It should go without saying, at this point, that we're living in some genuinely difficult times on a variety of fronts. As such, comparatively trivial bullshit should really not be the priority while bigger fish are being fried. But being that this stupid blog largely concerns itself almost exclusively with comparatively trivial bullshit, I thought I might as well address it.
The bloom is evidently off the rose in regards to Shepard Fairey's portrait of Deborah Harry on the southwest corner of Bleecker & Bowery. Back in February -- when life deceptively seemed significantly simpler -- you might remember I noted that someone had tagged up lovely Debbie's neck. Well, someone else took that baton and ran with it, as the mural has pretty much been wholly defaced, at this stage.
Once again, people are grappling with real problems, these days, so the sullying of some fetching street art doesn't really rank that highly on the unspeakable crime ladder.
After 16 posts on the subject, you’d think I’d be done, right? Nope.
When last I discussed the late, lamented Cedar Tavern in 2017, it was to relay the news that the actual old mahogany bar had been installed in a new space in Austin, TX. You can read that post here.
The video below, meanwhile, tells the backstory of how and why it ended up back there. Check it out.
Here in 2020, watch any documentary about the golden days of hardcore punk, and you’re pretty much guaranteed a couple of things. The first is that Ian Mackaye and Dave Grohl are bound to make a couple of cameos. The second is that somewhere along the way, someone is going to allude to the furtive network of communication — decades prior to the advent of the internet — that enabled bands and punk fans to connect, evangelize the music, book gigs, share crucial touring tips, establish scenes and thrive. Purple prose aside, it was the very essence of the “do it yourself” ethos in action, and it’s part and parcel of what made the hardcore scene of the 80’s totally organic and unique.
Today, of course, all of that type of information can be gleaned in seconds via any number of online resources. As with many things in the digital age, technology has enabled us to accomplish formerly complicated tasks without even having to put our pants on.
Once again, `twas not always thus.
Back when I was a sniveling little, acne-speckled teenage schmuck looking to find out when my beloved Circle Jerks were going to play New York City, my first go-to outlet of information was The Village Voice, a storied free weekly that came appended with loads of gig ads in the back pages. My second source of intel was just to walk the downtown streets. Prior to Mayor Giuliani’s draconian re-imagining of New York City’s quality of life, the exposed walls of Greenwich Village, SoHo, the East Village and certain other areas played host to a wide array of flyer campaigns. Longtime readers might remember my fixation with the Rock Hotel flyer series. After a while, my eyes were automatically conditioned to scan the walls for those signature black posters and their block capital white letters over a cryptic skull design — now considered fine art in certain circles.
The third reliable source was simply the word of mouth. As I was a regular patron of several likely concerns like Second Coming Records on Sullivan Street, 99 Records on MacDougal Street, Rocks in Your Head on Prince Street, Freebeing Records off St. Marks Place, Bleecker Bob’s on West 4th Street and many, many others (all vanished now, of course), my contacts behind the counter would routinely inform me of pertinent happenings on the regular. I was never at a loss.
I am somewhat embarrassed to confess, however, that I was evidently entirely unaware of another crucial means of disseminating this vital information. My writer friend Mike Stahl — a couple of years my junior, an otherwise meaningless difference in age that I used to routinely lord over him when asserting that the bands of my era were superior to the bands of his era … like it’s a competition — just penned a magisterial article for MEL Magazine (don’t ask me) about the phenomenon of OPEC SID. If, like myself, you are unaware of the significance of OPEC SID, you are in for a treat.
Back at a media outlet I used to work for about a million years ago, a colleague of mine had unearthed a trove of footage from the early 80’s of scenes from outside the old A7 space on Avenue A (which, today, is the rear chamber of Jesse Malin’s Niagara bar). There was loads of it, and he and I watched it all, spotting various luminaries along the way. Why the media outlet in question had amassed it in the first place was sort of lost in the mists of time. For the layperson, it probably didn’t mean too much, but for those slightly more invested, it was a tantalizingly rarefied glimpse back in time.
At the time, my colleague was investigating the option of doing something more with the footage, or working with certain other individuals that were interested in doing something more with the footage. Years later, I have no idea whatever became of those plans, and being that I no longer work at the media outlet in question, I figured nothing would ever come of it, and I’d never see that footage again.
… until today.
It’s yet another work-from-home day wherein the onus of staying focussed and productive is proving elusive. In one of several needless breaks, I found myself trawling YouTube for interesting fodder. As I've mentioned recently, with all the time-at-home people have been grappling with during the pandemic, lots of new stuff has been popping up on YouTube, so I’ve been regularly plugging in certain key words and seeing what surfaces.
As it happens, the footage below was uploaded quite some time ago — 2018 — by a source called Global Image Works, but this is just a portion of that original trove of A7 footage I’d viewed all those years back with my colleague at my former media outlet. How Global Image Works came to acquire this sliver of it — let alone where the rest of it is — remains a mystery.
In any case, dubbed “Slam Dancing and punks on the Streets of New York,” here is a frenetic and maddeningly brief montage of images from outside the former A7 space on East 7th Street and Avenue B. If I had to put a date on it, I'd suggest 1981/1982, but I'll defer to the more informed.
I always felt I should like Helmet more than I did. Sure, they recorded some truly amazing songs, “Turned Out” and “Biscuits for Smut” being two of my faves. They were hard, heavy and uncompromising, but — by the same token — they seemed to lack a little of the sneery charisma of their peers like The Unsane, Prong, Barkmarket, Surgery and — oh yes, wait for it — Cop Shoot Cop. Page Hamilton was certainly an innovative guitarist (and an avowed acolyte of Killing Joke, no less), but too often, they fell a bit flat, for me. I just wanted a bit more.
The track below is not the original video for their “big breakout” single “Unsung,” from In the Meantime. That video found the band playing in a strobe-lit abandoned foundry (or something) with lots of corrugated metal, rusty pylons and sharp edges and … y’know … chains and shit, amplifying their metal chops, I guess. Lots of bands did that.
This clip also highlight’s Helmet’s kinda weird, clean-cut fashion sense — lots of utilitarian ringer t-shirts, shorts and white socks with black sneakers. Never really got my head around that vibe, not that it affected their music at all.
More striking, here, is the state of the bandshell circa 1991, which looks crumbly, abandoned and slathered with graffiti. The space got a huge makeover/overhaul about five or six years ago, and looks nothing like the place presented here.
It must be said that, if nothing else, the pandemic has been a positive boon for the uploading of esoteric shit on YouTube. I guess with everyone on lockdown with loads of downtime on their hands, the moment finally seemed right to digitize and upload all sorts of far-flung crap, at long last.
Such is the case this week, as just goddamn yesterday, a YouTuber named E3 — how cryptic! — saw fit to upload the so-called Adult Contemporary mix of the debut by Dig Dat Hole.
For those playing along at home, Dig Dat Hole was the band Tod [A] played in after his stints with The Dum Dum Boys, The Crabs and Shithaus, but before his celebrated turns helming the mighty Cop Shoot Cop and his current-albeit-temporarily-dormant combo, Firewater. DDT also featured future Cop Shoot Cop drummer/percussionist Phil Puleo (later of the Audio Dyslexia, The Body Lovers, Angels of Light, and more notably SWANS and, most recently Human Impact) and a guitarist named Mike Rose. They played a few gigs here in the city alongside names like Railroad Jerk, Pussy Galore, Rat at Rat R and White Zombie, to name a small few, at since-vanished venues like CBGB and the Lismar Lounge.
E3 shared some more info…
DIG DAT HOLE Vocals/Bass: Tod A. Guitar: Mike Rose Drums: Phil Puleo
DIG DAT HOLE was the band Tod A and Phil Puleo were in just before forming Cop Shoot Cop. Most are familiar with them from the Kneejerk test pressing on Ruthless Records. What most don't know is that the record was also going to be released by Tom Smith on his Adult Contemporary label. What's more, the Adult Contemporary mix is waaaay better than the Ruthless Records mix, however it's impossible to find... except by me. I have a taped copy that was sent to the Ugly American zine by Tom Smith back in the early 90s.
I had to fly in A Similar End and a short part of Cooler Than You (don't worry. you won't notice the splice) from the Ruthless version due to an overdubbing accident that happened years ago.
Track listing is:
1) Six Good Reasons
2) I Exist
3) Dig Dat Hole
4) Spiritual Monday
5) A Similar End
6) Cooler Than You
7) Down
8) Infected Again
Here is Tod & Phil talking about the troubled record during a Cop Shoot Cop interview with the Ugly American fanzine on Feb 4 1990:
Tod: Steve Albini, who is just a weasel, dicked us out of a promise he made to us.
UA: Oh yeah, wasn't he going to produce?
Tod: No, he was just going to put out our record, but he like hedged and hawed, you know, he just strung us along for, what is it? A year and a half? A year?
Phil: Something like that.
Tod: And someone else before that, so it was just kind of like, "fuck it." We had other ideas, so...
UA: Was the other guy Tom Smith?
Phil: They know all about Tom Smith.
Tod: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
UA: Do you hate Tom Smith?
Tod: Um, Tom Smith is just kinda pathetic, like when I finally met him it was just... I went there with the intention of beating the shit out of him, but he was just sort of a pathetic drug addict. So I just left.
UA: What did he tell you about releasing the record?
Tod: He said he'd been doing a lot of cocaine and he used up all the money he was going to put out records with, um, doing cocaine and it was like, uh, cool... cool record label. Yeah, like "I'm sorry, I was really fucked up and I had to go out to my dad's place to build boats to straighten out."
In the wake of my last coupleof posts on “After Hours" — let alone the many posts I’ve devoted to the film over the last fifteen years — a regular reader who posts under a wide array of names posed the following questions…
What was the coffee shop where Paul and Marcy met? Who was the punk girl who gave Paul the flyer to Mohawk Night? I mean backstory (casting, what she went on to do etc.) Any real deal NYHC people in the Mohawk This Guy! scene? I bet Davey Gunner from Kraut and/or Doug Holland from Kraut and Cro-Mags were extras.
Okay, let’s dive in and see what we can answer…
What was the coffee shop where Paul and Marcy met?
Okay, I have two theories about this, actually. In terms of the storyline, Paul resides on the Upper East Side, although I don’t believe his exact address is ever revealed. The interior of the coffee shop looks somewhat similar to a former restaurant on Lexington Avenue between 77th and 76th street, although I don’t believe it is still there.
This all said, it also resembles another spot on Park Avenue South (just a few blocks to the north of the building wherein Paul’s character works), but — 35 years after the facts — these locations no longer look as they did in 1985. There’s a shot when Marcy is speaking that you can see a large-paned window behind her that reveals some detail of the street running perpendicular to the avenue the coffee shop is on. I’m projecting, but it looks a bit like East 25th street. Again, though, I do not have the concrete answer to this question.
Who was the punk girl who gave Paul the flyer to Mohawk Night?
That being this fetching young lady …
I cannot honestly say I recognize her, although several bona fide punk folks from the NYHC scene do appear in the film, so she might be more than simply an actress.
Any real deal NYHC people in the Mohawk This Guy! scene?
I bet Davey Gunner from Kraut and/or Doug Holland from Kraut and Cro-Mags were extras.
I don’t believe either of those gents were, ALTHOUGH the classic A7 t-shirt Doug Holland sports in the video for Kraut’s “All Twisted” does indeed make a quick cameo.
I’m not sure I know a credibly viable way into this post, so I’m just going to write it and worry about that later. But, suffice to say, it’s probably the least consequential/most trivial thing I’ve ever posted here … which is saying something.
I’ve long been obsessed with Martin Scorsese’s “After Hours,” a film he released in September of 1985 in the immediate wake of Paramount scrapping his longtime dream project, “The Last Temptation of Christ” (an ambitious undertaking he’d later go on to release in 1988). “After Hours” was the furthest thing imaginable from a sweeping Biblical epic — a black comedy documenting the tragicomic travails of a mild-mannered yuppie (played by Griffin Dunne) lured into the bohemian wilderness of the downtown Manhattan of the mid-80’s. Comparatively speaking, it’s a small movie with a relatively niche audience.
If you’ve spent any time on this blog, you know what I mean when I say I’ve obsessed over this film. I’d devoted posts to its locations, its score and even minor members of its cast. As a result, I used to think I knew everything there is to know about the film, but as yesterday’s post demonstrated, this is clearly not the case.
I originally started this post back in mid-May. I started writing it with the working title, “Unanswerable Questions About a Certain Scene.” Well, I regret to say that in the ensuing weeks, I’ve all but forgotten what most of those allegedly “unanswerable” questions were, but I do remember one major observation, and it concerns the scene below. Bear in mind that this has more to do with my original perceptions and preconceptions.
In this scene, we see the beleaguered Paul Hackett (Griffin Dunne’s protagonist) entering the Terminal Bar on the far western end of Spring Street in SoHo during a midsummer downpour. In actuality, the Terminal Bar did not exist. At the time — and for several years after “After Hours” was filmed -- this location was a bar called The Emerald Pub, although don’t go looking to have a pint there these days. The Emerald Pub closed in 2015 and the space has been dormant ever since. In any event, Paul repairs to the Terminal Bar to get out of the rain and to try to make sense of the chaos of the evening. Upon entering, he encounters cocktail waitress Julie (one of four pivotal blonde sirens through the film) and bartender Tom. While the scene plays out, a young, hip couple dances in the background to “You’re Mine,” a classic number by doo-wop duo Robert & Johnny.
Again, the rest of this is just about my silly projections, and has precious little to do with the film’s actual content.
In any case, for the longest time, I was ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that the male half of that young, hip dancing couple was wearing a black, sleeveless t-shirt emblazoned with the back-cover design of Avalon by Roxy Music. Being that Avalon came out in 1982, three years before “After Hours” was released, it fit the chronology. Moreover, a cool, black sleeveless Roxy Music t-shirt seemed like just the thing a hip SoHo scenester might’ve worn while dancing in a downtown bar in the small hours of a summer night. In the event that you’re unfamiliar, the back cover of Avalon — designed by Peter Saville, who also did the iconic sleeves for both Unknown Pleasures and Closer by Joy Division— features some sort of crimson stone embedded in a gold, medieval amulet. Here it is now…
Cool, right? It’s also worth mentioning that Avalon is an amazing record. While not as adventurous as Roxy Music’s first few albums, it marked the high point of the band’s more sophisticated pop era and sadly served as their swan song. During my college years, it was an album that could be found in virtually every dorm room on campus and, like Diamond Life by Sade, its airing within same was sonic shorthand for “don’t come knocking.” Chances are, if you came home to hear your roommate playing Avalon, there was a good chance he or she was doing some very intimate entertaining sans pants.
Anyway, ever since spotting it in “After Hours,” I’d started keeping my eyes out for it, as it seemed like it would be a cool artifact to own, given both its association with my favorite film and my affinity for the album in question.
But I was never able to find it, which always frustrated me.
Fast forward to stumbling on the scene above in YouTube, I was suddenly able to get a much closer look at the garment in question, equipped with the pause button. In doing so, I managed to capture the screen grab below.
Suffice to say, that is very much not the back cover of Avalon. I’d been mistaken all these years. Under closer scrutiny, I figured it out and Googled on a hunch what the actual t-shirt was and immediately struck oil. The dancing hipster in the Terminal Bar is wearing this….
In case you’re unfamiliar, it’s a Sha Na Na shirt. Sha Na Na was (and still is?) a doo-wop revival group who had their own television show back in the late `70s. They even played at friggin' Woodstock.
While not nearly as cool as a Roxy Music shirt, it actually makes way more sense as something a guy voluntarily dancing to a door-wop tune by Robert & Johnny would wear.
I actually had yet another “After Hours” post already in the works a few weeks back, but lost the urge to finish it, at the time, as it was strenuously beyond trivial. While I may soon revisit that, a friend of mine on Facebook recently called my attention to clip below, which dives into the mysterious minutia of the film’s very final scene in great detail, begging the question …. who is the mystery man in black?
Brooklyn at night during the peak of New York City's coronavirus outbreak, captured on bike rides throughout the borough. Set to Pat Irwin's haunting recording of the U.S. national anthem performed at the Never Records installation at The Rudin Family Gallery at BAM Strong on January 23, 2020.
Companion photo book Keep This Far Apart: Nighttime in Brooklyn, Spring 2020 available for purchase, with all proceeds going to Brooklyn Rescue Mission: https://sampolcer.com/store/keep-this...
Filmmaker statement: "On April 6th, New York City reached what turned out to be its highest number of daily COVID-19 hospitalizations (1,719) and cases (6,376), and third-highest number of daily deaths (565); the city had firmly established itself as the world’s coronavirus epicenter, gripped by fear, uncertainty and loneliness. That night, I began going on bike rides throughout the borough after dark for exercise and a taste of freedom sorely lacking in locked-down isolation. Out on the streets, I was struck by an overwhelming quiet overlaid with the constant wail of distant ambulance sirens, and decided immediately to document what I saw, from shuttered theaters and garbage-strewn sidewalks to the occasional cyclist or couple out for an evening stroll. For seven weeks, when the city that never sleeps tucked itself in, I’d embark from my home in the Kensington neighborhood with camera and tripod in tow. I felt compelled to document this moment, and to capture the feeling of isolation experienced by millions in close proximity to each other.
Over Memorial Day weekend, the city reclaimed some of its vitality, with more New Yorkers leaving their homes to socialize, and I stopped shooting. The next day, George Floyd was murdered by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin—a second bookend to the project as horrifying as the first.
When it came time to assemble the footage, I remembered a somber rendition of the national anthem performed by the composer and musician Pat Irwin in January as a part of Never Records, a recording studio/record store art installation that took place at the new Rudin Gallery at BAM Strong. (I'm a content strategist at BAM.) I just had this sense that the country was about as low as it could go, spiritually, and in nearly all other ways—thousands of people were dying, and our leaders were asleep at the wheel—and Irwin’s deeply affecting ‘Anthem’ resonated with that sentiment. It's probably the somberest, least patriotic version of the tune you've ever heard. And as an instrumental that leaves out the lyrics, it's appropriate considering current conversations around racial inequality: the song's lyricist, Francis Scott Key, was a slaveowner.
As NYC reopens and much of the country grapples with virus surges, the film is a meditative portrait of the city at its most locked-down. Is this what it means to be patriotic during a pandemic?"
Bios: Sam Polcer is a writer and photographer whose work has appeared in National Geographic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Hemispheres, Brooklyn Magazine, Spin.com, Esquire.com, Travel+Leisure.com, and many other websites and publications, as well as at the Museum of the City of New York. He is also a content strategist at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music). His first book, New York Bike Style, was published by Prestel in 2014. Previously, he was the communications director at Bike New York and an editor (of both text and photography) at Hemispheres. https://www.sampolcer.com
Patrick Irwin is a composer and musician who was a founding member of two bands that grew out of New York City's No Wave scene in the late 1970s, the Raybeats and 8-Eyed Spy. He joined The B-52s from 1989 through 2008. He has composed scores for numerous independent films including My New Gun, But I'm A Cheerleader, and Bam Bam and Celeste as well as hundreds of cartoons including Rocko's Modern Life, Pepper Ann, A Little Curious, and Class of 3000. He composed the scores for HBO's Bored to Death and Showtime's Nurse Jackie and most recently for the Netflix show, The Good Cop. https://www.patirwinmusic.com
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