In 2002, I moved from an apartment on East 12th Street to an apartment on East 9th Street. The guy who moved into the 12th Street apartment after me was a dude named Carl.
Yesterday, Carl emailed me to tell me that a UPS package arrived for me there -- a full 19 years after I'd moved out.
I will find out later what it is.
It will doubtlessly be anticlimactic, but ... so mysterious.
Watch this space.
As mentioned back on this post from 2015, I should preface this by saying I regrettably never made it to the Peppermint Lounge in either of its locations. A storied club dating back to the late `50s, the original venue was on West 45th Street and played host to everyone from The Beach Boys to Black Flag. The second iteration of the club appeared circa 1982 and lasted until 1985. Today, the original spot on 45th street is no more, razed at some point in the `80s, and the second spot on Fifth is currently an empty storefront in the wake of playing host to numerous retail outlets. There is no Peppermint Lounge anymore.
The clip below, meanwhile, dates back to 1981, and was captured in the 45th Street location. This is, of course, the original line-up of the Circle Jerks, one of my favorite all-time bands, arguably at the height of their powers. This performance would have been recorded just three months after Black Flag’s fabled appearance at the same club (with New York’s own Even Worse as opening act). By this point, the Circle Jerks would have also graced stages around town at spots like the Mudd Club, and would later play spots like The Reggae Lounge (formerly the Rock Lounge), Irving Plaza, the 10.18 Club (aka The Roxy), and The Ritz. I don’t know that they ever actually played CBGB prior to the `90s (when they famously performed a cover of the Soft Boys’ “I Wanna Destroy You” with Debbie Gibson on guest vocals), but don’t quote me on that.
As detailed on this post, I wouldn’t actually get to see the band until 1985, playing alongside DOA and Redd Kross, and by that time, original bassist Roger Rogerson and drummer Lucky Lehrer were long out of the ranks. When this video of the original band was captured at the 45th Street Peppermint Lounge – almost exactly a neck-snapping FORTY YEARS AGO -- I would have only recently graduated from 8th Grade, been sequestered out in Quogue, Long Island with my family, very deliberately NOT playing any tennis and otherwise begrudgingly mowing lawns for paltry sums. It would also have been that same summer when I was being lured away from comparatively conventional Punk records by The Ramones, The Clash, Generation X and the Sex Pistols and towards the splenetic strain of Hardcore by my friend Brad’s tireless evangelizing of records like the Circle Jerks’ Group Sex, Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Dead Kennedys and the seminal Let Them Eat Jellybeans compilation.
But while I was being indoctrinated, it was already happening, as can be vividly seen here. I think I was so struck by this video as it flies rather squarely in the face of the misconception that Hardcore was somehow a less “musical” variation of by-then-conventional Punk. While, indeed, Hardcore may have been a more feral and streamlined variation that was built for speed, so to speak, even a casual viewing of powerhouse drummer Lucky Lehrer amply demonstrates what a finessed and versatile musician he was.
Such highfalutin pretty talk aside, the band is fucking on fire here.
Enjoy.
If you're a fan of the band, you may have already heard about this documentary, Charles Atlas' "Put Blood in the Music," which is a profile of the New York music scene circa 1989, concentrating on John Zorn and Sonic Youth. You have to wade through about two minutes of needless extrapolation from "The South Bank Show," but the doc itself is well worth your time.
Enjoy.
Possibly the first time I ever heard this song, it was while watching a fellow student I shan’t accurately name emphatically lip-synch to it with great, dramatic aplomb from across the divide of “the senior section” in the student commons of my high school. Kris (not his real name) was miming the lyrics with astonishing conviction at his steady date and school-wide crush, Nora (not her name), strangely providing a vague glimpse into their otherwise deeply private, interpersonal dynamic for the rest of the student body to bear full witness to. As a somewhat brazenly doe-eyed freshman rather strenuously unversed in the ways of the teenaged heart, it was a visceral vista into a world I was desperately trying to comprehend. Did it help? I have no idea. Probably not.
A rather succinctly worded summation of a genuinely toxic relationship, “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell — a song originally made famous as a Northern Soul hit by Gloria Jones in 1965 — does not exactly paint a rosy picture of the conventional romantic interaction. Pairing the swooningly wounded vocals of one Marc Almond with the spartan electronic arsenal of Dave Ball, “Tainted Love” was both disarmingly emotive and icy cold, incongruously framing Almond’s sultry cooing within a chilly, dot-matrix soundscape. Sure, in later years, I’d learn of the influence of trailblazing electronic proto-punk duo Suicide on the nascent music of Soft Cell, but, at the time, it was genuinely unlike anything I’d ever heard. Mechanized blips, metronomic beats, robotic beeps and Marc Almond’s campily sonorous account of emotional dysfunction, “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell — to say nothing of the preferred extended mix appending a steamy cover of the Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?” — was the sound of a fraught, heartbroken future. Never had amorous tumult sounded so stylishly erotic.
Duly intrigued, I remember going with my forward-thinking grade-school comrade Pogo (not his real name, but immortalized here) to Disc-O-Mat on East 58th to pick up the 12” single of “Tainted Love.” For whatever stupid reasons, I remember being reassured that, on the back cover, Marc Almond was depicted sporting spikes on his wrists not at all unlike my favorites like Billy Idol, the Lords of the New Church, the Circle Jerks or Judas Priest. It was a relatively meaningless sartorial flourish, but it helped me contextualize it all.
What I wasn’t prepared for, however, was the single’s reach. While I may have projected upon it an indelible impression as an envelope-pushing bit of underground electronic pop, “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell was an ascendent phenomenon. At one point, I remember shuddering as I my own goddamn father pulled out his own copy of the 12” single from his collection while I was over at his apartment for dinner, one evening (him having divorced my mother several years earlier) and hearing him try to convince me of its groovy brilliance (I having already discovered it months earlier). I may have uttered an emphatic “please just shut the fuck up, Dad,” but don’t quote me on that. Suffice it to say, it did the single no favors, for me.
Sometime after that I remember being at some holiday get-together and having the preadolescent nephew of a friend of mine asking me to play it on the home stereo for the “laser sounds" on the 12” mix to score an imaginary conflict between him and another nose-picking rugrat in attendance. Clearly, the bloom was off the rose.
Moments like those made it hard for me to retain my initial impression of “Tainted Love” as that rarified collision of cutting-edge sonic technology with timelessly resonant songwriting, but clearly the song has endured as a classic, regardless of any genre-anal peccadilloes or predilections. It no longer belongs to any sub-group, it’s everyone’s favorite.
Here in 2021, you’re likely to hear “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell on the sound-system of your local grocery store. It has long severed its connecting tendrils to the comparatively subversive subcultures it might have once been associated with. It’s now just another slice of pop-culture nostalgia that doesn’t require that deep a dive. At the very least, one hopes that fact has fortified the coffers of Messrs. Almond and Ball, let alone the song’s original songwriters. But its days of being a seductively decadent dollop of freakydeakiness, are basically over.
To this day, however, I cannot shake the image of Kris singing it to Nora.
Wallow in it…
The concept of worth is an elusive thing. There are things out there in the world, somewhere, that probably mean next to nothing to the individuals who own them, but that I would consider positively invaluable. I’ve mentioned it several times here before, but there’s a certain elusive Cop Shoot Cop gig flyer circa 1990 at CBGB that I would gladly pay a handsome sum for, but I’ve just never been able to put my hand to it. Very recently, I came across a photograph of a lost bit of graffiti that I’ve been preoccupied with finding for literally over three decades, but when I asked the photographer’s representative how much a print of same might cost, the answer was in the thousands (translation: ain’t gonna happen). Why would someone pay handsomely for an old gig flyer? Why would someone pay for a photograph of old graffiti? Why ask why? Why do you like and pursue the things you do?
Then, of course, there are things that I happen to possess and don’t give a great deal of thought to that have gone on to become arguably valuable. I have a couple of books about No Wave and paperback copy of “The Stranglers Song by Song” (as mentioned here) that have gone out of print and strangely since become evidently rarified and summarily pricey artifacts. I have stacks of compact discs that might have been worth more than I’d originally paid for them, but the bottom has basically fallen out of that particular market.
Then there are things that may have once been entirely incidental that have ascended in perceived value to such an extent that they’re now shown in fuckin’ museums and prestigious collections. That will never cease to amaze me.
Another example of that revealed itself to me today when I stumbled upon the website of Gallery98. As I was perusing through their collection of party notices, gig flyers and nightclub invites, I noticed they featured a few of the distinctive cards for GREENDOORNYC. For the uninitiated, GREENDOORNYC was this series of regular parties, back in the mid-to-late 90s, in the East Village and Lower East Side thrown by Jesse Malin of D Generation. Originally, they were held at a variety of different locations until finally coalescing at the space on St. Marks Place that Malin would later commandeer as Coney Island High. These events were well-attended and raucous gatherings of East Village rock’n’roll types and went on for hours on end. I was lucky enough to go on three or four occasions, and always had a damn good time.
As such, I have a number of these silly cards, usually depicting period-specific antiheroes like Stiv Bator, Johnny Thunders, KISS, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Debbie Harry and the like. They formerly adorned my fridge on East 12th street or were pinned up to any number of bulletin boards at any of the several different jobs I’ve had since that era as mementos of my misspent semi-youth. They now live in a selection of battered envelopes of ephemera hastily amassed when I was leaving any one of those afore-cited jobs. They’re no longer pinned up and displayed, but I still have them, buried in the closet.
As a lark, I reached out to Gallery98 to inquire as to how much these cheaply printed and thinly produced scraps of cardboard are currently selling for.
Apparently, they’re currently selling for $100…. EACH!
Just a quick follow-up to this revelatory (well, to me, anyway) post from back in April.
Once I gleaned that the original site of the elusive Plasmatics mural from my distant memory was the tellingly-titled Graffiti Hall of Fame on 106th & Park Avenue (this discovery coming courtesy of an uncredited photo on “Graffiti Database”), I started to wonder if I could find any other — and/or preferably better — photographs of the art in question, but tireless Google searches were giving me nothing further on the subject. I mean, Hell, I was lucky to find that first photo to begin with.
Branching my search out further, however, I noticed that there is a very robust subculture of reverent graffiti-centric publishing. As such, when I spotted a fetching, paperback coffee-table book on Amazon that was exclusively dedicated to the very spot where the original mural was, I figured there was a sporting chance it would include another shot of it. And even if it didn’t, I was intrigued enough by the story of the place and its accompanying images that it would be cool to own. Tweny-something bucks later, it was mine. It arrived today.
Much to my delight, fourteen pages into the book comes a beautiful wide shot of the wall in question that was obviously snapped at least a year or two earlier, as the artwork is still vibrantly colorful and unsullied by other tags. This photo was taken by maverick shutterbug Martha Cooper. I remain mystified as to why these artists chose to immortalize the Plasmatics in this manner, but, again, perhaps they were just simply fans.
As a lark, I have reached out to Ms. Cooper to see if she’s consider selling me a print of the photo. We’ll see.
Incidentally, you can check out more of Cooper's amazing work on her Instagram page. Tell'em Flaming Pablum sent ya.
It’s the Friday of what has felt like a very long week, and while I still have a pile of work stuff to do, I am just not feeling the motivation to tackle any of it, at this very moment. Instead, herewith a rumination on a beloved slab of vinyl from eons past.
While arguably not quite as ear-&-brain opening as its forebear compilation Let Them Eat Jellybeans from 1981 (which I wrote at great, sepia-toned length about here back in 2006), the live compilation Rat Music For Rat People provided a more organic taste of early-80’s hardcore punk than I’d previously been privileged enough to experience, capturing several crucial bands in their untethered live element. Much as on storied live albums like It’s Alive by The Ramones and No Sleep `til Hammersmith by Motorhead, the live renditions of these already-frenetic songs were faster, harder, louder and sloppier than their comparatively genteel iterations from humble recording studios. Select tracks on this collection by D.O.A., the Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, T.S.O.L. and, most notably, Bad Brains took on furious new dimensions onstage, whereas turgid treks through pieces like “Scream” by Black Flag and “Life” by Flipper toppled out of the speakers as if slathered in hot oil and set ablaze in slow-burning agony. From top to bottom, the music on this LP was executed with bracing degrees of bug-eyed deliberateness. The bands weren’t trying to entertain, they were trying to exorcise.
Technically released in 1982, I don’t think I picked up my copy of it until the spring of 1983, purchased solely on the listing of bands cited above. The album also featured tracks by outfits who were new to me like Crucifix, The Dils and The Avengers, but it was really selections like Dead Kennedys’ “I Am The Owl,” prefaced with an inimitable rant by Jello Biafra about looming Orwellian governmental oversight, a particularly nihilistic bash through “Live Fast Die Young” by the Circle Jerks and a neck-snapping sprint through “How Long Can a Punk Get?” by Bad Brains that rendered the album so incredibly crucial.
Taped onto a 90-minute cassette that somewhat incongruously featured Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind on the flip, Rat Music for Rate People largely scored my somewhat furrow-browed summer of 1983, wherein I was exiled to summer school for flunking geometry and my mother and step-father’s marriage was steadily metastasizing. It was the music that “got me through it all,” so to speak, and even hearing a fleeting few seconds of those recordings today takes me right back to that era.
Today, my well-loved copy of the LP lives in a flight case in my mother’s basement out on the east end of Long Island with hundreds of other LPs I consider wildly significant. I never re-picked it up on compact disc. I believe they appended two more volumes of the series into a single disc, but even that is invariably well out of print, these days. Not sure if it’s streamable, but you can, for the moment, hear it via YouTube.
THIS is hardcore.
It’s by no means a stretch for any blog that concentrates on downtown NYC, but I’m sure I’ve mentioned Downtown Beirut here a few times, the long-lost watering hole on First Avenue. Don’t bother looking for it today, of course. I honestly can’t remember what’s there in 2021, let alone if said venture is even operational, at this stage. But, in any case, as Downtown Beirut, is was practically a holy site for folks of a certain disposition.
I cannot remember the first time I set foot in the bar, but it was invariably at some point around 1988 or 1989, relatively late into its storied tenure. True to its oft-repeated legend, it did indeed have a robustly adventurous jukebox of the old-school variety, and I remember being fairly gobsmacked to find bands like the Buzzcocks and Modern Lovers on it. It was a favorite spot for my fellow paylessly disgruntled SPIN interns and I to frequent, along with being the first place I ever witnessed my friend Dusty’s star-crossed garage-noise band, The Bastards of Execution, perform.
To my recollection, Dowtown Beirut feels like the place wherein the 80s transformed into the 90s, the decade that would eventually turn the bar's lights out. By 1994 or so, it was but a memory. To this day, invoke its name and watch folks who pair their greying temples with increasingly ill-fitting Lunachicks t-shirts get moist around the eyes. Many of today’s bars try to emulate its singular brand of grimy, punky cool, but like the CBGB, Mars Bar and the Lismar Lounge, it is now the stuff of legend.
It’s precisely for this reason that videos like the one below are so special. While you cannot darken the doors of Downtown Beirut anymore, here’s as close a taste to the experience you’re as likely to find, courtesy of one Mike Enright. It has the loose narrative of a student film, but the visual specifics are fantastic. I especially love the sticker on the jukebox that reads "New Missing Foundation - I DARE YOU!"
Site back and enjoy … “Night At Downtown Beirut.” By the way, the lovely photo at the top of this post was taken by one David Vega.
Night At Downtown Beirut from Mike Enright on Vimeo.
It’s been a long while since I’ve been as fixated with one, but I used to be pretty hung up about tracking down the locations of photographs of favorite bands of mine. I have a whole category on the blog devoted to it (and comparable mysteries), but I’m thinking my exhaustive (and exhausting) search for a specific shot of the Lunachicks some years back may have broken the back of that preoccupation … or maybe it’s just because I haven’t encountered another photo that captured my imagination the same way. Who can say?
In any event, along the way, I was aided and abetted by a few folks whose sleuthing skills were considerably sharper than mine, notably my comrade Bob Egan of Popspots NYC and a friend on Facebook named Chung Wong, among a few others. On several occasions, both Bob and Chung gamely dove in and helped divine the true provenance and practically the precise longitude and latitude of the locations in question.
As it happens, there is apparently another prominent and versatile cat on this beat. Slated for an upcoming session on my friend Drew Stone’s “New York Hardcore Chronicles” live, one Steve Birnbaum is an artist, photographer, filmmaker and fellow music head who takes comparable pains to seek out and artfully replicate shots of famous music luminaries. Where I was inclined to mimic the shots with the then-willing aid of my little kids (now that they’re in their teens, they are less enthused about such shenanigans), Mr. Birnbaum adds his own signature by framing the original photograph within the larger environment of the location. In a weird way, it’s a little reminiscent of the Instagram account of Murad Osmann. If that name doesn’t ring a bell he’s that self-styled “travel influencer” that continually photographs his smokin’ hot spouse from behind in the “follow me” series as they jetset around the globe. In Birnbaum’s case, instead of holding his lovely lady’s hand, he’s brandishing the original source material.
You can see the fruit of Birnbaum’s labors on his Instagram page called TheBandWasHere. On it, he covers a lot of the bases I, too, sought out, like the Misfts in the West Village, the Beasties in Charles Street, Joe Strummer on East 14th, The Cramps on Charles Lane and several, several others. He and I have clearly been bitten by the same bug.
Go check it out and tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.
Incidentally, my 2009 response to the above original (the cover of The Ramones' Too Tough to Die) is below.
For slavish fanboys of grisly noise bands like Cop Shoot Cop and Pussy Galore (i.e. me), one of the most coveted artifacts is the Live Crush 84-85 tape by the imaginatively titled beat combo, Shithäus. Simply put, this was future C$C founder Tod [A] and future Pussy Galore founder Jon Spencer’s short-lived “art school” band whose name was a derisively scatological dig at the uber-pretentious posturing of then-already-mythic Gothic overlords, Bauhaus. Somewhat ironically, while justifiably targeted with myriad accusations of arty pompousness, Bauhaus themselves were only named after an art school (not an actual institution, but a school of thought). In reality, they were actually childhood friends from the glum middle-class midlands of England. Shithäus, for all their sneery renouncement of highfalutin’ pomposity, were actually bona fide art-school students from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Have fun parsing that one.
In any case, prior to Tod forming Dig Dat Hole and later Cop Shoot Cop (and, for the matter, Firewater) and Spencer assembling Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and, more recently, Heavy Trash (I’m probably forgetting someone), these two young noiseniks briefly served in the ranks of the same band. This is that band.
This, of course, is all ancient history here in 2021, but as has been so often the case over the past year, some generous music fan (operating under the mysterious moniker blackoperations) seized the opportunity to share this archival find on YouTube, uploading both side A and side B of Live Crush 84-84 in all its chaotic cacophony.
Here’s the very lengthy description from blackoperations, filled with some compelling bits of trivia, notably that Jon didn’t even play guitar in the band.
A-1 Intro
A-2 Crush Jam
A-3 Rubber Doll
A-4 Walking Insane
A-5 Fire Ritual
A-6 Eye Gouge
A-7 Warm Leather
A-8 Weenie Up Neville’s Butt
A-9 Constant DecayB-1 Fag Hag
B-2 Film Song
B-3 Texas
B-4 When It Comes Time
B-5 May Day
B-6 Brain Dogs
B-7 Swan Song (White Ice)
B-8 I Like It Like That
Self-released/hand-made cassette by Shithaus (exact number in circulation is unknown).
Tom Fry (Vocals)
Tod Ashley (Guitar)
Stephan Harshman (Bass)
Jon Spencer (Drums)
James Joaquin (Drums)Part of the tape was recorded during a live broadcast on a show called ‘Noise with Neville’ on 90.1 WRIU, Kingston, RI.
For this broadcast the band are going by the name ‘Knocked-Up Teens’ as the name ‘Shithaus‘ was not deemed “broadcast worthy by FCC regulations”.
“Neville was a demagogue of the Providence noise-rock and proto-industrial scenes of the mid 1980s. The program ran from at least the Spring of 1985 into the Summer of 1987. Today the whereabouts of Mr. Neville are unknown.”
Also as stated on the broadcast the band management was ‘Method of Control’ whose ‘MOC’ logo can be seen on the bottom-right of the cover image.
The DJ gives a run-down of the bands equipment which includes; “Olds Mobile Gas Tank, Chevy Gas Tank, A Grinder, a drum board, A couple of cassette decks, fully fledged rhythm section, a guitar and some vocals”.
Most of the above information is courtesy of Jose Fritz. Visit his blog to read the complete entry and to hear a short audio sample of this release which includes a Jon Spencer introduction (“Hey stick around you might enjoy it.”).
When It Comes A Time was also released on the cassette compilation UHF/Channel 14. Shithaus released one cassette in 1985 and the music was used in two experimental films directed by Jon Spencer called ‘Pus: The Movie’ and ‘Ponzo’s Masterwork’. There was also a 16mm Black and White film titled ‘Shithaus’ which was released on V/A feat. Jon Spencer – Cinema Of Transgression Vol. 1.
OTHER NOTES: There is not a great deal of information known about Shithaus and pretty much everything available on the internet comes from a very limited number of sources which are as follows:
*Shithaus played a gig at AS220, Saturday September 7, 1985, gallery in Rhode Island – as220.org
*“sluggo: I remember seeing Shithaus, which was an early incarnation of Pussy Galore, play in a chicken wire-cage in this damp basement where everyone was covered in fluorescent paint”. – dragking.org
*Jim Thirlwell mentions Shithaus in an interview: “FOETUS: I totally respect Cop and I think Tod is a great songwriter. He acknowledges the fact that certain songs have a heavy Foetus influence. We’re close buddies and we collaborate. SECONDS: Did he play with you as a band-member? FOETUS: He played on a few songs on Gash, but he wasn’t in the band. No, him and Jon Spencer hooked up at Rhode Island School Of Design. Him and Jon had this band called Shithaus and then he had a band called Dig That Hole.” – foetus.org
*A message which refers to the Shithaus cassette: “ok, someone mentioned that in the early 80s in Providence some band that played in the apt. next to them was pussy galore. Most likely that was Jon’s first band Shithaus which he was in with, I believe, one of the principles in the noise rock band Cop Shoot Cop. I have the Shithaus cassette which was the soundtrack to a student film or something circa 84-85. I am not positive but I thought Pussy Galore was an idea in Providence but became a band when Julie and Jon moved to DC in like summer 1985. Where Neil lived I don’t remember. Christina, Jon’s wife, from Boss Hog lived in DC then and worked at Hagen Dasz 83/84-ish with Ian Mackaye and Henry Rollins, but I was too young to know all this at the time. They were resoundingly hated here because their lyrics were so harsh and their attitude so unlike DC. for me the thing is that people thought they were arty because they had no other frame of reference. If you were a critic who never heard the Keggs or the Green Fuzz, but you liked no wave bands, ehh… It’s like the people who talk about VU as new wave but never seem to notice the rock roots which form a lot of their songs. I don’t hear the sun ra references in people’s stuff because I don’t have that in my repetoire. – Don” – xnet2.com/bomp/searchable/0001/msg00564.html
Review : Maximum Rock And Roll / MRR #28 Sept 1985 Billing themselves as an “industrial hardcore half-breed,” I’d say they’re more on the industrial side of life. While there are some post-punk influences, the noise/mechanical factor is predominant. This is a “live” tape, and well-done if you’re into modern pain. TIM YOHANNAN
This, ladies & gentlemen …. was Shithäus. Enjoy.
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