I don't believe he spoke a single line of dialogue, and he basically had his ass handed to him entirely by foul-mouthed Ajax, but I was sad to learn that veteran stuntman Jery Hewitt -- who played the lead representative of the Baseball Furies in Walter Hill's 1979 urban combat epic, "The Warriors" -- just passed away.
I've written about my love for "The Warriors" a few times here (find those links here), but suffice to say, if you are of a certain age, let alone a New Yorker, it's a pivotal film for a lot of people.
Here's Hewitt's big scene on the mean streets of the Upper West Side. Pour one out for the great man.
Back in June, I posted a vaguely convoluted post about a gig poster from one of the final shows at The Cooler. In an attempt to tie several disparate elements together, I wrote this paragraph:
As it happened, that weird Ukranian disco was actually a weird Bulgarian disco called Mehanata. You can see snippets of the interior of that place in the video for “Start Wearing Purple” by Gogol Bordello. Gogol Bordello, incidentally, then counted guitarist Eugene Kaplan in its ranks, although Eugene also played for both Firewater and Botanica. Mehanata, meanwhile, was located directly over the former location of Dave’s Luncheonette, a fabled diner for the Mudd Club set which briefly made a cameo in the video for “Jukebox Baby" by Alan Vega of Suicide. See? It’s all related
I invariably patted myself on the back for connecting all those dots. But, alas, I had one detail wrong.
While it’s completely true that Mehanata then occupied the same building as the former Dave’s Luncheonette, the fabled all-night diner that was indeed a regular haunt of the Mudd Club crowd, the diner depicted in Alan Vega’s “Jukebox Baby” was not, in fact Dave’s. How do I know that? Well, for a start, let’s watch that video again.
How do I know that’s not Dave’s? Well, on one Facbook group I’m a member of, someone posted the below photograph of mid-80’s British pop combo, JoBoxers, standing manfully in front of Dave’s. See that picture below.
Okay, so on both the north-facing facade (“Luncheonette”) and westerly-facing facade (“Restaurant”) of Dave’s, the neon signage is very distinctive. Look again at the eatery Vega’s in, and you get totally different signage — much less ornate.
Put simply, it’s not the same place. But it still looked so familiar.
And then it hit me.
The luncheonette Vega’s depicted in is the same luncheonette depicted on the sleeve of the first 8 Eyed Spy record.
…..which begs the question: Where is that luncheonette? Does it even exist anymore?
But there were other stops on our circuit, a crucial one being at the Pizza Box on Bleecker Street to wolf down slices while examining our spoils. As with all of the concerns cited above, that — too — is gone. To be fair, a paltry handful of our former regular haunts still hang on today, those being Record Runner, Generation Records, Academy Records and Downtown Music Gallery, but one would be remiss to suggest that their respective prospects were especially promising in 2020. That’s just the way it is.
But from around 1987 to late 1988, we had another regular stop.
If you stand on the southeast corner of West 8th Street on Sixth Avenue — basically right in front of the hulking space that formerly housed a Barnes & Noble and a B. Dalton books before that — and look south, you’ll probably still see a bunch of folks selling dubious shit on the sidewalks. Old magazines, DVDs, vinyl LPs, books and other largely weathered ephemera are periodically up for sale along this strip even today. But back in the 80’s, it was a much more robust ersatz marketplace, one that stretched as far down as the basketball courts on West 3rd.
I don’t remember how we first happened upon him, but Rob and I came to know a young merchant on this strip named Tim. An unassuming kid from somewhere on the Upper West Side — usually sporting a mammoth pair of headphones — Tim was in the business of selling bootleg cassettes. For the layperson, this means illegal live recordings of the same variety that got nearby Second Coming Records in trouble (as discussed at greater length here). We’d show up about once a week and check out Tim’s little briefcase of offerings, immaculately presented in alphabetical order and all marked with the inky font of a thick black sharpie. Like ourselves, Tim was especially besotted with a few specific bands, and his stock leaned heavily in those directions. For whatever reason, his two favorite bands were the Minutemen and the Sisters of Mercy, but he also had tapes by ancillary acts like fIREHOSE and my then-faves in The Mission, along with sundry recordings by bands like U2, The Cult and The Cure. We were very clearly his target demographic, and frequently availed ourselves to his wares.
In the middle of penning this post, I heard from Rob and he informed me that we once went to Tim’s evidently sprawling townhouse on the Upper West Side, but I have absolutely no recollection of that whatsoever. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, but I just don’t remember it.
In any case, the one specific tape I remember buying off our Tim in May or June of 1987 was a pristine, soundboard recording of The Mission playing a gig I very bitterly missed at The Ritz on East 11th Street in just that previous April. I’d missed the show in question being that I was away at school when the band drunkenly plowed into town. Capturing the Mish at the hoary height of their powers, it featured roaring runs through their early singles, a few odd covers and tracks from their debut LP, God’s Own Medicine, including a lungful reading of “Wake,” a throaty middle-finger to their former taskmaster Andrew Eldritch of The Sisters of Mercy. I played the absolute shit out of that tape, taking it with me a bike trip across Western Europe, managing not to lose it in any number of grotty youth hostels along the way. I absolutely cherished it. Much like the XTC tape I discussed the other day, I still have it, although nothing to play it on. But sadly, unlike the XTC tape, I’ve never found a recording of the Mission at The Ritz in April of 1987 anywhere else. Not on disc. Not on YouTube. Nothing.
Anyway, sometime after all this, we again happened upon Tim on Sixth Avenue again while schmooing. At this stage, he mentioned that he was considering giving up the whole bootleg cassette venture. We earnestly tried to urge him to stick with it, but he informed us of a growing spiritual investment in Tibetan Buddhism. In short order, Tim fully renounced his materialistic endeavors, and stopped showing up to ply his cassettes.
The first time I ever saw Martin Atkins was probably via the video for Public Image Ltd.’s “Bad Life,” wherein he was fleetingly depicted dancing disjointedly behind John Lydon’s insistent mugging. Who he was in the grand scheme of things, at the time, probably didn’t occur to me, as by that point, PiL had basically become the John Lydon show, despite the fact that Atkins had essentially become the main musical force behind the operation in the wake of the inevitably acrimonious departures of PiL alumni Jeanette Lee, Keith LeVene, Jah Wobble and Jim Walker. Shortly after that, Atkins and Lydon hastily assembled a new iteration of the band and toured Japan, which spawned their perfunctorily titled live album, Live in Tokyo.
While both that particular line-up of the band and the ensuing live album were roundly derided by music critics and Public Image acolytes alike — not to mention the band themselves — Live in Tokyo was something of a crucial release for me. I have very vivid memories of a laborious car trip to the Berkshires with a cousin one snowy January weekend, and we only had two cassettes — one was my “well-loved” (read: battered) copy of Live in Tokyo, and the other was my cousin’s incongruous selection, Tales from The Topographic Ocean by proggy stalwarts, Yes, a fractious sonic dichotomy to be sure (although, somewhat ironically, original PiL guitarist Keith LeVene is purportedly a massive Yes fan). To be fair, I, too, am a sizable Yes fan, but decidedly not of that particularly ponderous record. My repeated airings of PiL’s scathing romp through “Analisa” — to say nothing of my insistence on singing along — did little to make the trip any smoother.
Some time after that, Martin Atkins also jumped ship from the ranks of Public Image Ltd., joining a growingly august legion of musicians who found working in close proximity with John Lydon an untenable scenario. Apart from a single or two by his own band, Brian Brain, Martin Atkins didn’t pop back onto my radar until news broke that he was joining my favorite band, Killing Joke. Despite having previously atrophied into a duo of vocalist Jaz Coleman and guitarist Geordie Walker for the divisive Outside the Gate, Killing Joke had geared up for a bracing return to their feral former sound and recruited Atkins to replace the burly rhythmic battery of Big Paul Ferguson. While Martin’s frenetic drumming style was markedly different from Ferguson’s tribal whallop, the injection of the PiL veteran’s aggressive approach and manic energy reinvigorated Killing Joke, and the ensuing recorded results remain some of the band’s finest work.
I just realized that this post is turning into a sprawling re-telling to the great man's bio, which is not what I intended it to be. I actually interviewed Martin a couple of times (the first detailed here), and went onto meet him in Killing Joke circles over the years. He's an exceptionally knowledgable and affable gent. In case you're curious as to what he did after his tenure in Killing Joke, let me wrap that up by saying he formed several impactful bands like Murder Inc., Pigface and The Damage Manual, when not lending his percussive prowess to bands like Ministry and Nine Inch Nails.
In any case, Martin just recently hooked up with my comrade Drew Stone of New York Hardcore Chronicles fame and had an amazing and informative chat this afternoon, touching on much of the above and so much more. Stick around for the anecdote about a physical altercation with GG Allin.
Here is a (very) late follow-up to a post from … jeezus … 2014.
The original spot of Bleecker Bob’s was not on Bleecker Street. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it was never actually on Bleecker Street. In someone’s infinite wisdom, it was a good idea for the late Bob Plotnik to assume some sort of catchy nickname that assigned him some kind of local renown, so he became Bleecker Bob despite possibly never having operated any business on that particular strip. Whatever.
The original spot of his shop was on MacDougal Street, just steps to the south of West 8th Street (see above). At some point at the dawn of the 80’s, though, Bob pulled out of that location and moved over to 118 West 3rd Street between MacDougal and Sixth Avenue. It was at this address that I first visited the shop in about 1981 or 1982. And it was this iteration of the shop that bore his nickname until it closed in 2013.
Before the space was Bleecker Bob’s, however, it was another similarly inclined shop called – inexplicabaly – Bonaparte. I never set foot in Bonaparte, so I cannot credibly tell you a thing about it, but I recently found a better shot of its exterior than the one I first posted here.
Here in 2020, the 1188 West Third street is still Asian eatery Miyagi, which I wrote about here, although I haven’t been back since. The original Bleecker Bob space on MacDougal off 8th Street played host to a number of ventures over the years – inclulding, very briefly, another record store – before morphing into a barber shop, a tea salon, a sandwich joint and other things. These days, it’s completely vacant.
Bleecker Bob Plotnik, meanwhile, passed away in 2018. Amazingly, Ben's Pizza is still there.
Lots of people kept their vinyl LPs and singles. I certainly did, even after the advent of the compact disc. Of course, I’ve also kept all my CD’s in the wake of them being rendered anachronistic by mp3s, the comparatively brief reign of the iPod and then streaming. Ask me if I care. You can take my physical music media when I’m dead, and not a nanosecond before.
But because I’m an extra-sad bastard, I also kept a healthy supply of my cassettes. I no longer have anything — or anything that works, anyway — to play them on, but there are several that I just simply refuse to part with. Sure, I ditched several workaday store-bought cassettes when I upgraded to compact disc. But I have stacks of cassettes that I consider otherwise irreplaceable. This is about one of those.
I managed to ruffle some feathers on social media, last night, when I made some cheekily uncharitable statements about Philadelphia’s myriad failings, prompted by the agonizing wait for Pennsylvania to tally their vote count in the election. I imagined my invocation of the Hooters might have tipped some people off that I wasn’t being entirely serious, but some folks started getting genuinely hot under the collar about it. Again, these are tense, divisive times.
In any case, in thinking about complementary things to say about the so-called City of Brotherly Love, i was reminded of a certain live-music venue, albeit one I never got to visit. More to the point, the venue in question wasn’t actually in Philadelphia, but rather just across the Delaware River in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. It’s unsurprisingly long gone, these days (razed after a fire in the mid-80’s), but once upon a time, this place was called Emerald City.
Now, despite some people’s claim that Philadelphia is New York City’s “sixth borough” (a notion that I’m sure irks the shit out of native Philadephians), I can count the number of times I made it to that city on one hand. I went once in 1994 to see Pink Floyd at Veteran’s Stadium, and twice in 1997 to see U2 at Franklin Field and, lastly, the Sisters of Mercy at the Electric Factory. That’s it. It’s not that I had anything against going to Philly. I just didn’t have enough of a reason to go, most of the time.
The only reason I had any clue about nearby Emerald City, however, was via a crucial bootleg cassette I bought from a guy named Greg during my freshman year of college.
Prior to going to Denison University in 1985, all I knew about XTC was “Senses Working Overtime,” which — while a sublimely catchy, well-crafted pop tune — was in somewhat stark contrast to the steady diet of Black Flag, Motorhead and Bauhaus I was otherwise concerning myself with, at the time. Once ensconced at Denison as a gloomy punk fan amidst a student body otherwise fixated with Ziggy Marley and The Grateful Dead, I was lucky enough to align myself with a tight gaggle of similarly inclined folks for whom tye-dyed t-shirts and interminable Jerry Garcia guitar solos had refreshingly little appeal.
Regularly convening with my friends in the dank ground floor of Crawford Hall (in a room half-ironically referred to as “Anarchy Hall”), I had my horizons forcibly broadened to music by bands previously beyond my narrow vista like The Velvet Underground, R.E.M., King Crimson, fIREHOSE, The Hoodoo Gurus, The Lime Spiders, Split Enz, The Modern Lovers, The Feelies, The Cramps, The Stooges, Television, NRBQ, The Tom Robinson Band, The Three O’Clock, The Smiths and — oh yes, wait for it — XTC.
On many a beery Friday and Saturday night did we in that room repeatedly crank the entireties of Chronic Town by R.E.M. and Black Sea by XTC before four or five of us set out to wobble around the campus in a drunken stupor, looking for trouble.
Besotted by tracks like the punkily rousing “Respectable Street” and the manic skank of “Living Through Another Cuba” from those high-volume evenings, I went out in search of more XTC, finding only a Portuguese edition (no joke) of the English Settlement cassette in our campus bookstore. Then, I happened upon Greg, a somewhat standoffish cat who lived downstairs from me in Huffman Hall. Greg and I didn’t have much in common, but he had a sideline business in buying and trading bootleg cassettes. Most of it was crap I wouldn’t play at a dog like Van Morrison and the like, but he did have one cassette I snapped up and bought from him without hearing a note off of it. It was XTC recorded a year earlier in Philadelphia on the tour for Black Sea. I brought that cassette with me to the next Friday night meet-up in “Anarchy Hall” and I was practically treated like the returning prodigal son. The fatted calf was verily slain and that much-loved tape was put into maddeningly regular rotation for our Friday/Saturday beer summits.
Originally broadcast on Philadelphia rock station 93.3 WMMR, the recording of XTC at Emerald City was a revelation. Pairing the adrenalized sprint of punk with irrepressible pop hooks and choppy, clanging guitars, it was high-energy music that was propulsive and frenetic, but more clever and jubilant than angry and nihilistic. In short order, I became an ardent fan of the band and followed them into their less exuberant, “bucolic” phase. But I’ll always adore this particular era of the band.
I always wondered what the interior of Emerald City looked like, speculating if it was more of a proper theatre or a conventional rock club. I pictured a utopian sort of scene where punks and rudeboys and hip-hoppers and hardcore kids and goths and New Wave babes and all stripes in between would mix and mingle, not unlike the then-about-to-shutter Danceteria back home in New York City. That might totally have been a fanciful projection, but it made me enjoy the listening experience of that cassette all the more. Some cursory googling revealed an ad for the venue that might reflect the same performance by XTC (see above). Shortly after that gig, bands like The Plasmatics and Joe Jackson played, lending credence to my image of the place. Who knows, though…. maybe it was a shithole?
Anyway, thirty-five years later, the footprint of Emerald City now plays host to a Subaru dealership. XTC put out several more albums before going into hibernation after 2000’s Wasp Star. I ended up finding a copy of the Emerald City recording on disc titled Fab Foursome in Philly several years back, but you don’t need to hunt that down. The entirety of it is on YouTube.
It’s been a real week of loss for my neighborhood. First came word that the Strand Bookstore was in trouble, which prompted me to take the wife and kids over there for a book-buying bonanza. Then came word that Astor Place Hairstylists was shutting down, which prompted my son to jog over and get one more trim from our favorite cutter Speedy. Then I noticed that Otto, Mario Battali’s eatery in the ground floor of 1 Fifth Avenue had given up the struggle and put a “FOR LEASE” sign in its window. Granted, Battali turned out to be a grabby schweinhund during the #MeToo era, but he recused himself from the operation in 2015. I cannot count how many great meals my family and I had in that space. We are heartbroken to see it go.
This weekend, after yet another trek around the East Village with no particular destination in mind, I was heading back home up East 10th Street. The strip in question has already lost a few businesses to the pandemic, notably the gimmicky Ikinari Steak House, City of Saints Coffee and Turntable Lab. While my kids are very happy that Sundaes & Cones is still hanging on, I was crestfallen to spot yesterday that Jesse Malin’s Black & White Bar is no more. I stood in front of its exterior with mouth agape. The interior has been gutted, and so have I.
I’m told they are “moving,” but there is no destination as yet.
I logged many a happy evening in the dark confines of the Black & White Bar. Subtle, low-key, comfortable and owned and operated by afore-cited NYC punk veteran Jesse Malin, the Black & White Bar was always a perfect destination. Somewhere, I have an envelope of photographs dating back to about 2003 of myself in the company of various members of Killing Joke’s road crew and a couple of erstwhile SWANS being very decidedly drunk within the intimate watering hole.
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