Flaming Pablum

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Death Cults & Ghost Signs

I’ve spoken about them a few times here before, notably here, here and here, but I was and remain a big fan of The Cult, dating back to their days as psychedelic goths through their period as hirsute ersatz-metalheads and beyond. Sure, they’ve been entirely capable of being roundly silly on many an occasion, but they’ve also penned a robust amount of unimpeachably great rock songs, regardless of whatever tribal affiliation you choose to adhere yourself to. If you can’t recognize the brilliance of tracks like “Wild Flower,” “The Witch,” “God’s Zoo,” “Rain” and – oh yes do wait for it – “She Sells Sanctuary,” I shall have to ask you to step outside.

In any case, I follow storied Cult guitarist Billy Duffy on Instagram, and today he posted the above photo, shot in New York City in 1983. Of it, the great man writes:

Last of the Mohicans 1983…Back in the Death Cult days I had a mohican for a while as can be seen in this pic taken in New York in August 1983. It was my first vacation in the States and I actually went over there on my own.

Now, beyond my fandom for the great Mr. Duffy, renowned for playing a fat, fuckoff Gretsch White Falcon with stylish aplomb, I was struck by this photo and my inability to accurately pinpoint its location.

To my mind, that looks like Chelsea’s fabled apartment complex, London Terrace on the far left hand side, which would put him somewhere east of Ninth Avenue and several blocks south of 23rd street, but I can’t be sure.

Also check out the ghost sign on the façade behind the tail of his `hawk. It seems to read “Harold & ______, Wholesalers”….

Ring any bells? Weigh in, location-spotters.

Here’s what he would have been up to, as the time, back when they were still Death Cult.

Strange Days Indeed

This past weekend, my son Oliver and I found ourselves watching one of my favorite movies of all time, that being “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three,” this being the original from 1974, not that Travolta bullshit from 2009.

Not only is the 1974 version a gripping, well-written and compellingly executed thriller, it’s also a quintessential New York movie. Being that large swathes of the film take place in the enrivons between Union Square and East 28th Street (just a stone’s throw from where Oliver has been going to school for the past decade), it is rife with visual depictions of spots that he and I encounter every day. Periodically throughout the movie, I’d blurt out location-signifiers like “look, there’s that corner where the Pret A Manger is today!” or “See, that’s Union Square, directly across from where Barnes & Noble is now!” or “That cop car is on Astor Place!” The specific sightings are all correct, but in many instances, given how much the topography of the city has changed since 1974, many of the locations were hard to recognize and reconcile.

In any case, this morning, I had to quickly run up to a spot in so-called “Midtown East.” After dropping off what I had to drop off, I started to head back downtown, hanging a quick right on East 36th between Second and Third Avenues. For rock geeks of a certain age and sensibility, this strip has resonance, as it’s the home of Sniffen Court, a bespoke little strip of choice real estate that features a fetching little mews of a type usually found in London.

Presumably preserved as a historic landmark and spared the rampant overdevelopment evident around the rest of the city, Sniffen Court is well known to the afore-cited rock fans because it’s the cover location of the second studio LP by The Doors, that being Strange Days. The suitably surreal sleeve to that 1967 album featured a slew of circus performers doing their thing in the middle of stately Sniffen Court. Personally speaking, while ostensibly a whimsical scene, I’ve always found something about the photograph somewhat sinister. Here it is now. Click on it to enlarge.

I covered both Sniffen Court and my feelings about the Doors back on this post, and don’t have much more to add to that, but as I walked by Sniffen Court this morning, I was relieved to see it looking, for all intents and purposes, more or less completely unchanged from the way it looked in 1967. It helps that the morning was similarly grey.

Here were the Doors in another part of the city … specifically Battery Park.

 

CBGB Express – When It Aboslutely, Postivevly Has To Be There, OMFUG!

©RichAllen

Spotted these two photos on the Facebook group, Manhattan Before 1990, taken by one Rich Allen, who very hopefully does not mind me repurposing them here.

Snapped in 1975, the photographs show two boys – Jeffreny and Fernando, evidently – playing hooky and messing around on the back of a delivery van. Closer scrutiny reveals the van to be apparently part of a new business concern called CBGB.

For those of us still lamenting the painful demise of the storied venue (though I’ve gone on record saying it’s high time to let go and say goodnight), this begs several questions, the most pressing and obvious one being….

If CBGB owned and operated a delivery van, ….what exactly were they delivering?

Cheers to Rich Allen.

©RichAllen

Keef in the Streets

Down here in Greenwich Village or – as I’m frequently heard to describe it – the veritable crotch of NYU, there’s a certain ground-floor apartment in the much, much nicer building across the street from mine that has always sparked a bit of speculation. Easily spotted from the sidewalk outisde, one can see a robust selection of handsome electric guitars hung around the high-ceilinged peremeter of a stately sitting/media room. I remember spying it sometime shortly after moving onto the street circa 2002 and becoming immediately curious as to the resident. At the time, I knew of certain celebrities like Julian Casablancas from The Strokes and Chris Noth from “Sex & The City” (and other roles, of course) living in the neighboring environs, but this room looked to be owned by someone at a more elevated level of affluence. The doorman of the building in question has, unsurprisingly, never been forthcoming about it (and, yes, I did ask). Lots of people in the `hood have theories.

“Keith Richards lives there,” is the one I’ve heard the most, although I furrow my brow every time it’s suggested.

For a start, while it had long been said that the storied Rolling Stone guitarist -- captured above by Timothy White -- “kept” a home somewhere in downtown Manhattan, it never struck me that the street-fighting man would have taken an apartment with a street-facing window. That just didn’t add up. He’s a Rolling Stone, for cryin’ out loud. Surely, die-hard Stones-heads would’ve figured it out and set up shop outside his window. But somehow, that theory persisted.

I also pooh-poohed the notion as -- however fun it would be to have Keef as a neighbor -- in the roughly seventeen years I’ve lived on this street, I have never once spotted the Midnight Rambler arriving or departing from the address in question. I’ve never even spotted a vehicle worthy of transporting same parked nearby. The whiff of Richards’ singular brand of louche badassery is nowhere to be smelt on my strip between University Place and Broadway. Given my own preoccupations, I assure you – if Keith Richards was living that close by, I’d damn well know about it.

Now, this not to say Keith hasn’t been spotted around, even if the spotting hasn’t been done by yours truly. As lovingly documented in Christopher McKittrick’s new book “Can’t Give It Away on Seventh Avenue” – which I’m currently reading – the Rolling Stones have an inexorable relationship with New York City, with all the band members having lived here at one point or another. Keith was said to have had a an apartment in the East Village until about 1983, although I’m uncertain as to where. And beyond periodically appearing on small stages across town to jam with certain notables, Keith was said to be a regular customer at Myers of Keswick, the traditional British grocery store over on Hudson Street in the West Village.

The rumors about Keef living in the buildng next door to me were officially dispelled in 2016, meanwhile, when it was reported that the great man was selling his Manhattan residence – an iconic duplex penthouse at One Fifth Avenue – for a tidy $12.2 million. Apparently, the Richards family barely owned that apartment for two years, having bought it some time in 2014, but they didn’t find a buyer for the place until last year.

This all begs two questions…..

Where was Keith Richards’ pad in the East Village?

…and…

Since it’s not Keith, who DOES live in the pricey guitar apartment across my street?

Joking on The Steps

I posted this on Facebook today, but I might as well share it here, too, because … well, why not?

According to several reports, notably this recent one in Vulture, certain fans have discovered the location of an evidently crucial scene in “Joker” and started to make touristy pilgrimages to the site in the Bronx. I say “evidently” as I still have not seen the film, and have no real desire to. To my mind, as I may have stated here before, we don’t need another telling of the Joker story, in much the same way we do not need another James Bond, or another goddamn “Star Wars” installment. Shouldn’t we all be bored to tears with these mythoses by now? How about new stories, new heroes and new anti-heroes. Just a thought.

In any case, while I might not give a rat’s ass about “Joker,” I really cannot get mad at folks for getting excited about tracking down those stupid Bronx steps, given the fact that I’ve undertaken countless pilgrimages of similar intent to any number of significant locations from photographs, album covers and films, usually in the company of my very patient kids. Many long-time visitors to this blog may remember same.

Here are some you might remember, should you care….Click on them to enlarge. 

 

Whither The Pit?

Because I’m a fatuously geeky fanboy, I am a member of a group on Facebook devoted to the Sisters of Mercy. This post is not really about the band in question, but I’m just citing this for context.

Over the past several weeks, members of this group have posted a couple of photos of enigmatic Sisters mainstay Andrew Eldritch sporting variations of black t-shirts (shocker!) emblazoned with the logo and legend “The Pit – New York City.”

I was, of course, immediately intrigued.

As an Upper East Side kid, I first started exploring downtown Manhattan during my early high school years. When the parents of my friend Spike (immortalized here, although still not his actual name) got divorced, Spike moved with his dad to an expansive apartment in Greenwich Village, down on Cornelia Street. This particular spot became my preliminary staging ground for acclimating myself with this captivating new (well, new for me, circa 1981 or so) part of the city, having already bored myself senseless looking for comic shops and record stores all around uptown and midtown.

During those early sorties (wherein I discovered crucial locations like Bleecker Bob’s, 99 Records, Subterranean Records, Second Coming Records and It’s Only Rock’n’Roll …. all gone now, of course), I do dimly remember a selection of places that haven’t gone onto become as well-documented as others. For example, I seem to be the only person who remember a heavy metal shop on MacDougal Street between West Third and Bleecker called C.C.& Star. I have vivid memories of the tiny joint, but there’s no evidence on the internet (apart from my own invocations) that it ever existed.

Similarly, I want to say I remember a concern named The Pit, but I may just be projecting.

Some members of the SOM group on Facebook suggest that it may have been situated on St. Marks Place. Was it a shop? A live music venue? A bar? Did the Sisters play there? It’s difficult to discern.

Much like my search for anything to do with C.C. & Star, nothing really comes up, other than the t-shirt design above, although that comes bereft of any info of the image’s true provenance.

Given the Hell’s Angels’ until-recent foothold in the East Village, I’m guessing The Pit might have had something to do with them, given the biker aesthetic at work – something the Altamont-fixated Sisters of Mercy would certainly have gravitated towards.

In any case, while the name rings the faintest of bells with me, I’m fairly certain I never set foot in the place, and probably only walked by it, at best.

Who can share more about The Pit? Weigh in…

For more context, here are the Sisters…

 

The Gang on Greene

Someone posted the above photo on the Greenwich Village Grapevine group on Facebook, this morning, and it caught my eye.

It's evidently titled "Teenage Gangs, Greene Street," and was taken in 1950 by Douglas Jones for Look Magazine, and it's currently part of the collection of the Museum of the City of New York.

As I look at it, though, I'm having a very hard time placing it on the contemporary Greene Street. The building on the far left corner with the burly columns doesn't ring any bells for me. Of course, the building might have simply been razed, by this point. Let's face it, 1950 was a little while ago. 

Can anyone accurately pinpoint this intersection? 

Oasis in Manhattan

If I’m being honest, I was never especially blown away by Oasis. I mean, they were certainly quite capable of cranking out a series of perfectly respectable-albeit-derivative singles that were loaded with catchy hooks and reminiscent of various well-established rock motifs, but I couldn’t quite understand why they enjoyed such a robust amount of popularity when – to my mind – some of their more musically adventurous fellow countrymen in bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and several others were stalled on lower rungs of the ladder. I mean, despite what short-lived NYC indie band Thin Lizard Dawn suggested, I never believed Oasis sucked, but I just didn’t think there was anything especially exceptional about them. I also never really warmed to Liam Gallagher’s voice, a sort of whiney amalgamation of Lennon and Lydon. I also never understood his penchant for basically standing stock-still when performing.

But, y’know, what the Hell do I know? Oasis went onto become one of Britain’s biggest musical exports, for a while, until the wheels fell off and the Gallagher brother could no longer stand each other. I’ve frequently suggested that if their music was as entertaining as their endearingly contentious interviews, I’d have been way more into Oasis. At the very least, Liam and Noel were quite handy with their pithy quips.

I’m only invoking their name here for a couple of reasons. I was recently discussing them with some work colleagues, and I came across the shot above. Somewhat famously, Oasis’ New York City debut performance was at Wetlands Preserve down on Laight Street in TriBeCa, a storied venue most renowned for spawning the neo-hippy jam-band scene comprised of bands like The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blues Traveler, et al. To be fair, while that was indeed Wetlands’ whole shtick, most of the bands I went to go see there had nothing to do with that vibe. From ska to funk to hardcore punk, Wetlands’ booking policy was refreshingly open-ended with regards to genre, so Oasis playing there wasn’t all that out of left field. More to the point, one could argue that Oasis’ music was no less retro-philic than the club’s more celebrated acts who were continually invoking the spirit of Woodstock, et al.

Regardless, while it was a decent-sized, bi-level club, the actual performance space was fairly intimate. I seem to always remember it being oppressively loud, as the sound bouncing off the back room’s concrete walls (floridly painted with pastoral scenes of flower-children dancing in leafy glades) had nowhere to go. That said, it was always a fun space to see a band. I never had a bad time there.

In doing research for this post, though, I discovered that the band actually graced the Wetlands stage twice on their debut American tour – first in July of 1994, and a second time three months later in October. You can see their full performance from the October date here.

I’m including the photo above from the July gig not just because it seems like a typical shot of the band, finding Liam in his signature stance, but also because it’s so telling of its era. Not only does no one have their fucking phone out, but I just love the guy pictured in the background just under Liam (the bespectacled gent in the Failure t-shirt). Dutiful rock journalist that he must have been (and given my own involvement in that vocation, I believe I might know the dude in question – Jon Wiederhorn, is that you??), he’s staring intently at Liam and actually taking notes with a pen and pad. That’s some goddamn dedication, right there. Here's another take...

The July gig was actually part of an annual music industry convention called the New Music Seminar, a string of dates every summer devoted to music showcases in various venues around town and schmooze-opportunities and panel discussions at a hotel in Times Square. I attended a few New Music Seminars, but I think I sat 1994’s out. I didn’t go to this Oasis gig, in any case. My former colleague Neil Strauss did, though, and wrote this little bit about it for the New York Times.

Just to bring things up to date as a side note, in the ensuing 28 years since this event, Wetlands Preserve is long, long gone. It closed in 2001, following the death of its founder-owner Larry Bloch. The building that housed the club, 161 Hudson Street, was converted into a luxury condo (of course) in 2004. The ground-floor space formerly occupied by Wetlands became an expensive bedding emporium of some kind for a while. Last time I walked by it, that concern had closed and it was awaiting a new tenant.

Both Jon Wiederhorn (if that's indeed him above) and Neil Strauss went further with their careers. I would later work alongside Jon during my tenure at MTV News Online circa 2006, and he’d go on to pen several books, including an authoritative guide on heavy metal called “Louder Than Hell.” Neil Strauss, meanwhile, who I’d worked with in 1990 at The New York Review of Records, later went on to write – as cited above – for The New York Times and other prestigious outlets. After writing some memorable profile pieces for Rolling Stone (including one where I believe he got into bed with Jewel), Neil was drafted to orchestrate (and presumably ghost-write) the fabled Motley Crue oral history, “The Dirt.” From there, Neil’s career took an interesting turn and he became an accomplished pickup artist, ostensibly for the purposes of writing a book on same. That book, “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” took Neil to a whole new level, so to speak. The last time I saw him was at a Cocteau Twins concert at the (since demolished) Roseland Ballroom. He was wearing leather pants.

Lastly, I stumbled upon this ancient video of Oasis and swiftly determined that it was shot here in New York City, possibly during the same stay as the first Wetlands gig. Herein we see the brothers Gallagher and cohorts playing in the Central Park bandshell, just steps to the south of Bethesda Fountain. There are also several shots of the band glumly burying their drummer in a makeshift public garden of the sort one used to encounter around certain portions of the Upper West Side and Lower East side. Can anyone identify the spot?

From Trash to Posh: The Metamorphosis of Hamilton-Holly House at 4 St. Marks Place

Originally the stately home of Eliza Hamilton, the widow of — wait for it — Alexander Hamilton, the townhouse of 4 St. Marks Place, otherwise known as the Hamilton-Holly House, is rightly considered a historic, designated landmark in the heart of what is now referred to as Manhattan’s East Village, a neighborhood descriptor Mrs. Hamilton’s tenure well predates.

As far back as I’ve ever been able to recall, however, 4 St. Marks Place was the home of Trash & Vaudeville, an enterprise I’ve discussed many times here.

Along with housing Jimmy Webb’s fabled punk clothing shop, the building also boasted an iconic stoop, one that frequently played host to the the local color of the neighborhood, so to speak.

I probably first called it out in the post that led to my interview with RB Korbet of Even Worse. I’d posted the photo below, and she’d gotten in touch to let me know the photographer’s name (Dave “Daze” Parsons). RB is the lady in black looking at the camera.

Over the years, the building has seen a lot of wear & tear, much like the surrounding neighborhood, but in the last fifteen-to-twenty years, or so, gentrification in the East Village (as well as its surrounding neighborhoods) has seen a sharp uptick.

In due course, while that stoop had long played host to any number of denizens of St. Marks Place, it was eventually gated off.

In 2016, meanwhile, Trash & Vaudeville was jettisoned from Hamilton-Holly House. Don’t fret. They relocated over on East 7th and, by all accounts, are still doing well. Webb even opened up an adjunct show further down in the Lower East Side.

Back at 4 St. Marks Place, however, a sidewalk shed was erected and plans were enacted to whip the former Hamilton-Holly House back into shape, so to speak.

Following the closings of St. Marks Sounds and the Grassroots Tavern just down the block for similar purposes, this development didn’t bode well for those who — like myself — who still cling to the idea of St. Marks Place remaining the endearingly chaotic and arguably grubby gateway to the East Village.

Recently, the shed was removed to reveal a newly refurbished facade. A quick Google search reveals that the townhouse is back up for sale (no price listed), and described thusly:

The space was previously occupied by Trash and Vaudeville's since 1975, and has historically been an epicenter of counter culture, bohemia and rock-and-roll. This landmark building is now being gut renovated, modernized and fully restored.

For those used to looking at 4 St. Marks Place during its Trash & Vaudeville days, it’s a slightly jarring transformation. My son and I walked by it yesterday, and I couldn’t stop from taking a picture (that’s Oliver below).

Technically, it’s the same stoop.

But you’d never know it.