New York's definitive rocker?

New York Magazine gets it right and wrong in the same issue.

But she just couldn't stay, she had to break away...

A few weeks ago, the fine folks at W. W. Norton & Co. (my second favorite Norton-named business--I certainly was a devotee of their lit anthology textbooks in high school and college) sent me a copy of Tony Fletcher's new tome, All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77. I finished it this morning and was pleased to find it an immensely satisfying survey of the major popular music scenes and figures of mid-20th century NYC. Fletcher's wide scope takes us on a seamless Five Boroughs-wide journey from the jazz age and its swing, bebop, and Latin/"Mambo Kings" offshoots; to the Village folkies; to the vocal harmony & Alan Freed '50s; to the '60s as it evolved from Brill Building pop to hippie rock and all beats in between; to the early dance clubs and discotheques; to the glam and punk periods; straight through to the Boogie-Down beginnings of hip-hop--all culminating in that pivotal year when two sevens clashed.

Any one of these topics could be (and in many cases, already is) the subject of its own book. Fletcher's mission, deftly accomplished, is to show the connections and continuity between each scene, and to never lose sight of the only-in-New-Yorkiness of them all. I only wish he'd had the space to delve into each period in an even deeper manner than he already did--as in, cover some of the more obscure figures in addition to the famous folks. [However, had he packed in any more detail I might have needed a magnifying glass to pore over all the minuscule-fonted fine print, as I'll probably have to start doing soon with Ugly Things! My great buddy Flipped Out got me the latest issue of it yesterday, but meanwhile I've barely made it through half the previous one--when will Mike Stax ever slow down and let me catch up?] In the introduction Fletcher himself laments all that had to be left out in the editing process, including his original concept of examining the whole of New York City music from the 19th century to our own burgeoning one. But he promises a wealth of supplemental material on his own site, ijamming.net, as well as a second book in this vein. Looking forward to it!

One minor copy-editing quibble though--the fortified wine that fortified (and ossified) many a Bowery bum is spelled Night Train, not Nitrane!!!

Normally I have a tendency to skip ahead and read the back matter of a book before starting the actual text--I guess I like to get the little extras out of the way before fully delving into the meat of the matter. For some reason though, I read this book straight through, with no advance peeks at the addenda...well, except to gaze at the cool shot of the Rascals at the Phone Booth printed on page 412. Imagine my utter shock when, upon completing the final chapter, I saw this sentence in the Acknowledgments:

I came across far too many archival Web sites to mention, but I would be remiss not to make note of the site "It's all the streets you crossed not so long ago," named for a Velvet Underground lyric and which collects "tales of New York City rock & roll landmarks, most of 'em long gone."

Whoa! Other than a long-ago interview in the New York Times (still one of the first things that comes up if you Google my whole name), this is my first appearance in a legit publication. Of all the better-written-and-designed, more comprehensive, and more well-connected sites that are surely out there, a professional writer singles mine out. I am touched beyond belief and I'm so glad he found it useful. It remains to be seen whether I can transmogrify his back-patting into action--i.e., get my lazy arse in gear and write my next proper entry!!! But this just might be the jolt of motivation I need...

And as if that humbling bit of praise weren't enough, the book also led me to a rather flabbergasting discovery. In his discussion on Janis Ian, Fletcher mentions a mature-beyond-her-years song she wrote at 13 entitled "Hair of Spun Gold." Intrigued by its feminist message and having never heard it before, I looked it up on youtube. But instead of Janis' version, I came across one by an obscure British '60s folkie named Deena Webster. That's my first name, and there aren't too many chicks with that name in showbiz, let alone with this spelling and active in the '60s--so pardon me for wanting to cue the Twilight Zone theme here. This Deena isn't a punk rocker though--she sounds quite a bit like Joan Baez, or, as my Pops affectionately called her, Joan Bare-ass! Good song too.

Elegie for Music Row

From Rock Scene, March 1976.

Found this article by accident while looking for something else. Clearly one of these days I've gotta pore through my issues of Rock Scene with a fine-toothed comb!

It's the Ritz, baby, the Ritz lookin' out for you...

Or was it "lookin' after" you? It's been many years since I've heard those old Jerry Brandt Ritz radio ads so I hope I can be forgiven for any errors. Someday I'll get to my long-promised Ritz post, not to mention all the other posts I've wanted to do--other obsessions are occupying my time at the moment. Meanwhile the Times has done a decent write-up on Webster Hall's plans for restoring more live music to its roster, complete with a brief survey of the Hall's previous lives. Here's a brief excerpt:

March 8, 2009
Adding Bands to the Beat
By C.J. HUGHES

IT was back in 1953, when RCA Victor set up a studio in the Grand Ballroom of Webster Hall in Manhattan to achieve a level of reverberation that would help the label compete with Columbia Records. Perry Como recorded his “Como Swings” there in 1959, which displayed Como in slacks and a blue shirt on a golf course.

As the world changed, and music with it, so did the acts the venue attracted: in 1967, Jefferson Airplane staged its first concert in New York inside. On Dec. 6, 1980, U2 ushered in the post-punk era here — it was called the Ritz at the time — when it pounded out “I Will Follow” in its first gig in the United States. And on Feb. 2, 1988, Axl Rose of Guns N’ Roses, standing on the same stage, before screeching “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” inflated a condom like a balloon.

Since then, live music has been a rarity in the aging building on East 11th Street in Greenwich Village. Instead, the sound most often heard has been electronica, like house music, whose turntable-fueled beats scored popular dance parties where glow-stick necklaces were the accessory of choice.

Now, Webster Hall has finished a $3 million, yearlong renovation of its four-level space and live music has returned in force. D. J. booths have been removed to make way for new stages, and a new venue within the venue, called the Studio, has been added. House music will still throb, but the owners are betting that rock fans can be lured inside, too.

[UPDATE 11/24/2009: I recently found a TV ad for the Ritz on youtube that comes close to the spirit of those radio ads--except the radio ads used the Talking Heads' "Take Me to the River" instead of Falco's "Der Kommissar" for background music as I recall...]

Remembrance of Greek Omelettes Past

It's been a long time since I've written a proper post, and it may be a while before I get back into the full research mode required to write a decent one. Nevertheless the urge to write something is coming on strong, so lemme get a little more personal and fulfill this blog's other stated mission of presenting my "moronic musings on various other enthusiasms." First up: I'll channel Gael Greene and discuss the reopened Lakeview Lunch, or as it's now officially known, The Lakeview.


The Lakeview was my husband's and my mainstay diner ever since we moved to Toronto in 2001. The combination of original circa-1947 fixtures, friendly staff, and tasty food kept us as perpetual regulars, even while other folks' attendance had dropped off sharply by the mid-aughts. (Apparently by the end they were making more money renting the place out as a movie location than they were as an operational restaurant!)

We ate breakfast there almost every Sunday morning (gawd only knows how many Greek omelette calories that computes to), unless we were out of town--or unless it was closed down (briefly in 2005, more permanently from August of this year until just this past week). And we could count on it being open for lunch during certain holidays when most other joints weren't (lord only knows how many chocolate shake calories that computes to!). Others may beg to differ (and perhaps I've got whacked-out tastebuds and a high tolerance for ineptitude, who knows), but somehow we never had a bad meal or a lousy experience there.

We were saddened but undaunted when it closed down. In fact, I must've had a weird premonition about its closure, 'cause shortly before it happened I'd thought that I ought to bring my camera one of those Sundays--which I naturally never got around to, the decor being seared into my retinas through long-term exposure anyway. After some trial and error with other breakfast joints we discovered that Sneaky Dee's weekend brunch suited us super-fine. (Surprising, as I've always considered their take on "Tex-Mex" to be bland at best, but after sampling their terrific Thanksgiving dinner this year we knew brunch had to be worth a shot.) We became cautiously optimistic when we heard the Lakeview was being taken over, restored, and re-visioned. While the new owners had plans for more upscale fare and clientele (and swank cocktails), their hearts seemed to be in the right place--at last those patched up seats would get recovered, among other much-needed cosmetic refurbishments. Yet our hearts sank when Rocky found this disgustingly smug opening-night report. Don't get me started on the utter ludicrousness of comparing Dundas-Ossington to either the East or West Village of ANY era, O.K.??? As swell as it is in its own way, you KNOW I oughtta know the difference better than most, even if I didn't intern at GQ or dine at Odeon in my callow youth...

Still, we had to try it, so we went for breakfast this past Sunday. I normally can't be bothered with makeup on a Sunday morning but I actually felt compelled to paint some eyeliner on lest the hostess turn us away for not being "beautiful people" enough!!! Contrary to my fears, all the staff we encountered were friendly and eager to please. And the restoration and freshening of the decor was just to my liking--so bright and airy now, where the old place could admittedly appear rather dark and drab to the uninitiated. (Miss the vintage movie posters, but whaddaya gonna do?)

But I wasn't so thrilled with the breakfast card. There were about 4 or 5 items tops, with nary an omelette or pancake or waffle among them. I suppose they want to cater more to the late-night crowd, but don't they realize that brunch is a BIG DEAL in this town? Perhaps a special brunch menu is "in development." I settled for scrambled eggs and sausage, and Rocky ordered the "eggy in the middle" which was a fried-eggs-within-toast concoction. Both came with home fries, a small mixed mesclun salad, and a nice little fresh fruit cup with berries, granny smith apple chunks, and banana slices. The plates were adequate, but nothing knocked our socks off taste-wise--truly odd considering all the food-gasms I'd had in that same building, nay, AT THAT VERY SAME TABLE over my frequent feta-and-tzatziki-laden Greek omelettes. And while I respect the owners' need to make a buck, charging 50 cents per coffee refill is mighty low, and certainly verboten in the true diner code.

Now that I can get my food-gasm fix over Sneaky's choose-your-own-omelettes (feta and mushroom being my personal fave combo), I doubt we'll be back to the Lakeview for breakfast anytime soon, unless or until they add some more creative dishes to their breakfast offerings. However, the dinner and drinks list looked intriguing enough for a return visit, which I'll be making with one of my best galpals later this week. (They even cutely named a couple of dishes after the dearly departed Stem and Canary.) Old habits die hard, and though I may not fit in among the hipsters they're hoping to attract, the place still calls to me somehow.

Images from my first-ever Lakeview visit--lunch prior to the wedding of our pals Erin and Dave, July 2001. Top: Me (ignore my giant arms and second chin!), Rocky, unknown interloper, Richard, Glynis. Bottom: Flipped Out, Sophie C., Mimi, Sophie-a-Go-Go.

Guess I'm not a lazy sod

I'm merely a slow blogger. From the NY Times, 11/23/2008:


Haste, Scorned: Blogging at a Snail’s Pace

By SHARON OTTERMAN

WHEN Barbara Ganley wants to collect her thoughts, she walks in the Vermont countryside, wanders home and blogs about it. In a recent post, she wrote about the icy impressions left in the snow by sleeping deer. In another, she said she wanted to commute by bicycle and do more composting.

If her blog, bgblogging.wordpress.com, sounds slow and meandering, it is. But that’s the point. Ms. Ganley, 51, is part of a small, quirky movement called slow blogging.
The practice is inspired by the slow food movement, which says that fast food is destroying local traditions and healthy eating habits. Slow food advocates, like the chef Alice Waters of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Calif., believe that food should be local, organic and seasonal; slow bloggers believe that news-driven blogs like TechCrunch and Gawker are the equivalent of fast food restaurants — great for occasional consumption, but not enough to guarantee human sustenance over the longer haul.

A Slow Blog Manifesto, written in 2006 by Todd Sieling, a technology consultant from Vancouver, British Columbia, laid out the movement’s tenets. “Slow Blogging is a rejection of immediacy,” he wrote. “It is an affirmation that not all things worth reading are written quickly.” (Nor, because of a lack of traffic, is Mr. Sieling writing this blog at all these days.) Ms. Ganley, who recently left her job as a writing instructor at Middlebury College, compares slow blogging to meditation. It’s “being quiet for a moment before you write,” she said, “and not having what you write be the first thing that comes out of your head.”
On her blog, Ms. Ganley juxtaposes images and text as she reflects on the local landscape. She tends to post once or twice a week, but sometimes she can go a month or so without proffering something new.

Some slow bloggers like to push the envelope of their readers’ attention even further. Academics post lengthy pieces about literature and teaching styles, while techies experiment to see how infrequently they can post before readers desert them.

This approach is a deliberate smack at the popular group blogs like Huffington Post, the Daily Beast, Valleywag and boingboing, which can crank out as many as 50 items a day. On those sites, readers flood in and advertisers sign on. Spin and snark abound. Earnest descriptions of the first frost of the season are nowhere to be found.

In between the slow bloggers and the rapid-fire ones, there is a vast middle, hundreds of thousands of writers who are not trying to attract advertising or buzz but do want to reach like-minded colleagues and friends. These people have been the bedrock of the genre since its start, yet recently there has been a sea change in their output: They are increasingly turning to slow blogging, in practice if not in name.

“I’m definitely noticing a drop-off in posting — I’m talking about among the more visible bloggers, the ones with 100 to 200 readers or more,” said Danah Boyd, a doctoral candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies popular culture and technology. “I think that those people who were writing long, thought-out posts are continuing, but those who were writing, ‘Hey, check this out’ posts are going to other forums. It’s a dynamic shift.”

Technology is partly to blame. Two years ago, if a writer wanted to share a link or a video with friends or tell them about an upcoming event, he or she would post the information on a blog. Now it’s much faster to type 140 characters in a Twitter update (also known as a tweet), share pictures on Flickr, or use the news feed on Facebook. By comparison, a traditional blogging program like WordPress can feel downright glacial.

Ms. Ganley, the blogger in Vermont, has a slogan that encapsulates the trend: “Blog to reflect, Tweet to connect.” Blogging, she said, “is that slow place.”

Another reason some bloggers have slowed down is sheer burnout. Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor at the University of Virginia, shuttered his popular blog, Sivacracy, in September, in part because he was exhausted by the demands. “When you run your own blog, there’s a lot of imaginary pressure to publish constantly, to be witty, to be good, and nobody can live with that,” he said in an interview.

These days, he fires off short, pithy comments on Twitter, but has another blog that he says is “more of a specialized project for in-depth thought.” Here, he shares ideas for an upcoming book, which posits that Google has infiltrated our culture to a worrisome extent.

Andrew Sullivan, perhaps the world’s best-read political blogger, talked about the burnout factor in an article in November’s Atlantic magazine called “Why I Blog.” He said in an interview posted on the magazine’s Web site that during the election, his readers became so addicted to his stream of posts that he sometimes set his blog to post automatically so he could go to lunch. When he took two days off to make sense of “the whole Sarah Palin thing,” his audience flipped, thinking he was dead or silenced.

“You can’t stop,” Mr. Sullivan said in the online interview. “The readers act as if you’ve cut off their oxygen supply, and they just flap around like a goldfish out of water until you plop them back in.”

Slow blogging is something of a philosophical rebuttal to this dynamic. While some bloggers may just be naturally slow — think of the daydreaming schoolmate who used to take forever to get the assignment done — others are more emphatic about the purpose of taking their time.
Russell Davies, a new media consultant in London, has started what may be the ultimate experiment in slow-blogging: Dawdlr. He has turned the instantaneousness of Twitter on its head by asking readers to send him snail-mail postcards answering the question posed to Twitter users, “What are you doing now?” He scans the postcards and puts them up, once every six months, on his site, dawdlr.tumbler.com. A recent postcard contained whimsical line drawings of cats and the words, “Trying not to look back.”

Mr. Davies said his goal was to see if slowing down promoted a greater thoughtfulness. It did, he said, but then again, because Dawdlr is updated so infrequently, few people have heard of it.
“It is an investigation into the Internet’s attention span,” Mr. Davies said by telephone.
Even Mr. Sieling, the writer of the Slow Blog Manifesto, gave up his personal blog because he felt no one was reading it. “I called it the Robinson Crusoe feeling of blogging,” he said by e-mail, “and I think it’s common.”

Quiet, numbskulls, we're broadcastin'!

When I'm not fretting over how lazy I am in updating this blog, I'm preoccupied with putting together my weekly CIUT radio show, Real Cool Time. (Actually, Rocky usually takes care of most of the playlist--I just press the buttons and twiddle the knobs.) Now I've created a whole 'nother distraction from updating streetsyoucrossed--a Real Cool Time Radio blog, replete with podcasts and playlists. Dig it!

Look elsewhere, angels...

...to the Times, for an article on the possibility of the Bottom Line setting up new digs in Brooklyn...and to the Bowery Boys, for a sordid Slide back to Kenny's Castaways.

Do you rememba Zaremba?

See more grainy, blurry, faraway Fleshtone fotos here.

I'm about two-thirds of the way through Joe Bonomo's mega-entertaining-and-edumacating Sweat: The Story of the Fleshtones, America's Garage Band (New York: Continuum, 2007). A couple of cringeworthy copy-editing oversights managed to sneak into the final product ("Surfer Bird"? "Bomp Newsletter, run by hip label-head Gary Shaw out of Burbank, California"???), but nevertheless Sweat is a monumental achievement in rock writing, and will soon take pride of place on my streetsyoucrossed research bookshelf as the Ultimate NYC Rock & Roll Tome. I do believe I'll devote the next few entries to some of the joints the Fleshtones called home in their formative years. First, lemme update my old Bond's Casino post--somehow this factoid didn't turn up in my original searchin'...

"On April 16 [1981], the Fleshtones headlined the enormous Bonds International Nightclub in Times Square...An historic link in the move toward rock dancing, Bond's was immense, the biggest disco that New York City ever saw, boasting a capacity of eighteen hundred. The Fleshtones played a 'Spring Vacation Party' in front of an enthusiastic if thin crowd. 'Three hundred fans showed up downtown to go up to see us and dance, and they essentially formed a row two-deep in front of the stage!' Marek remembers. 'It was disheartening to be in such a huge place and not fill it, but the Fleshtones never could.'"

And here's forgotten-ny's recent featurette on another Fleshtones haunt, the Lone Star Cafe--itself housed in a former Schrafft's. After the Lone Star closed, but before the building was converted into a Korean deli, it briefly operated as a music club under a different name in the early '90s. I can distinctly recall seeing some ska shows there, but of course I cannot recall what the joint was called.

Stompers Say Yeah!

Now that I've got a digital camera, I'll let the pictures say my usual thousand words. Here are a multitude of photos from Cavestomp 2007. (P.S: I guess John Varvatos is actually utilzing 315 Bowery as well!!! Even though we passed through the Bowery during part of our record-shopping expedition, somehow I couldn't bear to walk by the block to snag some photographic evidence. Belated RIP Linda Stein.) (P.P.S.: Now I hear the gallery space at 313 will be the new home of rock photo purveyor Morrison Hotel.)

Welllllllll, meet me, baby, down on 45th Street...

Bup-shoo-buh, bup-a-bup-a-shoo-buh...

(Thanks to my hip tipster Flipped Out Phil! Despite the Jackie K. cover I hadn't even perused this month's VF table of contents at the grocery checkout like I usually do!)

Let's swim to the moon, uh-huh...

I promised myself I'd crank out a post before leaving for Cavestomp! so here 'tis.

By the way--check out the Bowery Boys' wonderful blog on NYC history every Friday for a wicked wayback trip through all eras of New York nightlife. They're pros, so Lord knows they'll get to some of the more rockin' joints I've been meaning to cover way before I will! Actually, you'll wanna read it on a daily basis if you're any sort of an NYC history geek.



ONDINE--308 E. 59th Street. Arguably the hippest of the posh mid-'60s East Side discotheques that sprang up in Arthur's wake, this frequent Warhol-crowd hangout is best known for hosting the Doors' first New York gig. According to most sources it opened in 1965 and was co-owned by Jerry Schatzberg and Olivier Coquelin. However, the club's sound engineer and DJ Jim Reeves cites Howard Pratt, Claude Bell and Geist Ely as the owners. Reeves explains some of Ondine's internal workings far better than I can on his site:

"Ondine was an exclusive private discotheque club, pretty much a celebrity-based restaurant and dance club which pioneered a new trend in "happenings" of the era and after a year or so of its existence to the public, the then manager, Brad Pierce, had some connection with industry types, and somehow began to book the current acts. There weren't that may venues then so I guess it was a logical step for all involved in entertainment to take.

Around '64, as a recording engineer at Skitch Henderson's Studio 3 during the daytime, my mentor, Dave Sarser, who had set up private discotheques like Le Club (almost "speak easy"-ish) in the '50's and '60's, assigned me to a new club called Ondine. It was named after an Olympic winning sailboat. I was to install their sound system...I had become the head Discaire (now known as "DJ") as a result and played back to back pop records at night and weekends, stirring up a frenzy of go-go dancers. I also handled the sound for the house band, The Losers, and eventually for transient bands like the Pilgrims, who wore tunics styled after the knickers look of the Young Rascals who started out at the Barge, a sister discotheque in the Hampton's on Long Island. There was Arthur's, another New York disco owned by Sybil Burton, whose house band was the Fuzzy Bunnies. Many clubs followed as the trend caught on like Harlowe's and The Coney Island Pub and Nepenthe and many others.

At Ondine, The Doors, The Druids of Stonehenge, Buffalo Springfield, Jimi Hendrix, The Denims were among the list of performers. Live PA sound systems were just in their infancy then. It was new and exciting. Lots of real action. Bikers outside, mingled with the limousines. Jackie Gleason and Jackie Kennedy and Faye Dunaway would be mingling with Monti Rock III and Eric Burdon and Hilton Valentine of the Animals, while Jimi bit his guitar strings on the 8'x12'x18" stage. What can I say? Sonny and Cher would pop in. We'd hang out together with Steve Stills in the kitchen snacking on staff dinners together. Hendrix and I would go out after the club closed to the Brasserie for late night dinners. That's how it was. Nothing to compare it to then. Eventually it all led to The Cheetah and Studio 54, along with the Fillmore East and the Electric Circus and so on. It was all new to all of us."


The Olympian yacht Ondine was surely named after the water-sprite. And accordingly, the club was decked out in a nautical motif--an "undersea discotheque heavily draped in fisherman's nets," according to Michael and Ariane Batterberrys' On the Town in New York (New York: Routledge, 1999; orig. 1973). (Hmmm...wonder if it looked anything like T.O.'s The Boat?) Some suggestion of this can be seen in these photos of Curtis Knight and the Squires, found on earlyhendrix.com (note porthole beside the head of the guy dancing in front of Jimi).

Reeves offers some details about the club's layout on the Hendrix page: "After the new management (with Brad Pierce) took over, they moved the stage to the south wall. You can see the arched, ship-like rafters above on ceiling and the porthole near the guitar on the stand....Ondine was not at all a large venue. There was a 18' to 22' foot bar at the front and a coat check room across from it. Continuing on to the rear was a 25' x 35'x 9'h room with a stage, dance floor, and beyond that, a fairly large kitchen. There were booths around the perimeter of the room. "The Losers" was the house band. They were a funky blues rock pop band. Joe Nessor (bass and vocal), Tony Sal (Guitar and vocal), Brian Keenan (drums) and Russell ??? (guitar) I think."

Did the superstars in Warhol's firmament dig the place because one of their own was named Ondine? Andy doesn't say, but he does give some of the best available evocations of the club's ambiance in Popism: The Warhol Sixties (New York: Harper & Row, 1980; Pat Hackett, co-author).


"A discotheque called Ondine (just a name coincidence...) opened...at the very beginning of '65, and that was where you started seeing lots of beautiful girls in mini-skirts (they weren't even called that yet, though), short and pleated with stripes and dots and big colors and stretchy knits. Everyone started going to Ondine right away, all the celebs in town. The girls there were beautiful--Gerard picked Marisa Berenson there one night on her very first modeling trip to New York and brought her to the Factory for a screen test. Edie went there all the time, throwing a lot of money around in the beginning when she still had it, picking up the check for as many as twenty people every night..." [p. 99]

"[A]fter working all day at the Factory, we'd usually go out to Il Mio and then to Ondine and wind up at Arthur. A band called the Druids had been playing at Ondine for a couple of months. Jimi Hendrix--this was before he was Jimi Hendrix, he was still Jimmy James--would sit there in the audience with his guitar and ask them if he could play with them and they'd say sure. He had short hair and really beautiful clothes--black pants and white silk shirts...before the bandanna and the twangy guitar and all that. But he was already playing with his feet. [p. 189. Probably misheard in the transcribing; I'm sure he meant teeth. --Ed.]

"In November [1966] the Doors came to New York for the first time and they played at Ondine. When we walked in, Gerard took one look at Jim Morrison in leather pants just like his and he flipped. 'He stole my look!' he screamed, outraged. It was true enough--Jim had, I guess, picked it up from seeing Gerard at the Trip...The Doors were at Ondine because, according to Ronnie Cutrone, who should know--he hung out there enough--the girl who played the records, Billie, knew them from L.A. (She also knew the Buffalo Springfield from the Coast and she got them a gig there, too, right after the Doors...)...After [that], the image of the place went from chic to rocking, and groupies started hanging out there, beautiful girls like Devon and Kathy Starf***er...When you walked into Ondine, on the right was the coat check, on the left was a red leather couch, then there was the bar, and then a narrow strip with tables in it, and then the back room that was the dance floor, with the record booth at the end of it. Jim Morrison got to be a regular there, and the Doors played there again a few times the following spring. Jim would stand at the bar drinking screwdrivers all night long, taking downs with them, and he'd get really far gone--he'd be totally oblivious--and the girls would go over and jerk him off while he was standing there." [p. 189-90]









The Doors had three residency gigs at Ondine--November 1 to 30, 1966, January 19 to 29, 1967, and March 13 to April 2, 1967. Here are some more pics, and here are some of Richard Meltzer's reminiscenses (he refers to Ondine as a "plush clip joint...under the 59th St. Bridge").

[UPDATE 5/16/2010: Just found a fantastic "Pop Eye" column by Richard Goldstein in the March 23, 1967 issue of the Village Voice, covering several cool topics: Zal Yanovsky's rep as an informant; the growing use of psychedelics among musicians; the Toronto scene ("the influx of draft dodgers has given that city's hip community the status of an international mecca"); Joe Tex; the Monkees; the Fugs; a review of an attempted series of happenings called "Rock Flows" at the Broadway Central Hotel; and a fabulously evocative account of the atmosphere at Ondine during the Doors' stand that month.]



Following a one-night Night Owl stand on December 30, 1966, the Buffalo Springfield did a residency at Ondine's from New Year's Eve '66 through to January 9, 1967, as a support act for Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. According to this Springfield chronology, during one set Otis Redding sang "In the Midnight Hour" with them; during another, a fight broke out between Stephen Stills and Bruce Palmer after Palmer refused to turn down his bass amp.

Unknown gal sharing a confidence with Bob Dylan at Ondine.

Other bands known to have played there include the Daily Flash, Peck's Bad Boys, the Graypes, and the Remains--who recorded their audition for Capitol Records the morning after one of their very late Ondine nights (immortalized on Sundazed's A Session with the Remains).

[UPDATE 5/6/2010: I can't believe I missed any references to the Bobby Fuller Four's engagement, which started on May 2, 1966! The Barbarians apparently played there also. What can I say, the Billboard Google Archives didn't exist at the time I first wrote this. Must do a more thorough Ondine search there soon.]

I'm not sure how long Ondine was open, but I haven't come across any references to it dating later than 1967. Under new ownership it briefly operated as a disco called Together. Both incarnations of the club were frequently shook down by mobsters, including a certain Sopranos cast member.

Not sure if the same building still stands at 308, but apparently the address is currently used by Danny Alessandro, Ltd., a fireplace specialist.



The fabulous That60sGirl.com has a scan of a terrific article on the mid-'60s discotheque scene. There's no direct link, so click on "music," then "dances," and you'll come across it. One of the "discaires" pictured in it, Annette of L'Interdit, was on What's My Line once; it was hilarious to hear Bennett Cerf ask her about the "watutsi" and "frug" (which he incorrectly rhymed with rug).


[UPDATE 5/6/2010: A while back I actually uploaded the WML clip--here 'tis.]




Lastly--the CBGB gallery space is set to become a designer clothing store. No word yet on the fate of the club itself.






If you happen to be in T.O. tomorrow night--BOO!

A few Doll houses

I'm currently working my way through Kris Needs' and Dick Porter's Trash: The Complete New York Dolls (London: Plexus, 2006). It's somewhat more detailed than Nina Antonia's fine Dolls bio of a few years back, particularly on the individual members' pre- and post-Dolls activities. As any good New York rock and roll book should, it discusses some of the jernts where it all went down--and so I'll summarize a few of those discussions here. I've covered a few of these places already, but will offer some Dolls-centric updates to those previous entries.



QUINTANO'S SCHOOL FOR YOUNG PROFESSIONALS: "Although they weren't full U.S. citizens and thus had no need to beat the draft, Syl and Billy enrolled at Quintano's--a well-known Fame-style school located behind Carnegie Hall that groomed students for careers in the performing arts. 'It was sort of like a school for young professionals,' explains Syl, 'a lot of cool people came out.' (One of whom was Mary Weiss of the Shangri-Las.)" [p. 25] While students there, the pair formulated their groovy knitwear company, Truth & Soul. Syl also got a job at a hip men's shop called The Different Drummer, located at 63rd and Lex. "Right across the street from that shop...was this toy repair shop upstairs. It was called the New York Doll Hospital. That's when I first thought of the name...I thought it was a f***ing great name!" Seems like Quintano's was one of those only-in-New-York, only-in-the-'60s-and-'70s institutions, replete with liberal applicant-acceptance policies and lax attendance requirements. Other students associated with it include Bernadette Peters, Andrea Feldman, Rick Derringer, Steven Tyler (who described it as a "school for f**k-ups like myself where you just had to show up to graduate"), and some members of the Left Banke (whose management thought it prudent to re-enroll them in high school as a sort of draft-dodging measure--learned this tidbit off the leftbankism yahoogroup).

NOBODY'S--Not sure where this was, but it was one of the young Dolls' favorite bars. Needs writes that it was "described by Jayne County as a hangout for 'young guys from Queens who wanted to be Rod Stewart.'" [p. 36] [UPDATE 1/16/2008: Two folks have informed me that Nobody's was located on Bleecker Street.]

ENDICOTT HOTEL: A welfare hotel at 81st and Columbus--located near Rusty's Cycle Shop, a bike shop in whose basement the early Dolls frequently rehearsed. Around Christmastime 1971, workers at the hotel were organizing a party for the residents; they heard the Dolls jamming across the street and asked if they'd play in exchange for free food. "Faced with a mainly black and Puerto Rican audience, the Dolls launched into a set consisting of covers such as Otis Redding's 'Don't Mess with Cupid,' 'Showdown' by Archie Bell and the Drells, and other R and B covers. 'They got a real hoot out of it,' recalled Johansen. 'We were terrible, but we felt real proud.'" [p. 39] First and last gig with Rick Rivets and without Syl Sylvain, who was in London at the time.

HOTEL DIPLOMAT: "By May 1972, the quartet had gathered sufficient confidence to make their live debut at a proper venue. This took place at the Palm Room, a basement club housed beneath the Hotel Diplomat on West 43rd Street. At the time, the room showcased rock groups, but it would later become a popular gay disco hangout where Gloria Gaynor was inaugurated as the Queen of Disco in 1975. 'We found out about this benefit for this anarchist that was coming up, a "free somebody" programme at the Hotel Diplomat,' David told Melody Maker in 1978. 'Some kid who had another band told us about it, and we said, "Get us on it!" We didn't play the benefit for political reasons--we played it because it was a gig...That was the first time we ever got dressed to play...just a nice pair of pants and a nice shirt. We got a great response. There were a couple of people from the music business there--Danny Fields for one told me he thought the band were great, and all this heavy stuff, so I figured we would stick to it."...On 29 May, the Dolls made a return to the Palm Room, under the banner 'An Invitation Beyond the Valley.' The event was partly organized by Warhol's organization and featured Jackie Curtis as support...[T]he Diplomat gig would mark the beginning of the Dolls' ascent towards occupation of the niche vacated by the Velvets at the nexus of the Big Apple art/rock confluence...Support at the Palm Room came courtesy of Shaker, who featured Jerry Nolan on drums." [pp. 44-45]

MAN COUNTRY: The band's next gig was at this Brooklyn gay bathhouse--address unknown. "On the first night the band dragged up for the occasion, but most of their potential audience opted to carry on f---ing. The next night they wore leather, which intrigued the revellers sufficiently for them to emerge from their booths." [pp. 45-46]. Syl described this as their first paying gig in a 2005 interview for Creem Online.

MERCER ARTS CENTER: Home of the band's star-making residency, housed in a former grand hotel that would famously collapse in 1973. Thoroughly well-documented elsewhere. [The Modern Lovers opened for the Dolls' '72 New Year's Eve gig...I simply adore the audience member who can be heard marveling "He REALLY means it!" on the live recording of this!]


MY FATHER'S PLACE--19 Bryant Avenue, Roslyn, NY. "A former Long Island bowling alley, which had been converted into a 400-capacity bar and concert venue by promoter Michael Epstein. " [p. 89] The Dolls played there on August 14-16, 1973, returned on April 15 the following year, and possibly did an early '75 date as well. [I hope to attempt a more thorough write-up at some point, but don't hold yer breath...]

THE WALDORF-ASTORIA: "On 30 October [1973], the Dolls hosted a triumphant homecoming Halloween party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel Grand Ballroom...NBC News reported that a thousand or so punters, some ticketless, smashed the glass doors to pour into the venue." The costume contest (judged by Tommy Tune among others) was won by "a Mae West look-alike and a fan who'd dressed as an exotic alien to win the prize of a night on the town with the Dolls." [p. 96] (The runner-up won a night for three in a Newark motel.) Bob Gruen's All Dolled Up DVD features footage from local CBS news coverage of this event, including blast-from-the-past reportage from Jim Jensen and Joel Siegel.

ACADEMY OF MUSIC: "Mercury stumped up for some promotion and David recorded a radio advertisement that featured him declaring, 'Man, I'm getting tired of seeing your face every night this winter. There's one thing about this winter. We've got the New York Dolls coming to the Academy of Music on Friday night, February 15. We got our own St. Valentine's Day Massacre, honey, since all the deco got stacked up. That's this Friday, honey. You better be there.'...Almost as soon as the Dolls launched into their customary opener, 'Personality Crisis,' the sound system cut out. After a short delay they stormed through a triumphant homecoming..." [pp. 115-6] View part of Bob Gruen's "Lipstick Killers" short, as screened before this gig, here.

CLUB 82: "This had been one of Manhattan's most glamorous drag venues between the 1940s and late sixties, playing host to a bevy of transvestites and female impersonators. Latterly, 82 had lost some of its sparkle once such establishments could operate openly, but still employed a team of lesbians to man the door and bar. In keeping with the spirit of their surroundings, the Dolls dragged up more thoroughly than usual...The Miamis supported and acted as the Dolls' 'gentleman dates.' 'That was the only club that we ever did anything like that, really devised shit,' recalls Sylvain. 'It was run by this lesbian woman who was gorgeous, called Tommy, and ran it like a brick shithouse. It looked all tropical. The Copacabana goes gay, if you will. The center of it was the actual stage, like a square. Completely around the stage was the bar. We would hang down there. The prostitutes were on Tenth Street and after their work hours they would go down to Club 82 and drink down there. They would have like drag shows and performances...Tommy never used to want [rock & roll bands]...But business was bad for them. They needed new fun and excitement again. That's where the New York Dolls came in. They still talk about what we did at Club 82 because it was the most exciting thing going. It came at a time when the Dolls had been on their way up and then on their way down and this was sort of the valley of their career.'" [pp. 118-9]




LITTLE HIPPODROME: Needs' account of the Red Patent Leather shows pretty much reiterates others I've heard, but he also notes that the Hippodrome had a capacity of 2000--somehow I didn't conceive of it as being quite that large. Check out the fab poster at thunders.ca, and actual video on youtube!

Fauxpollo

Should have put these up earlier; it's probably gone by now. A phony Apollo marquee was recently, and surreally, erected on Yonge Street. Apparently it's for a sequel to The Hulk. I wonder if Bruce Banner will break out into song: "Up to Lexington, One-Two-Five, feel green and angry, more dead than alive..."

I had to take one last snapshot of Sam's. Somebody forgot to shut off the twinkling SAM lights at the roofline.

Where ya goin' to?

Another fab Mary Weiss interview, replete with Brooklyn Fox and NY Paramount memories, appeared in the 9/28/2007 issue of the New York Sun. [I'm assuming the author is the same Bruce Bennett, a.k.a. "Il Bruce," of A-Bones and The Hound fame, but perhaps I'm mistaken?]

"It was bizarre," Ms. Weiss said of the Shangri-La's appearances in and among eight to 10 other acts in William Fox's now demolished "Siamese-Byzantine" show palace monument to himself on Flatbush Avenue. "You'd get there in the morning, and the whole cast had to be onstage for the opening. Then you go back upstairs. The elevator never worked and they'd have you on, like, the sixth floor. Then you'd come back down and do your set, five songs, six songs, or whatever. Then you go back up, then come back down for the finale. And you'd do that seven times a day. It's insane, absolutely insane. Murray the K would have it running for weeks. It was a grind."
The upside was, of course, the company that the Shangri-Las' endurance on the pop charts allowed them to keep. "There were so many great people that I worked with and got to meet there," Ms. Weiss said. "The Rascals, the Zombies, Dusty Springfield, Marvin Gaye, you name it." Meeting the headliners at a gig farther up the street at the Brooklyn Paramount was another story. "The Paramount was with the Beatles," she said. "It was weird. They had them on one floor and everybody else on the show on another floor. It was very strange."
Though the Fab Four remained safely cloistered for the bulk of the show, one delegate from either group did eventually go boot to boot. "Mary Ann was backstage and somebody was shoving her," Ms. Weiss said. "She turned around and it was Ringo. So that was some contact, anyway. I almost wanted her to take his drumsticks."

"I did not know that," she said all Carson-like

A while back I heard that the former Gramercy movie theater--my main local screen back when I lived at the Hunter dorms--had been converted to a venue called the Blender Theater at Gramercy, but somehow it completely escaped my radar that Irving Plaza's name was changed to, ahem, The Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza as of last April. Pardon my delayed-reaction flabbergastedness.

Update-o-rama tidbits have been added to the ancient posts on Trude Heller's and the N.Y. Pavilion.

And now a sad farewell to a flesh-and-blood NYC landmark. RIP Bill Peitsch, the most fun-loving rock & roll character I ever met. Whether you saw him onstage or in the audience, if you were somewhere in his presence you were in for a blast. Nobody could liven up a room quite like him, but I understand that behind all the beer-hoisting boisterousness lay a truly kind and generous soul. All's I know is, I knew I'd finally become a bona fide garagenik when he first said "hi" to me. Though I hardly knew ye, I'll never forget ye.

Ye New Time Music Hall

NY Times, 8/30/2007: Neither Arenas Nor Dives, New Clubs Hope to Succeed with Style.

Thanks to good ol' buddy Bruno for the tip. Savage Cabbage forever!


[EDIT: For a glimpse into my addled expat mind, see also this 9/2/2007 Times article, Dodging Potholes Along Memory Lane.]

Word # 1,001

From the Voice.

[Yes, I really should get crackin' on that Schaefer Music Fest post.]

UPDATE: Voice article on the Kristal estate.

More dead Brooklyn knowledge

Forgotten NY does it again by hipping me to the existence of yet another Brooklyn movie-theater-turned-short-lived-rock-venue, the Fortway. Chuck Berry is known to have played there in 1972...any other documented acts?

D.C. is well aware that this doesn't make up for a lack of solid posts as of late. As always, I'm workin' on it!

Only the Dead knew Brooklyn

I've been curious about the story behind Brooklyn's 46th Street Rock Palace (a.k.a. Bananafish Gardens) ever since coming across a reference to it on some Dead site. The ever-exploratory Kevin Walsh of Forgotten NY fame has solved the mystery and given the venue a nice write-up on a page about Alben Square. Some further info is available at cinematreasures.org, as the joint was previously a movie palace (originally the Universal, later Loew's 46th Street). I might try to compile a brief list of show dates at some point. Thanks to reader/veteran NYC cabbie Wayne for the heads up!

UPDATE 1/29/2014:  Here's a photo essay on the current state of the building, courtesy of After the Final Curtain.