Flaming Pablum

The Punchline: Killing Joke Comes Back to NYC

Regular readers might remember a series of posts, last year, that unspooled a weepy, tragicomic epic poem about my endeavors to witness my beloved Killing Joke’s 40th Anniversary tour. For those who were fortunate enough to miss those laborious entries, here’s a quick recap.

I’d procured tickets for their September gig at nearby Irving Plaza, only to later learn that a work event would have me in Nashville on the very same day. I managed to get my company’s travel representative to move Heaven and Earth to get me plane tickets that would get me back to New York in time to catch the show. However, an uncaring God intervened by way of a prohibitive thunderstorm, which diverted my plane to the chilly barrens of Syracuse. By the time we were back in the air again, the show was already underway. By the time I got out of the airport and back to Manhattan, the show was over. I did not make it.

While I was congratulated for my work on the Nashville project, I was inconsolable for having missed the Killing Joke show, assuming that given the significance of the anniversary, they weren’t likely to undertake a tour this way again. Fate briefly smiled on me in the form of a cash bonus – a reward for my hard work in Nashville. I took said cash and immediately spent it on plane tickets to catch the final two dates of the tour in England.

In November, the day my flight was to depart from New York City to London for these shows, God again tried to take a giant dump on my plans by conjuring a freakish fucking blizzard -– in NOVEMBER, once again -- that ground the city to a virtual halt and delayed several flights – notably my own.

I did, however, eventually get out and made it to both of those shows, which were amazing. Should you give a damn, you can read all about that chapter here.

Further mocking me from on high, our sadistic deity then saw fit to bring Killing Joke not only back to New York City, but for two goddamn shows, one of which in my very fucking neighborhood. Hilarity.

So, yeah, tonight they’re playing at the comparatively intimate Le Poisson Rouge. Tomorrow night, they’ll be tightly ensconced in St. Vitus. Both of these tiny club shows are sold the fuck out, but guess who got tickets?

I mean, honestly, how could I NOT?

Details to come.

Here's a shaky bit of the last show in London (I did not shoot this)...

Tompkins Square `67

A far cry from today...

Ghost Riding Downtown

The Old New York Tumblr, which I’m quite fond of, posted the below picture today, and it struck a chord for a couple of reasons.

Snapped, evidently, in 1968, the image begs a few questions, foremost among them being what the Hell is that on the back of that motorcycle?

Is it a mannequin? A terrified mime? A cadaver? An evil clown? The little kids in the middle ground seem fairly unfazed, but maybe it’s happening too fast for them to really take stock. I fear we’ll never know the answers, here.

Beyond that, though, I really feel like I know this corner, but can’t slap a location on it. I’m assuming it’s the Lower East Side, but I suppose it could also be Brooklyn. It’s obviously somewhere in the vicinity of the Manhattan Bridge (note sign in center of photograph), but I cannot name that intersection.

Can you? Weigh in.

See, It's Not Just Me...

Circa 1993, I believe...

Where they're standing in this pic:

What Was on West Eighth

Over the course of this silly blog’s almost …. Jesus … 14-year existence, I’ve posted multiple entries about doings over on West 8th Street, specifically the strip between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Time was when this little patch of Greenwich Village covered a vast array of my needs and interests. From amazing record stores like It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll and the original Venus Records to mediocre ones like Revolution Records and Record Factory, there was no shortage of places to procure music. You also had Butterfly’s, should you ever be in search of just-the-right Iron Maiden or Black Flag t-shirt. Across the way was Postermat, which featured a dizzying array of crap --- poster, buttons, badges, décor – aimed squarely at teenage music jerks. There was also the suitably surreal art gallery, Psychedelic Solution and Flip, for all of your New Wavey fashion needs, the 8th Street Playhouse – which was the first place I ever saw “Repo Man” -- and the seemingly ageless Gray’s Papaya, once touted as Lou Reed’s favorite restaurant in New York City, at the end of the block. You also had the amazing video store TLA, and a massive B. Dalton Books (later Barnes & Noble) on the corner, across from Gray’s Papaya. There were also numerous places to buy shoes of every possible description.

In later years, when fortunes started to change for this once-busy byway, there were still places like Disc-O-Rama and Sleep of Reason Comics, but somewhat gradually, West 8th Street had less and less to offer me.

All of the concerns listed above, of course, are long, long gone here in 2019.

More recently, my kids became very fond of The Burger Joint (which left us about two years back), while I enjoy both the odd visit to endeavors like the 8th Street Wine Cellar, Arts & Crafts Beer Parlor and nouvelle-Italian eatery, Aunt Jake’s. My wife quite enjoys cocktails at the Marlton Hotel, every now and then, but I wouldn’t call that a particular favorite of mine.

In any case, blah blah blah… Who cares what I like, right? Fine. Regardless, as happened on University Place, and as is happening on the other side of town at St. Marks Place, West Eight Street is about to be blighted with its own enormous new luxury tower, slated to be plonked right down on the southeast corner of Eighth & MacDougal, finally putting to rest speculation of why that particular row of storefronts has been vacant for so long.

Whatever your memories of West Eighth Street are, get ready for this formerly signature byway of olde Greenwich Village to (further) decimated. Incidentally, the lovingly rendered painting of the intersection of MacDougal and West Eighth above comes courtesy of the great Ephemeral New York blog, and was painted by Alfred S. Mira in 1942. Below, meanwhile, as covered here a few times before, is Lowell Bodger's walk down West Eighth Street from the early 1970s.

Video Over SoHo

As it happens, I walk through SoHo every weekday on my treks to and from my office. During same, I cannot stop myself from taking pictures. Even though the neighborhood and its surrounding environs have dramatically changed over the last few decades, I am still moved by its singular architectural character, its vibe and the sense of history – both personal and civic --- it continues to exude. That above image of Broome Street I shot just this morning.

I haven’t mentioned her excellent blog in a little while (or not since 2017, I guess), but Yuki Ohta revamped her SoHo Memory Project not too long back, and it’s a wonderful trove of pictures and anecdotes for those who pine for the SoHo that was prior to it being a hotbed of prohibitively expensive real estate and luxury retail outlets.

I also noticed she has her own Vimeo account. Click here to check out some of the clips she’s amassed, lovingly capturing glimpses of that bygone SoHo. Enjoy.

The Bug on the Bowery: Redux

I wrote at greater length about Motherhead Bug on this post from 2016, but recently uncovered this amazing footage of the band playing CBGB in 1994.

Once again, Motherhead Bug was the amorphous collective spearheaded by erstwhile Cop Shoot Cop/Foetus/Firewater (yep, them again!) member/collaborator/pal Dave Ouimet.

As previously noted, these days, Mr. Ouimet is an accomplished illustrator and author whose work you should really check out. His latest work is a children’s book called “I Go Quiet,” which is published later this year. Find out more here. He's also a delightfully funny and very nice guy. 

Here he was conjuring all sorts of mayhem with Motherhead Bug.

Too Fast To Live, Too Young to Die, Too Old to Let Go

“Daddy, everybody there looked just like you. It was just old guys in blazers for miles.” So sayeth my 15-year-old daughter, yesterday, upon sending me the picture at right of Flea’s bass guitar, as housed in the Metropolitan Museum’s latest rock’n’roll-themed exhibit, “Play It Loud.” While I was pointedly underwhelmed by the Met’s last venture toward anything rock-related -– as you might remember from this ancient post -– I am indeed curious to go check out “Play It Loud,” as it’s more about actual instrumentation than fashion.

But of the myriad rock/punk-related exhibits going on right now -– you might remember my recent, pedantic takedown of the Museum of Sex’s somewhat one-dimensional “Punk Provocation” show -– I was quite enthralled by the Museum of Art & Design’s “Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die” retrospective of so-called “punk graphics” (as first mentioned here yesterday). I qualify that with “so-called” as many bits of the ephemera on display had precious little do to with bona fide punk by any definition. I mean, I’m sorry, but while lead singer Holly Johnson may have been a veteran of fabled Liverpool punk club, Eric’s, Frankie Goes to Hollywood were not a punk band, nor were trailblazing all-female British band Girlschool, who were heavy metal to the bone. That said, I get it --- had punk not happened, neither of those two outfits would have existed, or certainly not as we would come to know them.

Insufferably arrogant, music-knowitall quibbles like that aside, the two-floored exhibit checked way more of the right boxes than wrong ones, showcasing a host of period-specific artwork from across the pertinent spectrum of bands/scenes/labels, etc. I audibly gasped several times at some of the posters displayed -– both out of genuine awe and affinity, but also out of recognition.

To be sure, it’s a very strange sensation to see things that formerly hung on your own walls now displayed in an official museum as rarified artifacts to be studied with reverence. Now sequestered at my friend Rob D’s place out in New London, for many years I had a lovingly framed poster from Road to Ruin by the Ramones on my wall, also framed at the M.A.D. show in a display case sturdy enough to hold The Shroud of Turin.

During the course of my prolonged meandering around the galleries, I was strenuously tempted to fact-check a curator who was leading a gaggle of patrons, but thought better of it. As much as she was getting some of the minutia wrong, no one likes that guy.

Anyway, if you’re as enamored of this stuff as I am, you’d do well to check it out. Below are some more of my favorite pieces from it.

Of Punk, Product & Pricelessness

Hey again, all. It’s been a crazy April -- what with multiple projects percolating at work and the home renovation all happening, and life is poised to stay well and truly frantic until mid-May, it seems. We’ve finished the kids’ room, by and large, but the renovation has had ramifications on the rest of the apartment, so we’re re-imagining our living room in a somewhat painfully piecemeal way. On the office front, I’m preparing for two massive annual events and orchestrating a complicated tribute video to a prominent music executive, so that all has me all fucking stressed out. But, I have faith we’ll get through it all.

In any case, while I’m planning a larger piece on the Museum of Art & Design’s exhibit about Punk Graphics, I thought I’d quickly post this silly update to an older post involving one tiny bit of same.

Back in 2014, some regular readers might remember an entry I posted about Product, arguably one of the first CD boxsets put out by a punk band, that being the almighty Buzzcocks. In that post, I recounted how, as recently sprung post-collegiates , my friend Rob and I desperately coveted Product, but neither of could afford it, at the time, which leant the artifact a rarefied air of incalculable value. It also became a standard of measurement for us. We’re regularly tally the cost of debilitating financial demands and/or comparably unattainable items in terms of how many copies of Product they would equal. It was a genuinely silly idea, but a tenacious one.

This past Saturday, I was briefly let off my leash to go check out the afore-cited “Too Fast to Live, Too Young to Die,” the retrospective of graphics from the Punk era, and, upon entering, what should I behold but --- WAIT FOR IT – you guessed it, a pristine and lovingly preserved copy of Product (the cassette version), presented under thick museum glass as if prized from an Egyptian tomb, lending complete and utter credence to Rob & I’s long-held reverence for the collection.

Sadly, in keeping with the Museum of Sex’s ham-fisted mishandling of key facts about the Plasmatics and Cherry Vanilla, the Museum of Art & Design somewhat unbelievably mislabeled this item as the Buzzcocks’ debut LP, Another Music in a Different Kitchen, despite the collection’s actual name spelled out in big, block capital letters.

That unfortunate quibble notwithstanding, it’s indeed a great exhibit. More to come about that.

Pour one out for Pete. 

Cop Swap Cop: Another Track from EXCOP

Back in 2016, as discussed here, former members of my beloved Cop Shoot Cop (minus Tod Ashley, who was at home in Turkey, at the time) briefly reconvened for a benefit for Martin Bisi's fabled recording studio in Gowanus, Brooklyn. The gents partook in a jam session of sorts with former SWANS bassist Algis Kyzis filling in for Tod on second bass. Parts of that session were featured on a BC35 commemorative disc, credited to the name EXCOP. 

Some time later, -- around this time last year, really -- the release of that disc was celebrated at Brooklyn's St. Vitus with a live showcase, featuring EXCOP pummeling through an entirely improvisational set -- sort of like a burlier version of Spinal Tap's jazz odyssey without founding guitarist Nigel Tufnel. That's them above. It was a very festive occasion. 

Now, here in 2019, a second disc is surfacing -- BC35 Volume Two -- that features another great track from the original session. To celebrate same, EXCOP even cooked up a frankly disquieting video, replete with footage from the original session, spliced between unsettling snippets of all sorts of stuff. Easy viewing it is not, but what were you really expecting? 

Learn more here, but -- in the interim -- enjoy the video: