One from the Vault

I was very pleased and honored to be asked to compile a short piece on NYC venue history for Wolfgang's Vault earlier in the week. (I guess this means they've forgiven me for "borrowing" a few Anderson Theater poster scans from their site several years ago!) I tried to be concise yet comprehensive, and to my surprise editor Victoria Keddie left the post basically intact, save for removing most of the links I'd provided. I suppose all that excessive underlined hypertext might have been unsightly, but since I like my readers to have as much immediate info access at their fingertips as possible, I'll put my original link-laden final draft up here as well.

I do update old posts often, but only when I happen to come across or am provided with new information. In my search for new links for the article, I've found that there's quite a bit more material out there about some of the places I've covered than there was when I first started writin' this thang...so I probably should go back and do some thorough re-digging and rewriting to bring older posts further up to code. However, since I've got a greater desire to investigate joints I haven't covered yet, that may take a while.

I want to give a special albeit belated shout-out to the prolific NYCDreamin' of This Ain't the Summer of Love. I was already familiar with some of his work, having seen a few of his posts on historic NYC photography via links from other NYC blogs. Unbeknownst to me though, he has also written exhaustive pieces on the Hotel Diplomat and the Coventry--which kindly acknowledge and build on the posts I'd already done, but truly go the extra mile that eludes me by delving much deeper into building history, citing more sources, and listing accurate and complete show dates. He did an extensive series on the Mercer Arts Center too, a topic I was frankly a little frightened to tackle...and probably others I haven't found yet, but will find soon since I intend to read his blog "cover to cover" over the next few days. I bow to you sir!

Well, here 'tis. Please be kind, it was the best I could do under a rather tight deadline and with some insomnia issues.




As a rock & roll-obsessed New Yorker, I’ve long wished that somebody would write a detailed book on the many places where the music happened in my hometown. When such a book still wasn’t written by 2005, I started blogging about NYC’s lost rock & roll landmarks in my spare time—mainly to satisfy my own curiosity about these joints and the fine folks who performed and partied at them. Five years later, I’m no closer to being an authority on this vast subject than I was before, but I have learned a lot…so when Wolfgang’s Vault asked me to write a brief rundown on some key historical venues and clubs, I felt quite honored, and readily complied.

I haven’t yet delved as deeply into NYC’s ‘50s scene as I would like, simply because I’d be hard-pressed to track down so many untold and undocumented streetcorners, record hops, and uptown R&B bars. But the music’s earliest mass meetings were definitely Alan Freed’s colossal package shows. Most were held at the Brooklyn Paramount and the New York Paramount, though several other movie palaces and halls were also used. WWRL DJ Tommy “Dr. Jive” Smalls presented his own multi-act revues at the beyond-legendary Apollo Theater during the same period.

Freed’s career may have been in scandalous ruins by the ‘60s, but venue possibilities expanded and exploded throughout the decade. Old movie theaters continued to be granted a second adolescence: Clay Cole’s and Soupy Sales’ package shows and even the Beatles at the NY Paramount; Sid Bernstein’s early British Invasion shows at the Academy of Music; and Murray the K’s twice-yearly revues at the Brooklyn Fox. The Village Theater (formerly Loew’s Commodore) showcased many an up-and-coming underground act and hip happening before “Wolfgang” took over and renamed it the Fillmore East—as did the nearby Anderson Theater. But the rock & roll nightclub also came into full fruition at this time, offering a more intimate, energetic, and audience-participatory experience. Naturally the Village boasted a ton of them—Gerde’s Folk City, the Gaslight Café, Café Wha? (that David Lee Roth’s uncle ran that joint is even more remarkable to me than its most famous discovery), Café au Go-Go, Trude Heller’s, the Night Owl, and Generation to name a few…not to mention the mind-melting Dom/Balloon Farm/Electric Circus crosstown on St. Marks. There was the Peppermint Lounge, the Cheetah, Ungano’s, and the incredible Steve Paul’s the Scene on the West Side, and swank East Side discotheques like Arthur, the Phone Booth, Ondine, and L’Interdit. Numerous teen clubs sprouted throughout the boroughs and Long Island, most notably the Action House. And outdoor venues also proliferated—not only the Schaefer Music Festival at Wollman Rink in Central Park (co-founded by Ron Delsener and future CBGBs honcho Hilly Kristal), but also further-afield places like Downing Stadium on Randall’s Island, Gaelic Park in the Bronx, and even the grounds of Staten Island’s Daytop drug rehab center. The section of north-central Queens where I grew up was quite the hotbed of open-air action in particular—and we’re not just talking about the Beatles at Shea here. When I see old lineup schedules for the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium, the N.Y. Pavilion, and the Singer Bowl (footage from the Doors’ show/riot there wound up in the recent Doors documentary When You’re Strange), I imagine that my hipper-than-moi predecessors hardly had to schlep to Manhttan at all for kicks during those late-‘60s summers.

While Madison Square Garden and the Felt Forum hosted the hugest touring acts of the ‘70s, the Academy of Music (later rechristened the Palladium) and the Beacon Theatre still flew the flag for theater-scaled presentation, and the Bottom Line held up its end with a more cabaret-style setting. The go-go discotheque scene had sadly quieted, but there were still some in-crowd hangouts like Nobody’s and Harold C. Black’s 210 Loft. A common theme running through most punk rock history books states that there were absolutely no clubs offering original live music in town before CBGB came along. However, with places like the upper floor of Max’s Kansas City, the Oscar Wilde Room at the Mercer Arts Center, the Hotel Diplomat, Club 82, Mother’s, and the Coventry in existence, this could not have been entirely true. CBs did eventually rule the roost, and Hilly Kristal even attempted to open a bigger satellite venue inside the old Anderson Theater—which didn’t last, but did set a precedent for more successful large clubs like Hurrah, Bond’s Casino, Irving Plaza, and the Ritz. Other punk and post-punk places I wish I could have experienced include Great Gildersleeves, the Mudd Club, Club 57, the “new” Peppermint Lounge, the Pyramid, Danceteria, and the Dive.

My own time is actually not my favorite musical era, so I have not yet done as much research into ‘80s and ‘90s venues. I also moved to a whole other country at the turn of this century, and have just barely kept up with NYC’s changing live scene since then—which has shifted much of its current focus toward Brooklyn. Still, praise must be given to joints like the second Ritz (relocated to the old Studio 54 space), the Academy, Roseland, Tramps, the Lone Star, Maxwell’s (in the “sixth borough” that is Hoboken, N.J.), the old Knitting Factory on Houston, the Mercury Lounge, the Bowery Ballroom, Brownie’s, the Continental, Coney Island High (these last two never bothered to dismantle their sites, bless them), and numerous others too lost in time to mention. All stomping grounds of my generation’s formative years, and major waystations on the hopefully continuing trajectory of New York City rock & roll.




[UPDATE 5/21/2010: A kind archivist at murraythek.com just wrote to remind me that the Brooklyn Fox shows usually happened three times a year (over the Easter, Labor Day, and Christmas holidays), not twice as I erroneously and brain-fartedly wrote above. He also informed me that Murray would occasionally emcee a smaller fourth show at a summer-specific venue, such as the Westbury Music Fair.]

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.