Flaming Pablum

A Prize from The Priestess

I’ve written about my nascent love of the Plasmatics entirely too many times here, already (see links below), but something reared its head, this morning, that begged for another entry.

As laboriously unspooled on this ancient post, the first time I ever encountered the Plasmatics was in a long-vanished record store in midtown, on Madison Avenue at about 44th street, tucked incongruously between Brooks Brothers and Grand Central Station. Thumbing through their racks, I suddenly came across the band’s just-released second proper LP, that being Beyond The Valley of 1984. As a dyspeptic eighth-grader at war with the world, I was immediately won over by the brazen ludicrousness of the cover art and bought the LP on the spot, having never heard a solitary note of their music. I seem to remember taking pains to smuggle the record into my home, afraid the arguably lurid sleeve would give my mother pause. When my mom did finally catch sight of the album on my desk some weeks later, she only blithely remarked that poor Wendy’s décolletage looked perilously sunburned. So much for shock and horror.

Musically speaking, the actual songs, such as they were, on Beyond the Valley of 1984 matched the band’s image to a tee. In a nutshell, the Plasmatics were dutifully loud, pugnacious and obnoxious -- finesse and subtlety were very much not the order of the day. One might be very hard-pressed to credibly argue that the Plasmatics’ songs were as timelessly incendiary as those of their contemporaries in more respected bands like The Ramones and the like, but one got the impression that songwriting may not have been their first priority. That all said, to my 14-year-old sensibility, at the time, tracks like “Masterplan” “Living Dead,” “Pig is a Pig” and “Sex Junkie” (an exotic condition I was very assuredly unafflicted by, at the time) checked all the right boxes for me.

I played the shit out of Beyond the Valley…, but it was really the follow-up e.p., the equally over-the-top Metal Priestess that delivered the goods. While only six tracks (including two live versions of songs from Beyond the Valley…), it captured a leaner, more disciplined and more ….er… musical iteration of the band. Standout compositions like the occult-flecked “Doom Song” and “Lunacy” (where Wendy got to actually sing instead of gruffly exhort or hoarsely bellow) belied the band’s otherwise unshakeable reputation as simply substance-free spectacle. The album title was a telling one, signifying a shift in style that would come to full, hoary fruition on the follow up LP in 1982, Coup D’Etat (which I wrote about on this post). Even the visuals marked a departure from their punkier origins, finding the band adopting a sartorial aesthetic more akin to conventional heavy metal. The mohawks were still very much to the fore, but they were now augmented with more black leather, spikes and inverted pentagrams — essentially pre-figuring Motley Crue’s whole Shout At The Devil image. Somewhat ironically, around this same era, Motley Crue was in the habit of buzzsawing the heads off of mannequins made to look like Wendy O. Williams onstage. Odd, that — you’d have thought they’d have been kindred spirits.

In any case, in the wake of the follow-up album, the afore-cited Coup D’Etat, the original band basically fell apart. Technically, there was one more album — Maggots: The Record, but it was basically just Wendy and rhythm guitarist/songwriter Wes Beech. After that, Wendy’s voice was essentially shot, although that didn’t stop her from releasing a few solo records.

By the end of the 80s, both Wendy’s solo career and the Plasmatics were pretty much done. Wendy withdrew from the public eye, worked in animal rescue and tragically took her own life in 1998.

Arguably overshadowed by their penchant for wanton destruction, the Plasmatics never really got a critical reappraisal or second life. Beyond the Butcher Babies — an American band named after an early Plasmatics song — most invocations of the Plasmatics are purely lip-service. You might remember me taking Miley Cyrus to task to appropriating the iconography of the Plasmatics — yep, being a gatekeeper again — yet choosing to cover Blondie on her album. What?? Was “Pig is a Pig” too difficult to learn?

In any case, the only reason I’m bringing any of this up is because a piece of Plasmatics history just strangely showed up on eBay. As he prefaced on the Plasmatics Facebook page, one Vinnie V. writes:

Not sure where it will go next, but it's been cool owning it for a while, displaying it on and off and renting it out. Got it from a German friend of Wendy O's who was also a part of the NYC music scene in the 80's. It was folded and collecting dust beneath a pile of junk. Can't believe it actually survived that tour. Too bad CBGB wasn't still around. It should stay in NYC and be seen.

Mr. V is talking about the giant inverted pentagram from the album cover of Metal Priestess, the same one on the t-shirt I’m seen sporting at the top of this post, and the same that adorned the stage behind them on their fabled (by some) turn on “SCTV.”

It’s a curious artifact, to be sure, and would doubtlessly be fun to own (if you have the real estate to properly house and showcase it), but the sticky wicket is that Mr. V is asking just shy of $4,000.00 for it. As much as I still cherish my Plasmatics records and do indeed collect a lot of their fleeting ephemera, that’s a whole lotta cheddar for anyone to drop.

If you, however, are not as deterred as I, please avail yourself to the auction by clicking right here. Give it a good home, won’t you? Wendy would doubtlessly thank you.

CODA: According to the WikiPedia entry for Metal Priestess, songwriter Dan Hartman (who later had a big pop hit with “I Can Dream About You” from the “Streets of Fire” soundtrack) approached the Plasmatics after he heard Beyond the Valley of 1984 (he must have been as smitten as I) and went to visit them. Apparently, although I don’t know the source or any further specifics, Wendy O. Williams and band-manager/svengali Rod Swensen were based in a TriBeCa loft at the time. WHERE IS THAT LOFT?

More About The Plasmatics on FLAMING PABLUM:
“Doom Song” by The Plasmatics

Where Was Wendy’s Wall? 

Twelve Years Gone

There’s No Escape When It Infects You

Wild in the Streets: Plasmatics on East 42nd

Where Wendy Still Waits

Get Plasmasticized

Mohawks in Chinatown

Coup De Grace: Plasmatics on Pell

Hands Off The Plasmatics

Feel The Bern

My photoshop skills are sadly nonexistent, but I have a friend who made this one for me... 

The Gatekeeper Says 'NO!'

It’s probably not a new term, per se, but I’ve been seeing it invoked more and more, recently, in discussions about my favorite music, and it’s not a complement. The word is gatekeeping.

Gatekeeping, as I understand it, is sort of on par with mansplaining — it springs from a sort of exclusionary claim to be more vested in a specific artist or sub-genre to the extent that newbie novices need to be properly vetted and schooled before they’re allowed to fully appreciate said artist/music themselves. The Gatekeeper is the guy that demands that you name three songs by the band whose t-shirt you’re wearing. The Gatekeeper is the guy that cites the record just prior to a band’s breakthrough album as that band’s greatest achievement. The Gatekeeper put in his hours, and now expects you to follow suit, … if you’re worthy. The Gatekeeper’s motto, invariably, is “Fuck do YOU know about it?”

Unsurprisingly, given my oft-unsolicited opinions, I have been credibly accused of gatekeeping. Fair enough. I can own that. There are myriad examples here on this blog, be it my affinity for the Circle Jerks or my penchant to safeguard the iconography of the Plasmatics, to name but two.

To my mind, however, my tendencies to “gatekeep” stem from my ever-distant youth, when deviation from popular convention was more often treated with derision and contempt rather than admiration. To put it bluntly, If you’re 13 years old and your classmates give you shit for wearing the t-shirt of a band they don’t know or can’t understand, that experience is gong to stay with you. Years later, when everything is post-ironic and retro-philic and, thanks to the internet, all most music is accessible to everyone at all times, and no one has to put any time or effort into seeking it out, you can bet your bottom goddamn dollar I’m going to demand you cite three songs by fucking Flipper before I let you blithely walk around wearing their shirt just because friggin’ Kurt Cobain once did.

But I digress.

Today, on Facebook’s excellent No Wave group page, someone posted a video that speaks to the very thing that ignites one’s inner Gatekeeper. Entitled “5 Albums to Get You Into No Wave,” this clip is exactly the sort of content I ranted about back in 2017 on this post.

To my mind, videos and articles of this kind make me grind my teeth because they’re so inorganic. Music discovery should be a natural process. You need to listen and discern for yourselves, not cut corners with some half-assed “get hip quick” scheme. Videos like these seem like lazy “how to” manuals for people who want to create the right impression, rather than folks who might be genuinely interested in hearing and learning about new music.

But, in terms of the specific musical phenomenon of the fleeting No Wave scene, though, videos like this are a genuine disservice, as they kind of give everything away. For me, a big part of my affinity for No Wave came after the initial jolt of shock and confusion. That MUST be a part of it.

I vividly remember first dropping the needle on my college radio station’s long-neglected copy of the fabled Brian Eno compilation, No New York, which culled together tracks from a handful of pertinent bands from that tiny, insular scene. Being that the radio station in question was more renowned for playing yawnsome crap like Little Feat and Hot Tuna, the mere fact that they had a copy of No New York at all was reason enough to play it.

I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting upon that first listen (live on the air, no less), but it sure as shit didn’t sound like the Punk Rock I was enjoying at the time. In a nanosecond, it made records by the Sex Pistols, the Ramones and the like sound positively quaint and conventional (which, in retrospect, they basically are). It was such a stark strike of renunciation. Fuck your rock’n’roll rules! Fuck your precious melodies and danceable rhythms! Fuck playing these instruments the “right way!”

Without experiencing that jarring epiphany, I don’t think you can really absorb what No Wave was all about. You can’t skip to the last chapter and spoil the impact like that.

You have to be punched in the face by No Wave before you get to like it.

If believing that makes me a Gatekeeper, so fucking be it.

Decide for yourselves…

This Week

Like many Americans, I suspect, the events of this past Wednesday have left a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never been an especially zealous flag-waver to begin with, but it’s been a long damn time since I felt the degree of shame and embarrassment on behalf of the nation that I’ve experienced in the wake of Wednesday, and all the pusillanimous bullshit that has come in its wake.

There’s simply not enough bandwidth on the internet to accommodate everything that needs to be said about it, but I spied these two missives making the rounds on social media, and they both fit the bill nicely.

Also, if you get pepper-sprayed, clubbed or shot at for breaking into a federal building, please don't expect any sympathy.

New Sensations: Exhuming The Sensational Alex Harvey Band

Regardless of what side of the Atlantic you’re currently perched on, spend any time in the company of music geeks of a certain age, and sooner or later, you’re bound to get caught up in the age-old, laborious and eye-roll-inducing debate about the true point of origin of Punk Rock. Yanks like m’self will calmly point to iconoclasts like the Velvet Underground, the Modern Lovers, the MC5, the Stooges, the Ramones and the New York Dolls, usually qualifying the latter with the irrefutable bit of minutia that future svengali Malcolm McLaren briefly attempted to manage them in their death throes as a band (the infamous “red patent leather” era) and that when he returned to England, endeavored to graft the look and sound of New York City’s burgeoning Punk scene (specifically Richard Hell’s tonsorial/sartorial aesthetic and his signature anthem “Blank Generation”) onto the tabula rasa of the fledgling Sex Pistols.

If you’re of the British persuasion, you’ll usually click your tongue and wearily point to the seismic differences in theme, sound and aesthetic between New York’s more artsy contingent and Britain’s more volatile wellspring of anti-establishmentarianism. It’s poetry vs. politics, they’ll say. There is indeed some validity to that point, but all it takes is one rafter-shaking barre chord from Johnny Ramone — the sound that launched a thousand bands on both sides of the water — to truly settle the debate.

In all honesty, though, it’s really not all that cut and dry. While it can be argued that England’s take on the phenomenon was hugely informed by New York, the UK had its own class of proto-punk ensembles that were just as influential as the afore-cited Yank bands listed above. Foremost among those outfits was rollicking pub-rock band, Dr. Feelgood. Practicing an amped-up blend of rhythm & blues marked by the rough-hewn, self-taught guitar theatrics of bug-eyed Wilco Johnson and the gruff, confrontational delivery of vocalist Lee Brilleaux, Dr. Feelgood not only paved the way for Brit bands like The Clash, The Stranglers and Gang of Four, but none other than New York punk architect Richard Hell himself admitted to being a huge fan of Dr. Feelgood’s records in Julien Temple’s amazing documentary, “Oil City Confidential.” “We stared New York in the face,” exclaims Jonnson in same about Dr. Feelgood’s brief visit to the U.S. (a market they’d never crack), suggesting that the streams of influence may have flowed in both directions.

There is another such band, however, that, of late, I’ve kind of become sort of obsessed with, much as I’d done with Dr. Feelgood a few short years ago, although — by comparison — this band is even less well-known here in the States, and finding their incredibly rare albums plays right into my penchant for latching onto things the are hard to put one’s hand to.

The band in question is The Sensational Alex Harvey Band.

While ostensibly grim Glasgow’s answer to early `70s glam rock, there was actually precious little that was actively “glamorous" about the so-called "SAHB.” A bedraggled gaggle of hirsute, unshaven pirates, Harvey’s ensemble featured a burly bassist with a robust mullet and a penchant for wearing codpieces onstage, as well as a guitarist named Zal Cleminson who inexplicably dressed like a mime… as you do, I guess. Harvey himself, meanwhile, looked like the sort of gap-toothed fellow who’d gladly introduce your unsuspecting teeth to his bruised knuckles for daring to occupy his stool at his favorite pub. The Bay City Rollers they weren’t.

I first heard of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band when they were name-checked as a primary influence on my favorite band, Killing Joke, who used to use the SAHB’s peculiar instrumental track, “Booids,” as their walk-on music. I managed, several years back, to track down the album that song was on (that being their final 1978 album, Rock Drill, for those of you playing along at home), but it featured none of Harvey & Co.’s more "well-known” songs, which is a generous descriptor indeed.

If the Sensational Alex Harvey Band had a signature track, it’s inevitably “Faith Healer” from their 1974 record, Next, which isn’t particularly catchy or hook-laden, much less easy to describe. Here it is now…

If you’re listening to the Killing Joke correlation, you might notice the oscillating tone that starts the track being strikingly similar to the opening ominous synths of the Joke’s “Requiem.” Also, Zal Cleminson’s chugging guitar definitely informed Geordie’s style, particularly on the Joke’s “Are You Receiving?" Beyond this track, however, I’ve been starting to delve further into Harvey’s music, warming to songs like “Midnight Moses,” “Action Strasse” and oddball covers of Tom Jone’s “Delilah,” Jacques Brel’s “Next,” Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” and … err… “Crazy Horses” by the Osmonds.

For a little further historical context, it’s also worth noting that The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were allegedly a huge influence on AC/DC, particularly fellow Scotsman Bon Scott. It’s not hard to draw a correlation between the two bands, both boasting leering-lad frontmen and disarmingly kinetic guitarists.

In short order, I became hungry and curious to hear more. As such, I’ve been intent on hunting down further bits of their discography. And, to be clear, by that I mean obtaining the physical manifestations of their music, not just listening to it on shitty Spotify and/or YouTube. I want to own the albums, read the liner notes, check out the cover art and file them alongside my other discs.

The trouble there, however, is that albums by the Sensational Alex Harvey Band — led by a hard-drinkin’ Scotsman who passed away from heart failure at age 47 — ain’t exactly easy to turn up. As an ancillary problem, I’m also generally more inclined to buy my music in brick-and-mortar stores than order it online. I mean, I certainly do when no other options are open to me, but I’d rather give some independent shop my money than go through fucking Amazon. You can call me old fashioned and go fuck yourself, while you’re at it.

Anyway, to wrap all this up, in the paltry few remaining record and disc shops left in New York City, I was unable to put my hand to any albums by the SAHB. As far as the New York City of 2020 is concerned, it seems the Sensational Alex Harvey Band simply did not exist. No one knows their songs, much less their name. With that, I’ve indeed had to turn reluctantly to the internet to sate my needs.

In any case, while I heartily endorse seeking out this music yourselves, procuring further records by the Sensational Alex Harvey band has prompted a burning question … one best addressed by OCD record hoarders and pedantic music geeks…

Would you file The Sensational Alex Harvey Band under S ... or H?

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 

 

The Lost Murals of CBGB

Chris Stein of Blondie shared a photo on his social feeds today of some original artwork that adorned the wall behind the bar at CBGB (see that photo above). Here’s what he had to say about it.

These murals were behind the bar at CBGB’s at the far end near the stage. I took this the last week after it was closed . Hilly said he knew some of these guys names, they used to come into the place in the old days. Painted by a local artist in the early seventies, a woman. That’s all I’ve got on it. I’m not sure if they’re still there in Varvatos store, may have been covered up.

I’m assuming that by “the old days” he means prior the venue’s flashpoint as the birthplace of Punk Rock, when it was still a Bowery bar for the skid-row set.

When CBGB was being dismantled, I was still working at MTV News Online, and I *seem* to remember my colleague Chris Harris working that beat, and reporting that much of the original artwork on the walls of the place being painstaking removed and put into storage somewhere. I’m not sure that could really apply to this art, however, as the triptych looks like it was painted directly onto the actual wall.

One imagines they were covered up when John Varvatos moved it. Despite the clothier’s recent financial troubles, his business is still in operation on the Bowery, although I’m rarely in the mood to step inside. Anyone want to volunteer and go check it out?

The Mystery Song

I used to have a problem with Patti Smith. I just never heard what everyone else claimed was so groundbreaking about her music, and I found her records to be sort of mewlingly overwrought. I did not equate her with her storied peers in bands like Television and The Ramones, etc. This opinion did me no favors.

Were that not enough, I was then asked by a rock-writer friend of mine, a German gent named Sky Nonhoff, to pen a chapter in a book he was putting together about sacred cows. Sky wanted me to address Patti’s oft-celebrated album, Horses, and give it the redressing it allegedly deserved. So, I did that, pulled no punches and went from being a passive non-fan of Patti Smith to an open detractor. The book came out — albeit only in Germany (I have a copy, but I’ll be damned if I can tell how Sky edited my copy) and the deal was sealed. Just for posterity, I re-posted my original English text here on my stupid blog. This was was even later sourced, much to my embarrassment, in Eric Wendell's 2014 book, "Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist." Again, this did me no favors. 

After years of alienating friends of mine with my continued reluctance to capitulate to the cult of Patti Smith, I started to suspect that my position was becoming an untenable one for lots of folks who otherwise liked and tenuously respected me (I had a similar problem with the Grateful Dead). As if on cue, Patti Smith published her memoir, “Just Kids.” I didn’t race to the bookshop for a copy, but — being unemployed that summer — I had lots of unsolicited free time, so eventually picked it up and read it, almost devouring the book whole in a only a couple of sittings.

In that rarest of instances, Patti’s book completely upended my preconceptions about her, and I suddenly felt like a world-class jackass for shooting my mouth off about her for all those years. I recanted with another post on my stupid blog, for whatever that was worth.

This all said, while I took back all the mean, dismissive thing I’d written about Patti Smith, I still didn’t really enjoy her music. I still found so much of her vocal delivery to be sort of cloying and affected — not unlike the same problem I’d formerly had with Tom Waits. But where I was able to overcome my Waits problem, I still had a hard time getting past Patti’s cadence and histrionics. I respected her way more than I’d ever used to, but I still didn’t want to hear her music, if I could avoid it.

Last night, I was coming home from visiting a loved one in NYU Langone Hostpial on 34th and First Avenue, zig-zagging my way slowly to the southwest through the bitterly cold and dark streets of the Medical Corridor. For whatever reason, this stretch of Manhattan always makes me think of New York City in the grim late 70’s. Sure, much of it has been re-built and radically gentrified like the rest of the island, but there’s still a bit of that dour, function-over-form, brutalist aesthetic that makes it feel depressing and charmless. As such, whenever I’m on that stretch, I tend to flip my iPod to listen to bands like the Jim Carroll Band, Richard Hell & The Voidoids and the afore-cited Television — artists whose music defined Manhattan’s vibe back then. In the middle of listening to a playlist I’d made in 2015, filled with those bands and others like Missing Foundation, The Feelies, The Lounge Lizards and the Dead Boys, this one song suddenly filled my headphones and almost stopped me in my frigid track right on Second Avenue.

It sounded like Patti Smith being backed by a way-less-indulgent ensemble, anchored by a taut, pugnacious groove and a suitably Television-like riff. Holy shit!! How did I ever miss this? Listening intently as I walked further, I couldn’t recognize the track as ever having been on Horses, nor later records like Easter or Radio Ethiopia. Was it from the “Piss Factory” era? Wracking my brain to identify the true provenance of the song, I simply hit play again without looking. How did this song even get on my iPod? Where did I get it, and how have I never appreciated it in all these years?

When I could no longer unspool the riddle and still without a flicker of an answer, I gave up and looked.

It wasn’t Patti Smith at all, but rather a comparatively obscure band from the original CBGB set called The Erasers. I’d gotten the song off the Numero Group’s truly excellent 2015 box set of the Ork Records stable. Prior to this cut, the only Erasers song I was even aware of was their fleeting turn in Amos Poe’s movie, “The Foreigner,” where they play a song called “No Se,” while the film’s protagonist Max gets beaten up by members of The Cramps. You can see that here.

Removed from the context of all their esoteric, historical minutia, when I heard “I Won’t Give Up” by the Erasers, I *immediately* assumed it was Patti Smith, which makes me wonder if others made that same assumption at the time.

In any case, today is Patti Smith’s birthday. If you are so inclined, cue up a bit of her music and raise a toast, but maybe also enjoy this taste of the Erasers, who probably wouldn’t have recorded anything were it not for Patti knocking down the original doors. For more about them click here.

 

Lame Duck Soup

In the (almost) wake of the bona fide “American carnage” of the Trump Administration (333,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, at most recent count), as we plod through the disgruntled soon-to-be-ex president’s Lame Duck period, it seems a disarming swath of the nation still clings to the fallacy of Trump’s oft-propagated greatness. While, yes, I do indeed live in the allegedly enlightened bubble of New York City (trust me, we still have our fair share of idiots here), I do still have a reasonably varied spectrum of individuals in my social-media feeds, and one of them forwarded on the letter below, appended with a earnest “thank you” at the top.

See if you can get through it without laughing out loud...

I thought it might be prudent to do a bit of fact checking. My notes are in red.

Dear President Trump, - He’s not dear to me, but to each their own.

I want to take a minute to say thank you. - I don’t. Neither should you. 

Regardless of the outcome of this election (Biden won, just to be clear, and there really ought to be a comma after “election,” so I’m putting one in), you deserve my gratitude (no, he doesn’t. He deserves your scrutiny and your ire).

Thank you for not plunging my brothers and sisters into another war - Ummmm…. Trump did more needlessly impulsive saber-rattling than any modern President in my lifetime, going well out of his way to threaten key countries with bellicose bombast. That we managed to escape military escalation in those instances is more a testament to the restraint of the global community than of any prudent diplomacy on Trump’s part.

Thank you for walking through HELL and back for the American people. - Yeah, he didn’t do that. If anything, he blithely strolled in the opposite direction while letting the American people languish in it. Be ashamed.

Thank you for doing it for free. - Nope. As of September, it was reported that Trump raked in $1.9 billion in revenue during his first three years in office, maintaining ownership of his assets when he informed the nation he was recusing same.

Thank you for working through the night while my family was tucked safely in bed. - As reported by Business Insider, last Thursday was Trumps’ 317th golf-course visit during his presidency — he was on the putting green instead of addressing the terrorist explosion in Nashville and letting crucial unemployment insurance benefits lapse before finally signing the relief bill.

Thank you for standing strong and staring adversity in the face. — Yeah, that didn’t happen.

Thank you for keeping GOD in the country I love — I don’t believe faith was ever in any significant danger of subsiding in the country during Trump’s four years, although cognition seems to have taken a sharp dive.

Thank you for not backing down when the weight of the world was against you. — Trump’s abject failure to comprehend the concept of political compromise is not to be applauded, as it is a cornerstone of diplomacy and crucial in the sustainment of a functioning democracy. Trump’s penchant for not backing down has more to do with petty stubbornness and narcissism, and less to do with any laudable convictions.

Thank you for putting your family in the line of fire when you didn’t have to — For a start, it’s called nepotism, and it ought to be illegal. Secondly, the fact that Trump would giddily throw any of his own family members under the bus at the slightest whiff of trouble is hardly worthy of commendation.

Thank you for standing up for women. — Bahahahahahahaha. As if.

Thank you for not being a politician. - Well, he certainly wasn’t an effective politician, if that’s what you’re implying.

Thank you for being raw and even sometimes too much. - You’re seriously thanking him for this?

Thank you for standing up or the unborn. - If you genuinely believe Trump’s advocacy for the so-called “Pro-Life” agenda is anything more than brazenly shameless pandering to the Right, you are strenuously gullible.

Thank you for caring about the little guy. — This may be the most egregious line here.

Thank you for working harder than any president in my lifetime ever has. — Once again, last Thursday was Trump’s 317th golf-course visit.

Thank you for your service to this country. - You’re joking, right? After he has maligned veterans, POW’s and Gold Star families (going so far as to insinuate that he caught COVID-19 from them), you thanking him for his service?

Need I continue? Roll on January 20!

Back Into The Night

Back in the early 90’s, my friend Roxanne (not her real name) had this completely bonkers gig in “club promotion.” She being younger, more energetic and significantly more fabulous than myself, it was literally a job of hers to hit six or seven hopping night clubs during the course of a single evening, handing out flyers for upcoming parties and events. On a couple of occasions, she dragged me along, opening up a whole new world to me. I was certainly familiar with a few of the major clubs, but mostly from going to see bands. Going to a club for the sheer sake of going to a club wasn’t something I was normally inclined to do, so this was a true learning experience.

On a few of those evenings in early 1991, I remember breathlessly trying to keep up as we hit long-vanished places like the LoveSexxy Lounge, Big City Diner, The Tunnel, The Palladium, a place, I think, called Morrissey’s (no relation to the Smiths) and about a half-dozen more hotspots. We’d glide past the velvet ropes, thanks to Roxanne's clout (her good looks didn’t hurt, either), and I’d wander around the place looking lost, drinking overpriced beers and listening to bad house music for fifteen to twenty minutes before she’d grab me and we’d swoop off to the next venue. We covered a lot of ground.

Between missions, we’d frequently repair back to the cavernous interior of the Limelight, which was the de facto base of her operation. I vividly remember one particular evening doing just that. Roxanne had to re-stock her supply of invites and check in with her boss, with dopey, uncool me tagging along behind her. I remember following her through the dark to what looked like a rugby scrum of garishly dressed characters. Roxanne marched right up to this one individual who was wearing a particularly bizarre ensemble involving clown make-up and assess pants. Through the ample rear portals on said pants, he had bright, electric blue teardrops painted on his buttocks. Despite the …er….”festive” nature his of attire, when he and Roxanne spied each other, he was all business, sternly rattling off a laundry list of directives for her to dutifully absorb and execute, as if he was the chief operating officer of very important organization. Between blunt orders to Roxanne, I think he gave me a withering glance or two, but then turned with dramatic aplomb and vanished into the crowd, with the rugby scrum dutifully following his posterior teardrops. I felt like I was trapped in an NC-17 version of “Alice in Wonderland.”

Roxanne grabbed me again and we headed off into the night. “What was up with that?” I asked as we slipped out some secret exit and onto West 20th Street. “Oh, that’s just my boss,” she sighed, “he can be kind of a ridiculous jerk, sometimes.”

That boss was Michael Alig.