Flaming Pablum

My Christmas Injury, or "The Least Punk Rock Thing, Ever!"

I turned 53, back in October — a somewhat ignominious number I didn’t really know what to do with.

The big one was obviously 50, but after that, it all gets a bit vague. Regardless, here in my fifty-third year, I have started to notice certain crucial things. First and foremost is my vision. Where before I kept a pair of “readers” handy in the event I needed to study items on a menu, I now practically need them to see just about anything, suggesting that it’s high time to graduate out of mere “readers” and go see a goddamn optometrist for a proper eye exam and a genuinely effective pair of glasses.

Second is the laundry list of things I should have taken care of about three years ago — various medical tests, and whatnot, that one is supposed to tackle when one crosses the rubicon of a certain age — that I haven’t yet fit into my schedule. I was indeed on the path to taking care of some of those things until the pandemic turned everything upside down. Various appointments were cancelled that, as yet, have not been rescheduled.

Third has been the effects of the pandemic itself. I don’t mean the daily stress, inconvenience and alleged “freedom”-impairment of having to wear masks and maintain social distance whilst walking amongst the potentially infected, but rather the comparatively insouciant attitude towards eating and drinking that has become inherent during the COVID crisis. Where once mindfulness may have been the order the day, the coronavirus ushered in a new era of indifference towards such po-faced propriety. That was certainly fun for a while, but inevitably it comes with a price.

That price is, of course, weight gain. I haven’t stepped on a scale in the last ten months, but I’m reasonably certain I don’t need that apparatus to credibly deduce that I’ve put on a few pounds since March.

I’m fully aware of all these things, and do have at least a loose plan to remedy them, but I was abruptly served with another reminder of my advancing age, this week, that has left me literally wincing.

On Saturday night, we made a plan to get together with a pair of my wife’s sisters and their families for a de facto holiday celebration. Trying to be as responsible as possible, we all met a local favorite restaurant and sat in the frigid outdoors, largely masked and duly distanced. Under the glow of a couple of frankly middling heat lamps and buoyed by the Dutch courage (or, in this case, Greek) of a few Mythos beers, we made the most of it, but — after a while — the unrelenting chill of the mid-December climate rendered itself impossible to ignore. Halfway into a genuinely compelling true-crime anecdote unspooled by my brother-in-law John, I suddenly started feeling my extremities going numb. Game as we all were to support the restaurant and spend at least a modicum of the holiday time together we otherwise normally would have, it simply got just too fucking cold. We all paid up, waved goodbye to each other and all went home.

By the time we walked in the door, I was feeling cold, congested and miserable. I tried to fight the good fight for a bit on the couch with (another) beer, but after a moment, suggested that I should probably take a shower to warm up and then go to bed. I then dubiously decided I would take a bath, instead. As if on cue, my wife asked “will you even fit in our bathtub?” This was less a remark about my encroaching girth or freakish height and more about the diminutive size of our apartment’s facilities. I waved her off and adjourned to the bath.

As is so often the case, I should have listened to the wife.

Technically, I did indeed “fit” in our tub, but it was by no means comfortable, much less relaxing. After a soaking for a spell, I decided to hoist myself up and out. That’s when it happened.

In a split-second miscalculation of how slippery things were, I lost my grip and slammed my side against the unrelenting cast iron wall of the tub, giving my ribcage a massive jolt that knocked the wind out of me. When I was no longer seeing stars, I sat back up and immediately knew I’d sustained some sort of injury, but whether it was a cracked rib or simply bruised one was still uncertain. When I hobbled out of the bathroom like Ebeneezer Scrooge a few moments later, acute with pain, my wife gave me a look that was sympathetic, but iced with a bracing patina of “told ya so.”

“That’s, like, the least Punk Rock thing, ever,” Peggy chuckled, knowing how to effectively kick a man when he’s down.

Anyway, that was Saturday. It’s now Thursday, and while the pain has subsided to a degree, it’s still very much with me. Sitting up proves to be sharply painful, but not nearly as painful as when I happen to sneeze. My chiropractor took a look and assured me that it was just a bruise, recalling that classic Yuletide anthem by the Happy Flowers, “If It Was Broken, You’d Be Screaming.” In time, it will heal.

In the short term, I’m trying to look at the bright side … It could have been a lot worse.

Who's Your Loop Daddy? The Rise of Marc Rebillet

There’s a question on the inevitable “end of year” survey, every year, that asks what my “greatest music discovery” of the previous twelve months was. I was originally going to put this answer there, but upon further review, I felt it deserved its own goddamn post, so here that is.

Only a few months prior, I hasten to admit that I might have determined my “greatest music discovery” of 2020 to be the endearingly ridiculous Heilung, a collective of Scandiweigians who wear antlers on their heads and zestfully perform something they like to call “amplified history.” Should you care, I wrote more about Heilung here. While I did discover and summarily enjoy the inarguably odd outpourings of Heilung — although you really have to be in the right mood — their formerly pending citation as my “greatest music discovery of 2020” was thoroughly blown out of the water when I happened upon a guy named Marc Rebillet.

I can’t remember the exact context of the situation, but back in the middle of the summer, someone I know forwarded a video on Facebook of this peculiar gentleman performing a song …er… of a sort ... called, evidently, “I’m a Flamingo.” There’s no real way I’m going to do it justice with any sort of straight-faced description, so here it is now…

Right?

Okay, so obviously, when the initial puzzlement subsided, I immediately posted the video on my feed, proclaiming it be a mighty ear-worm that would take up residence in your head and never, ever leave. I feel I was right about that.

The problem, however, was that there was no explanation in the video that was forwarded to me — not even the name of the performer. For all I knew, it was just some violently vulgar one-off by some psychotic Hugh Hefner-wannabe in a silk bathrobe. I continued to laugh at it, until gradually forgetting about it.

Months went by, and then I was suddenly struck by the need to see it again, so I googled away, and up came the name Marc Rebillet.

As a general rule, with strenuously few exceptions, I tend to take a dim and dismissive view of millennials and an even less charitable view of so-called “YouTube stars.” Why is that, you ask? Well, simply because I’m old, judgmental and embittered (duh!) But within the course of viewing only two or three more of Marc Reblliet’s bizarre and wholly captivating videos, I became a hapless fanboy of this easily riled, self-proclaimed idiot.

The crucial thing, however, was that no matter how pruriently entertaining “I’m a Flamingo” was, it really didn’t even begin to capture Marc Rebillet's capabilities. Those particular gifts, I found, were better exemplified videos like this one….

As demonstrated, Rebillet occupies a unique space somewhere between singer/songwriter, stand-up comic, producer/arranger, performance artist and, well, circus geek. He’s a one-man dynamo of spontaneous musical improvisation, seasoned by some serious keyboard chops and armed with a resourceful and innovative battery of versatile equipment — crucially anchored by a loop station — that lets his impulses run rampant. Ice that oddball cake with a singularly surreal sense of humor, fueled by a potent combo of fearlessness, insatiable libido and self-deprecation, and you’ve got Marc Rebillet.

That may indeed sound like a lot of hyperbole, I realize, but when you examine the breadth of the work this guy has done in only the past three years or so, it’s hard not to be somewhat awestruck by his roundly unconventional path to, well, maybe not “success,” per se, but certainly renown. Style-wise, his music ricochets between quiet-storm R&B bump’n’grinds, rump-shaking funk, bombastic ersatz hip-hop, pulse-quickening EDM and dizzyingly frenetic electronic pastiche. To draw what many will consider a blasphemous analogy, Marc Rebillet kinda embodies the core ethos of Punk fucking Rock.

Wait, what?

You heard me, but I’m not talking about loud guitars, mohawks, safety pins and leather jackets, I’m talking about sensibility.

Taking the “Do-It-Yourself” principle to its extremes, Marc Rebillet uses everyday tools and platforms at his disposal to “write,” produce, arrange and perform his own music without any record-label support, without any formal commercial backing, without any fucking permission and without a fucking net. He has no publicist. He has no manger. He has no street team. He just does it, and has organically amassed a disarmingly large and faithful following doing so. And given the impish zeal he exudes while doing it, one gets the distinct impression that he would be doing it whether an audience was there or not. That’s fucking Punk.

In terms of his actual output, though, no Marc Rebillet doesn’t sound like Punk Rock at all. In fact, given the styles and genres he normally trades in and given his lovingly curated selections of recommended listening (Marc is a passionate music geek, obviously), I’d suggest that he couldn’t possibly be less interested in guitar-based rock music of any variety, which is actually kinda refreshing. If I had to draw further parallels, I’d say his music is kinda comparable to the explosion of esoteric samples evinced on Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys, and informed by the sort of off-kilter, hyper-caffeinated wit exemplified in since-extinct cartoon shows like “Ren & Stimpy,” “Space Ghost: Coast to Coast” and “The Aqua Teen Hunger Force,” … although a helluva lot bawdier. It should also be noted that he owes quite a bit — which he readily cites — to similarly inclined comedian Reggie Watts, specifically with regard to his use of loops.

Here's another of my favorites....

You may notice I put the verb write in quotes up there. That is not meant as a slight. While inarguably well versed in all the key components of composition and meticulous arrangement, Marc creates his music on the fucking spot. Nothing is planned out or written down. It was for this reason that I was surprised to learn that, along with already having released music online, he’s currently putting together a debut album. While I will very eagerly snap up any music Rebillet sees fit to release, the concept of him recording a proper album is almost kinda counterintuitive, because so much of the reward is watching and hearing him build his songs out of absolutely nothing — total improvisation.

Pretty much entirely unlike anything I'd normally listen to, Marc Rebillet's stuff initially struck me as this amazing trove of hidden hilarity that I felt compelled to share with anyone who'd listen. I evangelized him to friends and colleagues. Then I learned that he'd graduated out of playing bars and, prior to the pandemic, was touring pretty extensively to large-sized crowds. Check out the below...

So, yeah, even though I'm obviously late to the table on this guy (turns out both of my twenty-something nephews were both ardent fans, already), I can now officially and very emphatically dub Mr. Rebillet my "greatest music discovery" of 2020. Other folks are discovering him, too.... check out this very metal cover (!!) of "I'm a Flamingo."

Long may he reign...

Hammered at The Hammerstein

Pining for the live-music experience, once again, someone on the IDLES’ Facebook page — otherwise know as the “AF Gang” — posted the following discussion thread. I answered in kind, but thought it was worth sharing here, given the subject matter and all that. The post in question concerns a venue here in Manhattan called the Hammerstein Ballroom. While I haven’t been in the building in several years, by this point, I did see some cool shows there, including performances by The Cranberries, Lush, Weezer, Massive Attack, The Prodigy and the first reunion tour of Bauhaus, which ended up being recorded for posterity and released as the album/video, Gotham. I was also there for the show described below.

"What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done during a gig?”

I immediately had an answer for that one….

At some point in the very late `90s, the Verve came to New York City, playing the cavernous Hammerstein Ballroom. As much as my friends and I loved the Urban Hymns record, I have to say -- they weren't much to witness live. Somewhat as a result, three members of my party -- self included -- got somewhat heroically drunk. At one point during proceedings, I departed from our spot in the middle of the crowd to adjourn to the men's room, which was a flight down. Again -- leglessly drunk, at this stage.

Upon reaching the stairwell, I noticed that running down the middle of the staircase was a lovely, magisterial railing. "I know, " I thought, "I will expedite this mission by sliding down this bannister, thereby getting to my destination quicker, enabling me to return to my spot in the crowd to watch this lifelessly dull performance by the Verve." This was not exactly a sound plan.

I climbed aboard the bannister and -- indeed -- sailed down it with a velocity I hadn't truly considered. I ended up shooting off the END of the bannister on the floor below and flying about another seven feet (mercifully not colliding with anyone in the process), until my ponderous bulk reconvened with the floor with a bracing thud. I landed on my wrist, which promptly swelled up like a grapefruit, constricted by a metal bracelet from Tibet I'd inexplicably taken to wearing. "You should probably have a doctor look at that," exclaimed a friend whilst handing me another beer. I didn't.

The Verve broke up about a year later. They fleetingly reconvened in the 2000's, to no great effect, although Urban Hymns remains a very fine album. The Hammerstein Ballroom remains temporarily closed in light of the pandemic. As for me, the swelling around my wrist healed... kinda after a bit, as did the black n' blue mark on my buttock and the man-sized wound in my pride. To this day -- 22 years later -- I can now click my wrist if I rotate my hand a certain way.

You're not supposed to be able to do that, obviously.

What was YOUR most embarrassing gig experience?

Below is a video of the Verve's American tour, including some lovely footage of NYC....

"Merry Christmas, My Arse! I Pray God It's Our Last..."

I've spun this particular yarn here before, but I first heard the Pogues during my freshman year of college in 1985, when my long-suffering childood comrade & future best man Keith (also known as Charlie … very long & boring story) was sequestered away in Northern England for a turbulent semester abroad. Out of the blue, Keith sent me a mixtape rife with some of the music of the moment, including several atmospheric tracks by This Mortal Coil (wrongly credited to the Cocteau Twins), a clutch of dissonant songs by the Jesus & Mary Chain (wrongly credited to the band’s debut album title, Psychocandy – details were never Keith’s strong point) and various tunes by punk bands like The Stranglers and Peter & The Test Tube Babies. Practially the whole second side side of the tape, meanwhile, was occupied by early songs by The Pogues, a feral and innovative collective that messily fused traditional Celtic folk music with the adrenalized sprint and pugnacious invective of Punk Rock. Upon a single spin, I dispatched *WITH ALL HASTE* to nearby Threshold Audio on the glorious suburban planes of Newark, Ohio to fetch myself a copy of the band’s debut LP, Red Roses For Me, and have been a fan forever since.

Of course, later efforts by the Pogues found them streamlining their aesthetic for a more accessible sound. Never was that more the case than on what would become a perennial-yet-contested song from their third LP, If I Should Fall From Grace With God called “The Fairytale of New York.”

If I’m being honest, despite it being the motherfucking Pogues and despite it being topically rooted in my hometown, I was never a tremendous fan of the track. Too much treacle and sentimentality for my taste, and not enough of lead singer/songwriter Shane MacGowan’s untethered venom – although the song would go on to court divisive notoriety for its usage of a homophobic slur, which many considered brazenly offensive and others interpreted as simply an accurate employment of just the type of vulgar vernacular the song’s inglorious characters would have used. Thirty-two years after the song’s release, that debate continues.

Some have called for the song to be edited, censored and/or banned, while others have defended lyricist Shane’s utilization of poetic license. Quite unfortunately, the track has gone onto become a de facto anthem for the SantaCon set – resulting in hordes of drunken frat-bros beerily singing along and loudly accentuating the offending noun when that verse – trilled by the tragically late Kirsty MacColl – arrives. No one is well served by this.

As much as I would otherwise staunchly defend the concept of poetic license, as a hetero white male who has never experienced any genuine form of prejudice, intollerance, bigotry or hatred first-hand, I really have no place in blithely determining what is and what isn’t credibly offensive. To asssert that those objecting to the usage of the term in this song are simply “overreacting” is to diminish any strides made in the past several decades towards a more inclusive and tolerant society. Because I’m a spineless Libra, I can understand both side of this argument.

But I’ll tell you one thing for certain. Regardless of how offensive the original 1988 composition may or may not be, one thing its storied songwriters did not deserve was to hear their song irreparably befouled by the insidious likes of Jon Bon Fucking Jovi, who just released a simply indefensible cover of the song.

Hear that below and try not to spit up all over your keyboard. 

 

Hearkening Hagen

Incongruously prompted by an invocation of Diamanda Galas, earlier this week, I recently dug up some old Nina Hagen music for a reappraisal.

My first brush with Nina Hagen came via my grade school chum, Rich, who I’ve spoken about before (notably here). While Rich’s musical recommendations were usually directly on target — it was Rich, after all, who'd first turned me onto the burgeoning downtown hardcore scene, as well as doomy British bands like Theatre of Hate — I simply didn’t understand, much less buy, his assertion that the imaginatively titled Nunsexmonkrock by this crazy East German lady was on the same level of greatness. He gamely tried to force-lend it to me — as was his wont — but I was having none of it. It just didn’t click with me.

Shortly after that, Nina Hagen started appearing incongruously on MTV, albeit only in the form of her video for “New York, New York” from her 1983 album, Fearless (sometimes referred to as Angstlos). If I’m being honest, while I didn’t understand Nina’s music on Nunsexmonkrock, I have to say that I actively hated this new single, which saw Ms. Hagen embracing an arguably more accessible dance-club diva approach. That said, her pointedly mannered vocals and bizarre overall aesthetic weren’t exactly giving the Donna Summers and Alicia Bridges of that world any cause of concern. More akin to willfully off-center artists like Lene Lovich, Grace Jones and her fellow Teuton Klaus Noms, Nina Hagen was still making music for the more adventurous ear, not solely tracks to get your rump shaking. Regardless, I was still not buying it, largely writing her off as a shrill, bug-eyed source of annoyance.

In fact, let’s go there now. Here is Nina performing “New York, New York.”

But while I’d churlishly failed to grasp her appeal, I started exploring the wider world of music, only to discover that Ms. Hagen was great friends and sometime collaborators with certain other artists I’d come to admire, leading me to suspect that I might have been premature in my dismissal of her earlier material. I’m still far from what you could ever call an ardent supporter, but I respect her work more than I ever used to.

I made the connection from Diamanda Galas, meanwhile, from a fairly superficial point. Like Diamanda, Nina Hagen writes and performs music that flaunts convention and with the frequent purpose of making the listener uneasy. Both artists are classically trained and boast operatic voices that are powerful and elastic. Both artists were informed and inspired by the original, parameter-nullifying possibilities of Punk. These are all indisputable assertions, but the thing that linked them for me is that while both individuals seem to go well out of their way to look as disarming and often as flat-out scary as possible, they are both preternaturally beautiful women. Like I said, it’s a shallow, typically hetero-male observation, but there it is.

In any case, in looking for images for this post, I came upon this shot of Nina Hagen on the streets of what looks to me like SoHo here in downtown Manhattan. I want to suggest that this is Broome Street looking west, but I’m not convinced I’m correct. Anyone want to weigh in? 

Click on it to enlarge.

My Top Five Favorite Songs of 2020

It’s that laborious time of year again when insufferable music geeks pen floridly overwritten lists of their favorite music of the year. Given my vocational past as an on-again/off-again erstwhile “music journalist” of very dubious legitimacy, I’ve done my own such round-ups over the past fifteen plus years here on Flaming Pablum. By the same token, as an aging, middle-aged dad with an expanding waistline and a contracting vista of open-mindedness, I have also recused myself, on occasion, from said proceedings at various points, believing I didn’t have anything credible to offer, that year, to the larger discussion. One might assume that 2020 being what it was (and still is for another three weeks), I might choose to sit out this particular year. But one would be mistaken.

While my list of 2020 favorites is far from unwieldy or sprawling, I did find a clutch of new albums that I duly latched onto. If I’m being honest, however, I’d suggest that the music that I listened to most, this year, was recorded well in advance of 2020. I was particularly besotted with a bootleg of a Black Flag show in July of 1982 called Live At the On-Broadway, capturing the band as an incendiary five-piece with Henry on vocals, Dez Candena on second guitar and the mighty Chuck Biscuits on drums. I played the bejeezus out of that.

But, in keeping with the premise, herewith my top five favorite songs from my top five favorite albums of 2020. You may beg to differ with some and/or all of it, and that’s fine. Make your own damn list, then.

And here we go....

 

5. “Consequences” by Human Impact
As documented back on this ancient post, I was really wrestling, back in March, with the notion of going to see this band play Brooklyn’s disarmingly intimate metal club, St. Vitus. A veritable supergroup comprised of former members of The Unsane, SWANS and, indeed, Cop Shoot Cop, Human Impact is a band that is almost tailor-made to my particular tastes. That all said, when the show was looming, so also was the onslaught of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the concept of cramming into a tiny, sweaty rock club to stand in worrying proximity with a couple of hundred other people seemed like an irresponsible prospect, at the time. In short, I opted out, but the show happened anyway. Oh well. 

A few weeks later, a copy of their eponymous debut disc arrived in my mailbox. If truth be told, the prescient nature of the band’s pointedly dour lyrics concerning global tumult, political insurrection and — yes, do wait for it — disease were just a little too close to the current affairs of the day, so I sorta put off listening to it as much as I might have otherwise. Further Human Impact singles only turned out to be even more doomily prophetic. In any case, while the band’s music continues to retain all the cheer of a concrete slab to the face, I did warm to this particular track. Buckle up.

 

4. “The Ground Below” by Run the Jewels
There was indeed a time when I was credibly enthused and summarily versed in contemporary hip-hop. While that time is now largely in the past, I am still relatively up to speed on at least the names of the artists currently helming the trajectory of the genre. Nine times out of ten, however, I find most of what passes for contemporary hip-hop to be roundly uninspired and/or flat-out depressing. I pine for the fiery rhetoric and busy production of Public Enemy, the fanciful wordplay and jazzy groove of A Tribe Called Quest and the effortlessly cool style of the Beastie Boys, but too much of the music of today’s crowd leaves me cold and clammy. I can’t summon any enthusiasm for folks like the seemingly ubiquitous Drake, the mumble-rap idiots like Lil Xan and Lil Pump offer absolutely nothing in the way of innovation and the prurient shlock that spews from the shrill cannon that is Cardi B’s mouth just bums me right out.

All that fuddy-duddy bluster aside, when friends of mine hipped to the fact that the new Run The Jewels album featured a prominent Gang of Four sample on the song “The Ground Below,” I, of course, had to hear it. Sure enough, not only did the track make explosive use of the basic elements of “Ether” by the late Andy Gill’s storied ensemble, it also boasted all the aspects I’d been missing from the more popular hip-hop of the current day. No lazy, slurring idiotic bullshit here, the whole album is chock-a-block with dense, eloquent rhymes, all delivered with an emphatic sense of purpose and with a pugnacious production to match it. I bought it for a single track, but love the whole record — I love it when that happens.

 

3. “Amoral” by Napalm Death
As a fan of (much) earlier Napalm Death records like the almighty Scum from the balmy, carefree days of 1987, I initially scoffed at the suggestion that a Napalm Death record in 2020 could possibly match the cacophonous majesty of their long-ago heyday. That was before laying skeptically unsuspecting ears on their single, “Logic Ravaged By Brute Force,” which was unleashed in February. While furious and frenetic as is their signature, the single also came buoyed by a comparatively expansive production that owed not just a little to my beloved Killing Joke. Upon hearing the rapturous news that a full album — their friggin’ sixteenth — was to follow, I made a plan to pick it up.

Arriving in September, the suitably grim Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism initially disappointed me for not including the single that brought me to it (“Logic…” ain’t on it), but its 12 ferocious tracks are cut from the same fetchingly feral cloth. To take in the full album in a single sitting, honestly, is a bit of a rigorous chore for the ear, but in more measured portions, these tracks pack more than just workaday grindcore carnage. It’s not all just breakneck bombast with rapid-fire drums and splenetic screaming (although there is plenty of all that). Maybe not suitable for a holiday playlist or first-dance wedding selection, but a bracing bit of Brummie blitzkrieg it remains. Duck and cover, motherfuckers….

 

2. “Mr. Motivator” by IDLES
As you might remember, I was huge on IDLES when I first heard them in 2018. Clangy, shouty and basically bananas, their whole aesthetic was beguiling in its contradictions — sonically violent but lyrically enlightened. Spitting out progressively egalitarian couplets of tolerance and inclusivity with red-faced, vein-popping intensity, lead singer Joe Talbot and company may not trade in subtlety, but it’s hard to quibble with their intentions. That said, many did, and the backlash was pretty sharp, culminating in Blur vs. Oasis-styled feuds with British indie bands like the Sleaford Mods and the Fat White Family, neither of whom — to my ears — are capable of making music as compelling as their nemeses in IDLES. I was stealing myself up the seemingly inevitable failure of their third album, Ultra Mono, given the drubbing it got in the fickle British music press. But guess what? It still kicks a man-sized platter of ass. Here’s my favorite track, delivered with heated aplomb.

 

1. “Smrt Za Smrt (Revisited)” by Laibach
I already wrote a whole big post about this track, but suffice to say, it’s easily my favorite song of the year, however suitably devoid of any semblance of optimism. While I’d been a big Laibach fan back in the late 80s, I’d sort of fallen off at some point in the mid-90s, feeling I’d gotten all I’d needed from the sardonically po-faced Slovenian foursome. This summer, I read about this impending box set, which featured early archival recordings, new versions of old tracks and a clutch of live material. That sounded intriguing, but I couldn’t rationalize dropping that much cheddar on a box set from a band I hadn’t paid attention to in well over a decade. Then, I heard “Smrt Za Smrt (Revisited).” Bleak, ponderous and unrelentingly sombre, “Smrt Za Smrt” (Slovenian for — wait for it — “Death for Death”) is a blackly atmospheric rumination on conflict and retribution that pulls no punches. “Yeah, this is a real peppy toe-tapper” remarked my friend Rob B when I played it for him. While it does sound a bit like an evil Kraftwerk played at the wrong speed, it’s Hell and gone from lightweight listening. But I find its expansive, stentorian stomp and the unblinkingly funereal pomp-and-circumstance of its pacing to be nothing short of awe-inspiring.

Sick of the whistle-headed vacuity of “WAP”?

Here’s the fucking vaccine.

Farewell to the Fury

I don't believe he spoke a single line of dialogue, and he basically had his ass handed to him entirely by foul-mouthed Ajax, but I was sad to learn that veteran stuntman Jery Hewitt -- who played the lead representative of the Baseball Furies in Walter Hill's 1979 urban combat epic, "The Warriors" -- just passed away. 

I've written about my love for "The Warriors" a few times here (find those links here), but suffice to say, if you are of a certain age, let alone a New Yorker, it's a pivotal film for a lot of people. 

Here's Hewitt's big scene on the mean streets of the Upper West Side. Pour one out for the great man. 

Looking for the Lost Luncheonette

Back in June, I posted a vaguely convoluted post about a gig poster from one of the final shows at The Cooler. In an attempt to tie several disparate elements together, I wrote this paragraph:

As it happened, that weird Ukranian disco was actually a weird Bulgarian disco called Mehanata. You can see snippets of the interior of that place in the video for “Start Wearing Purple” by Gogol Bordello. Gogol Bordello, incidentally, then counted guitarist Eugene Kaplan in its ranks, although Eugene also played for both Firewater and Botanica. Mehanata, meanwhile, was located directly over the former location of Dave’s Luncheonette, a fabled diner for the Mudd Club set which briefly made a cameo in the video for “Jukebox Baby" by Alan Vega of Suicide. See? It’s all related

I invariably patted myself on the back for connecting all those dots. But, alas, I had one detail wrong.

While it’s completely true that Mehanata then occupied the same building as the former Dave’s Luncheonette, the fabled all-night diner that was indeed a regular haunt of the Mudd Club crowd, the diner depicted in Alan Vega’s “Jukebox Baby” was not, in fact Dave’s. How do I know that? Well, for a start, let’s watch that video again.

How do I know that’s not Dave’s? Well, on one Facbook group I’m a member of, someone posted the below photograph of mid-80’s British pop combo, JoBoxers, standing manfully in front of Dave’s. See that picture below.

Okay, so on both the north-facing facade (“Luncheonette”) and westerly-facing facade (“Restaurant”) of Dave’s, the neon signage is very distinctive. Look again at the eatery Vega’s in, and you get totally different signage — much less ornate.

Put simply, it’s not the same place. But it still looked so familiar.

And then it hit me.

The luncheonette Vega’s depicted in is the same luncheonette depicted on the sleeve of the first 8 Eyed Spy record.

…..which begs the question: Where is that luncheonette? Does it even exist anymore? 

Have at it, sleuths. 

The Schmoo, The Mish & Tim the Buddhist Bootist

I’ve already waxed rhapsodic about downtown Manhattan’s once-thriving network of independent record shops in several weepy, sepia-toned posts about stores like Rebel Rebel, Rocks in Your Head, Second Coming Records, Bleecker Bob’s, Venus Records, St. Marks Sounds, Subterranean Records, Other Music, Bleecker Street Records, Disc-O-Rama and It’s Only Rock N’ Roll and several others. From the mid-80’s until about into the early 2000’s, my best friend from high school, Rob D. and I used to routinely hit these shops on a circuit we inexplicably referred to as “the Schmoo.” If we were “out schmooing,” that meant we were invariably rifling through the bins at any of these above spots — or other’s like Route 66, Rockit Scientist, Kim’s, Golden Disc, Record Factory or Freebeing — trying to meet our insatiable need for new music.

But there were other stops on our circuit, a crucial one being at the Pizza Box on Bleecker Street to wolf down slices while examining our spoils. As with all of the concerns cited above, that — too — is gone. To be fair, a paltry handful of our former regular haunts still hang on today, those being Record Runner, Generation Records, Academy Records and Downtown Music Gallery, but one would be remiss to suggest that their respective prospects were especially promising in 2020. That’s just the way it is.

But from around 1987 to late 1988, we had another regular stop.

If you stand on the southeast corner of West 8th Street on Sixth Avenue — basically right in front of the hulking space that formerly housed a Barnes & Noble and a B. Dalton books before that — and look south, you’ll probably still see a bunch of folks selling dubious shit on the sidewalks. Old magazines, DVDs, vinyl LPs, books and other largely weathered ephemera are periodically up for sale along this strip even today. But back in the 80’s, it was a much more robust ersatz marketplace, one that stretched as far down as the basketball courts on West 3rd.

I don’t remember how we first happened upon him, but Rob and I came to know a young merchant on this strip named Tim. An unassuming kid from somewhere on the Upper West Side — usually sporting a mammoth pair of headphones — Tim was in the business of selling bootleg cassettes. For the layperson, this means illegal live recordings of the same variety that got nearby Second Coming Records in trouble (as discussed at greater length here). We’d show up about once a week and check out Tim’s little briefcase of offerings, immaculately presented in alphabetical order and all marked with the inky font of a thick black sharpie. Like ourselves, Tim was especially besotted with a few specific bands, and his stock leaned heavily in those directions. For whatever reason, his two favorite bands were the Minutemen and the Sisters of Mercy, but he also had tapes by ancillary acts like fIREHOSE and my then-faves in The Mission, along with sundry recordings by bands like U2, The Cult and The Cure. We were very clearly his target demographic, and frequently availed ourselves to his wares.

In the middle of penning this post, I heard from Rob and he informed me that we once went to Tim’s evidently sprawling townhouse on the Upper West Side, but I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I just don’t remember it.

In any case, the one specific tape I remember buying off our Tim in May or June of 1987 was a pristine, soundboard recording of The Mission playing a gig I very bitterly missed at The Ritz on East 11th Street in just that previous April. I’d missed the show in question being that I was away at school when the band drunkenly plowed into town. Capturing the Mish at the hoary height of their powers, it featured roaring runs through their early singles, a few odd covers and tracks from their debut LP, God’s Own Medicine, including a lungful reading of “Wake,” a throaty middle-finger to their former taskmaster Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy. I played the absolute shit out of that tape, taking it with me a bike trip across Western Europe, managing not to lose it in any number of grotty youth hostels along the way. I absolutely cherished it. Much like the XTC tape I discussed the other day, I still have it, although nothing to play it on. But sadly, unlike the XTC tape, I’ve never found a recording of the Mission at The Ritz in April of 1987 anywhere else. Not on disc. Not on YouTube. Nothing.

Anyway, sometime after all this, we again happened upon Tim on Sixth Avenue again while schmooing. At this stage, he mentioned that he was considering giving up the whole bootleg cassette venture. We earnestly tried to urge him to stick with it, but he informed us of a growing spiritual investment in Tibetan Buddhism. In short order, Tim fully renounced his materialistic endeavors, and stopped showing up to ply his cassettes.

We never saw him again.

Back … Again … to Bonaparte

Here is a (very) late follow-up to a post from … jeezus … 2014.

The original spot of Bleecker Bob’s was not on Bleecker Street. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it was never actually on Bleecker Street. In someone’s infinite wisdom, it was a good idea for the late Bob Plotnik to assume some sort of catchy nickname that assigned him some kind of local renown, so he became Bleecker Bob despite possibly never having operated any business on that particular strip. Whatever.

The original spot of his shop was on MacDougal Street, just steps to the south of West 8th Street (see above). At some point at the dawn of the 80’s, though, Bob pulled out of that location and moved over to 118 West 3rd Street between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue. It was at this address that I first visited the shop in about 1981 or 1982. And it was this iteration of the shop that bore his nickname until it closed in 2013.

Before the space was Bleecker Bob’s, however, it was another similarly inclined shop called – inexplicabaly – Bonaparte. I never set foot in Bonaparte, so I cannot credibly tell you a thing about it, but I recently found a better shot of its exterior than the one I first posted here.

Here in 2020, the 1188 West Third street is still Asian eatery Miyagi, which I wrote about here, although I haven’t been back since. The original Bleecker Bob space on MacDougal off 8th Street played host to a number of ventures over the years – inclulding, very briefly, another record store – before morphing into a barber shop, a tea salon, a sandwich joint and other things. These days, it’s completely vacant.

Bleecker Bob Plotnik, meanwhile, passed away in 2018. Amazingly, Ben's Pizza is still there.