Flaming Pablum

Screaming on the Expressway

There’s a billboard you can spot from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, not too far from the sprawling grounds of the Calvary Cemetery, that’s mystified me for quite a little while, now. Ostensibly, it’s designed to catch the eyes of commuters coming and going towards the city on what becomes the Long Island Expressway, a little further along. I first caught a glimpse of it a year or two ago while on a crowed Hampton Jitney bound for my mom’s place out in Quogue, and did something of a double-take, but we passed it so quickly that I couldn’t tell if I’d imagined it or not. Ever since, I’ve continually tried to take a closer look at it to verify my suspicions. Yesterday, on our way back from visiting my mother, I managed to whip my camera out at the right moment and take a picture of it.

Here’s that billboard now. Click on it to enlarge. 

...and here's an even clearer shot I found online...

Based out of Deer Park, Long Island, the North Shore Neon Sign Co. is evidently one of the region’s busiest suppliers of neon signage, and their handiwork can be seen all over Times Square. That’s all well and good, but that doesn’t explain the sign. Were their slogan — “We Hang to Live” — not odd enough, take a look at that accompanying graphic. I’m not quite sure what it’s supposed to be, but it looks a little like an inverted Christmas ornament. But look closer and folks of a certain sensibility might see something familiar. Am I wrong, or isn’t that the signature logo of The Screamers?

For the non-music nerds, the Screamers were one of the original bands to emerge on the Los Angeles punk scene in the late `70s, alongside iconic names like The Weirdos, X, FEAR and The Germs. Sort of the West Coast’s answer to New York’s Suicide, the Screamers completely eschewed guitars in favor of drums, electric piano, synthesizers and the voice and disarming stage presence of lead …er… screamer Tomato du Plenty. While the band has since garnered a reputation as a formidable influence, marked by their confrontational performances and stylized presentation, they never released a proper album. They’d made plans to release a video-only collection of music, but the finished product never came to fruition. Here in 2025, there are bootleg live recordings, demos and a few of those video performance clips floating around, but they never signed a record deal and never released a proper record. The band broke up, and Tomata moved around a lot, but passed away in San Francisco of cancer at the age of 52.

None of that explains why the band’s logo — designed by one Gary Panter, and modeled after the face and head of spiky haired Tomata — now adorns this North Shore Neon billboard.

This is not the first time the Screamers logo has been appropriated, though. Billy Idol approximated it in the animation for his video for …aptly enough.. “Scream” in 2005, but this is a little further flung than that.

Anyone know?

One clue: the artist responsible for the logo, Gary Panter, according to his website, lives in Brooklyn.

Here's what remains of the Screamers...

Those Barbarian Times: East Village `86

Here’s a curious one.

I must confess that, until this morning, I’d never heard of Terry Mann, the artist featured in the video below for the song “Barbarian,” a compelling little period piece captured around Alphabet City and other parts in 1986. I’m quite curious as to where exactly that big, open lot featured in the beginning was shot. I want to say those quick tracking shots (where Mann must have been stood at the rear of a flat-bed truck, maybe?) were taken around the Financial District, around the same neighborhood Yoko Ono and Zbigniew Rybczynski shot the clip for “Hell in Paradise.”

Here’s the info that goes with the clip:

Courtesy of NYC's Manic/Tango Productions, a music video production house once operated by the team of Abigail Simon and Tal Yarden out of 377 E. 8th St. in the East Village.

Clipping from the Video Track section of Billboard magazine dated June 28, 1986: "CBS International recording artist Terry Mann's video for 'Barbarian' was filmed at the now -defunct Manhattan cabaret 8 B.C. The clip is said to reflect Mann's East Village roots and employs some 50 extras, including members of local acts the Tomboys, Hell At Forty Feet, Band of Thieves, Harry Boy, and the Dogs. Abigail Simon produced for Manic /Tango; Tal Yarden directed." Professionally digitized from 3/4" U-matic tape by Rick Lombardi of Telefilm Transfers in Southampton, PA: Tape generously provided by Abigail Simon from her personal archives, who shared some background info: "Cornelius who owned 8BC is the main Mad Scientist dude, members of the Bad Brains, Frank Maya , and some other notorious east village characters of the time are in the cast...even Tal! it was a complete family production, shot in 8BC before the club was turned into Postmasters Gallery."

Regular readers might remember my invocation of 8BC from last April.

According to what I believe is his own official website, Mann abandoned New York and the travails of the duplicitous music industry to become a nomadic busker around Europe before settling in Amsterdam. You can find out more here.

Clix on Wax

I had a nice surprise, today.

The daughter of some dear friends of ours just got back from spending a semester in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Back over Labor Day weekend, we’d all gotten together and Ella — the daughter in question — heard me laboriously bloviating about the whole Clics Modernos saga. It’s a long, convoluted story, but if you’ve not been following this blog for very long, I played a small role in determining the exact location of the cover of the landmark 1983 album by preeminent Argentine rock star, Charly Garcia — via an old photograph by a Swedish tourist of Cortandt Alley at Walker Street in TriBeCa. It’s actually way more complicated than that, but you can read more here, if you’re curious.

In any case, I posted that all that here on my silly blog, back before the days COVID, and intrepid Argentines Inaki Rojas and Mariano Cabrera went a bit berserk, suggesting it was like determining the precise location of Abbey Road.

In 2023, a plaque was put up on the corner to commemorate it, which was a very big deal indeed. It’s now a spot that thousands of fans flock to in order to pay homage. Don’t believe me? Click here and scroll down,

Anyway, prizing a vinyl copy of the record (let alone from its native Argentina) is no easy feat, but thanks to Ella, I now possess it.

Yay for Ella!

Just For Clix: Whorelords on the Corner

Here’s a curious one.

The shot above comes from the ever-excellent New York Hardcore Chronicles Facebook page. The ensemble depicted therein was a band called The Whorelords, who were fronted by a gentleman named Bobby Snotz. I spoke about there about eleven years ago. Here’s what Misfits Central tells us about them…

Bobby Snotz formed this band in 1978 with Tarik Schapli. Because Tarik hadn't been playing guitar for long, Barry (and later Bobby Steele) joined the band as second guitarist. The Whorelords performed live several times while Bobby Steele was in the band; he left when he was asked to join The Misfits. Along with The Whorelords came a group of Whorettes (Charlotte Harlotte, Diedre, Carry Hamilton, and Rachel Rage) who did background vocals. Some members of The Whorelords went on to form Hell Sent, who opened for The Misfits in September 1979. A Whorelords reunion show took place that weekend when Bobby Snotz showed up and replaced Hell Sent's singer Kate K-Mart to perform a set of Whorelords songs. After spending a few years in jail, Snotz reformed the band in 1982. At some point during this time, they recorded a demo tape (with Pete Marshall on guitar) that has never been released. Bobby Snotz and Tarik also recorded as The Fiends on the New York Thrash compilation. Snotz was beaten to death in 1992.

There are two other small things of note, her. First up, the gent on the far left is depicted wearing a Blitz Benefit t-shirt (which I wrote about back here). Secondly, and this is really what initially jumped out at me, the tag behind the band is none other than MODERN CLIX, Fran Powers’ old band, and the impetus behind Charly Garcia’s Clics Modernos and Charly Garcia Corner.

For more on Fran Powers, click here and here.

For more on Charly Garcia’s Clics Modernos and Charly Garcia Corner, click here and here. 

I shared this back in 2014, but here were the Whorelords in action:

Exhuming Carter Stevens' "Punk Rock"

Here’s something I was entirely unaware of until last night, for whatever that’s worth.

Searching on our maddening Apple TV box for something to watch, I believe I was on Amazon Prime when an option titled, rather simply, “Punk Rock,” appeared on the menu, immediately piquing my curiosity.

Shot in 1977 by a notorious director named Carter Stevens, this endeavor was apparently a slavishly low-budget, exploitative porn flick with an anemic plot about a hardscrabble detective that tries to break up a sex-trafficking ring in the seedy underbelly of late `70’s New York, with, presumably, lots of needless and grainy coitus along the way (I’m projecting – I didn’t actually end up watching it, as I didn’t think it would have been a grand idea to have my wife walk into our living room to find me watching unseemly vintage porn). I did, however, watch the trailer, which I’m sharing with you below. You’re very welcome.

Here's a bit of the promotional text, as prized from IMDB:

Filmed on location at New York's legendary underground clubs such as Max's Kansas City and featuring original music and appearances from bands THE STILLETTOS, THE SQUIRRELS, SPICY BITS and THE FAST! On the track of a teenage runaway, a trail of murder, sex, and drugs leads private eye Jimmy into the decadent New York City night world: from massage parlors to penthouses and after-hours nightclubs; from sex slavers and pimps to the dangerous members of a killer rock'n'roll band!

Sounds almost promising, right? Well, don’t get too excited. What little I’ve seen of the film looks pretty dire, but the Max’s Kansas City footage is interesting. In terms of the names cited, the only bands of those I recognize are The Fast (who I spoke about here and here) and The Stillettos, a band that later spun off bassist Fred Smith to Television and Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, who went onto form – wait for it – Blondie. The Squirrels and the Spicy Bits? One can only guess. Suffice to say, it makes the infamous "punk rock" episode of "Quincy M.E." seem like a reverent documentary, by comparison. 

There’s a great, comprehensive book, from a few years ago, that someone gave me called “Destroy All Movies: The Complete Guide to Punks on Film” that I meant to remove from one of my bookshelves and look this film up in, but time got away from me. In the interim, enjoy the trailer…featuring blink-and-you’ll-miss’em cameos of the original MacDougal Street iteration of Bleecker Bob’s (just off Eighth Street) and the St. Marks Place location of Trash & Vaudeville.

Incidentally, if you also possess a copy of “Destroy All Movies,” hold onto it – it’s out of print, and now can fetch between $180 to $300 on eBay.

Faith Comes to the East Village: The Cure at the Ritz, 1981

The videos below have been circulating for some time, for avid Cure heads, but possibly not for the layperson. I only recently discovered this footage, so thought it’d be worth sharing here, but not just because of the coolness of The Cure.

Shot in the summer of 1981 for a Spanish television special, this footage finds the Cure hitting New York City for two nights of their tour for the album Faith (the band having recently jettisoned keyboardist Matthieu Hartley, reducing themselves to a trio). I’m jumping to a conclusion, here, but I’m guessing that Spanish television took an interest in these gigs because of the venue. The Ritz – as a live-music venue for rock acts -- would have only just revealed itself as such about a year earlier, when it changed over from its iteration as Casa Galicia, an organization – according to Wikipedia -- that promoted cultural ties with Spain. While the venue was now operating as a rock club, it was still owned by Casa Galicia (as it still is today). Being that I don’t speak a lick of Spanish, I can’t actually tell you what the presenter in the beginning of the clip is saying, but you can still see the old paint job and some remaining signage from the Casa Galicia era behind him. Let’s go there now…

The live footage of the band, meanwhile, is sharp and stark, finding the band moving further away from their more accessible origins. The material they were promoting here from their third LP, Faith was quite a long way from the comparatively spritely pop of their first record, finding Robert Smith wading deeper into the dark waters of moribund introspection and existential dread. Brimming with ruminations of death, grief and empty religious dogma, tracks like “The Funeral Party,” “The Drowning Man” and “Other Voices” weren’t destined to become student-disco bangers so much as hymns for a future generation of perpetually black-clad lost sheep. While not as cruel, nihilistic and gloom laden as the record that would follow it, Pornography, the whole of Faith is still a grim horse pill of a listening experience. The songs captured here, meanwhile, … despite all my purpose prose for Faith, are both originally from the preceding album, Seventeen Seconds.

I’m sure the presenter, who returns to the screen to interview Robert in some ancillary chamber of The Ritz at about four minutes and ….er…. seventeen seconds (coincidence?) is expounding on comparable points, but again – I don’t speak Spanish, so I can’t say for sure. Unfortunately, Robert’s answers are obscured by a Spanish voice-over, so it’s hard to glean what he’s saying, although he seems to be politely taking exception to being repeatedly referred to as “a New Wave band.” You can’t really blame him for that. Mercifully, the live material resumes after that.

Of course, for those of you who don’t care so much about all that extraneous info, there’s this handy truncation featuring solely the performance footage. You’re welcome.

At the time of this filming in July of 1981, I was in between 8th grade and high school, and invariably hadn’t heard of The Cure, as yet. I would have been more deeply entrenched in my stubborn affinity of heavy metal and immersing myself further into adoration for bands like Devo and the burgeoning underground of Hardcore Punk (as it was then still called). In fact, I wouldn’t set foot in the Ritz until four years after this was shot -- in December of 1985 to see the Circle Jerks, D.O.A. and Redd Kross (as floridly discussed here). By that point, I’d have heard the Cure via their incongruously poppy MTV hits like “Let’s Go to Bed” and “The Walk,” which owed precious fuck-all to the pervasive emotional torpor of the Faith era. But with the release of The Head on The Door (and the crucial compilation Standing on a Beach) in the spring of 1986, I became a devout Cure fan, going on to see them several times, but never in a venue as intimate as the Ritz.

The picture up top, meanwhile, was quite likely snapped during the same day this footage was captured (given that they’re wearing the same duds). They’re pictured standing in the fabled Tunnel of Light at 127 John Street near the South Street Seaport, which I’ve written about too many times here (see list below).

More About The Cure on Flaming Pablum

Searching for The Cure

Finding The Cure

Thirty Years of Disintegration

Robert Smith ... Prophet?

Lured to the Lost World: Reconvening with The Cure

Down in the Park

More About The Ritz on Flaming Pablum

Slaytanic Fits at the Ritz in `86

Puttin' on the Ritz

Ritz Redux

Before the Ritz

Back Yet Again to The Ritz

Final Rhapsody for The Ritz

A Requiem for the Ritz, A Wake for Webster Hall

Rising Above at the Ritz

As The Ritz Listz

As The Ritz Rotz

Reincarnating The Ritz

B-Boys in the Batcave

Sisters vs. Black Flag at The Ritz

More About the Tunnel of Light at 127 John Street on Flaming Pablum

Walk Into the Light

Joe Walks Into the Light

Walk into the Light: Slight Return

Ace in That Place

Walk Back into the Light

Painting the Town Red

I should preface this by saying that The Red House Painters were never one of “my bands.” What little I knew about them, at the time, didn’t suggest that they were something I was ever going to give a damn about. I mean, I do love my share of earnest indie rock, but there was nothing about this particular band that captured my attention. I gather, in more recent years, that lead singer Mark Kozelek went on to field a number of unsavory allegations of sexual misconduct in the same unfortunate vein as folks like Louis CK, but I don’t know enough about that to credibly opine. Should you care, there’s always Google, I suppose.

So, while this music sounds perfectly fine, I’m not citing the clip below for its musical merit, nor I am endorsing Kozelek as an artist you should go check out. I mean, if you want to, go for it.

No, the reason I’m featuring the video below is because some might remember, a few years back, a somewhat exhaustive entry I posted called Spinning Out: 102 More of the Best New York City Videos, which aggregated, well, exactly that – 102 music videos that were filmed or shot within the five boroughs of New York City. While it was, as I said, exhaustive, it was by no means comprehensive, and periodically, I come across another that warrants inclusion. As such, check out “All Mixed Up” by The Red House Painters. Shot in 1996, and like similarly-inclined videos like “Bad Reputation” by Freedy Johnston and, oddly, “Star” by The Cult, it features evocative footage of the mid-90’s iterations of midtown (sort of the Sixth Avenue side of Rockefeller Center), SoHo (specifically Greene and Crosby Streets), Central Park, the “Two Bridges” area of the Lower East Side and a tiny patch of Brooklyn.

Enjoy.

Down in the Park

A friend of mine on Facebook just posted the above photo of Robert Smith of The Cure, albeit without any credit, date or information. I sadly have no idea who took this picture, when it was snapped nor its precise location. 

That all said -- and I might be entirely projecting, here -- but it kinda looks like Robert is standing in the unlikely nocturnal environs of Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It honestly looks like he's standing just steps away from where the undercover cop played by Mercedes Ruehl lures priapic knucklehead Ajax into swiftly-handcuffed custody after he'd just finished beating up the last of the Baseball Furies in Walter Hill's "The Warriors."

I'm probably wrong, but....

Poached Pics: Pieces of the Past

There’s been a bit of an exodus, in recent days, of folks leaving Instagram and Facebook, put off by Zuckerberg’s brazen sucking-up to Trump. I, too, have courted the idea of leaving — which is saying something, given the ridiculous amount of crap I post on both platforms. I even opened a BlueSky account (find it here, should you care), but ultimately find it a bit too similar to the original Twitter (before Elon Musk took a giant, Hitler-heiling shit all over it). I never really warmed to Twitter, but we’ll see how it goes.

Personally, the notion of leaving those two Meta platforms is difficult in that it invariably means falling out of touch with a veritable nation of folks who I pretty much only know online. That’s tough to step away from, but again, we’ll see how it shakes out.

In any case, in perusing my Instagram page, trying to decide what my next step was to be, I happened to click on the roster of images I’d tagged in my “saved” column, like the excellent shot above of the intersection of Lafayette and Bleecker Street, which was taken in 1990 by my friend Gregoire Alessandrini. In doing so, I was reacquainted with several images that spoke to posts I’ve logged here, over the years. I thought I’d take a moment to share some of those, so here goes.

Below is a photograph of the old interior of Downtown Beirut circa 1989. This photo was originally snapped by a photographer named Eff Norkinhardie, but I prized if off the Instagram feed of Lara B. Sharp. This photo struck me not because it captured what the bar was like on a busy weekend night, but I'd swear to God the tall fella chatting up the lady in the foreground in the cheetah-spotted coat  is my friend Brent Butterworth, although he can neither confirm nor deny that. I wrote about Downtown Beirut here. 

I couldn't say what periodical the page of club ads below came from, but this image is courtesy of the Instagram feed of DaveW61. Long lost ventures being touted here are places I've scribbled about her before, like The Ritz, The Peppermint Lounge, Privates and more. 

The below image came from the Instagram feed of the great Legs McNeil, although I believe he originally got it from the amazing Instagram feed, Blondieisaband. In any case, back in 2014, I put up a bunch of posts speculating on the location of the photos in question, aided and abetted by photographer Roberta Bayley, I managed to track it down. I wrote about Legs McNeil back here. 

The shot of Third Avenue & St. Marks Place comes from the feed of UrbanArchiveNY. I did a series of posts postulating about the dinosaur signage of the old Continental Divide, on this now-unrecognizable strip. Find the culmination here. 

Not a super notable one, but here's the exterior of the Greenwich Village iteration of Crazy Eddie's as found in the feed of MikeSaes. Personally speaking, I was more partial to the uptown iterations of Crazy Eddie's, most specifically the ones on East 57th Street and on East 86th Street. You can read about both of those here. Today, this space below is a Chipotle. 

The below is an amazing artifact prized from the feed of Richard Boch's Muddclub_Book, proving that the Modern Lovers played live in Lower Manhattan in 1975 (and "blew the doors" off the Kitchen). I wrote about The Kitchen here, and the Modern Lovers a few times, most recently here. 

This is the fabled jukebox of the late, lamented Lakeside Lounge on Avenue B. I wrote about this place quite a few times, but most floridly here. This was from the feed of my friend Joe Bonomo. 

Another one from Gregoire's NewYork1990s, here's a shot of the window of Norman's Sound + Vision, which I wrote about here. 

This is an amazing shot from the feed of James and Karla Murray of the exterior of the P&G bar on the Upper West Side. I wrote about it a few times, but most notably as the location of a certain photograph of Joe Jackson. James and Karla, meanwhile, released a great book about NYC bars earlier this year.

Okay, stay with me, now, because this one is a bit confusing. From the feed of Recordrun, this is shot from the mid-`80s of the interior of Record Runner on Cornelia Street. Some short years later, Record Runner would move a block to the west to Jones Street (where it remains today), and this space would turn into Subterranean Records. I've written about both concerns many times here (too many to link, but Google it, if you care). This space as Subterranean Records closed in about 2008 and has been dormant ever since.

A tantalizing collection of flyers from the Rock Hotel, which I spoke about here. This shot was poached shamelessly from the feed of AlexisTMorrow

Taken from the feed of RecycledSounds_Omaha, here's an ad for my beloved Rocks in Your Head on Prince Street in SoHo. I've written about it thousands of times, so Google it if you're curious. 

The below is a shot of the rear exterior facade of the Roseland Ballroom from the feed of retronyc. It was never my favorite venue, but I do miss it, and wrote about it here and here. 

 

Ramones on Extra Place: From Chalkie to Char

I stumbled quite randomly on the above shot of the Ramones posing behind CBGB on Extra Place, the alley between the Bowery and Second Avenue in 1977. I initially assumed it was snapped by frequent Ramones documenter, Bob Gruen, but it turns out it was actually captured by one Chalkie Davies for the cover of the NME. I did some further Googling, and found this site wherein Chalkie himself discusses the shoot...

In April 1977 Mick Farren and I came to New York to check out the punk scene for the NME. We went to all the well known Clubs including CBGB's, Max's Kansas City, the Bottom Line, Danceteria and the Mudd Club.

Joey Ramone lived close to CBGB'S which was on the Bowery in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Initially we took photos on the roof of Joey's apartment building but although it looked like New York it did not really have the right feel.

I had spotted this alley when walking over to Joey's place, it was a block from  the Bowery and seemed perfect to me, it was full of trash and totally run down, back then huge parts of Manhattan were like this, the money had run out and the city was bankrupt.

I dragged the four Ramones to the location, I did a number of group shots, aided by their Artistic Director the late Arturo Vega. It seemed odd having somebody else telling the band what to do, all they did was stand there in a line, but it made them relaxed so I was happy to let him help.

To me this sums up the American Punk scene at that time, leather jackets, t shirts and jeans was the look they all had, it's a shame the Ramones never had the true success they deserved, but their influence should never be underestimated.

This afternoon, my daughter Charlotte and I were walking around the neighborhood, and we ducked down Extra Place to replicate the shot. 

It doesn't quite exude the same vibe, these days.