Flaming Pablum

Goodbye, Pete Shelley

They arguably lacked the spittle-drenched fury of the Sex Pistols or the alleged political acumen of The Clash, but The Buzzcocks were, quite simply, the perfect band. They struck a precise balance between the adrenalized sprint of the purest punk rock and an always-melodic brand of shiny, candy-colored pop. In frontman/guitarist Pete Shelley, they had an adept songwriter who could effortlessly pen shrewdly non-gender-specific lyrics that were immediate, universal and astonishingly nuanced. Simultaneously sweet, pugnacious and irrepressibly catchy, the songs of the Buzzcocks were and will always remain nothing short of total genius.

Pete Shelley died today at 63. I first heard the Buzzcocks courtesy of their deceptively prurient single, “Orgasm Addict,” which prompted me to pick up their seminal (pardon the awful pun) compilation, Singles Going Steady and was instantly smitten by their sharp, funny and inimitable brand of rock ‘n’ roll. One of the most exciting live shows I’ve ever been lucky enough to witness was when the band reformed in 1989 and played the New Ritz on West 54th Street. When the Buzzcocks assumed the stage and burst straight into “Everybody’s Happy Nowadays,” that storied room -- formerly Studio 54 -– burst wide open in a veritable explosion of joy.

I went on to see them several more times, though tapered off in more recent years. Pete was starting to look a little worse for wear and seemed to be less enthused the last time I saw them play at Irving Plaza a few years back. I am saddened I will never get to see them perform again, and heartbroken that yet another musical hero whose songs have meant so much to me since I first heard them several decades ago has left us.

Pour one out for Pete. Go buy every Buzzcocks album you can get your undeserving hands on. Thank me later.

Colloquial Semantics

Regarding this ridiculous story, if I'm not mistaken, the coinage of the term "to 86 someone" actually originates right here in NYC, stemming from the practice of forcibly removing someone from the premises of age-old speakeasy (since-turned-revoltingly bespoke eatery) Chumley's in the West Village, which I referenced most recently here. 

If you were selected to be thrown out of the bar, you were ushered out via its backdoor on 86 Bedford Street....hence "86'd."

It has nothing to do with murder (that's "Deep 6").

A PSA from The Hulk

There's still a little bit of time left, so .... if you haven't yet, please....

Courtesy of Dana Gould.

Back to Astor Place

Our good friend Bob Egan of Popshots NYC posted the below photo over on Facebook, and I found it so striking that I was motivated to post it here. Here's how Bob prefaced it...

Astor Place, 1984, from the roof of 111 Fourth Avenue at 11-12th St.

Seemingly a million lightyears from its current, busy, teeming iteration, this is exactly the Astor Place I first discovered in the early 80's. Barren, uncluttered, spacious.... full of elbow room and ripe for exploring. 

 

'Falling Out'

Photo by Sierra Urich.

Just a brief break in the political agita.

Next week, you can either celebrate the long-awaited cresting of the Blue Wave, or, conversely, suffocate your sorrows over the unyielding red-capped MAGA yoke of the GOP (in the wake of election 2016, we should take NOTHING for granted) by availing yourselves to “Falling Out,” the latest ambitious endeavor by my friends at The Phantom Limb Company.

As part of the 2018 Next Wave Festival, this production --  spawned by the creative partnership of Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko (discussed most recently here) -- explores and expounds on the relationship between recent traumatic events and the parables of mythology. As the Phantom Limb team itself describes it…

[“Falling Out”] is a rippling meditation on water, heartbreak, and healing in response to the 2011 tsunami and Fukushima nuclear disaster. In collaboration with Dai Matsuoka of dance troupe Sankai Juku, the work weaves flex dance, butoh, and Phantom Limb’s unique puppet theater into a visually arresting tapestry of collective experience and artistic alchemy.

So, yeah … it's not exactly “Yo Gabba Gabba!”

In all seriousness, the multi-media/multi-disciplined work of the Phantom Limb Company always makes for a striking visual experience that will inform, emotionally resonate and haunt you long after you’ve witnessed it.

It is well worth your time. Find out more by clicking right here. Performances only run from November 7th through November 10th, so act with stealth.

As an example of some of their earlier work, check out this teaser from their production, “"69º S"

Word on the Street

Missing No More: Finding Missing Foundation’s Music

I’ve written about Missing Foundation here entirely too many times, even as recently as this past September. In any event… here’s another installment to that saga.

Way back when, while Missing Foundation’s cryptic insignia may have been sprayed, scrawled, scratched and/or angrily carved onto virtually every decaying edifice southeast of 14th Street, actual, tactile documents of the band’s music weren’t quite as plentiful. Given their arguable infamy and notoriety for chaotic performances that frequently culminated in wanton property damage and the occasional riot, many may have suggested, at the time, that any records Missing Foundation produced might have almost been incidental; sonically ugly side-dishes to the malignantly deafening entrée that was their incendiary live incarnation. But whether those records were simply a means-to-an-end or more likely just the victims of shoddy distribution didn’t matter to me. Having had my curiosity piqued by the band’s eerily pugnacious flyer campaign circa 1989, I was determined to find those Missing Foundation records.

Suffice to say, that task was significantly more tricky than just walking into Crazy Eddie’s.

As luck would have it, however, in the summer of 1990, or so, a fittingly-albeit-unwittingly doomed record label called Restless Records saw fit to unleash MF’s third album, the cheerily titled Ignore the White Culture, along with re-releasing the band’s earlier works, Demise, 1933: Your House is Mine (that was my favorite) and their eponymous debut from 1987. In one fell swoop, I’d gone from famine to feast in the MF department.

Pressing play on the first track of 1989’s Demise, that being “A Hunting We Will Go,” was something of a startling revelation. Some months earlier, I remember dropping the needle on Scumdogs of the Universe, the second album by GWAR and being so let down by how comparatively polished the band sounded in contrast to their cartoonishly ultra-violent image. That first airing of Demise was the complete opposite experience. While Missing Foundation didn’t have an image like GWAR’s – or, really, any discernible “image” at all -- they had accrued that afore-cited nefarious mystique of being uber-agitpropagandizers. Opening with the strains of what sounds like actual police action at a riot (punctuated by sirens and a woman’s emphatic scream of “DON’T YOU FUCKING HIT HIM, YOU PIG!”), the music -– such as it is -- kicks in with a sluggish, lurching rumble atop primary instigator Peter Missing’s anguished moaning and semi-garbled invective as barked through a megaphone. While somewhat reminiscent of the similarly user-hostile, equally No-Wave-inspired outpourings of early SWANS, MF lacked that band’s disciplined, slave-ship gait, in favor of ….well….writhing cacophony. Easy listening this was not.

Anyway, long story short, Missing Foundation’s albums fleetingly came back into print for a bit. They released one further uncompromising album, 1992’s Go Into Exile before Restless Records collapsed and Missing Foundation, or that iteration of it, disbanded.

Fast forward almost 27 years later, and the physical manifestation of music isn’t quite as much of a priority as it once was, a development that has both revolutionized and disemboweled the music industry – an apparatus Missing Foundation were never totally on board with to begin with. While there are still folks – like myself – who collect such things with furtive reverence, most people, it seems, stream their music, these days. As such, given the advent of various digital platforms, actually hearing certain music is easier than ever before. Personally speaking, I continue to prefer CD’s and LPs. Whatever.

That all brings us to the point of this long-winded post. While their albums may have been difficult to prize back in the day, through the magic of Bandcamp, you can now pretty much avail yourself to the entirety of Missing Foundation’s discography, including the newly released Hamburg 1984, their comparatively slick (for MF) and entirely listenable collaboration with KMFDM.

Via this handy aggregation, you can hear some of my favorite selections like “Pistol Archive,” the afore-mentioned “A Hunting We Will Go,” the riff-blitzkrieg of “Jameel’s Turmoil” (including a more recent live airing of same), “Kill the Hypnotic Bastards” and, of course, “Burn Trees.”

Find all this by clicking right here. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

More on Missing Foundation ...

Missing to Be Clever

Missing in Action

Cocktails for Two: In Conversation with Missing Foundation's Chris Egan

Maron Misses Missing Foundation 

The Life & Times of RB Korbet

'I Will Destroy You'

A Missing Link

Is the Party Back On? 

Missing Foundation Live at the Marquee 1990

Skeleton Key at CBGB, New Year's Even `97

Back in 2016, I described my love for the band Skeleton Key thusly…

As I mentioned above, I’d first heard of Erik by way of his band Skeleton Key, who were easily one of my favorite discoveries of the `90s. Like a hiccupy cross between, say, early Devo and Pussy Galore — or maybe a less scowly Cop Shoot Cop — Skeleton Key made a gloriously skewed-but-tuneful cacophony. Like both C$C and Pussy Galore, the band featured a distinctive percussionist — initially a spiky haired gent named Rick Lee — who smacked the shit out of a variety of found metal implements, among them pots, pans, a fire extinguisher, a child’s red wagon and various other sundry items. In addition to Lee’s clamorous arsenal, the first iteration of the band also featured powerhouse drummer Steve Calhoon. In front of those two were guitarist/vocalist Chris Maxwell and bassist, vocalist, bandleader and former Lounge Lizard Erik Sanko.

That particular line-up of the band recorded an e.p. and one full album — the truly amazing Fantastic Spikes Through Balloon — before attrition started to take its toll, leaving Erik as the only mainstay from the original four. He kept the band going, though, recording two more consistently distinctive albums that retained the band’s signature brand of propulsive rock racket.

Indeed, the original line-up for Skeleton Key dissolved around 1999, although Erik kept the band going through 2012. In the interim, Erik also toured with Firewater and released a solo record, but his primary focus has been his work with the creative collective, Phantom Limb. Following their days in Skeleton Key, Lee and Calhoon formed Enon with John Schmersal from Braniac for a bit, but not sure what they’ve gone onto since. Guitarist Chris Maxwell currently pursues a solo career and, I believe, does music for the animated show “Bob’s Burgers.”

But back in 1997, the original line-up of Skeleton Key was just an insane live band that was not to be missed. Bizarrely, very little video evidence of that first line-up exists, beyond a weird appearance on MTV (see that old post). But a YouTuber called Mike’s Music Archive uploaded a live show quite recently taped at CBGB, and it is amazing to behold. See that below.

This was recorded on the New Year’s Eve of December 31, 1997. The Jesus Lizard was the headliner. I first posted this video on Facebook, and Erik mentioned that at the very end, Danny Elfman of Oingo Boingo emrges from the dressing room.

Anyway, … enjoy!

What's On Third?

...with apologies to Abbot & Costello.

Yesterday, our good friend and longtime fellow anachronistic bloggity-blogger EV Grieve posted an update on the status of the northeast corner of St. Marks Place at Third Avenue. Many might remember the news from about a year back that a large segment of that block -– including spaces fomerly or currently occupied by concerns like McDonald’s, the Continental, Korilla (formerly about nine other things since its storied iteration as St. Marks Pizza, above, as caught by Matt Weber in 1985), that corner news-agents/smoke shop, the since-shuttered Papaya King, among others -– would be razed to accommodate a new, seven-story tower of office space, because -- yeah, wait for it -– we needed that.

Well, plans for same, at the moment, seem squishy (see Grieve’s post for details), although most of the businesses on that plot have already closed up shop. The McDonald’s has been gone for a while, pushed out not just by this plan, but also the advent of the ever-aromatic/pungent (depending on your opinion) Shake Shack across the avenue. The Continental seems to have received a stay of execution, for the moment, although, if I’m being honest, I haven’t set foot in that particular joint since they dismantled the rear stage and stopped hosting live music.

As laboriously lamented in this old post, I was lucky enough to regularly witness a slew of suitably slovenly bands grace the stage at The Continental back throughout the 90’s, some notable high-decibel culprits being the legitimately incendiary Nashville Pussy (above), The Unband (below), The Upper Crust, The Lee Harvey Keitel Band, The Bullys, The Pleasure Fuckers, Furious George and the Candy Snatchers.

The loss of St. Marks Pizza was also worthy of its own post, which I thought I’d done, but evidently not. Or, if I did, I can’t find it anymore. In any case, it closed in 2003, and the neighborhood was pointedly the lesser for it. I also remember their slices being way better than those prized at more rhapsodized pizzerias like Stromboli's two blocks to the east.

I also strangley spent a week living in that eyesore of a dormintory right next to the old McDonald’s back in 1993, which I spoke about in this ancient post. The building hasn’t aged well, but it’s still standing … despite what many of the architecture students who lived inside it, at the time, were predicting.

In any event, regardless of what’s to transpire for ths busy plot of the East Village, it already seems somewhat undead. That said, I’m sure I’ll pine for this decrepit iteration of it once the new buildings start going up.

When I think of that particular strip, I invariably think of going to those live shows at the Continental. Herewith a smattering of that era, replete with live footage captured in that venue.

Harley & Glen

If you're a fan of the same stuff I regularly post about here, neither of these dudes should be a mystery to you. But, in the interest of clarity, this is an episode of Harley Flanagan's YouTube/podcast thing. Harley is the living embodiment of New York Hardcore, having cut his teeth as a tween playing drums in the Stimulators before forming the Cro-Mags. His is a legend that looms large.

Glen E. Friedman, meanwhile, is the incredibly prescient and endearingly outspoken photographer that documented the crucial gestation period of skateboarding culture (see out "Dogtown & Z-Boys" if you're unfamiliar with same) and some of the most iconic photographs of the then-still-percolating eras of hardcore punk and Hip-Hop. You've doubtlessly seen his handiwork on album covers by Public Enemy, the Beastie Boys, Slayer, Minor Threat, LL Cool J, Ice-T, Suicidal Tendencies and countless others.  He was also, for a time, my next-door neighbor, strangely enough. 

In any case, it's an illuminating chat. Enjoy.