(TV) more arguing with the stroke

[robin dunn <rdunnrn@yahoo.com>]

i liked and saved this post from babel-list, which
speaks to the early development of the ny punk scene. 
 


"Augustine Nocera" adnocera@nyc.rr.com to babel-list
earlier this year:

My 14 year old daughter and I saw Patti and the band
across the street from our home last summer, (the WFC
concert). She had a great time, and Something must
have stuck. Aline (the daughter in question - a
formidable bass player and general bliss to have
around) and I were over on Bowery looking for a new
frying pan at one of the kitchen joints and out of the
blue she wants to know everything there is about
American punk and those long ago days. I wrote her
this and thought you guys might like it:

"His heart is out in the street." -Deborah Harry

One cannot understand the history of American Punk
Rock with out understanding the Urban Geography of
Lower Manhattan. Ill get to that in a moment. 

In the beginning was the Velvet Underground. Not
everything they did was proto-punk, but the things
that John Cale had a strong hand in and anything that
featured NICO was. While their music was evocative of
things to come, the cultural movement didnt begin
with them. It began with two remote and disparate
forces coming together in one time and one place.

The first was the white kids of Manhattan below Union
Square. It is very hard to imagine what Lower
Manhattan was like in those days. If you can find some
old Kojak episodes and turn off the sound and just
look at the street scenes you can start to understand.
By 1970, lower Manhattan was an abysmal, rotted,
foeted, wasteland of corruption at every level of
society and decay at every level of civility. A decade
before every white family that could put together a
$6,000 mortgage had moved out. White kids that were
left behind had families so dysfunctional that they
couldnt get out, to even the crappy suburbs in Jersey
and the Island. This is pretty dysfunctional, given
what many of the families that did get out were like.

At the same time, there was a movement in the Serious
Art World that provided the philosophy. In a name,
Andy Warhol and his Factory and particularly the
antics of Ultra Violet / NICO and assorted other
kooks. Was it the birth of the ethics of
Post-Modernism? I dont know about these things. It
was ironic to the core, self-referential and in your
face. When this match lit the streets of lower
Manhattan it exploded. The epicenter of the blast was
the crudest corner on The Island: Bleeker and Bowery,
near the home of CBGB, a skuzzy little rat hole of a
club with a visionary owner. Unable to afford much by
way of entertainment, Hilly booked locals like
Television, The New York Dolls, The Ramones, The Patti
Smith Band, Blondie and these kids who showed up from
RISDi one day called The Talking Heads. (note: there
were many, many others and I dont wish to show them
any disrespect, but these are the few Aline has
probably heard of.)

It spilled out into the street and soon most of the
disaffected, Throwaway white kids in the five boroughs
were there every night. The fact that none of these
kids were strangers to nihilism and dope, hung a
skinny, leather jacketed, whiff of scag and danger on
the whole scene. In short, by 1976, it was the coolest
place in the World to be. Uptown kids came downtown to
ogle the "Punks", and were otherwise ignored, or used
for sex and money, not that they cared.


Eventually, Blondie and the Talking Heads would make
the mainstream and Patti Smith would flip Middle
America out on Saturday Night Live, with her perfect
werewolf howling "G.L.Ah.Or.I.Yey!" and hairy armpits.
To this day I think shes the coolest thing Ive ever
seen and Im so happy shes alive and well. 

Not that the record companies cared, they wanted
Disco, and Soft Rock and songs like "Convoy" on the
radio. It was simple, cheap, neat, tidy and easy to
package and feed. Punk was none of those things, not
least of which was it wasnt really even one kind of
music.

Still, the vast Uber-Corporation that is American
Culture always has its scouts out for what is "next".
One by one the neighborhoods were changed. SoHo got
boutiqued, then "Gap-ed", the NYPD blasted the
psychotic Irish gangs out of Hells Kitchen and it
became "Clinton". TriBeCa was "Preserved" and finally
the Lower East Side. Moms with kids in Scandinavian
clothes read books in what had been Needle Park. As
Calvin Trillin put it brilliantly: "Apartments that
your grandparents worked themselves to death to get
out of, you wanted to rent for three grand a month!"
Chelsea simply remained a decent place to live and the
Village shook off some, but thankfully not all, of its
gay leather drag.

Now, when I go to the Odeon, its full of tourists
wanting to get a look at someone famous. Im told it
has all happened before and will all happen again and
again. I smile at the Official NYDOT street sign that
reads: "Joey Ramone Place", I listen to "Hey, Ho,
Lets Go!" on the TV-ad for Cruise-Ships. Part of me
wants to go home, warm the tubes up in my Marshall,
turn it up to eight, yell "1-2-3-4!" and do "I Wanna
be Sedated" so loud I get evicted. Part of me just
wants to quietly move to Connecticut.

About the author, he was there and once laughed so
hard he blew Ballentines out his nose and onto the
shoes of Allen Lanier hey, I was 17!




	
		
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