Flaming Pablum

Favorite Jazz Records of a Cretinous Rock Idiot

While I pride myself with being the sort of abjectly insufferable music snob of the type people regularly avoid at cocktail parties, I’ll fully concede that I really don’t know that much about jazz. I mean, sure, I can rattle off a string of important names and their significance to various sub-genres and name-check a few canonical album titles, but in terms of genuinely understanding jazz, I’m largely still in the weeds. I have a very great friend from my college days, Jay, who — after having turned me onto seminal records by artists like the Velvet Underground, Brian Eno, King Crimson and the Stooges — tried valiantly to get me into appreciating the free jazz pyrotechnics of John Coltrane, but I never managed to take the bait. Jay would play tracks from Coltrane’s celebrated opus, A Love Supreme at Zeppelin volume, but I could never really get my head around it. I felt stupid listening to it, because I couldn’t seem to decode it.

Similarly, I had a great friend from my days interning at SPIN named Brent who shared my affinity for lots of extreme metal, but also harbored a great love of deeply skronky jazz. I’d go with him to see artists like Ronald Shannon Jackson, James “Blood” Ulmer, Sonny Sharrock and Last Exit (sort of a free jazz supergroup), but I’d be lying if I said I totally “got” it. I liked the volume and the intensity, but a lot of it still seemed kind of gratuitously noodly, to my cretinous ears.

There was some jazz I did like, though, like the album Heavy Weather by Weather Report (which I discussed here), but that was largely due to the supernatural bass hijinks of the late Jaco Pastorius, a player whose style — like Hendrix before him — completely transcended genre. I had — and continue to have — absolutely zero knowledge about Miles Davis beyond album titles and pictures of him being a perennially cool cat. I don’t know my Thelonius Monk from my Charlie Parker and I’ve sadly never been to the Blue Note, despite living a stone’s throw from it.

I’d take pains to point out that I’m not a jazz-hater at all (unless we’re talking about insipid bullshit like Pat Metheny or Kenny G — I mean, I don’t wish those people ill, but fuck that horrible, masturbatory shit). There’s clearly a vast wellspring of jazz that I suspect I’d be well into, but it’s hard to know where to start. So many of my favorite bands — from Pink Floyd to King Crimson to the Stranglers to 8 Eyed Spy to Talk Talk and many more — have been obviously influenced and informed by jazz, that there is obviously much to be discovered. There are whole genres that I’m very happy to write off and never bother exploring (I don’t expect, for example, to become enthusiastically versed in reggaeton any time soon), but I have been curious to get further into jazz, and that’s largely due to a few specific albums.

Beyond that aforementioned Heavy Weather, there are a few bona fide jazz records that I have come to own and love. In no particular order, they are as follows. My rumination on each will doubtlessly lend veracity to the exclamations above about not credibly knowing anything about the genre.

A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio - Honestly, if you need an explanation as to why I own and cherish this record, you should go seek help. Beyond it being jazz to the bone, this record — to my mind — is verily the only Christmas album anyone could ever need. The perfect blend of melody, seasonally appropriate sentimentality and nostalgia, it’s perfect from start to finish. And, …. it fuckin’ swings, baby!

Voice of Chunk by The Lounge Lizards - Regular readers might remember a series of posts wherein I invoked my interactions with Mr. Lurie. After a couple of instances in which I wrote something here on this blog that was kind of irresponsibly misinformed, he rightly wrote in and called me on it. I apologized and we maintained a correspondence, for a short while. Very kindly, he also sent me a copy of this album from 1988 that I’d long been searching for. While a genuine acolyte of jazz, Lurie applied the ethos and aesthetic of the Punk Rock of the time when he started the Lounge Lizards. This third album found Marc Ribot replacing DNA’s Arto Lindsay on guitar (he left after their debut LP), which signaled a shift away from the more skronky, avant-garde aspects towards a richly melodic and emotive listening experience. I find it absolutely extraordinary.

Blow-Up: The Original Soundtrack Album by Herbie Hancock - As arguably my second-favorite film of all time (the first, like you care, is “After Hours”), I, of course, had to have this. If I’m being honest, the big draw of this record, for me, was the recording of “Stroll On” by the Yardbirds, which is unapologetically ROCK in every goddamn way. But the rest of the album is basically all of Herbie Hancock’s sophisticated score, a mellifluous suite of jazzy instrumentals that accompanied scenes from the film wherein David Hemmings is stalking an enigmatic couple in a London park, hanging out like a louche lothario in his cool-cat studio and feverishly developing photographs to try and solve a mystery. Divorced from those cinematic associations, it’s still an amazing collection of music, even if — once again — I don’t totally comprehend it. It sounds great, though, and that's the point. 

Best of Blue Note Volume One - by Various Artists - If I’m being honest, I must confess that I have no earthly recollection of how I came to possess this disc, but it is indeed a complete keeper for the aspiring jazzbo. Featuring tracks by notables like the aforementioned John Coltrane, Art Blakey and, again, Herbie Hancock, it’s a user-friendly jazz primer, of a sort. My personal favorites -- again, like you care -- on this include “Song for My Father” by Horace Silver and “Blues Walk” by Lou Donaldson, although I couldn’t tell you one goddamn thing about either musician. Personally speaking, it’s an ideal disc to put on when we’ve got mixed company over (instances when music by favorites like, say, Killing Joke, Cop Shoot Cop and SWANS don’t really fit the bill). It’s also great to do dishes to. Sue me.

So, yeah, these are all completely great, but of the jazz records I own and like, the grandaddy of them all that lays waste to all other contenders is…

Time Out by The Dave Brubeck Quartet.

I can almost hear the jazz purists groan, roll their eyes, shake their heads and click their tongues. Expressing affinity for this particular universally beloved, iconic record is probably as boldly unconventional as declaring that you enjoy ketchup on your fries, but hear me out.

I first heard Time Out before I knew what “jazz” was. Hell, I probably heard it before I know what rock was. Like certain albums by Abba, Sergio Mendes, Simon & Garfunkel and Herb Albert, Time Out was an LP that was owned independently by my mother, my father (who divorced my mother upon the happy occasion of my birth) and my step-father. There were always multiple copies of it in our home. It was one of those records, I guess, that everyone of a certain generation felt compelled to own. As such, I have vivid recollections of staring at its sleeve, as a child, trying to make sense of the wildly abstract cover art (are they mouths and eyeballs?). The music contained therein, meanwhile, became as familiar to me as the color of the walls of our dining room. It was frequently playing. But when it was playing, I didn’t register the experimental time signatures or the groovy passages that completely swing — I just heard what I started to associate as the sound of my home.

Though technically billed as cool “West Coast” jazz, to my dim ears, the tracks on Time Out all remind me of the New York City of my childhood. It’s the sound of being sequestered in the back of a cab winding through the nocturnal byways of Manhattan in the rain. It’s the sonic equivalent of staring south on the Great Lawn of Central Park and surveying the surrounding city scape. It evokes empty street corners and the warm glow of well-appointed Park Avenue lobbies in the dark of night. It’s the soundtrack of racing through the majestic halls of Grand Central Station, trying to make it onto a departing Metro North train. I remember at one point on a snowy night in the early `90s ducking into the long-vanished Madison Pub on Madison Avenue (duh) just above East 79th Street and immediately hearing the album’s first track, “Blue Rondo a la Turk” come chiming out of the jukebox just as I was entering. It seemed like a perfect, quintessentially New York moment. Sure, most — if not all — of that is just my own fanciful association, but who cares? To me, it’s what makes that record absolutely vital.

Somewhat ironically, I only recently learned that Brubeck recorded an album five years after Time Out called Jazz Impressions of New York, so perhaps that's the one I should investigate. As a lark, a couple of years back, I picked up this compilation CD at the gift shop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (of all places) called, promisingly, New York Jazz, but when I got home and spun it, it was filled with dreadfully insipid crapola like Mel Torme and Michael Feinstein, which made me want to wrench it out of my stereo and defenestrate it at once. Don't buy music at museums. 

So, what are your favorite jazz albums …. and why?

15 Years Later: Remember The Raven

It’s long been said that you should never meet your heroes, as, more often than not, they can frequently fail to live up to your expectations. This was never the case when I was lucky enough to meet the mighty Paul Raven of Killing Joke at some point in 2000.

Though I’d been a massive fan of the bass player since first seeing the video for “Eighties” in 1984, Raven and I became chatty on The Gathering (an online community of Killing Joke fans) and he rang me up during a quick visit to NYC. In very short order, Raven put to rest any standoffish rockstar bullshit, and we became actual friends. I’d frequently come home to find his big laugh roaring out of my answering machine. His was one of the first calls I managed to field in the strange hours after September 11, 2001. He also left a giddily profane congratulatory message upon the birth of my first child. We’d get together whenever he came to town and he looked after me when I was in London.

The last time I saw him was when he was playing with Ministry at the BB King Blues Bar in the spring of 2006. We went out for dinner afterwards, and I remember him seeming a bit more tired than usual. He passed away on this day a year later and has now been strangely gone for 15 years. Lots of folks tell very comparable stories to mine, but it’s all true – despite the bluster, the reputation of alleged pugnacity and his imposing physique, he was a truly big-hearted gent.

I wish all the pictures I have of us together don’t involve being, well, drunk, but that can’t be helped.

Rest in peace, RAVEN.

Sundays on The Bowery: Back to the Matinees with Brooke Smith

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember my posts about the photographs of Brooke Smith (yes, she of “Silence of the Lambs” fame, among myriad other roles). Just in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, back in 2011, a clutch of photographs of the nascent New York hardcore scene started making the rounds on the internet (I posted about it here) and they were a remarkable encapsulation of the community, showcasing a warmth and humanity largely absent in the more established accounts of the era.

The pictures in question were captured by the teenaged Brooke Smith who, prior to becoming an actor, became ensconced in the New York punk scene from the early to mid `80s. Not only did Brooke’s photos evoke the energy and atmosphere of the venues and the rough-n’-tumble pageantry of the sartorial and tonsorial trappings of the subculture, they also presented it all as it genuinely was — essentially a congregation of similarly disenfranchised kids who found solace and sanctuary in a welcoming community that thrived well outside of the high school cliques, troubled family dynamics, mind-numbing malls and suburban doldrums they all sought refuge from. As such, even if you weren’t versed in the oeuvres of bands like Murphy’s Law, the Cro-Mags, Warzone, Agnostic Front and Bad Brains, these photographs resonated on countless other levels. Put simply, they acted as a telling glimpse of a time, a place, a neighborhood, a sensibility and a tribe that basically no longer exists.

In an weird way, Brooke Smith's photos established her celebrity beyond her career in film and television, making her something of local punk rock legend. Were that not enough, Brooke was also later the roommate of singer/songwriter Jeff Buckley, and one can’t help but suspect it was her that turned him on to the music of the Bad Brains (whom he’d go on to fleetingly cover). She addressed all of the above in a great episode of Damian Abraham’s podcast, “Turned Out a Punk,” which I wrote about last year. During the course of that conversation, she mentioned that she had it in her head to put a book together of her photographs from the period. I’m very happy report that said book is shortly to be released.

I found this out, incidentally, from the great lady herself. Either she stumbled upon one of my posts or some likely character like my friend Drew Stone might have hipped her to them, but she reached out to me, out of the proverbial blue, to see if I’d like to help spread the word and evangelize the project. Of course I said yes, and posited the notion of a quick e-mail interview. Gamely, she complied. While she quite understandably brushed aside my dumb questions about “Silence of the Lambs” (honestly, can you blame her?), she was thoughtful, candid and forthcoming in her answers. The book’s official website can now be found here, and you can pre-order the book here. Additionally, Smith will be doing a book-signing at Generation Records at 210 Thompson Street on December 3, from 6 to 8pm. 

And now, Brooke Smith now unwittingly joins the 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 and J Younger of White Zombie as being the latest installment of the Flaming Pablum Interview. Here we go….

These photos started making the round on the internet some years back, and — in certain circles — are now sort of the stuff of legend. What prompted you to finally get this book together?

It’s taken me 10 years to put the book together. I was moving 12 years ago and found a box of old photos I’d taken. A friend saw them and asked if he could show them to a curator friend of his and the next thing I knew, I had a solo show at Primary Gallery in NYC! I wanted SUNDAY MATINEE to be a love letter to those people and that world, and it took time to arrange the photographs in a way that that made sense to me.

Kind of a ridiculous question, but what kind of camera were you using to capture these shots? It sounds quaint now, what with everyone being able to capture crystalline images via their phones, but back in the day, taking sharp photographs required a capable bit of photographic hardware. What was your weapon of choice, in this capacity — and was it a drag to be carrying a camera around (especially in these particular circumstances)?

I had my mother’s old Minolta and one of the only classes I liked in high school was photography. It wasn’t that easy to carry it around with me at first but then it just became second nature. Recently I got a photo pass to shoot AF and Sick Of It All at The Roxy in LA and IT WAS SO HARD! Like you said; the low light and the fast action… It made me think of all the lost rolls of film I had back in the day because I wasn’t very good with the technical side of things, so everything was blurry.

What’s ironic is that now when I’m at concerts I feel conflicted. I see an audience full of phones shooting the show and I feel bad for the bands and the audience. It feels like the audience should be experiencing it in the moment rather than trying to capture it. But I also relate because when I love something I want to try to capture it as well.

How did you first get involved with the whole Bowery/hardcore scene? What first drew you to engage?

I was an outsider growing up in my hometown, in the suburbs of Rockland County. I didn’t relate to most of the kids I went to high school with. I had a lot of anger and felt disillusioned about the world and what I felt was ‘expected' of me. I listened to WFMU and got Maximum Rock N Roll and started going to the east village when I was 13.

All these years later I can see that one thing we all shared was that we had all experienced some kind of childhood trauma. We didn’t talk about it at the time but I find it interesting now to realize that trauma seemed to be a common denominator for all of us. We were the children of alcoholics, divorced parents, and all different types of abuse.

How receptive were your subjects? Obviously, you were taking pictures of your friends in the context of hanging out, but had you any concept, at the time, that you were genuinely capturing a time/place/scene that was something fairly special?

Well, I thought the NYHC scene was something special and you shoot what you know, right? People got used to me having a camera all the time so I think they were more relaxed about it around me.

Of the bands around, at the time, who were your favorites?

Bad Brains, Agnostic Front, Murphys Law, The Cro-Mags, The Mob, Cause For Alarm, Warzone, Underdog, Sick Of It All, Nausea, Scab, PMS…

Depending on whose accounts you read, there is a pervasive thread that suggests that, as time went on, the whole NYHC became less inclusive, especially towards female members of that community. In your experience, did you find that to be true?

Well I was pretty much fully out of the scene by the end of 1986, about a year after my younger brother died in a surfing accident. So if that happened, it was after 1986, because that wasn’t my experience at all.

Are you in touch with any of these individuals today?

Oh yeah! Some of them are still my closest friends who I never lost touch with, and others I found and reunited with more recently on social media. I still feel a deep connection to those people, and I feel like we all still have each other’s backs!

Could a community like the one you captured in these photographs happen again in New York City, in your opinion?

Well I hope that young people will always be starting their own communities. One thing that was very different back then was that we didn’t have cell phones and computers so we really had to get out and go find the action ourselves. It was also possible to live in the city and not pay a fortune for your apartment. There were squats, and rents were cheaper, etc…

For a long time I thought of New York City like it was my ex-husband who was now only into rich people!! LOL. I hated the corporatization and homogenization of everything. Times Square became like Nike-town or something. But then I saw the city change after covid. So I guess it’s always changing, and I somehow take comfort in knowing that NYC was here before me and will be here after me. One of my daughters is at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, and when I follow her on the sidewalk (she walks much faster than me, just like I walked much faster than my mom,) it’s obvious that it’s her city now. And I like that.

Do you still listen to Punk Rock?

I never stopped listening to Bad Brains, Agnostic Front and a few others. I’ve been a huge Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds fan for years. It’s always exciting when you hear music that sounds completely fresh and different. And you know who I find totally punk rock? Kendrick Lamar.

Once again, get a sneak peek at Brooke's book here. 

I Remember "Halloween"

At some point in the summer of 1981, I spent a couple of weeks visiting a former grade-school pal named Sean, whose family had decamped from the Upper East Side of Manhattan for the proverbial Big Sky Country of Bozeman, Montana. Beyond the usual amount of city-mouse-visits-country-mouse shenanigans (tear-assing around irresponsibly on so-called “all-terrain vehicles,” some rudimentary horseback-riding and almost losing my left eye during a star-crossed session of ill-considered fly-fishing), we would occasionally repair to the proper center of Bozeman for the nearest approximation of a “town” experience. During one such afternoon, we happened upon a video store that was going out of business. They were parting with all their stock, including all their wall-decor, which consisted of hundreds of movie posters. We were invited to help ourselves to whatever of that stuff was left. I zeroed in on one particular poster and was told I could have it for free, so I happily took it.

That was the poster below.

The poster in question lived in my drawer for the next couple of years until it was time for me to pack up my shit and head to college. Along with painstakingly dividing up my unwieldy record collection (leaving behind most of the more slack-jawed heavy metal selections, as detailed here), I also brought along a clutch of posters for the purposes of decorating my freshman-year dorm room. In addition to a slew of large-sized posters of predictable bands like The Clash, Black Flag, my beloved Killing Joke and ...er... Marillion (don't ask), I threw in my “Halloween” poster. Why not, right?

Once ensconced in my room —which I shared with a happy-go-lucky football player from Cleveland named Darren who didn’t share my affinity for all things angry and macabre but gamely never complained about it — I immediately started decorating. My main wall over my rarely-made bed ended up looking like this…

Were that not complicated enough, however, I hung the “Halloween” poster right over my bureau, which became pretty much the first thing anyone saw upon entering our room. 

We lived in a co-ed hall of a co-ed dorm and, given Darren’s admittedly striking physique and tirelessly convivial nature, the girls on our hall were frequently in and out of our room, and often without knocking (that’s almost another post in itself). Suffice to say, when coupled with my cynical, jittery, needlessly defensive and pointedly, well, weird demeanor, the “Halloween” poster did me absolutely zero favors. In due course, I accrued the nickname “Axe” (short for “axe murderer,” despite the fact that at no point during the film in question does Michael "The Shape" Myers brandish an axe), which proved a tenacious new moniker (to this day, certain former classmates still refer to me as such). Suffice to say, while I never renounced my love for the movie in question, the “Halloween” poster did not grace the walls of any room of mine from that point forward.

Cut to 2022 and horror films, by and large, have become way more embedded into the mainstream, and expressing a fandom for same doesn’t really brand one a freaky, antisocial weirdo in the slightest. In the same way Punk Rock no longer scares, shocks or genuinely offends anyone, appreciation for horror has been largely defanged and subsumed by popular culture.

Earlier this week, a young colleague of mine named Chris revealed that he was very excited to catch the impending final chapter (the thirteenth installment, if I’m not mistaken) of the “Halloween” saga (notice how I didn’t say “franchise”? Let’s retire that fucking term if we’re talking about cinema, goddammit). He then explained that he considered himself a massive horror fan, with the “Halloween” series being, to his mind, the pinnacle of the genre. This evening, I went spelunking in my closet and dug out my old poster, which is now as fragile as the Shroud of Turin.

Tomorrow, I’m passing it onto Chris, and given his fervor for the subject, I have little doubt that it will serve him better than it did me.

 

The Knife

It is another time, in another place.

The doorbell of our loft sounds unexpectedly and Peggy goes to answer it. It’s our then next-door neighbor Avner, holding a package. We love Avner. A big-hearted Israeli guy with an imposing height and physique to match his aforementioned heart, Avner is a tireless source of surreal wit and good cheer. We threw a party some weeks before this, and he came over to complain that we weren’t being loud enough, and then proceeded to commandeer the stereo, putting on a selection of disco classics which morph our CBGB vibe into more of a Paradise Garage aesthetic. We’re not quite sure what Avner's actual job is, but we know he pursues a fittingly bizarre sideline performing in a few West Village cabarets as “the Singing Cowboy,” …. which is extra strange, given his thick Hebrew accent. After standing silhouetted in our front door like a looming Darth Vader, Avner is welcomed into our home.

Avner proceeds to inform us that he’s taken a gig as a sort of ersatz door-to-door salesman, and asks if we will allow him to practice his pitch on us. No sooner are the words “of course” out of our mouths than Avner is busily unpacking his mystery parcel and laying out a series of strange implements and a thick coil of gnarled rope on our dining room table. His display complete, Avner launches into a clearly well-rehearsed, bright-eyed shpiel in his signature clipped English about the inarguable benefits of this new miracle product he is brandishing. Peggy and I are doing our very damnedest not to giggle as Avner delivers his detailed narrative. The product in question is a sort of wide, flat blade in a most unconventional shape, featuring a serrated edge and a curious grip. An ideal serving implement, this strange tool can act as both a versatile cutter and de facto spatula, perfect for slicing and dispensing pieces of cake, pie, lasagna and countless other dishes with ease and efficiency. By the same token, it’s also sturdy and rugged enough to cut seamlessly through the most resistant materials. With that he proceeds to demonstrate the blade’s prowess by butchering the aforementioned coil of rope into a series of bite-sized tidbits, fleetingly prompting my wife to offer them around as hors d’oeuvres. ”Rope, anyone?"

Following a few more compelling demonstrations of the blade’s myriad uses (including the fun bonus that it makes a weird little sound when you bend it against a hard surface), Avner wraps up his pitch and, figuratively, goes for the jugular. In short order, we glean that this is no practice shpiel but a genuine sales pitch, and we are expected to take the bait. Unable to resist Avner’s puckish enthusiasm, we oblige and ask how much he’s asking for the miracle knife.

“It’s a complete bargain at only $65.00”

Peg and I glance at each other, deflate slightly, and then succumb. We pony up an unthinkable 65 bucks for this single implement out of love and respect for our dear neighbor. Giddy with victory, Avner packs up his stuff and departs. We are 65 dollars poorer and now own a something that looks like the bastard child of a spork and a tool used by medieval dentists.

That was 1999.

It is now 2022, and we are STILL using Avner’s freaky knife. We no longer live in that loft, but the Avner knife came with us when we moved, and while we’ve never again used it to cut up rope, it has been employed in the preparation of countless meals and intricate dishes, from pizza to soufflé to homemade pies to every single birthday cake we’ve ever made for our children. Other kitchen curiosities have come and gone, but the Avner knife has become the only constant. I don’t even know how I’d function, let alone even begin to replace it, if it went missing.

Best $65.00 we ever spent.

Get Back in the Pit

I've got a cool post coming up that I'm most excited by, but it's not ready for prime time, just yet. Suffice to say, I'm interviewing someone pretty cool. Here's a tantalizing and pertinent teaser (although, no it's not one of Bad Brains). Get ready.

Kid Oy!

Oh Good lord. 

The once-arguably-respectable periodical that is Rolling Stone just published a strenuously dubious list of what they consider "The Best Concept Albums of All Time" (suffice to say, I have a full skeleton's amount of bones to pick with said roster), but in the process, they cite Kid A by Radiohead (which they rank at No. 14) and link to my now-ancient entry about pop-culture writer Chuck Klosterman's not-entirely-serious theory that said ominous opus predicted the events of September 11, 2001. Oh, exasperation. 

In the 17 years since I first posted that entry, it has become -- as I've alluded before -- the most-clicked piece on this silly blog, routinely cited on countless discussion boards, Radiohead fan site and in otherwise legitimate outlets like Cracked, Noisey and Pitchfork, and invited no small amount of incredulous invective from all conceivable sides of the argument. 

Under normal circumstances, I'm practically giddy for the exposure, but in this particular instance, while I'm not going to recant the post or take it down, I feel obligated to once again point that while, yes, I was initially intrigued and amused by Chuck's theory, I in absolutely no way genuinely espouse it, nor do I honestly care about it one way or the other. 

I'm sure Chuck and Radiohead alike are also quite bored with discussing it. 

Thanks.

Pour on the Schmaltz: Midnight Blue at Sammy’s Roumanian Steak House

I’ve mentioned the particular legacy of Sammy's Roumanian Steak House on the Lower East Side a few times here before, notably here, which I wrote upon the sad news of its closing in 2021. As detailed in that post, I first heard about the restaurant probably a good decade before I ever knowingly set foot in the place, and this was entirely thanks to its singular advertisement during virtually every broadcast of “Midnight Blue,” the fabled Manhattan cable-access porn program spearheaded by infamous “Screw” Magazine editor/publisher Al Goldstein that ran from the late `70s and into the mid-`90s, I believe. According to Wikipedia, it ran for almost 30 years, but can now be enjoyed on a DVD series with seven (!!!) volumes. `Cos y’know …. ya need that.

In any case, sandwiched between ads for escort services with names like “Tryst” and “Bel-Aire,” the dependably jaunty commercial for Sammy’s would routinely air on “Midnight Blue,” jarringly off-setting grainy vignettes of `70s-era porn with footage of hirsute patrons tucking into some frankly unappetizing-looking dishes, scored by what I can only imagine is some age-old Roumanian pop song as performed by the in-house entertainment at Sammy’s. If you were ever up late enough to watch “Midnight Blue” (which usually did not happen by accident), the likelihood of you viewing the commercial for Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse during proceedings was greater than the promise of a new day. I don’t know if it was Al Goldstein’s favorite restaurant (which is entirely plausible) or if they were just committed sponsors of the program, but the two ventures were inexorably linked by the partnership.

For YEARS, I’ve searched the `net for the Sammy’s commercial, but always came up empty.

… until today.

Fittingly slotted within a cavalcade of cable-access idiocy from the same era, I happened up the very commercial for Sammy’s I’ve spent the last few paragraphs discussing, and it instantly came rushing back to me. If memory serves, my grammar-school pal Robo (not his real name), who lived upstairs from me, at the time (he was on 12, I was on 7) and I once actually made up suitably prurient lyrics to the commercial’s background song, … which ought to give you a pretty firm indication of our loyal “Midnight Blue” viewing habits. I have a vivid memory of sleeping over at Robo’s apartment one night and us furtively staying up late into the evening, watching Channel J (the program’s notorious home) with the volume turned way down, so as not to wake Robo’s preternaturally oblivious parents. When the Sammy’s commercial came on, as if on cue, we both got up and started bopping around the room, applying our rude new lyrics (none of which I can remember now) and giggling like the little morons we were for the next hour and a half.

As mentioned in that earlier post, years later, I actually patronized Sammy’s a few times. On one notable occasion, David Lee Roth was dining at a nearby table. On another, specifically my friend Rob C’s bachelor party, our group somehow inspired our waitress (whose name was Meredith, if memory serves) to flip us a very emphatic bird on our way out the door. Ahhh…. good times.

Here in 2022, if you walk down Chrystie Street, you will not find Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse anymore. Covid-19 put a stop to that venture, even after they’d mounted an unthinkable refurbishment. “Midnight Blue” is no longer on Manhattan cable television. Al Goldstein passed away in 2013 from renal failure. My poor friend Robo, meanwhile, tragically passed away in the very late `90s in a car accident on his wedding night.

And now … without further ado, I proudly present to you ….. the Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse commercial.

I'm Guessing It's a Horse

When I first moved into the neighborhood in the mid-`90s, the space in question was, if memory serves, a futon emporium. At some point well prior to that, it has something to do with the American Association of Lithographers (or something like that). It may have changed hands a few times after its iteration as the futon joint, but it more recently had became a sort of do-it-yourself Italian restaurant called Vapiano, where you could go from station to station and pick out your pasta, your protein, your sauce, etc. That was novel, for a little while, but the bloom was off the rose after in pretty short order, I'm afraid to say.

I’m talking, of course, about the southeast corner of East 13th Street at University Place. Right now, the space in question seems only a breath away from opening as a garishly decorated P.F. Chang’s, a celebrated chain of Chinese restaurants that started in Arizona, of all places. As part of its impending unveiling, the restaurant appears to be about to reveal a large sculpture perched on the steps of its northernly facing entrance, as captured below by none other than the great J.G. “Foetus” Thirlwell (I respectfully swiped it from his Istagram, … and I have to say that I love the notion of Foetus walking around my neighborhood taking pictures).

It’s looking like the wrapping might come off of this sculpture any day now.

But when it does, I cannot help but think that the mammoth sculpture underneath will probably become an absolute magnet for graffiti before its first week is even done. Don’t get me wrong – I’m a huge fan of street art (and am churlishly known to have stuck up more than a few stickers in my day), but I fear the worst for this mighty steed. Shouldn’t they move him inside? Is it too late for that? Shouldn't they have considered that? 

We’ll see.

Re-Exhuming ...If I Die, I Die by the Virgin Prunes

I noticed, quite recently, that this coming November will be the 40th anniversary of the release of the first “proper” album, ...If I Die, I Die, by the Virgin Prunes, a willfully difficult-to-categorize Irish band who emerged in tandem with the markedly-less-complicated U2, back in the very late `70s. I believe I first wrote about my adoration for this album back in the neonatal stages of this blog (which I shan't link to, being that it's a phase of this endeavor which I'm still embarrassed by), which I’m cleaning-up and repurposing here….

I didn't find out about the Virgin Prunes from my usual channels. It was the summer of 1986. I was working thanklessly as a dish-washer at a crappy "gourmet eatery" out in Westhampton on Long Island, scraping burnt croissant crusts off of baking sheets and basically being a surly bastard. Most of the kitchen was a bright, airy place...apart from the dish-washing area, where myself and a couple of other lackeys wallowed in damp, airless squalor, listening to `round-the-clock airings of Black Flag and Iron Maiden (after we'd disconnected the restaurant speaker which force-fed the rear of the kitchen tireless lashings of Sade, Swing Out Sister and the soundtrack to "Annie," as discussed here). It didn't pay especially well, but it was a job.

Every summer, legions of Irish kids would seemingly flock from Dublin to Long Island to snatch up waitressing and au pair jobs, and this particular establishment quickly became a hotbed of plucky lasses with adorable accents. One such young lady was a baking server named Fiona, who lived in a suburb of Dublin called Lucan. In relatively short order, Fiona and I became friendly (and I, in turn, soon developed a bit of a crush on her...to absolutely no effect or great avail whatsoever). In any case, she kept going on and on all the time about this gent back home named Guggi who she completely fancied (even though she allegedly already had a boyfriend who played in an excellently named band called Those Handsome Devils). Guggi was this chap who evidently sang in a band called the Virgin Prunes. Unimpressed, I sniffed that I'd never heard of them. And being that Fiona was otherwise obsessed with Lloyd Cole & the Commotions, I didn't imagine they were, as they say, "much cop."

So, I'm trolling around my usual network of downtown record stores during one of my weekly trips into the city (where my other job as an apprentice to a graphic designer kept me running all around town delivering mock-ups to ungrateful cosmetic companies) and I happened to spy an album cover emblazoned with the name Virgin Prunes. But....what's this? THEY LOOK LIKE SCARY, PUNKY, SCREWED-UP, CROSS-DRESSING PYROMANIACS!!! HOW COULD THIS BE ANYTHING BUT COMPLETELY BRILLIANT!!!! Clearly, no drab, mawkish Lloyd Cole-isms were going to be found here. Fiona's stock instantly rose a few more degrees, and I snatched up a copy of ...If I Die, I Die (great title, too!) on the spot!.

Despite not being able to get my head around what Fiona could possibly have seen in Guggi (himself of presumably indeterminate sexual preference), I was instantly intrigued by this mysterious band with the funny names, obscure language and pointed disdain for convention. Certainly a bit Bauhausesque, but Bauhaus never sounded this disheveled and possessed (except for maybe on "Stigmata Martyr"). As with many of what became my favorite albums of all time, this record literally has a sound that is completely all its own … or if there's another record out there like it, I sure as hell haven't heard it.

Meandering between creepy atmospherics and pounding caterwaul, ...If I Die, I Die is a primal, tribal, nightmarish YAWP of a record, and decidedly not right for every occasion (the album was met by a dependable chorus of "what the fuck is this shit?" by every college roommate I ever had). It's a lot to swallow in one sitting if you're not in the mood, but the single-y tracks (the positively jaunty "Baby Turns Blue" and the jagged "Pagan Love Song") alone are worth wading through the disquieting stuff. There are just some great moments here, from the ghoulish shanty of "Theme for Thought" (boasting the fiendish chorus of Die-d-Die-Die-Die-Die-d-d-d-Die as crooned by a drunken ensemble of evil Leprechauns) to the serpentine guitar stomp of "Caucasian Walk.”

Nothing ever ended up happening between myself and Fiona. She left at the end of the summer to go back to Lucan (and never wrote), but I still felt I got something great out of it. Subsequent `Prunes records didn't quite pack the punch of ...If I Die, I Die (though I later found a whole new appreciation for lead singer Gavin Friday's solo work).

Here in 2022, outside of the “Elder Goth” community (good lord, did I just use that term in earnest?), people here in the States mostly haven’t a clue who the Virgin Prunes were, apart from maybe invocations of their connections to U2. For the longest time, it’s almost as if the Virgin Prunes were this great little secret -– a rarified collective who made a handful of hard-to-find and equally hard-to-fathom records and then seemingly vanished. As mentioned on this post, when Gavin launched his solo career, I was immediately onboard, although by that time, he’d ditched the more theatrically confrontational aspects of his music in favor of a more refined, cabaret approach. There were a few posthumous compilations and import re-issues, here and there (I am not-at-all-ashamed to concede that I have bought If I Die, I Die… in various formats no fewer than four times, and still have all of them) and they even re-convened for an impromptu one off in 2009 (I missed it), but for all intents and purposes, all matters concerning the Virgin Prunes as a going concern were closed.

Or so I thought.

This past June, out of the proverbial (Baby Turns..) blue (sorry), my social media feeds were suddenly filled with sounds and images from the Virgin Prunes as part of a new campaign to advertise that unlikeliest of outcomes, that being that the entirety of the band’s brief-but-unwieldy five-album discography was suddenly available for streaming on a wide array of platforms. They launched a proper website, complete with news, video, a comparatively exhaustive bio of the band (so much for their once-beguilingly impenetrable anonymity) and the inevitable merch store (you can now, for example, procure yourself an official Virgin Prunes tote bag emblazoned with their frightwigged pates and thousand-yard stares). I was initially shocked to incredulity by the manufacturing of actual Virgin Prunes “action figures” until I realized they were just an unaffiliated artist’s novel one-off.

Having taken this unexpected step into the 21st Century (given that the original line-up had disbanded prior to the wider advent of the compact disc), will this dramatically change the fortunes of the Virgin Prunes? Will a new audience of attention-deficit-disordered teens now discover the harrowing charge of “Come to Daddy” or the disquieting list of “Heaven”? I kinda doubt it, but who knows? But if they start anywhere, they should start with ...If I Die, I Die.

Here, from that aforementioned website, is an compelling breakdown of how the album came together, as recounted by Gavin Friday himself.

Enjoy…