Flaming Pablum

Remain in Laight

November....

December ...

Does the Laight Street Bridge (i.e. the pedestrian bridge that extends over the northwest-bound exit out of the Holland Tunnel Rotary) have a proper name?

 

Teenage Buzzcock With Camera in Fun City

Peruse through the fourteen years worth of posts here on Flaming Pablum, and you’re bound to find not-just-a-few allusions to, posts about and pictures & videos of the mighty Buzzcocks, inarguably one of England’s finest exports from the Punk years. I first heard them via the inclusion of “Orgasm Addict” on a mixtape a friend bequeathed me circa 1980, and life was never the same. Progenitors of tight, immaculately crafted tunes that seamlessly fused palpable pop hooks with punky pugnacity, the Buzzcocks were, simply put, a perfect band. Beg to differ and be laughably wrong.

I didn’t see the Buzzcocks in their prime, being that they officially broke up in 1981, only a year after I’d first heard them at the age of 13. But they reformed in 1989, featuring the classic line-up of Pete Shelley, Steve Diggle, Steve Garvey and John Maher. My friend Rob B. and I went to their reunion show at the New Ritz in November of that year, and it was one of those rare live-concernt experiences wherein the myth fully lives up to the hype – the band exploded onto that stage like a multi-dimensional Jackson Pollack painting of noise and color. Hands down, it was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending.

In typical form, I’m letting my love of the Buzzcocks get the better of me, as this post wasn’t really supposed to be about them, or at least not directly.

This post is about original Buzzcocks drummer John Maher. I only saw him perform once – at that show at the New Ritz in `89. Stiff-backed and stoic behind a pair of black shades, Maher provided the tireless engine that fueled the band’s most propulsive songs. My favorite image of him is in the live video Auf Wiedersehen, which captured the band’s final, pre-breakup performance on German television in 1981. Maher wore a black ANARCHY shirt (which was sort of cheeky, being that the band’s songs were always more about romantic travails than revolution), black shades and a bowler hat.

After the 1989 reunion, Maher left the band again to focus more on his love of vintage cars – which was also somewhat ironic, given that one of the band’s early singles, “Fast Cars,” lamented the fetishistic materialism of car culture. In any case, the band carried on without him, initially recruiting fellow Mancunian and former Smiths’ drummer Mike Joyce to helm the drum kit. Maher would later join the band onstage a couple of times, but never fully returned.

Along the way, Maher also established himself as a photographer, gaining renown for his work. I stumbled upon his Instagram not too long back and it took me a minute to connect the dots and realize that this was the same John Maher that played on some of my favorite records of all time.

Anyway, quite recently, my favorite things in the world completely aligned, and John Maher commenced a new series (?) on his website wherein he shares images of New York City he took during the Buzzcocks’ earlier tours of the United States in 1979 through 1980.

Check them out here.

Where The Music Leaves

Some of you might remember a curious entry I posted here back in April of this year wherein I chronicled the long, undisturbed residency of a certain compact disc on the shelves of a Westhampton Beach pharmacy out on the East End of Long Island. By my fuzzy math, there had been a copy of Ministry’s 1995 opus, Filth Pig waiting to be discovered and purchased from that shelf on Main Street’s Rite Aid since about 1998.

As mentioned in that older post, the store in question went through several makeovers and corporate permutations, but that copy of Filth Pig kept sitting there. In October of 1998 — when I met the woman who would become my wife — that copy of Filth Pig was sitting on that shelf. Peggy and I, having married in 2001, celebrated our eighteenth wedding anniversary this past July. When we did so, that copy of Filth Pig was still sitting on that shelf. It has been sitting on that shelf for as long as we’ve been married. While it sat there, we’ve had two children that have grown into their teens. All this time — no one has thought to purchase it.

Since posting that entry back in April, I’ve continued to give that Rite Aid my reluctant patronage. For whatever reason, whenever we’re out there visiting my mother, we invariably have to repair to that Rite Aid to procure any number of sundry items — from band aids to deodorant, suntan lotion through shampoo. If we’re out that way, it’s a given that at some point or another, we’ll be visiting that Rite Aid.

And, as such, whenever we did, I would usually check in on Filth Pig.

Now, having spotted the disc still siting there several times over this past summer, I didn’t think to take a picture of it every time I was there, but I checked in on it in the beginning, the middle and the end of the summer. And every time I did that, it was still there.

We left my mother’s place in neighboring Quogue at the summer’s end on Labor Day 2019. We always plan on coming down in the Autumn, as it’s lovely out there, but life gets in the way. As it turned out, we did not make it back until this past Thanksgiving Weekend.

Sure enough, with my son nursing a small wound sustained at an “Escape The Room” attraction at a birthday party last week (a whole saga unto itself), I was dispatched to Westhampton’s Rite Aid on Thanksgiving morning to procure him a new finger splint.

When I got there, I was nonplussed to discover that the Rite Aid signage was down, replaced by some decidedly makeshifty Walgreens banners. I feared the worst.

While, yes, still a soullessly corporate and antiseptic pharmaceutical chain of no great distinction, this new iteration of the space came with re-imagined aisles of brand new stock. I found a finger splint for Oliver and proceeded down the aisle formerly reserved for greeting cards, device-chargers, batteries and laughably anachronistic media like DVDs and compact discs. This was the aisle wherein that lonely copy of Filth Pig was seemingly permanently sequestered. In this newly designed section, however, all I encountered was cloyingly zealous Christmas decorations.

I circumnavigated the store, thinking they may have just absorbed Rite Aid’s old stock and repositioned it somewhere else. But after three sorties around the place — much to the bemusement of the new store’s staff -- it was relatively clear that this venture no longer stocked such goods.

For whatever stupid reason, I was sort of counting on that copy of Filth Pig to always be there.

But, obviously, life had other plans.

CBGB Express – When It Aboslutely, Postivevly Has To Be There, OMFUG!

©RichAllen

Spotted these two photos on the Facebook group, Manhattan Before 1990, taken by one Rich Allen, who very hopefully does not mind me repurposing them here.

Snapped in 1975, the photographs show two boys – Jeffreny and Fernando, evidently – playing hooky and messing around on the back of a delivery van. Closer scrutiny reveals the van to be apparently part of a new business concern called CBGB.

For those of us still lamenting the painful demise of the storied venue (though I’ve gone on record saying it’s high time to let go and say goodnight), this begs several questions, the most pressing and obvious one being….

If CBGB owned and operated a delivery van, ….what exactly were they delivering?

Cheers to Rich Allen.

©RichAllen

Bad Happenings on Avenue B

Evidently, Harvey Weinstein stepped out on the town, last night, to attend an event at a frankly douchy-looking new L.E.S. establishment called the Downtime Bar. Back in the 90’s, there was a Goth club called Downtime on West 30th Street – this is not affiliated with that. In any case, during the course of the evening, it was gleaned by certain event participants that the infamous Mr. Weinstein was in attendance. Tempers unsurprisingly flaired, although the outcome didn’t result in Weinstein’s ejection from the bar, but rather the ejection of two of his confronters. You can read details of the whole icky account on Gothamist.

If even a fraction of the stories about Weinstein have even a modicum of truth about them, he’s the abhorrent scumbag we all assume he is, and he deserves no pity. I hope he had a shitty evening. But speaking of shitty evenings, there was something strangely familiar about the location.

I did a bit of Googling and found Downtime’s website – which revealed it to be just as, once again, douchy as I’d been expecting. It turns out, however, that it’s located at 25 Avenue B, and that’s what put the hook in me.

I don’t remember what sort of concern 25 Avenue B was back in the comparatively carefree, balmy days of 1993, but it was considerably less salubrious than what Downtime aspires to be today. In fact, the address is directly across the street from the former site of the infamous Gas Station, a notorious venue I’ve spoken about here a few times. Depending on who you ask, The Gas Station is arguably most renowned as being the site of the final performance by the late GG Allin in June of 1993. GG went on to overdose on drugs later that same day, but not before needlessly stripping naked, assaulting a few people, pelting anyone within pelting-distance with fistfuls of his own excrement and inspiring a riot that spilled out onto the busy byways of Avenue B. You can see lots of same in the grainy video below.

About twenty-five minutes into the video, after the “concert” has been effectively scuttled, watch how the Geeg boldly bounds out of the Gas Station and onto the avenue, wherein he proceeds to bash his head against a light pole, roll around naked in the middle of street – as one does, I guess – throw a bottle at a bus, flip off said bus, and then fleetingly take shelter from the scrutiny of the nearby constabulary by hiding in the doorway of what -- I think -- today is the Downtime Bar.

Here in 2019, GG Allin has been dead for twenty-six years. The Gas Station was razed and a new building with a Duane Reade now stands in its footprint. Harvey Weinstein, meanwhile, is still walking the streets. 

There’s some bad kinda karma on that strip of Avenue B, to be sure.

Whither The Pit?

Because I’m a fatuously geeky fanboy, I am a member of a group on Facebook devoted to the Sisters of Mercy. This post is not really about the band in question, but I’m just citing this for context.

Over the past several weeks, members of this group have posted a couple of photos of enigmatic Sisters mainstay Andrew Eldritch sporting variations of black t-shirts (shocker!) emblazoned with the logo and legend “The Pit – New York City.”

I was, of course, immediately intrigued.

As an Upper East Side kid, I first started exploring downtown Manhattan during my early high school years. When the parents of my friend Spike (immortalized here, although still not his actual name) got divorced, Spike moved with his dad to an expansive apartment in Greenwich Village, down on Cornelia Street. This particular spot became my preliminary staging ground for acclimating myself with this captivating new (well, new for me, circa 1981 or so) part of the city, having already bored myself senseless looking for comic shops and record stores all around uptown and midtown.

During those early sorties (wherein I discovered crucial locations like Bleecker Bob’s, 99 Records, Subterranean Records, Second Coming Records and It’s Only Rock’n’Roll …. all gone now, of course), I do dimly remember a selection of places that haven’t gone onto become as well-documented as others. For example, I seem to be the only person who remember a heavy metal shop on MacDougal Street between West Third and Bleecker called C.C.& Star. I have vivid memories of the tiny joint, but there’s no evidence on the internet (apart from my own invocations) that it ever existed.

Similarly, I want to say I remember a concern named The Pit, but I may just be projecting.

Some members of the SOM group on Facebook suggest that it may have been situated on St. Marks Place. Was it a shop? A live music venue? A bar? Did the Sisters play there? It’s difficult to discern.

Much like my search for anything to do with C.C. & Star, nothing really comes up, other than the t-shirt design above, although that comes bereft of any info of the image’s true provenance.

Given the Hell’s Angels’ until-recent foothold in the East Village, I’m guessing The Pit might have had something to do with them, given the biker aesthetic at work – something the Altamont-fixated Sisters of Mercy would certainly have gravitated towards.

In any case, while the name rings the faintest of bells with me, I’m fairly certain I never set foot in the place, and probably only walked by it, at best.

Who can share more about The Pit? Weigh in…

For more context, here are the Sisters…

 

Brûlant Pablum à Paris: Part 2

Just to complete the recap...

The flat we stayed in was literally steps away from the current Picasso museum on Rue de Thorigny in the Marais. We couldn't not go, obviously, it being so damn convenient. As cool as it was, however, Picasso strikes me as an artist that has reached such an iconic level wherein literally every single thing he ever did is now treated like absolute gold. This is not to say that his work isn't striking to the layperson, but we didn't see anything within the collection that was especially well known, so the "wow" factor was slightly diminished. Against my better judgment, I was privately hoping they'd be selling beach towels with "Guernica" on them, but -- to the credit of their taste -- this turned out not to be.

Much to the chagrin of my kids, we made it to the Francis Bacon show at the Pompidou. While m'self and the wife are fans of his work, the kids weren't really buying it (nor is much of Bacon's work especially "kid friendly"), but the element that made it especially tough was the crowd size. Enjoying Bacon's paintings is somewhat difficult when you have people stepping on your feet and breathing down your neck. Still, while not for everyone,if you're a fan of the man's stuff, it's worth seeing.

While they didn't necessarily dig Bacon's splattery grotesqueries, the kids did quite enjoy the view from the top of the Pompidou.

While significantly decreased here in Manhattan, street art is still alive and well in Paris...

Oh yeah, and the French don't like him either....

The day before we left, Peggy & the kids went to do some shopping, letting me off my leash long enough to go track down a punk rock record shop I'd read about across the Beaumarchais in a slightly less salubrious area of Paris. I found Born Bad Records in the end, tucked around a corner on a quiet little street. They didn't really have anything I crucially needed, but I bought a t-shirt to be supportive. Vive Le Rock! 

I will say this. If you're planning a trip to Paris, you very well may have heard about the Bateaux Mouche, which are those boats that sail around the Seine, giving sight-seers a view of the City of Light from the water. While that certainly sounds nice, lemme tell ya.... if you hate tourists as much as I do, avoid the Bateaux Mouche like the plague. It will put you swiftly in touch with your inner xenophobe in no time. Packed with competing hordes of German and Japanese tourists (the former are way more annoying than the latter, I decided), the experience made appreciating the visual splendor on offer very difficult. Don't say you weren't warned.

So, yeah, Paris was just as magical as we're all repeatedly told it should be. I ate like royalty and regained the fleeting remnants of my sanity that have otherwise been robbed of me by the daily grind. That is, of course, when I wasn't squabbling with my teenage daughter, who took a bit of time acclimating to the pointedly unhurried nature of Parisian living ... something native New Yorkers have a harder time adjusting to. In the end, she was heartbroken to have to leave. We all were. 

We will go back. 

Brûlant Pablum à Paris: Part 1

You're probably all getting bored sick of hearing me continuing to invoke Paris, so before any more time goes by, I thought I’d just post a quick recap not unlike the one I did for our trip to Beirut last year.

It should come as zero surprise to anyone who has been lucky enough to go there that our quick trip to Paris was nothing short of delightful. Say what one will about the French, but they do know how to live. If you’ve not been, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

For maximum fromage effect, click on the video below for a suitable soundtrack as you view the pics.

S'amuser

The courtyard of our AirB'n'B on Rue de Thorigny in the Marais...

Oliver enjoys a crepe...

Action at the Louvre....

As is to expected, everyone loses their shit for a glimpse of the "Mona Lisa," which -- to be perfectly candid -- left me a little underwhelmed. In an adjoining gallery, however, I came finally face to face with a painting I'd both studied in high school and adored from the cover of the Pogues' Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, that being Gericault's "Raft of the Medusa." I'd never realized the sheer scope of the painting before, and to see it up close stopped me dead in my tracks. Forget the "Mona Lisa" and check this out!

Just a hairstylist on the Beaumarchais whose name caught my eye...

He is rightly everywhere still...

As first invoked back on this post from way back when, we made it back to surreal taxidermy emporium Deyrolle. To be honest, I'm not sure my kids knew what to make of it. Oliver was certainly intrigued by the beasts on display, but Charlotte -- who is a bit woke, it must be said -- was somewhat horrified by the whole endeavor. I did manage to spot the afore-cited poster for "Squelette de Lapin," but they had none left for sale, alas...

More to come ... watch this space. 

The Old Man on The Bridge

True story. Prior to boarding our flight home from Paris, yesterday, we actually had to go through border security again. I’d encountered that upon entering a country, but never exiting. In any case, I gathered up all our passports and went up to the clerk. She checked through each passport, calling out my wife and both kids by name to come collect theirs. When she got to mine, she looked down, and looked up with bug-eyed mock-surprise, as if to say “That’s you? What the Hell happened?” She then laughed in her merry French way, stamped my passport, and off we went.

Settled on the plane, I whipped my passport back out. The picture on same dates back to 2012 -– seven years ago. Have those seven years really taken that much of a visual toll?

As previously mentioned, I crossed the Rubicon of my 52nd birthday while in Paris. On the day of, we found ourselves walking along the Seine and happened upon the stately expanse of the Pont Neuf, a bridge I was photographed on during my first trip to Paris the summer of 1987. I handed my phone to my daughter and asked her to capture me in the very same spot. The results are below. 

Technically, I was 19 years old when the top photo was taken. Behold the difference of 33 years.

Paris was, of course, beautiful. Look for more photos and unsolicited anecdotes to come.

Firehouse 1-2-3