GG Allin and Prince are two artists rarely mentioned in the same breath, but both are responsible for strangely similar, arguably-talented, female protégé off-shoot trio acts. In the case of Prince, we have Vanity 6 (and Appollonia 6, if you count characters fromPurple Rain). In the case of GG Allin, we have the Cedar Street Sluts.
Deceased, shit-flinging, “Rock and Roll Terrorist,” GG Allin, is, for better or worse, a punk icon, known for his transgressively messy live shows which blurred the lines between music and off-the-rails performance art—and more often than not, crossing the line into criminal behavior. RJ Smith wrote of Allin in a 1986 issue of The Village Voice:
“GG Allin, this New Hampshire loser, appeared at the Cat Club, wearing only a jockstrap and cowboy boots. He started shouting the moment he came out, after shitting in his hands and wiping it on his chest. Then he bashed the microphone into his mouth, nose and eye sockets, a shiny red mask spreading across his face. He stretched his jock aside and pulled hard on his little dick. He broke bottles on the ground and rolled in them. Back up on stage now, there was other stuff on the floor (vomit?), and his butt and legs, besides his face, were bleeding. On his back, sometimes doggy style, Allin would shove the microphone into his anus. Then he went into the second number.”
Punk impresario, GG Allin
Allin’s life and death are chronicled in the excellent 1994 Todd Phillips documentary Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies. If you need to know more, start there—on an empty stomach. One particular chapter of Allin’s career not explored in that film is the Cedar Street Sluts.
The original “Cedar Street Sluts” were a backing band of supposed prostitutes on a 1986 cassette release: The Sleaziest, Loosest Sluts. The band members named on that release were “Connie Clit”, “Tammy Tits”, “Poline Pussy”, and “Sally Sleaze.” This tape featured call and response vocals between GG and the female vocalists.
An interview reprinted at Terminal Boredom recounts how Nancy Sinatra, of all people, led Allin to the idea of an all-girl group:
I’d like Nancy Sinatra to come see me play. She’s great. I’m totally into Nancy Sinatra. I’d marry her in a second. She’s the queen of whores. You know that song on the Cedar St. Sluts EP, “Tough Fuckin’ Shit”? That’s a Nancy Sinatra song, really. I just changed the words around a little. I got the idea for the all-girl band from listening to Nancy Sinatra.
—Conflict #43, Jan/Feb 1987
Sometime after that cassette release, Allin was jailed. While incarcerated, he and Black and Blue Records label chief, Peter Yarmouth (AKA “Dick Urine”), decided to put together a new lineup of Cedar Street Sluts to record an album.
Jerry Brown stayed busy during the 28-year interval between his two stints as California’s governor: he made a bid for the presidency, got elected mayor of Oakland, and became the state’s attorney general. Before he was mayor, he also founded a commune in Oakland called We The People. The house at 200 Harrison Street doubled as a salon; Brown envisioned it as a place for “philosophers, artists and activists to discuss and plan ways to work change.” On weekdays in the mid-90s, he broadcast a talk show (also called “We The People”) from the commune over the Bay Area’s Pacifica station, KPFA.
On one afternoon in October 1995, Brown’s guest was Dr. Timothy Leary. Leary owed his host a favor. Two decades earlier, Leary, having already escaped prison once with the help of the Weather Underground, was doing hard time in Folsom State Prison, where he was looking at a lo-o-ong sentence (95 years, says Wikipedia). In 1975, Brown’s first year as governor, he pardoned Leary. (If you think this means Brown is some kind of hippie with an enlightened attitude to drug policy, guess again; he’s actually been a wiener on this issue.) After Leary’s federal parole was granted the following year, he was a free man. He was arrested in Texas for smoking a cigarette in protest of no-smoking rules in 1994, but he stayed out of the slams for the rest of his life. I’d think he must have had warm feelings about Jerry Brown.
Leary had sought the office of governor in California’s 1970 election. He planned to take on the incumbent, Ronald Reagan, armed with a campaign song by John Lennon. Sadly, what might have been one of the most entertaining gubernatorial campaigns in American history was cut short by Leary’s incarceration some ten months before the election. Wise elders, why didn’t you send Reagan up the river instead?
In this wide-ranging half-hour conversation, the two lapsed Catholics do not discuss the pardon or their mutual interest in the governorship, but Brown does bring up the subject of toad-licking when a caller observes that many psychedelic compounds appear in nature. Even if you have no interest in any of the above, you will certainly enjoy hearing California’s current governor exclaim: “You can SUCK THOSE FROGS that give you the good high! Did you read about them?”
Thanks to the folks at Nerdist, we now have a video of Chewbacca reenacting the opening sequence to Louie. Why? Perhaps it’s in celebration of the season premiere of the show tomorrow. Other than that, I got nothin’.
I did enjoy the all too brief scene featuring a Stormtrooper. Blink and you’ll miss it.
As a side note: The video is damn tiny. Sorry about that.
From the Dangerous Minds archive, a post about John Sex on what would have been his 59th birthday.
John Sex was a New York City-based performance artist, male stripper and disco singer who was a standout personality of the East Village art scene of the 1980s. He’d sing schmaltzy Vegas numbers in glittery smoking jackets, shiny Ziggy Stardust-esque zip-up jumpsuits, 10-inch platform heels, and assless leather pants. His trademark was his bleached-blond hair which stood straight up on his head in an exaggerated pompadour which he said was held aloft by “a combination of Dippity-do, Aqua Net, egg whites, beer, and semen.” He also had a pet python, named “Delilah,” and a suit made of 500 light bulbs. In his X-rated version of the Sinatra standard “That’s Life,” he’d sing “I’ve been a hustler, a hooker, a honcho, a hero, a dyke and a queen.”
The “character” of John Sex was not all that much off from the “real” John Sex, but more of a mythical version of himself as an omnisexual rockstar parody or phallocentric version of Tom Jones. He couldn’t turn it off if he wanted to, which I can assure you, he did not. He would often claim that his parents were immigrants who “Americanized” their original Irish surname “Sexton” to “Sex” so they would fit in better, then adding “and if you believe that one…” The real story is that during a period of “rampant promiscuity,” Joey Arias and Klaus Nomi renamed art student John McLaughlin, the nice Catholic boy from Long Island who was everything his mother never wanted him to be, “Sex” and for obvious reasons, I think the name just stuck!
John Sex with Ann Magnuson, early 1980s
John Sex was a smart, super creative, fun, funny and endlessly inventive guy. Everyone loved him. There was absolutely no reason not to. John was a total sweetheart, a great raconteur and he always had the best showbiz stories and gay gossip you ever heard. He is one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. There was constant laughter when he was around. You can see a little bit of what John Sex was like in this clip shot by video artist Nelson Sullivan. John and his friend Craig Vandenberg (who often played John’s washed-up showbiz loser father in shows they’d do together) trade lines in the basement of the Pyramid Club, warming up before a performance there. His boyfriend, Willfredo, the guy with sunglasses, is seen taking pictures about 2:45 in. You can see the performance itself here.
With his female backing singers, The Bodacious TaTa’s (Wendy Wild, April Palmieri, Micki French, Myra Schiller and others) and wearing his exaggerated showbiz finery courtesy of his friend (and sometime TaTa) fashion designer Katy K, John Sex played to nightclub audiences at venues like Club 57, the Pyramid Club, Danceteria, Limelight, The Palladium and The Saint. Many of his shows would end with him stripping down to a glittery jock strap, or beyond, during a song called “Jet Set.” Some of his other notable numbers were “Hustle With My Muscle” (see clip below), “Sex Appeal,” “Bump and Grind It” and “Rock Your Body,” a song he did with noted hip hop producer Man Parrish, that I made a music video for in 1988 (see bottom clip).
“Hustle With My Muscle” directed by Tom Rubnitz, This was shot at the Area nightclub in 1986 when the theme of the decor was something like “rednecks” or “trailer trash.”
John Sex only released two records during his lifetime. His sole non local news or NYC cable access TV appearance might have been on the short-lived talkshow hosted by comedian/actor Richard Belzer in the 80s, but I could be wrong about that. He was in the Cars video for “Hello Again” directed by Andy Warhol. He did a notable ad for LA Eyeworks that was widely seen in a lot of magazines in the mid-80s. He was also included, with a very memorable performance of “Hustle With My Muscle” featuring ejaculating prop penises, in the underground film Mondo New York which is often still seen on IFC and the Sundance Channel late at night. This is how most people hear of him these days. There was not exactly a large body of work left behind when John died in 1990.
In 1981, I visited New York on a 36-hour long school trip to see Broadway plays (two matinees, two evening performances). I saw two very striking, very fashionable people (John and Katy K) walking down St. Marks Place. There I bought an issue of the Village Voice that I *studied* for the next year, because the back pages and apartment rental listings told me everything I needed to know to be able to make my way from my hometown back to the Big Apple. In that issue was an Amy Arbus portrait of the two of them. I recall thinking “Hey it’s THAT GUY!“ the first time I saw John in a nightclub. He was one of those people who was a celebrity, but only in lower Manhattan. The whole Warhol “Superstar” glamor also rubbed off on John, who was friends with the artist.
I don’t really recall how John and I met, but when his “Rock Your Body” record came out, I proposed that I direct a music video for it and he enthusiastically accepted. This was another of the videos I co-directed with my friend Alan Henderson, and in fact it was the first one we did together. [I’ve posted about the one for Bongwater’s “Power of Pussy” here and the one for The Beme Seed’s “God Inside” here.]
John had a lot of fun ideas (surfing on the wave of his own hair, the flying carpet bit were his) and this spurred Alan and I on, too. Since we were shooting everything on “green screen” we were able to attempt many of these ideas, despite the budget essentially being pretty much nothing. It was shot and edited at Windsor Digital, the high tech video post production house where both Alan and I were employed at the time. We had a limited amount of time to shoot this, so certain things worked out better than others.
I can’t recall exactly what all of the late 80s video devices were that we used to edit it together, but at the time they were mostly newly introduced and the gear there cost way into the millions. Very few people would have had access to this stuff at the time and here we were two young guys (I was 22 at the time) who could get our hands on them, so we used ‘em. To record, one of us would have to run to the control room and hit record on two machines simultaneously and then run back into the studio. Alan basically taught himself effects editing on the project and now works for Fox Sports. We did all kinds of things, just experimenting, to see what would happen and what it would look like. A colleague and friend of ours there, Laurie Salladay helped out with some Paintbox work.
The peeling banana effect was achieved by taking a banana held in place by a nail and peeling it slowly and scooping out the meat as we pulled the skin away in a cheap and cheerful version of stop motion using frame by frame analog video animation (hardly optimal, to say the least). The digital video device known as the Quantel Mirage (everyone who knows what that was just smiled to themselves) wrapped the next scene in the shape of a peeled banana, tucked it in and then out it jumps, on the beat, in a cheesy jungle homage to the Velvet Underground! At least that is what I think we were thinking…
The bit where John is in the car, that car was taken from a still frame from a VHS tape of Russ Meyer’s Faster Pussycat, Kill, Kill and then colorized on a Quantel Paintbox. It was layered like this: random footage we had shot out the window of a moving car; the back seat, John (who was supposed have have a prop steering wheel in his hand, but we forgot it and had to use a film reel); then the top layer of the car.
John’s hair gave us tons of trouble, as you can see in the final product, because the lights would go right through it, and fuck up the clean silhouette of the green screen footage (which was recorded on a separate reel of videotape as a black and white “keyhole” and then matted together later with a third video recorder). This wasn’t something that we counted on and we were often limited with what footage we could use because of this.
Today, you could do this all on After Effects with minimal effort, but in 1988, I can assure you that you’d have to have been a fucking maniac to attempt this stuff on analog video. (The videos for Neneh Cherry’s “Buffalo Stance” and Boy George’s “No Clause 28” pioneering gay rights protest song were the first ones done on this equipment, as I recall, and you can see how similar they are if you follow the links). I’m not posting this because it’s so great or anything—this is a no budget video done by two young guys in their early 20s—I’m posting it because it’s of interest, hopefully, to a lot of people, who would have no exposure to John Sex otherwise, and who are interested in the East Village scene of the 1980s. John Sex was one of the seminal personalities of that era in New York City and it would be a shame if he’s forgotten.
Incidentally, we shot the video on the first day of the Tompkins Square Park Riot, August 6th, 1988 and as I returned home late that night, I fell asleep in the cab. When the driver stopped and told me he could go no further, I woke up to find my entire neighborhood on fire and cops everywhere. Good times!
When the video was finished, we were thrilled and shocked that MTV picked it up. They even did a story about it on MTV News. After a few months of the video circulating to nightclubs via the RockAmerica VJ tapes, John called me up one day to tell me that his asking price as a “track act” (i.e. nightclub performer with backing tapes) has risen to $3500 per gig and that he was getting offers to play in discotheques and gay clubs in places like Miami Beach, Palm Springs and Atlanta.
Sadly, his newfound success was not to continue for much longer as John was diagnosed with HIV. I don’t think any of his friends were really that surprised—he was a pretty randy fellow—but boy were we all saddened. It just seemed colossally unfair. Someone blessed with such charisma, good looks, smarts… so funny and so sweet. I can still recall how numbed I was when I heard the news he was sick. AIDS was still terra incognita back then, the idea of John dying slowly was a depressing thing to contemplate. He wasn’t the first friend of mine to get sick and he wouldn’t be the last.
John Sex’s last public performance was at the Mars nightclub in New York in 1989. I was the doorman of the upstairs VIP room at the club—Vin Diesel worked the front door—and saw the show. He was still a high energy performer, but the medication he was taking made him puffy and his hair had started to fall out and so he was obliged to cut off his trademark hairdo, fashioning the hair that was left into a jeweled crown.
Whenever I was around John in the last year of his life, he always seemed to be in generally good spirits, all things considered and would even indulge in “gallows humor” at his own expense (like when he made me take about half of his record collection home with me, because he wasn’t going to be needing it). The last time I saw him, I stopped by his apartment (which always smelled heavily of curry because of the Indian restaurant downstairs) on St. Marks Place, with my then-girlfriend, Jesse. (She is the blonde seen in the X-ray glasses bit of the “Rock Your Body” video). His tiny place at that point was set up like a hospital room and he looked terrible. His hair was nearly gone and he looked like a baby bird. Still, he was as mentally sharp as ever, and although it was obvious he was going to die soon, at least around me, he didn’t dwell much on it conversationally.
Jesse and I had a lot of shopping with us and John insisted that we leave it at his place so we didn’t have to carry it around all day. When we left him, he was full of energy and alert. When we came back about a bit later, he had an IV drip in his arm and seemed to have no idea who I was. I don’t recall how many weeks went by, before John passed, but it wasn’t too many. He died the day before my 24th birthday, on October 24, 1990.
L. Ron Hubbard auditing a tomato. He claimed that that they “scream when sliced.”
If you haven’t seen Going Clear, the HBO documentary on Scientology, I suggest you get on it. The science fiction cult of the rich and famous is so much more disturbing than most people know! From the mouths of ex-Scientologists themselves, you hear about surveillance, blackmail, brainwashing and abuse administered strategically upon celebrities and mere mortals alike, all to build this lucrative empire based on a batshit pseudoscience religious cult. There’s so much crazy, the doc can’t even cover it all.
For example, one of my favorite details is L. Ron Hubbard’s fundamentally retrograde views on the sexes (which have, of course, been edited out of more recent publications). It’s pretty well-known that old L. Ron thought you could “pray away the gay” (or “audit” it away or whatever), but Scientology’s obsession with heteronormativity goes way beyond basic homophobia.
Below is the entirety of a now-omitted chapter from Hubbard’s 1965 treatise Scientology: A New Slant on Life, covertly titled “A Woman’s Creativity.”
The whole future of the race depends upon its attitude toward children; and a race which specializes in women for “mental purposes” or which believes that the contest of the sexes in the spheres of business and politics is a worthier endeavor than the creation of tomorrow’s generation is a race which is dying.
We have, in the woman who is an ambitious rival of the man in his own activities, a woman who is neglecting the most important mission she may have. A society which looks down upon this mission and a society in which women are taught anything but the management of a family, the care of men, and the creation of the future generation is a society which is on its way out.
The historian can peg the point where a society begins its sharpest decline at the instant when women begin to take part, on an equal footing with men, in political and business affairs, since this means that the men are decadent and the women are no longer women.
This is not a sermon on the role or position of women; it is a statment [sic] of bald and basic fact. When children become unimportant to a society, that society has forfeited its future. Even beyond the fathering and bearing and rearing of children, a human being does not seem to be complete without a relationship with a member of the opposite sex. This relationship is the vessel wherein is nurtured the life force of both individuals, whereby they create the future of the race in body and thought. If man is to rise to greater heights, then women must rise with him or even before him. But she must rise as woman and not as, today, she is being misled into rising—as a man. It is the hideous joke of frustrated, unvirile men to make women over into the travesty of men, which men themselves have become.
Men are difficult and troublesome creatures—but valuable. The creative care and handling of men is an artful and a beautiful task. Those who would cheat a woman of their rightful place, by making them into men, should at last realize that, by this action, they are destroying, not only the women, but the men and the children as well. This is too great a price to pay for being “modern” or for someone’s petty anger or spite against the female sex.
The arts and skills of woman, the creation and Inspiration of which she is capable and which, here and there, in isolated places in our culture, she still manages to effect, in spite of the ruin and decay of man’s world which spreads around her, must be brought newly and fully into life. These arts and skills and creation and inspiration are her beauty, just as she is the beauty of mankind.
Obviously gender conservatism is nothing new in religion, but you just kind of expect something a little more progressive from a UFO cult! This is a science-fiction religion founded in 1952—the futuristic aesthetics apply just fine to aliens, “Thetans” and bullshit E-meters (seen in the picture above, with Hubbard “auditing” a tomato), but a career girl is just way too “out there?” What would Xenu say?
YITT stands for “Yep, I’m the Toaster” (shades of James Hetfield’s vigorous declaration of his status as a table?), and it’s the nom de mash of a self-proclaimed “Amateur mashup artist/producer/drummer, photographer/mashup video editor” from the Bay Area. His Soundcloud page is full of goodies, but he’s lately posted a little piece of genius. In answer to pomDeter’s highly amusing “Call Me a Hole” from a couple of years back, YITT has made an unholy chimera of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “I Really Like You” and Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like a Hole.” The recontextualization makes Trent Reznor’s angst sound… so… HAPPY! I do so wish Trent could be happy all the time. And the video mixing is every bit as skillful as the sound.
And here, I didn’t think the Internet was going to cough up anything funnier today than the Hard Times’ torpedoing of One Life Crew.
Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein were supporting characters in the story of art, literature and culture during the early to mid-twentieth century. Stein was a writer, poet and playwright, who collected and promoted the artists Cezanne, Picasso, Matisse and Picabia; and the writers Hemingway, Ezra Pound and Scott Fitzgerald. Toklas was Stein’s lover, muse, editor, and confidante. The couple were inseparable during their 39-year relationship, which was celebrated through Stein’s book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas in 1933. This book told the story of their relationship through Toklas’s biography.
Stein (pooch)Toklas.
While Stein ruled the salon, Toklas was mistress of the kitchen. Almost a decade after Stein’s death in 1946, Toklas published what could be described as another Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas—a cookbook that mixed her favorite recipes with concisely written memoirs of her life. Her childhood she recalled through her mother’s fritters and ice cream; her aunt and a favorite car (a Model-T Ford) recalled through a recipe for hot chocolate; while many of the artists, writers and actors she met through her relationship with Stein were evoked by recipes, such as “Custard Josephine Baker” or through tales of serving food—cooking Picasso fish, for example.
One recipe for “Hashish Fudge” was supplied by friend and artist Brion Gysin. This sweet delicacy gave The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book considerable notoriety, and forced the publishers to enquire over the legality of publishing such a recipe.
HASHISH FUDGE
(which anyone could whip up on a rainy day)
This is the food of paradise — of Baudelaire’s Artificial Paradises: it might provide an entertaining refreshment for a Ladies’ Bridge Club or a chapter meeting of the DAR. In Morocco it is thought to be good for warding off the common cold in damp winter weather and is, indeed, more effective if taken with large quantities of hot mint tea. Euphoria and brilliant storms of laughter; ecstatic reveries and extensions of one’s personality on several simultaneous planes are to be complacently expected. Almost anything Saint Theresa did, you can do better if you can bear to be ravished by ‘un évanouissement reveillé‘.
Take 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1 whole nutmeg, 4 average sticks of cinnamon, 1 teaspoon coriander.
These should all be pulverised in a mortar. About a handful each of stoned dates, dried figs, shelled almonds and peanuts: chop these and mix them together.
A bunch of Cannabis sativa can be pulverised. This along with the spices should be dusted over the mixed fruit and nuts, kneaded together. About a cup of sugar dissolved in a big pat of butter. Rolled into a cake and cut into pieces or made into balls about the size of a walnut, it should be eaten with care. Two pieces are quite sufficient.
Obtaining the Cannabis may present certain difficulties, but the variety known as Cannabis sativa grows as a common weed, often unrecognised, everywhere in Europe, Asia and parts of Africa; besides being cultivated as a crop for the manufacture of rope. In the Americas, while often discouraged, its cousin, called Cannabis indica, has been observed even in city window boxes. It should be picked and dried as soon as it has gone to seed and while the plant is still green.
As “experienced” gourmands know, the recipe bears more of a resemblance to what’s referred to in Morocco as “majoun.” The 1960s comedy I Love You Alice B. Toklas, starring Peter Sellers name checks Alice due to his uptight character eating a bunch of hash brownies. An audio recording of Alice reading the “Hashish Fudge” recipe can be heard here.
Only Grace Jones would look at home in a blue/teal/peach bodysuit and purple ponytail…. You can’t beat it.
Grace Jones is such a likable presence that any random 44 minutes of her life would, we can presume, be tolerably diverting. Even better when it’s a pristine chunk of her performing on Chilean TV right smack in her prime. This marvelous footage popped up on YouTube in December but hasn’t gotten the play it deserves (yet). Considering that the clip is roughly 35 years old, to my eyes and ears both the audio and video fidelity seem extraordinarily high.
The setting is some kind of swank eatery/studio, there are tables with well-heeled patrons enjoying food and drink. Quite a distance from, say, sweaty and chaotic Studio 54, n’est-ce pas? During the first number, “The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game,” off of 1980’s Warm Leatherette, Grace briefly attacks a potted plant (an incident that, judging from this playful clip, got more than its share of attention in South America) and ends the song by hovering over a table full of patrons.
During the interview segment, conducted mostly in Spanish, we learn that Grace was under the weather that day. It didn’t prevent her from shedding a tear or two during “Ma Vie en Rose.” During the jaunty track “Bullshit” she gets on a table and boogies down.
This whole clip is crazy entertaining, but if you’re in a rush, it’s still worth it just for the stunning multicolored bodysuit and synthetic purple ponytail she wears for the first song. (After a costume change, she re-emerges in a more familiar mannish gray jacket.)
Track listing:
The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game
La Vie en Rose
Bullshit
Fame
Autumn Leaves
Encouraged by his then-girlfriend, American pop singer/songwriter Jackie DeShannon, Jimmy Page tried to move beyond his work as a session musician for a bit of the limelight himself. The result was the solo single “She Just Satisfies,” co-written with Barry Mason, which came out on Fontana Records in February of 1965. DeShannon co-wrote the instrumental B-side “Keep Moving” with Page and sang back-up vocals on the A-side.
“There’s nothing to be said for that record except it was very tongue-in-cheek at the time. I played all the instruments on it except for the drums and sang on it too, which is quite, uh … unique. “She Just Satisfies,” that’s what it was called. It’s better forgotten.”
Not sure if I agree, it’s a nice Kink-ish curio of Page’s long career. He’s no Robert Plant, but then again he’s no Jeff Beck either... [In actual fact, he sounds like Keith Relf!]
Jesse Malin exemplifies an increasingly rare breed—a songwriter with an almost umbilical connection to a New York City that barely exists anymore outside of fading photos and fading memories. It’s fair, I think, to consider him part of a lineage stretching from Lou Reed through Jim Carroll, Richard Hell, Alan Vega, et al. From his time as a really young kid in the pioneering NYHC band Heart Attack, through his ‘90s alterna-fame with glam punks D Generation (a band that also included my DM colleague Howie Pyro), to his 21st Century solo work, Malin has grown into a worthy Bard of the Boroughs. His new album, New York Before the War, may actually be the apotheosis of his career so far. (I have no doubt that some DGen fans would disagree.)
Since DGen, Malin has shed some Lower East Side punk classicism for a broader approach; there are traces of Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen all over the new album. But it’s an eclectic batch of songs, and still for the greater part identifiably punk-inspired, and still absolutely classicist. Malin told DM that the title New York Before the War itself refers to things that New York, and society at large, have lost.
It’s no particular war, it’s surviving and fighting against all the fucking corporate bastards, all the changes on the planet, with New York being one of the central pieces of the world. It’s that the world is such a disposable, apathetic, digitized place and we’re burning through it so fast. I’m into holding on to things that are important, and finding them, and making them, and celebrating them.
In that spirit of touching back to the worthy past for inspiration, we thought it would be fun to look at Malin’s very early roots, as a member of Heart Attack. That band formed in 1980, when its members ranged in age from 12 to 16. Even at that age, the band managed to tour, and they released a 7” and two E.P.s, which were collected on the inevitable discography CD The Last War 1980-84. Malin was kind enough to share his old stash of fliers with us, and when we prodded him for personal reminiscences of the shows, he was supremely obliging.
That’s the first time anybody took my picture. That’s me and two other members of Heart Attack. Javier, on drums, from Mexico City. I met him through an ad in the Village Voice, he was a very original drummer. In the middle is John Frawley, he was from Flushing, Queens, and had been in the band The Mob, who were our friends and rivals at the time. He played bass. And that’s me on the right, I was 14 years old, and that was around the time the “God is Dead” 7” came out on the Damaged Goods fanzine label. And we were on East 12th Street, with a bunch of Puerto Rican guys in the back, and that was shot for Sounds, the UK weekly newspaper. Tim Sommer was doing a piece on the early, early New York hardcore scene, and I think we put out the first 7” from that scene, which became kind of a collectable, but it got bootlegged a few times. And that’s not our car, it just looked like that down there.
171A was the studio where Bad Brains recorded the ROIR cassette. They had a record store in the basement called “Rat Cage.” Jerry Williams, rest his soul, wonderful guy, recorded all our bands there, let us rehearse there, had illegal gigs, the Bad Brains LIVED there, Black Flag rehearsed there, it was one of the first places to support hardcore. The first Beastie Boys record Polly Wog Stew was recorded there as well, with the famous “Egg Raid on Mojo.” That was a benefit, three nights at a theater, and believe it or not, with that bill, it was kinda empty! But a great show.
The later years of Heart Attack, we got a bit noisy, and somehow attracted fans in those bands, so we played with Sonic Youth, we played with Swans. Swans were the loudest thing I’d ever seen at the time, louder than Motörhead, and they were very good to us. We did a few shows, mostly in New York, and that one was at the SIN Club, which means “Safety In Numbers.” That night there were gunshots going off across the street, and we were the very few white kids at 3rd St and Avenue C. The SIN Club took chances and put on great shows, and that was the cool diversity, being able to have Heart Attack and Swans, mix those two worlds. I guess the common thread would be anger, angst, intensity.
John Sex with Ann Magnuson, early 1980s
