The Damned first played New York City’s CBGB in 1977, the first British Punk band to do so (along with having been the first British Punk band to issue any vinyl). During that maiden voyage, the band were famously captured by erstwhile CBGB door-minder/photographer Roberta Bayley in the photo above, posing with great, snotty aplomb in front of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
The band ended up playing four April nights at CBGB, sharing the bill with their Buckeye counterparts in the Dead Boys. Here’s a shot of them during one of those doubtlessly volatile evenings, this one taken by Ebet Roberts.
Today, meanwhile, in trawling around the `net, looking for nothing in particular, I came across this uncredited photo from the same era. I’m making some assumptions here but based on the line-up (with guitarist Brian James still in the ranks), I’m guessing this was snapped during that same span of April days. I have no idea who took it, but my question is – where in Manhattan was this photograph snapped?
I’d say the awning behind Dave Vanian on the left is a big clue, as are the terraced apartments behind Captain Sensible’s head. I have a hunch which I’m going to investigate, but where do YOU think it was taken?
The Damned are coming back to New York City (with original drummer Rat Scabies with them, this time) this May, but the next day is my son’s graduation, so I don’t think we’ll be going. We did just see them in October, anyway.
Back in 2018, some might remember a post discussing a New Year’s Eve show from 1997 at CBGB featuring Skeleton Key opening for the Jesus Lizard. It was a remarkable video for a number of reasons – not least being that, as mentioned in that post, there is a true paucity of video evidence out there of that particular iteration of Skeleton Key. In fact, former guitarist Chris Maxwell even wrote in to my blog to find out more about the video’s true provenance.
The clip was also compelling as it was yet another taste of what it was like to experience a show at CBGB, in all its cramped, overcrowded, smelly, firetrap-y glory. Lastly, it was just an intriguing slice of a New York City music scene that simply does not exist in any shape, way or form, anymore.
Unsurprisingly, the video was taken down for whatever reason, and never re-materialized. It happens.
About a year ago, however, someone evidently posted the other half of that video, that being the performance by the headliners, the mighty Jesus Lizard. I’ve posted footage of this band playing at CBGB before (notably back in 2022), but it’s never a bad idea to evangelize the Jesus Lizard.
Like many others, I adored the Great Jones Cafe, a funky little hole in the wall on Great Jones Street that served up amazing Cajun cuisine in a cool, relaxed, bohemian atmosphere. It wasn't at all out of question to be enjoying a meal or several beverages within its intimate walls and have, say, Willem Dafoe or Laurie Anderson or Matt Dillon walk in, or to be seated next to the full membership of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black or The Unband. The place just oozed character.
I snapped the picture above of same circa 1999. It closed in 2018, to much hue and cry, only to be replaced by ventures named Jolene and, well, Elvis. I'd never heard this story, as hipped to me by E.V. Grieve, but The New Yorker just posted an amazing article about the Great Jones Cafe's legendary Elvis bust. Read it here.
I should preface this by saying that The Red House Painters were never one of “my bands.” What little I knew about them, at the time, didn’t suggest that they were something I was ever going to give a damn about. I mean, I do love my share of earnest indie rock, but there was nothing about this particular band that captured my attention. I gather, in more recent years, that lead singer Mark Kozelek went on to field a number of unsavory allegations of sexual misconduct in the same unfortunate vein as folks like Louis CK, but I don’t know enough about that to credibly opine. Should you care, there’s always Google, I suppose.
So, while this music sounds perfectly fine, I’m not citing the clip below for its musical merit, nor I am endorsing Kozelek as an artist you should go check out. I mean, if you want to, go for it.
No, the reason I’m featuring the video below is because some might remember, a few years back, a somewhat exhaustive entry I posted called Spinning Out: 102 More of the Best New York City Videos, which aggregated, well, exactly that – 102 music videos that were filmed or shot within the five boroughs of New York City. While it was, as I said, exhaustive, it was by no means comprehensive, and periodically, I come across another that warrants inclusion. As such, check out “All Mixed Up” by The Red House Painters. Shot in 1996, and like similarly-inclined videos like “Bad Reputation” by Freedy Johnston and, oddly, “Star” by The Cult, it features evocative footage of the mid-90’s iterations of midtown (sort of the Sixth Avenue side of Rockefeller Center), SoHo (specifically Greene and Crosby Streets), Central Park, the “Two Bridges” area of the Lower East Side and a tiny patch of Brooklyn.
This one goes all the way back to 2016, but some of you might remember a shortseries of posts, back then, when I was trying to verify the existence of a short-lived club under Bond Street in NoHo called ‘Downtown.’ Rumors abounded Joey Ramone had a hand in it and that bands like The Lunachicks, White Zombie, Cycle Sluts from Hell, Cronos and Celtic Frost had played there. I remember Killing Joke being slated to play there, but the club closed shop before the gig in question could ever occur.
In any case, here we are in 2025 and – presuming it’s legit – our friend Michael W (whom you might remember from this post) posted the gig poster below, affirming that both the Lunachicks did indeed play there, and that it was indeed at 666 Broadway.
In later years, the space Downtown occupied turned into part of the whole “fitness corridor” plague which I lamented here, although I believe it is currently back to being empty and dormant.
Given that the band in question acrimoniously parted ways at the midpoint of the `90s, it’s exceptionally rare that I’m ever able to relay that there’s “new shit from Cop Shoot Cop” in the offing. The last time was probably circa the release of 2016’s live DVD, New York Post-Punk/Noise Series: Volume 1, which captured the band circa 1993, playing in the storied basement of producer Martin Bisi’s BC Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn. In 2018 and 2019, Martin Bisi himself released two LPs of former protegee bands celebrating his studio’s anniversary, featuring a couple of tracks by EXCOP, a quasi-reunion of Cop Shoot Cop, albeit with former SWANS bassist Algis Kizys filling in for Tod [A], who had expatriated to Turkey. That band even played live at late, lamented St. Vitus to celebrate those record releases, although their set was all-improvisational, kind of like the fabled “jazz odyssey” episode in This is Spinal Tap. Beyond those fleeting instances, new Cop Shoot Cop news, merch or activity of any kind is sadly as strenuously unlikely as the notion of Donald Trump ever credibly paying for any of his myriad crimes (sorry, just trying to keep things timely).
Rare and unlikely, maybe… but still possible.
Some weeks back, a gentleman from a label called Jungle Records reached out to me, looking to locate contact information for the elusive former commanding officer of Cop Shoot Cop, that being the aforementioned Tod [A]. Having noticed I’d posted what is probably the most recent interview with the man back in 2023, Jungle Records thought I might know how to get ahold of him. Evidently, Jungle has acquired what remained of Big Cat Records, the British indie label who first signed Cop Shoot Cop at the dawn of the `90s. I relayed that missive to Tod in Istanbul and things proceeded from there. For my part, I was rewarded with a review copy of the limited “Record Store Day” re-release of Cop Shoot Cop’s proper debut LP, Consumer Revolt, lovingly remastered and newly pressed on blue vinyl, which you can all expect to see hit discerning, RSD-participating shops this coming April.
As a brief aside, regular readers might remember my misgivings about Record Store Day, having previously renounced it as a shallow gimmick on some occasions. I changed my tune last year, you might remember, upon spying a lovely re-release of some Sisters of Mercy material, making me something of a filthy hypocrite. And while the notion of “limited editions” sometimes reeks of a quick cash-in, I firmly support the re-mastering, re-mixing, and re-releasing of any and all music by Cop Shoot Cop, regardless of any associations to Record Store Day or Arbor Day or whatever.
Anyway, I’m happy to relay that the re-release is slavishly faithful to the 1992 Big Cat edition of the album. Of course, the original album from 1990, on Circuit Records, boasted different cover art (featuring a different band logo superimposed over the visage of a deformed baby) and, if I recall correctly, a small poster with the LP. This new edition replicates the 1992 sleeve (“Now 15% More HATE!”), as well as the inner “bag,” replete with lyrics, a designation that “Tracks 4 & 12 were recorded at some piece-of-shit studio and doctored-up later somewhere else. (I mean, who really reads this crap , anyway?)” and that those in violation of copyright reservations “will be hunted down, imprisoned, and suffer a lingering death by torture at the hands of trained mercenaries.”
The vinyl itself is now a striking shade of blue. Why blue? I honestly don’t know beyond a hunch that, well, cops frequently wear blue, but that’s just me projecting.
Sadly, I am unable to report as to how this new vinyl actually sounds, just yet, as my teenaged son Oliver absconded with my turntable, not too long back. Once I’ve remedied that quandary, I’ll let ya know.
I will say this, though. This first full long-player by Cop Shoot Cop, which was prefaced by both the visceral Headkick Facsimile and the literally-blood-splattered Piece, Man (both technically “EP’s”), captured a still-nascent iteration of the band that was refreshingly unbothered by the notion of seeming inaccessible to the layperson. As such, their utilization of untethered noise comes unrestrained by any concerns for appeasing radio-programmers or offending the bean-counting sensibilities of any easily riled middle-management monkeys from the major labels. This is reflected in both the sound and the sentiment of this record. Speaking to my alma mater SPIN in April of 1991, Tod [A] said…
We’re vomiting back all the garbage – the stuff that passes for culture – that the media shove down our throats. It’s a revolt like in-your-stomach revolting. Everything now is preprocessed and predigested.
As such, standout tracks like “Lo.Com.Denom,” “Burn Your Bridges,” “Fire in the Hole” and “Eggs For Rib” (featuring a bassline allegedly swiped from Gilberto Gill’s “Girl from Ipanema”) pull absolutely no punches, but still manage to stay stubbornly musical at their core, despite the whirring, buzzing and clanky caterwaul they come couched in.
It should’ve been the sound of the future. Maybe it still is. Rediscover it now.
As he’d probably be the first to admit here in 2025, storied Cro-Mags’ founder Harley Flanagan accrued the type of reputation, over the course of his colorfully tumultuous life, that could understandably prevent even the most charitable person from giving him the full benefit of the doubt. A "Zelig"-like figure on the Punk Scene writ large (not just New York), the youthful Harley mixed and mingled with Punk Rock royalty at a significantly tender age (see above, sitting next to Mick Jones of the Clash at The Palladium, as captured by Pennie Smith, possibly the same night she shot the cover of London Calling), cutting his very sharp teeth as the pre-teen drummer of The Stimulators before later going on to practically personify (alongside his brethren in Agnostic Front) all things New York Hardcore with his stint in Murphy’s Law and then by forming the Cro-Mags, a band whose shadow looms large as a pivotal proponent of the genre.
Along the way, Harley credibly cultivated an aura of menace around himself, establishing the notoriety of being prone to violence and volatility. I’m not making all this up, as it’s well documented by the man himself in his 2016 autobiography, “Hard-Core: Life of My Own,” and in a forthcoming documentary, “Wired for Chaos.”
But, y’know, people grow. In the same way I’d like to think I’ve fully evolved out of being the sneery, socially challenged dweeb I was in my high school years (you, of course, may beg to differ), Harley has – by all accounts – recanted many of his former ways and grown into a thoughtful and affable elder statesman, of a sort (although I doubt he’d like to be described that way). But the specter of his earlier infamy is a tough one to shake. I haven’t taken them down, but I deeply regret some posts here wherein I jumped to some conclusions about a certain incident in 2012 between him and former band mate John Joseph (an equally complicated and polarizing figure) based solely and speculatively on Harley’s by-then-cemented rep as a human wrecking-ball. The minutia of that full story was, of course, never fully disclosed, but Harley was absolved of the allegations and the charges were dropped.
Years later, I fleetingly corresponded with Harley about possibly contributing to a book project I was working on, at the time, and he couldn’t have been more accommodating about it (although said book project was shortly put on the rear burner of a stove that wasn’t even plugged in, but that’s a separate, weepy tale).
So, why am I talking about any of this stuff now? Well, Damian Abraham of Fucked-Up just launched the latest episode of his “Turned Out a Punk” podcast – which I’ve discussed here a few time – and it features a sprawling, two-hour chat with Harley Flanagan about pretty much everything under the sun. Whether you’re just a passive fan or a bug-eyed NYHC zealot who considers Age of Quarrel their gospel, it’s well worth your time.
If I’m being honest, the first time I ever heard David Johansen sing was not via his storied tenure in the New York Dolls, but rather during the early portions of his post-Dolls solo career, just prior to his comparatively lucrative reinvention as Buster Poindexter.
He’d scored a minor hit with “Funky but Chic” in 1978, which abandoned his previous incarnation as a lippy, cross-dressing frontman in favor of a more streamlined, mainstream approach. But his music didn’t cross my transom until the early days of MTV, wherein David was promoting a live album called Live It Up, featuring a not-really-punky at all cover medley of songs by Eric Burdon and the Animals. In between era-defining clips by bands like The Fixx, Golden Earring and Thompson Twins would come this ersatz live clip (Dave is clearly lip-syncing) of the great man in front of a very receptive audience, flanked by a band of gurning guys with mullets and sleeveless t-shirts. Here’s that clip now. It’s aged better than I’d remembered it.
I don’t think I bought a proper New York Dolls release until my junior year of high school. I remember picking up the ROIR cassette of Lipstick Killers at the Disc-O-Mat on East 58th Street, but by that point, the band’s proto-punk blend of bawdy glam-damaged rawk had been so brazenly appropriated by dozens of pretenders to the throne that it was hard to reconcile how original they must have sounded at the dawn of the impenetrably beige 1970s.
In any case, Johansen’s gone on to lead a fairly remarkable career of comebacks, detours, reinventions and surprises ever since, and remains something of a national treasure. Sadly, the latest surprise was his admission, today, that he’s currently battling Stage 4 Cancer and a brain tumor. Click here for more details and to help, if you can.
Godspeed, David. This will always be my favorite New York Dolls track....
For no particular reason, I’ve been on a bit of Joe Jackson kick, lately. I’ve always been a fan of his, but like many, I’d assume, I remain partial to his comparatively earlier material. I applaud his penchant for experimentation, but I can’t say I’m as enthused about his forays into chamber music and clasical as I am of his classic records from the post-punk era, as dispiriting as he’d probably find that. Regardless his first few records with his original band — particularly his debut, Look Sharp — are absolutely unstoppable. While often lumped in as one prong of the thorny triumvirate of “Angry Young Men of the British New Wave,” I’d say Looks Sharp blows Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True and Graham Parker’s Squeezing Out Sparks (as fine as they both are) completely out of the water. But, hey, that’s me.
I also quite like Jackson for his pronounced affinity for my native New York City, most floridly expressed on his 1982 breakout album, Night and Day, wherein he was basically starting to shedd his spikier leanings in favor of more jazzy, sophisticated pop.
In any case, I stumbled upon the recording below, this morning, and it captures our Joe when he was still straddling this compelling middle ground between the nervous pugnacity of Punk Rock and his obviously more accomplished musical chops. This would have been recorded just prior to the release of his second album I’m The Man. This was captured in the intimate confines of The Bottom Line at 15 West 4th Street. I did not attend this show as, at the time, I would have been 12 years old and living on the Upper East Side.
Today, Joe Jackson lives in Berlin, driven away from living full-time in his adopted NYC given the smoking ban. He’s still recording, releasing records and touring, although he’s on an English Music Hall kick, at the moment, which I don’t believe I’m that enthused about. The Bottom Line, meanwhile, closed in 2004 and is now an antiseptic NYU facility.
A friend of mine on Facebook just posted the above photo of Robert Smith of The Cure, albeit without any credit, date or information. I sadly have no idea who took this picture, when it was snapped nor its precise location.
That all said -- and I might be entirely projecting, here -- but it kinda looks like Robert is standing in the unlikely nocturnal environs of Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It honestly looks like he's standing just steps away from where the undercover cop played by Mercedes Ruehl lures priapic knucklehead Ajax into swiftly-handcuffed custody after he'd just finished beating up the last of the Baseball Furies in Walter Hill's "The Warriors."
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