Flaming Pablum

A Wide Open Space

One for the Canegie Hill kids…

Someone posted the photograph above on the Facebook group, Manhattan Before 1990, a little while back, and it really put the hook in me. Taken by Frank Fournier, who allegedly says it was captured on Madison Avenuat at 93rd Street in 1977, the picture has haunted me ever since.

For a start, it is, of course, a stunning photograph. But its composition is not what I quibble with.

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, many times, while I largely concern myself with downtown doings here, I was originally born on the Upper East Side, however unfashionably square that is, and lived, for a spell, right on East 93rd Street. Moreover, I had several friends who also lived along the very strip this image was supposedly captured (notably Shawn, Pogo, Spike and Peter, as mentioned, respectively, here, here, here and here). I would, have been about ten years old when the photo was snapped and otherwise preoccupied with all things KISS and “Star Wars.”

That said, while I do remember a vacant lot just steps to the north of East 93rd on Madison, it was in no way this vast. The lot I remember wasn’t even half this size, although who knows what sort of lens Fournier was using, much less what his vantage point was? Was he standing on Madison, shooting to the east, or was he in the actual lot and shooting north or south? Either way, I just have no recollection of a big, open space like this that would synch up with any patch on Madison Avenue between, say, East 91st and East 96th.

Today there's a big high-rise halfway down the block (between 93rd and 94 on Madison, on the eastern side of the avenue) that could conceivably fill a space this massive, but I don't believe there is a Park Avenue-facing building behind it that would match up with what's in the photograph.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.

Who remembers?

Charly Gets His Corner of TriBeCa

I realize I’ve been discussing it an awful lot since first invoking it in, gosh …2021, when I first stumbled upon a telling photograph by a tourist named Bo G. Eriksson that was shared in a Facebook group called Manhattan Before 1990, but in the long wake of that revelation, today the corner of Cortlandt Alley on Walker Street played host to an official naming ceremony that re-christened the plot of Manhattan real estate as Charly Garcia Corner. Sadly, the individual who first reached out to me about it – one Iñaki Rojas – was not able to make the trip from Mendoza, Argentina.

Once again, for a more-or-less succinct summary and timeline of all this, click here.

Anyway, today was the big day, so I went on down to check it out. Here are the pics…

Here's the corner, .... all dressed up for the unveiling of the plaque. 

Here's me, waiting for things to kick off...

...and then it started to get crowded....

...and then it got REALLY crowded...

...and then a proverbial mob scene.... the Charly Army was out in FORCE!!....

Then came, at long last, the ceremony ... here's Mariano Cabrera, who was instrumental in putting this together....

Here's the formal proclamation (the woman is, I believe, Charly Garcia's sister)...

Here's a view from the east, looking west from Cortlandt Alley down Walker Street....

After the plaque and the street sign were unveiled, alumni from Charly's band came on and played five or six songs from the record in question, that being Clics Modernos, which is a very big deal in Latin American/Argentinian music. 

There might be video later. Watch this space.

Suicide's Walking Tour of Lower Manhattan: Bonus Cut

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. 

 

 

A Walking Tour of Lower Manhattan … with Suicide

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…

Life Without Alan Vega

"Je T'Adore, Baby"

Suicide in SoHo

Don't Mess with Cheree

Back Again ... Briefly ... To The Cooler 

 

Remembering The Rickster

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! 

This Must Indeed Be The Place

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.

It's All Happening in The Park

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.

Still On Fire: Flaming Pablum at 18

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.

Back To The Clubs of The Late `70s

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?

Back to the East River Amphitheater ... with Cop Shoot Cop

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.