For this inclined towards this sort of thing, an organization called Workhouse has put together an auction (culminating on January 7) for various original artifacts from Gem Spa, the iconic corner shop on St. Marks Place. Want the sign? Bid on it. Want the Egg Cream display? Bid on it. Want the Kostabi-painted gate? Bid on it. Want the milkshake machine? Bid on it. Etc.
Here's the official statement:
"Due to Covid, we were forced to close like so many beloved New York City businesses. To honor the special spirit of the shop, we are auctioning off memorabilia, egg cream equipment, and signs from the store. These are the last remnants of an iconic institution and we hope that with this auction, they will find a new home with someone who loves old New York and wants to preserve a piece of precious history."
Chris Stein of Blondie shared a photo on his social feeds today of some original artwork that adorned the wall behind the bar at CBGB (see that photo above). Here’s what he had to say about it.
These murals were behind the bar at CBGB’s at the far end near the stage. I took this the last week after it was closed . Hilly said he knew some of these guys names, they used to come into the place in the old days. Painted by a local artist in the early seventies, a woman. That’s all I’ve got on it. I’m not sure if they’re still there in Varvatos store, may have been covered up.
I’m assuming that by “the old days” he means prior the venue’s flashpoint as the birthplace of Punk Rock, when it was still a Bowery bar for the skid-row set.
When CBGB was being dismantled, I was still working at MTV News Online, and I *seem* to remember my colleague Chris Harris working that beat, and reporting that much of the original artwork on the walls of the place being painstaking removed and put into storage somewhere. I’m not sure that could really apply to this art, however, as the triptych looks like it was painted directly onto the actual wall.
One imagines they were covered up when John Varvatos moved it. Despite the clothier’s recent financial troubles, his business is still in operation on the Bowery, although I’m rarely in the mood to step inside. Anyone want to volunteer and go check it out?
I had heard about Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse probably a good decade before ever knowingly setting foot on the Lower East Side, albeit for one of the most ignominious of reasons.
You see, as a Manhattan brat growing up on the Upper East Side in the mid-to-late `70s, we had cable television. As such, when word spread like wildfire around my grade school that there was gratuitous nakedness to be seen on the cable-access channels if you quietly stayed up late enough, my friends and I took very serious note. If you managed the trick of not waking your parents, you could treat yourself to the prurient idiocy of a legendary New York City cable-access program called “Midnight Blue,” the brainchild of iconic “Screw”-magazine founder/publisher, Al Goldstein. While essentially just a half-hour of grainy raunch interspersed with potty-mouth rants from Goldstein himself and loads of commercials for escort services and the burgeoning phenomenon of phone sex, watching “Midnight Blue” felt like the most legitimately taboo activity imaginable, and most of my classmates and I were furtively regular viewers.
How does Sammy’s enter into all of this, you ask? Well, amidst all that low-resolution sleazery, Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse distinguished itself by having the solitary non-smut-related advertisement on the program. In between fleeting segments of porn stars Marilyn Chambers and John Holmes flailing their genitalia around, lurid tirades about bad customer service from Al Goldstein and ads informing you that “the extra E is for extra….” (don’t Google it), you’d see footage of giddy, `70’s-era patrons partaking of steaks with schmaltz in the low-ceilinged confines of Sammy's Roumanian Steakhouse on Chrystie Street. One imagined that after a while night of unfettered carnality at the oft-cited Plato’s Retreat, the swinger set would put their pants on and go enjoy a fine meal at Sammy’s (this may well have happened, but Plato’s was on the Upper West Side, while Sammy’s was Lower East, so it’s logistically flawed). I can still vividly hear the background music used in that stupid ad.
Years and years later, some friends and I went to Sammy’s and partook of its fine fare — which is strikingly different from anything you’d find in a more conventional steak place, all served with schmaltz — liquified chicken fat that comes in a bottle that you’re supposed to pour over your steaks. It looks disarmingly like orange juice. While we didn’t spot any porn stars, let alone Al Goldstein, we did have the pleasure of sharing the space with none other than David Lee Roth, who was entertaining guests at a neighboring table. For a friend of mine’s bachelor party in the late `90s, five of us had a rousing dinner at Sammy’s that culminated with our waitress emphatically giving us the finger, for some long-forgotten reason.
I had a cherished black Sammy’s shirt (“Schmaltz It Up”) that I wore religiously for decades, usually with a pair of tattered camoflauge cargo shorts.
I used to have a problem with Patti Smith. I just never heard what everyone else claimed was so groundbreaking about her music, and I found her records to be sort of mewlingly overwrought. I did not equate her with her storied peers in bands like Television and The Ramones, etc. This opinion did me no favors.
Were that not enough, I was then asked by a rock-writer friend of mine, a German gent named Sky Nonhoff, to pen a chapter in a book he was putting together about sacred cows. Sky wanted me to address Patti’s oft-celebrated album, Horses, and give it the redressing it allegedly deserved. So, I did that, pulled no punches and went from being a passive non-fan of Patti Smith to an open detractor. The book came out — albeit only in Germany (I have a copy, but I’ll be damned if I can tell how Sky edited my copy) and the deal was sealed. Just for posterity, I re-posted my original English text here on my stupid blog. This was was even later sourced, much to my embarrassment, in Eric Wendell's 2014 book, "Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist." Again, this did me no favors.
After years of alienating friends of mine with my continued reluctance to capitulate to the cult of Patti Smith, I started to suspect that my position was becoming an untenable one for lots of folks who otherwise liked and tenuously respected me (I had a similar problem with the Grateful Dead). As if on cue, Patti Smith published her memoir, “Just Kids.” I didn’t race to the bookshop for a copy, but — being unemployed that summer — I had lots of unsolicited free time, so eventually picked it up and read it, almost devouring the book whole in a only a couple of sittings.
In that rarest of instances, Patti’s book completely upended my preconceptions about her, and I suddenly felt like a world-class jackass for shooting my mouth off about her for all those years. I recanted with another post on my stupid blog, for whatever that was worth.
This all said, while I took back all the mean, dismissive thing I’d written about Patti Smith, I still didn’t really enjoy her music. I still found so much of her vocal delivery to be sort of cloying and affected — not unlike the same problem I’d formerly had with Tom Waits. But where I was able to overcome my Waits problem, I still had a hard time getting past Patti’s cadence and histrionics. I respected her way more than I’d ever used to, but I still didn’t want to hear her music, if I could avoid it.
Last night, I was coming home from visiting a loved one in NYU Langone Hostpial on 34th and First Avenue, zig-zagging my way slowly to the southwest through the bitterly cold and dark streets of the Medical Corridor. For whatever reason, this stretch of Manhattan always makes me think of New York City in the grim late 70’s. Sure, much of it has been re-built and radically gentrified like the rest of the island, but there’s still a bit of that dour, function-over-form, brutalist aesthetic that makes it feel depressing and charmless. As such, whenever I’m on that stretch, I tend to flip my iPod to listen to bands like the Jim Carroll Band, Richard Hell & The Voidoids and the afore-cited Television — artists whose music defined Manhattan’s vibe back then. In the middle of listening to a playlist I’d made in 2015, filled with those bands and others like Missing Foundation, The Feelies, The Lounge Lizards and the Dead Boys, this one song suddenly filled my headphones and almost stopped me in my frigid track right on Second Avenue.
It sounded like Patti Smith being backed by a way-less-indulgent ensemble, anchored by a taut, pugnacious groove and a suitably Television-like riff. Holy shit!! How did I ever miss this? Listening intently as I walked further, I couldn’t recognize the track as ever having been on Horses, nor later records like Easter or Radio Ethiopia. Was it from the “Piss Factory” era? Wracking my brain to identify the true provenance of the song, I simply hit play again without looking. How did this song even get on my iPod? Where did I get it, and how have I never appreciated it in all these years?
When I could no longer unspool the riddle and still without a flicker of an answer, I gave up and looked.
It wasn’t Patti Smith at all, but rather a comparatively obscure band from the original CBGB set called The Erasers. I’d gotten the song off the Numero Group’s truly excellent 2015 box set of the Ork Records stable. Prior to this cut, the only Erasers song I was even aware of was their fleeting turn in Amos Poe’s movie, “The Foreigner,” where they play a song called “No Se,” while the film’s protagonist Max gets beaten up by members of The Cramps. You can see that here.
Removed from the context of all their esoteric, historical minutia, when I heard “I Won’t Give Up” by the Erasers, I *immediately* assumed it was Patti Smith, which makes me wonder if others made that same assumption at the time.
In any case, today is Patti Smith’s birthday. If you are so inclined, cue up a bit of her music and raise a toast, but maybe also enjoy this taste of the Erasers, who probably wouldn’t have recorded anything were it not for Patti knocking down the original doors. For more about them click here.
Back in the early 90’s, my friend Roxanne (not her real name) had this completely bonkers gig in “club promotion.” She being younger, more energetic and significantly more fabulous than myself, it was literally a job of hers to hit six or seven hopping night clubs during the course of a single evening, handing out flyers for upcoming parties and events. On a couple of occasions, she dragged me along, opening up a whole new world to me. I was certainly familiar with a few of the major clubs, but mostly from going to see bands. Going to a club for the sheer sake of going to a club wasn’t something I was normally inclined to do, so this was a true learning experience.
On a few of those evenings in early 1991, I remember breathlessly trying to keep up as we hit long-vanished places like the LoveSexxy Lounge, Big City Diner, The Tunnel, The Palladium, a place, I think, called Morrissey’s (no relation to the Smiths) and about a half-dozen more hotspots. We’d glide past the velvet ropes, thanks to Roxanne's clout (her good looks didn’t hurt, either), and I’d wander around the place looking lost, drinking overpriced beers and listening to bad house music for fifteen to twenty minutes before she’d grab me and we’d swoop off to the next venue. We covered a lot of ground.
Between missions, we’d frequently repair back to the cavernous interior of the Limelight, which was the de facto base of her operation. I vividly remember one particular evening doing just that. Roxanne had to re-stock her supply of invites and check in with her boss, with dopey, uncool me tagging along behind her. I remember following her through the dark to what looked like a rugby scrum of garishly dressed characters. Roxanne marched right up to this one individual who was wearing a particularly bizarre ensemble involving clown make-up and assess pants. Through the ample rear portals on said pants, he had bright, electric blue teardrops painted on his buttocks. Despite the …er….”festive” nature his of attire, when he and Roxanne spied each other, he was all business, sternly rattling off a laundry list of directives for her to dutifully absorb and execute, as if he was the chief operating officer of very important organization. Between blunt orders to Roxanne, I think he gave me a withering glance or two, but then turned with dramatic aplomb and vanished into the crowd, with the rugby scrum dutifully following his posterior teardrops. I felt like I was trapped in an NC-17 version of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Roxanne grabbed me again and we headed off into the night. “What was up with that?” I asked as we slipped out some secret exit and onto West 20th Street. “Oh, that’s just my boss,” she sighed, “he can be kind of a ridiculous jerk, sometimes.”
I've mentioned it here a few times before, but a large box of records arrived at our door in the summer of 1977, courtesy of my father, who was based in London, at the time, as a correspondent for Forbes magazine. He’d befriended someone from CBS/Epic Records, who gamely passed onto him a crate of promo LPs to send home to my sister and I.
Victoria and I divvied up the albums by artists we were already aware of, and then spent the rest of the summer gradually investigating the newer stuff we were unfamiliar with.
I gravitated towards one particular LP that featured a trio of pugnacious-looking troublemakers on the the cover. It sounds quaint to suggest in 2020, but when we dropped the needle on the first track below, it was like our speakers exploded and the concussion blew a hole in the living room wall.
Life, as they say, was never the same.
Rest in peace, Joe Strummer — eighteen years gone today.
First appearing in 2017 (above), taking the place of a mural depicting Joey Ramone incongruously sporting a pair of boxing gloves (a hollow allusion to Overthrow Boxing Club just steps away — part of the noxious corridor of fitness that had largely taken over the neighborhood), Shepard Fairey’s Blondie mural depicted the preternaturally gorgeous Debbie Harry gazing unblinkingly to the north from an original photograph by Bobby Grossman, flanked by allusions to their breakthrough 1979 album, Parallel Lines and images from the art of their then-new album, Pollinator, which Fairey had also designed.
Ostensibly conceived as a tribute to the neighborhood’s sadly fading punk roots (the site of the former CBGB is but a cheap beer-can’s toss to the east), Fairey’s painting remained largely unblemished for the past few years, until sometime this summer, when an increasingly less-relevant street artist saw fit to scribble his signature space octopus (or whatever it’s supposed to be) on Debbie’s comely neck.
Following that unsightly blemish, less finessed taggers went to town on the whole thing….
I’m happy to relay, as first reported by EV Grieve, that Fairey’s original work has been fully restored (below) to its sharp-lined glory, and Miss Harry’s distinctive physiognomy is back to being untainted by the sloppy doodling of bottom-feeding graffiti trolls. We’ll see how long that lasts.
I was half-thinking it might be time to mix it up, again, and put someone new on that particular spot. Richard Hell? Stiv Bators? Jayne Country?
Pining for the live-music experience, once again, someone on the IDLES’ Facebook page — otherwise know as the “AF Gang” — posted the following discussion thread. I answered in kind, but thought it was worth sharing here, given the subject matter and all that. The post in question concerns a venue here in Manhattan called the Hammerstein Ballroom. While I haven’t been in the building in several years, by this point, I did see some cool shows there, including performances by The Cranberries, Lush, Weezer, Massive Attack, The Prodigy and the first reunion tour of Bauhaus, which ended up being recorded for posterity and released as the album/video, Gotham. I was also there for the show described below.
"What's the most embarrassing thing you've ever done during a gig?”
I immediately had an answer for that one….
At some point in the very late `90s, the Verve came to New York City, playing the cavernous Hammerstein Ballroom. As much as my friends and I loved the Urban Hymns record, I have to say -- they weren't much to witness live. Somewhat as a result, three members of my party -- self included -- got somewhat heroically drunk. At one point during proceedings, I departed from our spot in the middle of the crowd to adjourn to the men's room, which was a flight down. Again -- leglessly drunk, at this stage.
Upon reaching the stairwell, I noticed that running down the middle of the staircase was a lovely, magisterial railing. "I know, " I thought, "I will expedite this mission by sliding down this bannister, thereby getting to my destination quicker, enabling me to return to my spot in the crowd to watch this lifelessly dull performance by the Verve." This was not exactly a sound plan.
I climbed aboard the bannister and -- indeed -- sailed down it with a velocity I hadn't truly considered. I ended up shooting off the END of the bannister on the floor below and flying about another seven feet (mercifully not colliding with anyone in the process), until my ponderous bulk reconvened with the floor with a bracing thud. I landed on my wrist, which promptly swelled up like a grapefruit, constricted by a metal bracelet from Tibet I'd inexplicably taken to wearing. "You should probably have a doctor look at that," exclaimed a friend whilst handing me another beer. I didn't.
The Verve broke up about a year later. They fleetingly reconvened in the 2000's, to no great effect, although Urban Hymns remains a very fine album. The Hammerstein Ballroom remains temporarily closed in light of the pandemic. As for me, the swelling around my wrist healed... kinda after a bit, as did the black n' blue mark on my buttock and the man-sized wound in my pride. To this day -- 22 years later -- I can now clickmy wrist if I rotate my hand a certain way.
You're not supposed to be able to do that, obviously.
What was YOURmost embarrassing gig experience?
Below is a video of the Verve's American tour, including some lovely footage of NYC....
Much has been made, over the years, about the status of CBGB’s lavatories. In fact, it’s rare to hear an anecdote about the place without the being invoked. I’ve devoted no less to twoposts about it myself. In any case, in the wake of my last post about the virtual tour of CBGB, a friend of mine shot me the video below, which grabbed the baton and ran with it even further. Herewith Sour Jazz — featuring my comrade Cowboy Mark on bass — playing right fuckingINthat fabled water closet.
In the ensuing years since, since CBGB closed, the place was commandeered, of course, by John Varvatos. I’ve had lots to say about that, although recanted it all when I read of the man’s financial trouble. Not sure what’s going on there now, although the shop is still open, last time I walked by it. I don’t believe the general public are allowed down into the toilets, these days, but if Varvatos wanted to fire up some quick cash, he might consider opening it up to tourist groups.
I have the sneaking suspicion that at some point in the last 15+ years of doing this stupid blog, I've put this link up before, but, honestly, I can't be arsed to look for it, and it's still worth evangelizing, so here it is .... possibly for the second time.
I've gone on record here a number of times to suggest that the time for lionizing the legend of CBGB may have reached the end of its tether, and that by continuing to weepily bleat about it, those of us who cling to its memory are becoming just as cloyingly insufferable as those who continue to harp on and on about friggin' Woodstock. But, that's the cynic in me talking.
In reality, I am a fucking brazen nostalgist. It cannot be argued. For better or worse, I carry multiple torches for any number of landmarks and touchstones of lost eras. It's just the way my DNA is hard-wired. I gotta own it.
In recent weeks, I've been helping a friend fine-tune a very cool book project that has many topical tendrils wrapped around this particular stretch of the Bowery (note also my rumination on soon-to-be-razed Bowery Bar, yesterday). As such, I am more reminded of my affinities and associations for the sweatily cramped confines of CBGB than usual, not that it's ever that far from my mind. When that book project nears fruition, I'll report more.
As a result, when I re-spotted this "virtual tour" of the interior of CBGB, it took me right back there. Once again, is the place over-rhapsodized? Maybe, ... but what it was represented -- and continues to represent -- means a lot of a lot of people. And I'm one of them.
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