The Damned first played New York City’s CBGB in 1977, the first British Punk band to do so (along with having been the first British Punk band to issue any vinyl). During that maiden voyage, the band were famously captured by erstwhile CBGB door-minder/photographer Roberta Bayley in the photo above, posing with great, snotty aplomb in front of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The band ended up playing four April nights at CBGB, sharing the bill with their Buckeye counterparts in the Dead Boys. Here’s a shot of them during one of those doubtlessly volatile evenings, this one taken by Ebet Roberts.
Today, meanwhile, in trawling around the `net, looking for nothing in particular, I came across this uncredited photo from the same era. I’m making some assumptions here but based on the line-up (with guitarist Brian James still in the ranks), I’m guessing this was snapped during that same span of April days. I have no idea who took it, but my question is – where in Manhattan was this photograph snapped?
I’d say the awning behind Dave Vanian on the left is a big clue, as are the terraced apartments behind Captain Sensible’s head. I have a hunch which I’m going to investigate, but where do YOU think it was taken?
The Damned are coming back to New York City (with original drummer Rat Scabies with them, this time) this May, but the next day is my son’s graduation, so I don’t think we’ll be going. We did just see them in October, anyway.
When it comes to what sort of content resonates with readers, here, I’m afraid I’m probably the last person you should ask. All too often, I’ll agonize over a certain entry and post it, only to be greeted with a chorus of crickets. Other times, I’ll slap something up as a lark, and get engulfed in feverish clicks (well, maybe not feverish clicks, but clicks all the same). Why some posts hit their mark more than others completely eludes me. I’m just thankful when it happens.
In any case, as we begin the perilous slide into the gaping jaws of 2025, I thought I’d take a quick moment to look back at some of my personal favorites from the past twelve months. Some got a lot of attention, and some of them simply died on the vine, so to speak. Here are the one I’m most proud of, for whatever that’s worth.
Back in 2016, I posted an inordinate amount of entries detailing my frankly ridiculous search for the location of a photo of the Lunachicks, which culminated here, should you care. The photo above of the band above was not the photo in question, but taken from the same shoot. This shows the Lunachicks on the Bowery at Bond Street, just steps away from the former site of CBGB, and was snapped by one Joe Dilworth in 1990.
The charts may not be chock full of actual rock bands, anymore — their place taken by poorly-enuciating hip-hoppers and tempestuous pop twits — but flip on the streaming service of your choice, and you can avail yourselves to any number of hoary rockumentaries from all over the rock spectrum. In doing so, you're bound to hear lots or purple-prosed hyperbole and/or wildly exaggerated anecdotes about the band’s antics from a previous, more hedonistic age (and probably a soundbite or two from Dave Grohl), but lemme tell ya – the Lunachicks ain’t stretching the truth, in this trailer below.
Being a fellow native New Yorker, I had the immense privilege of seeing The Lunachicks perform many times, back in the `90s, but the show that …er… “sticks out” the most (this is an awkward turn of phrase, given the anecdote I’m about to unspool) was their opening slot circa 1990 for the Rollins Band at the Marquee Club on West 21st street in Manhattan. ADDENDUM:I just learned, via the Instagram page of Michael Wingerm, that this particular show was 34 years ago TODAY!!!!
In the trailer below, you’ll hear bassist Sydney “Squid” Silver mention a host of indignities the band had to weather during their dues-paying years, and I caught some of that firsthand, that night. Already a curious anomaly for the times (even at the dawn of the pre-Riot Grrl `90s, the notion of an all-female punk/hardcore/grunge/noise/metal/scrumrock band was still largely diminished as something of a lesser novelty), the Lunachicks usually had to do way more than simply “win over” a blithely disinterested audience that was otherwise there to see the headliner. They had to leave an indelible impression, which they usually did. Later that evening, in fact, Henry Rollins would endearingly thank the Lunachicks for allowing the Rollins Band to “to close for them.” Rarely did anyone walk away from a Lunachicks show feeling indifferent.
But in the middle of the Lunachicks’ own rollicking, high-voltage performance, that night, there was a bit of a commotion in the crowd (and not just the usual pit scuffle). The band even stopped mid-song to get involved. I was standing over on the right, and only saw what looked like a wolfpack of skinheads suddenly close in on someone and beat him senseless. The guy was pulled out of the scrum ... strangely with his pants around his ankles, and roughly frog-marched/dragged out of the venue and tossed onto the unrelenting concrete of the sidewalk. It was quite a scene.
From the stage, one of the Lunachicks called out thanks to the skins. As it turned out, the recipient of that rigorous beat-down was none other than one Dino Sex, erstwhile naked drummer for GG Allin's band, The Murder Junkies. As detailed in disquieting minutia in Todd Phillips’ excellent-if-repulsive documentary, “Hated: GG Allin & The Murder Junkies,” Dino could charitably be described as being not quite right in the head and was deeply obsessed with the Lunachicks. Dino had shown up at the Marquee that evening and was so caught up in the erotic rapture from watching the mightly Lunachicks play that he felt obliged to drop trou and commence masturbating right in front of them. Neither the band nor the skinheads in the crowd were especially enthused about this display and -- as they were wont to do – the skinheads responded accordingly.
While bloodied upon his forced exit from the Marquee, Dino did survive the experience more or less intact. The last time I saw him was years ago. By this point, he had taken up a side-hustle as a bike messenger. Calling it a “side-hustle” is actually kind of generous, being that playing drums for the Murder Junkies — naked or otherwise — probably wasn’t the most lucrative of vocations. In any case, Dino had taken to dying his hair — both on his scalp and his now bushy handlebar mustache — jarring shades of flaming orange and neon green, making him fairly hard to miss.
I went on to see the Lunachicks quite a few times after that, and — again — it was never just another gig. I don’t believe they ever got their proper due, but I’m super psyched they’re finally getting recognized with this doc.
There’s a bit of a fatigued adage designed to make those of us rocketing through our middle-age years feel a little bit better around our encroaching decrepitude, and that is “I May Be Old, But I Got to See All the Cool Bands.” I may not express that in so few words (I tend to go the windier route), but I’ve certainly belabored that exact sentiment.
So, I’m sitting around, last night, with some old grade school pals, and discussion turns to that very subject. Back in the posh confines of our Upper East Side school, St. Davids, there was a specific coterie of what I considered preternaturally informed classmates who were always at least two steps ahead. These guys were listening to The Ramones and the Dead Boys while I was still wasting time with Kiss and Boston. By the time I’d caught up and gave up arena rock for Devo and the Sex Pistols, they were already digging into Black Flag and Bad Brains. I’ve mentioned some of these guys before, but I'm talking about guys like John C., Rich K., Zachary T., Chris H. and Brad O. (some of whom recently immortalized here), and while they’d laugh about it today, their counsel was both informative and invaluable.
In any case, we’re there last night, and talk turns to a particularly tumultuous gig at CBGB by Washington D.C.’s own Minor Threat in 1982. I spoke about that show here. I wasn’t at that gig, as I was probably safely sequestered back uptown playing “Pitfall” on my Atari 2600. Brad and John, however, allegedly were. I’m not going to say I was incredulous at this claim, but it’s a bit like saying you saw the Beatles at the Cavern Club.
But then John showed us the picture.
As presumably captured by maverick photographer Glen E. Friedman (my former neighbor), here’s my friend Brad … his face obscured by Ian MacKaye’s microphone wire.
Fucking TOP THAT!I can’t.
ADDENDUM:
So, in the wake of this revelation, I went back to that post I linked to from 2021. As mentioned, there, photographer Glen E. Friedman used to be my neighbor and, at one recent point, he'd decided to publish some never-before-seen pics from the early `80s, and shared some photos with me from that 1982 Minor Threat gig (again, the one I wasn't at). I started to look at this pics again, and was again blown away, specifically by this pic.
Armed with the knowledge that my friends were in attendance for that show, I spotted my friend Brad AGAIN in the throng. That's him far-left in the Necros t-shirt.
As a side note, my allusion to "Pitfall" was initially hastily apocryphal, but I looked it up and the game was indeed introduced (by ActiVision for the Atari) in 1982, so there is a MORE THAN tragically LIKELYchance I was indeed at home playing this stupid game rather than getting the wind knocked out of me while slamming around to the melodious strains of "I Don't Wanna Hear It," "Bottled Violence" and/or "Small Man, Big Mouth."
Cruelly, even in proper punk rock circles, the Jim Carroll Band seem relegated to “one-hit-wonder” status. And while, yes, that one “hit” – the ecstatic “People Who Died” – is a stone-cold classic by every concievble standard (unless you talk to my brother-in-law), it’s true that the JCB never really meaningfully bothered “the charts” (it made it to No. 103 on Billboard’s “Bubbling Under Hot 100 chart … for whatever that’s worth) a second time. The public can be fickle.
Of course, music was really never more than a dalliance for Jim Carroll, whose primary passion was as a writer and a poet, having penned “The Basketball Diaries,” a gripping memoir about growing up in New York City amidst drugs and prostitution, when he was still in his teens. I believe he was lured into rock’n’roll via his friendship with folks like Patti Smith, Keith Richards and the Max’s Kansas City crew, but I’m ultimately just projecting. He always seemed more comfortable behind the pen than the mic stand.
Regardless, Carroll formed a band, signed with Atlantic Records and released three LPs of music, the first being Catholic Boy in 1980, which featured the classic “People Who Died” as well as equally incendiary (if lesser celebrated) songs like “Three Sisters,” “It’s Too Late” and the title track. As a taste of the era, Catholic Boy is required reading, so to speak.
The JCB’s other two records, meanwhile, seem to be rarely discussed. 1982’s Dry Dreams (and how’s that for a title?) didn’t produce any comparably notable numbers -- although I still quite dig “Lorraine.” Those expecting another grim novelty number (although “People Who Died” was so much more than that) didn’t get it.
When I Write Your Name followed in 1983, the world seemed to have moved on. Even the inclusion of a cover of “Sweet Jane” by the Velvet Underground failed to move the needle (although Lenny Kaye and Lou Reed made a nice cameos in the video for same). In the wake of that record, while Jim Caroll would continue to write and even record, his days fronting a band were over.
I never got to see the Jim Carroll Band perform, but I did go to a couple of readings by the great man before he sadly passed away in 2009. “People Who Died” continues to inspire, finding placment in countless films, and getting covered by everyone from my friend’s band The Cryer Brothers to the Hollywood Vampires (the less said about that, the better). Suffice to say, you’re best off sticking with the original.
As mentioned in some earlier, ancient post, I first heard the Jim Carroll Band back in grade school via the preternaturally hippper taste of my classmate Zach. I dutifully ran out and bought myself a copy of Catholic Boy, and the whole album swiftly becme a favorite. That said, it was years before I bothered to snap up Dry Dreams and I Write Your Name to get the whole picture.
More recently, however, a lost studio track of the band’s surfaced. As recounted here, the studio rendition of “Tension” was prized out of the closet of some dude named Earl McGrath, and it’s genuinely revelatory slice of the Jim Carroll Band at the peak of their powers. I believe the track was later re-arranged/re-written as the track “Voices” that appeared on the final LP, I Write Your Name, but I am uncertain of the chronology.
You can here the studio versioh of “Tension” here, but some time ago, a former founding member of the Jim Carroll Band put up this live clip from their final ever appearnace. This is what bassist Steve Linsley said about this…
I am a founding member & the bass player. This is The Jim Carroll Band, playing the last gig, ever. This is the original band, with founding members. Brian Linsley, Terrell Winn, Wayne Woods, Stevie Linsley, and Jim Carroll. This final gig followed the final tour of what was the second incarnation of the Jim Carroll Band with Stevie and Wayne still on bass and drums and Lenny Kaye and Paul Sanchez on Guitars. Anyone else claiming to be a Jim Carroll Band member is fucking looking to open a can of asswhoop!
Someone on the Lower East Side: Back in the Days page posted an amazing shot by Dutch photographer Teun Voeten, over the weekend, that I wanted to share here.
This is the southwest corner of St. Marks Place at Second Avenue circa 1987. From about 1957 – although I’ve read that the business itself well predates that year – that corner was occupied by Gem Spa, a newspaper stand and candy store renowned as a neighborhood fixture. Its signature Egg Creams were touted as the best in the city (I cannot speak with any authority about that, but they were damn good), and it was famously immortalized in an iconic photograph of the New York Dolls by Toshi Matsuo (and later recreated by Roberta Bayley). I spoke about those elements back here.
The photo above was taken about fifteen years after that and features the same row of beat-up phone booths that Matsuo had the Dolls pose with. What struck me first about Voeten’s photo were the Rock Hotel flyers on the right, advertising a particular gig in December of 1987 featuring the Dead Boys, Kix, Circus of Power and a band called Hilfiger, which was a combo put together by guitarist Andy Hilfiger -- clothier Tommy Hilfiger’s little brother -- after the dissolution of the short-lived band King Flux, which featured Richie Stotts of the Plasmatics and Marky Ramone of – wait for it – The Ramones.
I was actually at that gig – which I wrote about here -- and still have that very flyer to this day. Here it was in my sorely under-utilized kitchen on East 12th Street back in the mid-`90s.
My memories of the show in 1987 are fleeting. I was home for Christmas break during my junior year of college. It was one of the Dead Boys’ annual reunion shows, albeit one of the final ones. I remember Kix – kind of a hackneyed hair-metal band who I wrote about here – being better than I’d expected. I sadly have no recollection about Hilfiger (sorry, Andy), but do vividly remember Circus of Power (who I wrote about here). Circus of Power always seemed like they should have been a bigger deal, but they were always kind of entirely out of step with the other New York City bands, at the time. Moreover, if I'm not mistaken, the guy in this photograph in the shades, backwards cap, black leather jacket and Ramones shirt looks like the incongruously named Gary Sunshine, guitarist for Circus of Power, although I can't be sure.
The other thing that caught my eye was an invocation to one of my late friend Fran Powers’ bands, Whole Wide World, which you can see on the top right, just above the trio of Rock Hotel flyers.
Gem Spa closed in 2020. The space that Gem Spa formerly occupied is now a coffee shop called Poetica Coffee. The Dead Boys had already broken up, but the death of Stiv Bator in 1990 put a definitive stop to their annual reunion shows. Kix only broke up as recently as last year. Circus of Power technically broke up for a first time in 1995 but reformed in 2014 and are conceivably still at it. Whole Wide World was just one of Fran Powers’ many bands. They independently self-released an LP in 1987 (the same year as this photograph), and it contained a cover of The Nazz’s classic “Open My Eyes.” While he’d long since moved on to other projects beyond Whole Wide World, Fran Powers passed away in 2021.
According to some colleagues of mine, today is Band T-Shirt Day. The official (?) website attests that "Band Shirt Day is a global fundraising initiative, where artists come together for a single day to sell merchandise on their official sales channels and donate proceeds to charitable organizations of their choice.”
Regardless, at my office, the folks that program content for the company’s intranet portal were soliciting pics of team members sporting their favorites. Being that I have pretty much a full-blown addiction to accruing band t-shirts, I was game to participate. Here’s what I submitted...
“I have what any normal person would consider a stupid amount of band t-shirts, but I can’t seem to bring myself to part with any of them. This one is among my very favorites. It’s Dread Zeppelin. Ostensibly, Dread Zeppelin was a reggae band that played Led Zeppelin covers with an Elvis impersonator as a lead singer. If that sounds ridiculous, that’s because it was. Suffice to say, they were a tremendously entertaining live band. I got this shirt at a tour stop in 1990 at long-since-vanished Wetlands Preserve, not too far away from our office. To this day, this shirt continues to confuse and upset Zeppelin purists … which makes it priceless, to my mind.”
I partially went with Dread Zeppelin not just because I genuinely love the shirt, but because I can only bang the gong so much about my allegieance to certain specific bands like Killing Joke before I lapse into self-parody. Funnily enough, my company’s recently-hired new Chief Financial Officer submitted a pic of himself sporting a Killing Joke shirt, which pretty much knocked me right off the porch. I’ll be discussing that with him soon, although I have to meet him first.
I also love the irony of our CFO rocking a t-shirt emblazoned with the cover of the album that spawned the single “Money Is Not Our God.”
Anyway, Happy Band T-Shirt Day to all that celebrate. To see more of my stupid pile of t-shirts, click here.
While I do not know them personally, James & Karla Murray are renowned in the amorphous community of NYC-centric bloggers, vloggers, photographers, nostalgists and digital storytellers of which I am also a member. Over the 19 (jeezus!) years I’ve been “keeping” this silly blog, I’ve doubtlessly mentioned their name, evangelized their work and re-purposed their striking images countless times.
James & Karla's lovingly composed photographs of New York City corner shops, bistros, pizzerias, record stores, taverns and mom’n’pop concerns of all stripes have become a crucial part of the documentation of our ever-(d)evolving city, and their magisterial books like “Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York,” “New York Nights,” and “Broken Windows: Graffiti NYC” make any coffee table they are placed on that much goddamn cooler. I’ve frequently spied them out and about — Karla’s signature shock of punky, bleach-blonde hair is hard to miss. On the occasions in which I’ve accosted them (“hey, it’s James & Karla!”), they seem to be in a constant state of buoyant, infectious joy. They clearly live their entwined lives like one long, curious adventure, and are insatiable in their quest to see, go, do, experience, capture and create. I find them quite inspiring, in that way.
Imagine my own joy, then, when I was contacted out of the proverbial blue by a publicist representing a new project for Prestel Publishing, that being the forthcoming book by James & Karla titled “Great Bars of New York City.” I relayed an enthusiastic “yes” to the publicist before I’d even finished reading the pitch.
Beyond my tireless affinity for waxing rhapsodic about the New York City of my growingly distant youth and/or my favorite willfully obnoxious, listener-hostile music, I am somewhat sheepishly notorious for my penchant for putting away many a pint of beer, and I quite relish doing so in any number of establishments — from the endearingly seedy to the stuffily stately — across the five boroughs (yes, dear readers, I have consumed beers on Staten Island). “Great Bars of New York City” speaks directly to that ….uhh…. unquenchable thirst with 239 pages of James & Karla’s brilliant photographs, augmented with text by food & culture scribe, Dan Q. Dao. The pictures are crisp, colorful and packed with nuanced detail, matched by Dao’s meticulous historical research and illustrative prose. It’s entirely splendid. If you harbor any of the same predilections as myself, you will not be able to put this book down, as I haven’t.
I think the first time I ever saw Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” -- the 1983 “punksploitaion” epic about a gaggle of runaway hardcore kids living in a squat in the forbidding tract-housing district off of Southern California’s Interstate 605 -- was at the 8th Street Playhouse in Greenwich Village with my friend Spike (forever immortalized here), very possibly as a midnight double-feature with Alex Cox’s “Repo Man,” although I might be fudging that timeline. In any case, Spheeris’ rough-hewn and stiffly acted study of teen angst, familial dysfunction and youthful rebellion immediately left an impression on me, not least for its depictions of the Southern California punk scene and volatile performance footage of bands like D.I., T.S.O.L. and The Vandals. I believe I picked up the soundtrack to “Suburbia” the very next day.
While half of the record was taken up with composer Alex Gibson’s score of spartan, post-punky fragments and moody soundscapes, the other side was all of the live music featured in the film, namely “Richard Hung Himself” by D.I., “Wash Away” and “Darker My Love” by T.S.O.L. and a fittingly anarchic take on “The Legend of Pat Brown” by The Vandals. While all of these tracks immediately went into heavy home-stereo rotation and on many a mixtape, my hands-down favorite of the bunch was “Legend of Pat Brown,” which prompted me to seek out The Vandals’ debut album, Peace Through Vandalism. Here’s the live version from the movie:
It should go without saying that, in 1983, there was no internet, so no immediate access to any and all information. As such, I searched out and absorbed all the disparate ephemera about these bands that I could find. I picked up a VHS copy of “Suburbia” when it became available, replete with incongruous cover art that suggested more of an art-house movie like “Liquid Sky” than the comparatively gritty Spheeris opus.
Beyond finding that copy of Peace Through Vandalism, the only info I had to go on, about the Vandals, apart from what I’d hear in likely record shops and the bits and pieces I tracked down in zines like Flipside and MaximumRocknRoll, was threadbare at best. I remember studying the back cover of the “Suburbia” soundtrack (see below) and zeroing in on the photo of the band, standing in front of what looked like a prehistoric diorama of the same variety one might find here in New York at the American Museum of Natural History.
Unwittingly, we did sort of stumble upon a comparable site. Appropos of nothing, Rob decided that we should go check out the musuem at the La Brea Tar Pits, which is something of a revered local curiosity and geological anomaly, in the Los Angeles area. I quite enjoyed the lifelike models, out front, of the robustly tusked, prehistoric pacyderms incapacitated in the bubbling tar. When we walked inside, however, I was immediately struck by the notion that it must the origin of that photograph of the Vandals from the back cover on the “Suburbia” soundtrack.
But after circumnavigating the interior the museum, I couldn’t seem to pinpoint the mural in question. Rob immortalized my feverish quest with the photograph below. That’s me circa 1995, oblivious to the wooly mamoth about to trample me.
In later years, I learned that the Vandals photo in question was taken by Edward Colver, a crucial figures resonsible for iconic images of the SoCal hardcore scene. The photograph was indeed taken inside the La Brea Tar Pits museum. Maybe this particular exhibit was off limits that day,… or maybe I just walked right by it. Either way, here it is….along with Colver’s original.
Shortly after recording their follow-up to Peace Through Vandalism, the cheekily titled When In Rome, Do as The Vandals, lead singer Stevo Jensen left the band, and I sort of lost interest in them. Stevo sadly passed away in 2004 of a prescription medication overdose.
The rest of the “Suburbia” cast – a.k.a. T.R., or ‘The Rejected’ – didn’t really go on to big things, apart from “Razzle” (played by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers) and “Jack Diddley” (Chris Pederson), who later appeard in “Platoon” and “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me.” Wade Walston, the guy who played “Joe Schmo” ended up playing bass for the U.S. Bombs. Various iterations of D.I., T.S.O.L. and The Vandals all exist today. For a while the T.S.O.L. guys were acrimoniously estranged, leading to two separate versions of the band making the rounds. The Jack Grisham-led version continues to this day.
Invoke Penelope Spheeris’ “Suburbia” today, and many might confuse it with the Richard Linklater film of the same name from 1994. Spheeris, who’d initially found renown via her preeminent L.A. punk documentary “Decline of Western Civilization,” went on to bigger and more successful fare like the “Wayne’s World” films, along with two more installments of the ”Decline” series, among other things. While frequently cited alongside her name, “Suburbia” isn’t widely considered her crowning achievement.
Be that as it may, the film does still have its champions. Beyond idiots like myself, other people have been simillarly fixated with its minutia. As evidence of same, check out the exploits of the gentleman below…
There are a few, ridiculously trivial “Holy Grail” items out there that I’d still donate an organ to track down. Foremost among them is the poster above, one of only a limited run, posted around downtown Manhattan in the summer of 1984, advertising two neighborhood gigs by The Sisters of Mercy. It's lovely, isn't it?
Sadly, while I’d just recently become a fan of the Sisters, by 1984, I was unable to attend this show, as I believe I was with a bunch of teenaged strangers on a bicycle trip, zig-zagging across the state of Massachusetts with the American Youth Hostel group, that summer, and invariably doing a whole lot of complaining, as was my wont, at the time.
Not only were these gigs notable as early appearances by the Sisters (they’d played New York prior to these gigs, notably at Danceteria), the second of these NYC shows was significant as it was an incongruous opening slot for ill-matched headliners, Black Flag, also a favorite of mine, at the time. So, yeah, I didn’t get to go to that.
But as with quite a few gigs I’ve alluded to before, my comrade Greg Fasolino (recently invoked in my eulogy to Steve Albini) did, and – as was his wont – took pains to record the show, god bless him. As this week marks the – good fucking lord -- FORTIETH -- anniversary of this show, Greg posted the below on Facebook.
40 years ago today: The Sisters of Mercy and (yes) Black Flag double bill at NYC’s Ritz, after a nice daytime record shopping trip to Slipped Disc. It was only the second time I’d been to The Ritz, and the first and only time I saw the Sisters live (and as you can see from the pics, I was front and center) An absolutely riveting performance. The smoke machine was stupendous. As I’ve written about in the past, it was also the weirdest bill in my concert-going history. They played with Black Flag as the headliner! So what you had here was an audience of half proto-goths and half hardcore punks. The punks were visibly and audibly hostile to the Sisters from the beginning of the show; on my tape of the show, you can hear Andrew Eldritch walk out and tell them to “settle down.” As for Flag, I worshipped their early records but by this time they’d gotten plodding and metallic and I wasn’t as into it as I’d hoped, though Henry was clearly a force of nature. August 9, 1984.
Nice, right? I’m taking the liberty of sharing a couple of Greg’s shots from the proceedings…
Here is Greg’s recording of the Sisters’ set…and you can indeed hear Andrew admonish the punks in the room…
So, yeah, even though it was by no means a normal show, given my adoration for both outfits (I’d go on to see both bands perform – separately, of course), it seems like a nexus point I should have been present for.
In any case, much like that elusive Cop Shoot Cop flyer I continue to scour the globe for, I’d happily pay handsomely for the poster pictured up top, fleetingly available on Etsy, some years back, for a suitably lofty amount of money. I am not holding my breath.
As a testament to his resourceful creativity, his own affinity for the Sisters of Mercy and consideration for his dear ol’ dad, my son Oliver mocked up a replica of the poster on his computer, which was damn swell of him.
Today, the Sisters of Mercy are still a going concern, albeit in their umpteenth line-up, finding vocalist/mother superior Andrew Eldridge as the only original member. They're slated to slither back into town next month to play Radio City Music Hall.
Ostensibly, Black Flag also still exists, although only as a sporadically touring vehicle for founding guitarist Greg Ginn and a rotating cast of largely anonymous henchmen. Henry Rollins left the ranks of Black Flag in 1986. I was actually privileged to witness one of that iteration of the band's final performances at the Newport Music Hall in Columbus, OH, but it was honestly not that memorable a show. Henry went onto pursue a wide range of other projects, not least the Rollins Band. He has since given up performing music entirely, but still tenaciously tours as a spoken-word performer. He's also a far more approachable, thoughtful and considerate figure than he ever was back in the `80s.
Irving Plaza, despite a brief, confusing stint as the Filmore East at Irving Plaza, is still in full operation here in 2024. The Ritz technically moved uptown to West 54th Street at the tail end of 1989 for a short few years before closing at some point in the middle of the `90s. The original space that had been The Ritz morphed back into Webster Hall and became more of a dance club. Webster Hall closed for a spell, but is currently back in full swing.
Just a great set by Cop Shoot Cop at CBGB, captured on that intimate stage right after Christmas 1993. I was actually at this show. I believe I shouted something just prior to "Shine On, Elizabeth."
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