Flaming Pablum

Re-Exhuming ...If I Die, I Die by the Virgin Prunes

I noticed, quite recently, that this coming November will be the 40th anniversary of the release of the first “proper” album, ...If I Die, I Die, by the Virgin Prunes, a willfully difficult-to-categorize Irish band who emerged in tandem with the markedly-less-complicated U2, back in the very late `70s. I believe I first wrote about my adoration for this album back in the neonatal stages of this blog (which I shan't link to, being that it's a phase of this endeavor which I'm still embarrassed by), which I’m cleaning-up and repurposing here….

I didn't find out about the Virgin Prunes from my usual channels. It was the summer of 1986. I was working thanklessly as a dish-washer at a crappy "gourmet eatery" out in Westhampton on Long Island, scraping burnt croissant crusts off of baking sheets and basically being a surly bastard. Most of the kitchen was a bright, airy place...apart from the dish-washing area, where myself and a couple of other lackeys wallowed in damp, airless squalor, listening to `round-the-clock airings of Black Flag and Iron Maiden (after we'd disconnected the restaurant speaker which force-fed the rear of the kitchen tireless lashings of Sade, Swing Out Sister and the soundtrack to "Annie," as discussed here). It didn't pay especially well, but it was a job.

Every summer, legions of Irish kids would seemingly flock from Dublin to Long Island to snatch up waitressing and au pair jobs, and this particular establishment quickly became a hotbed of plucky lasses with adorable accents. One such young lady was a baking server named Fiona, who lived in a suburb of Dublin called Lucan. In relatively short order, Fiona and I became friendly (and I, in turn, soon developed a bit of a crush on her...to absolutely no effect or great avail whatsoever). In any case, she kept going on and on all the time about this gent back home named Guggi who she completely fancied (even though she allegedly already had a boyfriend who played in an excellently named band called Those Handsome Devils). Guggi was this chap who evidently sang in a band called the Virgin Prunes. Unimpressed, I sniffed that I'd never heard of them. And being that Fiona was otherwise obsessed with Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, I didn't imagine they were, as they say, "much cop."

So, I'm trolling around my usual network of downtown record stores during one of my weekly trips into the city (where my other job as an apprentice to a graphic designer kept me running all around town delivering mock-ups to ungrateful cosmetic companies) and I happened to spy an album cover emblazoned with the name Virgin Prunes. But....what's this? THEY LOOK LIKE SCARY, PUNKY, SCREWED-UP, CROSS-DRESSING PYROMANIACS!!! HOW COULD THIS BE ANYTHING BUT COMPLETELY BRILLIANT!!!! Clearly, no drab, mawkish Lloyd Cole-isms were going to be found here. Fiona's stock instantly rose a few more degrees, and I snatched up a copy of ...If I Die, I Die (great title, too!) on the spot!.

Despite not being able to get my head around what Fiona could possibly have seen in Guggi (himself of presumably indeterminate sexual preference), I was instantly intrigued by this mysterious band with the funny names, obscure language and pointed disdain for convention. Certainly a bit Bauhausesque, but Bauhaus never sounded this disheveled and possessed (except for maybe on "Stigmata Martyr"). As with many of what became my favorite albums of all time, this record literally has a sound that is completely all its own … or if there's another record out there like it, I sure as hell haven't heard it.

Meandering between creepy atmospherics and pounding caterwaul, ...If I Die, I Die is a primal, tribal, nightmarish YAWP of a record, and decidedly not right for every occasion (the album was met by a dependable chorus of "what the fuck is this shit?" by every college roommate I ever had). It's a lot to swallow in one sitting if you're not in the mood, but the single-y tracks (the positively jaunty "Baby Turns Blue" and the jagged "Pagan Love Song") alone are worth wading through the disquieting stuff. There are just some great moments here, from the ghoulish shanty of "Theme for Thought" (boasting the fiendish chorus of Die-d-Die-Die-Die-Die-d-d-d-Die as crooned by a drunken ensemble of evil Leprechauns) to the serpentine guitar stomp of "Caucasian Walk.”

Nothing ever ended up happening between myself and Fiona. She left at the end of the summer to go back to Lucan (and never wrote), but I still felt I got something great out of it. Subsequent `Prunes records didn't quite pack the punch of ...If I Die, I Die (though I later found a whole new appreciation for lead singer Gavin Friday's solo work).

Here in 2022, outside of the “Elder Goth” community (good lord, did I just use that term in earnest?), people here in the States mostly haven’t a clue who the Virgin Prunes were, apart from maybe invocations of their connections to U2. For the longest time, it’s almost as if the Virgin Prunes were this great little secret -– a rarified collective who made a handful of hard-to-find and equally hard-to-fathom records and then seemingly vanished. As mentioned on this post, when Gavin launched his solo career, I was immediately onboard, although by that time, he’d ditched the more theatrically confrontational aspects of his music in favor of a more refined, cabaret approach. There were a few posthumous compilations and import re-issues, here and there (I am not-at-all-ashamed to concede that I have bought If I Die, I Die… in various formats no fewer than four times, and still have all of them) and they even re-convened for an impromptu one off in 2009 (I missed it), but for all intents and purposes, all matters concerning the Virgin Prunes as a going concern were closed.

Or so I thought.

This past June, out of the proverbial (Baby Turns..) blue (sorry), my social media feeds were suddenly filled with sounds and images from the Virgin Prunes as part of a new campaign to advertise that unlikeliest of outcomes, that being that the entirety of the band’s brief-but-unwieldy five-album discography was suddenly available for streaming on a wide array of platforms. They launched a proper website, complete with news, video, a comparatively exhaustive bio of the band (so much for their once-beguilingly impenetrable anonymity) and the inevitable merch store (you can now, for example, procure yourself an official Virgin Prunes tote bag emblazoned with their frightwigged pates and thousand-yard stares). I was initially shocked to incredulity by the manufacturing of actual Virgin Prunes “action figures” until I realized they were just an unaffiliated artist’s novel one-off.

Having taken this unexpected step into the 21st Century (given that the original line-up had disbanded prior to the wider advent of the compact disc), will this dramatically change the fortunes of the Virgin Prunes? Will a new audience of attention-deficit-disordered teens now discover the harrowing charge of “Come to Daddy” or the disquieting list of “Heaven”? I kinda doubt it, but who knows? But if they start anywhere, they should start with ...If I Die, I Die.

Here, from that aforementioned website, is an compelling breakdown of how the album came together, as recounted by Gavin Friday himself.

Enjoy…

Back to Coney Island High

I’ve written long, lengthy, heartstring-plucking entries about both The Upper Crust (most recently here) and St Marks Place (find that here) before, so please avail yourselves to those weepy epistles if you are feeling so inclined. Suffice to say, both are gone, here in 2022.

Earlier this week, I found myself back on St. Marks Place for a reason I can no longer remember. Not unlike certain other byways such as, say, Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, 21st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and/or the westerly regions of Spring Street in SoHo, St Marks Place is a street I have very strong associations with. Like whole nations of other people, for me, this gateway to the East Village used to be a veritable bazaar of cool, bohemian insouciance. Of course, that sounds like a fanciful pastry full-o’-crap today, but it genuinely was this super-cool destination, peppered with so many concerns that exuded its overall punky aesthetic. It was the epicenter, for a long while, of pretty much everything I was looking for from a comparatively underground pop culture that wanted nothing to do what the jocks and the preps and the beautiful kids cared about way north of 14th Street, however ridiculously clichéd that may now sound.

Here in 2022, once again, that St. Marks Place is long, long gone. Between the demolition on its northwesterly corner (still slated to host a sun-blotting corporate tower of some variety) and the proliferation of shoddily assembled and poorly maintained dining sheds, St. Marks Place is in both literal and figurative disrepair. Obviously, this problem isn’t relegated solely to St. Marks (take a stroll south on Thompson Street, some morning, and you’ll encounter a similar situation that affronts the senses), but St. Marks now seems bereft of any of its former character and relative luster. With the possible exception of concerns like Search & Destroy and maybe Funkytown, there’s nothing left for the punks among you, here. All the record and disc shops like Sounds, Mondo Kims, Venus, Free Being and Rockit Scientist are all long, long gone. Ventures that once defined the strip like DoJo and the Grassroots Tavern are similarly missing in action. St. Marks Comics moved to Industry City in Brooklyn, and Trash & Vaudeville moved deeper into the East Village. So much of what made St. Marks Place cool … or even inviting, for me … is gone. It’s a graveyard.

While waiting to hear back from a mercurial vendor, this morning, I was killing time on YouTube and stumbled upon the video below of the Upper Crust in 1998, gracing the stage of Coney Island High, a storied-albeit-comparatively-short-lived live-music venue that used to be smack dab in the middle St. Marks between Third and Second Avenues. Formerly the site that hosted the GREENDOORNYC parties (as mentioned here), the site was acquired by local punk hero Jesse Malin (more about him here and here). I was actually at this show, but Coney Island High was a frequent stop of mine, at the time. Other bands I saw on that diminutive stage include The Damned, The Dickies, Barkmarket, The Dandy Warhols, The Prissteens, DGeneration, The Dictators and Firewater, to name a small few. It was an amazing space that was closed roughly a year after this was recorded by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in his war on New York City nightlife … as if anyone needed another reason to hate that fuckin’ guy.

In any case, here’s a brief taste of what it was like…..enjoy.

At War with The Fitness Freaks: The Battle for Bond Street

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember a short series of entries I posted here back in 2016 wherein I attempted to divine the exact location of a short lived basement-level live-music venue called Downtown circa 1989. I remembered it as a place on Bond Street in NoHo that my beloved Killing Joke had been slated to play (going so far as having their name cited on a notice board outside its entrance). The venture actually closed before that show could take place. Other folks remembered it as place they’d seen local bands like White Zombie, the Lunachicks and the Cycle Sluts from Hell along with bigger names like Celtic Frost, Clan of Xymox, Cronos from Venom and Gang Green.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever found out much more about the place beyond pinpointing its location as the spot I’d remembered from that aborted Killing Joke gig. It was mere steps to the east of Broadway at Bond Street. here I am in front of it circa 2016.

It seems in the years since its tenure as Downtown — however fleeting that was — the space at 1 Bond Street has undergone a series of transformations, its days hosting loud rock n’ roll now but a romantic, sepia-toned notion for silver-scalped rock dads like myself. These days, it caters to a very different demographic.

As lamented here, in recent years, pretty much the entirety of the surrounding so-called “NoHo” neighborhood has become a de-facto “fitness corridor,” peppered with places like boxing-gym Rumble, David Barton, Soul Cycle, Equinox, Barry’s Boot Camp and a wide host of other workout-centric endeavors. I don’t necessarily decry the concept of physical fitness, I just don’t quite understand the necessity of such a high-volume concentration of said businesses in one single neighborhood.

True to this trend, the space at 1 Bond Street that had, once upon a time, been the rock club Downtown is now an adjunct space of a venture called Crossfit Union Square (who are technically located at the ominous location of 666 Broadway). From that lower-staircase, the clientele of same now regularly meet by the corner of Bond and Broadway, … and wait for their signal.

And when they get that signal — maybe it’s a starter’s pistol or a pertly chirped whistle or a gruff bark from a drill sergeant with a meaty neck — they run. And they run with a gravely humorless sense of determination around the circumference of the block.

The sprint sweatily and shirtlessly with rippling musculature towards Lafayette Street, at which point they turn like harried stags in flight of a hunter’s shotgun to the south and bound with breathy bravado down that stately avenue to the corner of Bleecker Street, where they turn west to lope like charging stallions back towards Broadway. Upon reaching that main artery, they course-correct like hoary steeds of glory to race north with steely focus. At Bond Street, they turn with great, dewy aplomb and complete their lap, glowing with an almost viscous radiance.

All to which I say, … “HEY, WE HAVE PARKS FOR THAT!”

I’m not sure if my handful of readers are at all familiar with the streets in question, but suffice it to say that the byways of Bond, Lafayette, Bleecker and Broadway can be handily described as “busy." Around that single block, highly trafficked businesses like Blick Art Materials, Bond No. 9, Showfields Department Store, Los Tacos No. 1, LeVain Bakery, Aape New York, Le Pain Quoditen, Wendy’s and a City MD (to name a few) all steadily operate. As such, the surrounding sidewalks are regularly teeming with foot traffic. In front of Los Tacos and LeVain alone, aspiring patrons literally line-up in anticipation of their turns. Navigating these stretches of crowded pavement even at a casual stroll can be demanding, lest you collide with an impatient muffin-consumer or taco enthusiast. Now, inject into this equation regular herds of fast-moving, self-absorbed, endorphin-addled fitness freaks and you have a roiling, organic obstacle course ready to detonate at any second.

Once again, I’m not saying anyone should necessarily refrain from working out or seeking to actualize their idealized visions of their healthiest, sexiest selves, but there’s a time and place for that shit, and the already pointedly crowded byways of lower Manhattan assuredly ain’t it.

Take it to the parks, people.

Where Strode the Warriors?

Over on Facebook, my friend and fellow NYHC acolyte Lou posted a shot from a deleted scene from "The Warriors." Lou writes

A scene that never made it into the movie or as a deleted scene. The Warriors walking through The Savage Huns territory. It was filmed in an alley in Soho.

Here's that photo now....

Now, I like to think I'm fairly familiar with the topography of lower Manhattan, at this point, but I can't think of an alley in SoHo that matches this terrain. It's certainly not Cortlandt Alley off of Canal. 

I postulated that this might be St. John's Lane, an alley that extends between Laight Street and Beach Street at the mouth of Tribeca, just steps to the west of Sixth Avenue. There's been a lot of development since 1979, but here's that strip now...

\

What do we think? Weigh-in, Boppers. 

 

"BEST ARTIST" Rene Never Walked Away

I put up a fleeting post about Rene, the “I AM THE BEST ARTIST” muralist (among other things), some time ago after finding a short interview with him wherein he expounded on his hyperbolically self-aggrandizing declarations that were formerly visible on several facades around SoHo like the one above on West Broadway at Grand Street as captured by photographer Leo London. You can see that here.

Beyond those works, though, it should be noted that Rene also acquired a bit of infamy for some of his more provocative artwork, specifically a series of sculptures that featured detailed depictions of female genitalia in the center of a crucifix. Vintage cable-access porn afficianodos may remember a clip on late-night Channel J’s programming of “Midnight Blue” wherein a cigar-chomping Al Goldstein -– dressed up as Jesus, of course -– gets thrown out of St. Patrick’s Cathedral with one Rene’s aforementioned sculptures on his back. I promise you I’m not making that up.

For whatever reason, I somehow assumed that Rene had shuffled off this mortal coil. I’m happy to report, however, that I was mistaken in my assumption, and that “THE BEST ARTIST” is alive, well and still with us. If you’ve got a half-hour to spare, please avail yourselves to this video wherein the man himself showcases his work around SoHo back in the day, and expounds on the meanings behind the messages.

No Way Back to The Bowery

To this day, toss the word “Bowery” into a conversation with your fellow New Yorkers, and certain indelible associations will invariably spring right up. Some folks will immediately cite “bums” and derelict flophouses. Others might take a higher road and mention myriad retail light-fixture and kitchenware outlets. For myself and several like me, the first and foremost touchstone is, of course, Punk Rock, what with the Bowery formerly playing host to late, lamented CBGB, the veritable epicenter of everything that genre/subculture/movement exemplified (sorry, England). When I hear “Bowery,” that remains the first thing that comes to mind, and probably always will.

There are entirely too many seminal images to pair with this particular association, from early snaps by Roberta Bayley and David Godlis of characters like Richard Hell and the Ramones to iconic photographs of the legions of kids from the hardcore matinee days, many of those taken by photogs like Brooke Smith and Drew Carolan. For me, one of my favorites has always been the shot above by Godlis from 1978. Captured one atmospheric night long after hours, this “No Wave” all-stars team photo features iconoclastic scene-makers and band members like James Chance, Jim Sclavunos, Anya Philips, filmmaker Diego Cortez and others leaning louchely against a car outside of CBGB, whilst the incomparable enfant terrible of that scene, one Miss Lydia Lunch, is perched on the vehicle’s roof. Behind them, the forbidding expanses of Bleecker Street, Bond Street and The Bowery play host to roaming cars with impossibly bright headlights that split the night. The whole photograph just exudes such an aura of impossibly sneery cool -– insouciant punks laying claim to a desolate backwater to make their own brand of noise.

Well, that fanciful depiction was further decimated for me today upon reading, via my comrade EV Grieve, that a brand-spankin’ new J.Crew is opening up a 316 Bowery.

Apologies to Yorkville: A Quick Correction

As mentioned within the body of the text, my recent entry about Robert Chambers, Jennifer Levin and Dorrian's Red Hand caused me a little bit of concern that I might get a bit of pushback. To this day, 36 years after the fact, the "Preppy Murder" story is one many people would quite prefer not be invoked, discussed or even alluded to in passing. This is not to suggest that Robert Chambers still has his, for lack of a better term, "supporters" (I sincerely hope he doesn't), but that the whole chapter saddled Dorrian's and its literal generations of loyal patrons with a bit of a tenaciously damning reputation. In much the same way the former concierge and staff of the Chelsea Hotel wished people would stop bringing up Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen in tandem with their business, I'm quite sure the familial proprietors of Dorrian's Red Hand quickly soured on the notoriety that came with the bar's seemingly inexorable association with Robert Chambers. 

I'm not here to mine that story any further (although you should definitely check out the impending second episode of Desperately Seeking the `80's exhumation of the whole saga). That said, I realized, this morning, that I made a shameful geographical error that needs to be promptly cleared up.

I suggested in the --- good lord -- eleventh, needlessly windy paragraph that Ryan's Daughter, a bar I greatly preferred over Dorrian's, was down the street on East 84th between 1st and 2nd Avenues. This is not at all the case. Dorrian's remains on East 84th Street, while Ryan's Daughter is on East 85th Street, goddammit. Given the amount of time I spent there, back in the day, I should really have remembered that accurately. I realize this is a minor point, but wrong is wrong, and I strive for better. 

Being that I haven't lived in the neighborhood in question in 26 years, I cannot say I've stopped in recently, but I am happy to report that Ryan's Daughter is still in business. Their old, vinyl-45 jukebox (which was regularly maintained and updated by a fabulous lady behind the bar with great, punky taste whose name now escapes me) was long-replaced by a more modern machine, but the interior and overall vibe is otherwise unchanged.

Those with a keen eye for detail might still find there a framed cutting from an age-old and long-vanished freebie newspaper called New York Perspectives wherein the bar is rightly praised for being a hidden Yorkville gem and not to bring a "carload of idiots" with you when you come by for a drink. I wrote that one.

A Hot, August Night at Dorrian's Red Hand

It feels strange to discern that despite my blog being topically preoccupied with my youth in New York City, in the 16 plus years I’ve been writing Flaming Pablum, I have only mentioned the fabled Dorrian’s Red Hand in a single instance, and then only in passing.

What makes that strange is that for someone growing up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the neighborhood I called home from my birth in 1967 to my departure for the greener pastures downtown in 1996, Dorrian’s was this hugely significant locale, for a lot of folks.

By way of quick explanation, for those who may not be familiar with the establishment in question, Dorrian’s Red Hand (I’ve never been quite sure what the full name was about, but something from hoary Celtic lore, I’m assuming) has been a neighborhood Irish bar perched on the southeast corner of East 84th Street and Second Avenue (directly across the street from former comic-book stronghold, Supersnipe, for all my fellow nerds out there) since 1960. During the height of the `80s, of course, Dorrian’s developed a pronounced reputation for its permissive door policy, making it an absolutely crucial destination for, shall we say, aspiring drinkers of smaller-than-necessarily-legal years. For whatever reason, Dorrian’s rather brazenly got away with serving under-age patrons on the regular, and made a presumably lucrative business doing so.

The odd thing about that, though, was that it was largely perceived as being basically “perfectly okay” by both a nation of (probably equally drinky) UES parents and, evidently, the local constabulary. I don’t ever remember the bar getting busted for what was basically their bread-&-butter business (that being the hawking of booze to minors), but I guess the pervading sentiment was “better at Dorrian’s than somewhere else” (as if Dorrian’s was, like, your kindly grandmother’s basement rec room or something).

That, of course, would all change in the wake of one humid August night in 1986.

I’m referring, obviously, to the notorious “Preppy Murder” case wherein one Robert Chambers left Dorrian’s with one Jennifer Levin. From Dorrian’s, the pair adjourned into the sepulchral darkness of Central Park. At 6:15 the following morning, Levin’s half-naked corpse was found by a tree near the back of the Metropolitan Museum. Chambers was arrested and shortly charged with strangling her during what he continues to allege was a bout of “rough sex.” In pursuit of a bargain, Chambers pled guilty to first-degree manslaughter, for which he was sentenced a five-to-15 year term.

Following the media frenzy that was that strenuously salacious trial, the Levin family understandably went after Dorrian’s, alleging that the bar overserved Chambers that evening, a claim which Dorrian’s later settled out of court. In due course, Chambers went to prison, Levin went to the cemetery and Dorrian’s, more or less, went back to business as usual … well, following a brief loss of their liquor license and some dodgy tax trouble.

The ramifications of the “Preppy Murder” rippled out across the city’s nightlife, and certain businesses all around town that once turned blind eyes were suddenly cracking down and asking for IDs. Many ventures actually closed. I’m thinking specifically about Danceteria on West 21st Street, a club that was known for its similarly permissive stance, although I’ve heard rumors that … there was another reason, but that’s a post for another day.

In the ensuing three decades since that fateful night, Chambers served out his full, 15-year term -– albeit with numerous disciplinary infractions -– and was released in 2003, only to hopscotch in and out of prison for myriad drug offenses over the next several years. As of today, he’s currently incarcerated at the Shawangunk Correctional Facility upstate. He could get out as soon as 2024, but I wouldn’t bet any large sums that he’d be out for long.

Meanwhile, I’ve never really been able to reconcile how Dorrian’s managed to soldier on, following the toxic PR fallout from the “Preppy Murder” case, but somehow, it bounced back. It’s still open and considered a venerable neighborhood institution to this day. I cannot attest to the current scene being in any way comparable to the way it was back in the `80s, but I’ve heard tell that, at the very least, the surface-level trappings are more or less all still there. The awning’s still red. The tablecloths are still the same red-checkered pattern. The jukebox is also evidently still filled with `80s favorites, which is odd, considering that one might have assumed the bar would like to move on from the associations of that era. In the `90s, I actually interviewed their door-minder Kerry for an article I was penning for New York Perspectives about great Upper East Side jukeboxes, although can't remember what I said about it. 

For the longest time, I avoided talking about Dorrian’s Red Hand because, well, it was just never my scene. I mean, I certainly did darken its doors on several occasions, as did countless people from both my grammar and high schools, but never felt particularly comfortable doing so (especially when I was still officially underage). More to the point, though, while I grew up on the Upper East Side and attended the same schools as the regulars at Dorrian’s, I didn’t really share an affinity for that crowd and its accompanying trappings and priorities. I harbored no desire to be perceived as a prep in any capacity. My former brother-in-law once memorably described my sartorial aesthetic as having one foot in Brooks Brothers and the other in CBGB, an uncomfortably incongruous amalgam of styles that found no safe haven in ventures like Dorrian’s Red Hand. The fact that I was also an awkward, pointedly self-conscious geek certainly didn’t help matters.

In the latter half of my high school years, I lived only a couple of blocks away from Dorrian’s, but, of an evening, was usually more likely to be found skulking about on the edifice of the Metropolitan Museum (as detailed here) or tucked discreetly just inside the entry way to Central Park on the southwest corner of 79th & Fifth Avenue, furtively sipping contraband beers in the company of certain comrades next to a boombox playing favorites by Rush, AC/DC and Iron Maiden (we referred to this spot as “Klub 79”). By the time I was actively and legally going to bars, my UES/Yorkville watering holes of choice were either The Gaf on East 85th (long gone) and Ryan’s Daughter on East 84th, just steps off First Avenue. Ryan’s Daughter had a vastly superior jukebox and the diminished likelihood of abject douchebaggery you were likely guaranteed to encounter up the block at Dorrian’s. Also, by this point, I was way more than likely to be headed to points downtown than spending time in the (to my mind, at the time) cripplingly staid environs of the Upper East Side.

But, there’s another reason I’ve been disinclined to delve too deeply into the story of Dorrian’s, Robert Chambers and Jennifer Levin, and that’s because I used to know Robert Chambers.

As fleetingly alluded in a few posts, over the years, “Robert C.” and I both attended St. David’s on East 89th street. Whenever this is invoked “in real life,” I am usually very quick to point out that “when I knew him,” we were both children, presumably prior to his gradual transformation into a thieving, drug-fueled and murderous sociopath. Robert was in the grade ahead of me, but unlike most of the other boys in his class, never lorded that over we underclassmen or treated us like a dick. As an irretrievably hapless nerd, I certainly knew more than my fair share of bullies, but Robert was never one of them. I don’t mean to sugarcoat anything or condone his actions later in life, but when we were schoolmates, Robert was a perfectly good kid. He even saved my friend Spike and I from being robbed and beaten up (as recounted on this ancient post). Sorry if that doesn’t jibe with the popular narrative, but there it is.

But my reasons for never really discussing it here before have less to do with being concerned about besmirching Robert Chambers’ name (I’d suggest he’s already done a fine job of that himself), and more about how the community from which all these figures sprang still seems to feel about it. Perhaps I’ve been entirely projecting, all these years, but I get the sense that a whole lot of folks would rather this story just not be discussed any further. Granted, it’s a dark, ugly chapter that has been irretrievably sensationalized, but one gets the pervasive vibe that that’s not the reason. It still hits home very deeply for a lot of people on a level I’m not entirely sure I can empathize with, and I don’t know that I’ll ever reconcile that.

In any case, the only reason I’m bringing this all up now is that my lovely new comrades over at Desperately Seeking the `80s are devoting two whole episodes of their podcast to the myths, intricacies and fallout of the “Preppy Murder” story, and their deep dives are well worthy of your attention. You can hear part one by clicking right here. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

Incidentally, while the case predictably inspired a host of horrible made-for-tv movies, the “Preppy Murder” case also went onto inspire several musicians. Along with prompting songs by Hole and The Killers (two bands I have zero fascination for), it also manifested as the topic of the song “Eliminator Jr.” on Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation. Here’s them playing that now, not that you’d necessarily be able to tell it’s about that…

Back to The Blue Willow

I’ve been very lucky, over the years, to have found people for whom my weird little posts resonate. I’m always skeptical that some trivial factoid that I’m all hot and bothered about will actually connect with a reader that shares that particular enthusiasm, but every now and then, it happens. I’m also continually amazed that some items that I just blithely mention in passing get latched onto and widely circulated. Which stories find their audience and why are not an exact sciences, by any stretch.

In any case, this entry is something of a minuscule follow-up to one of those stories I was somewhat inexplicably all fired up about upon first posting it. Technically, all it’s really about is a room in a long-vanished restaurant where a photograph was taken, but something about the story has always continued to haunt me. Let’s see if I can capably encapsulate it.

Back in 2013, I put up a post titled “Searching for the Blue Willow.” The Blue Willow, by way of explanation was an eatery on the northeast corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street that was allegedly open between October of 1983 and some point in 1990. I never dined in that establishment, I’m sad to say, but it was notable to me in that I’d gleaned that one of its rear chambers had served as the location for the photograph that graced the cover of one of my favorite albums of all time, that being Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves by Gavin Friday and The Man Seezer. Here’s that cover now.

Cool, right?

Exuding a beguiling air of what I called “elegant decrepitude” in that first post, the sleeve of Each Man Kills… features Gavin Friday, former singer in Dublin’s macabre post-punk combo, the Virgin Prunes, leaning with louche aplomb against the piano of musical co-conspirator Maurice Seezer, depicted with his back to the viewer as he presumably plays. Beneath a stylishly distressed wall of stripped wallpaper, a nude couple embraces next to a glowing jukebox. Snapped by renowned Dutch rock photographer Anton Corbijn, the image says absolutely nothing about the era in which it was captured. It’s a mysterious picture that perfectly matches the sound, sentiment and sensibility of the album it sheathes. You’d never know that, at the time this photo was taken, the pop charts were caked with idiotic offal like “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred and “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C+C Music Factory, but I digress.

I have no idea whose idea it was to shoot the cover and accompanying promo images and single sleeves in the Blue Willow, but I can only imagine Gavin had happened upon it and been enchanted by its noirish, old-world atmosphere. Or maybe it was just a lucky fluke. Regardless, when I learned the name and the location of the restaurant (regrettably over a decade and a half after it closed its doors), I was immediately compelled, as detailed in that first post, to check out what was in that space in 2013.

At the time, of course, it was a douchey menswear emporium called Atrium who leant out its rear space — the very chamber where the the sleeve of Each Man Kills… was taken — to a pricey sneaker concern called, inexplicably, KITH. As you’ll see back on that first post, only traces of the original details of Corbijn’s cover could still be seen, notably the flooring and some of the marble trim that was depicted in some of the other photos from the shoot.

A couple of years after that, I posted a quick follow up to report that even those remaining elements were, by that point, covered up.

That was pretty much that. I remember posting the original piece on a discussion board about Gavin Friday and the Virgin Prunes. Already converted to the cause, so to speak, that community was duly intrigued and appreciative, but the layperson probably doesn’t care too much. But I remained so intrigued by the Blue Willow and always wanted to see more.

The only problem was…. there wasn’t much out there about it. I forget where I’d found it, but I did have an image of a matchbook from the place, as well as a fleeting mention of the eatery taken from a 1984 article in the Times about its then-slow-gentrifying neighborhood. Here’s the crucial mention from that piece.

'Back then, Lower Broadway was a bankrupt neighborhood with bums lying around in doorways,'' said Martin Fine. Mr Fine, a lawyer, owns the four-month-old Blue Willow restaurant at 644 Broadway at the corner of Bleecker Street. All the food in his restaurant is cooked without salt. Mr. Fine also owns the building it occupies, a former bank with handsome moldings and chandeliers. ''A few of us bought buildings here because we knew that someday the area would be hot,'' Mr. Fine said.

Where is Martin Fine today, one wonders.

In any case, beyond the images on and associated with Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves and that matchbook, I had no other visual ephemera to pair with the place.

Until today.

For no readily apparent reason, I was doing some random Googling, as I’m wont to do, and thoughtlessly entered the words “Blue Willow” and “Bleecker.” While the same images I’d posted on my blog about the Gavin Friday album came right up, a link to the Poster Museum also came up with a “vintage poster” of the place that practically blew a new part in my hair. Here’s the prefacing text.

"644 Broadway Corner Bleecker Street. New York, New York. Open Late."

Original vintage poster for a Chinese restaurant, the Blue Willow. The poster illustration features a bustling dining room, a waitress incoming with a majestic peacock on a platter—not to be eaten, I hope!

Artist: Kristen Johnson

Year: c. 1975

Condition: Fair, please note some small tears along the poster's perimeter. The appearance of tears can be significantly improved by having the poster linen-backed.

Here’s the image now….

Anyone notice the discrepancy?

Clearly, this is the very same Blue Willow, given the correlating address, but the Poster Museum believes this artifact dates back “circa 1975,” when, by the fleeting accounts I’ve tracked down, including the afore-cited New York Times piece, the restaurant didn’t open until 1983.

Like I said, this probably means so much less to most folks than it means to me, but the fact that since 2013, I’ve been able to discern that the Blue Willow boasted a kind of Belle Epoque vibe, served Chinese food and prepared its fare without any salt helps complete the picture.

Here in 2022, I can report that Atrium has since closed and vacated the premises at 644 Broadway. Noxious footwear concern KITH, meanwhile, decamped and moved a block to the east, taking over the old “Peace Pentagon” building that used to house Paper Tiger TV and Marty’s Cool Stuff.

Gavin Friday went onto release on a few more truly excellent albums before focussing predominantly on soundtrack work. His last proper solo album was 2011’s Catholic.

That ground-floor space at 644 has now been vacant, dormant and covered up since well prior to the pandemic. I am unrealistically hoping that whatever venture next occupies that space sees fit to restore some of the hidden trappings first captured on the sleeve of Each Man Kills…, but with my luck, its next iteration will be a AT&T cell phone outlet.

Some sonic context...

Wolfman Flees Park: A Dr. Feelgood Mystery Update

Every now and again, someone will latch onto an old post of mine and share it on social media. It’s rare that I’m able to track down how the post is being framed or re-purposed, but I’m also curious as to which posts garner such second winds. I noticed one such post get a re-discovery boost today, and felt compelled to bring proceedings up to speed.

Regular readers might remember an entry I posted here back in 2015 about an arguably obscure British band from the early `70s called Dr. Feelgood (not to be confused with the Motley Crue album of the same name). In a nutshell, Dr. Feelgood was a “pub rock” band who played a taut, hardscrabble brand of R&B (and by that I mean guitar-based rhythm and blues, not schmaltzy loverman ballads) in an era when the pervading tastes were more inclined towards mellow, Laurel Canyon-styled singer/songwriters and the more indulgent aspects of shaggy prog rock. They were loud, bawdy and aggressive and played songs that were comparatively short, sharp and shocking. Basically, Dr. Feelgood were out-of-step punks before punk was punk.

In any case, this particular post of mine concentrated on a tiny aspect of a documentary made about them by filmmaker Julien Temple called “Oil City Confidential.” In one fleeting seqeunce therein, Temple divulges that former lead singer Lee Brilleaux (above) had passed away in 1994 from cancer. While recounting same, Temple showed strangely incongruous footage of a tiny memorial plaque in Brilleaux’s honor on a park bench in my own Manhattan’s West Village. Acting on a hunch, I tracked down the actual bench and plaque, as documented in that post, in Jackson Square. On the surface, it made absolutely zero sense to have a memorial plaque to Lee Brilleaux in the West Village of Manhattan, given that the fabled frontman never lived on these shores, nor had any tangible connection to New York City.

Towards the end of that post, meanwhile, I disclosed that a compatriot of mine had solved the riddle, sharing that a nearby art gallery, White Columns, had done a whole installation about Dr. Feelgood, one aspect of which was affixng Lee’s small plaque to a bench in Jackson Square. The link I posted in that orignal entry no longer goes to the explainer page, but I found another page with the full story (and pictures) still available here. Apparently, the plaque was put up at some point in 2005, a decade before I discovered it through Julien Temple’s film.

Noting that my post was being re-circulated, however, I thought it was prudent, once again, to bring things up to date. If you go looking for Lee Brilleaux’s memorial plaque here in 2022, I am sad to relay that you will not find it. For whatever reason, what started off as the only memorial park-bench plaque in Jackson Square has been replaced by a slew of new ones commemorating since-deceased figures who, more than likely, actually have some genuine connection to the park, unlike dear, departed Lee. That makes sense, of course, but I miss the strange little anomaly of that furtive tribute.

Meanwhile, for those curious, here’s some great footage of Dr. Feelgood in action, taken from a French television program from 1976 called “Beau Fixe Sur Pithiviers.” The band shows up in a vintage blue convertible in the beginning, then plug in and rock your face off starting at around 01:59.