A few weeks ago (here) I shared a photo taken beneath the Queensboro Bridge on Roosevelt Island. My cousin had bagged that particular day off work and joined me on my travels up and over the Roosevelt Island Tramway and later for a bracing (read, bloody freezing!) ride on the East River Ferry, under the Williamsburg Bridge to Brooklyn Navy Yard. After a revitalizing coffee and outrageously good doughnut in the Brooklyn Roasting Company on Flushing Avenue, we wandered up to Fort Greene, then back to the river via the iconic Dumbo neighbourhood. The plan was to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and back to the apartment, but when we got to the bridge we found it closed because of a potential jumper in the middle. Multiple choppers hovered directly overhead, police boats patrolled the waters below, ambulances stood ready at each end and the crowd of people waiting to cross quickly became a huge goggling throng. Rather than just standing there, we ambled off through Brooklyn Bridge Park and on to Brooklyn Heights, before looking back some time later to see traffic and people moving across the bridge once again. The potential suicide had thankfully been successfully talked down. Darkness had fallen by the time we eventually walked across the bridge ourselves, the myriad lights of Lower Manhattan's skyscrapers guiding us home.
Over at The (New) Vinyl Villan, the Imaginary Compilation Album series continues to go from strength to strength. A couple of days ago, our mutual friend Dirk kept the bar way up high with a terrific Ramones ICA. Dirk concluded his ICA with the entertaining tale of how he narrowly missed meeting Joey Ramone in 1991. Nine years later I had my own near miss with the great man.
On the afternoon of April 15th 2000, the last day of my 39th year, walking alone through the East Village in Manhattan, I crossed 3rd Avenue on 9th Street and noticed a small kerfuffle in a doorway to my right. There, towering above a throng of a dozen chattering fans, was Joey Ramone, signing autographs, talking to everyone at once, but clearly trying to edge inside the building. I fumbled in my backpack for some paper and a pen and waited patiently at the edge of the group. Joey remained unstintingly polite, in spite of the barrage of questions and bits of paper being thrust at him to sign, but gradually, and before it came to my turn, he eased himself into the foyer of the building and, with a wave through the glass door, he was gone.
So I didn't quite get to meet Joey that day, but it was a memorable New York Moment for me all the same. A moment that came spinning back 12 months later, when I opened a newspaper on the morning of my 41st birthday to find that Joey had passed away the previous afternoon, exactly one year after my close encounter with him. The extent of his illness hadn't been widely publicised, his death was a terrible shock and, 17 years on, we miss him still.
For their first full length LP, 1995's 'Down by the Old Mainstream', Golden Smog's fluid all-star line-up consisted of Kraig Johnson fom Run Westy Run, Soul Asylum's Dan Murphy, Gary Louris and Marc Perlman from The Jayhawks, Wilco's Jeff Tweedy and Noah Levy of Honeydogs. By the time the band rolled into New York on April 13th 1996, 21 years ago today, the membership was bolstered further by Tweedy's bandmate, the late Jay Bennett, on guitar and keyboards. Also in attendance were Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner and an unbelievably wasted Evan Dando. I know all this because I was there too - and I still have the t-shirt and flyer to prove it. Ronnie Lane's 'Glad and Sorry' was one of several well chosen covers played by Golden Smog that night and proved to be an outstanding highlight of their set.
(This one goes out to our pal Singing Bear, who's back in action with a brand new blog, The Road of Golden Dust. Check it out here.)
In May 1994, I spent 10 days visiting the
American based contingent of the family in New
York. At that time, before they had any kids,
it was just my Cousin and her Husband, living
in a small apartment on 24th Street. It was
the pre-internet era, so I diligently scoured
the Village Voice for upcoming gigs and
events of interest to fill any spare evenings during
my stay, which is how I discovered that Allen
Ginsberg was performing at a small
independent bookstore in Soho, two days before
I was due to leave for home.
Ginsberg sang and recited poetry for a little
over an hour at the back of the tiny store. His set commenced with a
selection of better known pieces from his
catalogue (including 'Father Death Blues'),
moving onto readings from his then current
book, 'Cosmopolitan Greetings', before
finishing with a brace of unpublished works.
It was an informal event and at the end there
was an unruly scramble to have books and
other memorabilia signed. The place was packed to the rafters and it was all moving
very slowly. I had a ticket for a gig
later that evening, so I had to leave.
The following evening Ginsberg carried out a
very much more formal book-signing session at
the gigantic Barnes & Noble Bookstore on the
corner of 22nd & 6th, a couple of blocks from my
cousin's apartment. There was no performance this time, just a very long queue that
snaked around the shop floor. As we neared
the desk where he sat, head down, signing endless copies of
'Cosmopolitan Greetings', I was asked my name by a member
of staff, who scribbled it down on a scrap of
paper and tucked it into the front of my
copy. As I edged nearer, a burly security
guard stepped forward to address this portion
of the queue. He told us in no uncertain
terms that Mr Ginsberg would sign our copies
of 'Cosmopolitan Greetings' ONLY and nothing
else. Furthermore we were not to attempt to
speak to Mr Ginsberg or distract him in any
way and to move on immediately our book was
signed. The piece of paper with my name written on it was so that Ginsberg could write a dedication above his signature without becoming embroiled in unnecessary conversation and thus holding up proceedings. The whole event was something of a
military operation, the exact opposite of the
previous evening.
Finally, I reached the desk and silently placed the
book in front of Allen Ginsberg, open to the
title page as instructed. He squinted at the
scrap of paper on which the staff member had
written my name, but clearly couldn't
decipher the scribble. I hesitantly spoke
my name to help him out. He looked up.
'You're not from New York', he said. I felt
the eyes of security, staff and waiting
punters burning into the back of my neck.
'......err, no..' I replied, 'I'm from the UK, visiting
relatives in the city.' Pause. 'I enjoyed your
performance in Soho yesterday'. To my
amazement and everyone else's annoyance he
continued chatting as he signed and dated my
book plus a postcard of him I'd picked up earlier, before handing them back and saying, '...enjoy the
rest of your stay.' I told him that I was
actually going home the following day,
absent mindedly adding that I was bloody
terrified of flying. Ginsberg reached out and
asked me to give him the book back, he opened
it and added a couple of extra marks to the
title page, on either side of his signature. I asked him what he'd drawn.
'Wings,' he said, 'for a safe flight home.'
In 1996 Allen Ginsberg released a great
single, 'Ballad of the Skeletons', featuring
musical accompaniment by Lenny Kaye, Marc Ribot, Philip Glass and
Paul McCartney. Not a bad band. Here's the full studio take (there's a
little swearing in this one, just so's you
know) plus a clip of a Beat and a Beatle performing an early stripped down version of the song live at The Royal Albert Hall in 1995.
A recent post over at the ever wonderful Sun Dried Sparrows reminded me of the time I was
browsing in an achingly (and I really mean
achingly) cool, alternative bookstore in
Brooklyn several years ago. It was a
fascinating and incredibly arty shop,
chock-a-block with obscure titles and with ferocious jazz blaring from the in-store sound-system. Anyway, I
was nosing about the shelves, when a skinny young man
stepped from behind the counter and
approached me. He worked at the store and had
recognised my English accent. This was a guy
who wouldn't have looked out of place in the
line-up of a cutting edge band - an
impossibly cool individual. So you can
imagine my surprise at the question he asked
me. 'You're from England...', he said, '...do
you know a TV series called Lovejoy?'
'Errrm...., yes...' I replied, somewhat taken
aback, '...in fact parts of it were filmed
not far from where I live'. At this, the
guy's veneer of cool dropped. 'Oh my God, I
LOVE that show...' he babbled excitedly, '...do
you know when the third season will be out on DVD?'
If only I'd known at the time....
Yes, it transpired that this arty, uber-cool,
bookish Brooklynite was a massive fan of the
venerable East Anglian antique dealer and he
proceeded to pepper me with questions about
the programme for several minutes - fairly
unsuccessfully as it happens, as I'd rarely
watched it myself. His main gripe seemed to
be that, at the time, only the first couple
of series had thus far made it to DVD in the
USA, so he'd had to rely on acquiring
bootleg copies of the show to feed his habit! This was
well before Ian McShane found American fame
in Deadwood, so, to be quite honest, I was
surprised to hear that any episodes of
Lovejoy had been released on DVD in the
States and frankly astonished that the
programme was so admired by such a young hipster.
Now, what's that phrase about not judging a
book by its cover? It seems particularly apt in this case.
In New York on one of my
occasional Stateside trips to
visit relatives, I was walking on The
Bowery one balmy evening in
2005, zigzagging across the
street between the gridlocked
traffic.
'Hey man...' a voice called
out from an open car window,
'..hey...Robyn Hitchcock...I
love your music...'
At the time my grey hair was
fairly unkempt and I was
wearing a black & white polka
dot shirt. I'm also quite
tall, so I guess it's a
plausible mistake, not to
mention a flattering one -
I've been a fan of the great
man since The Soft Boys' 'A
Can of Bees' LP in 1979.
I half-smiled in the guy's
direction as the traffic
moved on and then noticed a
small spring in my step. It
was the first time I'd ever
been mistaken for someone
even slightly well-known -
and it was someone I liked!
My second experience as a
doppelgänger (this time of a
different musician) was in
the same city a few years later and in a slightly
more public arena....but
that's another story.
For now here's Robyn in 2010,
performing a pretty obscure
1988 b-side and a long-time
favourite song, Ghost
Ship.
(I met Robyn Hitchcock once
in the late 1990s and neither
of us - or anyone else in the
room - remarked upon any
physical similarities between
us!)
