"Some Came Running," at leisure

Display case, “No Wave 1976–1980,” KS Art

As I deal with the var­ied vicis­situdes of being out (for the time being) of a day job, I’ve been try­ing to do a bunch of stuff that I might not have done were I still, you know, in a day job. Hence, last Thursday night, I met up with my sim­il­arly day-job-less pal Louise W. (who I met in geo­metry class at Jefferson Township High School in 1977; she was a fresh­man, while I was a mathematically-challenged seni­or), with blankets in tow, to get a sweet spot on the lawn by the Prospect Park Bandshell for the open­ing night of the Celebrate Brooklyn! series of con­certs at said band­shell, fea­tur­ing Mr. Isaac Hayes. We were soon joined by a host of day-job-possessing pals, includ­ing Kenny-Evans-wedding maid of hon­or Rubina H., wed­ding ush­er Patrick K., my buddy Mario of DVD Palace fame, and more. (My Lovely Wife, alas, was tied up in rehears­als for a play.)

It was a beyond-perfect night for such an event, which was hil­ari­ously pre­faced by a bunch of goofy speeches from var­ied rep­res­ent­at­ives of the muni­cip­al­ity. Hayes was pretty awe­some. He can­’t rock the gold-chain “Black Moses” vest like he used to—he instead wore a long black-and-gold robe—and he had three elec­tron­ic key­board­ists emu­lat­ing the sounds of a 21-piece orches­tra, but close your eyes and it was Hot Buttered Soul and Live at the Sahara Tahoe all the way, except without the stage pat­ter. It was as if South Park had nev­er even exis­ted. “Lord, ain’t nobody mak­ing music like this no more,” one delighted old-schooler exclaimed a couple minutes into “I Stand Accused.” Damn right, as Hayes says on one of his most fam­ous hits. Speaking of which, the exten­ded ver­sion of the theme from Shaft with which he closed the show had enough wacka-wacka for ten porno movie soundtracks…

Late after­noon Friday I hied down to Manhattan’s Leonard Street, with a two-fold pur­pose. First, to attend a book party/gallery recep­tion cel­eb­rat­ing No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976–1980 by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and long­time crit­ic­al gad­fly Byron Coley. An essen­tial photo col­lec­tion and text for any­body who looked in ter­ri­fied won­der at the back cov­er of No New York, and sub­sequently listened in ter­ri­fied won­der to its grooves. 

This was my scene, these were my people. I man­aged to impress a couple of the young ‘uns at the hop­ping party by telling them that I had indeed wit­nessed the Irving Plaza triple-bill that was a) the first gig of open­ers The Bush Tetras; b) the DNA set wherein an extremely unhealthy-looking nude blonde wandered onto the stage and suc­ceeded in dis­tract­ing not one of the band mem­bers; and 3) the Feelies show dur­ing which Glenn Mercer broke his A string in the middle of the solo of “Moscow Nights” but imme­di­ately executed a nifty trans­pos­i­tion and fin­ished without a hitch. Those were the days.

Alas, the always-entertaining former DNA front­man Arto Lindsay (pic­tured on the above cov­er of NY Rocker, with Contortion/Tetra Pat Place) did not make it, nor did droll Contortion/Raybeat/Golden Palomino Jody Harris. I was able to catch up with Bar/None label founder Glenn Morrow and his lovely wife, artist Elizabeth van Italie, Donnie Christensen, the Contortions/Raybeats drum­mer who now engin­eers Phillip Glass record­ings, among oth­er things (Donnie also had the thank­less task of co-producing a demo for a band fron­ted by yours truly way back in the day), my esteemed col­league Amy Taubin (who came with her pal Dale Kaplan, the ori­gin­al drum­mer for The Gynecologists), as well as peri­pat­et­ic musi­cian/author (and former Première con­trib­ut­or) Alan Licht and stal­wart music writer and recent Sonic Youth bio­graph­er David Browne, both pictured. 

Moore him­self (above) was in a suit­ably expans­ive mood, but he would put on his poker face as guest bassist for the reformed Teenage Jesus and the Jerks across the street at the Knitting Factory later in the even­ing. (The second reas­on I was there.) Legendary No-Wave pro­vocateur Lydia Lunch came over from her Barcelona home to stage a couple of reunion sets in hon­or of the book. Here’s Lydia and a couple of pals at the reception.

She’s almost crack­ing a smile in my pic­ture, but on stage she nev­er broke char­ac­ter, har­anguing the audi­ence and doing some pum­mel­ing bot­tle­neck slide noise. It was, besides glor­i­ous noise, pretty con­vin­cing. (And refresh­ingly brief—under 25 minutes, for sure.) Granted, age has giv­en Lunch a qual­ity that’s a little more “get off my lawn” than “the leaves are always dead,” but that’s life, and from the back of the Knit you could­n’t really tell. The set was opened by the mighty Information, who, among oth­er things, did a great cov­er of Mars’ “Puerto Rican Ghost,” num­ber two of the ima­gin­ary No Wave hit parade (DNA’s “Blonde Red Head” is num­ber one, in case you’re wondering).

The exhib­it, incid­ent­ally, runs until July 10 at KS Art, 73 Leonard Street, New York, NY, 212−219−9918.

Saturday morn­ing, it was off to Secaucus by way of Penn Station, to get a New Jersey Transit train. The NJT train passed through Paterson, the charm cap­it­al of the Western Hemisphere…

…(I lived there for almost ten years, so remem­ber that, any­body who ever wants to call me a snob or ques­tion my “street smarts”…) on its way to its ulti­mate des­tin­a­tion: Suffern, where the loc­al con­veni­ence store wants you to know;

I was there to go here, the great Lafayette Theater…
The Lafayette is the incred­ible labor of love of anoth­er old friend, Mr. Nelson Page. Nelson over­saw the metic­u­lous res­tor­a­tion of the 1924-built movie house, which con­tains a full-blown Wurlitzer Pipe Organ, here being played by Jeff Barker in full even­ing wear (a pecu­li­ar sight at 11 in the morning):

The atten­tion to detail at this place is spectacular—Nelson even has the sound from the fea­ture present­a­tions piped into the rest rooms, a really cool old-school touch. The Lafayette still func­tions as the loc­al movie house, show­ing new releases—the new Indiana Jones is the fea­ture there now, and prob­ably plays really well in the setting—but spring and fall Nelson and Peter Appruzzese present their Big Screen Classics series, and there’s noth­ing like it. I missed most of this spring’s sea­son, but had to make it out there yes­ter­day to join my oth­er old pal Mr. Joseph Failla and catch a screen­ing of…

…a film which has a pecu­li­ar res­on­ance in both out lives, and which will play a sub­stan­tial and hope­fully amus­ing part in the mem­oir of a movie-crazy child­hood that I’m look­ing for someone to pay me to write. The screen­ing was pre­faced by, among oth­er things, a per­form­ance by Tony Babino, a quite-good imper­son­at­or of Jolie.

Oddly enough, I did­n’t spot any­body from the pre­vi­ous even­ing’s Teenage Jesus and the Jerks set in the audience.