Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon talk about the infamous Bond’s concerts, their image, the film project with Don Letts Clash On Broadway which was eventually abandoned, New York City…and more. This was broadcast in 1982 on the NBC affiliate in NYC.
The intent of Clash On Broadway was to document the events and performances centering around the band’s historic seventeen consecutive shows at Bond’s International, a club located in Time’s Square, NYC, extending from May 28-June 13, 1981. Footage included Topper Headon strolling around NYC at night & being interviewed while riding in a taxi, the group sitting on a rooftop watching a group of young black kids rap and breakdance, the graffitti artist Futura plying his trade, the backstage scene, and stellar performances from the Bond’s shows.
Although the film itself never materialized, the footage that was shot provided the basis for the “This is Radio Clash” video and formed much of the backbone of Letts’ 2000 documentary of The Clash, Westway to the World.”
The interviewer is Sue Simmons and she’s quite good as is Joe’s fairly new dental work.
Although DM featured this in the past, the video was pulled from YouTube but has now reappeared so I thought I’d share it again. It’s that good.
Kids Are People Too ran on Sunday mornings from 1978 to 1982 on ABC and featured a lot of topnotch rock and rollers including Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Kiss, and the fabulous Debbie Harry.
One of the few 45s I still own, The Slit’s wonderful cover of “Man Next Door,” a reggae classic associated with both John Holt (who wrote it) and the “Crown Prince of Reggae,” Dennis Brown (who covered it. So Did Massive Attack). This non-album, 1980 production was mixed by Adrian Sherwood, Adam Kidron and the Slits themselves.
The B-side is a tripped out dub version. Once I was able to get my hands on some “real” (Jamaican) dub, I was disappointed that it seldom lived up to the psychedelic standards set here.
In this live clip, The Slits perform an epic, nearly 9-minute-long romp all over “Man Next Door” augmented by Steve Beresford on sound effects, Bruce Smith (The Pop Group, PiL) on drums and a young Neneh Cherry on backing vocals (and great dance moves!) at the Tempodrom in Berlin on June 19,1981. Turn this up LOUD and wish you had been there…
During a high school theatre outing to New York in 1981, I managed to sneak away for a while to buy a few punk-rock records in the East Village. Walking down St. Mark’s Place, I saw a guy sporting the most outrageously high bleach-blond pompadour I’d ever seen. He was wearing a pink Teddy Boy suit and pink brothel creeper shoes. His companion was a busty blonde who looked like Dolly Parton, and dressed just like her, too. Even in the context of New York at that time, they were two groovy, glamorous celebrities from the future.
A few weeks later, I saw a photo of the flamboyantly dressed duo by Amy Arbus in the Village Voice, which must have been shot on the day that I saw them because they were wearing the same clothes. His name was John Sex and hers was Katy K. His profession was listed as “lounge singer/male stripper” and she was a fashion designer (Katy K did – and maybe still does – make stage clothes for Dolly Parton).
By the early 80s, the myth of Warhol and the sexy, druggy, doomed denizens who were his Factory’s superstars had spread pretty much everywhere, even to the remotest redneck corners of America (like my West Virginia hometown). For a certain type of kid, what they imagined Andy Warhol’s social life to be provided the impetus to move to New York City and reinvent themselves like the people in the photograph, who were associated with Club 57, a nightclub in the basement of a church where all the young art-school types hung out. They seemed like the second generation, drawn in by that Warhol myth but doing their own things.
East Village painters, musicians, performance artists, filmmakers, clothing designers and DJs had a second home at Club 57, run by Susan Hannaford, Tom Scully and performance artist Ann Magnuson, who was the manager, “den mother” and today the most emblematic person of that time and place. This trio provided an artsy/campy playground for the neighborhood misfits; Club 57 was a Fellini-esque salon for art shows, demented parties and elaborate DIY theme nights done on the cheap. The inspirations for the kooky neo-Dada Club 57 gestalt were things like The Sonny & Cher Show, kids TV shows, monster movies, 60s fashion, New Wave music and of course, Andy Warhol, its patron saint.
By the time I got to New York in 1984, Club 57 was gone, replaced by bigger clubs like Area and Danceteria, but the people who were a part of that scene still ruled New York nightlife. If you were at a party or art opening and people like Keith Haring, John Sex, Ann Magnuson, Joey Arias, Kenny Scharf, Fred Schneider and Jean-Michel Basquiat were there too, you knew you were in the right spot – they were the downtown royalty of the time. Within a few years, however, Hollywood had come calling for some and art-world fame and fortune for others. Then the ravages of AIDS truly ended the era.
Some 25 years later, museums are starting to catalogue and preserve the East Village 80s for posterity. A huge exhibition of paintings, photographs, sculptures, posters, party invitations, costumes and more, culled from the personal collections of Ann Magnuson, Kenny Scharf, Joey Arias, Howie Pyro and others – and curated jointly by Magnuson and Scharf – opened at the Royal/T gallery in Los Angeles in late 2011. Magnuson and Scharf are currently trying to figure out where the exhibition will travel next.
Richard Metzger: Nightlife scenes rarely form out of thin air; how did Club 57 come together?
Kenny Scharf: Keith Haring, John Sex (then known simply as John McLaughlin), Drew Straub and I were basically wandering the streets in the middle of the day, students at the School of Visual Arts. After having a 50¢ drink at the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, we went next door to Club 57 and saw a great jukebox, so we stayed. When the music began, Ann appeared from behind the bar – yes, a bar serving alcohol at a youth club under a church – and we all started wildly go-go dancing. Thus our immediate bond began!
Ann Magnuson: The core Club 57 crowd definitely cohered in the church basement, but many of us first met at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. I met Susan Hannaford and Tom Scully the year I arrived in NYC – 1978 – and we formed an alliance that produced the New Wave Vaudeville Show together. That was the show where Klaus Sperber metamorphosed into Klaus Nomi. Almost everyone involved with the vaudeville show migrated over to Club 57. Kenny brought in his fellow SVA students like Keith Haring, Wendy Wild and John Sex. I knew Jean-Michel Basquiat already.
Kenny Scharf: Ann and Klaus Nomi came to my first show in 1979 at the Fiorucci boutique, and she asked me if I would like to show some art at Club 57. Soon after, I had a show called Celebration of the Space Age, where we served Tang and Space Food Sticks.
Ann Magnuson: Others were simply drawn in off the street by the posters for the Monster Movie Club. The original Misfits came in that way. The jukebox drew people in who liked to dance. Club 57 basically became a magnet for anyone interested in punk rock, obscure horror and exploitation films, 60s fashion and alternative neo-Dada theatre experiences. It was truly a neighbourhood hangout so anyone in the East Village who cared to could drift in and out. Some stayed longer than others.
Richard Metzger: Club 57 seems like it was running parallel to punk/New Wave in NYC, but not necessarily a part of it. How much overlap was there?
Ann Magnuson: Oh, Club 57 was definitely part of punk and New Wave. And everyone who went to Club 57 went to the Mudd Club too, or Max’s, or even Hurrah’s uptown.
Kenny Scharf: We all went to CBGBs and the Mudd Club, too, but Club 57 was really ours.
Richard Metzger: It seems like there was a lot of that Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney ‘Hey kids, let’s put on a show!’ spirit at Club 57. What are some of the ‘happenings’ that occurred there?
Ann Magnuson: We didn’t let anyone tell us ‘no’. We didn’t allow poverty to stop us from realising our wildest imaginings. One of my favorites was Putt-Putt Reggae, where we built a miniature golf-course out of boxes pulled from the trash and made it resemble a Jamaican shanty town, and the DJ played dub music. We had a hash-brownie-fuelled slumber party with go-go boys that the church father walked in on…
Kenny Scharf: It was terrible to leave town even for a few days for fear of missing something.
Ann Magnuson: Keith Haring curated the Erotic Art Show. There was a photo of a giant phallus at the entrance, and when I saw the church father coming towards us I had to head him off. It’s amazing we got away with what we did. In fact, a special neighbourhood meeting was called to complain about us. The neighbours asked Father John why he ‘allowed evil people in the church’ and he said, ‘That’s where evil people should be, in a church.’ God bless him!
Kenny Scharf: One night, I think it was Elvis night, we started a street brawl where I ended up hitting an off-duty cop on the head for punching a girl I knew in the face. It was dismissed because he was arrested on the court date for murdering his boyfriend.
Ann Magnuson: Another event was called Radio Free Europe, because I was obsessed with these communist fashion and lifestyle magazines I had found, and the neighbourhood was predominately Polish and Ukrainian anyway, so why not? I debuted my Russian pop star character Anoushka there (with her band Polska ’66). We gave (Russian accent) ‘free beet and potato at door’ to the members.
Read the rest with more images) at Dazed Digital. The interview appeared in print in the March issue of Dazed & Confused.
Terry Ork in his punk rock bunker. Unlike most record execs, Terry was content with a cheap 14th street stereo system. The kind the people who bought his label’s records could afford.
Terry Ork’s loft was a safe house for unsafe music. With money he made working at my favorite store devoted to the movies, the long gone Cinemabilia, Ork funded one of the few really great DIY labels to come out of New York City, Ork Records. Releasing 45rpm records by Television, Alex Chilton, Mick Farren, The Feelies and The Marbles, among others, Ork had a great feel for what made Manhattan’s downtown music scene special.
I would go to Cinemabilia to thumb through the movie books, magazines and posters. I really loved the place and I grew to really like Terry Ork. We’d shoot the shit on film and that’s what I knew him as, a film geek. Although I was a musician with a decidedly punk outlook, I had no idea that Terry had an indie label until one day when I was in Cinemabilia he handed me a record with the Ork label on it. The record was a single by Television called “Little Johnny Jewel” and it occupied both sides of the seven inch vinyl. My already high esteem for Mr. Ork escalated into the stratosphere.
The photos you are looking at were shot by Jon Jackson back in July, 1982 during the Brixton Academy stop of The Clash’s “Casbah Club Tour.” Jon’s son, who is a Redditor, posted this little back story about his dad and the photos:
My dad was born in Cambridge in the 50’s, growing up very close to David Gilmour and other members of Pink Floyd - he has always followed the Cambridge music scene very closely and has seen many of their influential concerts. He lived in London during the 70’s and early 80’s, experiencing the cataclysm of culture and music which living with certain people during that time became. He toured with The Clash, The Beat and Bob Marley, there might be more but these are the ones I know about.
I chose six shots of The Clash from Jon Jackson’s Flickr set, but you can see the rest here.
Bonus: Jon also captured The Beat at Nottingham in1982. You can view those here.
Divorce is a femme-thrash four piece from Glasgow, Scotland, quickly picking up a reputation for being one of the best live acts in the UK. I have posted about Divorce on Dangerous Minds before—a fitting tribute, I felt, to the newly-wed future King of England and his blushing bride—and now the band are back with a new 7” release on Milk Records called “Horseheads,” with a strange accompanying video.
Fans of both spiky, angular post-punk and the heavier end of hardcore will find a lot to like here. Drummer Andy Brown describes their influences as “loud, ugly and offensive. Anything that luxuriates in the joys of noise.” He adds that “genres and middle-class whiteboy whining can get fucked.” I second that emotion.
The video for “Horseheads” features a humanoid-chicken pecking at a pentagram-emblazoned snare drum (a nod perhaps to the infamous ‘Chicken Lady’ character from Kids In The Hall?) but as Brown states:
“The fact that there’s no-one dressed as a horse in the video has not gone unnoticed. The song’s not about horses anyway, it was named after the town that our vocalist Jennie comes from in America - only she really knows what it’s all about!”
There is, indeed, a village in upstate New York called Horseheads that describes itself as the “gateway to the Finger Lakes”. Visitors will be glad to know that, as of the 30th of January 2012, the drinking water from well number five is safe and does NOT require a “boil water advisory”. I don’t know what they’re putitng in the water in Horseheads, but I sure am glad it somehow turned out like this:
Divorce “Horseheads”
For more info on DIvorce (including upcoming tour dates and current releases) visit the Divorce the Band blog.
Legendary punk, post punk, hardcore, hip-hop, photographer (and Dangerous Minds pal) Glen E. Friedman gives an excellent interview to Paradigm Magazine. He discusses Occupy Wall Street, the importance of your voice being heard in political debate and the importance of of having a rebellious attitutude:
If you’re inspired to do something, if you want to do something, if you have some kind of feeling that you should do something … then you should just do it; don’t let what other people’s preconceived ideas of good behavior, or whatever it is, limit you to thinking what you should and shouldn’t do.
The Hammer Museum is hosting a 24-hour retrospective of the video work of the late Mike Kelley, the influential Los Angeles-based artist who took his own life three weeks ago.
This video “wake” for Kelley started last night at 9pm and will continue until 9pm tonight at the Farley Building, 1669 Colorado Blvd., in Eagle Rock. A spontaneous tribute to Kelley has appeared on Tipton Way in Highland Park featuring a Kelley-esque assemblage of stuffed animals and quilts.
Below, a “commercial” for Kelly’s limited edition “Little Friend” multiple. I have one of these. It’s got a “talk box” that says odd things when you squeeze it, managing to make this piece both ridiculous and slightly sinister at the same time, like a lot of Mike Kelley’s work.
If The Beatles had been Glaswegian and played Punk they may have sounded a bit like The New Piccadillys, a fab four of respected musicians: George Miller (Lead guitar), Keith Warwick (Rhythm guitar), Mark Ferrie (Bass guitar), and Michael Goodwin (Drums), who have variously worked with Sharleen Spiteri, The Kaisers, The Thanes, Wray Gunn and The Rockets and The Scottish Sex Pistols. This is their toe-taping version of The Ramones “Judy is a Punk”. European tours, world domination and Piccadillymania beckon.
The b&w version of the promo has been taken down (boo hiss) so, here it is in color, directed by Bill Gill,
