Down at the Rock and Roll Club

Brendan Toller, director of the upcoming Danny Says, did a great interview on Dave the Spazz's show last week, and was featured in the Village Voice blog a few days ago.  Just now when I went to get the link for that, I noticed the V.V. blog also did a recent piece on John Joseph's Lower East Side walking tours.

Get dishpan hands at the Norton Records Wash-a-Thon tonight if you can --or if you're not local, drop a few Paypal'ed bucks into their Superstorm Sandy recovery fund.

Via the Bomp List Bookshelf Facebook group, I was hipped to this vintage piece on Lou Reed by Bruce Pollock, and learned that memoirs from Marty Thau and Richard Hell are due to be published soon.  And speaking of those fellas--while browsing at Sonic Boom the other day I chanced upon a DVD entitled Punk Revolution NYC, which I couldn't recall hearing about before.  (Indeed, even after I bought it on impulse, I could find only two reviews for it on the entire internet.)  I've only watched the first disc so far (it's a two-disc, three-hour-tour production), but it's quite a thorough documentary, covering the NYC punk scene from its proto- to prime eras. The film has a pretty straightforward format--i.e., interview segment/performance clip/interview segment/archival photo display/interview segment--but all the clips are well-chosen and they talk to many of the right people.  (I didn't see any Talking Heads among the talking heads though.  Have I made that dumbass joke before in regard to another vintage punk documentary?  Probably.)  Here's an excerpt from it, about the NYC scene's influence on the U.K.



I devoured the new Peppermint Twist book in a matter of hours.  It's more of a mob story than a music book (in fact, I think Chapters and Indigo are shelving it under True Crime), and it also seems to focus more on the Miami Peppermint Lounge than the New York original.  That was O.K. by me, as it put me in the right frame of mind to watch the episodes of Magic City that my great buddy Flipped Out loaned to us....but still, as much as I enjoyed the behind-the-scenes tough stuff, I would have preferred a bit more emphasis on the hip-swiveling happenings within both clubs.  (As is my wont, I've also gotta nitpick on a factual error I noticed very early on in the text--Vernon and Irene Castle were husband and wife, not "a popular brother-sister dance team"!)




Coincidentally, and further to that picture of the Action House included in my last post, here's a quote from Chris Dreja which I saw in Light and Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page:  "The people who ran the promotions, especially in America, were mainly mafia.  I remember playing Vanilla Fudge's club in Long Island and being introduced to truly menacing people who were eight feet tall, with chewed up ears and smashed-in faces, and had names like Vinnie."

Here we are livin' in Paradise

A few weeks ago Tim B. at Stupefaction posted a mind-blowing image of the flyer for a Richard Hell/Senders/Teenage Jesus and the Jerks/Contortions show, held at the Paradise Garage of all places.  Today he elaborated on what transpired that night, with help from Nightclubbing's Pat Ivers.  Dig it here.



Excerpt from Joe Bonomo's Sweat: the Story of the Fleshtones (New York: Continuum, 2007):

...as Eddie Holman sang "This Will Be a Night to Remember" over thumping disco party grooves and Peter [Zaremba] and Marek boogied through much of 1977 and 1978 in a glittering blur of dance floors at Studio 54, Hurrah, Paradise Garage, Le Mouche, Odyssey 2001.  Indulging and nurturing their love for kicks and speed, they greeted dawns stumbling out of whatever Christopher Street dance club they happened to have closed.  They became after-hours denizens, kicking their nights into gear at three or four in the morning...

Hi-watt circuses, soaking in gin and dusted with coke, allowed Peter and Marek glimpses of the kickiness of the underground gay and transgendered world...The fellas were intrigued beyond reason. "It was out there, like the Velvet Underground unearthing the subterranean New York experience," remembers Marek.  "It was really beyond the pale of a lot of the rock and roll people to do, but for us it was like an adventure into the nether regions of experience.  We really were into it, all of that homosexual undercurrent that we used to love to flirt with."