Here’s a clip from short-lived French/American outfit Band Apart, who were allegedly part of the No Wave scene. I honestly don’t know that much about them, but immediately warmed to this clip not just for its ominous, metronomic electronic pulse (reminiscent of both “Faith Healer” by The Sensational Alex Harvey Band and “Requiem” by Killing Joke), but also for the footage of NYC circa 1981 (including a blink-&-you'll-miss-it shot of Dojo on St. Marks Place)…. Enjoy.
The concept of worth is an elusive thing. There are things out there in the world, somewhere, that probably mean next to nothing to the individuals who own them, but that I would consider positively invaluable. I’ve mentioned it several times here before, but there’s a certain elusive Cop Shoot Cop gig flyer circa 1990 at CBGB that I would gladly pay a handsome sum for, but I’ve just never been able to put my hand to it. Very recently, I came across a photograph of a lost bit of graffiti that I’ve been preoccupied with finding for literally over three decades, but when I asked the photographer’s representative how much a print of same might cost, the answer was in the thousands (translation: ain’t gonna happen). Why would someone pay handsomely for an old gig flyer? Why would someone pay for a photograph of old graffiti? Why ask why? Why do you like and pursue the things you do?
Then, of course, there are things that I happen to possess and don’t give a great deal of thought to that have gone on to become arguably valuable. I have a couple of books about No Wave and paperback copy of “The Stranglers Song by Song” (as mentioned here) that have gone out of print and strangely since become evidently rarified and summarily pricey artifacts. I have stacks of compact discs that might have been worth more than I’d originally paid for them, but the bottom has basically fallen out of that particular market.
Then there are things that may have once been entirely incidental that have ascended in perceived value to such an extent that they’re now shown in fuckin’ museums and prestigious collections. That will never cease to amaze me.
Another example of that revealed itself to me today when I stumbled upon the website of Gallery98. As I was perusing through their collection of party notices, gig flyers and nightclub invites, I noticed they featured a few of the distinctive cards for GREENDOORNYC. For the uninitiated, GREENDOORNYC was this series of regular parties, back in the mid-to-late 90s, in the East Village and Lower East Side thrown by Jesse Malin of D Generation. Originally, they were held at a variety of different locations until finally coalescing at the space on St. Marks Place that Malin would later commandeer as Coney Island High. These events were well-attended and raucous gatherings of East Village rock’n’roll types and went on for hours on end. I was lucky enough to go on three or four occasions, and always had a damn good time.
As such, I have a number of these silly cards, usually depicting period-specific antiheroes like Stiv Bator, Johnny Thunders, KISS, Iggy Pop, Alice Cooper, Debbie Harry and the like. They formerly adorned my fridge on East 12th street or were pinned up to any number of bulletin boards at any of the several different jobs I’ve had since that era as mementos of my misspent semi-youth. They now live in a selection of battered envelopes of ephemera hastily amassed when I was leaving any one of those afore-cited jobs. They’re no longer pinned up and displayed, but I still have them, buried in the closet.
As a lark, I reached out to Gallery98 to inquire as to how much these cheaply printed and thinly produced scraps of cardboard are currently selling for.
Apparently, they’re currently selling for $100…. EACH!
I honestly have no earthly idea how or why my friend Jeremy ended up on a YouTube channel hosted by a talking tennis ball, but …. y’know,… maybe he lost a bet or something.
In any case, my friend and fellow music geek Jeremy Shatan was recently on a YouTube program called “Dad Jokes with Dennis Ball” wherein he got to chat about a number of different things. I’ll try not to be too brazenly namedroppy about this, but along with being an exceptionally good guy and a man of exquisite musical taste (Jeremy is a similarly avowed Killing Joke acolyte and also hosts an exhaustive blog about music fandom called An Earful), Jeremy has a few notables to his name, namely that (a) he was a founding member of The Young Aborigines, the teenage punk band that would gradually mutate into the Beastie Boys and (b) it was our Jeremy who took the wide-angled panoramic photograph of the intersection of Ludlow & Rivington on the Lower East Side that would grace the cover of the Beasties’ legendary sophomore LP, Paul’s Boutique.
Now, despite having these fairly impressive items on his curriculum vitae of cool, to spend any time chatting with Jeremy, you’d absolutely never know it. He’s an affable, grounded and normal guy, and he generally speaks about these things with the same nonchalance you might recount a goofy anecdote about some silly shit you did with your friends when you were a kid, which is more or less precisely the scenario. It’s just that the friends in question happened to become genre-straddling iconoclasts.
In any case, I’m happy to evangelize any endeavor Jeremy’s involved in, so please enjoy the clip above.
The shot below, meanwhile, was one I snapped in about 1995. If you cannot figure it out, it’s the same corner Jeremy captured on the front panel of Paul’s Boutique. If you visit this spot today, it looks like nothing of the sort. The last time I walked by it was a cafe of some kind, and there’s a massive mural of the Beasties on its east-facing facade. But circa `95 (only six or so years after Jeremy’s photo), it was still more or less the same concern.
Once I gleaned that the original site of the elusive Plasmatics mural from my distant memory was the tellingly-titled Graffiti Hall of Fame on 106th & Park Avenue (this discovery coming courtesy of an uncredited photo on “Graffiti Database”), I started to wonder if I could find any other — and/or preferably better — photographs of the art in question, but tireless Google searches were giving me nothing further on the subject. I mean, Hell, I was lucky to find that first photo to begin with.
Branching my search out further, however, I noticed that there is a very robust subculture of reverent graffiti-centric publishing. As such, when I spotted a fetching, paperback coffee-table book on Amazon that was exclusively dedicated to the very spot where the original mural was, I figured there was a sporting chance it would include another shot of it. And even if it didn’t, I was intrigued enough by the story of the place and its accompanying images that it would be cool to own. Tweny-something bucks later, it was mine. It arrived today.
Much to my delight, fourteen pages into the book comes a beautiful wide shot of the wall in question that was obviously snapped at least a year or two earlier, as the artwork is still vibrantly colorful and unsullied by other tags. This photo was taken by maverick shutterbug Martha Cooper. I remain mystified as to why these artists chose to immortalize the Plasmatics in this manner, but, again, perhaps they were just simply fans.
As a lark, I have reached out to Ms. Cooper to see if she’s consider selling me a print of the photo. We’ll see.
Incidentally, you can check out more of Cooper's amazing work on her Instagram page. Tell'em Flaming Pablum sent ya.
It’s the Friday of what has felt like a very long week, and while I still have a pile of work stuff to do, I am just not feeling the motivation to tackle any of it, at this very moment. Instead, herewith a rumination on a beloved slab of vinyl from eons past.
While arguably not quite as ear-&-brain opening as its forebear compilation Let Them Eat Jellybeans from 1981 (which I wrote at great, sepia-toned length about here back in 2006), the live compilation Rat Music For Rat People provided a more organic taste of early-80’s hardcore punk than I’d previously been privileged enough to experience, capturing several crucial bands in their untethered live element. Much as on storied live albums like It’s Alive by The Ramones and No Sleep `til Hammersmith by Motorhead, the live renditions of these already-frenetic songs were faster, harder, louder and sloppier than their comparatively genteel iterations from humble recording studios. Select tracks on this collection by D.O.A., the Circle Jerks, Dead Kennedys, T.S.O.L. and, most notably, Bad Brains took on furious new dimensions onstage, whereas turgid treks through pieces like “Scream” by Black Flag and “Life” by Flipper toppled out of the speakers as if slathered in hot oil and set ablaze in slow-burning agony. From top to bottom, the music on this LP was executed with bracing degrees of bug-eyed deliberateness. The bands weren’t trying to entertain, they were trying to exorcise.
Technically released in 1982, I don’t think I picked up my copy of it until the spring of 1983, purchased solely on the listing of bands cited above. The album also featured tracks by outfits who were new to me like Crucifix, The Dils and The Avengers, but it was really selections like Dead Kennedys’ “I Am The Owl,” prefaced with an inimitable rant by Jello Biafra about looming Orwellian governmental oversight, a particularly nihilistic bash through “Live Fast Die Young” by the Circle Jerks and a neck-snapping sprint through “How Long Can a Punk Get?” by Bad Brains that rendered the album so incredibly crucial.
Taped onto a 90-minute cassette that somewhat incongruously featured Iron Maiden’s Piece of Mind on the flip, Rat Music for Rate People largely scored my somewhat furrow-browed summer of 1983, wherein I was exiled to summer school for flunking geometry and my mother and step-father’s marriage was steadily metastasizing. It was the music that “got me through it all,” so to speak, and even hearing a fleeting few seconds of those recordings today takes me right back to that era.
Today, my well-loved copy of the LP lives in a flight case in my mother’s basement out on the east end of Long Island with hundreds of other LPs I consider wildly significant. I never re-picked it up on compact disc. I believe they appended two more volumes of the series into a single disc, but even that is invariably well out of print, these days. Not sure if it’s streamable, but you can, for the moment, hear it via YouTube.
It’s by no means a stretch for any blog that concentrates on downtown NYC, but I’m sure I’ve mentioned Downtown Beirut here a few times, the long-lost watering hole on First Avenue. Don’t bother looking for it today, of course. I honestly can’t remember what’s there in 2021, let alone if said venture is even operational, at this stage. But, in any case, as Downtown Beirut, is was practically a holy site for folks of a certain disposition.
I cannot remember the first time I set foot in the bar, but it was invariably at some point around 1988 or 1989, relatively late into its storied tenure. True to its oft-repeated legend, it did indeed have a robustly adventurous jukebox of the old-school variety, and I remember being fairly gobsmacked to find bands like the Buzzcocks and Modern Lovers on it. It was a favorite spot for my fellow paylessly disgruntled SPIN interns and I to frequent, along with being the first place I ever witnessed my friend Dusty’s star-crossed garage-noise band, The Bastards of Execution, perform.
To my recollection, Dowtown Beirut feels like the place wherein the 80s transformed into the 90s, the decade that would eventually turn the bar's lights out. By 1994 or so, it was but a memory. To this day, invoke its name and watch folks who pair their greying temples with increasingly ill-fitting Lunachicks t-shirts get moist around the eyes. Many of today’s bars try to emulate its singular brand of grimy, punky cool, but like the CBGB, Mars Bar and the Lismar Lounge, it is now the stuff of legend.
It’s precisely for this reason that videos like the one below are so special. While you cannot darken the doors of Downtown Beirut anymore, here’s as close a taste to the experience you’re as likely to find, courtesy of one Mike Enright. It has the loose narrative of a student film, but the visual specifics are fantastic. I especially love the sticker on the jukebox that reads "New Missing Foundation - I DARE YOU!"
Site back and enjoy … “Night At Downtown Beirut.” By the way, the lovely photo at the top of this post was taken by one David Vega.
It’s been a long while since I’ve been as fixated with one, but I used to be pretty hung up about tracking down the locations of photographs of favorite bands of mine. I have a whole category on the blog devoted to it (and comparable mysteries), but I’m thinking my exhaustive (and exhausting) search for a specific shot of the Lunachicks some years back may have broken the back of that preoccupation … or maybe it’s just because I haven’t encountered another photo that captured my imagination the same way. Who can say?
In any event, along the way, I was aided and abetted by a few folks whose sleuthing skills were considerably sharper than mine, notably my comrade Bob Egan of Popspots NYC and a friend on Facebook named Chung Wong, among a few others. On several occasions, both Bob and Chung gamely dove in and helped divine the true provenance and practically the precise longitude and latitude of the locations in question.
As it happens, there is apparently another prominent and versatile cat on this beat. Slated for an upcoming session on my friend Drew Stone’s “New York Hardcore Chronicles” live, one Steve Birnbaum is an artist, photographer, filmmaker and fellow music head who takes comparable pains to seek out and artfully replicate shots of famous music luminaries. Where I was inclined to mimic the shots with the then-willing aid of my little kids (now that they’re in their teens, they are less enthused about such shenanigans), Mr. Birnbaum adds his own signature by framing the original photograph within the larger environment of the location. In a weird way, it’s a little reminiscent of the Instagram account of Murad Osmann. If that name doesn’t ring a bell he’s that self-styled “travel influencer” that continually photographs his smokin’ hot spouse from behind in the “follow me” series as they jetset around the globe. In Birnbaum’s case, instead of holding his lovely lady’s hand, he’s brandishing the original source material.
You can see the fruit of Birnbaum’s labors on his Instagram page called TheBandWasHere. On it, he covers a lot of the bases I, too, sought out, like the Misfts in the West Village, the Beasties in Charles Street, Joe Strummer on East 14th, The Cramps on Charles Lane and several, several others. He and I have clearly been bitten by the same bug.
For slavish fanboys of grisly noise bands like Cop Shoot Cop and Pussy Galore (i.e. me), one of the most coveted artifacts is the Live Crush 84-85 tape by the imaginatively titled beat combo, Shithäus. Simply put, this was future C$C founder Tod [A] and future Pussy Galore founder Jon Spencer’s short-lived “art school” band whose name was a derisively scatological dig at the uber-pretentious posturing of then-already-mythic Gothic overlords, Bauhaus. Somewhat ironically, while justifiably targeted with myriad accusations of arty pompousness, Bauhaus themselves were only named after an art school (not an actual institution, but a school of thought). In reality, they were actually childhood friends from the glum middle-class midlands of England. Shithäus, for all their sneery renouncement of highfalutin’ pomposity, were actually bona fide art-school students from the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Have fun parsing that one.
In any case, prior to Tod forming Dig Dat Hole and later Cop Shoot Cop (and, for the matter, Firewater) and Spencer assembling Pussy Galore, Boss Hog, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and, more recently, Heavy Trash (I’m probably forgetting someone), these two young noiseniks briefly served in the ranks of the same band. This is that band.
This, of course, is all ancient history here in 2021, but as has been so often the case over the past year, some generous music fan (operating under the mysterious moniker blackoperations) seized the opportunity to share this archival find on YouTube, uploading both side A and side B of Live Crush 84-84 in all its chaotic cacophony.
Here’s the very lengthy description from blackoperations, filled with some compelling bits of trivia, notably that Jon didn’t even play guitar in the band.
A-1 Intro A-2 Crush Jam A-3 Rubber Doll A-4 Walking Insane A-5 Fire Ritual A-6 Eye Gouge A-7 Warm Leather A-8 Weenie Up Neville’s Butt A-9 Constant Decay
B-1 Fag Hag B-2 Film Song B-3 Texas B-4 When It Comes Time B-5 May Day B-6 Brain Dogs B-7 Swan Song (White Ice) B-8 I Like It Like That
Self-released/hand-made cassette by Shithaus (exact number in circulation is unknown).
Tom Fry (Vocals) Tod Ashley (Guitar) Stephan Harshman (Bass) Jon Spencer (Drums) James Joaquin (Drums)
Part of the tape was recorded during a live broadcast on a show called ‘Noise with Neville’ on 90.1 WRIU, Kingston, RI.
For this broadcast the band are going by the name ‘Knocked-Up Teens’ as the name ‘Shithaus‘ was not deemed “broadcast worthy by FCC regulations”.
“Neville was a demagogue of the Providence noise-rock and proto-industrial scenes of the mid 1980s. The program ran from at least the Spring of 1985 into the Summer of 1987. Today the whereabouts of Mr. Neville are unknown.”
Also as stated on the broadcast the band management was ‘Method of Control’ whose ‘MOC’ logo can be seen on the bottom-right of the cover image.
The DJ gives a run-down of the bands equipment which includes; “Olds Mobile Gas Tank, Chevy Gas Tank, A Grinder, a drum board, A couple of cassette decks, fully fledged rhythm section, a guitar and some vocals”.
Most of the above information is courtesy of Jose Fritz. Visit his blog to read the complete entry and to hear a short audio sample of this release which includes a Jon Spencer introduction (“Hey stick around you might enjoy it.”).
When It Comes A Time was also released on the cassette compilation UHF/Channel 14. Shithaus released one cassette in 1985 and the music was used in two experimental films directed by Jon Spencer called ‘Pus: The Movie’ and ‘Ponzo’s Masterwork’. There was also a 16mm Black and White film titled ‘Shithaus’ which was released on V/A feat. Jon Spencer – Cinema Of Transgression Vol. 1.
OTHER NOTES: There is not a great deal of information known about Shithaus and pretty much everything available on the internet comes from a very limited number of sources which are as follows:
*Shithaus played a gig at AS220, Saturday September 7, 1985, gallery in Rhode Island – as220.org
*“sluggo: I remember seeing Shithaus, which was an early incarnation of Pussy Galore, play in a chicken wire-cage in this damp basement where everyone was covered in fluorescent paint”. – dragking.org
*Jim Thirlwell mentions Shithaus in an interview: “FOETUS: I totally respect Cop and I think Tod is a great songwriter. He acknowledges the fact that certain songs have a heavy Foetus influence. We’re close buddies and we collaborate. SECONDS: Did he play with you as a band-member? FOETUS: He played on a few songs on Gash, but he wasn’t in the band. No, him and Jon Spencer hooked up at Rhode Island School Of Design. Him and Jon had this band called Shithaus and then he had a band called Dig That Hole.” – foetus.org
*A message which refers to the Shithaus cassette: “ok, someone mentioned that in the early 80s in Providence some band that played in the apt. next to them was pussy galore. Most likely that was Jon’s first band Shithaus which he was in with, I believe, one of the principles in the noise rock band Cop Shoot Cop. I have the Shithaus cassette which was the soundtrack to a student film or something circa 84-85. I am not positive but I thought Pussy Galore was an idea in Providence but became a band when Julie and Jon moved to DC in like summer 1985. Where Neil lived I don’t remember. Christina, Jon’s wife, from Boss Hog lived in DC then and worked at Hagen Dasz 83/84-ish with Ian Mackaye and Henry Rollins, but I was too young to know all this at the time. They were resoundingly hated here because their lyrics were so harsh and their attitude so unlike DC. for me the thing is that people thought they were arty because they had no other frame of reference. If you were a critic who never heard the Keggs or the Green Fuzz, but you liked no wave bands, ehh… It’s like the people who talk about VU as new wave but never seem to notice the rock roots which form a lot of their songs. I don’t hear the sun ra references in people’s stuff because I don’t have that in my repetoire. – Don” – xnet2.com/bomp/searchable/0001/msg00564.html
Review : Maximum Rock And Roll / MRR #28 Sept 1985 Billing themselves as an “industrial hardcore half-breed,” I’d say they’re more on the industrial side of life. While there are some post-punk influences, the noise/mechanical factor is predominant. This is a “live” tape, and well-done if you’re into modern pain. TIM YOHANNAN
As mentioned in this recent post, I worked, for a spell, at the website of “The TODAY Show.” In a nutshell, sensibility-wise, it was really not a great fit for me. Essentially, the program and its accompanying website (for which I was a homepage editor) cater to a very specific demographic with fairly mainstream tastes. To put it very mildly, I did not and do not share a great deal of affinity for the stories, subjects and guests we regularly featured. By the same token, it was a good, steady job, paid well and I worked with some genuinely amazing people, many of whom I am still great friends with today.
That said, there was a pronounced sea change within the overall organization during my tenure there and the office culture changed somewhat radically after I’d been there a couple of years. There came a great cleaning of house and a re-org, and I started answering to other managers. In short order, the scrutiny was turned way up. I was out of my depth and a bit overwhelmed, and was basically “managed out” of the organization with a ruthless efficiency. That’s about all I’ll say about that.
As a result, 30 Rockefeller Plaza is very much not a place you’re likely to find me voluntarily hanging around, not just because I don’t work in that building anymore, but because the circumstances of my carefully orchestrated departure were fairly fraught (well, for me, anyway). In the grand scheme of things, leaving the place was the best thing that could have happened, but one generally prefers to leave on one’s own terms, which was not at all the way it went down.
So, when news broke today that Rough Trade NYC – recently unmoored from its airplane-hangar-sized original perch in Williamsburg, Brooklyn --- was relocating to … WAIT FOR IT… 30 Rockefeller Plaza (literally four flights directly beneath the roiling, orange-walled, windowless chamber of trauma that was my former office), my enthusiasm was somewhat muted. It seems like a strenuously unlikely place for a shop that caters rather specifically to indie, alternative and underground music, but hey …. what the Hell do I know?
May they have a thousand times more success than I experienced at that address.
I already expressed as much in this comparatively ancient post, but today is evidently Bono’s birthday, so here we go again.
If I’m being honest, I was a sizable U2 fan for many years and have seen them perform more times than I can count. Despite being hoary and earnest and about as subtle as a ball-peen hammer to the face, U2 – if you are of a certain age – were nigh on inescapable. While they were essentially the anti-Killing Joke, they were verily the soundtrack to my school years. Up until, say, Pop, I pretty much know all those albums back to front, bought all the singles to get the b-sides and sought out bootlegs and rare tracks from them from the far corners of the globe. I’ve seen them play at Madison Square Garden, Yankee Stadium and Giants Stadium, among other places, including Philadelphia, Las Goddamn Vegas and in the ground floor of my local Astor Place K-Mart for a botched promotional stunt.
Then, at some point, I just … stopped. I came to a point wherein I felt I had all the U2 I needed. Circa How to Dismantle All That You Can't Achtung (or whatever it was called), I just stopped following them. I still love a lot of those early records, but I’m just not a member of the U2 army anymore.
This was the first I’d ever heard from them, and despite being somewhat uncomfortably churchy, it’s still pretty damn great.
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