Flaming Pablum

Six New York City Diners in 1974

St. Marks Place & Third Avenue

...in 2014

Oasis in Manhattan

If I’m being honest, I was never especially blown away by Oasis. I mean, they were certainly quite capable of cranking out a series of perfectly respectable-albeit-derivative singles that were loaded with catchy hooks and reminiscent of various well-established rock motifs, but I couldn’t quite understand why they enjoyed such a robust amount of popularity when – to my mind – some of their more musically adventurous fellow countrymen in bands like Suede, Blur, Pulp, Elastica and several others were stalled on lower rungs of the ladder. I mean, despite what short-lived NYC indie band Thin Lizard Dawn suggested, I never believed Oasis sucked, but I just didn’t think there was anything especially exceptional about them. I also never really warmed to Liam Gallagher’s voice, a sort of whiney amalgamation of Lennon and Lydon. I also never understood his penchant for basically standing stock-still when performing.

But, y’know, what the Hell do I know? Oasis went onto become one of Britain’s biggest musical exports, for a while, until the wheels fell off and the Gallagher brother could no longer stand each other. I’ve frequently suggested that if their music was as entertaining as their endearingly contentious interviews, I’d have been way more into Oasis. At the very least, Liam and Noel were quite handy with their pithy quips.

I’m only invoking their name here for a couple of reasons. I was recently discussing them with some work colleagues, and I came across the shot above. Somewhat famously, Oasis’ New York City debut performance was at Wetlands Preserve down on Laight Street in TriBeCa, a storied venue most renowned for spawning the neo-hippy jam-band scene comprised of bands like The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blues Traveler, et al. To be fair, while that was indeed Wetlands’ whole shtick, most of the bands I went to go see there had nothing to do with that vibe. From ska to funk to hardcore punk, Wetlands’ booking policy was refreshingly open-ended with regards to genre, so Oasis playing there wasn’t all that out of left field. More to the point, one could argue that Oasis’ music was no less retro-philic than the club’s more celebrated acts who were continually invoking the spirit of Woodstock, et al.

Regardless, while it was a decent-sized, bi-level club, the actual performance space was fairly intimate. I seem to always remember it being oppressively loud, as the sound bouncing off the back room’s concrete walls (floridly painted with pastoral scenes of flower-children dancing in leafy glades) had nowhere to go. That said, it was always a fun space to see a band. I never had a bad time there.

In doing research for this post, though, I discovered that the band actually graced the Wetlands stage twice on their debut American tour – first in July of 1994, and a second time three months later in October. You can see their full performance from the October date here.

I’m including the photo above from the July gig not just because it seems like a typical shot of the band, finding Liam in his signature stance, but also because it’s so telling of its era. Not only does no one have their fucking phone out, but I just love the guy pictured in the background just under Liam (the bespectacled gent in the Failure t-shirt). Dutiful rock journalist that he must have been (and given my own involvement in that vocation, I believe I might know the dude in question – Jon Wiederhorn, is that you??), he’s staring intently at Liam and actually taking notes with a pen and pad. That’s some goddamn dedication, right there. Here's another take...

The July gig was actually part of an annual music industry convention called the New Music Seminar, a string of dates every summer devoted to music showcases in various venues around town and schmooze-opportunities and panel discussions at a hotel in Times Square. I attended a few New Music Seminars, but I think I sat 1994’s out. I didn’t go to this Oasis gig, in any case. My former colleague Neil Strauss did, though, and wrote this little bit about it for the New York Times.

Just to bring things up to date as a side note, in the ensuing 28 years since this event, Wetlands Preserve is long, long gone. It closed in 2001, following the death of its founder-owner Larry Bloch. The building that housed the club, 161 Hudson Street, was converted into a luxury condo (of course) in 2004. The ground-floor space formerly occupied by Wetlands became an expensive bedding emporium of some kind for a while. Last time I walked by it, that concern had closed and it was awaiting a new tenant.

Both Jon Wiederhorn (if that's indeed him above) and Neil Strauss went further with their careers. I would later work alongside Jon during my tenure at MTV News Online circa 2006, and he’d go on to pen several books, including an authoritative guide on heavy metal called “Louder Than Hell.” Neil Strauss, meanwhile, who I’d worked with in 1990 at The New York Review of Records, later went on to write – as cited above – for The New York Times and other prestigious outlets. After writing some memorable profile pieces for Rolling Stone (including one where I believe he got into bed with Jewel), Neil was drafted to orchestrate (and presumably ghost-write) the fabled Motley Crue oral history, “The Dirt.” From there, Neil’s career took an interesting turn and he became an accomplished pickup artist, ostensibly for the purposes of writing a book on same. That book, “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” took Neil to a whole new level, so to speak. The last time I saw him was at a Cocteau Twins concert at the (since demolished) Roseland Ballroom. He was wearing leather pants.

Lastly, I stumbled upon this ancient video of Oasis and swiftly determined that it was shot here in New York City, possibly during the same stay as the first Wetlands gig. Herein we see the brothers Gallagher and cohorts playing in the Central Park bandshell, just steps to the south of Bethesda Fountain. There are also several shots of the band glumly burying their drummer in a makeshift public garden of the sort one used to encounter around certain portions of the Upper West Side and Lower East side. Can anyone identify the spot?

The Couch

Peggy and I got married in the summer of 2001. We returned to New York City from our honeymoon in Spain on Friday, September 7. The following Tuesday was …. well, you can figure it out.

Freshly married, eager to move forward with our plans and newly reminded of the fragility of human life, we promptly started looking to move out of my studio apartment. However cool and spacious it was, it just wasn’t an apartment necessarily conducive to having any babies, which was our priority, at the time.

In relatively short order, after looking at scores of uninspiring spaces, we somehow struck oil. Peggy happened to spot a promising listing in the very same neighborhood. By the tail end of 2002, we moved from a studio on East 12th to a “Junior Four” (read: a one-bedroom apartment with a dining room/study that could be re-purposed as a second bedroom) on East 9th. This was where we were going to start our family. As it’s turned out, we’ve been there ever since.

Once settled, we decided to get a sectional sofa. In retrospect, I cannot remember why. I think I was romanced by the one my cousins used to have at their old house up in the Berkshires. It just seemed comfier and homey. So, we went to shitty Crate & Barrell on Broadway and picked one up.

Details elude me as to why we chose a brown one, but that’s the color we got. I suppose it meshed with the other colors in the living room, but I’ll be damned if we were that thorough about it. The important thing was that it could accommodate several people quite comfortably. If necessity called for it, two people could sleep on it simultaneously.

In time, our plans to have children were realized, and our big brown couch was soon being climbed all over by Charlotte and, shortly afterwards, her little brother Oliver.

Guests came and went. Myriad meals were consumed on the couch. Parties were thrown on it. Countless drinks were spilled on it. A fortune in coins slid between its cracks. A graveyard of lost LEGO bricks vanished beneath its skirts. Various remotes went frequently astray beneath its cushions. But it served us well.

In time, its robust brown luster faded. In due course, the springs beneath the two most frequently sat-upon spots gave way. The “command center”/”driver’s seat” spot on the far end was soon re-dubbed “the Pit,” as whomever sat in it would sink, butt-first, towards the floor beneath.

When we could no longer tolerate it, Peggy started suggesting we bite the bullet and spring for a new couch. Because I ultimately loathe change, I was slow to get onboard, but even I was getting fed up.

The particulars of getting a new sectional sofa were far more complicated than we’d imagined, but living in a building without a service elevator meant that we had to choose a sectional of very specific measurements. I don’t remember that quandary when we bought the first one, but maybe we’d just gotten lucky.

It took us forever to find a suitable one. I honestly recused myself, after a while, about feeling the need to weigh in on its preferred design. As long as it fit and was comfortable, that would be fine by me. Colors really don’t matter to me.

We settled on one, paid for it and made arrangements for delivery. That will happen tomorrow. Today, our building’s super and handyman removed the old brown one.

On Oliver’s way home from school, he passed by the couch on the sidewalk and snapped the following shot, and I’m not gonna lie. I got kind of a lump in my throat about it.

Yes, it was an ugly, beat-up and suitably pooh-colored piece of shit, but this couch was really the epicenter of our home. There are videos of my kids as tiny tots crawling all over it. To see it dumped on the pavement really breaks my heart.

I was reminded of this song by the Lemonheads about feeling anguish over seemingly banal, inanimate objects.

The new couch arrives tomorrow. We’ll see how that goes. But I’ll always love the old couch.

Goodnight, Daniel Johnston

I’m a little late to the table with this, but gimme a break …. it’s been a busy week.

I remember reading about Daniel Johnston way before ever hearing his music, but got my first taste via a compilation video called Mouthful of Sweat, which I bought for its inclusion of angry noise-rock bands like Missing Foundation, Prong and Cop Shoot Cop. Daniel's contributions ("Funeral Home," "I Did Acid with Caroline" and "Don't Play Cards with Satan") were *nothing* like the feral, aggressive music I bought the video for, but the songs were just as powerful, albeit in an entirely different way.

At once childlike, surreal and intimately heartfelt, Daniel's music hinted at a much more complicated story than the descriptor "Lo-fi indie songwriter" could ever begin to encapsulate. I had to write an obit for the man for work this week, which you can find here. Given the nature of my organization’s relationship with its affiliated songwriters, composers and music publishers, it wasn’t really prudent to get into the specifics of Johnston’s otherwise largely acknowledged mental travails, although those aspects of his personal and creative life are essentially an inexorable part of his story. The man himself was entirely open about his struggles in that capacity.

That particular aspect of Daniel Johnston — his role as a pivotal figure in so-called “outsider” music (i.e. naive, self-taught) has always made me somewhat uncomfortable. There seems to be a sort of voyeuristic quality and not-so-vague exploitative element to celebrating the more eccentric parts of his art and music, which seems sort of brazenly inappropriate considering that the issues he was grappling with were very real. By the same token, much of the greatest art, music and literature throughout the ages has been produced by similarly troubled individuals. To not celebrate Johnston’s entirely distinctive and prolific work is to deny his life’s greatest endeavor.

When I think of Daniel Johston’s music, meanwhile, I am instantly transported back to a specific era of popular culture. I am reminded of discovering bands like Galaxie 500, King Missile, The Clean and Bongwater, hanging out in long-since vanished live-music venues like Maxwell’s in Hoboken, the Knitting Factory in on East Houston Street and the Thread Waxing Space on Broadway. His music played regularly in similarly long-shuttered esoteric record stores like Pier Platters in Hoboken, Rocks In Your Head in SoHo and Downtown Music Gallery. His songs evoked a specific, intangible sensibility that really did influence and inform a whole legion of artists more inclined to more purely expressing themselves rather than simply catering to trends or shifting units.

May he finally find peace.

We Are Doomed as a Species

Still zonked from the big work event that took me to Nashville and back earlier this week, I walked home from work in the warm, late afternoon, yesterday, up through TriBeCa and into SoHo.

Strolling north on Mercer Street, I was once again reminded of how much that neighborhood has changed. Where it was once a comparatively whisper-quiet backwater of modest, independent businesses and galleries, the strip in question is now a hotbed of retail activity, playing host to any number of high-end “streetwear” outlets that attract gaggles of teenaged hip-hoppers in expensive sneakers. The third-floor gallery I used to work in at 55 Mercer is long gone, its buidling converted into a pricey condominium a few years back.

As I proceeded further, I spied a roiling, animated crowd gathered just beyond the intersection of Prince Street. There was a horde of gawkers spilling over the sidewalk and into the street in front of the Mercer Hotel, gazing up at the hotel, many with smartphones extended above their heads in the hopes of capturing some fleeting image. It was not quite Beatlemaniacal pandemonium, but obviously someone of note was about.

I asked someone standing with earnest intent on the far corner what all the fuss was about.

Apparently, one of the Kardashian sisters was rumored to be inside.

Goin' Down to Nashville

As I’ve been alluding to over several posts, I depart this coming week for Nashville, Tennessee to attend a company-wide Town Hall event I’ve been orchestrating logistics and video coverage for. We now seem to do one of these every year. It’s a lot of goddamn work and, frankly, way more stressful than it should be, but I’ve managed to pull it off for the past two years. Here’s hoping this coming week’s event sustains that trend. Please wish me luck, in any case.

While it seems like an awfully fun town (even if you’re not inclined towards Country music), I never get to spend a great amount of time in Nashville. I arrive the day before the event, go right to our office on Music Row and work, go to the rehearsal, head back to the hotel, sleep, wake up, do the event and then check out and bolt back to New York. Nashville has a renowned live-music scene and purportedly some of the best BBQ to be found on the planet, but I haven’t been able to experience either, as yet, and this year looks to be no different, in that capacity. One of these visits, I’m sure I’ll get to know Nashville properly.

For me, though, the first word to still pop into my head after an invocation of Nashville is a very specific and robustly prurient one. I’ll explain, but first … some deeply tiresome and needlessly detailed context.

Popular music in the 1990s. Pose that to someone, and the first word you’ll probably hear is Grunge. While, true, Seattle’s more sludgily bedraggled take on punk rock did indeed break big in the 90’s via obvious bands like Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Tad, Pearl Jam and …. y’know …. that other “N” word, it wasn't the only thing happening. Suggesting that Grunge was the only major musical export of the decade in question is just lazy. In the very early 90’s, alongside Grunge came the British indie boom, with sub-sets like the so-called Shoegazer scene of bands like Lush, Ride, Chapterhouse and Curve and the sort-of post-Grebo crop of bands like The Wonder Stuff, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, Kingmaker and the Senseless Things. This was followed shortly by the whole Manchester scene, finding the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, The Charlatans and James rising to prominence. Later on, of course, there was the Britpop boom, featuring bands like Blur, Suede, Echobelly, Gene and, of course, Oasis. Back here at home, Grunge seemed to pave the way for a vast new crop of sloppily-dubbed “alt.rock” bands of all stripes to suddenly get snapped up by major labels. When grunge started to arguably lose its flannel-swaddled charm, along came a brand new crop of more accessible pop-punk outfits, finding bands like Green Day, The Offspring and Rancid taking a formula honed by myriad forebears still wallowing in comparatively impoverished obscurity to both the top of the pop charts and verily the fucking bank. Outside of rock circles, of course there was hip-hop of all stripes — from the progressive and adventurous Native Tongue scene to the grittiest of hardcore gangsta rap, both later overshadowed by the schism between the East Coast’s Bad Boy label and the West Coast’s Death Row. Club music continued to evolve and the phenomenon of Trip-Hop fully blossomed via the triad of Massive Attack, Tricky and the seismically original debut album by Portishead, the blueprint for which later limply copied by countless pretenders who turned the sound into sonic wallpaper for cocktail lounges. Around this same time, many of my native New York’s noise-rock bands were in major percolation, finding Surgery, Helmet, Prong, Barkmarket and — yes, do indeed wait for it — Cop Shoot Cop hitting their respective strides. Regardless, by the end of the decade, the sickly plague of teen pop suddenly became the prevailing order of the day, finding Rolling Stone putting people like Britney Spears on their cover far more times than the magazine’s tenuous grasp on credibility should have ever allowed.

So, yeah, musically, there was a lot going on in the 90’s, and this isn’t even really the whole of it. I’m dead-sure I’ve omitted lots of stuff.

While all this was going on, I was pretty dutifully plugged in. For most the decade, I juggled full-time jobs at LIFE Magazine and then TIME Magazine with gigs as a freelance music journalist for outlets as far ranging as indie mags like The New York Review of Records and a magazine called Exit to music glossies like Creem and HuH! (a seemingly forgotten offshoot of RayGun Magazine) and then onto a delightful position as a weekly contributor to the “Goings On About Town” section of The New Yorker, for which I wrote blurbs about upcoming shows by bands the average reader of that magazine would invariably never consider attending.

But, even as I was deeply versed in all the subsets floridly cited above, I was also fortunate enough to still be fleetingly hip enough to be privy to a live-music circuit of an endearingly grotty, downmarket and proudly underground variety. Via a select coterie of comrades in the mid-to-late 90’s, I was regularly attending shows by bands like The Lunachicks, The Unband, The Prissteens, The PeeChees, The Candy Snatchers, The Lee Harvey Keitel Band, The Pleasure Fuckers, The Upper Crust and a particularly eye-&-ear-immolating (literally and figuratively) combo called Nashville Pussy.

Not actually from Nashville but named after a slavishly libidinous bit of idiotic stage banter by Ted Nugent on his Double Live Gonzo album (right before he lapses into the suitably obscene “Wang Dang Sweet Poontang”), Nashville Pussy was — and remains — a Georgia foursome who play a blistering, boogie-fueled blend of depraved, high-octane cowpunk that is as informed by KISS, AC/DC and Motorhead as it is by Blackfoot, Molly Hatchet and Skynyrd, but played with the ferocity of Black Flag. I realize that’s an awfully messy description, but they’re that kind of band.

Taking this bizarre aesthetic to a whole other level were Nashville Pussy’s secret weapons, the two-fisted punch of weapons-grade estrogen in the form of perpetually bikini-topped guitarist Ruyter Suys and towering Amazonian bassist Corey Parks, two ridiculously sexy — and ruthlessly adept -- players who flanked lead-singer/guitarist Blaine Cartright (himself a dead-ringer for neighbor Carl from “The Aqua Teen Hunger Force”). Where Ruyter was a perpetually head-banging and tantalizingly sweaty hybrid of Angus Young and an Alberto Vargas pin-up, Corey Parks stalked the stage at Darth Vader height and spat fucking fire in a manner that really did not suggest a scrupulous observation of venue fire codes. Parks left the band in 2000, a couple of years before the horrible Great White fire at Rhode Island niteclub, so I’m not sure Nashville Pussy still dabbles in this sort of reckless pyrotechnics to this day. But, at the time, it was really quite a spectacle.

I was lucky enough to see Nashville Pussy almost burn off my eyebrows off and singe my eardrums at least four or five times, usually at the Continental just off St. Marks. I did also see them at Tramp’s (possibly in a double-bill with The Hellacoptors, but I cannot recall). At that particular gig, I managed to take a couple of shots (this was before cell phones, so I braved the pit with my proper camera — no small feat, in retrospect). Some of those shots are above and below.

I adored both the Nashville Pussy live show and their first album, the somewhat predictably titled Let Them Eat Pussy — which is not exactly a great album to leave lying around on your coffee table when, say, your in-laws come visiting. Early versions of the record came with a bonus EP — titled, WAIT FOR IT, Eat More Pussy — of esoteric covers, featuring deep cuts by AC/DC, Rose Tattoo, Mitch Ryder, The Flamin’ Groovies and The Saints, among others. Corey Parks split the band right before their second record, High as Hell, and her departure sort of sapped my enthusiasm a bit, and I didn’t really keep after them beyond that. I’m sure they still kick a man-sized platter of ass, but I wish Corey were still in the band’s ranks.

Despite being nominated for a Grammy Award (!!!) for Best Metal performance for the song below (the delightful “Fried Chicken & Coffee”), Nashville Pussy have never really broken big. Whether it’s their indelicate name or their proudly blunt espousal of sleaze, the band has remained underdogs of the underground, which is probably just how they like it. I have a weathered Nashville Pussy t-shirt, but stopped wearing it some time ago, as it started to appear a bit unseemly for a greying dad like m’self to be sporting such a legend across my chest. I’ll never part with their first album and EP, though. God bless’em.

So, yeah …. anyway…. whenever I hear the word Nasvhile….the next word in my head is always… well, Pussy.

Enjoy.

Blondie on The Bowery in `76

From "Blank Generation." It's hard to believe it's the same city...

The Summer 2019 Survey

Since, as mentioned, I'd suggest it's fair to say that Summer 2019 is officially over and done with, I thought I'd exhume this Summer Survey that I haven't done since 2016. Here goes...

Defining Moment of Summer 2019:
I would say that the defining moment, for me, would be --- after months of fretting about the prospect of our son, Oliver, departing for his first time away at sleepaway camp for four weeks -- arriving back up at the camp and seeing him bounding out of his cabin looking happy, healthy and filled with tales to tell about how much he enjoyed his time there, completely exceeding our expectations about the endeavor. The whole experience ending up being all that we'd hoped for him, and more. 

Best Purchase of Summer 2019:
Overlooking stuff I procured for my kids, I'd say the most rewarding purchase would be the pair of ridiculously indulgent YETI 10 Oz Rambler Wine Tumblers I bought to celebrate the wife & I's eighteenth wedding anniversary. Nothing says "marital bliss" like needlessly expensive outdoor lifestyle products. 

 

Best Book You Read of Summer 2019:
It was initially a toss up between Wayne Hussey's memoir, "Salad Daze" and Joe Doe & Tom DeSavia's continuation of their oral-history-styled documentation about the trajectory of L.A. punk, "More Fun in The World" (which I'm currently finishing), but if I'm being honest, it was re-discovering H.P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu & Other Weird Stories" (which I discussed here) that really brought me the most joy.

Best Movie You Saw During Summer 2019:
I honestly cannot recall the last film I went to, as in sat down in a movie theater to watch. I saw plenty of decent movies in the past couple of months, but I did not have the experience of attending a movie in its intending setting. I mean, yeah, I guess I enjoyed "Avengers: Endgame," but I feel like that's the lamest of possible answers. 

Best Gift You Received of Summer 2019:
For Fathers Day, my son Oliver gave me a fetching red Forbidden Planet t-shirt that I was quite pleased with. Also, my friend Rob B. surprised me with a copy of the sprawling, live Wonder Stuff boxset, Upstaged, for no readily apparent reason other than that he'd heard me mention how curious I was about it. Damn nice of him. 

Biggest Loss of Summer 2019:
I spoke about it here already, but I was quite sad to see the final demise of Manitoba's on Avenue B. 

Song That Best Sums Up Summer 2019:
Honestly, while I'm inclined to cite the new single by IDLES, "Mercedes Marxist," which arrived back in June, I can't say it's the song that defined my summer. For whatever reason, my family found itself repeatedly playing the 1978 best-of by Paul McCartney & Wings, Wings Greatest with some inexplicable regularity, although no one else seems to enjoy "Live & Let Die" as much as I. Realistically, I think the song that is destined to always remind of this summer is one by a guy named Spencer Ludwig. As mentioned elsewhere, at my job, I am tasked with putting together a fiscal-year-end highlight video, scored by various pop hits of the day by my organization's affiliates. Spencer Ludwig's "Best Life" is factoring heavily into that video -- whether I like it or not -- and it has been an inescapable ear-worm. Here it is: 

Happiest Memory of Summer 2019:
After initiating a dialogue with an estranged best friend (which I spoke about here), he suggested reconvening with another since-inexplicably-distanced friend at a Murphy's Law gig on a boat. The evening in question was far and away the happiest I've been and the hardest I've laughed in a long, long time. 

Saddest Memory of Summer 2019:
This might sound pretty histrionic, but I found the failure of Robert Mueller's beleaguered testimony to congress to really move the dial in any meaningful capacity to be pretty damn tragic. To my mind, it was a blown opportunity to make a crucial course correction, and I kinda blame Mr. Mueller for that. You may beg to differ, but so be it.

Scariest Memory of Summer 2019:
In early July, I showed up for jury duty and narrowly escaped being selected for placement on a case they'd informed me would take "at least three months," which would have fallen squarely in my busiest period at work. Suffice to say, I vehemently protested, but was called in to talk to a roomful of lawyers to explain my situation anyway. I was probably a little needlessly belligerent about it all, but managed to convince them I would very much not be an asset to either side of the dispute. I had no problems serving at the time, but this was a commitment that would have severely messed up my life. 

Word That Best Describes Summer 2019:
Intangible.

 

Summer in the City, 2019

The calendar might tell you one thing, the almanac another and the weatherman a third, but as far as I'm concerned, summer's official point of departure is when school starts back up again. Being that both of my two head back to their respective classrooms this week, I'd suggest that it's fair to say that Summer 2019 is done and dusted. As such, herewith some of my favorite photographs I snapped during the past three months of life here in New York City.  Enjoy and welcome Autumn.