There are special moments in one’s life that take on mythic qualities. Most of mine have involved sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. One particularly mindfucking moment for me was the night I got shitfaced with Lester Bangs at The Village Gate while watching Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers and their opening act The Senders. Bangs and I agreed it was a mighty night and we celebrated it with reckless abandon, the kind of assault on my body that would probably kill me today. I learned to pace myself. Lester didn’t. He died a year or two later…

Phillipe Marcade, the frontman of The Senders, was a mad Frenchman who was drunk on Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. And Thunders was firmly embraced but not strangled by the arms of Morpheus. That night at The Gate, the alchemy was like mystical napalm and we all went up in some kind of cosmic smoke. I will say here and now it was a great night of rock a’n’ roll and what I can remember of bullshitting with Bangs was pretty good too. In fact, it was splendid. Having a conversation with Lester Bangs was like trying to stand up in a row boat during a hurricane. The force coming off of Thunder’s guitar provided the ballast to keep me from capsizing.

So all of that is leading me up to prepare you for another fine moment in which The Heartbreakers roared heroically with Johnny’s knees only buckling occasionally under the blow of smack’s velvet blackjack. This footage of the band at Max’s Kansas City in 1979 captures some of the raw excitement of Johnny, Walter Lure (doing most of the heavy lifting), Jerry Nolan and Billy Rath grinding out their punk bliss with the kind of transcendent energy that only loud guitars and big ferocious beats can deliver. The audio is thin, but I can guarantee that being at this show was as breathtakingly intense as being crushed by a subway train. This is Johnny shortly before the dope turned him into a helpless headcase. Savor it.
 

Vintage shot of Kim Gordon via Suicide Watch

There’s a fascinating must-read short profile of Kim Gordon in this month’s Elle by Lizzy Goodman. In it, the Sonic Youth co-founder discusses being single again at the still Sonically Youthful age of 59, divvying up those pop culture treasures she and Thurston Moore must’ve amassed over the years and her breast cancer treatment:

“We have all these books, records, and art and are getting it all assessed; that’s what is taking so long,” she says after ordering a glass of rosé. But both have moved on. Among her suitors are a restaurateur, an architect, and an actor. “It’s just weird,” Gordon says of navigating new romance. “I can’t tell what’s normal.” And Moore has regularly been seen with the same woman, fueling the rumor that his affair helped doom their marriage. “We seemed to have a normal relationship inside of a crazy world,” Gordon says of her marriage. “And in fact, it ended in a kind of normal way—midlife crisis, starstruck woman.”

Some years ago, a woman Gordon declines to name became a part of the Sonic Youth world, first as the girlfriend of an erstwhile band member and later as a partner on a literary project with Moore. Eventually, Gordon discovered a text message and confronted him about having an affair. They went to counseling, but he kept seeing the other woman. “We never got to the point where we could just get rid of her so I could decide what I wanted to do,” Gordon says. “Thurston was carrying on this whole double life with her. He was really like a lost soul.” Moore moved out. Gordon stayed home and listened to a lot of hip-hop. “Rap music is really good when you’re traumatized,” she says.

The first few months were rough. “It did feel like every day was different,” she recalls. “It’s a huge, drastic change.” But slowly things improved. She adjusted to the framework of semisingle parenthood. (Coco, their only child, is now a freshman at a Chicago art school.) Gordon kept their colonial filled with friends—a musician, a poet, and Moore’s adult niece, with whom Gordon has remained very close. “Sometimes I cook dinner and just invite whomever,” she says of her improvised family life. “Everyone helps out a bit with the dogs. It’s a big house. It’s nice to have people around.” Things were stabilizing. Then Gordon was found to have a noninvasive form of breast cancer called DCIS. “I’m fine; it’s literally the best you can have,” she says of her diagnosis, which required a lumpectomy. “I didn’t do radiation or anything, but I was like, Okay, what else is going to happen to me?”

Read more at Elle.
 

  
In honor of Public Enemy’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight, here’s a clip from the Life Goes On TV series where “Corky” shows his more rebellious side and “fights the power.”

And, yes, I’m probably going to Hell for posting this.

  
With thanks to Leopold Stotch!

 
Simply superb showing by a youthful Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers circa 1978 (Leroy Radcliffe, D. Sharpe, Asa Brebner) from Dutch TV’s Top Pop program.

Starts off with a playful version of “Egyptian Reggae,” Richman’s charmingly clunky white college boy take on the famous riddim from Johnny Clarke’s “None Shall Escape the Judgment.”

“Egyptian Reggae”.
“New England”.
“Abominable Snowman”.
“Cleopatra”
“Buzz Buzz Buzz”
“Affection”.
“I’m A Little Airplane”
 

  
Socialist post-punk dance-floor agitators, Delta 5 were closely aligned with the Gang of Four, another Leeds-based group who mixed music and leftwing politics. Their thumpy, double bass guitar-led funk attack, slashing guitars and flat, bored female vocals made them sound like a tighter version of the Slits mixed with the Gang of Four’s razor-sharp guitar lines. Both Delta 5 and the Gang of Four were associated with the Rock Against Racism movement. Delta 5, with three women in the group, also played several benefits to fight the Corrie Bill, an anti-abortion statute.
  
In late 1970s, the racist British Movement, an National Front offshoot that was unashamedly Nazi organized in Leeds and enlisted some local yobs to form skinhead groups to harass the “Communist” bands and to counter RAR. The concerts they organized were called Rock Against Communism (The notorious Screwdriver came out of this milieu). One night Delta 5-member Ros Allen was recognized in a pub by eight British Movement members who called her a “Communist witch.” The members of Delta 5 were followed outside and beaten. Vocalist/bassist Bethan Peters told Greil Marcus in 1980 that the sight of skinheads doing “Sieg heil” salutes was common at their gigs and how she once grabbed one of them and repeatedly smashed his head into the stage.
  
Delta 5 didn’t last that long, just one album and some singles before they split in 1982. Their reputation was obscure for several decades, but in 2006, the Kill Rock Stars label released some early Delta 5 material called Singles & Sessions 1979-81, which saw renewed interest in the group.
  
Their best song (in my opinion): “Mind Your Own Business”:
  

   
“You”:
    

    
Delta 5 in 1981 on Oxford Road Show:
    

 
In an almost mythical ABC After School Special from 1987 titled The Day My Kid Went Punk, a wholesome all-American family (with Love Boat‘s “Doc,” Bernie Kopell as the worried dad) has to deal with uh… tragedy when their “normal” son starts wearing black lipstick, cuts his hair into a Mohawk and generally goes for an extreme “Goth Eye for the Straight Guy” make-over…

“Nice kid. Quiet. Plays classical violin…”

“Oh, really? Well a Ziggy Ziggy Sputnik lookalike is sitting outside in the lobby for us hire him as our daycare counselor.”

“Who are you talking about? Who is Ziggy Ziggy whatsit?”

Just the above image made the viral rounds a few years back, but this is the longest clip yet of this elusive bit of cult TV to appear on YouTube. Who has the entire thing?
 

 
Phil Spector produced the Ramones’ 1980 album End of the Century. At one point during the recording sessions in Los Angeles, Spector held Dee Dee Ramone at gunpoint, and forced him to play the same riff over and over again.

Perhaps because the King of Mono was still on the outside at the time this interview was filmed, one gets the distinct feeling watching it that the boys from Forest Hills were holding something back…

Joey was the biggest Spector freak in the band. Note how he doesn’t say a word..

Sent our way by the legendary Mr. Danny Fields
 

 
Has Hedwig And The Angry Inch entered the annals of the ‘classic musical’ yet? If not, then why not?

I can’t think of another original musical from the last 10/15 years to have gained such a strong cult following and had so much niche AND crossover appeal (no mean feat considering the subject matter.) Shows with people throwing themselves around to Abba or Queen songs don’t count.

Here is a rare treat for fans of Hedwig, it’s a taping of the original cast performing the show Off-Broadway in 1999, featuring what is very obviously a star-making turn for John Cameron Mitchell. The quality’s not all that bad, and of course the music is great. Which is important for a musical. Here’s a little more info via YouTube uploader Antoine Granger (and Wikipedia):

Hedwig and the Angry Inch is a rock musical about a fictional rock and roll band fronted by an East German transgender singer. The text is by John Cameron Mitchell, and the music and lyrics are by Stephen Trask. The musical premiered in 1998 and has been performed throughout the world in hundreds of stage productions.

The story draws on Mitchell’s life as the son of a U.S. Army Major General who once commanded the U.S. sector of occupied West Berlin. The character of Hedwig was originally inspired by a German divorced U.S. Army wife who was a Mitchell family babysitter and moonlighted as a prostitute at her Junction City, Kansas trailer park home. The music is steeped in the androgynous 1970s glam rock era of David Bowie (who co-produced the Los Angeles production of the show), as well as the work of John Lennon and early punk godfathers Lou Reed and Iggy Pop.

The musical opened Off-Broadway at the Jane Street Theater on February 14, 1998. The theater was located in the ballroom of the Hotel Riverview, which once housed the surviving crew of the Titanic (a fact which figured in the original production). Originally directed and produced by Peter Askin, the play won a Village Voice Obie Award and the Outer Critics Circle Award for Best Off-Broadway Musical. The Off-Broadway production ran for two years, and was remounted with various casts by the original creative team in Boston, Los Angeles, and London.

Songs :

“Tear Me Down”
“The Origin of Love”
“Sugar Daddy”
“The Angry Inch”
“Wig in a Box”
“Wicked Little Town”
“The Long Grift”
“Hedwig’s Lament”
“Exquisite Corpse”
“Wicked Little Town (Reprise)”
“Midnight Radio”

This is the original cast performing on stage in 1999, awesome performance if you ask me. I took the liberty to do a small noise reduction over the original source. If you liked the show I strongly advise you to also check out the movie.

 
Thanks to Zac Griffiths.

Trash Can. Photo by Steven Hirsch.
 
Photographer Steven Hirsch has been documenting the crusty punks (street dwellers) who live in and around Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan’s East Village. His blog, Crustypunks, is fascinating, beautiful, heartbreaking and provocative. The stories of these homeless folks are sad, infuriating and often tragic. These are hippies without a shred of idealism. And though they may wear the occasional Misfits t-shirt, few of them seem to have any connection to the punk scene of the 1970s other than their anger, which seems directed at virtually anything that moves.

As I looked at Hirsch’s powerful photographs, I realized anyone of us could become one of society’s damaged goods at any time. Our comfort zones are extremely fragile. While some of the crusty punks are just white kids slumming, there are plenty who have, for whatever reasons, given up on life. Many are victims of rape, domestic violence, mental illness, neglect, etc. There but for the grace of God…

Hirsch shot this video of a crusty punk (not the above pictured Trash Can) getting his kicks in a most unusual way. Talk about a cheap high. This makes sniffing glue look like part of a health food regime. 
 

 
From the DM achives:

Scottish documentary filmmaker John Samson died at the age of 58 in 2004. But sadly, for someone of his distinct talents, he had unceremoniously faded into obscurity two decades before his death.

Samson was a hugely influential artist who never got his due during the seminal years in which he was actually engaged in creating the films he would later be lauded for. It is only in retrospect that his films are being heralded as being too honest, too real and too thoughtful for the British television corporations he depended upon for the distribution of his work. Years after his death he’s finally getting some recognition in a case of too little too fucking late.

Samson’s films often focused on compelling and unorthodox (for its time) subject matter such as tattooing, fetishism, dwarfism and sex. He approached his material objectively, never editorializing, letting the subject speak for itself. Perhaps it was his own outlaw status that helped him relate to social outcasts, the stigmatized and the proudly defiant.

In 1977 Samson made Dressing For Pleasure, a documentary about ordinary people who enjoyed dressing in rubber and who approached their fetish with a matter of factness that seems almost quaint. The film was an immediate sensation among British fashion designers and within the London punk scene and was promptly banned as a video nasty. It ended up becoming one of the most ripped off British films of the 1970s.

The BBC used segments of Dressing For Pleasure in a 1995 documentary on the Sex Pistols. Having not seen the BBC documentary, I assume the parts they used are the scenes with Jordan in Vivienne Westwood’s boutique Sex and the one where allegedly Malcolm McClaren’s oversized head is wearing an inflatable black rubber gimp mask. Exactly where John Lydon wanted him. 

During Vivienne Westwood’s 2004 career retrospective in London, Dressing For Pleasure ran on a continuous loop and Julien Temple featured the Sex segments in his Pistols documentary The Filth And The Fury.
 

Punk icon Jordan in Seditionaries boutique, Kings Rd.
 

The lasting impression of Samson’s film is not of aggressive provocation (of which punk was often accused by its mainstream detractors) but of an affectionate tribute to a characteristically English strain of bloody-minded eccentricity.

 

John Samson and his plastic fantastic lover.
 
The long overdue appreciation for John Samson is a small victory for good art. He’s not around to benefit from it. His heart knocked him out the game. I wonder if the stress of the game, the politics and business of it all, was just more than he cared to handle. The hassle of selling yourself can be deadening. His style of egalitarian filmmaking was life embracing and opened up doors into worlds that may have seemed strange to some but contained a certain purity that was undeniable. He found the flesh under the rubber. But perhaps he couldn’t put up enough latex and plastic between himself and the corporate pigs to protect his own beating heart and it attacked him.

The director Don Boyd, an executive producer on The Great Rock’n’Roll Swindle, is still appalled by the ease with which John Samson was allowed to fade away. “He represented a different breed of film-maker,” Boyd says. “He had commitment, vision and a respect for the truth. He was criminally ignored by tyrants in an editorially fascist television era which, thank God, looks as if it’s coming to an end. His best work represents everything they have destroyed.”

Here’s the rarely seen Dressing For Pleasure in its entirety. As you watch it, take notice at how beautifully the film is composed and shot. At times I’m reminded of the the films of Kenneth Anger, the soft meeting the hard, the yin, the yang, the whole damn thing, to a rock and roll beat.