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 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…
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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….
This was challenging on a number of fronts. For a start, the very name of the club – Drums – isn’t one that readily lends itself to easy research. I mean, the term is going to come up in virtually every entry about live music in one form or another.
Secondly, there’s the neighborhood it was allegedly situated in. Personally speaking, I consider that midtown, but – technically – East 59th Street is broadly seen as the southern border of the Upper East Side. It may not feel like the Upper East Side to some folks like yours truly, but be that as it may, it has been thus established.
Thirdly, while really not that long ago, Drums seems to have only existed for a hot second. It would have been in operation when I was old enough to drink, mix and mingle within its interior, so why I myself had never heard of it is a mystery, especially since it was hosting arguably scary bands I cared about like Pussy Galore and the Gun Club, but I spent much of 1988 still in college, so I can only assume that’s why I missed it.
Anyway, fixated with finding out more, I went up there, on rainy Saturday, to check the neighborhood out. I don’t know what I expected to find, but I felt compelled to go look.
Back in the day, so to speak, I spent a little bit of time around the 59th Street Bridge. My late friend Danny and I used to frequent a video arcade on First Avenue not too far from the comedy club, Dangerfield’s. Similarly, my fellow avid comic-collecting friend Jeremy’s divorced father had a sad studio apartment at 300 East 59th Street that we sometimes hung out at. Lastly, my own dad had a relationship with an airline hostess (yeah, I know) who lived in a cramped little apartment under the bridge’s overpass on super-depressing East 61st street. Lest that sound worse that it was, Dad actually married her, rescuing her from said flat. She was his third wife of ... several, but was a genuinely nice lady. They divorced, too (spoiler alert), but that’s a whole other story. Her former street looks a little bit better today, but it’s still a long way from salubrious.
Anyway, on Saturday, I circumnavigated the area, speculating where a live-music venue and/or rock club might’ve once held court. I’d hope to come across a neighborhood Irish bar wherein I might have found an old mainstay who’d have recalled such a venture, but no such luck. There was one spot I had a hunch about, but more about that later.
Overall, however, that little cluster of sloping streets – now outfitted with a Trader Joe’s under the bridge – exuded very little to suggest that a band like the antagonistically slovenly Pussy Galore had ever plugged in and rocked out nearby, especially but a stone’s throw from the posh environs of Sutton Place. That all said, while snapping some pics, I did see one little trace of “downtown.” Spraypainted high on a wall adjacent to the bridge was the telltale Missing Foundation logo, normally never seen north of Union Square. To tie it back to this story, prior to joining Pussy Galore, drummer Bob Bert did play in Drunk Driving, the band fronted by Peter Missing that would later turn into Missing Foundation. I took that as a sign.
Over the next few days, meanwhile, I continued my largely fruitless Googling, but made very little progress. More recently, however, a regular reader named G (that’s it … just G) wrote in to say he, too, had been to Drums, but was not largely impressed. He did, however, suggest that it was on East 60th, and not East 59th. That one little tip made all the difference.
My hunch was correct. The space that used to be Drums in the late `80s later became an outlet of the strip-tease franchise Score’s (I was actually taken to this very address for my bachelor party in 2001), only to later morph into the venture it is today, which is another strip club called Sapphire, which caters to hip-hoppin’ high rollers.
While that doesn’t shed very much light on what Drums was all about, that does kind of close the case.
Pussy Galore, meanwhile, sounded like this, at the time....
For those following the arguably very convoluted tale of the backstory of Clics Mordernos, the final installment of Iñaki Rojas’s web series, “Modern Clix Super Powers” is now online (see way below), this episode largely concentrating on the late Fran Powers, the New York City punk rocker responsible for tagging the corner of Walker Street at Cortlandt Alley (above, as captured by one Vera Isler in 1982) with his band’s graffiti.
Even typing that paragraph was complicated, but here’s a very simplified-but-still-complexly-lenghty timeline:
At some point in the early-to-mid `80s, punk rocker Fran Powers (below) spray-paints his band’s name, Modern Clix, on the corner of Walker & Cortlandt Alley. Hey, it's the `80s….lower Manhattan is a lawless badlands. Rampant graffiti is the least of its problems.
As some point after that, fabled street-artist Richard Hambleton, renowned for painting cryptic “shadow men” – somewhat ominous black silhouettes of human forms -- augments Fran’s tag, making it look like the shadow man is leaning against it. During this era, these figures are all over downtown.
At some point in 1982, preeminent Argentine rocker Charly Garcia is sequestered over on Waverly Place while recording an album at nearby Electric Lady Studios on West 8th Street. He’s already got a title in mind for his forthcoming album, but during a walk around Lower Manhattan with a photographer named Uberto Sagramoso, he happens upon the corner of Walker & Cortland and spies both the Hambleton figure and the mysterious legend “Modern Clix” and has his picture taken sitting beneath.
So taken is Charly by the resultant image of him sitting beneath this striking tableaux of New York City street art, that he scraps his original plans, and makes Sagramoso’s photograph the cover image of his new record, which he is now re-titling Clics Modernos.
Time passes.
Clics Modernos, Garcia’s second solo album, gradually becomes one of the most celebrated Argentine rock albums of all time.
More time passes.
Rabid Argentine rock fans of a certain stripe start speculating about the whereabouts of the now-iconic corner pictured on the sleeve of Clics Modernos.
More time passes.
In 2011, actress/photographer Brooke Smith (most renowned for her work in “The Silence of the Lambs” and several television series) posts a clutch of period-specific photographs of her time as a member of the then-burgeoning hardcore punk scene on the Lower East Side.
Captivated by same, I post an entry about Brooke’s photos and notice a recurring face therein, that being one Fran Powers of many different bands with names, at the time, like Ultra Violence, Whole Wide World, East of Eden and – wait for it – Modern Clix, an amorphous ensemble that plays an amalgam of styles like rock, ska, reggae, funk and punk.
From those pictures, I rightly deduce that Fran was responsible for his own brand of cryptic graffiti, that being the Modern Clix insignia of the spear-throwing figure (above) which I’d remembered seeing around Astor Place several years earlier. You can see that same figure tattooed on Fran’s bicep below.
At some point in the mid-2010’s, I meet one Yukie Ohta, a blogger who starts The SoHo Memory Project, a loving tribute to the neighborhood of her youth. She and I frequently compare notes and share assets for our respective web-projects (even though hers is a much classier and more professional endeavor than mine) and we become friends.
Yukie Ohta’s SoHo Memory Project really takes off, and she hosts a party at a loft space in – wait for it – SoHo, which I attend.
On my way out of that party, I literally run right into Fran Powers (he was boarding the elevator I was exiting), but I stop him in his tracks with the excited exclamation, “Hey, YOU’RE FRAN POWERS OF MODERN CLIX!!” We start chatting about punk rock stuff and become friends.
One night not too long after that – circa 2015 – I’m sitting down to watch “After Hours,” my favorite movie of all time, for the bajillionth time. This time, however, I notice that none other than Fran Powers himself makes an amazing cameo. I reach out to him to see if he’d be game to discuss it for a post, which he does. You can read that here.
Richard Hambleton dies from cancer at age 65 in 2017, oblivious to the fact that his artwork graces the cover of one of the most beloved albums of Argentine rock ever (ask Wikipedia!)
In 2019, a friend of mine sends me the link to a video by Charly Garcia of a song called “Fanky,” which was shot around Lower Manhattan. I connect the dots and realize that I have heard of Garcia and post the sleeve photo of Clics Modernos, speculating if Fran Powers was aware that Garcia had appropriated his tag for his album --which, at the time, I am unaware is of such seismic significance to the Argentine rock community.
In 2021, a photographer named Bo G. Eriksson posts pictures he snapped in 1984 of Cortlandt Alley. I spot these on a Facebook page called Manhattan Before 1990 and immediately spy the location of Clics Modernos from the tell-tale street art. I brazenly poach Eriksson’s images (sorry, Bo) and I post these findings here on my blog.
Back in Argentine, writer/producer Iñaki Rojas somehow sees my post and falls out of his chair with excitement. He writes a very long and detailed missive to me about it, explaining how he’d been on a quest to divine the origins of the Clics Modernos cover and how my post had solved a few riddles for him, and enabled him to reach directly out to Fran.
In June of 2021, Fran Powers passes away after succumbing to an illness he’d been long battling.
As you’ll see in the video below, the corner of Walker and Cortlandt Alley will be named, this coming November, as a landmark of Argentine rock history in a small ceremony. Iñaki Rojas and Fran’s window Shoei are planning to be there. I’d imagine so will Yukie Ohta, and I’m going to try to coerce some of Fran’s friends like Brooke Smith and fellow NYHC scenster and sometime bandmate RB Korbet to attend. And, yes, I’ll be there, too.
And here, once again, is the final installment (we think) of "Modern Clicks Super Powers." You'll want to turn the CC on for English subtitles....
I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times, but I’ve been continuing to enjoy listening to “Curious Creatures,” the podcast hosted by former Slits/Banshees/Creatures drummer Budgie and Lol Tolhurst, ex of The Cure. Not only are their insights and recollections of “Life After Punk” compelling and often hilarious (“You May Think You Know The Territory … But We Drew The Map!”), but they’ve had a slew of really great guests like Miki Berenyi of Lush, Kevin Haskins of Bauhaus/Love & Rockets, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem (who never shuts up), Juliane Regan of All About Eve, Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, Martin Atkins of Pil/Killing Joke/Ministry/Pigface and loads more. Find out more about it here. It’s well worth your time, if you’re a fan of this sorta stuff.
In any case, it regularly puts Siouxsie & The Banshees back into my brain, despite said band having largely called it quiet eons ago (although I did go see them on the bare-bones Seven Year Itch reunion tour, some centuries back, and then a solo show at the BB King Blues Bar on Times Square on the Mantaray tour in 2004, of which I honeslty remember absolutely nothing … although you can see pics of that gig here). Now divorced, Sioxsie and Budgie now live separate lives (he’s in Berlin, now, and started a family). Sioux is about to embark on her first tour (only over in Europe and the UK, so far) in decades, although she is slated to appear Stateside in May at the Goodbye Cruel World festival in California, alongside a host of her former peers like the Bunnymen, Love & Rockets, Billy Idol and several others. I am curious as to how that’ll go.
But in terms of their legacy, the music of Siouxsie & the Banshees still completely holds up, and I’ve been revisiting their catalog in depth, of late, notably singles like “Song from The Edge of the World” (which oddly never made it onto any of their LPs), their strange covers album Through the Looking Glass (which contained great treks through Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough..” and Iggy’s “The Passenger,” but also an ill-considered rendition of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”) and other favorites. I’m also a big supporter of their album that came after that, Peepshow, which featured a host of great songs beyond the “big single” that was “Peek-a-Boo.”
” In any case, in the course of all this, I stumbled upon this old shot of Sioux and bass player/co-conspirator Steve Severin, and it immediately struck a familiar chord with me. While an otherwise perfectly banal photo of these two British Punk veterans, some eagle-eyed downtown New Yorkers might recognize the mural they’re standing in front of.
The pair are pictured in front of the south-facing façade of what used to be a Sloan’s supermarket on West 3rd Street between Mercer Street and Broadway in Manhattan, which featured a whimsical depiction of fake window filled with fresh produce and delectable comestibles. In later years, it looked like this
Today, that Sloan’s is long gone, and the space it occupied has been dormant and shuttered for years. After being repeatedly tagged up with graffiti, the mural was also painted over. Today, it looks like this.
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