Flaming Pablum

Almost Neighbors

Today, it seems Genesis Breyer P-Orridge of Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV would have turned 73, had that individual not passed away in 2020. As such, I thought I’d share my one and only P-Orridge-centric anecdote.

In about 2018 or so, both of my children were streadily growing, and the small bedroom they shared was swiftly becoming too small to accommodate them, not least in that they were (and remain) of different genders. The wife and I had long put off finding a new apartment, as the travails and curve balls of life kept getting in the way. Despite the fact that we loved the building we were living in, we dutifully started to go check out a few places that might better suit our family.

Most of what we saw was pretty dispiriting – glum apartments in dreary post-war buildings, or grim, ground-floor railroads with unnerving proximity to whatever was happening on the sidewalk, mostly in neighborhoods we had no connection to, much less any desire to live in. We were getting pretty discouraged in very short order.

We then heard about an opportunity in “Two Bridges,” which is sort of the most southeasternly portion of the Lower East Side (or, more accurately, Lowest East Side), thus named for its placement near the bases of the Brooklyn Bridge and Manhattan Bridge over the East River. We have some friends who live over there, and while quite remote (fifteen minute walk to the nearest subway entrance), their home is lovely.

In any case, we went up an looked, and while the buidling itself seemed a bit off-the-beaten track (the lobby faced the roar of the FDR Drive, looking east toward Brooklyn), when we checked out the apartment, it was bright and roomy. We paced around the rooms for a while before feeling satisfied, and then made our way out the door.

We stood in front of the elevator discussing the prospect for what seemed like a half an hour, waiting for the lift to make multiple stops on its way up to whatever floor we were on. When the doors finally opened, the elevator cab’s lone passenger stepped out and onto the landing we were standing on – one unmistakable Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, who gave us a polite smile before passing and then vanishing behind a door down the hall next to the apartment we just left.

Despite having been an avowed fan of Throbbing Gristle’s more experimentally visceral forays into confrontational, proto-industrial music, I said noting, more shocked than anything else by the sudden appearance of that band’s primary instigator. I knew he lived on the Lower East Side somewhere, but never in a million years would I have guessed this particular building, much less next to an apartment that I was considering moving into.

My wife didn’t get it. “Are you alright?” she asked as the doors of the elevator closed behind us. I explained who the garishly attired (camouflage and hot pink) “pandrogyne” was who we just passed us in the elevator bank, and she stared at me blankly. Having grown up in England in the `70s and `80s, Peggy knew her share of British punk and post-punk, but Throbbing Gristle was still a bit too left field for her.

In the end, we didn’t move, but rather did some slight renovation to the kids’ room to make it a bit more conducive to a more amenable configuration of beds and desks. But I’ll never forget briefly entertaining the prospect of moving in to the apartment next door to Genesis Breyer P-Orridge.

Who knows? We may have become fast friends.

….but I kinda doubt it.

Caving In

In the wake of the unimaginable deaths of two of his sons, Nick Cave has undergone a profound transformation. In his latest book, “Faith, Hope & Carnage,” he concedes that he’ll most likely never make another noisy, guitar-based rock’n’roll record ever again, suggesting that he wouldn’t even know how to begin. And while I do appreciate his more recent elegiac works like Skeleton Tree and the sprawling Ghosteen, I cannot help but mourn the departure of the more feral, bloodthirsty exhorter that was the Nick Cave I first discovered in the late `80s.

Meanwhile, Nick's Red Hand Files continues to be a great source of inspiring discourse. Find that here. 

Back to The Met

I’ve already privately evangelized it to a few select individuals, but if you’re an acolyte of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for ANY reason (childhood nostalgia, its tireless capacity as a sanctuary of solace or simply …duh… the art contained therein), you need to go track down the new book, “All the Beauty in the World: The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Me” by Patrick Brinkley.

Ultimately the memoir of a journalist who loses an older brother to prostate cancer, Bringley recuses himself from a plush job at The New Yorker in order to become a guard at the Met. I’m only half way through, but his poignant ruminations on the art and the location and the magical power of the institution are well worth your time, if you are similarly inclined.

Find out more here.

Curlycues in ‘Casablanca’ - a Mission Mystery

Here’s one strictly for music geeks of a certain stripe, so ready thyselves.

As discussed in this post from last year, when the First and Last and Always incarnation of the Sisters of Mercy fell apart circa 1986, departing conspirators Wayne Hussey and Craig Adams made more than a few deliberate attempts to stick it to Sisters’ Mother Superior Andrew Eldritch on their way out of the convent. For a start, their initial plan was to name their new project The Sisterhood, an uncomfortably comparable name to the former order, that is until Eldritch beat them to it with a hastily released EP (recently re-issued on CD). Unfazed, the new band re-christened itself The Mission, also a dig at Eldritch, being that plans for the follow-up album that never transpired were to call it Left on Mission and Revenge.

But the jabs didn’t end there. The Mission wholly made off with the tonsorial/sartorial aesthetic of the Sisters, with Wayne adopting Eldritch’s shades-on-absolutely-all-the-goddamn-time and big-fuckoff-black hat flourish. A sharper sting was naming their debut LP’s lead single “Wasteland,” blithely cribbed from the title of an epic modernist poem by Eldritch’s beloved T.S. Elliot. It seemed as if the new band was going well out of its way to mock and taunt their former taskmaster at every opportunity.

Of course, the mighty Mish went onto find a grand amount of success on their own accord and soon defined their own identity, largely shaking off the shackles of their former association and, I want to believe, burying the bitter baggage along the way, although a full-scale reunion with Eldritch has yet to happen, and I’m not holding my breath.

But there was one more thing from the Sisters that the Mission kind of adopted that always intrigued me - the curlycue cross.

A big part of the early Sisters of Mercy was their bold iconography. Even before they’d properly honed their chops as a functioning band, they’d established themselves with a stark design scheme, a proper logo and even a preferred font, not unlike the template-founders in hallowed Motorhead before them. As the band developed, Eldritch basically assigned the now iconic head/star motif to the band’s label, Merciful Release, and soon adopted the so-called "Chinese Chop,” another cryptic design that graced the sleeves of the singles and the eventual release of the first LP, First and Last and Always, although when that line-up dissolved from attrition, Eldritch retired the “Chinese Chop” for good.

Doubtlessly recognizing the value of that type of readily identifiable insignia, the Mission, too, sought to similarly brand themselves, and settled upon the curlycue cross you can see at the top of this post, a sort of suitably baroque rune that hints at arcane lore. It was just vague enough to conjure any number of gothy connotations, and looked fuckin’ great on the back of a black leather jacket. One friend of mine always thought it looked like four condoms, ... a decidedly more pruriently priapic suggestion than I'd believe the band would prefer to espouse. 

Personally speaking, I’d always been curious about the curlycue cross — what was its origin? What did it actually mean? Where did the band first find it? What was its true provenance?

I’d always assumed it was appropriated from some Celtic, pre-Christian art or swiped from some esoteric medieval source, and figured that, short of directly asking Wayne (which I actually had the opportunity to do, at a couple of points, in the early `90s as a fledgling "rock journalist"), I’d never actually solve the riddle.

And then came yesterday.

My wife and I had a dinner plan with one of her siblings on the Upper East Side later in the evening, but decided to go uptown early for a mild mid-winter stroll and maybe a quick museum trip. We settled on the Neue Gallery, a poshly teutonic little institution on the corner of East 86th and Fifth Avenue that, despite my having grown up in the same neighborhood, I’d never actually visited. The Neue is a comparatively tiny museum next to its stately neighbors like the Metropolitan Museum of Art to its south and the Guggenheim to its north. Its humble succession of rooms features treasures like several iconic paintings by Gustav Klimt, an impressive-if-random array of medieval arms and armor, some Austrian illustrations from two centuries ago and — quite incongruously — a tiny alcove filled with trivial ephemera from the classic film, “Casablanca.” The private collection of one wealthy German art-collector and rampant cinephile Ronald Lauder (of the Estee-Lauder gang), this trove of memorabilia featured a wide selection of movie posters, stills and promotional materials from the film, as well as the prop passports used by protagonists Rick, Ilsa and Victor Lazlo. It’s pretty impressive, if completely out of nowhere, even if you’re only a passive fan of the film.

So, I’m standing there, admiring Lauder’s collection and listening to Louis Armstrong’s throaty rendition of “As Time Goes By,” when I suddenly spot something that just about blows me out of the alcove. In a promo shot from the film, there’s a scene of the great Claude Rains, portraying French officer Captain Louis Renault, conversing with Humphrey Bogart’s Rick. Claude is attired as the jaunty policeman, and has his head cocked at an angle, revealing the top of his fetching chapeau — adorned with, mais, oui — qu’est-ce que cest?? Why, it’s the Mission’s curlycue cross!!! Here’s that shot now….

Further scrutiny reveals that the curlycue cross was something of an ongoing motif in the French military. Here it is on the the top of a cap from World War I.

Now, as far as I’m aware, the great Wayne Hussey doesn’t have a solitary drop of French blood in his person. He was born in Bristol, moved to Liverpool and cut his musical teeth in the local punk scene in bands like The Walkie Talkies, Pauline Murray’s Invisible Girls and then Dead or Alive before decamping to Leeds to join the Sisters. So, why the curlycue cross, and where did he first see it? Was he covertly a student of the sartorial finery of the French military or did he indeed swipe it from Claude Rains in “Casablanca”?

As has always been the case, probably only Wayne has the answer.

A Package from Abroad

This is a meandering one, so maybe go get yourself a drink before reading any further.

In the summer of 1986, I was a college student between my freshman and sophomore years, spending half my break working as a surly dishwasher out in Westhampton Beach at Ina Garten’s Barefoot Contessa. It was by no means a glamorous job, sequestered, as I was, in the dishwashing station in the rear of the kitchen, just a stone’s throw from the outside dumpster and the canal. Outside the kitchen, it was celebs, `80s fashions and teenage wildlife, but back where I was, it was stacks of soiled baking sheets, filth-encrusted mixing bowls, sharp knives hidden in murky sink water and tireless airings of Black Flag and Iron Maiden. My family routinely got a tremendous kick out of bringing friends by the rear of the kitchen, on busy Friday nights, to watch me toil. I failed to see the humor in this and responded accordingly.

It wasn’t all drudgery, though. I made several friends and often spent nights out drinking my wages with them. One early August evening, we repaired to nearby Sag Harbor to a club called Bay Street to catch UB40 perform. I realize this wins me precious few points in the cool department, but we went with what we got. It’s not like New Order or Love & Rockets were swinging out to play gigs on the East End of Long Island … although we did also get INXS and the Fine Young Cannibals, if memory serves.

I’m not gonna lie, though — while UB40 are largely maligned in credible reggae circles for their paucity of authenticity (I’m trying to be diplomatic, here), I did quite enjoy Labor of Love from a year or so earlier, which my (now late) friend Danny had been a huge champion of. Maybe they lacked the ganja-toasted edge of Peter Tosh or the righteous indignation of Steel Pulse, but as a roundly reggae-ignorant rockhead, at the time, I was just fine with it. And hey … it was a night out with beer and girls. Who was I to complain?

To be honest, I don’t actually recall that much about the show beyond more or less enjoying it. I do remember spotting a long-lost childhood friend in the crowd — a kid named Jimmy Rothwell, who I’d formerly played “Advanced Dungeons & Dragons” with a decade earlier — and having a beery reunion. UB40, for their part, played the hits, including the big ones off Labor of Love, and their then-new single “Sing Our Own Song,” seemingly oblivious to the irony of performing an anthem about the hopeful emancipation of apartheid-era South Africa to a club full of privileged, white Hamptonites. They closed, as I recall, with a rousing trek through the title track of their new record, Rat in Mi Kitchen (which, oddly enough, was retitled Rat in the Kitchen, here in the States).

As one does, despite my lukewarm affinity for the band, I dutifully bought a t-shirt, which was white with a cartoonish rat posed in front of a hypnotic black spiral, and the band’s logo on the back.

I wore that shirt for a little while, albeit not with a great deal of zeal. At some point, I believe I farmed it off to one of my nephews. The last time I saw it, it was on the back of my beach-lifeguard nephew Tristan, who’d chopped off the sleeves to showcase his guns, which are admittedly impressive.

Around the same time all of the above was going down, over in the UK, my wife (who I’d obviously not met, as yet) and her sisters also latched onto UB40. Peggy’s older sister Lizzie bought the 7” of “Rat in Mi Kitchen” (that’s me holding same, up top) and evidently played it with alarming frequency. To this day, it remains her favorite song.

At virtually every family event, Lizzie finds a way to play “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” It was kinda funny, at first, but now it’s just kind of predictable and, of course, annoying. At one recent point, I indulged Lizzie by treating her to the anecdote above, which made her squeal with jealousy.

After hearing the song played at so many family get-togethers, my daughter Charlotte has now been indoctrinated into the faith. When I told her that I’d seen UB40 on that tour and bought a shirt, her eyes bugged out. “WHERE IS THAT SHIRT NOW?” she demanded, although she was under the impression UB40 was a solitary individual, and not a band. I told her that it’s probably back at her grandmother’s house, if it’s anywhere, at this point.

The next time I was out at my mom’s, I searched the basement for the UB40 shirt, but came up empty, assuming that Tristan might still have it. As a lark, I hopped on the internet to see if I could track a version of the shirt down. I came up empty on eBay, but did manage to snag one off a website called Grailed. It wasn’t entirely cheap, but I figured Charlotte would love it, so I ponied up and ordered it.

Weeks went by, and I kinda forgot I’d ordered it …. until a mystery package arrived.

From a battered envelope covered with odd, unfamiliar stamps and odd lettering, the shirt was mine again. Closer scrutiny revealed that my seller was mailing the UB40 shirt from that 1986 tour … from war-torn fucking UKRAINE.

Now, I don’t know about you, but this instantly put things in a new perspective. Now matter what sort of stupid-ass strife you have going on in your life, I think you’re hard pressed to compete with some dude off in the wilds of Ukraine, busily stuffing a vintage concert t-shirt of little or no value into a mailer while the fucking Russian army is busy shelling his town. It certainly took the sting out of the higher-than-preferable price I paid for this silly garment. The guy even wrote to me asking if the package arrived safely and lived up to my expectations. What a true salesman.

A few days later, I packed the UB40 shirt, which has now crossed ocean after ocean, into a new mailer and bundled it off to my daughter’s college in Scotland as a surprise package. As expected, she was elated.

Punk Before Punk Was Punk: More About Tom Verlaine

Following up on my last post about the late, great Tom Verlaine, even when he shared a fleeting moment of discourse with me (if you can even call it that) that rainy night on University Place, as we unwittingly sat side by side in the front window eating our respective slices and watching our neighborhood fill up with water, I knew not to push my luck and try to carry on a conversation with the famously icy icon.

But had I done so, I might have asked him what he thought about the word “Punk.”

Read any of the myriad obits for him in the last day, and you’re bound to see descriptors of Television’s distinctive musical style as “angular,” “lyrical,” “innovative,” all of which, I’d concede, is more or less accurate, if all a bit predictable. Billboard magazine even ran an obit, which I thought was pretty rich, given that Television really never came within squinting distance of vaulting a record onto the pop charts, which is really all Billboard cares about. One outlet referred to the dynamic of Verlaine and fellow string-bender Richard Lloyd as a “combative two-guitar assault,” which kind of made me laugh. Had this writer even heard Television? Despite inarguably being Punk pioneers (there’s a legend about them being the first band outside of the “country, bluegrass, blues” milieu to approach CBGB’s Hilly Kristal about playing the venue, but that may be apocryphal), Television didn’t really make music that bludgeoned its listeners, even at their most aggressive, like on this live recording of “Little Johnny Jewel” below.

There’s another possibly apocryphal anecdote about Television that always comes to mind in that when they were recording their debut LP, Marquee Moon, Verlaine ruffled Lloyd’s feathers by constantly insisting to co-producer/sound engineer Andy Johns that he wanted all the guitars to sound “smaller” and “dryer,” already looking to distance himself from the trajectory so-called “Punk Rock” was headed. It’s for this reason that, to this day, Marquee Moon’s eight songs still sound fresh and completely unlike anything else.

Once again, despite being Punk before Punk was Punk, what made Television a preeminent Punk band was their disdain for tired, staid convention. While original bassist Richard Hell — who split to form the more volatile Voidoids and Heartbreakers well before the recording of Marquee Moon — is credibly regarded as the tonsorial/sartorial blueprint of the “Punk Rocker” (being the first to cut short and spike up his hair and adhere his ripped clothes together with safety pins — more out of necessity than prescient fashion), Television didn’t really look like punks, and they certainly didn’t sound like what the media was spinning as “proper Punk Rock,” at the time. The comparatively mild-mannered Television were never going to deafen you with feedback or be gratuitously prurient. We had the Dead Boys for that.

All this is why I wonder — what did Tom Verlaine think of the term he was saddled with?

Goodnight, Tom Verlaine

I used to routinely see Tom Verlaine around the neighborhood, but one learned pretty swiftly not to bug the man. I once accosted him in front of The Strand like a gushing fanboy, and the sneer I received could have stopped a rhino in his tracks.

My favorite memory, though, was being caught in calamitous summer rainstorm in the late 90s and ducking in out of the maelstrom into Stromboli’s Pizza on University Place between 12th and 13th street (long gone). The only other patron in that tiny space? Yep, Tom Goddamn Verlaine. Remembering the Strand incident, I ordered my slice and left him alone …. only to have him remark in soggy solidarity, “It’s really coming down out there.”

Of his solo stuff, this has always (pardon the pun) been my favorite. Raise a slice to the great man.

Down on West 8th Street

In the latest episode of "Broken Record," Rick Rubin speaks with greatest living American, Iggy Pop. Regardless of what you think of Rick, it's a really great discussion. Find it here.

My favorite bit of trivia revealed therein: This song was originally titled "Down on the Beach," until Ig & the Ashetons visited NYC and walked down West 8th Street "between University Place and 6th Avenue" when it was "more active" (circa 1970), and were captivated by what they encountered. Love that a little chunk of my backyard (not *nearly* as "active" as it used to be, alas) inspired the greatest rock album of all goddamn time (fight me).

Crank it. 

Back to the Los Angeles of "Repo Man"

Prior to about 1994 or so, all I ever knew about Los Angeles and its surrounding environs came from the movies – specifically era-appropriatre films like “Grease,” “Fast Times at Ridgemont High,” “Valley Girl,” “Tuff Turf,” “Body Double,” Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia,” “Into the Night,” “Mulholland Drive” and several other choice selections. As viewed through the prism of those films, L.A. was this strange sprawl of freeway clovers, dusty back streets peppered with incongruous palm trees, shopping malls, suburban ranch homes and high schools.

But there was one film in particular that really seemed to sum up everything I thought I knew already about Los Angeles and Southern California writ large, and that was Alex Cox’s inimitably oddball sci-fi opus, “Repo Man” from 1984. In much the same way many folks latch onto the elusive exotica of New York City based on atmospheric flicks like “Taxi Driver,” “The French Connection” or even “The Warriors,” I was smitten with the idea of that chunk of the West Coast being the sort of run down, washed out, quasi-derelict urban badlands wherein Emilio Estevez’s Otto, Dick Rude’s Duke and Harry Dean Stanton’s eminently quotable Bud ran completely amok.

As mentioned in this ancient post, one of my best friends – Rob D – moved out there in the mid-90’s, essentially squatting in a well-appointed corner bungalow/cottage owned by his step-mother in Costa Mesa in nearby Orange County (or, as we laboriously referred to it, “Behind the Orange Curtain”). During his tenure there, I made a few lengthy visits to the Costa Mesa compound, entirely romanced by the notion of exploring the same endless byways, boulevards, buildings and barrooms depicted in the films I cited earlier. Once again, as mentioned in that ancient post, I was particularly smitten with locating the former site of fabled hardcore punk venue, The Cuckoo’s Nest, but never managed to pinpoint the right spot.

But about a beer-can’s reckless throw from the front lawn of Rob’s step-mother’s cottage was this deli-cum-liquor store that I would have absolutely SWORN was the one depicted in several key scenes in “Repo Man,” so much so that we came to regularly refer to the place as the Repo Market. Of course, this presumption was based on very little in the way of evidence.

Well, imagine my sad surprise to learn, this morning, by way of the exhaustively minutia-laden video below (clearly this man is my brother) wherein severl key locations from the beloved film in question are revealed. Suffice to say, that liquor store/deli was not in Costa Mesa.

Silly side bar: On some discussion board or another I frequent, someone invited people to list “movies about Punk Rock.” One participant put “Repo Man” at the very top of the list, which triggered my not-so-inner insuffferably pedantic streak. While, yes, Otto, Duke, Archie, Debbie and Kevin are all characters one would conventionally identify as “punk rockers” (to say nothing of the cameo by the Circle Jerks and a soundtrack rife with bands like Suicidal Tendencies, Fear, Iggy Pop and the Plugz), the film is really in no discenable manner about Punk Rock. It’s about a rogue scientist who kidnaps an alien’s cadaver and puts it in the trunk of an iconic 1964 Chevy Malibu and his surreal travails in dodging both federal agents and a plucky gaggle of repo men, whom protagonist Otto has taken up with, hungry to collect the bounty. If you’re looking to learn about Punk Rock, you won’t get far with “Repo Man.” Just saying.

Fermenting New Firewater: Tod [A] Looks Ahead

With the possible exception of Killing Joke, I don’t think there’s a band I’ve scribbled more about here than Cop Shoot Cop, the former NYC-based, clangy noise-rock ensemble of one Tod [A], who bowed out of said band, in the mid-`90s, during the recording of what would have been their fifth studio LP. Upon leaving C$C under arguably not the most amicable of circumstances, Tod turned his attention to forming Firewater, a loose collective of musicians who’d go onto to explore, over seven diverse albums, a far broader vista of musical styles than Tod’s previous band was ever likely to dare. Largely jettisoning Cop Shoot Cop’s full-frontal industrial assault in favor of a sinuous amalgam of influences from klezmer to ska to Middle-Eastern folk music to Romani to bhangra to sea shanties to Russian drinking songs to straight-ahead punk fucking rock and virtually all points and ports of global call in between, Tod’s inherent sense of wanderlust became deeply imbued into the music he was making. Putting his money where his mouth was, by the band’s sixth album, 2008’s The Golden Hour, Tod pulled up stakes and set out on a formidable trek across the imposing terrain between New Delhi, India and Istanbul, Turkey, recording with local musicians along the way. This experience not only fueled that album -– arguably Firewater’s finest -– but also served as fertile fodder for his first novel, “Banging the Monkey,” which surfaced in 2019.

I’ve been friends with Tod since the very early `90s, when I was tasked with writing up a cover story for a local freebie news weekly about “a hot new band that typifies the New York sound and sensibility.” Without skipping a beat, I chose Cop Shoot Cop, having become enamored of their wilfully chaotic live performances, their boldly unconventional approach (two basses, no guitars), their dark sense of humor (lost on large swathes of their audience), their unwieldy aesthetic and their cryptic poster campaign. Over the course of Cop Shoot Cop’s tumultuous rise and fall and then into the Firewater years, Tod and I have spilled many gallons of beer and ink about our respective trajectories. Now ensconced full-time in Istanbul, Tod only gets to New York City every so often, and he and I only get to convene in person every couple of years or so, usually around the holidays. The last time he was in town back in December, we caught up for a drink at an old favorite, the Ear Inn on the westerly end of Spring Street, and it dawned on me that I’d never subjected the poor guy to the Flaming Pablum Interview. So now, joining the estimable ranks of Big Paul Ferguson of Killing Joke, Chris Egan of Missing Foundation, RB Korbet of Even Worse, Erik Sanko of Skeleton Key, Fran Powers of Modern Clix, J Yuenger of White Zombie, Brooke Smith of Sunday Matinee, Don Rauf of Life in a Blender, and Andi Harriman of Some Wear Leather, Some Wear Lace, here with the Flaming Pablum Interview with Tod [A]…

FP: You’ve now been living in Turkey for almost 12 years. How’s that going? Of all the places you’ve lived, how does Istanbul compare?

I've lived in NYC, Denpasar, Phnom Penh, Calcutta, Surat Thani and now Istanbul. Though I didn't expect to be here quite so long, I can't complain about the city. Istanbul is the NYC of Turkey: it's a port city, which means it's quite multi-cultural. The cost of living is far less than NYC, and the town has public transport that doesn't reek of urine. It has a lot more cats and a lot less rats (do the math). I guess I feel as at home here as I have felt anywhere else, though the current Turkish government leaves much to be desired. Hopefully the people of Turkey will get rid of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named in the upcoming 2023 general election.

It’s been eleven years since you released International Orange, but now, I gather, have new music demoed and ready to be recorded — can you give us an update?

Having decided to procreate, I took some time off from recording and touring to concentrate on raising my daughter. I didn't want to be the father who was never there. In the meantime, I wrote fifty songs. I am now a free agent and I think I'm almost ready to get back to recording and touring. We shall see who winds up releasing these records.

Firewater has counted many illustrious names in its ranks, over the years — are you in touch with all those players? Might we hear from them again on the next LP?

Yes, we are mostly all still buddies. It's quite possible there will be some appearances from old friends once it's time to go into the studio and begin touring again.

If you had to characterize the direction and sound of the new material, how would you do so?

My itinerant lifestyle has certainly colored the new batch of songs, melodically, sonically, and rhythmically. There is a Turkish flavor to many of them. But somehow I can't seem to scrape all the American mud off my boots. I feel like my time abroad has given me perspective to write about the country of my birth.

Your first novel, “Banging the Monkey” was published in 2019. Are there more books in you waiting to come out?

Yes. I am working on a few new books at the moment: a novel (for adults), and some others for children. But I take my time. They will be done when they are done.

You were recently back in the States and in New York City for the first time in a while. How does your former home turf feel to you in the wake of all that’s happened?

I still love NYC. But as I told you when I saw you last, I feel safer raising my daughter in a quasi-dictatorship like Turkey where almost nobody has a gun, than in America where everyone seems to own multiple firearms.

In 2016, you joined some of your former Cop Shoot Cop bandmates for the commentary track of the live DVD New York Post Punk / Noise Series 1. Are you still back in contact with those guys today?

Yes, I am in touch with Jim Coleman and Phil Puleo and we are on good terms. During the lockdowns, we made some sporadic attempts to collaborate from afar, but nothing seemed to catch fire. Jim and Phil seem to be doing quite well with Human Impact, so more power to them.

Is there any Firewater (or, for that matter, Cop Shoot Cop) material left “in the vault,” so to speak? Stuff that was never released? If so, will it ever see the light of day?

Yes, there is quite a bit. But tracks get left in the vault for a reason, usually because they weren't quite ready.

What’s your take on the music of today? Are there any new artists you’re particularly enthused about? What have you been listening to?

When I was a young punk I thought the way to move forward was to obliterate the past. Now I'm much more interested in the historical continuity of music. I'm trying to catch up on the homework I should have done when I was 21, learning the musical secrets of all the songs I love. I'm delving back into the past: jazz, the birth of rock 'n' roll. I listen to a lot of early blues, jazz, folk and psychedelia. Mainly I'm focused on developing as a songwriter and composer. I've been studying soundtracks (Morricone, Elfman, Zimmer), and I try to learn from the lyricists I admire (Dylan, Waits, Bowie).

Of all the spots you lived around New York City, which was your favorite, and why?

It was definitely fun living in Williamsburgh in the late 80's – early 90's. The rents were incredibly cheap, and there was much fun to be had exploring the empty buildings. I remember setting fire to an abandoned car in a vacant lot and watching it burn. Neither police nor the fire department ever came. That's how much of a no man's land it was at that time.

…which was your least favorite, and why?

By the time I moved to Bushwick, I had already pretty much had it with NYC. The locals weren't too enthused about the bohemian gringos encroaching on their turf, so there was quite a bit of aggro. Also, I was arrested for drinking a beer on the street outside my building, about 20 feet away from the corner where a bunch of jackasses had been selling smack and crack for years. So once I got out of jail, I was off to Thailand.

Where in the world is the food the best?

Italy, of course. I have worked there a lot, and the Italians really know what they are doing. But I also love Thai street food. Such an amazingly subtle combination of flavors. And usually $1 a plate. Indian and Mexican. Turkish food is also amazing.

What’s your favorite Firewater album?

The Golden Hour certainly was the most fun to make. The adventure of recording it, in India, Pakistan, and Indonesia, combined with working with my buddies in Tel Aviv to complete it. Everything seemed to come together on that record.

What’s your least favorite? Why?

International Orange was a nightmare to make. My record company didn't support the concept, so I had to cut a lot of financial corners. As a result, even though the songs were as good as those on The Golden Hour, the sound quality on International Orange suffered because of budget problems. I would love to re-record those songs someday. My ugly experience making International Orange also made me want to wait until I could afford to record in the right way.

What’s your favorite Cop Shoot Cop album?

Release. At that time CSC was firing on all pistons, and we had producer David Sardy at the controls. After that record, everything went rapidly south for the band.

What’s your least favorite? Why?

White Noise. It just hasn't aged well.

The irony here is the White Noise continues to be my favorite album by the band. It’s aged just fine, to my ears.

Why do the vinyl re-releases of Get Off the Cross... and Golden Hour have different cover art?

When Scott Schaefer approached me about doing vinyl releases of the Firewater catalog, I saw it as an opportunity to make something special. So I decided to re-make all the covers by hand. It's been really fun to re-imagine the art. The vinyl series will be continued in the near future.

Beyond from family and friends, what do you miss most about the United States?

A genuine NYC slice, and a real bagel. And not much else.

What sort of music is your daughter listening to?

I knew going into this parenting thing that I had a window of maybe four or five years in which I could vet the music my daughter would hear. Being a control freak, I took full advantage of those years. I wanted her developing brain to get a solid grounding in classic melody and song structure before she was exposed to bullshit musical 'content' from off the internet. So I made her tons of mix tapes: nursery rhymes; classical stuff like Carl Orff, Peter and the Wolf, and the Nutcracker; plus kid-friendly songs from folks like Raffi, the Beatles, Donovan, Ivor Cutler, Monty Python, Spike Jones, Woody Guthrie and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band.

Yeah, well, to answer your question, the window has closed. You don't want to know what sort of music torture I am subjected to now. I can't wait till she's a teenager, and will start hitting me with some cool sounds.

What was the best concert you ever attended?

I can't name just one: Black Flag at some bowling alley in New Jersey circa 1984, Nirvana at the Reading Festival circa 1992, Tom Waits at the Beacon Theater 1999, Bone Machine tour, Motorhead in Istanbul, 2011. Plus any Jesus Lizard show. 

What five albums can you not live without?

Ramones - Ramones
Tom Waits - Rain Dogs
The Doors - The Doors
David Bowie - Diamond Dogs
Bob Dylan - Highway 61 Revisited

The best songwriter is….

There are seven: Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Robyn Hitchcock, Leonard Cohen, and Ivor Cutler. (and me.)