Here’s a curious clip. Purportedly from 1986, here we see a supposedly tense stand-off in Greenwich Village — specifically on Waverly Place between Washington Square Park West and Sixth Avenue — between an alleged drug dealer and … Neil Diamond. Mr. Diamond has apparently had enough and is ready to inflict some damage with a billy club (although it looks more like a small baseball bat), successfully scaring off his would-be opponent … in front of a convenient camera crew.
After the almost-melee, Mr. Diamond laments the encroaching preponderance of crack vials in the leafy byways of his neighborhood. At no point does anyone bust out into an impromptu rendition of “Sweet Caroline."
Now, I realize, 1986 is quite a little bit ago — I’d have been a college freshman, at the time — being even then, picturesque Waverly Place in the Village was more likely to have been the scene of some comparatively placid weed deals (or, even more likely, oregano posing as weed) rather than a locale wherein to procure crack. I'm not entirely positive of the true province of this little portion of video, and I’m not saying there wasn’t drugs or crime in the Greenwich Village of 1986, but one suspects this presentation might be more than a little “dramatized.”
Moreover, I had the great honor of meeting and interviewing the inimitable Neil Diamond at a Songwriters Hall of Fame function in 2019. That is very assuredly not Neil Diamond, although Gothamist isn’t entirely sure.
This, by the way, is the real Neil Diamond of New York City...
I have a history of speaking disparagingly about the business endeavors of John Varvatos on this blog (most floridly here, but elsewhere as well). My objections with him and his efforts, though, are basically about fundamental differences in perception. He’s not an evil man, nor has he -- to my knowledge, at least -- broken any laws.
When news came down, last week, that his brand was in serious financial troubles brought on by the pandemic-imposed closures of his clothing outlets (his flagship spot at 315 Bowery, the former site of CBGB, among them), I blithely mentioned on Facebook that I wouldn’t shed a tear seeing that venture close up shop.
Do I like what he’d done with the place? Hell, no, but he didn’t force CBGB out of existence (blame Muzzy Rosenblatt and/or Hilly Kristal for that). And, at the very least, while it’s not the way I would have done it, Varvatos did take pains to recognize the historical significance of the space he came to occupy. It very well might've turned into a bank or a frozen yogurt place.
It’s a tragedy for every business caught behind the eight-ball because of this pandemic. No one deserved this.
More to the point, though, while I may not like John Varvatos’ stuff or “deem appropriate” his handling of certain aspects of rock’n’roll lore, these are ultimately just my silly tastes and opinions.
So, yeah, what I’m trying to say is that my arguments against John Varvatos are ultimately just petty bullshit, especially this long after the fact, and I'm sorry his business is taking such a hit. I'm still not about to shop there, but good luck to him.
Some of you might remember a post or two from 2017 wherein I discussed stumbling upon the video archives of one director Charles Libin, a trailblazer in the field of music video, being one of the first bona fide veejays. For a while, there were several of his clips on YouTube, showcasing a trove of period-specific footage of live music and conceptual video. Check out this post for more details, although the videos themselves are no longer embedded therein.
Well, recently, the daughter of Mr. Libin reached out to me with something really cool. Here’s what she had to say…
I’d love to share with you Charles Libin (my dad) and Paul Cameron’s series WE FILM BANDS. Libin+Cameron made conceptual music videos and shot live punk, post-punk, and no wave performances by iconic bands in the 1980s, many of which have never been seen. Fortuitously, I also began directing in my early twenties, the same age my dad and Paul were when they made these videos. In my music video for Princess Nokia’s Green Line, I included their footage of the Bronx breakdancing crew Floor Masters, from their Melon video After the Death.
We felt that, in celebration of the 40 year anniversary, their collection would be a cool discovery for people stuck in their homes.
And here’s a bit more info from the press release:
On March 3, 1979, Charles Libin and Paul Cameron gathered fellow film students from SUNY Purchase and shot the B-52s’ now legendary performance of Rock Lobster at the Hurrah nightclub in NYC. Libin+Cameron’s filming of the B-52s kicked off a series of live performances they captured, including The Cure's first NYC appearance, Gang of Four, Suicide, Polyrock, James White (aka James Chance) & The Blacks), Debbie Harry, Defunkt, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Kid Creole & The Coconuts, The Plastics, and other ground-breaking bands. Libin+Cameron designed and programmed an immersive video experience with monitors throughout Hurrah. “A fair-haired, soft spoken 22-year old named Charles Libin is credited as the first veejay.” – Daily News, Sept 4, 1981
Friggin’ cool, right?
Anyway, you can check out all this stuff on WE FILMED BANDS.
An inventive stitching-together of scenes from various films for those of you, like myself, missing carefree days in the verdant wilds of Central Park.
In 2020, it’s probably considered a bit rich, passé and precious to still be getting riled about one’s favorite music being used for advertising purposes. Ever since Nike first used “Revolution” by the Beatles to plug their sneakers, the floodgates have been, for all intents and purposes, blown off the doors. It’s no longer considered shocking, disrespectful, inconsiderate, inappropriate or even consequential in any capacity to hear certain tunes used to promote and sell goods and services, the overarching rationale being “well, at least the artist will see some money.” That’s true, I cannot argue with that, but it still comes — to my mind — at a cost.
And we’re not just talking about the Beatles or Zeppelin anymore. This many years after the fact, I’ve heard The Cult and The Ramones used to sell beer, Gary Numan to plug cars (how original!), the Buzzcocks used to promote AARP and — most notoriously — Iggy Pop used to advertise cruise ships. Even my beloved Cop Shoot Cop had a track of theirs — the instrumental “Migration” — used in a Nike ad — and, to be fair, the ad itself was quite striking. I don’t *think* anyone’s used Killing Joke, yet, but I might be mistaken.
There’s also the strong argument regarding exposure. A quintessential example of this is Nick Drake. Prior to a certain Volkswagen campaign that artfully employed said troubled troubadour’s song “Pink Moon” in a clip about swooning teenagers eschewing a keg party in favor of driving around in the moonlight, the oeuvre of Nick Drake was largely known only to a comparatively furtive cabal of esoteric music geeks. One ad later, I had colleagues who previously only listened to indefensible offal like Hootie & the Blowfish and Edie Brickell suddenly extolling the merits of “Pink Moon.” It’s a damn shame that Nick Drake — who died broke and embittered, long prior to his work garnering any semblance of wide recognition — never got to reap the financial rewards nor the long-delayed mainstream kudos for the genius of his music. That the song in question is arguably about encroaching doom is another matter entirely.
In any case, this ponderous preamble is all to tee up the anecdote that while watching TV last night, I spotted a commercial for a Marc Jacobs perfume. The clip featured comely blonde temptresses frolicking in a golden field. I immediately snapped to attention at the sound of the music scoring this otherwise banal clip. The music in question was “Cheree” by Suicide.
Invoke the name Suicide in certain circles, and watch scowling nerds light up like Christmas trees. Groundbreaking pioneers — punks long before punk was punk — Suicide made unfathomably forward-thinking music with a confrontational approach in an environment that could not possibly have been more hostile (a hostility they fed off of). While records like Never Mind the Bollocks and Rocket to Russia might sound just like regular rock’n’roll today, the eponymous debut by Suicide remains as brazenly unconventional and jarring in 2020 as it was upon its release in 1977. To use a stupid, phallocentric cliché, it’s a record that separates the men from the boys. The music of Suicide — to say nothing of their notoriously pugnacious live-performance style, steered by the late, great Alan Vega — was not for weak-hearted dilettantes.
That debut album, which arrived in a fittingly blood-slathered sleeve, offers no quarter and makes no apologies. At the risk of lapsing further into purple-prosed hyperbole, it is a singular work of art, undiminished by creative compromise or ambitions of commercial appeal. It is both incalculably influential and criminally uncelebrated.
While not an exception to their palette nor a hit single, however, there is “Cheree” … a sparkling three-and-a-half minutes of gobsmacked amore in an otherwise filthy, black subway tunnel to Hell. A minimalist, erotic ode to a leather-clade seductress, Vega gasps and whispers his devotions over Marty Rev’s twinkling and humming keyboards. Both beautiful and profane, it’s like watching a strip-tease in a cathedral. It was allegedly “Cheree” by Suicide that U2 sought to emulate with their signature single, “With or Without You.”
Meanwhile, …. here it is in a Marc Jacobs ad.
Longtime readers, here, might be familiar with my long-simmering disdain for Marc Jacobs. I got nothing against fashion, but two things I do hold sacred are my native New York City and punk rock, and Marc Jacobs’ unwieldy hubris routinely shits on both.
Marc Jacobs incurred the justifiable ire of Greenwich Village residents in the past decade by avariciously snapping up several storefronts on the western end of Bleecker Street, almost single-handedly evicting the old neighborhood’s character and morphing the once-sleepy West Village backwater into a new high-fashion shopping zone. But, like a callously tawdry one-night stand, Jacobs’ investment in Bleecker Street was not to last. As fortunes changed, by 2017, most of his ventures— ones previously owned by longtime local businesses — decamped, leaving countless empty storefronts dotting the street. Regardless of your predilections, your money no longer has many places to go on that stretch of Bleecker. Go ahead and blame Marc Jacobs for that. I know I do.
Secondly, there’s the music. I have no beef with anyone who shares my affinity for certain music and its accompanying subculture. But, if you’re going to express it, at least do your fucking homework. Like John Varvatos, Jacobs' equally vain fashionista peer at the other end of Bleecker Street at 315 Bowery, Marc Jacobs sure likes the trappings of punk rock, but doesn’t really do the research. He just cherry-picks whatever iconography he digs at the time and appropriates it for his purposes. Witness his witless co-opting of images from Skrewdriver as a prime example. You’re doing it wrong, Marc.
While harrumphing about all this on social media today, my friend Vicki came up with a damning bit of evidence that singularly sums up my arguments against Marc Jacobs in this capacity. Here’s the press release to Jacobs’ new ad. Pay attention to the last line.
Typically, Marc Jacobs is getting it laughably wrong again. Suicide were not “London-based” in any way, and to hear Vega sing/speak, you’d have to really not be paying attention. Suicide are New York City to the fucking BONE.
But, of course, Marc Jacobs doesn’t know that, because Marc Jacobs doesn’t care enough to invest.
Music touches people. Music means something. Music is powerful. Respect it.
I was very sad to learn of the permanent closing of SoHo drinking establishment Lucky Strike, this morning. A Grand Street fixture for 31 years, this lovely, unpretentious bar could not survive the financial hardships imposed by the Trump pandemic.
I first started going to Lucky Strike in the early ‘90s when I was working as a gallery-sitter on nearby Mercer Street. It was Lucky Strike wherein I first repaired with the lovely lady who’d become my wife, after she suggested we leave the Wooster Street party we were at to “get more beer” (I naively thought she meant going to a deli). And it was within Lucky Strike — fittingly named — that we first kissed.
I gravely fear this place will not be the last favorite haunt to meet this cruel fate.
I first posted this on Facebook, and then took it down, as there was some confusion as to the cause of the great man's demise. In my haste to eulogize Jimmy Webb, it seems I mistakenly assigned the culprit as COVID-19, when more credible sources have suggested it was cancer. In any case, it's a genuine loss to the East Village community he knew and loved ... and loved him back.
The pervasive stereotype of the punk rocker usually involves a joyless, scowly contrarian, more than happy to spit at your feet or engage in a rampant bout of unprovoked pugilism. For decades, Jimmy Webb, whose age-old punk haberdashery, Trash & Vaudeville, occupied a storied perch in the Hamilton-Holly House at 4 St. Marks Place, was the consummate punk rocker, but defied the above stereotype in every manner.
Sure, visually, he fit the bill — garish skin-tight pants, sleeveless t-shirts, endearingly ridiculous brothel-creepers, blinding peroxide hair, leather jacket — but you cannot a imagine a more affable, smiley fella. Welcoming all into his fabled shop — from the local sneery street-urchins to the Upper East Sider dilettantes and all stripes in between — Webb was buoyantly enthusiastic to help you pick out just the right pair of tartan bondage-trousers to go with the vintage-design Dead Boys t-shirt you were buying, and would be damn happy to chat about it with great giggly aplomb with you. No judgements. Just happy to evangelize the scene, the music, the lifestyle. If Jimmy Webb was your ambassador into the rock’n’roll sartorial underground, you could not imagine a more gracious figure to guide you there. The t-shirts may not have been as cheap as I thought they should've been, at the time, but then again, neither was the rent. It was for that reason that Trash & Vaudeville had to leave that spot on St. Marks Place, but Jimmy found a new spot on East 7th Street, and even opened a new venture further south on the Lower East Side shortly afterwards.
Jimmy Webb was also, without the slightest question, the world’s most fervent Iggy Pop fan. If Iggy or the reunited Stooges came to town, you could bet your bottom dollar Jimmy Webb would be there, and onstage with the great man before too long, usually showcasing is full-back tattoo, loudly proclaiming “I NEED MORE” after the Iggy tune of the same title.
Evidently, Jimmy Webb passed away this week. Another tragic loss in a season of unimaginable sadness.
Recent Comments