Flaming Pablum

Under House Arrest: The Proper Way to Listen to 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions

Despite repeatedly asserting, over the course of this blog’s ….jeezus… almost 18-year existence, that Fun House, the second album by The Stooges, released in August of 1970, is the greatest rock’n’roll album of all goddamn time (usually punctuated with a needlessly antagonistic flourish like “if you can’t appreciate the furious majesty of Fun House, you should probably start listening to Janis Ian records and collecting ornamental doilies, because you just don’t understand rock’n’roll played fucking properly!”), I have twice committed what some Stooges purists might consider abject heresy by decrying the 1999 deluxe release of Rhino Records’ sprawling, 7-CD box set, 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions.

I first got candid about it here, and then documented my tragic attempts to unsuccessfully pawn the thing here.

In a nutshell, my issue with the lavish package was that while the original album clocked in at a meaty 36 minutes and 35 seconds of pure, lean rock perfection, this Rhino collection – played from start to finish – takes 7 hours and 52 minutes to get through. More to the point, despite its unwieldy length, the Rhino Box basically only features the same 7 songs, apart from a few, brief dalliances with unfinished compositions. The majority of the box set is comprised of maddeningly multiple takes of each of the original album’s tracks. Disc Two, for example, offers 19 versions of the album’s second song, “Loose.” Those aren’t even all the versions in the box. There are still NINE more versions of “Loose” waiting for you on friggin’ Disc Three. I first heard “Loose” in 1985 and it swiftly became a contender for one of my favorite songs of all time. After trying to sit through 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions in its entirety upon foolhardily purchasing it in 1999, I practically never wanted to hear it again.

As laboriously rhapsodized in those older posts, I used to unrealistically imagine that the original Fun House was swiftly recorded with devil-may-care aplomb over the course of one heady afternoon when Iggy and the boys were fleetingly sober enough to find the “record” button, before traipsing off into the night to snort, smoke-&-drink the town dry and pillage accordingly. The Rhino box set cruelly decimated that fanciful myth, revealing the Stooges to be more meticulously nitpicky perfectionists than slovenly protopunk pirates.

With that sad realization, my copy of the box was relegated first to a high, dusty shelf in my previous apartment (to be spied at and foolishly coveted by similarly nerdy friends of mine) before, upon moving to our current apartment in 2002, my dreaded front-hall closet, to which tragic piles of ephemera from my stupid youth are sentenced, dispatched and summarily crammed into endless dormancy like a Punk Rock Guantanamo Bay.

A few years back, however, I’d been all too efficient in paying off some bills, which found my bank account suddenly leaner that I’d otherwise prefer it. To temporarily remedy this problem, I hastily figured it was as good a time as any to sell my rarely played copy of 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions, but my efforts to do so were met with blankly ignorant stares or, at best, tragically low-ball offers that didn’t even come close to half of the cost I’d originally spent on it. As such, I still possess it. It’s in the back of that closet as I type this.

So, here we are in 2023, 53 years after the original album’s release, 24 years after the Rhino box set’s release and 18 years after first posting about my disappointment with it, I fielded a very thoughtful message from one Robert Cook, who wrote….

I'm glad to have the COMPLETE FUNHOUSE SESSIONS. The thing is, no one (or very few) will enjoy listening to different takes of the same song over and over and over in sequence. The way to enjoy this set is to put it on shuffle mode in the CD carousel and let the tracks play at random...AND...limit yourself to 45 minutes to an hour for each listening session.

Or, sequence different takes of each song in the same track order as the released album, and burn each sequence onto a cd-R. Then you can listen to FUNHOUSE, Version A, or FUNHOUSE, Version C, etc., etc. whenever you have a hankering to hear FUNHOUSE. You won't be pummeled into terminal boredom and you'll be listening to different versions of FUNHOUSE each time to play it (them).

I might just have to give that a shot.

Meanwhile,.... here's "Loose."

Let Gavin Have It

I’ve invoked his name here on this blog numerous times, but back in my days as an erstwhile music journalist, I had the tremendous honor of twice interviewing Irish singer/songwriter/punk rocker Gavin Friday, former lead singer/provocateur of the Virgin Prunes turned surrealist cabaret chanteur. In later years, Gavin would branch out into film-scoring to become a respected composer in his own right. They say you should never meet your heroes, as all too often, the reality is an awkward letdown, but on both occasions, Mr. Friday was a chatty, affable and attentive conversationalist and a rivtetting raconteur, our sessions spilling way over the allotted times into meandering hours of deep, informative chat. The first time was at the sutiably atmospheric downtown loft of his then-manager, who lived on White Street in then-still-largely-ungentrified TriBeCa, the second at Sin-E, a tiny Irish bar/venue then on St. Marks Place. Once again, on both occaisions, Gavin Friday was a tirelessly amiable and engaging character.

In terms of perormance, I was able to to catch three shows of his here in New York, the fist being at CBGB on the tour for his first solo album, Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves (which I discussed here). The second was at the Bottom Line on West 4th Street at Mercer Street, wherein Gavin punctuated his set with daring leaps from stage to various table-tops with great dramatic aplomb. The third was at the Westbeth Theatre in the West Village. As of this writing, all of those venues are long gone – one’s an overpriced haberdashery, the second an antiseptic NYU facility and the third was literally bricked up and sealed away from the public like a tomb.

At this stage of the proceedings, I have grave doubts of ever interviewing the great man again, although with a new album of material allegedly in the can and ready to be set free on the world, one hopes another tour might follow.

The only reason I’m bring up Mr. Friday again is that he just did a the 100th episode of a great Irish pop-culture podcast called Let Christy Take It wherein he gamely unspools thoughts and anecdotes from each stage of his amazing journey as an artist. If you’re a fan, it’s well worth your time, and even if you’re not, Gavin Friday is a captivating storyteller.

Check it out here, and tell’em Flaming Pablum sent ya.

From TriBeCa to Argentina & Back Again: The Clics Modernos Timeline ... and Finale?

For those following the arguably very convoluted tale of the backstory of Clics Mordernos, the final installment of Iñaki Rojas’s web series, “Modern Clix Super Powers” is now online (see way below), this episode largely concentrating on the late Fran Powers, the New York City punk rocker responsible for tagging the corner of Walker Street at Cortlandt Alley (above, as captured by one Vera Isler in 1982) with his band’s graffiti.

Even typing that paragraph was complicated, but here’s a very simplified-but-still-complexly-lenghty timeline:

• At some point in the early-to-mid `80s, punk rocker Fran Powers (below) spray-paints his band’s name, Modern Clix, on the corner of Walker & Cortlandt Alley. Hey, it's the `80s….lower Manhattan is a lawless badlands. Rampant graffiti is the least of its problems.

• As some point after that, fabled street-artist Richard Hambleton, renowned for painting cryptic “shadow men” – somewhat ominous black silhouettes of human forms -- augments Fran’s tag, making it look like the shadow man is leaning against it. During this era, these figures are all over downtown.

• At some point in 1982, preeminent Argentine rocker Charly Garcia is sequestered over on Waverly Place while recording an album at nearby Electric Lady Studios on West 8th Street. He’s already got a title in mind for his forthcoming album, but during a walk around Lower Manhattan with a photographer named Uberto Sagramoso, he happens upon the corner of Walker & Cortland and spies both the Hambleton figure and the mysterious legend “Modern Clix” and has his picture taken sitting beneath.

• So taken is Charly by the resultant image of him sitting beneath this striking tableaux of New York City street art, that he scraps his original plans, and makes Sagramoso’s photograph the cover image of his new record, which he is now re-titling Clics Modernos.

• Time passes.
  
  
• Clics Modernos, Garcia’s second solo album, gradually becomes one of the most celebrated Argentine rock albums of all time.
  
  
• More time passes.
  
  
• Rabid Argentine rock fans of a certain stripe start speculating about the whereabouts of the now-iconic corner pictured on the sleeve of Clics Modernos.
  
  
• More time passes.

• In 2011, actress/photographer Brooke Smith (most renowned for her work in “The Silence of the Lambs” and several television series) posts a clutch of period-specific photographs of her time as a member of the then-burgeoning hardcore punk scene on the Lower East Side.
  
  
• Captivated by same, I post an entry about Brooke’s photos and notice a recurring face therein, that being one Fran Powers of many different bands with names, at the time, like Ultra Violence, Whole Wide World, East of Eden and – wait for it – Modern Clix, an amorphous ensemble that plays an amalgam of styles like rock, ska, reggae, funk and punk.

• From those pictures, I rightly deduce that Fran was responsible for his own brand of cryptic graffiti, that being the Modern Clix insignia of the spear-throwing figure (above) which I’d remembered seeing around Astor Place several years earlier. You can see that same figure tattooed on Fran’s bicep below.

• At some point in the mid-2010’s, I meet one Yukie Ohta, a blogger who starts The SoHo Memory Project, a loving tribute to the neighborhood of her youth. She and I frequently compare notes and share assets for our respective web-projects (even though hers is a much classier and more professional endeavor than mine) and we become friends.

• Yukie Ohta’s SoHo Memory Project really takes off, and she hosts a party at a loft space in – wait for it – SoHo, which I attend.
  
  
• On my way out of that party, I literally run right into Fran Powers (he was boarding the elevator I was exiting), but I stop him in his tracks with the excited exclamation, “Hey, YOU’RE FRAN POWERS OF MODERN CLIX!!” We start chatting about punk rock stuff and become friends.
  
  
• One night not too long after that – circa 2015 – I’m sitting down to watch “After Hours,” my favorite movie of all time, for the bajillionth time. This time, however, I notice that none other than Fran Powers himself makes an amazing cameo. I reach out to him to see if he’d be game to discuss it for a post, which he does. You can read that here.

• Richard Hambleton dies from cancer at age 65 in 2017, oblivious to the fact that his artwork graces the cover of one of the most beloved albums of Argentine rock ever (ask Wikipedia!)

• In 2019, a friend of mine sends me the link to a video by Charly Garcia of a song called “Fanky,” which was shot around Lower Manhattan. I connect the dots and realize that I have heard of Garcia and post the sleeve photo of Clics Modernos, speculating if Fran Powers was aware that Garcia had appropriated his tag for his album --which, at the time, I am unaware is of such seismic significance to the Argentine rock community.
  
  
• In 2021, a photographer named Bo G. Eriksson posts pictures he snapped in 1984 of Cortlandt Alley. I spot these on a Facebook page called Manhattan Before 1990 and immediately spy the location of Clics Modernos from the tell-tale street art. I brazenly poach Eriksson’s images (sorry, Bo) and I post these findings here on my blog.

• Back in Argentine, writer/producer Iñaki Rojas somehow sees my post and falls out of his chair with excitement. He writes a very long and detailed missive to me about it, explaining how he’d been on a quest to divine the origins of the Clics Modernos cover and how my post had solved a few riddles for him, and enabled him to reach directly out to Fran.
  
  
• In June of 2021, Fran Powers passes away after succumbing to an illness he’d been long battling.
  
  
• As you’ll see in the video below, the corner of Walker and Cortlandt Alley will be named, this coming November, as a landmark of Argentine rock history in a small ceremony. Iñaki Rojas and Fran’s window Shoei are planning to be there. I’d imagine so will Yukie Ohta, and I’m going to try to coerce some of Fran’s friends like Brooke Smith and fellow NYHC scenster and sometime bandmate RB Korbet to attend. And, yes, I’ll be there, too.

And here, once again, is the final installment (we think) of "Modern Clicks Super Powers." You'll want to turn the CC on for English subtitles....

Back to Wollman Rink

My friend Mark posted a link on Facebook, yesterday, that there are plans afoot to turn Wollman Rink — a large ice-skating rink on the southern side of Central Park that was uncomfortably saddled with associations to bag-of-human-garbage Donald Trump — into something like the world’s biggest Pickleball Court. I don’t know if you’ve been following the great Pickleball Struggle, but evidently zealous Pickleballers are at war with a nation of Manhattan parents over coveted and rarefied playground space. The Picklejocks want it for Pickleball, the parents want it for their kids. Several public spaces have actively banned Pickleball, as a result, and the Picklejocks are up in arms. Personally speaking, my kids are out of the playground stage, so I don’t really have a horse in this race, but I’m siding with the parents on this one. The people I’ve met who are into Pickleball seem a bit too precious and, well, douchey about it, and it’s called fucking “Pickleball,” which is stupid and embarrassing, as far as I’m concerned, so they can fuck right off.

In any case, this development triggered a bunch of recollections.

For a start, when I was growing up, when it came to ice-skating, we didn’t really go to Wollman Rink, but rather Lasker Rink on the upper end of the Park. I’m not sure why, though. Maybe it was cheaper? In any case, it was demolished in 2021, so don’t go looking for it.

That all said, one of my very earliest memories of being out and about with my family (quite possibly with my father, although it’s all very fuzzy, this many years later) is of being in Central Park as a very small child and going to Wollman Rink where, from the upper deck, we watched what appeared to be the filming of a television commercial — one that involved several anthropomorphic, cone-shaped chocolates frolicking around haphazardly on the ice. I have no idea why we were there — were we just passing through? — but we stopped and watched this bizarre display. The image of those poor people dressed up like giant chocolates and bumping into each other remains vivid in my memory. It sounds very silly, yes, but remember this for later in the post.

Beyond its facility as an ice-skating rink, right in the magisterial shadow of what it now referred to as Billionaire’s Row, Wollman Rink also played host to the Schaefer Music Festival from 1967 to about 1976. This series had a dizzying array of acts over the course of its run, not least by big time rock luminaries like The Who, Jethro Tull, The Kinks, The Doors, Traffic, Blue Oyster Cult, Led Zeppelin and, as I wrote about way back here, King Crimson (to name a very small few). For whatever reason, Schaefer Beer pulled out in 1976, and the cause was taken up by Dr. Pepper, who, after a year or two of hosting middle-of-the-road stuff, started staging a more forward-thinking roster of bands including some of my favorites like Blondie, Joe Jackson, The Tubes, The Ramones, Talking Heads, The B-52s, The Cars, The Pretenders and DEVO.

I’m not sure why that all stopped, but it did. The concert series decamped Central Park for Pier 84. I caught a few shows there, but I’m sad to say I never saw any of the Wollman Rink shows.

The reasons for its closure, however, probably had something to do with — according to Wikipedia — the concrete beneath Wollman Rink buckling in 1980. This prompted an expensive and protracted period of renovation that found Trump stepping in with various promises, but evidently not before most of the actual work was already done, as I understand it, but — naturally — taking all the credit for it. Regardless of his contributions to the restoration of Wollman Rink, Trump’s ties to both Wollman and Lasker Rink were severed by Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2021. So fuck you, Donald.

So, now….after all that, it’s gong to be a big Pickleball court. Again, I don’t really care, but hey …. if you’re a Pickleballer, get excited.

In any case, while writing all of this, I started searching for any verification of my distant memory of that commercial…..

…and found this….

Now, I have no way of actually knowing if this was from the same shoot my very young eyes witnessed, nor is there a wider shot of what could (or could not) be Wollman Rink, but sure enough…. here are those dancing, anthropomorphic chocolates or, more specifically, Rolos, as it turns out.

The one thing that makes me think this is the same one is at 00:18, when they suddenly cut to a beaming child brandishing a roll of Rolos … otherwise inexplicably depicted wearing a wool hat and scarf for winter weather … precisely the garb you’d wear to Wollman Rink.

Obviously, the dancing Rolos footage could very well have been captured on a soundstage, but … why would I remember it, then?

And Zoso It Goes

Yesterday, a young colleague of mine came to the office wearing a Led Zeppellin t-shirt, despite the fact that he’s – by his own admission – never voluntarily listened to Led Zeppelin in his (comparatively very brief) life. His listening habits are generally more inclined towards contemporary pop ala Taylor Swift, Doja Cat, Ariana Grande, Maren Morris and their vile ilk. His reasons for wearing the garment in question had more to do with (a) it allegedly being the “most comfortable” t-shirt he owns and (b) he knew it would piss me off. I can’t speak to (a), but (b) was certainly true.

In response, I literally wrote a ten-paragraph (before I stopped) screed about it, invoking an episode from 18 years prior wherein a former (and also significantly younger) colleague of mine at MTV News Online failed to recognize the name “John Bonham,” despite being -– and I’m not making this up -– our allegedly hyper-informed, go-to specialist for all things heavy metal.

An urgent bundle of assets I’d been waiting for all day arrived before I could finish my epic poem, and in re-reading it this morning, I felt like the moment had passed, so I shan’t be posting it here.

In its place, though, here are my top ten favorite Zep songs. Hurrumph! 

1. “When the Levee Breaks”
2. “In the Light”
3. “Kashmir”
4. “In the Evening”
5. “The Battle of Evermore”
6. “Communication Breakdown”
7. “The Song Remains the Same”
8. “Over the Hills & Far Away”
9. “How Many More Times”
10. “The Ocean”

Happy St. Patrick's Day

A Sound of Thunder

I thought this was pretty cool.

As I understand it, "Thunder" is an experimental film from 1982 made by a Japanese director named Takashi Ito. I shan't do it any semblance of justice, so here's Wikipedia's description.

Thunder features a series of photographic slides of a woman repeatedly covering and uncovering her face with her hands, projected onto the interiors of an empty office building. The images bend and distort against the interior surfaces. Additionally, a long ribbon of light is seen curling and oscillating. The effect of the ribbon of light was produced using long-exposure photography, created frame-by-frame by a person with a flashlight moving throughout the building's rooms during long single-frame exposures.

Well, an intrepid YouTuber named Artomo Sardanapale got a little experimental on his own, and decided to score those cryptic visuals with one of my favorite b-sides by my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, that being "Transmission," which appeared on the 1995 CD single for "Any Day Now." A slow-burning, dystopian narrative of paranoia with a suitably encroaching sense of dread imbued deep within its buzzing, dissonant core, "Transmission" builds to a head when drummer Phil Puleo punctuates the refrain ..."WHAT IS YOUR POSITION? REPEAT TRANSMISSION!"... with jarring strikes of a snare drum, as the ominous intonation fades into the noise. It's not exactly a peppy dance number.

Anyway, here is the spot-welding of those two disparate elements. The title of this post, meanwhile, comes poached from a great Ray Bradbury short story from 1953 about a man who travels back in time to shoot a Tyrannosaurus Rex, only to unwittingly alter the trajectory of time in the process. 

Punk Not Punk: Robyn Get Raw

Frequent Flaming Pablum favorite Robyn Hitchcock (mentioned several times in the last few weeks, notably here, here, here and here) is the most recent guest on an episode of Damian Abraham’s Turned Out a Punk podcast, and while I agree with Damian that Robyn is a sorely underpraised songwriter of the highest caliber, I’m not entirely sure he belongs on this podcast … and, clearly, neither was the great man himself.

While certainly born of Punk Rock, Robyn’s first proper band, The Soft Boys – by his own, oft-repeated admission – were not really Punk Rock by any tangible standard. Their influences were comparatively arcane and unfashionable, their hair was too long, they messed about with harmonies and melodies, and, by and large, they weren’t very aggressive (or at least not compared to, say, Sham 69 or the Stiff Little Fingers). In any case, it’s still a great episode, as Robyn’s knack for effortlessly surreal wordplay and whimsically sardonic observations (one favorite being that his native England is simply a nation of “thugs and grannies”) keep proceedings lively.

This all said, I think some of my very favorite bands of the era, and of the era just afterwards, were those that didn’t completely adhere to the rigid doctrine of Punk Rock – bands such as the Stranglers, XTC, Killing Joke … Hell, even The Police. The bands that dared the disregard the dogma.

With regards to Turned Out a Punk, though, I would say this, though: Damian’s intros to each episode need to be significantly shorter. There’s really no need to repeat the same, lengthy schpiel every time. Still, it’s a pretty consistently entertaining podcast.

Robyn’s actually playing here in New York City in a few weeks. I may or may not go, although I’m disappointed that I cannot find a way to smuggle my 17-year-old son Oliver into the gig. I’m sure he’d quite dig it. Below is the Soft Boys at the arguable height of their punkiest hour. You be the judge.

A Fighting Chance

Spotted some sad news, today, regarding the welfare of a member of New York City’s own punk royalty and one of the preeminent figure of the “No Wave” scene. Not that he’s every seemed especially well, but the legendary James Chance is having a pretty tough time of it, these days. Beyond the death of his longtime girlfriend Judy Taylor back in October of 2020, Chance’s health and circumstances seem to be in perilous decline.

Back in January, one David Siegfriend, the organizer of this GoFundMe page designed to help Chance out, gave this update…

Dear Friends and Fans of James Chance, I need to update everyone on James's current status. His health issues of severe abdominal pain and spinal stenosis have not improved. But thanks to you, the GoFundMe donors, we have been able to keep James at his apartment at The Dorothy Ross Friedman Residence for the past three years. But now I have been informed by building management that they have decided to take legal action because they want to force James to move out of there and into an assisted living facility. A Medicaid assisted living facility would be a real downgrade in living conditions and he is vehemently against having to move, but we will have to see what happens and will have to abide by whatever the court decides. I hope everyone is doing well in the new year, and if you can find it in your heart to donate again, even a small amount, it will help a lot as the funds are running quite low and we're still hoping to reach our goal. Thanks, David S

Please checkout Siegfried’s GoFundMe page and donate if you can.

My friend Miles and I actually went to see James Chance perform, a few years back, when he was promoting his 2016 album, The Flesh is Weak at Bowery Electric, but I seem to remember having to leave early, inexplicably (Too crowed? Too hot? Too late to the stage? School night? Who remembers?), so I regrettably can never say I saw the great man play.

That said, I did once spot him being interviewed, circa 2017, on the stoop of 77 White Street, the former site of the Mudd Club. See that here. 

The picture up top of James Chance in his prime, meanwhile, was taken by none other than the great Julia Gorton, a truly remarkable and prescient photographer who captured an amazing swathe of images from New York City’s thriving underground scene in the late `70s and early `80s. Her striking, black-&-white photographs of folks like Chance, Lydia Lunch, Richard Hell, Debbie Harry, Tom Verlaine, Anya Phillips and a host of other notable downtowners have recently been collected into a stately coffee-table book called “Nowhere New York: Dark, Insulting + Unmelodic Photos by Julia Gorton.” Appended with essays, quotes and testimonials from period-specific luminaries, participants and spectators, “Nowhere New York” is a truly rare glimpse into the whole “No Wave” scene that – unlike some of its comparatively esoteric and textbooky predecessors – provides an illuminating and genuinely warm angle to proceedings. Portrayed by Gorton’s lens and embellished by personal anecdotes, fabled figures once locked in starkly grainy punk rock mythology became relatable, human individuals. Gordon’s book is a captivating vista into that whole era.

Find out more about it here.

Meanwhile, here’s a taste of James Chance in his prime….

Siouxsie in The City

I’ve mentioned it here a couple of times, but I’ve been continuing to enjoy listening to “Curious Creatures,” the podcast hosted by former Slits/Banshees/Creatures drummer Budgie and Lol Tolhurst, ex of The Cure. Not only are their insights and recollections of “Life After Punk” compelling and often hilarious (“You May Think You Know The Territory … But We Drew The Map!”), but they’ve had a slew of really great guests like Miki Berenyi of Lush, Kevin Haskins of Bauhaus/Love & Rockets, James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem (who never shuts up), Juliane Regan of All About Eve, Rachel Goswell of Slowdive, Martin Atkins of Pil/Killing Joke/Ministry/Pigface and loads more. Find out more about it here. It’s well worth your time, if you’re a fan of this sorta stuff.

In any case, it regularly puts Siouxsie & The Banshees back into my brain, despite said band having largely called it quiet eons ago (although I did go see them on the bare-bones Seven Year Itch reunion tour, some centuries back, and then a solo show at the BB King Blues Bar on Times Square on the Mantaray tour in 2004, of which I honeslty remember absolutely nothing … although you can see pics of that gig here). Now divorced, Sioxsie and Budgie now live separate lives (he’s in Berlin, now, and started a family). Sioux is about to embark on her first tour (only over in Europe and the UK, so far) in decades, although she is slated to appear Stateside in May at the Goodbye Cruel World festival in California, alongside a host of her former peers like the Bunnymen, Love & Rockets, Billy Idol and several others. I am curious as to how that’ll go.

But in terms of their legacy, the music of Siouxsie & the Banshees still completely holds up, and I’ve been revisiting their catalog in depth, of late, notably singles like “Song from The Edge of the World” (which oddly never made it onto any of their LPs), their strange covers album Through the Looking Glass (which contained great treks through Sparks’ “This Town Ain’t Big Enough..” and Iggy’s “The Passenger,” but also an ill-considered rendition of Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit”) and other favorites. I’m also a big supporter of their album that came after that, Peepshow, which featured a host of great songs beyond the “big single” that was “Peek-a-Boo.”

” In any case, in the course of all this, I stumbled upon this old shot of Sioux and bass player/co-conspirator Steve Severin, and it immediately struck a familiar chord with me. While an otherwise perfectly banal photo of these two British Punk veterans, some eagle-eyed downtown New Yorkers might recognize the mural they’re standing in front of.

The pair are pictured in front of the south-facing façade of what used to be a Sloan’s supermarket on West 3rd Street between Mercer Street and Broadway in Manhattan, which featured a whimsical depiction of fake window filled with fresh produce and delectable comestibles. In later years, it looked like this

Today, that Sloan’s is long gone, and the space it occupied has been dormant and shuttered for years. After being repeatedly tagged up with graffiti, the mural was also painted over. Today, it looks like this.