In the fall of 1985, myself and a newly-minted, equally scowly friend John — a flat-topped skater and fellow fan of disconsolately frowny hardcore trapped within a bug-eyed nation of Little Feat and Allman Brothers fans — drove from the verdantly plush campus of Central Ohio’s Denison University to the comparatively ungenteel High Street of Columbus, Ohio. Our destination was a dank, low-ceilinged “club” with wood-paneled walls called Stache’s. The venue and the event we were attending have already been discussed here, but I was reminded of the evening in question again by yet another chapter in Sam McPheeters’ “Mutations,” which also spawned yesterday’s post about the Crucifucks.
John and I went to Stache’s for the purposes of witnessing a live performance by the willfully disconcerting Texas combo, The Butthole Surfers. I’d been to a gig in Columbus a few weeks earlier, that being X at the Newport Music Hall on the tour to promote their frankly lackluster major label debut, Ain’t Love Grand, but that was at a proper live music hall, not a dingy, makeshift den-turned-dive bar like Stache’s.
John and I and possibly another couple of friends of ours muscled our way to the back of the room where the “stage” ostensibly was (although I really don’t remember there being a bi-level effect of any kind), to ready ourselves for the opening band. The opening act was a Wisconsin ensemble called Die Kreuzen, which -- in clipped, guttural German -- means “The Crosses.” That said, everyone seemed to mispronounce their moniker not as a plural noun, but as a grim command, Die Cruisin’. The foursome gathered around their amps and drum kit and got ready to play.
This still being the mid-eighties, I remember being somewhat surprised by the look of these Midwesterners. While I was dutifully boasting a sadly de rigeur “hardcore” outfit (white, freshly laundered Circle Jerks t-shirt over jeans, plaid flannel shirt tied around waist -- just so -- like a kilt), Die Kreuzen looked more like hairy hobos who took turns swigging from a communal jug of moonshine in the damp, dark woods behind the Price Chopper. Adhering to any code of punky fashion was clearly -- and quite refreshingly, in retrospect -- not on their agenda.
I remember being struck by the bass player, whose instrument seemed wholly oversized for him. The lead singer was a long-haired, lanky guy who looked like he only just got off his shift pumping gas. Once fully plugged in, the band started, and lanky long-hair raised the mic and opened his mouth, letting loose a sound that caused those of us standing, arms-folded in the front to strongly consider taking several steps back.
To be honest, while I hadn’t heard their records yet (which I’d later come to really appreciate), the live Die Kreuzen experience circa 1985 was a headachey fog of shambolic shrillness. John described it best by suggesting that each of their songs sounded, basically, like an over-amplified “WAAAAAAARRGGHHHH”, … which was fairly accurate.
I told the rest of this story back on this post — the Butthole Surfers ended up not showing up as, earlier in the day, their bass player had either jumped out — or been forcibly ejected — from their van whilst motoring down the highway. They wouldn’t return to Columbus until the following year, wherein they played the Newport Music Hall, a show I’m still recovering from.
Back at Stache’s, we all miraculously ended up getting our money back, which essentially meant that we got to see Die Kreuzen for free.
The only reason I’m revisiting all of this, is because in McPheeters’ book, he describes Die Kreuzen thusly:
Vocals like a scarecrow screaming at you from across the cornfield at night …WHY DID YOU ANGER THE SCARECROW?
Absolutely on point....
The photo up top is by the truly amazing JFotoman, who I wrote about back on this post. There is possibly no greater documentation of not just the Stache's scene, but of American underground music of the 1980's writ large than his work.
I am currently about a third of the way into "Mutations: The Many Strange Faces of Hardcore Punk," by former Born Against vocalist Sam McPheeters, and I am hugely loving it. Not only is McPheeters a tirelessly funny writer, but the insights and info on stalwart figures from the punk scenes of decades past are formidable.
While I originally picked the book up on the strength of its inclusion of a chapter on Flaming Pablum-favorites Missing Foundation (haven't gotten to that chapter yet), I just read an eye-opening passage about Doc Dart, the notorious lead provocateur extraordinaire from the Crucifucks. Longtime readers might remember I posted about that band here. Evidently, these days, Doc goes by the enigmatic new name, 26.
I'm not going to ruin it for you, but it's a truly weird and oft-harrowing story. For this chapter alone, this book is crucial. Go get it.
I started writing this as a laboriously longer piece about, once upon a time, being the youngest person in an office environment — being called “kid,” and noted for my youthful, scrappy take on life. Gradually, that changed. I started working with people younger than me and blah blah blah.
I’m going to spare you from having to plow through several chunky paragraphs and needless, sepia-toned preamble and fast forward to 2020.
I now work with a gaggle of people from whom I am separated by a yawning generational chasm. Both them and myself regularly make pop-cultural allusions we each consider universally recognizable, but haven’t the foggiest clue what each other are talking about.
When it comes to music and the appreciation thereof, we are practically from different planets. For them, people like Britney Spears, Beyonce and Kanye West are like faces on Mount Rushmore, and late-90's hip-hop acts I'd considered derivative and redundant at the time are practically considered venerable oldies acts to them. We share virtually no common parlance in this realm. They have no clue (nor interest in) who, say, Lemmy, Adam Ant, Cop Shoot Cop (pictured above), GG Allin and/or Bob Mould are, and I have no clue (nor interest in) who SZA, 2 Chainz, Lil Uzi Vert and Earl Sweatshirt are. Andy Warhol’s banana from the sleeve of the debut album of The Velvet Underground and Peter Saville’s ubiquitous artwork from the sleeve of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures are just Urban Outfitter t-shirt designs to them. Likewise, iconography from their musical touchstones mean nothing to me.
I may have mentioned her before, but one young colleague of mine — Lyndsey — had a refreshing take on a New Year’s resolution. Instead of giving up something as some sort of penitent punishment, she got her herself a coffee-table book of allegedly canonical albums and planned to devote each month to listening to and immersing herself in a new (for her) record, thus broadening her knowledge and experience of this celebrated music. I thought — and still think — that was genuinely very cool.
She ended up sharing this exercise with our mutual colleague, Tegan, who sits in her adjacent cubicle. I’d walk by and hear comparatively incongruous music coming from their part of the office, like the Monkees, Iron Butterfly and Revolver by the Beatles. I started chatting with them about it, and we struck on a new idea.
Tegan made a primer Spotify playlist for me of music that she — being unfathomably younger than myself — considers worth knowing about and/or appreciating with regards to what’s happening for her generation. Similarly, I was tasked with making one for her and Lyndsey of the type of music that I am fond of.
So, yeah, if you think that explanation was long, you should have seen the one I scrapped. But it was just basically to tee up the playlist below. Now, while I don’t generally get my fingers dirty on Spotify — being no fan of streaming, I — this was for a good cause. Plus, it was fun.
Yes, it’s still missing a lot of crucial stuff, but should you care, … enjoy.
Rat calling Sinking Ship, Rat calling Sinking Ship, … Come in Sinking Ship!!!
I remember when the darkness closed in after the lights suddenly went off during Hurricane Sandy, my family and our best friends/next-door neighbors hunkered down together that first night and made an evening out of it. The next day, however, they quietly crept out of their apartment and decamped to a spot they have upstate. Circumstances, obligations and limited resources forbade us from following suit, so we stayed put and rode the rest of the week out in the dark. In retrospect, we were mildly inconvenienced, whereas lots of folks in places like the Rockaways lost everything. We had nothing to complain about, other than ennui, really. We’ve joked about it since then, how our neighbors “jumped ship,” but who could blame them? They had a warm, lit house to escape to.
Upon the further spreading of the Trump Virus, we did the same this week, taking advantage of my family’s kind offer to escape the heavy case concentration in New York City (check out the map below, courtesy of this story in the New York Times). I’ve been called out by a couple of select readers on it, but y’know what? If you had the option to get your kids out of a tiny apartment to an (arguably) safer space, you’d do it, too. If you have cognitive difficulty processing the logic of that decision, I cannot help you.
Take even a cursory glance at the media source of your choice, these days, and you’ll doubtlessly see images of normally bustling city streets across the world transformed into vast, empty spaces, largely bereft of another human being. This doesn’t mean everyone’s taking the hint (witness the stubborn influx of party-determined spring breakers in Florida), but the smart ones are refraining from large gatherings. For it to genuinely work, I’d imagine everyone has to abide, but we’ll see, I guess, if the curve is indeed flattened.
In any case, speaking of bustling city streets, my friend Gregoire Alessandrini, who maintains the excellent photographic site, New York City in the 1990s, recently posted a cool new entry. Gregoire lives in Paris, these days, but returned to NYC last summer. Regrettably, we were not able to meet up, but he took the time to revisit some of the places he’d first documented decades ago. See those pictures here.
In the interim, please stay safe and sane and look out for each other. There’ll be more here soon.
Stay home as much as you can, my friends. I'm a native New Yorker -- we define ourselves by being defiant in these situations. This is NOT a time for defiance. This was not a terrorist attack. It's a pandemic. DON'T BE STUPID!
To walk the streets in certain neighborhoods, you'd never know anything was up. People are still doing their thing. This should be a collective effort.
I had a growing quandary, as this past week was slowly unfurling, as to whether I was going to attend a show scheduled to happen this evening at St. Vitus in Brooklyn. A record-release gig for Human Impact, a veritable NYC noise-rock supergroup of former members of SWANS, The Unsane and -- wait for it -- my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, this was promising to be an event practically tailor-made for my predilections.
I was super gung-ho, for a while, even when my longtime comrade Rob D. had to bail, being that the Connecticut university that employs him issued a strict out-of-state travel ban for the conceivable future. That was a bummer, but I was still looking forward to the show.
As events developed, however, I started to suspect that the concert was going to be cancelled, especially in the wake of edicts by Mayor De Blasio and a couple of fatuously botched addresses from our embarrassment of a president.
But it wasn't.
I was starting to have flashbacks to 2012, when the outer bands of Hurricane Sandy were threatening to arrive the same evenings as a SWANS gig at the Bowery Ballroom. Given their steely resolve and, possibly, bloody-minded iron will, SWANS refused to cancel that gig, as you might recall. It ended up being one of the most amazing live-music experiences of my life.
But this situation is different.
After much head-scratching and a few "should I or shouldn't I?" threads on social media, I decided I'm not going, as much as it saddens me. Out of respect for the collective effort to "flatten the curve," I am going to stay put. I don't necessarily believe I'd be at risk to contract the virus at said gig, but ... y'know, what the Hell do I know? I wouldn't want to become a carrier for it either and risk spreading it around, even if I didn't develop any symptoms myself.
I want to support touring bands and independent clubs, but the risks, considerations and the anxieties involved are outweighing everything. If you go -- be safe and considerate.
I want to have faith that we'll have this opportunity again.
Be safe. Be smart. Look out for each other. Get through this.
I’ve spoken about them a few times here before, notably here, here and here, but I was and remain a big fan of The Cult, dating back to their days as psychedelic goths through their period as hirsute ersatz-metalheads and beyond. Sure, they’ve been entirely capable of being roundly silly on many an occasion, but they’ve also penned a robust amount of unimpeachably great rock songs, regardless of whatever tribal affiliation you choose to adhere yourself to. If you can’t recognize the brilliance of tracks like “Wild Flower,” “The Witch,” “God’s Zoo,” “Rain” and – oh yes do wait for it – “She Sells Sanctuary,” I shall have to ask you to step outside.
In any case, I follow storied Cult guitarist Billy Duffy on Instagram, and today he posted the above photo, shot in New York City in 1983. Of it, the great man writes:
Last of the Mohicans 1983…Back in the Death Cult days I had a mohican for a while as can be seen in this pic taken in New York in August 1983. It was my first vacation in the States and I actually went over there on my own.
Now, beyond my fandom for the great Mr. Duffy, renowned for playing a fat, fuckoff Gretsch White Falcon with stylish aplomb, I was struck by this photo and my inability to accurately pinpoint its location.
To my mind, that looks like Chelsea’s fabled apartment complex, London Terrace on the far left hand side, which would put him somewhere east of Ninth Avenue and several blocks south of 23rd street, but I can’t be sure.
Also check out the ghost sign on the façade behind the tail of his `hawk. It seems to read “Harold & ______, Wholesalers”….
Ring any bells? Weigh in, location-spotters.
Here’s what he would have been up to, as the time, back when they were still Death Cult.
The New York Times published a nice little piece by one of my favorite writers, this past Friday. “The Lower East Side in 8 Songs” by John Strausbaugh (whose most recent opus, “Victory City,” all about New York City during WWII, is currently my mom’s favorite book) culled together a selection of tracks that harken back to key points throughout the decades, addressing jazzbos, proto-punks, rockers and beyond from within the cultural diaspora of the East Side of Lower Manhattan. Being the insufferable pedant that I am, I quibbled with his selection of “Waiting for the Man” by the Velvet Underground. Yes, the Velvets were L.E.S. to the very bone, but that particular track has more to do with Harlem (East 125th Street and Lexington Avenue, where Lou Reed’s protagonist cops his dope) than the Ludlow Street roots of the band.
In any case, in perusing his list, I felt the need to add my own suggestions to the mix, most of which allude to my own eras. What else are we missing??
"Life During Wartime," Talking Heads, 1979
Admittedly, by the time Talking Heads released their third album, Fear of Music, in 1979, the band's days of hanging out at CBGB on the Bowery were over, replaced by world tours, growing global renown and quality time with cats like Brian Eno and Robert Fripp. This all said, "Life During Wartime" alludes to that period-specific locale with a degree of prescience. While New York City writ large was slowly recovering from the near-bankruptcy of the mid-70s, much of downtown Manhattan still seemed akin to a veritably lawless war zone. "This ain't no party, This ain't no disco, This ain't no foolin' around," famously sings David Byrne, his protagonist lamenting the passing of the salad days into the stark realities of desperate survival in a region under siege, strangely presaging Missing Foundation's own defiant slogan, "The Party's Over" by a few years. "Life During Wartime" was lazily held up by many a witless classic-rock acolyte as being some sort of anti-disco screed, but those oafs failed to take Byrne's lyrics in context. The scenario Byrne depicts was never a renunciation of disco. It was more a rumination on life in an environment so plagued with hardship and conflict that frivolous activities like dancing and having fun are no longer on the menu.
Today, the space once occupied by CBGB at 315 Bowery is a laughably expensive clothiers. The space once occupied by the Mudd Club at 77 White Street in TriBeCa is an exclusive condo ... although there is a plaque on the exterior, commemorating its tenure as the Mudd Club. Here they are playing in it...
“East Side Beat,” The Toasters, 1987
It might sound vaguely ridiculous that downtown Manhattan once had its own thriving ska scene, but that was indeed the case, for a little while. At the arguable center of that scene were The Toasters, a high-stepping, horn-honking gaggle of Big Apple rudeboys fronted by British ex-pat Robert “Bucket” Hingley, who brought a degree of Two-Tone-styled authenticity to proceedings. By day the manager of geek mecca Forbidden Planet (near and very dear to this blog’s heart), Hingley emulated his homeland’s premiere ska band, The Specials, by recruiting fellow Brit ex-pat Joe “Look Sharp” Jackson to produce their sophomore long player just as the Specials had drafted Joe’s peer and fellow “angry young man of the New Wave,” Elvis Costello to handle their debut. The resulting album, Skaboom, arrived in 1987. This standout track from same paints almost a “West Side Story” depiction of life in the East Village of the late 80’s, complete with references to police brutality, riots, junkies, skinheads and shout-outs to fellow NYC Ska bands like Second-Step and Urban Blight. For a while, Hingley operated his own ska record label and shop on East 10th Street, Moon Ska Records.
Today, the space Hingley's shop occupied is a derelict former ramen restaurant. Forbidden Planet, however, is still on Broadway.
“Burn Trees,” Missing Foundation, 1988
Espousing a literally scorched earth approach to the encroaching gentrification of the Lower East Side in the late 80's and early 90's, enigmatic noise-rock collective, Missing Foundation accrued a formidable mystique for their uncompromising aesthetic. Banned from countless live music venues for their penchant for riot-incitement and wanton property damage, Peter Missing and his cohorts burrowed further underground, pointedly distancing themselves from any conventional music-scene shenanigans and aligning themselves with the defiant squatters movement. Were you ever able to find them, Missing Foundation's records were violently expulsive and incendiary, dispensing all finesse in favor of industrial clamor and high-decibel agitprop. "Burn Trees" from their second album, 1933 Your House is Mine, is a perfectly realized taste of their mission -- a harrowing, repetitive call for destructive insurgence. The video for same (see below) bludgeons the point with footage of the Tompkins Square Park riots from August of 1988. Peter Missing de-camped from New York City in 1992, but still continues making art and music, although his current approach seems slightly less nihilistic.
You can still spot invocations of Missing Foundation (the cryptic upside-down cocktail-glass insignia) all over the Lower East Side.
"Invisible People," False Prophets, 1990
With hearts similarly aligned to the ethos of Missing Foundation, if not quite as militantly chaotic, False Prophets started off as more or less another early hardcore punk band like Kraut, Heart Attack, The Undead and Even Worse, earning them a spot on ROIR's seminal cassette compilation, New York Thrash, despite their brazenly artier inclinations. The band was led by one Stephan Ielpi, captured at the top of this post by photographer Q Sakamaki. Evolving beyond three-chord blitzes and into more refined fare towards the end of their decade-long run, False Prophets released Invisible People in 1990, its title track being a lilting, heartfelt ode to the plight of the homeless that sounded planets away from their earlier rants like "Mental Ghetto." The message of "Invisible People" was further augmented by the album cover art and video animation of illustrator Erik Drooker, whose stirring portraits of social inequity have gone on to grace magazine covers around the world.
The video also finds False Prophets performing in the eroding, graffiti-slathered East River Park bandshell, a space that has since been re-imagined and cleaned up, although it's still a chillingly lonely spot at certain times of the day.
"There's a Riot in Tompkins Square," The Undead, 1993
Taking a more pragmatic-if-cynical approach to the continued unrest in the neighborhood, at the time, Bobby Steele penned "There's a Riot in Tompkins Square" with precious little empathy for any of the parties concerned. A former guitarist for The Misfits and a Johnny-Ramone-styled conservative (albeit one with a big, fuckoff mohawk, on occasion), Steele had little time for the hue & cry of the East Village squatters, equating them with lazy hippies. I have no idea how he feels about the Trump Administration's co-opting of the GOP, but he remains an affable, approachable guy, and is still making music with The Undead years later.
Today, Tompkins Square Park is largely squeaky clean, compared to its late 80's iteration.
“It Only Hurts When I Breathe,” Cop Shoot Cop, 1994
Never ones to shy away from the ugly truths of life in a city in decline, Cop Shoot Cop frequently spun narratives rife with bleak urban imagery, flinging off caustic couplets like a particularly world-weary Micky Spillane. "It Only Hurts When I Breathe" from the album that would become their swan song, 1994's Release, is no exception, coughing up grim verse after grim verse about a life-engulfing cynicism, underpinned by the band's signature dual-bass battery, which jovially swings, despite its otherwise dour demeanor. Possibly only Lower East Side locals will catch their telling invocation of an infamous Alphabet City street corner -- B & Third -- which unmistakably alludes to the shadowy purveyance of smack.
Today, Avenue B & East Third Street is essentially a well-traveled nightlife destination that's about as comparatively threatening as a summer spent in Nantucket.
“Ditch,” The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, 1994
Though largely spawned from the same gene pool as their pals in Cop Shoot Cop, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion -- formed by the inimitable Jon Spencer in the wake of the fittingly acrimonious dissolution of Pussy Galore -- dispensed with all semblance of po-faced misanthropy in favor of a rollicking celebration of non-stop diaphoretic coitus. "Ditch," from 1994's suitably detonative Orange, is precisely that, finding Spencer giving emphatic voice to his roiling libido whilst also name-checking Ludlow Street, the former epicenter of a L.E.S. variant of bohemian bacchanalia anchored around since-shuttered bars like the original Max Fish. While only a few, short years prior to era of The Strokes, The Rapture, Interpol, LCD Soundsystem and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, this iteration of the Ludlow scene seems like ancient history.
Today, the original Max Fish on Ludlow Street is long gone, replaced by chic and tony hotel with an insufferable bar. Similar ventures to Max Fish on Ludlow like Motor City, Barramundi, the Pink Pony, the Ludlow Street Cafe, Cake Shop and the Luna Lounge, which was a flashpoint for the afore-cited scene the Strokes kicked off, are also all gone.
“Alphabet Town,” Elliott Smith, 1995
Given the tragic circumstances of his untimely demise and some of his more notorious predilections, it's not much of a leap to make certain assumptions about what Elliott Smith's "Alphabet Town" is really about. Taken from his eponymous second album in 1995, the song is poetically vague but seemingly coded. Though not yet living in New York, at that time in the mid-90's, Smith sings about the infamous proclivities of Alphabet City denizens with a knowing lilt to his fragile, whisper-quiet voice, spinning a melancholy yarn about a tenuous relationship built on a grim codependence that the mood of the music mirrors.
“Summer on Avenue A,” Cause For Alarm, 1997
Originally from New Jersey, Cause For Alarm (or simply CFA) don't seem to inspire the same immediate name-recognition as some their NYHC peers like Agnostic Front, Cro-Mags, Warzone, Murphy's Law, etc., but they were indeed early participants within that scene. Personally speaking, the fact that Agnostic Front named their second album Cause for Alarm only served to confuse matters, but I'm sure they all had their reasons. This particular track, extolling the arguable merits of eschewing the leafy byways of New Jersey for a life on the then much meaner streets of, once again, Alphabet City, wasn't released until the late 90's, seemingly jumpstarting a variant of "nostalgia-core" later zealously picked up by their pals in Agnostic Front with recent tracks like "I Miss the Old New York" and, wait for it, "I Remember."
“Forsyth Street,” Muckafurgason, 1998
A band not at all concerned with telegraphing any bleak message or pugnacious badassery, Muckafurgason was a light-hearted trio of indie-rock dudes who probably had more in common with the "alt.comedy" boom nurtured at Ludlow Street's Luna Lounge than with the new crop of indie-garage rock revivalists who were gestating at the time. They didn't take themselves especially seriously, as evidenced on tracks from their debut album, Tossing a Friend, like "Lunch," an ersatz-rap homage to their favorite meal of the day. "Forsyth Street," meanwhile, is a comparatively somber ode to their home address, glumly describing a vista of homeless junkies and naked masturbators in Sara D. Roosevelt Park just out their window.
Today, Forsyth Street is just a bit more salubrious.
“93 Avenue B Blues,” SWANS, 2012
Walk by 93 Avenue B today and it's a fairly innocuous-looking doorway adjacent to a hookah bar called Horus. But back in the early-to-mid 80's, it was the heatless, windowless, concrete-bunker headquarters of Michael Gira and SWANS. True to their Spartan, disciplinary aesthetic, the address served as both an inhospitable rehearsal space and Gira's equally unwelcoming living quarters. When he speaks of what the surrounding neighborhood was like at the time, he does so without any fondness or nostalgia, painting a grim picture of lawlessness, depravity and violence. Tales he's told about life within 93 Avenue B don't suggest that things were much better behind the "safety" of that front door. This instrumental track from 2012's The Seer seemingly seeks to capture the experience of that space, at the time. Easy listening it is not.
Today, once again, you'd never necessarily know anything of the sort went down at said address, although there is still a SWANS insignia (a cryptic spiral) carved into the pavement in front of the front door.
I have a friend from high school who, whenever it’s some rock star’s birthday, posts a picture of same on his Facebook page, appended with a legend like “Today is the great Jimmy Page’s birthday. Thank you for the music, sir, enjoy your day!”… seemingly oblivious to the fact that Jimmy Page himself probably isn’t privy to my friend’s Facebook feed. It’s the thought that counts, I guess.
In any case, today happens to be the birthday of one Kristy Marlana Wallace, otherwise more notoriously known as the inimitable Poison Ivy Rorschach, former guitarist of The Cramps. Alongside her now-deceased spouse and partner in crime, Lux Interior, Poison Ivy provided a singular blend of endearingly sleazy rock n’ roll that cribbed from only the coolest elements of rockabilly, garage rock, fledgling punk and trashy American pop culture to mesh into a sound and sensibility that could only be produced by The Cramps. If you haven’t experienced them, your life is that much more boring, stuck-up, staid and humorless.
Lux Interior passed away in 2009, effectively putting an end to The Cramps. For all intents and purposes, in the wake of her beloved’s demise, Poison Ivy also vanished. She’s still alive -- now aged 66 -- but makes no cameos on other people’s records, plays no shows, does no photo shoots, gives no interviews, etc. She’s living quietly somewhere in Glendale, California.
But, once upon a time, there was nothing quiet about her. She didn’t speak much, preferring to let her guitar do the talking. And talk it fucking well did.
As a sophomore in college, I was once vehemently reprimanded for playing the below song on the air at our college radio station, WDUB 91.1 FM in Granville, OH. Funnily enough, it wasn’t so much the playing of the song in question, but rather my simple back-reading of its title that irked listeners. Evidently, it was okay for Lux Interior to sing it, but hearing a sniveling collegiate pencil-neck like myself utter the word “pussy” over the airwaves put certain people’s noses out of joint. Oh well.
The below clip is an amazing live recording – as The Cramps were surely in their element as a live, throbbing entity – but there’s a signature moment on the studio version of this song (off of 1985’s crucial LP, A Date with Elvis) that is also replicated here. At about 2:03 into the performance, Ivy underpins her solo with some of the raunchiest, low-end guitar crunch that is the quintessence of filthy badassery. It’s glorious.
Happy birthday, Poison Ivy Rorschach. Thank you for the music, ma’am. Enjoy your day.
I’ve spoken about photographer Rich Allen a couple of times here (notably here and here). In any case, he’s been sharing his remarkable images of the East Village and Lower East Side from previous decades for a while now. Just recently (i.e. yesterday), he uploaded a great video. It’s an amazing step back in time.
As I mentioned in my last post, so much of the topography of downtown Manhattan has changed in the past couple of decades that many of these locations might seem tough to recognize.
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