Flaming Pablum

Your Friday Flyer

No reason, other than boredom. I was actually at this show in 1988. It was delightful. Rest in peace, Stiv.

Oh Nevermind: Cop Shoot Cop at the Pyramid on Avenue A

It should come as very little surprise to anyone that knows me, but I “run” and/or “manage” Facebook’s seemingly only Cop Shoot Cop page. Actually, to be fair, that’s not true — there’s also a group page called We Demand a Cop Shoot Cop Reunion, but it’s dormant on the best of days. If you’re looking for all things Cop Shoot Cop on Facebook, I am evidently your authority. At the very least, I’ve manage to amass arguably the greatest collection of C$C and C$C-related visual ephemera to be found on the `net. See that here, should you care. So, yeah, yay me.

Why don’t any of the original Cop Shoot Copy guys get involved? Dunno. I assume they either just don’t care, have way better things to do and/or are just fine with me handling it. I was drafted, let’s remember, at one point, with the task of putting together that star-crossed and ill-fated Cop Shoot Cop coffee-table book that regrettably never came to pass. One could argue that said aborted assignment gives me the right. Or not. Whatever. Regardless, I've kept it going for at least five years now, and I’m always heartened that people still contribute to it. It doesn’t happen with roaring fervor, but every now and then, someone posts something rare — which, in the grand scheme of things, is really the only pertinent descriptor for Cop Shoot Cop and their ilk — a scene, a sound and a sensibility that is swiftly becoming anachronistic. This week, that happened.

A user named Erin posted a super-rare flyer of the band’s yesterday. This was from the early days, when commanding officer Tod [A] -- that's him at the top of this post in an image respectfully purloined from Recalcitrant Monthly --  was toiling, by day, at a copy shop on West Broadway, a tenuous state of disgruntled employment that, at the very least, gave him access to vast amounts of paper and copying equipment with which to illicitly print up the band’s signature brand of provocative propaganda. For one particular gig at The Pyramid on Avenue A, Tod paired his own typically eye-catching graphic skills with an appropriated image from the illustrious oeuvre of one Tom of Finland. For those unfamiliar (although there was recently a bona fide biopic on the man), Tom of Finland was an artist from — WAIT FOR IT — Finland renowned for his beatific depictions of homosexual erotica, usually concerning workaday scenarios involving impossibly burly sailors, firemen, cops, etc. Imagine the artwork of children’s illustrator Richard Scarry, only instead of anthropomorphic cats, dogs and piglets, it was blissful, hulking men with titanic erections.

To wit, Tod came up with this poster below …. a bit of promotional material that doubtlessly furthered the notoriety of the band, probably to the pronounced chagrin of the local constabulary. People of delicate constitutions and easily-offended sensibilities should avert their eyes...

I’d actually seen this poster before, hanging on the wall of the original incarnation of Max Fish on Ludlow Street during a late-80’s/early-90’s flyer retrospective. I wish I’d brought my camera to that one.

Also this week, I happened to spy a flyer on the official Instagram page of the mighty Lunachicks for a series of gigs also at the Pyramid. Mind you, as discussed here before, the Pyramid on Avenue A used to be this amazing, ground-breaking, scene-sharing venue that hosted all stripes of subculture — from punks, hardcore kids, metal heads and noise-rock freaks through drag-queens, club kids and disco-zealots, all more-or-less happily co-mingling in this grotty little bar. I haven’t been back in decades, but if the video in this post is to be believed, that iteration has since been replaced by just another douchey disco.

Anyway, boo hoo. The thing that, of course, struck me about this flyer was the line-up. On the otherwise sleepy night of Thursday, April 26, 1990, Cop Shoot Cop shared a bill with the similarly inclined local band Rat At Rat R (who I discussed here) and a hip and happening little beat-combo from Seattle called …. Nirvana.

While that Nirvana show has since become the stuff of legend (for some), sadly, there is precious little documentation of the Cop gig, although — to be fair — it was only one of many nights they played this particular venue over the years. Two short years later, Nirvana and Cop Shoot Cop would both play the fabled Reading Festival in England, although Nirvana were headliners and Cop Shoot Cop were relegated to something called The Session Tent (flanked by their compatriots in the Lunachicks, among others). Cop Shoot Cop did eventually make it to the big stage at Reading Festival in 1994, although still at the bottom of the bill, under friends like Helmet and the Jesus Lizard, with …. er … the Red Hot Chili Peppers headlining.

Does any of this matter now? Maybe only to a few. But for those it does matter to, I’m happy to share.

Meanwhile, as discussed in great detail here,  I’m still searching for the rest of THIS poster….

2018: The Year in Photographs

If you spend any meaningful amount of time on this blog, or are foolish enough to follow me on Instagram, you already know that I take what some might consider an irresponsibly laborious amount of pictures. I can't help myself. Were I unable to share those photographs on social media or here on this blog, I don't think I would behave any differently. And in an era when one can capture striking images without a huge, hulking camera but with simply one's iPhone, I find myself routinely pausing throughout my travels to do just that. 

As such, here are some of my own favorite images I was lucky enough to capture this year. You may have seen some of these before, but I tried to eschew repeating shots from the Beirut trip, the  England trip and the summer, as I feel I've covered those already. Click on each to enlarge, should you feel so inclined. 

Anyway, please enjoy, and why not share your own? 

Ramones Removal

I cannot be sure when it was first put up, but I first spotted it in December of 2015, right about the time I’d started my new gig downtown. Along a perpetually weathered strip of SoHo on Thompson Street between Broome and Grand — one that’s always been a magnet for street art — an artist who calls himself Space Invader affixed a brilliant, pixelated portrait of the Ramones (circa their first album cover) as an intricate, tiled mosaic to an age-old, bricked-up window box on the easterly side of the street (essentially the rear of the parking garage on West Broadway). While SoHo isn’t the first neighborhood I’d have chosen to commemorate da brudders, being a lifelong Ramones fan, I loved this bit of street art from the second I laid eyes on it. Anything that gives props to this greatest of New York City bands, to my mind, is a justified endeavor.

Then, as documented on this post, the mosaic started to suffer a bit of physical trauma and endure a torrent of indignities as the building’s caretaker — one assumes — routinely tried to paint over it. By this time last year, the portrait had been crudely painted over with a sickly shade of yellowish beige.

Then, last August, the Ramones triumphantly re-emerged — courtesy of Space Invader? — a little worse for wear, but freshly scrubbed of their yucky beige coating. I was well pleased.

Tonight, however, I spotted something dispiriting. Again, presumably the work of the building’s landlord, the Ramones mosaic appeared to be in the throes of forcible removal, half of its tiles violently chipped away.

Space Invader, the ante has been upped. It's clearly your move. 

Pour one out for Joey, Johnny, Dee Dee & Tommy…

 

‘I Know, I Know … But Please DO!’

I took the above picture on November 7, 2016. Look at the language on the top sticker, affixed to a pole on the corner of White and Church Streets, at the time.

It rather tidily summed up the feeling here in New York City prior to Election Day. It seemed like such a given. There was absolutely no way Trump was going to win. What a ludicrous notion! So, yeah, even though it seems like such a given, please, y'know ... go vote and stuff.

…and then we all know what happened.

Heading into the Midterm Elections of 2018, a whole lot more has fucking happened (to say the least), and once again, the nation -– or portions of it, anyway -– are preparing to vote this coming Tuesday.

For all the talk of the looming “Blue Wave,” or that “Winter is Coming” for all of us angry “snowflakes” and for all the polls talking about early voter turnout, please remember this:

NOTHING IS A GIVEN.

Nothing’s in the bag. Regardless of what polls and pundits might try to tell you, they’ve all been wrong -- REALLY wrong -- before.

Don’t be apathetic. Don’t take anything for granted. Be enthused, proactive and even optimistic, if you see fit, but don’t be lazy, convinced or easily swayed by spin.

If you don’t participate, you have no right to complain, even if that sounds naïve and idealistic.

VOTE ON TUESDAY!

As the sticker said, I Know, I Know … But Please DO!

Hold It Now, Hit It...

It should come as absolutely zero surprise to anyone that, given the things that I happen to preoccupy myself with, I think the new Beastie Boys book -- the imaginatively titled Beastie Boys Book -- is absolutely essential. I'm barely a third of the way in, and I'm practically ecstatic about it. 

Go get it.

Word on the Street

Missing No More: Finding Missing Foundation’s Music

I’ve written about Missing Foundation here entirely too many times, even as recently as this past September. In any event… here’s another installment to that saga.

Way back when, while Missing Foundation’s cryptic insignia may have been sprayed, scrawled, scratched and/or angrily carved onto virtually every decaying edifice southeast of 14th Street, actual, tactile documents of the band’s music weren’t quite as plentiful. Given their arguable infamy and notoriety for chaotic performances that frequently culminated in wanton property damage and the occasional riot, many may have suggested, at the time, that any records Missing Foundation produced might have almost been incidental; sonically ugly side-dishes to the malignantly deafening entrée that was their incendiary live incarnation. But whether those records were simply a means-to-an-end or more likely just the victims of shoddy distribution didn’t matter to me. Having had my curiosity piqued by the band’s eerily pugnacious flyer campaign circa 1989, I was determined to find those Missing Foundation records.

Suffice to say, that task was significantly more tricky than just walking into Crazy Eddie’s.

As luck would have it, however, in the summer of 1990, or so, a fittingly-albeit-unwittingly doomed record label called Restless Records saw fit to unleash MF’s third album, the cheerily titled Ignore the White Culture, along with re-releasing the band’s earlier works, Demise, 1933: Your House is Mine (that was my favorite) and their eponymous debut from 1987. In one fell swoop, I’d gone from famine to feast in the MF department.

Pressing play on the first track of 1989’s Demise, that being “A Hunting We Will Go,” was something of a startling revelation. Some months earlier, I remember dropping the needle on Scumdogs of the Universe, the second album by GWAR and being so let down by how comparatively polished the band sounded in contrast to their cartoonishly ultra-violent image. That first airing of Demise was the complete opposite experience. While Missing Foundation didn’t have an image like GWAR’s – or, really, any discernible “image” at all -- they had accrued that afore-cited nefarious mystique of being uber-agitpropagandizers. Opening with the strains of what sounds like actual police action at a riot (punctuated by sirens and a woman’s emphatic scream of “DON’T YOU FUCKING HIT HIM, YOU PIG!”), the music -– such as it is -- kicks in with a sluggish, lurching rumble atop primary instigator Peter Missing’s anguished moaning and semi-garbled invective as barked through a megaphone. While somewhat reminiscent of the similarly user-hostile, equally No-Wave-inspired outpourings of early SWANS, MF lacked that band’s disciplined, slave-ship gait, in favor of ….well….writhing cacophony. Easy listening this was not.

Anyway, long story short, Missing Foundation’s albums fleetingly came back into print for a bit. They released one further uncompromising album, 1992’s Go Into Exile before Restless Records collapsed and Missing Foundation, or that iteration of it, disbanded.

Fast forward almost 27 years later, and the physical manifestation of music isn’t quite as much of a priority as it once was, a development that has both revolutionized and disemboweled the music industry – an apparatus Missing Foundation were never totally on board with to begin with. While there are still folks – like myself – who collect such things with furtive reverence, most people, it seems, stream their music, these days. As such, given the advent of various digital platforms, actually hearing certain music is easier than ever before. Personally speaking, I continue to prefer CD’s and LPs. Whatever.

That all brings us to the point of this long-winded post. While their albums may have been difficult to prize back in the day, through the magic of Bandcamp, you can now pretty much avail yourself to the entirety of Missing Foundation’s discography, including the newly released Hamburg 1984, their comparatively slick (for MF) and entirely listenable collaboration with KMFDM.

Via this handy aggregation, you can hear some of my favorite selections like “Pistol Archive,” the afore-mentioned “A Hunting We Will Go,” the riff-blitzkrieg of “Jameel’s Turmoil” (including a more recent live airing of same), “Kill the Hypnotic Bastards” and, of course, “Burn Trees.”

Find all this by clicking right here. Tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

More on Missing Foundation ...

Missing to Be Clever

Missing in Action

Cocktails for Two: In Conversation with Missing Foundation's Chris Egan

Maron Misses Missing Foundation 

The Life & Times of RB Korbet

'I Will Destroy You'

A Missing Link

Is the Party Back On? 

Missing Foundation Live at the Marquee 1990

Exhuming 'Recent Things'

Back in August of 2008, I posted an entry dubbed “Recent Things.” This was essentially just a series of photographs I’d snapped with my still-quasi-new digital camera (not iPhone) to offset a series of photo posts I’d portentuously titled “Things That Are No Longer There,” and variations thereof. I stumbled upon that latter post this morning, and was struck by how many of those things – a decade later – are themselves no longer there … or at least not how I’d left them, so to speak. Let’s review, shall we?

This, as the sign says, was Bleecker Bob's. I devoted almost as many posts to the slow demise of this storied stronghold of punk vinyl as I did to the untimely vanishing of the Cedar Tavern. In any event, it closed in 2013 and, contrary to original plans, did not turn into a rock'n'roll-themed frozen yogurt emporium, but rather a fair-to-middling Japanese restaurant I dined in in 2015. Read that account here, should you honestly care. 

This is a shot of my then-four-year-old daughter Charlotte standing cherubically in front of what had been the fabled Moondance Diner at the bottom of Sixth Avenue, just north of Canal Street. About year after this photo was taken, the Moondance closed (its physical manifestation moving out west to Wyoming, if memory serves) and a giant, fuckoff hotel was erected in its footprint. I sneer every time I walk by it ... which is daily. 

This is the former exterior of Marty's Cool Stuff on LaFayette Street just north of Bleecker. The shop was a complete, unmanageable mess, but Marty did indeed have the odd bit of genuinely ...er... "cool stuff." The only lasting bit of ephemera I have that I'd prized there is this orange metal sign that says "Smiths Overalls." It hangs just above the interior transom of our front door. Today, this is part of the noxious streetwear flagship, KITH. 

This is the former entrance to 9 Second Avenue, just steps to the south of the Mars Bar (also gone, of course) on East First Street. Largely derelict and abandoned by the time of this photo, the building's significant back history was lovingly told in an amazing documentary called "The Tao of 9 Second Avenue." I wrote about it here, but it's well worth seeking out. Today, the spot in this photo is part of a TD Bank branch.  

 

Fittingly just around the corner from the shot immediately above, this is the north-facing exterior of the old Mars Bar on East First Street between Second Avenue and the Bowery. A constantly shifting and captivating canvas for murals and spontaneous expressions of colorful street art, this strip of East First Street was always one of my favorite spots in Manhattan. It's all gone now. What's in this space now is that TD Bank, a chic condo's chilly lobby and -- last time I checked -- a business called The Alchemist's Kitchen. 

Believe it or not, this is Extra Place on the northern end of East First Street, just steps to the east of the Bowery. Yes, down at the end of that arguably forbidding dead end was the rear of CBGB. Many an atmospheric photo of punk luminaries was snapped in this forgotten byway. Today, it's a comparatively straight-laced and squeaky-clean strip of neatly appointed -- but frequently empty -- storefronts.

This last one probably doesn't need a lot of explanation. That's Charlotte, again.

Prior to the Punks, Years Before the Yuppies: East Village 1967

Next month, I am to cross the perilous Rubicon of my 51st year. I’m not especially enthused about that number, but what is to be done? Arriving, as I did, if my mother is to believed, at “cocktail hour” during the early evening of October 13, 1967, following a harrowing ride in a yellow cab across congested West 14th Street en route to St. Vincent’s Hospital, I was officially born in downtown Manhattan. My family did not live downtown, at the time, which might explain why that cab ride was so fraught, but they made it to St. Vincent’s all the same. My grandfather, a doctor, has practiced at St. Vincent’s, which might be why the decision was made to have me delivered there. Decades later, both of my own children were born at St. Vincent’s. Today, despite my multiple personal connections to the place, St. Vincent’s Hospital is sadly gone, razed to accommodate a new and prohibitively expensive cluster of condominiums. `Cos ya know … those are more important to a community than having a proper hospital in the vicinity. But, I digress…

In any case, in my regular perusals around the internet, I stumbled upon the clip below and let out an audible gasp or two. From the AP Archives, the video below captures scenes from the East Village – including footage of East 9th Street, First Avenue, Tompkins Square Park, St. Marks Place, The Dom and the Electric Circus, among other locales --- circa 1967. In fact, the story accompanying the footage was evidently posted on the very day of my birth. While these hirsute hippies right out of central casting were depicted strolling -– in some instances barefoot -– around the largely-still-recognizable East Village, I was busy preparing my early entry into the world about five avenues to the west.

Anyway, enjoy the trip back in time… and please note that while some footage repeats itself, it’s worth sticking around for the whole 8:26 of it.