My dream is on the screen

Debbie, Chris, and Will Hermes at the NYPL, March 27, 2013. Starts at around the 13 minute mark.

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."

He will save rock and roll

If you get the chance to see Andy Shernoff's solo acoustic show, run don't walk, do not pass go, do not collect $200! Here's the official description, from the invite I got to his Toronto gig last night at Mitzi's Sister (partly accompanied by Teenage Head's Gordie Lewis), via the "Andy Shernoff Appreciation Society" facebook page.

When Giants Walked The Earth--a musical memoir by Andy Shernoff

It's a narrative about growing up in NYC with Johnny Thunders, early days playing music, touring the UK in 1977, working with Dee Dee, people who covered his songs like Dion and Mary Weiss from The Shangri La's, being with Joey Ramone in the hospital when he died, up to the currrent sad state of rock and roll...Join the "Christopher Columbus of punk rock" as he performs all his monster hits while regaling the audience with tales of the glory days of rock and roll when sex was safe and drugs were cool.

I know what you're thinking--"Dictators Unplugged." Yeah, it's partly that, and hearing those songs as songs, sung with finesse as opposed to HDM's drill-sergeant delivery, is indeed strange and revelatory. But it's so much more. I might be in a state of Kinks konfusion at the moment (I'm currently working my way through their day-by-day khronology by Doug Hinman, and am listening to Something Else as I write this), but the show reminded me a lot of Ray Davies' '90s solo outings, albeit a tad less theatrical...and Andy's tales have an off-the-cuff feel, while I distinctly recall that Ray often read directly from X-Ray during his spoken-word bits. At any rate, I don't wanna give too much away but the show is a veritable New York rocker's paradise--possibly particularly moving if you're in that subculture's Queens division. Don't miss it!

[EDIT 6/19/2010: I guess I wasn't too far off with the Kinky komparison...here's an excerpt from a gomemphis.com article: Shernoff's "storytellers" set began as a residency at a small club in New York, but soon grew in popularity. "So I got serious about putting together an actual show; there's a basic outline, but a lot of it is improvised," says Shernoff, who has described his current incarnation an "insensitive singer-songwriter or Ray Davies with a White Castle slant."]

One of Andy's stories had to do with seeing Iggy and the Stooges at Max's in '74 or so. I don't know if he was aware of this, but about a week from now Ig & co. will be turning Toronto into the center of the rock & roll universe, when they do a FREE SHOW at Yonge-Dundas Square as part of the North by Northeast festivities!!! NXNE seems to be getting bigger and closer in stature to its Austin cousin every year. I wasn't sure if the bookers could possibly top last year's free Sonics extravaganza, but they've managed to outdo themselves big time...we not only get a dose of free Stoogemania, but there's also a free Mudhoney and X show a couple days prior to that! But man, the Stooges...we schlepped to NYC to see the Asheton incarnation at Little Steven's Randall's Island fest a few years ago, and shelled out pretty big bucks to see them again at Massey Hall in 2008, so it'll be extra-gratifying to see the Williamson edition for peanuts. They're showing the Making of 'Raw Power' doc at the NXNE film fest too, but we were able to see that at a free preview as well. With all this Stoogenerosity I certainly don't mind buying a ticket for the Kinks-related Do It Again doc.

Mother's Father

I'm back--hopefully on a far more prolific basis than I was throughout 2006. Sorry, my head was just in a whole 'nother place, so the best I could manage were various little updates here and there. Thanks to all the fine folks who left comments, corrections, and encouragements--your input is most appreciated.

A while back, and I'm ashamed to say it was well over a year ago, Peter Crowley--former booker for Mother's and Max's Kansas City and manager of W/Jayne County--stumbled upon my sketchy entry on Mother's and contacted me about it. Deeming it "pretty accurate but incomplete," he kindly offered some further background details on the joint, which I shall henceforth paraphrase.

Crowley's association with Mother's began in 1974. He had been attempting to get Wayne County and the Back Street Boys a gig at CBGB to no avail, and asked a friend named Mike Umbers if he knew of any other bars where he could put on shows. Umbers recommended Mother's, a gay bar that was struggling to make a go of things. The management were amenable to Crowley's ideas and allowed him to turn the place into a rock & roll club.

Mother's occupied two narrow storefronts on 23rd. They shared a common disused kitchen area at the back, which served as a makeshift dressing room. Entry to the club was through the right-hand/eastern storefront, where the bar and jukebox were located. At the rear by the end of the bar you'd find the entrance to the "back room," or the left-hand storefront, where the shows would take place; admission, usually 3 bucks or so, was collected at this doorway. There had been a tiny stage by the blacked-out front window when Crowley arrived, but he enlarged it to accommodate bands.

During the first week Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys played two shows a night, with rotating support from the Fast and the Outkids--and the response was so good punters sometimes had to be turned away. Crowley stayed on at Mother's until a point in 1975 when he was hired to be the music and art director of Max's Kansas City. Some Mother's regulars took the place over and changed its name to ZEPPS. They continued to book bands there for a couple of years afterwards, but I have been unable to locate any reference to this incarnation of the club.

The *other* rock club on the Bowery

...and one which bit the dust long before the (pending) petering out of its more famous neighbor.

GREAT GILDERSLEEVES--331 Bowery between 2nd and 3rd Streets. Presumably named in honor of the '40s radio show and film series The Great Gildersleeve. In Punk magazine's "Summer 1979 Punk Club Guide" [see Punk: The Original (New York: Trans-High Publishing, 1996)], Gildersleeves is given a 3-star, "This place is smokin!" rating. But to my frustration I've yet to locate any concrete background info about the joint--ownership, exact years of operation, history of the building, atmospheric accounts, etc. Thus the best I can offer is a brief list of some bands who played there. Most gig dates are in the '79-'83 range, so I gather the place didn't see the other side of 1984.

On April Fool's Night, 1979, Elvis Costello and the Attractions played a whirlwind three shows at three separate venues--the Bottom Line, Lone Star Cafe, and Gildersleeves. This was around the time of Elvis' notorious denigrating remarks about Ray Charles; here's a Rolling Stone article which describes the controversy and mentions the extra security needed for the G.G. gig (including a couple of Hell's Angels recruited from around the corner).

Public Image, Ltd., April 22, 1980--a couple of days after a show at the Palladium.

The J. Geils Band, April 27, 1980. That night's rendition of "Love Stinks" was later released on a 12" promo picture sleeve. Listen to the mp3, which starts off with the club's outgoing phone message regarding the gig--apparently the band was billed as Juke Joint Jimmy and His Houseparty Rockers.

Starz, sometime in 1980--read one fan's memories here.

Sonic Youth played the club on June 3, 1981 (their second show ever, as openers for Glenn Branca), and on June 12 the following year. Seems Thurston Moore played there again on February 20, 1983, as a member of Even Worse (which included future Big Takeover honcho Jack Rabid).

Thrash guitarist Neil Turbin played the club as a member of the Newrace and Anthrax. Dig some Village Voice ads for a couple of his '82 gigs here--one of them lists Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers on October 2. Thunders & Co. are also known to have played there on November 27 and New Year's Eve of '82, and February 26, 1983. Here are sound engineer Jimmy Miller's recollections of one of these shows.

The Tickets, various dates in '82/83.

Black Flag, March 13, 1983.

Husker Du, April 17, 1983. Robert Christgau was there and maintains that fewer than a dozen witnesses were present. (Also dig this Christgau state-of-the-scene Voice article dated October 23, 1978, which discusses several noted clubs of the time.)

The Beastie Boys, still in their hardcore period, April 24, 1983. The flyer for this show also lists Reagan Youth, the Blessed, Artless, and You Suck, and further announces a Circle Jerks gig for the following week. Then a "teenage shutterbug," my pal Justina snapped a photo of the Jerks at that show--and also got a few shots of Heart Attack on some other Gildersleeves night.


This flyer for a May 29, 1983 show with S.S. Decontrol also lists several big-name hardcore shows for June of that year, including the Misfits, Minor Threat, G.B.H., and D.O.A. (who also did at least one other date on December 6, 1983).


Other bands/performers associated with the club include Iggy Pop, Another Pretty Face, the Flashcubes, Thundertrain, the Nihilistics, 15 60 75, the Savage Skulls, Amtrak, Kraut, Jackal, the Blind Dates, the Privates, Marshall Crenshaw, Gemini Jones, Doug Wahlberg, the Laughing Dogs, the Crumbsuckers, the Brats, and these unknown mudwrestlers.

One of the few bits of commentary about the club that I was able to find comes from Bruno Ravel of Danger Danger: "I started going there when I was 14 and continued for years until they closed down. It was a great scene. It gave me the bug to become a rock musician. Sure, I loved to play and loved music but hanging out in this club was like being backstage at a concert. Totally decadent, trashy and cool. I wish I could go back, even for one night." The band's 2000 album was entitled The Return of the Great Gildersleeves; its cover photo was taken on the same block where the club had been.

Lord knows what's at 331 Bowery now--probably a condo construction site. But here are a couple of blog entries about the NYC club-closure issue, here's the site for the club currently most at stake, and here's an essay on the history of NY hardcore written by Uncle Al of Murphy's Law.


UPDATE 12/29/2012:   Unbeknownst to me at the time I wrote this post, the building still exists.  A while back I posted a bunch of 1977 and 1978 Gildersleeves ads from the Voice.  Here's a 2009 post about the club from the Ffanzeen blog.  A Gildersleeves reunion show was supposed to happen in November 2012, but was cancelled due to Superstorm Sandy.  And the place gets a brief mention on page 76 of Cyndi Lauper: A Memoir (New York: Atria Books, 2012): "In Blue Angel, we recorded expensive, bad demos to send around to record labels and played clubs like Great Gildersleeves, which was (physically and sort of symbolically) right down the block from CBGB.  Gildersleeves was never the place, never the 'scene.'  Instead it was always the corny rock place that had the straighter bands."