shorts.

Today, my comrade Elie from Bowery Boogie reported that, like countless other favorites in recent months, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse is no more.

Pour one out with extra schmaltz. New York City is being disemboweled.