In the wake of yesterday's post about Adrian Boot's amazing photographs of Alan Vega and Martin Rev of Suicide from 1979, I hit some key locations on my way to work this morning ...
Benson Place, then and now.
The Puck Building, then and now.
Jersey Street, then and now.
I’ve seen a lot of these individual shots before (some have taken on a legitimately iconic status, in terms of the history of New York City Punk, etc.), but never knew who the actual photographer was. Turns out it was a British photojournalist named Adrian Boot, and I recently stumbled upon his account of his first encounter with Suicide purely by accident. Sure, it’s a great, illuminating read, but it wasn’t until I clicked on the VISIT THE GALLERY (see below) link at the bottom that I saw the full array of images from that early spring morning on the still-squalid streets of 1979’s Downtown Manhattan.
Even if you’re not a fan of Suicide’s singular blend of brazenly forward-looking and bracingly listener-hostile electronic music (46 years on from their debut eponymous LP on Red Star Records, it’s still not for everyone), Boot’s photos of Martin Rev and Alan Vega leisurely loitering around strips of the Bowery, the Lower East Side and areas now referred to as SoHo, the East Village and even TriBeCa (I’m confidently convinced that shot No.1 was taken on Benson Place, which extends off Franklin Street near where Courtlandt Alley ends at the foot of what had been the Mudd Club at 77 White Street) are still eye-opening revelations. Can you name the other locations?
View the full gallery of Suicide shots here and be sure to check out Boot’s other amazing pictures. They are well worth your time.
And, for the curious and/or uninitiated, this was Suicide
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More from Flaming Pablum on Suicide…
Back Again ... Briefly ... To The Cooler
Regular readers may recognize the name Ricky Powell, who I’ve invoked several times here, over the years (notary here, here, here, here, here and this post, wherein the man himself chimed in on the comments). In Downtown NYC circles, he was a known quantity as a photographer, graffiti tagger, personality, and erstwhile comrade of the fledgling Beastie Boys. That latter association probably provided him with the most renown, but he was very much an established figure in his own right.
In any case, Ricky sadly passed away in 2021. Shortly after his death, Showtime released a documentary on the man titled “The Individualist.” Being that I don’t subscribe to that service, I was unable to ever see it.
Until now….
A regular reader named Crawford kindly wrote in …. with a link.
Enjoy it while it’s up. Thanks, Crawford!
While I’m currently committed to finishing “Sweet Dreams: The Story of the New Romantics,” a sprawling oral history by Dylan Jones all about London's fertile synth-pop scene in the late `70/early 80s spawned from fabled clubs like The Blitz (I’m about a third of the way through … it’s kind of slow-going), I popped into the Barnes & Noble near my office for a quick browse, yesterday, only to have the book pictured above practically leap out and grab me by the jugular.
Penned by one Jesse Rifkin, a historian who also conducts a varies series of music-themed tour of New York, “This Must Be The Place: Music, Community and Vanished Spaces in New York City” seems verily tailor-made to my particular predilections. And given that, after a swift perusal of the index, I spotted invocations of names like Agnostic Front, SWANS, Missing Foundation and – OH DO PLEASE WAIT FOR IT – Cop Shoot Cop, I snapped it up and bought it on the spot. Expect a full, florid book report in relatively short order.
I want to say that I’ve encountered Mr. Rifkin in one instance or another, but cannot seem to find any record thereof. In any case, while I’m quite fired up to read his book, his Instagram account is entirely worth your time, touching on many of the same topics as my blog. Witness just two examples below.
Back in 2015, I posted an entry wondering aloud about a short-lived venue called Chase Park Lounge that fleetingly played host to the ferocious likes of The Birthday Party. From a post of Jesse’s on his instagram, here’s an antiquated show schedule from the venue that discloses its location at 599 Broadway, on the south side of Houston Street. Today, that space is the American Eagle Outfitters wherein I spotted that beach-ready, day-glo bastardization of the Unknown Pleasures sleeve.
Back in May of 2022, meanwhile, I posted a piece about Michael Gira’s fabled “bunker” at 93 Avenue B, a SWANS rehearsal space which doubled as his windowless crash pad. Via his Instagram page, Rifkin hosted a glimpse of that fearasome stronghold’s interior…
Anyway, find more amazing images like these here and tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya. Enjoy.
I'm not sure when he posted or completed this particular chapter, but our good friend Bob Egan of PopSpots now has a truly sprawling collection of all his minutia-laden detective work re: images and album covers of various luminaries in and around Central Park, like this great shot of Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley fraternizing with some old ladies at the Central Park Zoo (snapped originally by photographer Warring Abbott).
It's entirely worth your time. Find it here.
It's hard to write these entries without dramatically lapsing into hoary cliché, but it does genuinely seem like only yesterday that I launched this blog. That fateful date was eighteen years ago today, believe it or not. Were this blog a sentient human being, it would now be legally eligible to vote, run for political office, enter a contract and/or make a will.
Marching up hills of eloquently inspired fecundity and down into deep valleys of yawnsome, derivative drivel, Flaming Pablum has doggedly soldiered into its petulant late teens, with the pronounced penchants for willful obnoxiousness, door-slamming obstinance and acne-speckled histrionics that customarily come with that ill-mannered age. But I wouldn't expect a course-correcting dose of responsible maturity any time soon.
As I've said in previous anniversary messages, I still legitimately feel, each and every time I post something here, that it could be my very last entry, as I have no earthly clue when I might be next inspired to share something. But, I don't think I'm ready to hang it up just yet. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, got involved and contributed, this year, notably the Desperately Seeking the 80's ladies, Inaki Rojas of Pop Secret for including me in his epic series about Charly Garcia's corner, Flaming Pablum interviewees like Brooke Smith and Tod [A] and everyone who took the time to leave a constructive, informative or even simply encouraging comment.
The image at the top of this post, by the way, in case you can't decode it, is one of my stickers. This particular one was affixed to a light pole on East 10th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues (just a bottle's toss from the site of Jesse Malin's old Black & White Bar). I don't remember when I first slapped this one up, but where often they get covered, painted over, peeled off or amusingly defaced (my favorite being that one that replaced the word Pablum with the word Scrotum), someone actually tried to BURN THIS ONE OFF, with only middling success.
But, technically, it's still there.
No sooner do I post a self-pitying entry about how uninspired I am during my boot-imposed exile than I stumble upon something truly worth evangelizing. My friend Joe Bonomo posted the below on Facebook and it’s quite cool.
Originally posted by one Rick Johnson, here’s the preamble:
Photos of NYC bars at the end of the 70s. From the January 1980 issue of New York Rocker. I’m jealous I wasn’t there to hang out then. There is no better feeling than being in a rock and roll club when the band starts playing! CBGB, Max’s, Mudd Club, Gildersleeves and more…all frozen in time. Check them out! All photos by Steve Lombardi.
These are the photos, with locations names in lower right-hand corner. There are a couple I don’t recognize. Who remembers Tomato?
As a revelation that should surprise absolutely no one, I run the Cop Shoot Cop Facebook page. The former members of the band didn’t particularly want to do it, so just they let me get on with it. And so I do, although that involves little more than doing periodic internet searches for pertinent mentions, pictures and videos and then posting them for the C$C faithful, who also send in assets to post. Back in 2013, I stumbled upon the shot below….
I had no idea of who shot it, where it was taken, what year it was snapped nor where it was first published, but dutifully shared it on the C$C Facebook page.
Ten years later, I’m happy to say that I can report that the photograph was taken by one Stephen Street to accompany a 1993 story in the British music-news weekly, Melody Maker written by legendary rock scribe Everett True. This was sent in by a C$C fan named Bill Farrar, who’s spotted it on Twitter.
The part that caught my eye, meanwhile, was the inclusion of the entire photograph (see below).
What I’d never realized about that first iteration of the photo is the location. The Cop Shoot Cop lads are pictured loitering menacingly around the Lower East Side Amphitheatre (or Bandshell, as some of us called it) in 1993, a full 30 (!!!) years before Mr. Farrar spotted it on Twitter.
I’ve written about the East River Bandshell several times here before (most recently here), but it was a significant Lower East Side landmark, for several years, especially as it started to gradually erode, slowly devolving into a hunk of urban decay like a set-piece from “Planet of the Apes.” In varying states of disrepair, it appeared in several music videos, notably “Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy” by Kid Creole & the Coconuts, “Cold Turkey” by Cheap Trick (yes, a Lennon cover … also starring late skateboarder/scenester Harold Hunter), “Unsung” by Helmet and “Invisible People” by False Prophets, although I’m probably forgetting some others. It also made a prominent appearance in the classic hip-hop flick, “Wild Style.”
Of course, in later years, the East River Amphitheatre got a complete makeover, reducing the structure to its core shell, with some artful piping around it.
But then, in the wake of the damage wrought by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, some contentious plans to radically re-structure East River Park writ large were put into motion, and the East River Amphitheatre was razed in 2021. I haven’t been down that way in a little while, so I have no idea what’s there at the moment, but I’m relatively certain it’s dispiriting.
Here, meanwhile is Cop Shoot Cop circa 1993.
Apropos of nothing, Oliver and I re-watched “The Warriors,” last night. The first time I showed him this movie, about two or three years ago, he was incredulous about how a group of so-called tough guys like the titular characters had such a difficult time navigating the mass transit system of their own city, and spent most of the film detailing quicker, alternate routes they might have considered to get from Dyre Avenue in the Bronx to Stilwell Avenue in Coney Island, Brooklyn. I told him to relax and enjoy the film.
I was amused to learn, recently, that back in 2020, a runners club organized an event called “The Warriors UltraRun,” wherein over thirty runners — dressed as gang members from the film — did an overnight race from the Bronx to Coney Island. I love that idea, but — alas — authenticity-fixated pedants would be super-quick to point out that while that run is an admirably ambitious athletic undertaking, they would only be recreating the concept of the narrative, being that the actual depiction jumps all over the city map in geographical incongruity.
While viewing “The Warriors" a second time, Oliver came up with other vexing quandaries and brazen plot holes, largely concerned with the physical limitations and logistical hazards of wearing roller skates on a subway platform, the inconsistencies of oft-repeated Warrior lingo (is Swan’s inherited title —following the presumed elbow-inflicted demise of Cleon — “War Chief” or, per Ajax, “War Lord”?), and some sartorial inquiries. Why, for example, does the taskmaster of the Gramercy Riffs —and, really, Gramercy??? — dress in a sequined robe that wouldn't look out of place on Liza Minelli?
These are all valid concerns, but the only perceived discrepancy in “The Warriors” that’s ever really bugged me is the notion that the ominous disc-jockey who relays directive from the Riffs in-between late-`70s funk and soul selections would actually drop the needle on a Joe Walsh record.
In any case, we were discussing the many locations featured throughout the film (and how, more often than not, they don’t really sync up with the narrative), and I exhumed this from YouTube.
Let's get down to it, Boppers....
I stumbled upom the video below, over the weekend, and it kind of struck a chord, pardon the pun.
Put together by a songwriter named Louie Fleck, “Back Then” is a music video of Fleck’s memories of the Greenwich Village he used to know, circa 1978-1984, when Manhattan was still, in his own words, “a folky-punky music town.” Set to a slightly incongruous reggae beat, Fleck’s song is a straightforward breakdown of the things he held dear that, by and large, are mostly no longer there.
While I recognize several of the images he utlilizes (I believe he may have even poached a scan I made of an old SPIN photograph of Freebing Records on St. Marks Place, but whatevs … I’m certainly no stranger to liberally appropriating images), I’m sure Fleck’s recollections are just as heartfelt and vital (to him) as the ones I continually cite here are to me, even if the touchstones and landmarks he highlights aren’t immediately familiar to me.
Everyone has their own New York City, here’s Louie Fleck’s….
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