Flaming Pablum

Don't Mess With "Cheree"

In 2020, it’s probably considered a bit rich, passé and precious to still be getting riled about one’s favorite music being used for advertising purposes. Ever since Nike first used “Revolution” by the Beatles to plug their sneakers, the floodgates have been, for all intents and purposes, blown off the doors. It’s no longer considered shocking, disrespectful, inconsiderate, inappropriate or even consequential in any capacity to hear certain tunes used to promote and sell goods and services, the overarching rationale being “well, at least the artist will see some money.” That’s true, I cannot argue with that, but it still comes — to my mind — at a cost.

And we’re not just talking about the Beatles or Zeppelin anymore. This many years after the fact, I’ve heard The Cult and The Ramones used to sell beer, Gary Numan to plug cars (how original!), the Buzzcocks used to promote AARP and — most notoriously — Iggy Pop used to advertise cruise ships. Even my beloved Cop Shoot Cop had a track of theirs — the instrumental “Migration” — used in a Nike ad — and, to be fair, the ad itself was quite striking. I don’t *think* anyone’s used Killing Joke, yet, but I might be mistaken.

There’s also the strong argument regarding exposure. A quintessential example of this is Nick Drake. Prior to a certain Volkswagen campaign that artfully employed said troubled troubadour’s song “Pink Moon” in a clip about swooning teenagers eschewing a keg party in favor of driving around in the moonlight, the oeuvre of Nick Drake was largely known only to a comparatively furtive cabal of esoteric music geeks. One ad later, I had colleagues who previously only listened to indefensible offal like Hootie & the Blowfish and Edie Brickell suddenly extolling the merits of “Pink Moon.” It’s a damn shame that Nick Drake — who died broke and embittered, long prior to his work garnering any semblance of wide recognition — never got to reap the financial rewards nor the long-delayed mainstream kudos for the genius of his music. That the song in question is arguably about encroaching doom is another matter entirely.

In any case, this ponderous preamble is all to tee up the anecdote that while watching TV last night, I spotted a commercial for a Marc Jacobs perfume. The clip featured comely blonde temptresses frolicking in a golden field. I immediately snapped to attention at the sound of the music scoring this otherwise banal clip. The music in question was “Cheree” by Suicide.

Invoke the name Suicide in certain circles, and watch scowling nerds light up like Christmas trees. Groundbreaking pioneers — punks long before punk was punk — Suicide made unfathomably forward-thinking music with a confrontational approach in an environment that could not possibly have been more hostile (a hostility they fed off of). While records like Never Mind the Bollocks and Rocket to Russia might sound just like regular rock’n’roll today, the eponymous debut by Suicide remains as brazenly unconventional and jarring in 2020 as it was upon its release in 1977. To use a stupid, phallocentric cliché, it’s a record that separates the men from the boys. The music of Suicide — to say nothing of their notoriously pugnacious live-performance style, steered by the late, great Alan Vega — was not for weak-hearted dilettantes.

That debut album, which arrived in a fittingly blood-slathered sleeve, offers no quarter and makes no apologies. At the risk of lapsing further into purple-prosed hyperbole, it is a singular work of art, undiminished by creative compromise or ambitions of commercial appeal. It is both incalculably influential and criminally uncelebrated.

While not an exception to their palette nor a hit single, however, there is “Cheree” … a sparkling three-and-a-half minutes of gobsmacked amore in an otherwise filthy, black subway tunnel to Hell. A minimalist, erotic ode to a leather-clade seductress, Vega gasps and whispers his devotions over Marty Rev’s twinkling and humming keyboards. Both beautiful and profane, it’s like watching a strip-tease in a cathedral. It was allegedly “Cheree” by Suicide that U2 sought to emulate with their signature single, “With or Without You.”

Meanwhile, …. here it is in a Marc Jacobs ad.

Longtime readers, here, might be familiar with my long-simmering disdain for Marc Jacobs. I got nothing against fashion, but two things I do hold sacred are my native New York City and punk rock, and Marc Jacobs’ unwieldy hubris routinely shits on both.

Marc Jacobs incurred the justifiable ire of Greenwich Village residents in the past decade by avariciously snapping up several storefronts on the western end of Bleecker Street, almost single-handedly evicting the old neighborhood’s character and morphing the once-sleepy West Village backwater into a new high-fashion shopping zone. But, like a callously tawdry one-night stand, Jacobs’ investment in Bleecker Street was not to last. As fortunes changed, by 2017, most of his ventures— ones previously owned by longtime local businesses — decamped, leaving countless empty storefronts dotting the street. Regardless of your predilections, your money no longer has many places to go on that stretch of Bleecker. Go ahead and blame Marc Jacobs for that. I know I do.

Secondly, there’s the music. I have no beef with anyone who shares my affinity for certain music and its accompanying subculture. But, if you’re going to express it, at least do your fucking homework. Like John Varvatos, Jacobs' equally vain fashionista peer at the other end of Bleecker Street at 315 Bowery, Marc Jacobs sure likes the trappings of punk rock, but doesn’t really do the research. He just cherry-picks whatever iconography he digs at the time and appropriates it for his purposes. Witness his witless co-opting of images from Skrewdriver as a prime example. You’re doing it wrong, Marc.

While harrumphing about all this on social media today, my friend Vicki came up with a damning bit of evidence that singularly sums up my arguments against Marc Jacobs in this capacity. Here’s the press release to Jacobs’ new ad. Pay attention to the last line.

Typically, Marc Jacobs is getting it laughably wrong again. Suicide were not “London-based” in any way, and to hear Vega sing/speak, you’d have to really not be paying attention. Suicide are New York City to the fucking BONE.

But, of course, Marc Jacobs doesn’t know that, because Marc Jacobs doesn’t care enough to invest.

Music touches people. Music means something. Music is powerful. Respect it.

Duty Now For The Future, Spuds!

Life As We Know It ... Now

Back on March 10, I posted a quick little screed about all the things that were suddenly getting canceled as a result of precautionary measures to stem the roiling tide of coronavirus infections. I rattled off a laundry list of events in my own little sphere of existence that were either indefinitely postponed or knocked off the calendar entirely, closing with an exasperated little flourish of “I’m getting fed up with this shit.”

Ah, fed up indeed.

Had I known that, seven weeks later, we’d all be where we (still) are today, I may have worded it differently. Or not. I certainly was fed up, but I’m not sure I was entirely aware of the magnitude of what was shortly to come.

Seven days after that post, my wife, kids and I made the decision to literally escape New York City, a lucky, undeniable privilege many of our friends and colleagues were not able to similarly take advantage of. They’re still there, sheltering in place and staying indoors in a city renowned for its tireless hustle’n’bustle, now rendered unrecognizable as a veritable ghost town.

No one is enjoying this. It’s not normal, it’s not easy, it’s not comfortable, and it sure as shit isn’t fun. But we’re all doing it, because it’s the smart, responsible thing to do.

Whoops, well not so fast.

In certain states across the nation, pockets of science-doubting, Trump-loving folks are actively protesting to “re-open” their respective states, some more vehemently than others -- see the strenuously confused little rocket scientist pictured at the bottom of this post. While some are motivated by the very real and drastic ramifications of the prolonged shut-down directives wreaking havoc on the economy and their livelihoods, still others are wedding it with a reason to get their “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and their precious assault rifles out to make a statement about the violation of their Constitutionally protected freedoms, equating the public health recommendations, shelter-in-place directives and advisories to cover your nose and mouth with a mask when in public as the perilous first step towards succumbing to communism.

As if.

The bottom line is this: The sheer force of your will to re-open the economy will in no way minimize or diminish the very real COVID-19 threat. By being impatient and opening things prematurely, you're essentially feeding the virus and gravely delaying its abatement.

Be smarter. Be less stubborn. Think beyond yourselves. There are no corners to cut here.

Robert Smith ... Prophet?

Along with it being Iggy Pop's birthday, yesterday was also the birthday of the estimable Robert Smith of The Cure, which reminded me of the below.

I've posted this video before, but revisited it recently, and was struck by something. Let's watch again...

Beyond it being simply an amazing, rocking clip 

1. The lyrics (below) basically mirror current events.
2. The name of the band is THE CURE (duh)
3. Robert's introductory flourish, saying "this is about any country you choose to live in." (i.e. this condition is everywhere).

Weird, right?

 
No light
No people
No speak
No people
No cars
No people
No food
No people
Stopped
Short
Grinding halt
Everything's coming to a grinding halt
No sound
No people
No clocks
No people
No fine
No people
No me
No people
Stopped
Short
Grinding halt
Everything's coming to a grinding halt
Everything's coming to a grinding halt
Slow down
Slow down
No people
Slow down
Everything's coming to a
Everything's coming to a
Everything's coming to a
Everything's coming to a

 

It's Iggy Pop's Birthday

I actually own the original illustration of this, which first appeared in New York Press in 1993.

All Hail.

 

The Street Light

Pretentious Preamble:

There’s a unique sort of trope director David Lynch regularly employs throughout his work that’s become one of his signature moves, if you will. With his inimitable blend of intangible nuance, Lynch manages to imbue certain, otherwise banal, inanimate objects with a heightened degree of sinister significance. Through Lynch’s lens, innocuous items like electrical sockets, radiators and blinking traffic lights take on an inexplicable aura of enigmatic menace. While there’s nothing inherently scary about the images in questions, Lynch -- through the power of his elliptical narratives and his particular use of light, sound and music -- is brilliantly able to assign each with powerful implications of something deeper, something unseen and, usually, something unspeakably terrifying. It’d probably be a tired cliche if he didn’t pull it off so well.

Perhaps I’ve just watched too many David Lynch films.

-----------

It’s the beginning of our sixth week out here at my mother’s house in Quogue. Time has moved strangely, during this unprecedented period. The days can be very long, but the weeks fly by. The family has already gone through several phases — stir-craziness, boredom, agitation, fatigue, etc. While we’re settled into a routine, it still feels far from normal, which is apt, because nothing about this is situation is normal.

My mother moved into this house in 1996, I believe, after she sold both her previous cottage and her Manhattan apartment, bought this bigger place and made Quogue her permanent residence. I met my wife only a couple of years after mom got this house, and we’ve been coming out here in the summers and on holidays ever since. Our children have grown up running up and down these stairs and playing in the backyard.

That’s one of the reasons this period feels so alien. We normally just associate this house with vacation time and with my mom. Mom’s not here — she’s hunkered down in Florida — and this is no vacation. There’s a cognitive dissonance in trying to go about the remote workday while in a place normally designated as a space to get away from all that.

But there’s another thing about this stay that feels different, an element I’d either never noticed before, or that possibly wasn’t there.

The street light on the telephone pole across the street.

I’m pretty sure the pole has been there forever, but I’ve only recently noticed the street light. It’s practically invisible by day … something you’d never look twice at. But, at night, when the darkness falls on Quogue like a heavy, impenetrably black quilt, it take on a wholly different form.

Maybe the light was only recently installed or repaired, but it now cuts through the dark in an assertive manner. When you pass by it, in the late evenings, from the many windows that face the street, it seems strangely magnified — a bright beacon in the gloom. When we turn off all the lights at the end of the night, the aura of the street light floods into the living room, and all eyes are drawn to it like insects to a flame.

On the one hand, we should appreciate the street light. My mom lives on an otherwise very dark, quiet strip, and it certainly provides enough illumination to allow for better vision in the dark. But, by the same token, there’s just something …. odd about it.

Like some sort of unblinking sentinel, it seems to be waiting for something. It’s like some persistent reminder of an unshared secret. Why is it …. there? Did someone ask for it? Did something happen here that warrants such a light? What has it seen?

What does it know?

When I open the front door at look at it in the dark, the shine it emits seems to jump back across the lawn again, not quite as brilliant as when viewed from inside our house. But it keeps its fixed gaze. What does it want?

Quogue isn’t a loud town. Sure, on certain summer nights, you’ll hear people having the odd backyard barbecue, or you’ll hear cars gunning their engines on nearby Montauk Highway, but it’s mostly quite tranquil. In the dead of night, you can hear the trains weave through the pine barrens north of the highway, blowing their ghostly whistles in the dark. But, most of the time, it’s whisper quiet.

As such, the slightest creak, snap or settling of the house can stir me from sleep. My daughter sleeps downstairs in her own room here, a luxury compared to the tiny room she shares with her little brother back in the city. Now a 16 year old, she’s less inclined to go to bed early, so I’ll frequently hear her puttering around in the kitchen or giggling as she texts with friends back home. I thought I’d heard her knock something over, the other night, which had me out of bed like a shot, and creeping down the stairs to discover her fast asleep and nothing out of place. That said, she’d left the kitchen light on. I flicked that off and went back towards the stairs in the living room.

I tried not to look at it, as I knew it would fire the usual synapses and get me thinking about it all over again, but the cold glow of the street light outside was visually inescapable. I could not look away.

It looked like a spotlight shining on a stage awaiting someone. I turned and adjourned upstairs again, unable to shake the feeling that one night, I’ll see someone standing, …. and waiting … under that light.

Da Bruddahs

By all accounts, the Ramones pretty much hated each other by the end of their run. Hell, they hated each other well before the end of their run, given that at least half of their years were spent in icy dysfunction, largely due to iron-willed Johnny Ramone hooking up with hopelessly romantic Joey’s ex. Johnny ended up marrying her (she being Linda Ramone), a blow from which Joey never recovered. Allegedly, they never spoke about it — or to each other — ever again. In the band’s official biopic, “End of the Century,” there is a fleeting moment wherein Johnny concedes — however bluntly — a modicum of regret. One wonders what might’ve happened had they cleared the air and tried to talk it out.

The world will never know. Both Johnny and Joey are dead, now (thanks, Cancer!). Yesterday, the Instagram page of Johnny Ramone posted the below picture, and I love it for a couple of reasons.

Firstly, despite the well-established acrimony between them, this picture exudes none of that. While the mythology of the band being actual brothers was all whimsical window-dressing, they look legitimately fraternal, here. While they had their differences, Johnny did indeed affirm that he’d never perform with a different lead singer than Joey. He was at least loyal.

Secondly, I have certain friends who love to invoke the fact that Johnny Ramone considered himself an avid Republican (see these posts for more on that). True, yes he did, famously saying “God Bless George W. Bush” at the Ramones’ induction into the meaningless Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame. This all said, Johnny was also a genuine fan of the Manson Family, a gaggle of actually murderous hippies and the very personification of everything the Right Wing once actively recoiled from. Check out Johnny’s t-shirt of a crucified Charlie Manson. What explains this core conflict? Was it all a pose? Was it the manifestation of Jungian duality? Or was Johnny really just a xenophobic nationalist more than a more bona fide card-carrying conservative?

I’ve wondered before here what Johnny might have felt about his fellow Queens native, Donald Trump as our president. While, yes, Trump is himself a rampantly xenophobic nationalist (a term he espouses), I want to believe Johnny would have seen right through him for the avaricious fat-cat conman he is. Also, the slightest whiff of Russian involvement — which the Trump Administration remains irretrievably steeped in — would have put Johnny right off.

But, again, we’ll never know.

Goodnight, Jimmy Webb

I first posted this on Facebook, and then took it down, as there was some confusion as to the cause of the great man's demise. In my haste to eulogize Jimmy Webb, it seems I mistakenly assigned the culprit as COVID-19, when more credible sources have suggested it was cancer. In any case, it's a genuine loss to the East Village community he knew and loved ... and loved him back.

The pervasive stereotype of the punk rocker usually involves a joyless, scowly contrarian, more than happy to spit at your feet or engage in a rampant bout of unprovoked pugilism. For decades, Jimmy Webb, whose age-old punk haberdashery, Trash & Vaudeville, occupied a storied perch in the Hamilton-Holly House at 4 St. Marks Place, was the consummate punk rocker, but defied the above stereotype in every manner.

Sure, visually, he fit the bill — garish skin-tight pants, sleeveless t-shirts, endearingly ridiculous brothel-creepers, blinding peroxide hair, leather jacket — but you cannot a imagine a more affable, smiley fella. Welcoming all into his fabled shop — from the local sneery street-urchins to the Upper East Sider dilettantes and all stripes in between — Webb was buoyantly enthusiastic to help you pick out just the right pair of tartan bondage-trousers to go with the vintage-design Dead Boys t-shirt you were buying, and would be damn happy to chat about it with great giggly aplomb with you. No judgements. Just happy to evangelize the scene, the music, the lifestyle. If Jimmy Webb was your ambassador into the rock’n’roll sartorial underground, you could not imagine a more gracious figure to guide you there. The t-shirts may not have been as cheap as I thought they should've been, at the time, but then again, neither was the rent. It was for that reason that Trash & Vaudeville had to leave that spot on St. Marks Place, but Jimmy found a new spot on East 7th Street, and even opened a new venture further south on the Lower East Side shortly afterwards.

Jimmy Webb was also, without the slightest question, the world’s most fervent Iggy Pop fan. If Iggy or the reunited Stooges came to town, you could bet your bottom dollar Jimmy Webb would be there, and onstage with the great man before too long, usually showcasing is full-back tattoo, loudly proclaiming “I NEED MORE” after the Iggy tune of the same title.

Evidently, Jimmy Webb passed away this week. Another tragic loss in a season of unimaginable sadness.

Pour one out for the great man.

Big City Survey: Part II

As I mentioned in the first part, I started answering the individual questions of this survey well over a month ago — back before life as we all knew it came to a grinding halt. As such, the tone of the answers below may be a bit different from the first batch.

Once again, I am not in the city in question, at the moment. About three weeks back, the wife, kids and I took up my family’s kind offer to decamp to my mother’s empty house out on Long Island. Given the limited space of our Manhattan apartment — which was already feeling tiny well before this crisis hit, even after some “creative" renovations — the spiraling uncertainties and the growing predictions of a looming, unstoppable uptick in COVID-19 cases — I felt it was prudent to get my family out of what has since become, by all reports, an unspeakable tragedy — one that we could have collectively been better prepared for had Trump and the rest of his clown car of an administration not dismantled the Nation Security Council’s pandemic response team in May of 2018. But, what’s done is done. There are now coronavirus-treatment tents on Sheep’s Meadow in Central Park and makeshift morgues in the streets. There is continued talk of temporarily burying COVID-19 victims in trenches in city parks.

Out here in Quogue, I would take solace in the notion that we’ve now been out of the city long enough for the incubation period — had we been infected before we left and unwittingly brought the virus with us — to have flowered into sickness by now, and that hasn’t happened. We are all still, to our knowledge, fully healthy. But, that, too, is speculative. We could very well have been infected and continue to be asymptomatic. As such, we are staying inside, washing our hands frequently and furiously after supply missions and, now, covering our noses and mouths when we have to do those runs. Most of all, we’re staying indoors and maintaining physical distance with others in accordance with that elusive goal of flattening the curve. But I cannot — and will not — complain.

I am profoundly privileged to have gotten out, but I miss my city, and I sorely fear for my friends, family and countless independent local concerns still there. I worry constantly about what happens next. As do we all.

As such, here’s the second half of the survey that celebrates my home town.

Favorite Book Shop:
Much as with my favorite record & CD shops, New York’s once great network of small, independent bookstores has also been largely vanquished by the advent of technological convenience. Time was when I would have answered this question with Shakespeare & Company at 716 Broadway, but that closed a few years back and is now a Foot Locker (`cos, y’know … we needed another place to buy expensive sneakers). That was an amazing bookshop, as I discussed here, but it’s gone now. As such, my fallback position is the mighty Strand on Broadway at East 12th Street. A huge, cavernous, multi-tiered hive of all sorts of literature, it is absolutely essential and unfuckwithable.

Favorite Music Shop:
I have already devoted entirely too many posts to lost record & CD shops. It’s a subject that largely defines this stupid weblog. As such, I’ll devote this answer solely to what remans … which regrettably isn’t very much. If I’m hard-pressed to find a specific disc, my first inclination, these days, is to head to Rough Trade in Williamsburg, which has a sprawling and enviable supply of great music of all stripes and is staffed by knowledgable folks (like my good friend Miles). Failing that, in Manhattan, there is always Generation Records on Thompson Street, but their selection is growing somewhat thin, of late. I’m also still quite fond of Downtown Music Gallery down on Monroe Street, in a sleepy patch of Chinatown, but that’s exclusively for deeply esoteric stuff. With regards to all three of these businesses, I have grave concerns about their well-being in the wake of this pandemic.

Favorite Dive Bar:
There remains a great deal of debate about what genuinely constitutes a proper “dive bar,” but I’ll say this — if the bar you’re in has a flatscreen television, it’s not a dive bar. Dive bars are generally dark, decrepit, a little scary and filled with drinkers for whom the clock has little or no importance. And make no mistake — dive bars aren't “punk bars.” Sure, there are plenty of so-called punk bars, but they’re usually fairly stylized, arty and endeavor to create a specific atmosphere (and many try way too hard, in this capacity). Proper dive bars don’t cater to that. There are loads of seedy, neighborhood bars, but that doesn’t make them dives. Proper dive bars don’t cater to being neighborhoody or kitschy or themey. They’re there to profit from despair, not cultivate character. Proper dive bars may indeed serve food, but chances are you don’t want to eat it. Dive bars are purely function over form — places wherein to get blotto drunk on the cheap to help you forget the shittiest of life’s circumstances. There are no proper dive bars in my neighborhood, anymore. None. Being that less and less is genuinely cheap in Manhattan, there are fewer and fewer of these joints. Dive bars don’t exist in nice neighborhoods. They perch on the fringes of civilization. I used to know a couple of bona fide dives on 8th and 9th avenues, where desperately depressed mailmen would drink themselves blind, but I don’t know if they’re still there. The Savoy, tucked behind Port Authority, was certainly one of them, but that’s changed hands a few times since I was last there in the mid-90s. Billymark’s West on West 28th & 9th Avenue was similarly grim, but the last time I looked, it was a good deal more inviting.

Favorite Irish Bar:
My favorite is probably The Scratcher on East 5th Street. Genuinely Irish, but without any cartoonishly cloying blarney aesthetic. Being half-Irish, I’m allowed to say shit like that.

Favorite Date Bar:
Well, I’ve been married for about twenty years, now, so haven’t really been on any dates, recently. When we were dating, the wife and I were quite fond of Johnny’s Bar on Greenwich Avenue, especially if we could sit in the front window. If you’re feeling flush, I might also suggest taking your date to the King Cole Bar at the St. Regis, which has astounding atmosphere (but very pricey drinks). Angel’s Share on Stuyvesant Street (amazingly still there) was also a great spot for dates, especially in that it was hard to find, which made it that much cooler.

Favorite Sports Bar:
Being that I generally don’t give one single crap about sports, I really don’t have one. If I’m at a sports bar, you’re bound to find me at the jukebox, about to piss off several patrons who are otherwise trying to pay attention to their precious ball games.

Favorite Park:
As much as I love Washington Square Park and Tompkins Square Park and Riverside Park, there is only one — 1 — answer for this. Any answer other than Central Park is moot.

Favorite Street:
I have a few, but they’re favorites for different reasons. I love Courtlandt Alley for its atmosphere, vibe and history. I love 13th Street between 6th & 7th Avenues for its overall look and feel. I love my own street, because I live on it.

Favorite Live Music Venue:
I feel like I’m repeating myself, but most of my favorite live music venues are gone. If you’re curious what they might have been, just peruse back under the “Vanished Venues” category. In terms of live music venues that — as of, say, February — that were still in operation, I’d say I’m still quite fond of the Bowery Ballroom. Irving Plaza is reportedly coming back, or at least was before all this bullshit went down. I have not been the re-opened Webster Hall, as yet, so jury’s still out on that, but the building certainly still carries a ton of resonance.

Favorite Movie Theatre:
I love the Quad Cinemas on West 13th Street. Kind of the very last of its kind.

Favorite New York Movie:
Without a moment’s hesitation, “After Hours.” Second place would be “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” the original version from 1974.

Favorite Song About New York:
I could make whole playlists of favorite songs about New York, so picking one is not easy feat. Today, I’m going to say “Manhattan” by Cat Power, but that could change in a half an hour.

Favorite Quiet Place in New York:
Maybe the Conservatory Gardens on Upper Fifth Avenue.

Favorite New York Secret:
If I disclosed that here, it wouldn’t be a secret anymore.

 

Punk vs. Pandemic: Jesse Malin in a City Under Siege

I don't often share the stuff I write for work here, but every now and again, I get to do something I'm really fired up about.

As part of a new series I'm endeavoring to do of Q&A's with songwriters trying to stay active & inspired in the midst of the pandemic, I reached out to stalwart NYC punk/hardcore luminary Jesse Malin to find out how he was getting through it.

A tirelessly prolific creative force and a driven guy, Jesse always has a lot to say. He did not let me down. Click here to check it out.