Flaming Pablum

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.

Back to Coney Island High

I’ve written long, lengthy, heartstring-plucking entries about both The Upper Crust (most recently here) and St Marks Place (find that here) before, so please avail yourselves to those weepy epistles if you are feeling so inclined. Suffice to say, both are gone, here in 2022.

Earlier this week, I found myself back on St. Marks Place for a reason I can no longer remember. Not unlike certain other byways such as, say, Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side, West 8th Street in Greenwich Village, 21st Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues and/or the westerly regions of Spring Street in SoHo, St Marks Place is a street I have very strong associations with. Like whole nations of other people, for me, this gateway to the East Village used to be a veritable bazaar of cool, bohemian insouciance. Of course, that sounds like a fanciful pastry full-o’-crap today, but it genuinely was this super-cool destination, peppered with so many concerns that exuded its overall punky aesthetic. It was the epicenter, for a long while, of pretty much everything I was looking for from a comparatively underground pop culture that wanted nothing to do what the jocks and the preps and the beautiful kids cared about way north of 14th Street, however ridiculously clichéd that may now sound.

Here in 2022, once again, that St. Marks Place is long, long gone. Between the demolition on its northwesterly corner (still slated to host a sun-blotting corporate tower of some variety) and the proliferation of shoddily assembled and poorly maintained dining sheds, St. Marks Place is in both literal and figurative disrepair. Obviously, this problem isn’t relegated solely to St. Marks (take a stroll south on Thompson Street, some morning, and you’ll encounter a similar situation that affronts the senses), but St. Marks now seems bereft of any of its former character and relative luster. With the possible exception of concerns like Search & Destroy and maybe Funkytown, there’s nothing left for the punks among you, here. All the record and disc shops like Sounds, Mondo Kims, Venus, Free Being and Rockit Scientist are all long, long gone. Ventures that once defined the strip like DoJo and the Grassroots Tavern are similarly missing in action. St. Marks Comics moved to Industry City in Brooklyn, and Trash & Vaudeville moved deeper into the East Village. So much of what made St. Marks Place cool … or even inviting, for me … is gone. It’s a graveyard.

While waiting to hear back from a mercurial vendor, this morning, I was killing time on YouTube and stumbled upon the video below of the Upper Crust in 1998, gracing the stage of Coney Island High, a storied-albeit-comparatively-short-lived live-music venue that used to be smack dab in the middle St. Marks between Third and Second Avenues. Formerly the site that hosted the GREENDOORNYC parties (as mentioned here), the site was acquired by local punk hero Jesse Malin (more about him here and here). I was actually at this show, but Coney Island High was a frequent stop of mine, at the time. Other bands I saw on that diminutive stage include The Damned, The Dickies, Barkmarket, The Dandy Warhols, The Prissteens, DGeneration, The Dictators and Firewater, to name a small few. It was an amazing space that was closed roughly a year after this was recorded by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in his war on New York City nightlife … as if anyone needed another reason to hate that fuckin’ guy.

In any case, here’s a brief taste of what it was like…..enjoy.

At War with The Fitness Freaks: The Battle for Bond Street

Regular readers — again, if they exist — might remember a short series of entries I posted here back in 2016 wherein I attempted to divine the exact location of a short lived basement-level live-music venue called Downtown circa 1989. I remembered it as a place on Bond Street in NoHo that my beloved Killing Joke had been slated to play (going so far as having their name cited on a notice board outside its entrance). The venture actually closed before that show could take place. Other folks remembered it as place they’d seen local bands like White Zombie, the Lunachicks and the Cycle Sluts from Hell along with bigger names like Celtic Frost, Clan of Xymox, Cronos from Venom and Gang Green.

Honestly, I don’t think I ever found out much more about the place beyond pinpointing its location as the spot I’d remembered from that aborted Killing Joke gig. It was mere steps to the east of Broadway at Bond Street. here I am in front of it circa 2016.

It seems in the years since its tenure as Downtown — however fleeting that was — the space at 1 Bond Street has undergone a series of transformations, its days hosting loud rock n’ roll now but a romantic, sepia-toned notion for silver-scalped rock dads like myself. These days, it caters to a very different demographic.

As lamented here, in recent years, pretty much the entirety of the surrounding so-called “NoHo” neighborhood has become a de-facto “fitness corridor,” peppered with places like boxing-gym Rumble, David Barton, Soul Cycle, Equinox, Barry’s Boot Camp and a wide host of other workout-centric endeavors. I don’t necessarily decry the concept of physical fitness, I just don’t quite understand the necessity of such a high-volume concentration of said businesses in one single neighborhood.

True to this trend, the space at 1 Bond Street that had, once upon a time, been the rock club Downtown is now an adjunct space of a venture called Crossfit Union Square (who are technically located at the ominous location of 666 Broadway). From that lower-staircase, the clientele of same now regularly meet by the corner of Bond and Broadway, … and wait for their signal.

And when they get that signal — maybe it’s a starter’s pistol or a pertly chirped whistle or a gruff bark from a drill sergeant with a meaty neck — they run. And they run with a gravely humorless sense of determination around the circumference of the block.

The sprint sweatily and shirtlessly with rippling musculature towards Lafayette Street, at which point they turn like harried stags in flight of a hunter’s shotgun to the south and bound with breathy bravado down that stately avenue to the corner of Bleecker Street, where they turn west to lope like charging stallions back towards Broadway. Upon reaching that main artery, they course-correct like hoary steeds of glory to race north with steely focus. At Bond Street, they turn with great, dewy aplomb and complete their lap, glowing with an almost viscous radiance.

All to which I say, … “HEY, WE HAVE PARKS FOR THAT!”

I’m not sure if my handful of readers are at all familiar with the streets in question, but suffice it to say that the byways of Bond, Lafayette, Bleecker and Broadway can be handily described as “busy." Around that single block, highly trafficked businesses like Blick Art Materials, Bond No. 9, Showfields Department Store, Los Tacos No. 1, LeVain Bakery, Aape New York, Le Pain Quoditen, Wendy’s and a City MD (to name a few) all steadily operate. As such, the surrounding sidewalks are regularly teeming with foot traffic. In front of Los Tacos and LeVain alone, aspiring patrons literally line-up in anticipation of their turns. Navigating these stretches of crowded pavement even at a casual stroll can be demanding, lest you collide with an impatient muffin-consumer or taco enthusiast. Now, inject into this equation regular herds of fast-moving, self-absorbed, endorphin-addled fitness freaks and you have a roiling, organic obstacle course ready to detonate at any second.

Once again, I’m not saying anyone should necessarily refrain from working out or seeking to actualize their idealized visions of their healthiest, sexiest selves, but there’s a time and place for that shit, and the already pointedly crowded byways of lower Manhattan assuredly ain’t it.

Take it to the parks, people.

No Way Back to The Bowery

To this day, toss the word “Bowery” into a conversation with your fellow New Yorkers, and certain indelible associations will invariably spring right up. Some folks will immediately cite “bums” and derelict flophouses. Others might take a higher road and mention myriad retail light-fixture and kitchenware outlets. For myself and several like me, the first and foremost touchstone is, of course, Punk Rock, what with the Bowery formerly playing host to late, lamented CBGB, the veritable epicenter of everything that genre/subculture/movement exemplified (sorry, England). When I hear “Bowery,” that remains the first thing that comes to mind, and probably always will.

There are entirely too many seminal images to pair with this particular association, from early snaps by Roberta Bayley and David Godlis of characters like Richard Hell and the Ramones to iconic photographs of the legions of kids from the hardcore matinee days, many of those taken by photogs like Brooke Smith and Drew Carolan. For me, one of my favorites has always been the shot above by Godlis from 1978. Captured one atmospheric night long after hours, this “No Wave” all-stars team photo features iconoclastic scene-makers and band members like James Chance, Jim Sclavunos, Anya Philips, filmmaker Diego Cortez and others leaning louchely against a car outside of CBGB, whilst the incomparable enfant terrible of that scene, one Miss Lydia Lunch, is perched on the vehicle’s roof. Behind them, the forbidding expanses of Bleecker Street, Bond Street and The Bowery play host to roaming cars with impossibly bright headlights that split the night. The whole photograph just exudes such an aura of impossibly sneery cool -– insouciant punks laying claim to a desolate backwater to make their own brand of noise.

Well, that fanciful depiction was further decimated for me today upon reading, via my comrade EV Grieve, that a brand-spankin’ new J.Crew is opening up a 316 Bowery.

Back to 113 Jane

I’ve written about 113 Jane Street in the West Village here a few times, usually in relation to its former incarnation as the site of so-called Rock Hotel, which hosted a series of notable hardcore punk shows in the early-to-mid `80s, featuring bands like Samhain, Bad Brains, Kraut, the Cro-Mags, Murphy’s Law, Discharge, The Exploited and many more. But while that might be incredibly significant for rockheads like myself, it should be noted that the building has a far richer history beyond once playing host to a bunch of unruly cretins with mohawks.

Originally built in the early 1900’s, 113 Jane Street was initially designed as a residence for sailors, which makes sense, given its placement on the Hudson River. It gained greater notoriety, however, as the hotel that hosted the survivors of the Titanic who soggily arrived at the pier just across what is now the West Side Highway.

By the 1940’s, the hotel basically became a string of hospitality ventures, gradually devolving into essentially a flophouse for drunks, drug addicts and drifters. At some point in the 70’s, the downstairs ballroom was turned into a theatre space. Some years after that, a promoter named Chris Williamson started putting on punk rock shows there, morphing the space into the Rock Hotel, although by 1985, Williamson moved the Rock Hotel series over to the roomier Ritz.

Around the time the Rock Hotel was vacating the premises, a certain aspiring drag superstar was moving in, that being RuPaul. A friend and kindred spirit of maverick videographer Nelson Sullivan (whom I’ve also mentioned several times here), RuPaul gave the budding proto-vlogger a tour of his space in the top tower of the still fairly rough-&-tumble Jane Hotel. See that below…

Circa 1992, the downstairs space turned into a venue called Sweet Jane, a rather lamely obvious nod to the Velvet Underground tune of the same name. Under this guise, it hosted at least a handful of live shows, notably the New York City debut of once-promising Atlanta hip-hop collective, Arrested Development and a typically cacophonous and volatile show by the notorious Missing Foundation. Here’s a noisy little taste of the latter.

This might be purely conjecture, but given Missing Foundation’s formerly pronounced penchant for riot-incitement and wanton property damage, they very well might have been the reason Sweet Jane stopped operating. By 1998, six years later, the downstairs theatre space became the off-Broadway home of “Hedwig & the Angry Inch.”

By the dawn of the 2000’s, however, things took another turn. The hotel was refurbished in 2008 with an eye towards luxurious douchebaggery. The downstairs space was re-imagined once again and turned into “The Jane,” a club that swiftly attracted a new variant of high-volume revelers who eschewed combat boots and drag finery for Manolo Blahnicks and monogrammed billfolds. As The Jane, the venue invited a lot of scorn from affluent, post-gentrification residents who now occupied the newly-tony neighborhood. The club was later taken to task for allegedly allowing in under-age drinkers (gosh, where have I heard that before?) and not having an “assembly permit.”

To be honest, here in 2022, I wasn’t quite sure what was transpiring in that space today, but when I fielded an invite from my sister, this weekend, to come attend a celebratory get-together in honor of my nephew’s engagement to his girlfriend of three or four years, I leapt at the offer. To be clear, I would have happily gone regardless to help ring-in this very happy development, but the fact this it was transpiring in a space that sparked my curiosity made it a no-brainer. 

Imagining that the event was going to be held in the downstairs space that once played host to afore-cited names like The Exploited, Missing Foundation, Arrested Development and “Hedwig,” imagine my bemusement when were informed upon arrival that the soiree was happening “upstairs.” The wife and I boarded the elevator and ended up walking into the very same sixth-floor space that had been RuPaul’s pad as detailed in that video above.

Oh how times have changed. See pics below.

In the Lair of the Lizard: The Jesus Lizard at CBGB, August 1992

There’s been a lot of chitter-chatter, of late, about certain characters in Jordan Peele’s new horror film, “Nope,” wearing period-specific band t-shirts by less-householdy names like the Wipers, Mr. Bungle and the Jesus Lizard. Now, if you’ve spent any significant amount of time reading my silly blog, you probably know I have more than a little to say about the sporting of band t-shirts and the protocols and etiquette thereof. This all said, I haven’t seen “Nope,” nor do I have any immediate plans to, so I cannot credibly weigh in much further. Suffice to say, however, that I am strenuously skeptical that I would approve of the usage.

Never a band for the fair-weather fan or the faint of heart, here’s the mighty Jesus Lizard doing their thing on the fabled stage of CBGB during the dying embers of August 1992. At the time (and, honestly, still) I was more enamored of their pals and frequent touring companions in Cop Shoot Cop, local boys I’ve devoted far too much bandwidth to here. My friend Joanne and I would regularly debate the merits of each ensemble with a degree of fervor which suggested that fisticuffs were an entirely viable recourse to resolve the conflict. In retrospect, I’m not sure why we needed to establish which outfit was dominant — they were both equally fucking brilliant.

Regrettably, at the time this performance was captured on video, I was not in attendance (although I’m reasonably certain Cop Shoot Cop were also on the bill). In late August of 1992, I was very busily nursing a wounded, histrionic heart from being on the losing end of an office-romance breakup and invariably waging a doomed campaign, that evening, to restore what was never going to be meaningful repaired. Ah, … youth.

Flaming Pablum favorite RB Korbet exhumed this footage and put it up on Facebook this morning, and I felt compelled to share it here. With all due respect to my beloved Cop Shoot Cop, there were truly precious few bands as visceral and unpredictable as the Jesus Lizard at full throttle, and this is ample proof of that.

Maybe you were right, Joanne.

Back to The Blue Willow

I’ve been very lucky, over the years, to have found people for whom my weird little posts resonate. I’m always skeptical that some trivial factoid that I’m all hot and bothered about will actually connect with a reader that shares that particular enthusiasm, but every now and then, it happens. I’m also continually amazed that some items that I just blithely mention in passing get latched onto and widely circulated. Which stories find their audience and why are not an exact sciences, by any stretch.

In any case, this entry is something of a minuscule follow-up to one of those stories I was somewhat inexplicably all fired up about upon first posting it. Technically, all it’s really about is a room in a long-vanished restaurant where a photograph was taken, but something about the story has always continued to haunt me. Let’s see if I can capably encapsulate it.

Back in 2013, I put up a post titled “Searching for the Blue Willow.” The Blue Willow, by way of explanation was an eatery on the northeast corner of Broadway and Bleecker Street that was allegedly open between October of 1983 and some point in 1990. I never dined in that establishment, I’m sad to say, but it was notable to me in that I’d gleaned that one of its rear chambers had served as the location for the photograph that graced the cover of one of my favorite albums of all time, that being Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves by Gavin Friday and The Man Seezer. Here’s that cover now.

Cool, right?

Exuding a beguiling air of what I called “elegant decrepitude” in that first post, the sleeve of Each Man Kills… features Gavin Friday, former singer in Dublin’s macabre post-punk combo, the Virgin Prunes, leaning with louche aplomb against the piano of musical co-conspirator Maurice Seezer, depicted with his back to the viewer as he presumably plays. Beneath a stylishly distressed wall of stripped wallpaper, a nude couple embraces next to a glowing jukebox. Snapped by renowned Dutch rock photographer Anton Corbijn, the image says absolutely nothing about the era in which it was captured. It’s a mysterious picture that perfectly matches the sound, sentiment and sensibility of the album it sheathes. You’d never know that, at the time this photo was taken, the pop charts were caked with idiotic offal like “I’m Too Sexy” by Right Said Fred and “Gonna Make You Sweat” by C+C Music Factory, but I digress.

I have no idea whose idea it was to shoot the cover and accompanying promo images and single sleeves in the Blue Willow, but I can only imagine Gavin had happened upon it and been enchanted by its noirish, old-world atmosphere. Or maybe it was just a lucky fluke. Regardless, when I learned the name and the location of the restaurant (regrettably over a decade and a half after it closed its doors), I was immediately compelled, as detailed in that first post, to check out what was in that space in 2013.

At the time, of course, it was a douchey menswear emporium called Atrium who leant out its rear space — the very chamber where the the sleeve of Each Man Kills… was taken — to a pricey sneaker concern called, inexplicably, KITH. As you’ll see back on that first post, only traces of the original details of Corbijn’s cover could still be seen, notably the flooring and some of the marble trim that was depicted in some of the other photos from the shoot.

A couple of years after that, I posted a quick follow up to report that even those remaining elements were, by that point, covered up.

That was pretty much that. I remember posting the original piece on a discussion board about Gavin Friday and the Virgin Prunes. Already converted to the cause, so to speak, that community was duly intrigued and appreciative, but the layperson probably doesn’t care too much. But I remained so intrigued by the Blue Willow and always wanted to see more.

The only problem was…. there wasn’t much out there about it. I forget where I’d found it, but I did have an image of a matchbook from the place, as well as a fleeting mention of the eatery taken from a 1984 article in the Times about its then-slow-gentrifying neighborhood. Here’s the crucial mention from that piece.

'Back then, Lower Broadway was a bankrupt neighborhood with bums lying around in doorways,'' said Martin Fine. Mr Fine, a lawyer, owns the four-month-old Blue Willow restaurant at 644 Broadway at the corner of Bleecker Street. All the food in his restaurant is cooked without salt. Mr. Fine also owns the building it occupies, a former bank with handsome moldings and chandeliers. ''A few of us bought buildings here because we knew that someday the area would be hot,'' Mr. Fine said.

Where is Martin Fine today, one wonders.

In any case, beyond the images on and associated with Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves and that matchbook, I had no other visual ephemera to pair with the place.

Until today.

For no readily apparent reason, I was doing some random Googling, as I’m wont to do, and thoughtlessly entered the words “Blue Willow” and “Bleecker.” While the same images I’d posted on my blog about the Gavin Friday album came right up, a link to the Poster Museum also came up with a “vintage poster” of the place that practically blew a new part in my hair. Here’s the prefacing text.

"644 Broadway Corner Bleecker Street. New York, New York. Open Late."

Original vintage poster for a Chinese restaurant, the Blue Willow. The poster illustration features a bustling dining room, a waitress incoming with a majestic peacock on a platter—not to be eaten, I hope!

Artist: Kristen Johnson

Year: c. 1975

Condition: Fair, please note some small tears along the poster's perimeter. The appearance of tears can be significantly improved by having the poster linen-backed.

Here’s the image now….

Anyone notice the discrepancy?

Clearly, this is the very same Blue Willow, given the correlating address, but the Poster Museum believes this artifact dates back “circa 1975,” when, by the fleeting accounts I’ve tracked down, including the afore-cited New York Times piece, the restaurant didn’t open until 1983.

Like I said, this probably means so much less to most folks than it means to me, but the fact that since 2013, I’ve been able to discern that the Blue Willow boasted a kind of Belle Epoque vibe, served Chinese food and prepared its fare without any salt helps complete the picture.

Here in 2022, I can report that Atrium has since closed and vacated the premises at 644 Broadway. Noxious footwear concern KITH, meanwhile, decamped and moved a block to the east, taking over the old “Peace Pentagon” building that used to house Paper Tiger TV and Marty’s Cool Stuff.

Gavin Friday went onto release on a few more truly excellent albums before focussing predominantly on soundtrack work. His last proper solo album was 2011’s Catholic.

That ground-floor space at 644 has now been vacant, dormant and covered up since well prior to the pandemic. I am unrealistically hoping that whatever venture next occupies that space sees fit to restore some of the hidden trappings first captured on the sleeve of Each Man Kills…, but with my luck, its next iteration will be a AT&T cell phone outlet.

Some sonic context...

"If You Miss This, You're Not Cool!"

Earlier this summer, iconic Teutonic electronic combo, Kraftwerk, brought their signature robotic schtick to Radio City Music Hall (in 3D, no less) for an evening of crystaline meccanik reverie. Sadly, I was not able to attend. More to the tragic point, I’ve never witnessed Kraftwerk live (although I’ve scribbled about them here several times, notably here, here and more recently here). I love their records, but the opportunities to see them perform are usually rare, exclusive and often expensive. C’est la guerre, I suppose.

Time was, however, when the band was less of a revered institution and more of an ascendent anomaly. As such, when the Deutscher droids came to New York City in 1981, they played a now-legendary show at the Ritz on East 11th Street (now Webster Hall). I was actually already aware of the band, by this point (having picked up a copy of Computer World on the strength of covertly hearing Man-Machine courtesy of the record collection of the enimatic teenage daughter of a friend of my mother’s, as recounted here), but I was still only 14 years old, at the time, and not able to attend. True to the tagline on the ad below, I missed the show and was summarily less-the-cooler for it. 

I love that tickets for it were available at Fiorucci. Below the ad is the recoding of said gig. The photo above, meanwhile, also comes from that Ritz show, catpured by Laura Levine.

Enjoy!

Back Again to Wetlands Preserve in TriBeCa

Alright, I know I said I was going on vacation, but I technically don’t leave until tomorrow, so thought I’d squeeze in one more.

I’ve spoken about Wetlands Preserve, the long-gone TriBeCa live-music venue that operated between 1989 and 2001, a few times here before, notably here, here and most recently here. I pretty much expressed as much in all of those earlier posts, but it was kind of an extraordinary place. Yes, of course, it was the heroically unlikely flashpoint for a music scene giddily out-of-step with the times when it launched the careers of names like Blues Traveler, the Spin Doctors, Phish, the Dave Matthews Band, Joan Osborne, Widespread Panic and a host of other neo-hippy/jam bands, but there was so much more to the place than that. I mean, personally speaking, I fucking hated that kind of stuff, at the time, yet still counted myself as something of a Wetlands regular, because their booking policy was so all-inclusive. I mean, sure … on one night you’d get nothing but stoner-friendly fare like Grateful Dead cover bands and easy-skanking reggae outfits, but you were just as likely to experience an evening of splenetic hardcore or stentorian metal the next night. I mean, friggin’ Manowar even played Wetlands, at one point.

Anyway, despite it being this great club with an endearingly oddball vibe and a pointedly relaxed posture about the imbibement of alternative stimulants (especially downstairs in its lower, opium-den like chambers), Wetlands was forced to close up shop in the wake of the passing of its founder, Larry Bloch. For more on that, there’s a great documentary from the Sundance Channel that came out in 2008 that’s worth seeking out.

After the venue close, the building which housed the space underwent a major renovation and turned into (yet another) pricey condo, which was certainly in keeping with the economic trajectory of TriBeCa, at the time.

The first venture I remember opening up shop in the old Wetlands space was, I believe, a bespoke bedding and furniture emporium, of some kind. I never walked inside it. That concern closed up in fairly short order, and the space that had seen so much vibrant activity throughout the `90s became a largely dormant storage facility of a sort.

It’s been that way pretty much ever since.

At the tail end of 2015, I landed the job I currently hold basically down where TriBeCa abuts the Financial District. I was suddenly finding myself walking through TriBeCa on a daily basis, frequently passing the once-iconic corner of Laight & Hudson, where Wetlands was perched. I pretty much always glance in its direction upon walking by, never expecting to notice anything new or different. This morning, however, it looked as though a lot of the view-blocking detritus had been cleared away from the windows that now line the exterior of the façade. As such, I climbed up the ramp and peered inside.

It’s very hard to reconcile that it’s the same room, but below is that old Wetlands space in 2022. The intimate stage, such as it was, was in the back on the right-hand side. On the nearer right-hand side was where the “Eco-Lounge” was, along with the fabled VW van. The main bar was on the left-hand side.

Bands I saw perform in this room include: The Royal Crescent Mob, Rise Robots Rise, Life in a Blender, fIREHOSE, Monster Magnet, the Supersuckers, Living Colour, Space Hog, Dread Zeppelin, the Scofflaws, Mephiskapheles, Fishbone, The Machine, Echobelly, Mansun, Second Step, Last Exit, Life of Agony, King Missile, Motherhead Bug, Agnostic Front, Murphy’s Law, the Lunachicks, the Toasters, the Meat Puppets, Ari Up of The Slits and The Damage Manual (these last two were the final show I saw there in October of 2000.

 

Succumbing to Wet Leg

I am frequently heard to complain about how, evidently, all the good band names are taken – resulting in a veritable avalanche of indefensibly stupid band names like Dry Cleaning, Soccer Mommy, Mannequin Pussy, Car Seat Headrest, Laundry Day, Japanese Breakfast, etc. etc. My reaction to this has pretty much always been that if you can’t be bothered to think of a decent band name, you needn’t worry about me every giving a fuck about your music.

But, as has been well established elsewhere on this blog, I am a filthy hypocrite.

Back when the earth was young, I had a co-worker named Drew who shared a similar affinity for loud, obnoxious music. He was raving, at the time, about this band he liked called Pissed Jeans. As expressed above, I had zero interest, as I found their name to be idiotic and distasteful (and this coming from a guy who actively espouses bands like the Circle Jerks, the Butthole Surfers, the Revolting Cocks, etc.) In any case, Drew would not let up on his championing of Pissed Jeans, continually asserting that I was really missing out on a good thing. As if on cue, Pissed Jeans rolled into town and played at since-vanished music venue Cakeshop on Ludlow Street. Very begrudgingly, I went at Drew’s behest to check them out, churlishly expecting to be underwhelmed.

And, of course, they were fucking brilliant, as discussed here. Not only were they precisely a variant of slovenly, pugnacious rock that I happen to adore, once I saw them perform and heard their music, their “stupid and distasteful” name made completely PERFECT sense. They SOUNDED exactly like the state of being wherein urinating in one’s own jeans is par for the course. Mind changed and summarily blown.

Cut to 2022 and suddenly there’s a hotly touted band making the rounds called Wet Leg. My immediate reaction is a disinterested “fuck you” in very much the same manner I wrote off Pissed Jeans. If “Wet Leg” is honestly the best thing they can come up with, why should I be arsed to listen to what is inevitably a puddle of anemic sonic piffle, right?

Once again, however, I stand corrected.

For relatively no good reason, I clicked “play” on the video below, captured at last week’s Glastonbury festival in merry olde England, and was quickly totally engaged. It was embedded in a roundup in Vulture. I’m not sure what I was expecting, but when they kick into that guitar riff at 01:12, I was completely onboard. The fact that there are two zealous guys in the audience dressed like lobsters had nothing to do with it, I assure you.

This is a more amped-up performance than captured on the studio version, but I’m still really digging it. It is my recent understanding that the band chose their admittedly dumb name to take the pressure off them -– which is pretty much the same reason why one of my favorite-ever bands, Echo & the Bunnymen, chose theirs. Once again, I am revealed to be prematurely closed-minded and a filthy hypocrite.

Sorry, Wet Leg … please forgive me.