Flaming Pablum

Back to the P&G

I spotted the below photo on the excellent Tumblr, NYC Nostalgia (refreshingly unencumbered with any blogger’s guilt about being unabashedly nostalgic, or “pasturbatory” as Kembra Pfahler of the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black might say), and it put the hook in me.

This is, of course, as shot of the ol’ P&G Bar & Grill, which formerly stood on the northeast corner of West 73rd and Amsterdam Avenue. I’ve mentioned it a few times, notably here, here and here, but it was an excellent spot.

This photo was taken in 1980. I haven't been in that neck of the woods in an age but today, I gather, it’s a Blue Bottle Coffee franchise.

After Hours AOC

Despite appearances to the contrary, this post is not really about AOC (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez), but — since I just invoked her — I might as well concede that I think she’s pretty great. Sure, she’s young and probably still has a lot to learn about the office she now holds, but anyone who is capable of speaking truth to power with her level of conviction — to say nothing about causing so much angst and indigestion among key figures on the Right — is a-okay with me. You, of course, may beg to differ. That’s all.

In any case, a friend of mine recently posted the above photo on Facebook of AOC, posing with her signature, unblinking intensity on a weathered New York City stoop, her impeccably sharp, green ensemble creating a striking dichotomy with her otherwise rough-hewn surroundings. At first glance, I found it strangely familiar, but then I realized … there are doubtlessly thousands of stoops just like the one she’s depicted sitting on.

Then I thought back to an evening several weeks back. I was going to meet some out-of-towner friends who now live on the other side of the globe. They were briefly back in the city for a wedding, so we decided to meet up an at age-old favorite haunt, the Ear Inn on the westerly edges of Spring Street.

I’ve mentioned the Ear a few times here. It passively vies for the title “Oldest Bar in New York City” in meaningless competition with joints like Pete’s Tavern and McSorley’s, although — to my mind — it’s way better than either of those over-hyped establishments. Whether it’s genuinely the oldest bar in New York means nothing to me. It’s just a great place to meet friends and have a few beers. Long may it stay that way.

In any case, because I’m deeply neurotic and punctual to a fault, I arrived in the neighborhood ahead of schedule, which left me plenty of time to roam around the surrounding environs before assuming my place at the bar.

Time was when part of the Ear’s charm was that it was in such a remote, desolate backwater of a neighborhood. Apart from a deli or two, a couple of fellow bars (notably McGovern’s and the Emerald Inn) and, later, rock club Don Hill’s, there was practically nothing. The streets were empty and quiet. It’s for this reason that Martin Scorsese chose this patch of SoHo for many of the locations in “After Hours,” because it exuded such an eerily quiet, empty ambiance.

Suffice to say, this is no longer the case in 2019. These days, the westerly edges of Spring Street are a densely populated Emerald City of exclusive condos and monied luxury. Somehow, the Ear Inn has managed to hold on, but the days of it being a remote outpost are decidedly over.

This all said, there are still whispery elements of the neighborhood’s old vibe, if you look hard enough for them. As I circumnavigated the area on foot, I snapped a few pictures, trying to capture that rarified essence of place.

Circling the block on Renwick Street, just a street to the east of the Ear Inn, I came upon a certain stoop at the tail end of the building that formerly housed the Emerald Inn, the bar Scorsese re-cast as the Terminal Bar for “After Hours” (which I wrote about back here). I was struck by how grim and forbidding the stoop in question looked, so, I took a picture.

Sure enough, it’s the same stoop AOC was photographed on. Now, what was she doing there?

Hell if I know.

Iggy, Me & XTC

Birds of a feather? 

Forty Years of It's Alive by The Ramones

Released forty goddamn years ago this week, It’s Alive by the Ramones is many things for me.

First and foremost, it’s far and away my favorite Ramones release. Secondly, it’s without question my favorite live album of all time (which isn’t saying that much, being that live albums are frequently shit). Thirdly, it may be the single document that definitively captures that nebulous, elusive essence of Punk Rock. If you can listen to It’s Alive without wanting to get up and leap about like a loon or at least downstrum maniacally on a battered imaginary Mosrite, you should probably go buy yourself a Joan Baez record and go smoke some damn cloves.

Boasting a particularly feral incarnation of the original band that is tightly wound and ready to detonate, It’s Alive is essentially the contents of the first three Ramones albums played harder, faster and sloppier than their comparatively genteel studio-recorded iterations. Songs brusquely shove into you in a torrent of feedback, shouty count-offs and echoey harmonics. While you’re still recovering from the pugnacious assault of one song, da brudders are already three-quarters of the way through the next song, barely pausing a moment for Joey to make some bizarre quip about Indian food (“After eating that chicken vindaloo ….”) before Dee Dee has slammed his weathered Plimsoll down on the gas pedal once again. It’s not so much a performance as a stealthy execution. If you happen to enjoy it, that’s nice, but they’re not doing it for your listening pleasure in the slightest.

I first heard It’s Alive in the summer of 1980, when I was sequestered largely against my will at a camp in Maine called Great Oaks (as in “from little acorns, Great Oaks grow”). I’d already been exposed to punk rock via some hipper kids at my grade school, but had gotten a greater taste for it when my father, who was a London correspondent for Forbes Magazine in the late `70s, sent my sister and I a crate of promo LPs from a friend of his at CBS records. In said crate were the first albums by The Clash and The Vibrators, which I immediately gravitated to. How could one not?

But shamefully, while they were from my own hometown, the Ramones hadn’t yet made the same inroads for me. That all changed via a suitably battered (read: well-loved), homemade cassette of It’s Alive that circulated like a virus through the cabins of Great Oaks (each named after a state – ours was West Virginia, swiftly re-christened West Vagina by some wisenheimer or another). That cassette ostensibly belonged to a junior counselor named Andy Romeo, who I tenuously knew from my grade school back home in the city. When not blithely disregarding his duties as a junior counselor, Andy played in an acoustic punk duo called The Latrines with another counselor. I was largely just a pesky nuisance to Andy until I informed him, while canoeing across Saturday Pond one insufferably sunny afternoon, that I owned the first Clash LP (British edition, no less), which dubiously earned me his respect.

In any case, at the end of the summer, guess who went home with that battered, shitty, tinnily recorded homemade cassette of It’s Alive? This guy, that’s who.

I continued to play the shit out of it, thrilling to every manic nanosecond of its 28 furious tracks until my shitty tape recorder (notice I didn’t say “boom box”? I mean, shitty tape recorder, like those no-fidelity, one-speaker pieces of garbage) decided to unceremoniously eat the tape in a tangled spool of warbling disappointment.

Crestfallen, I immediately went out in search of the proper double LP, finding it in the cut-out bin at … of all places … Woolworth’s, a suitably shitty “five’n’dime” on East 86th Street and Third Avenue.

True to the no-frills nature of the recording, the sleeve art of It’s Alive displayed a comparable lack of finesse. Presumably taken from screen grabs of the video of the same performance (at London’s Rainbow Theatre on New Year’s Eve, 1977), the pictures on the cover and in the gatefold are grainy and strangely saturated with the overall visual aesthetic being “this’ll do.”

Regardless, the images of Dee Dee leaping, Joey leaning into his mic and Johnny about to strike another rafter-shaking chord absolutely thrilled me.

Thirty-nine years after first hearing the breakneck sprint of “Teenage Lobotomy” via that shitty, homemade cassette of It’s Alive, it remains dearer to me than I can practically put into words. Every fleeting moment of the It’s Alive recording is crucial to me, from Johnny’s first power-chord clashing with Dee Dee’s false-start count off (stepping on Joey’s terse introduction of “Rockaway Beach”) to the culminating gallop through “We’re a Happy Family.” It is a perfect record from start to finish.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, and I mean it most sincerely: I intend to be buried with a copy of it.

Szkodzinski’s Bands of the Night

In doing a little research for that last piece about Irving Plaza, I stumbled upon this genuinely amazing website by photographer Joseph Szkodzinkski (that’s a tough one to spell, lemme tell ya).

Drawn to his site because of the truly amazing portrait of Doyle, Glen and Jerry from the Misfits at Irving Plaza (above) that came up in a Google Image search, I ended up spending vast amounts of time perusing Mr. Szkod’s archive of pictures from a host of old NYC venues of bands like the Stimulators, 999, Bauhaus, the Shirts, The Clash, the Heartbreakers, Dead Kennedys, Tuxedomoon, DNA and droves more.

If you’re as besotted with this era of NYC music and nightlife as I, you’ll love it. Check it out HERE!

Back to Warsaw

As much as I genuinely enjoy the venue in question, I’ve only been to Brooklyn’s Warsaw in Greenpoint twice -– on both, separate occasions to witness the sensory-engulfing maelstrom of the live SWANS experience. I love that it’s a great big room with a rich history. I love that they serve Polish grub and beer. I love their t-shirt slogan that reads: “Where Pierogis Meet Punk.”

Breathe easy, reader. I don’t think it’s going anywhere. I’m not lamenting its impending demise, although when that day does come, I shall find solace in the videos below, not least the SWANS highlight reel of one of the shows I was at (featuring lots of skull-worrying drones and wavey Gira gesticulation), but more so the Secret Machines clip from 2006 or so just beneath, which was filmed entirely at Warsaw.

Enjoy, and go have a pierogi, why don’t you?

Gettin' 'Fanky' in The Streets

Yesterday afternoon, apropos of nothing in particular, I posted a video on Facebook by this great New Zealand band called The Clean, that being “Dunes” from 1989. Beyond it just being a great tune, I harbor an affinity for this video -– as richly detailed in this post from 2013 -– because it is rife with Super 8 footage of the band exploring the New York City of the summer of 1989, and visiting various favorite locales like the old Knitting Factory on East Houston Street, CBGB on Bowery, Maxwell’s in Hoboken, etc. To my mind, it just captures a time and a place perfectly.

Presumably inspired by same, my friend Frank R. then sent me a curious clip from the very same era by a performer named Charly Garcia. In all honesty, I initially had no concept who this strangely mustachioed Argentine dude was -- although that would change --  but much like the Clean video, this clip for a tune called “Fanky,” --  whatever that means -– finds Mr. Garcia and cohorts hamming it up in the streets of SoHo, Chelsea, Greenwich Village, Washington Square Park, East River Park and around the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, all circa that same turn of the decade, when downtown still felt cool, airy and arty -– and not staid, overcrowded and avaricious like it does today.

The music is sort of slickly overproduced, but still legitimately funky. Some of the video effects are distracting, but the clip still mercifully allows for some nostalgic viewing. Check it out here…

In doing a bit of further research, however, it suddenly struck me that I HAD indeed heard of Charly Garcia before. In about 1983, or so, he put out a record called Clics Moderno or…. wait for it … Modern Clix. The sleeve for same found Mr. Garcia posing in front of some very specific street art. See below…

Keen-eyed NYC street-art fans will probably recognize the shadowy figure behind Garcia as the work of Richard Hambleton (who I discussed back here). That part, while certainly cool, wasn’t what caught my eye, though. No, what struck me is that the “Modern Clix” tag refers -– presumably -– to my friend Fran Powers’ old band. As close as I can figure it, evidently Charly Garcia must have been photographed somewhere on the streets of downtown NYC and liked the picture so much, he decided to slap it on his album and name the record after it --- wittingly or unwittingly, I do not know.

As detailed in this old post, Fran Powers’ Modern Clix played an amalgam of ska/punk/funk/reggae that is worth checking out. You also might recognize Fran from his cameos is films like "After Hours" and "Hannah and Her Sisters," which he and I discussed here. 

Is he aware that Charly Garcia appropriated his tag for the title and image of his earlier record?

I will have to ask. 

Where The Music Used to Live: The Reboot

As a tireless proponent of the physical manifestation of music , I have devoted what some might consider an inordinate amount of bandwidth on this here silly blog to eulogizing great, iconic and even –- in some instances -– frankly mediocre record and CD shops that formerly speckled the map of Manhattan. Today, if you’re trying to put your hand to a specific compact disc or slab of vinyl here in the city, suffice to say your options are pointedly fewer and shittier (especially if you refuse to subject yourself to the bowel-worrying indignity of shopping at shoddy purveyors of putrid offal like Urban Outfitters). Yes, you could, of course, order whatever it is online, but -– really -– where’s the fun in that?

In any case, following in the tradition of this post, herewith three quick additions to the roster.

I’ve already devoted a few posts to Freebeing Records (notably here, here, here and here), but I spotted this shot and thought I’d invoke it again. It was posted on Facebook and dated as having been taken in 1983, but that’s clearly incorrect, being that the sleeves for the Damned’s Phantasmagoria, The Mekons’ Fear and Whiskey and OMD’s Crush -- among others – are featured in the shop window. All three of those albums came out in 1985. Look a little closer, and there appears to be a Live Skull flyer on far right. In any case, it’s a cool shot. No idea who the dude is. Today, the space that was Freebeing on this stretch of Second Avenue is now a Mexican food joint called Tanqueria Diana

As mentioned elsewhere, before I discovered the fabled network of independent record shops way downtown, I used to routinely avail myself to certain midtown spots like Disc-O-Mat on Lexington Avenue, Crazy Eddie on East 57th and a few spots further down like the one I detailed here and this other one right near the Brooks Brothers flagship store on Madison Avenue (long, long gone). Additionally, there was Record Explosion on Fifth Avenue between 35th and 36th Streets. I have vivid memories of routinely hitting this outlet in the mid-80’s. For some reason lost in the mists of time, I immediately associate this place with the Paul Young’s 1983 cover of “Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home).” I want to say it’s because I remember watching one of the shop’s clerks emphatically “air-bass” along with that blue-eyed-soul ditty’s signature fretless bass line (played by the great Pino Palledino). In any case, Record Explosion is unsurprisingly very long gone, but see it below on the right hand side of the picture.  Today, I believe it’s footwear place called NYC Sole. 

The last one isn’t a photo but rather a business card. I spoke about Musical Maze quite a while back, notably the one on Third Avenue that was initially – according to Dean Wareham of Luna/Galaxie 500 – the shop where Lux Interior and Bryan Gregory of the Cramps allegedly worked (before the latter decamped to King Karol a few blocks to the north). That Musical Maze location later became a short-lived Crazy Eddie outlet staffed by Brian “Damage” Keats of Genocide and –- fleetingly -– The Misfits who I befriended in the mid-80s.

This card isn’t for that location, but rather for one that was formerly on Third Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets. True to the legacy above, this iteration of Musical Maze counted Peter Holsapple of the dB’s as an employee (as documented here). Not sure when it closed -– and I have no recollection of it, honestly -– but in more recent years, it was a venture called The Pizza Bar, and is now, if I’m not mistaken, vacant.

If you're excited by this type of ephemera, do please check out...

Don't Bother Lookin' For'Em: Great Since-Closed NYC Record Shops

Where the Music Used to Live

Where the Music Used to Live: Slight Return

Where the Music Lived: REMIX

 

You May Think You're Cool,....

...but you'll never be as cool as these two dear, departed fellows. Photograph by Curtis Knapp.

Birds of a Feather ...

Look, it's a pair of deeply horrible fuckin' creeps!