Flaming Pablum

Who Made the Scene at By Any Means Green?

This will matter to an exceptionally small few of you, but it’s been bugging me, so perhaps it’ll intrigue you as well.

Regular readers might remember an entry I posted back in the fall of 2020 about By Any Means Green, which was a benefit show held at CBGB in the summer of, I think, 1991. I’d stumbled across a poster of it on instagram, and later found a better scan of it on a Jon Spencer fan site. Here it is now…

This artwork, as mentioned in that first post, is the handiwork of “Dirty” Danny Hellman, an illustrator who used to do amazing work for outlets like New York Press and Al Goldstein’s Screw, back in the day. Like I said, Hellman had also drawn an amazing illustration of Cop Shoot Cop and Iggy Pop in 1993 that I bought off of him several years back. To see Hellman reunited with Cop Shoot Cop again warmed my heart, and I asserted that if anyone still had a copy of this poster, I’d pay handsomely for it.

I actually reached out to Danny himself about it, but he conceded that even he didn’t have a copy of it, remarking instead about how he hates having to draw horses. Oh well.

I pretty much figured that was that until spotting a variation of the poster above last week. Beyond being seemingly divorced from Hellman’s illlustration, the details of the gig are different on this bill, finding the mighty Lunachicks occupying the top billing instead of Cop Shoot Cop.

Check it out below, and click on it to enlarge…

Now being that the benefit gig in question -- organized by Marguerite Van Cook and held on behalf of the Park Rights Council to “save Tompkins Square Park” -- transpired a whopping three decades ago this July, information on who played and how it all went down is all a bit hard to track down. But in doing some further creative Googling, I happened on this page, featuring a third flyer advertising the same gig. Once again, click on it to enlarge...

Heightening the mystery further, this fetching flyer –- drawn by John Terhorst, based on an original illustration by James Romweber, husband of event-organizer Marguerite Van Cook, and father of Crosby Romweber, the plucky tyke pictured on the sleeve of Cop Shoot Cop’s 1992 album, Ask Questions Later -- puts the colorfully named Reverb Motherfuckers in the top spot, despite citing C$C at the bottom. The Lunachicks get nary a mention.

So, I’m putting it out there – who went to this gig? Did you? What’s the story? Who officially ended up headlining By Any Means Green?

Today, meanwhile, whether effectively saved or not, Tompkins Square Park is still there, thirty years later. Cop Shoot Cop broke up circa 1995, although the resultant acrimony is largely water under the bridge, at this stage. The Lunachicks reformed quite recently, albeit without guitarist Sindi Benezra (pictured above). CBGB closed for good in 2006.

Back to McCarren Pool: Devo in 2008

Tonight will be either the eighth or ninth time I’ve seen my beloved Devo perform, having previously caught them at shows at Radio City Music Hall, the Palladium, the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, the Central Park Summerstage, the Hammerstein Ballroom, the McCarren Park Pool in Brooklyn, Irving Plaza and at least one or two others I’m forgetting. I had tix to see them return to Radio City Music Hall in 2021, but that got nixed. As Devo was my first-ever concert in 1981, I’m bringing Oliver, and they will be HIS first-ever concert. We are very much looking forward to it.

Someone recently uploaded the whole show at McCarren Pool from 2008, which was an amazing gig indeed. I ranted about it in real time here. This video omits the very end, however, when Devo tried to come out for an encore (with Booji Boy) and some McCarren Pool goon literally snatched the mic out of Mark’s hand. So much for Brooklyn being laid back.

Here was Jerry’s take on the incident (from this oral history):

Casale: At the end of every Devo show, the band comes out with Mark wearing the Booji Boy mask and we do “Beautiful World.” The sound always comes down and Booji Boy does a faux-Springsteen satire telling long drawn-out stories, but not at McCarren. The pool had a ridiculously early curfew of 10 p.m., but we didn’t think it was a hard and fast rule. Before we started, the mics and the amplification went dead thanks to the long arm of the law. I’m screaming at the sound guys on the side of the stage, the audience is booing and hissing, it’s getting ugly. Two security guards walk out on the stage and tell Booji Boy he’s got to go. In his high-pitched voice he’s saying, “I just want to talk to them,” and the guards grab him by the arms and walk him off the stage. We thought, “We’re the headliners, they have to let us finish our set.” We couldn’t believe it. All those radiation suits and energy domes became sad clown outfits.

A then-derelict giant swimming pool. I remember dutifully rockin’ out at this show in a pair of battered ol’ Chuck Taylors. After two hours of boucin’ up and down on the pool’s unrelenting, cracked concrete floor, I could barely walk.

A few years later, McCarren Pool stopped hosting live music and was converted back into a public pool in 2012, something of a death knell for that era of Williamsburg's character. 

Six years after this performance, original Devo member Bob "Bob 2" Casale passed away, the second original member to die after drummer Alan "Human Metronome" Myers in 2013. Today, the surviving members -- Mark Mothersbaugh, Jerry Casale and Bob "Bob 1" Mothersbaugh -- are flanked by longtime drummer Josh Freese -- who has played with everyone from A Perfect Circle and Guns N' Roses through Weezer, The Vandals and Nine Inch Nails -- and guitarist Josh Hager, formerly of The Rentals and ShadowParty.  

Crank it.

We're Still All Devo

I’m usually a big WNYC fan, but I have to say that the interviewer here, David Furst sitting in for Alison Stewart, kinda drops the ball in this sit-down with Mark and Jerry (above) from Devo on the eve of their long-awaited return to New York City tomorrow night at the Rooftop at Pier 17. One doesn’t get the impression that the interview did more than a cursory perusing over Devo’s full story. Mark sounds bored and Jerry sounds increasingly agitated with the direction of the conversation. Kind of a missed opportunity, really.

I’m, of course, going tomorrow night, and I’ll be accompanied by my son. This will not only be his first Devo show, but his first concert ever, which is fitting, as Devo was my first concert back in 1981.

I’ll let ya know how it goes.

Back Again to Wendy's Wall

This is not a consequential one, but what the Hell?

Longtime readers – again, if they exist – might remember a few posts last year wherein a serendipitously unearthed a photograph of something I’d long been searching for, that being a depiction and exact location of a graffiti mural of The Plasmatics that I’d seen back in the early `80s from behind the window of a school bus traveling south in Spanish Harlem.

As first invoked here, then brought to fruition here. the wall in question ended up being the eastern-facing façade of a plot of real estate on East 106th & Park Avenue dubbed “The Graffiti Hall of Fame.” After some diligent Googling, I’d managed to pretty much divine the latitude and longitude of the spot and even found a representation of the (presumably) long-one bit of artwork.

Shortly after that, as documented on this follow-up post, I picked up a fetching coffee-table book about the Graffiti Hall of Fame and came across a better photograph of the wall and artwork in question. I reached out to the photographer in question – that being one Martha Cooper – and inquired about possibly purchasing a print of the photograph. Alas, the figure her handler quoted for same was a bit steep, so I didn’t pursue it. Oh well.

In any case, in the wake of that, I did indeed go up to re-check out the spot. As expected, the rendering of the Plasmatics logo (alongside a cartoony depiction of Wendy O. Williams brandishing a signature chainsaw next to Richie Stotts’ signature Flying V guitar, bisected and spurting blood) had long-since been painted over. I snapped some pics, but never got around to posting them here.

Over this past weekend, however, my son, Oliver, and I went back up to that neck of the woods, specifically for the purposes of checking out the Museum of the City of New York’s excellent “New York, New Music” exhibit (which is still there through September, incidentally). On the way, we got off the 6 train at 96th and Lex and walked up to Park Avenue and down the hill of that very tributary up to East 106th.

Here’s that same wall here in 2022. That's me in front, looking like I just spotted something unspeakable happening just off-camera. 

And this, once again, was the Plasmatics…

Back to The Bunker

I’ve evidently gotten to the age wherein I’m forgetting about stuff I’ve already written about here. I got about one third into a strenuously long-winded post about carving things in wet cement in Manhattan that was eventually going to meander around, after a few tenuous anecdotes, to the main point of the post, that being the cryptic concrete carving outside of 93 Avenue B, the former “bunker” of Michael Gira and Jarboe and SWANS headquarters (pictured above, courtesy of the Living Jarboe), only to remember that I’d already devoted a big ol’ post to it in 2013. Whoops.

In any event, that little strip of East Village has been on my mind, in the last few weeks, for another reason, that being the somewhat half-baked series, “Russian Doll” on Netflix. I enjoyed Season One as sort of a cloying hipster version of “Groundhog Day,” but I’m really struggling with Season Two. In any case, a lot of the action happens in and around Tompkins Square Park and its surrounding environs.  I took a stroll over there this morning, now a destination for mimosa-swigging brunches, to see if the SWANS tag was still etched into the concrete. 

Once again, this is the spiraling vortex motif that adorned their releases circa 1987’s Children of God, which found the band slowly evolving their sound out of slave-ship stern-und-drang and into more accessibly melodic terrain, largely via the addition of Jarboe, whose soaring vocals and introspective songwriting leant the band a more versatile palette.

The album in question, however, was sort of mired by the unwitting albatross of an ill-considered (to my mind) Joy Division cover (“Love Will Tear Us Apart”) which really did no one any favors apart from possibly the coffers of Ian Curtis’ estate. While it also featured SWANS favorites like “New Mind” (which prompted the band’s first ever “proper” music video, finding Gira lip-synching into a flashlight, drooling and brandishing an axe) and the strikingly delicate “In My Garden” (a full-on Jarboe contribution), my favorite moment of the album has always been the title track. Though still anchored by SWANS’ signature, pummeling rhythm section, the studio version features a haunting performance by Jarboe, harmonizing with herself a recurring, ominous mantra about the hollow promises of religious dogma.

It’s the live version, however, from 1988’s Feel Good Now that really defines it, for me. While his voice is absent from the comparatively ethereal studio version, Gira’s terrifying vocals duet with Jarboe’s in the live setting, providing the tyrannical counterpoint of a vengeful Pentecostal preacher. To my ears, this track is the perfect balance of the band’s brutal beginnings and its embrace of a broader aesthetic.

Today, SWANS are recording a new album with yet another new line-up. While she contributed to their 2012 album, The Seer, Jarboe is no longer a member of SWANS. The space that had been the SWANS Bunker is still a hookah bar/restaurant called The Horus Cafe, and the surrounding neighborhood is no longer quite as fearsomely dicey as it had been.

The carving in the cement in front of their old front door, however? That’s still there.

Astor Place 1983

A photographer named Peter Bennett captured the shot below in 1983, presumably from within (or on top?) of 770 Broadway (formerly Wannamaker's and later K-Mart, and allegedly soon-to-be Wegman's). I spotted it on Facebook, and it stopped me dead in my tracks, as they say.

Here we're looking east over Astor Place and its surrounding, East Village environs. This was obviously taken well before the Cooper Union dormitory was erected in 1992, before the comparatively squat NYU building on the left was razed to accommodate the giant Death Star/Rubik's Cube building went up, before the shampoo bottle condo tower was built in the southernly parking lot, before the corner of St. Marks & Third was razed and before the Gringo mural was painted over. 

This is the Astor Place I fell in love with. Click on it to enlarge. For more of Bennett's work, but sure to check out his website. 

Farewell & Goodnight, Howie Pyro

I was shocked and saddened to learn, this morning, of the passing of bona fide New York City Punk legend, Howie Pyro (above, as captured by Manel Armengol). There was certainly nobody cooler, but he was also just a genuinely nice, funny and inclusive guy. He actually left a couple of comments on this blog, over the years.

Rest In Peace, sir.

Here he is on bass detail with DGeneration in 1994 at Irving Plaza.

Turn it up and pour one out.

Back to The Village

I’ve spoken about the late Nelson Sullivan here many times before, but in a nutshell, he was this sort of visionary character who took tremendous pains to document his life and his experiences on video, which, circa the `80s when he was doing so, involved some comparatively unwieldly equipment.

This particular strip below was actually shot be Nelson on Super8 film, which is not quite as clunky an affair as video. In any case, there isn’t a date on this, but here Nelson captures some revealing footage of Greenwich Village and what is now frequently referred to as “the West Village” (usually incorrectly) from the 1970's. It’s striking how some aspects of it don’t look that different, even this many decades later. Here’s the official description.

Super 8 films shot by Nelson Sullivan on and around Christopher Street in the 1970s. These five reels feature shots of everyday life, focusing on pedestrians, traffic, and the buildings in the area, beginning with a long shot of the vacant Stonewall Inn. Other scenes feature Paws and Claws pet shop, the intersection of Christopher and Gay Street, Tor Restaurant, Rastro Importers (383 Bleecker Street), Frankel Pharmacy, Village Cigars, Riker's, the Christopher Street-Sheridan Square 1 Train station, St. Veronica's Church, and the inside of the former post office at 152 Christopher Street. The final reel begins on the uptown platform of the 1 station, where Nelson boards the train and rides for several stops before the film runs out.

Check it out....

Status Report

Forgiving Young Americans

Like so much of what would become my favorite music, my introduction to David Bowie came via my older sister, Victoria, specifically her copy of Changesonebowie. A seismic compilation (although I don’t think either of us realized that, at the time), Changesonebowie arrived onto the stack of LP’s next to the family stereo circa summer 1978, and swiftly became an all-killer/no-filler favorite of the household (and a much-needed respite from the otherwise tireless airings of the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack and my well-loved copy of Dressed to Kill by KISS). A jaw-dropping array of seamless pop, balls-out rock, sinuous funk, spacey weirdness and glammy panache, Changesonebowie really had just about everything one could ever want, and like certain crucial records before it, notably Mothership Connection by Parliament, Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd and A Night at the Opera by Queen, it was a record we both completely adored in equal measure.

That said, we may have been more divided on the track listing itself. While my sister warmed to the poppier aspects of the record, like “Fame” and “Golden Years,” I tended to lean toward the more riff-driven barnburners like “Diamond Dogs” and “Suffragette City.” I could never quite reconcile the specific sequencing of side two, wherein the cocky guitar stomp of “Rebel Rebel” slid right into the faux-Philly soul shenanigans of “Young Americans,” largely signaling the end of the big rock portion of the record. I didn’t know it, at the time, but it was that very accomplished versatility to shape-shift that ultimately made the man the renowned artist he was, but everyone knows that, now.

If anything, that bemoaned sequencing of that compilation was no accident, itself being a canny encapsulation of what had occurred in that era of Bowie’s trajectory. While touring the grimly dystopian Diamond Dogs (far and away my favorite album by the great man), Bowie grew fatigued with its spiky guitars and proto-goth melodrama and started ditching its trappings for a different sound and style entirely, swapping corroded glam rock for so-called blue-eyed soul. This somewhat bewildering transition is best captured on the live projects David Live and Cracked Actor.

By the release of next studio LP, Young Americans, the transformation was complete. Smitten as I’d been by my first taste of Bowie’s oeuvre, when I started investing in his back catalog in the ensuing years, I deliberately eschewed Young Americans, unable to shake the stigma of that first association. The title track alone started to get on my nerves, a brazen crowd-pleaser for drunken sorority girls who couldn't seem to remember — let alone parse — the actually-quite-complicated lyrics when shouting along to it at keg parties, I considered “Young Americans” a pandering cop-out. Fuck that populist shit, I thought. Give me the weird stuff.

I, of course, was a stupid, young American myself, at the time.

In time, my ironclad adherence to solely “that which rocked” relaxed a bit. As ideally comes with gradual maturity, my tastes broadened to embrace bits of music outside of the parameters of whatever flimsy tribal affiliations I might have previously assigned to myself. Decades later, as a perplexed 54 year old trying to navigate the shifting tectonic plates of popular culture, I no longer care about how my listening habits might be perceived. In terms of my Bowie fandom, I became deeply enamored of all aspects of his discography, from the hard angles of his Berlin period to the folksy whimsy of his first recordings to the brazen accessibility of the Let’s Dance era and all points between and beyond.

But I never bought Young Americans. Or not until today, at least.

My friend John made a coyly telling declaration on Facebook, a couple of days ago, that being…

my cranky old hipster level is "I thought your movie looked cool until the trailer had a 70s Bowie tune in it and then you seemed real basic”

I smiled and hit “like” immediately, assuming he was talking about the clunkily witless placement of “Starman” in the preview to the new Pixar movie about Buzz Lightyear. Turns out he wasn’t. He was actually referring to the use of “Time” from Aladdin Sane in the trailer for “Everything Everywhere All At Once,” (a film he’d later concede was crazy well done). But the point remained the same. While not quite a deep cut, the employment of even a lesser-celebrated single like “Time” in a film’s trailer just seems like a lazy stab at broadcasting some aspired connotation of cool invariably well beyond the scope of your movie. Points off.

But then last night, while chugging through several episodes of Season 1 of Netflix’s “Mindhunter” (yes, I realize I’ve been leaning a bit too uncomfortably into serial-killer content, of late) I was struck by a nuanced, period-specific placement of a libidinously undulating funk track that I immediately recognized as David Bowie, but had still never heard before. Turns out, that song is called “Right,” and it’s the fourth track off of —WAIT FOR IT — Young Americans.

It’s, of course, brilliant.

Today, I strolled up to Academy Records on West 18th, ponied up eight bucks and finally succumbed to the charms of Young Americans.

Crank it.