60 years ago today - the fifth of my annual birthday portraits in front of the family radiogram.
This morning you find your roving reporter at the front end of a 10 day stay with my cousin and her family in New York. Interestingly, a couple of things will have changed forever by the time I return to Old Blighty next week. 1) All future visits to my barber on a Monday or Tuesday will be £5 cheaper than previously, and, of even greater significance, 2) My local pub will apparently give me a 10% discount every Thursday. The reason? Today I turn 65....sixty bloody five! Like the t-shirt says, it's weird being the same age as old people, but at least those are two somewhat positive points of my extreme dotage.
I'm obviously writing this ahead of time, but my cousin has already let it slip that they've made plans for my, ahem, big day, even though I will only just have flown into the country and will therefore probably be a complete mess. I can barely make it past 8pm when I'm on home turf these days, so attempting to stay awake, alert and coherent late into the evening of my first day in a different time zone is going to be something of a challenge, to say the least. In a restaurant on the first evening of a New York trip about 20 years ago, after being awake for 24 hours, I momentarily forgot to open my eyes again when blinking and very nearly ended up face first in my meal. I'll let you know how I get on this time round.
Our old pal Brian pointed me in the direction of Community Radio's 'Look Now You're Cursed' nine long years ago and I still spin it regularly. This one seemed appropriate today.
In May 1994 I flew to New York for the third time to stay with my cousin and her husband. In later years whenever a trip to the Big Apple was looming, I'd pre-book tickets for gigs or other events of interest online, but in those pre-internet days she would mail me a copy of The Village Voice listings guide a couple of weeks before I travelled, then order any tickets I required and I would settle up with her when I arrived. It was all very analogue back then, but that was how I found out about an concert entitled 'In Their Own Words - A Bunch of Songwriters Sittin' Around Singin''. It was one of a series of similar events at The Bottom Line, a small venue on West 4th Street, taking place bang in the middle of my stay and a show I definitely didn't want to miss. For $18 I got to spend a couple of hours in the company of Ted Hawkins, Roger McGuinn, Pete Seeger and Joe South as they sat in a semi-circle on the stage talking about their lives and playing music acoustically, together and individually, in a very informal setting.
I'd seen Ted Hawkins live in Norwich in 1986, on his first wave of success following radio exposure from Andy Kershaw, but he'd fallen off the radar again quite soon after. By 1994, however, he'd been re-discovered and chatted enthusiastically on stage about his new album on the major label, Geffen, and played us a few songs from it. Tragically, Ted's life was to end seven months later as the result of a stroke, aged just 58.
In spite of Hawkins' considerable contribution to the evening, the majority of the New York audience were there for McGuinn, Seeger and South, all of whom played their best known material interspersed with anecdotes and memories. Inevitably, given the location and the parties involved, Bob Dylan loomed large in several of the conversations. Roger recounted the 'give this to McGuinn' story regarding the opening line to 'Ballad of Easy Rider', Pete Seeger gave his version of the mythical axe incident from the day Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965 and, perhaps most fascinating of all, Joe South spoke a little about the Nashville 'Blonde on Blonde' recording sessions in 1966. It was an unforgettable evening.
We lost Joe South in September 2012, by coincidence the same month that Pete Seeger, at the age of 93, released what he claimed was the first album of all original music he'd ever recorded. 'A More Perfect Union' was written and performed in conjunction with Seeger's long-time friend Lorre Wyatt. Guests on the album included Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and Emmylou Harris. Though I have immense respect for his achievements, I can't claim to be a scholar of Pete's music, but 'Fields of Harmony', sung by Seeger alone, is a remarkable performance. The vocal, by this stage little more than an abrasive whisper, is extremely moving.
You may be familiar with Anish Kapoor's 2006 sculpture Cloud Gate, situated in Millennium Park, Chicago. Due to its shape, the huge reflective piece quickly became referred to as The Bean. In February, mere weeks before I touched down in New York, Kapoor's 15 years in-the-making Big Apple version of The Bean was finally unveiled, located just a few hundred yards from my cousin's apartment. Where Cloud Gate stands unencumbered on prominent display, its Tribeca counterpart gives the impression of having been forcibly squished beneath a canopy in the entrance of a large residential building, spilling out across the sidewalk. I was keen to take a good look at the sculpture, but the area was very busy during my initial visit so I only managed to snatch a quick side angle shot from Leonard Street. On the Sunday morning, while on an an extended wander in search of coffee, I found Church Street practically deserted, allowing me to capture The Bean head-on. The imposing structure is 58ft long, 19ft high and cost an estimated $8-10 million dollars to create.
While there was a conspicuous lack of interesting gigs during my visit to New York in March, I did have a few cultural bits and bobs set in stone long before I boarded my flight. One of those was a trip over to the Meatpacking District to catch 'Edward Hopper's New York' at The Whitney a couple of days before the show closed. Given that it was so late in the retrospective's five month run, together with the necessity to pre-book not just a ticket, but also a specific timeslot, I more or less assumed that the gallery space would be easy and comfortable to negotiate. How wrong I was. It was absolutely rammed, ridiculously oversold. I'm guessing that The Whitney had decided to ring every last drop out of the popular exhibit before it packed up and shipped out. The Hopper art on display was almost exclusively modest in size, which meant needing to get as close as possible to each piece while continuously jostling with the crowds for a couple of hours. It was like being in an ongoing series of scrums, moving slowly through the gallery. The work itself was of course fantastic. I was particularly interested by the many magazine illustrations on view, an area of his life I knew little about. Then there were the sketchbooks. The creative process in any artform is a thing of mystery and fascination to me and it was riveting to see as he edged, over successive pages, ever closer towards a finished masterpiece we know so well.
Dad would've loved to have visited New York. He had a life long fascination with the city and would no doubt have spent hours walking its alleys, streets and neighbourhoods, but by the time my cousin relocated to the Big Apple in the 1980s and invited him over, it was already too late. The mobility issues that dogged his later life were beginning to take hold and he knew in his heart that he wouldn't have been physically capable of doing the things he really wanted to do, which would have frustrated him enormously. So he never made it there, but enjoyed hearing about my exploits whenever I returned from a stay with my cousin and I got into the habit of buying him a book about some aspect of New York each time. I got him one on the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge and another about the growth of the subway system, but his favourite was the one I picked up about the history of the Staten Island Ferry. If Dad could have been magically transported to New York and allowed to do just one thing, I think it would have been to have taken that iconic orange ferry, gazing back across the harbour as Manhattan disappeared into the distance. He simply couldn't believe that I'd never done it. This year, on a bright, chilly March morning, I put that right.
In early 1996, a few weeks before I was due to visit her in New York, my cousin managed to reserve me a ticket for a recording of Conan O'Brien's Late Night TV show on Thursday April 4th. I believe she had filled a blanket application for all four of Conan's shows that week to ensure I got into at least one of them. If I'd had a ticket for Tuesday 2nd I would've seen O'Brien chatting with William Shatner and on Friday 5th Nathan Lane and Martin Amis were on the sofa. On my night the guests were Mary Tyler Moore and Ahmet & Dweezil Zappa. As luck would have it Conan's April 4th show also included a musical turn, Son Volt. Now I'd been lucky enough to have seen Uncle Tupelo in concert three years earlier in London and also caught a handful of Wilco's early UK shows, but Son Volt's performance of Drown that night remains the one and only song I've ever seen the band play.
These days TV talk show reservations are applied for online, which is exactly what I did prior to my return to New York a couple of months ago. The tickets are still free, but it's also still a complete lottery, so I filled blanket applications for both The Late Show with Stephen Colbert and Late Night with Seth Meyers, hoping I wouldn't get tickets for both shows on the same day. As it transpired I struck lucky with a Colbert recording on the Tuesday and Meyers the following day. There were no musical guests on either show this time around, though Jim Himes, a bee-keeping Democratic House Intelligence Committee member, gave me a glint of optimism for the future of American politics and author Margaret Atwood was a charming and funny interviewee. (I've linked both interviews if you're interested). Meanwhile, back in 1996.....
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.
According to Ol' Blue Eyes, New York is the city that never sleeps and that's a pretty accurate description, for the most part at least. Sunday morning, however, is when the Big Apple turns over, pulls the cover over its head and has a bit of a lie-in. From my very first trip to New York in 1992, right through to my last in late 2010, I'd be up and out of the apartment early on Sunday mornings in an effort to hit as many flea markets as possible. The fleas popped up ad-hoc on vacant lots, in crumbling garage basements and murky alleys all over the city and were crammed to the gills with the kind of tat I loved to pore through at car-boot sales back in the UK at the time. They were also home to some of the New Yorkiest New York characters I've ever encountered - outrageously loud, breathtakingly brusque and hugely entertaining to this outsider. The streets may have been quiet, but the fleas were always noisy and heaving with bleary eyed, caffeine fuelled punters.
My favourite fleas gradually disappeared on my visits throughout the noughties, with skyscrapers sprouting from the vacant lots, crumbling garages being demolished and murky alleys gentrified beyond recognition. On my return to New York a few weeks ago after a gap of 13 years, I discovered only a couple of neat, tidy, organised fleas in operation, which leaned far more towards being vintage markets, with prices to match. The hustle, the bustle, the tat and the characters all gone. I took a pass.
Instead, while the Apple stretched and yawned, I spent a couple of hours wandering the still Sunday morning streets. Photo opportunities are a lot easier to grab when the sidewalks are empty and the roads are free of gridlocked, honking traffic. Here for example is a Con Edison stack I stumbled across on the corner of Church and Duane in Tribeca, work abandoned for the weekend and steam billowing into the chill morning air.
Today's photo was taken on Roosevelt Island, beneath the Queensboro Bridge (known colloquially as the 59th Street Bridge....if you're feelin' groovy). High alongside the bridge is one of the two cable cars that make up the Roosevelt Island Tramway, a service that runs 115 times per day to and from Manhattan. If you don't have a head for heights the tramway can be a nerve wracking proposition, offering stunning views along 1st and 2nd Avenues as it moves off, before rising 230 feet above the East River, swaying and clunking as it goes. I've only ridden the RIT once before, about 25 years ago. Back then Roosevelt Island was a fairly bleak wasteland, a crumbling work in progress. Now somewhat gentrified, it's home to 12000 people and offers restaurants, parks and a welcome respite from the intensity of the city.
Thankfully I wasn't riding the Roosevelt Island Tramway at 5.22 pm on April 18th 2006, when both cable cars came to a sudden halt mid-crossing, trapping a total of 69 people high above the East River. The last of the passengers was rescued at 4.07 am, nearly 11 hours later.
For my 60th birthday in April 2020, I was scheduled to make a long overdue return visit to New York City, the flight a present from my cousin who lives in Lower Manhattan. The trip, the celebration and the family reunion didn't happen of course, instead I spent my big day filling shelves at work. It turned out to be a pretty good day in the end though. A bunch of work colleagues bought me a cake plus several bottles of beer, so I went home quite happy. With travel restrictions still in place, earlier this year my 61st birthday came and went and the credit note for the flight is still sitting in a folder on my laptop. I've tentatively started to make plans for April 2022, we'll see how things pan out.
Of more urgent concern however, is the fact that my cousin has been unable to visit her mum in London for nearly two years. Although she has an American husband, three duel nationality kids and has lived and worked in New York for nearly 40 years, my cousin has never taken American citizenship, so international travel at any stage of the lockdown was out of the question. Travel rules finally ease on November 1st and the following weekend she's flying into London for a very brief visit with her mum. I'm hoping to get down there to be a part of the family catch-up as well, even it's for only 24 hours.
One morning, during one of our trips to visit my cousin in the mid-noughties, Mrs S & I set out on a roughly 5 mile walk from the apartment in Tribeca, across the Brooklyn Bridge, through Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens until we eventually reached Red Hook - in those days fairly inaccessible by public transport. We picked up a couple of pieces of Key Lime Pie, from Steve's, a place that had been highly recommended, before wandering into the nearby Louis Valentino Jr Park, which offers impressive views across the bay to Liberty Island and Jersey beyond. I had a fairly basic point and press camera at the time and fired off a couple of shots, one of which is at the top of this post (click on it to enlarge). In spite of the distant grainy quality, it's a photo I've always been pleased with - the anonymous ferry on the way into Manhattan, the Staten Island Ferry on the way out and Liberty between them.
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Today's tune comes from 1972. While most of the kids at school were grooving to the Chinnichap glam of 'Wig Wam Bam' by The Sweet, me and my mates (and, no doubt, a certain Master John Medd) flipped over the 45 to dig into the heavy, self-written b-side 'New York Connection', featuring a rare example of a solo Brian Connolly vocal, devoid of the usual harmonies from Mick Tucker, Steve Priest & Andy Scott.
One of the fringe benefits of staying with a relative whilst on holiday, is that one doesn't have to cart unnecessary luggage halfway around the world. There was never any need to pack excess clothing when visiting my cousin and her family in New York, as her washing machine was always available to us and, by the time of our last trip in 2010 with three young kids in the apartment, that washing machine was invariably going morning, noon and night.
So our cases were half empty and we travelled light, at least on the way out to the US. On the way back however, we usually travelled very heavily indeed, our cases full to bursting. The reason? We spent much of our time between the going away and the coming home trawling through the myriad CD shops that were still to be found scattered around the Five Boroughs back then, most of which had dusty bargain bins crammed with interesting looking nuggets, often retailing at less than a dollar a pop. Throughout the noughties we bought home copious amounts of these cheap CDs from our NYC trips, really ridiculous amounts. Some were already on our shopping list, but many were spontaneous purchases, interesting looking oddities. Needless to say a fair few of these CDs ended up in UK charity shops once we'd checked them out, the interesting covers being the extent of their attraction. Others led us to a fuller appreciation of the artists in question and on to further, full price, purchases, Ohio band The Six Parts Seven being a case in point. Best described as melodic instrumental post-rock, though with none of the bombast or tricky time signatures often associated with the genre, we eventually ended up with a clutch of their albums on our shelves after initially plucking 'Silence Magnifies Sound' from the bottom of a grubby cardboard box in a dimly lit corner of an East Village CD store in 2004, for the grand sum of 87 cents.
(This is my first attempt at using the new Blogger format. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but I think I've managed to stumble my way through the process without incident. The only thing I've so far not figured out is how to actually save the set date and time option - is anyone able to help a guy out?)
The Six Parts Seven - Changing the Name of October
So my trusty Google calendar reminds me that today I should be returning to work following a two week stay in the Big Apple. The original arrangements were that I would fly into the UK overnight on Sunday, landing in the early hours of Monday morning, spending the rest of the day and Tuesday snoozing and generally catching up with stuff, before heading back into the store this afternoon. The trip would've marked my first visit to New York in exactly ten years, but of course it was not to be. Here are a few snapshots that survive from previous visits in 2008/9/10 to keep me going until next time.
After my initial visits to the city in the early 1990s, I was never too bothered about hitting the tourist traps of Times Square, Fifth Avenue again, instead I'd usually head for lesser visited neighbourhoods, walking for hours fuelled only by endless coffee and bagels. On the rare occasions that my travels did take me to the mid-town area, I'd invariably strut along the sidewalk with Serge Gainsbourg's superb 'New York USA' as my internal soundtrack. The song comes from the 1964 LP 'Gainsbourg Percussions', his last full length outing for 4 years.
I honestly don't know where it all comes from. Just over a week ago a 72 hour bug temporarily knocked the stuffing out of me, but thankfully galloped through my system so quickly that I didn't really have much time to think about it. However, ten days later and feeling in otherwise fine fettle (and with apologies for over-sharing), my head is still a phlegm making machine. The throat rattles & wheezes and the nose is a constant (and I mean constant) pouring stream. No matter how often I blow my schnoz, it just keeps on coming.
I do hope I haven't put you off your breakfast.
Given all this unpleasantness, there is only one tune from my collection that truly fits the bill today. I picked up 'Harcourt', a Pehr compilation, from a long-gone Greenwich Village record store in 2002. At the time, Pehr specialised in the kind of dark post-rock I was particularly partial to, but I'd heard of none of the acts on this cheap sampler. 'Lunarcy' by French four piece Phlegm is the standout and quickly became a favourite of myself and Mrs S. The tune is taken from a split 12" EP, 'Phlegm / Telemak', their only release, a physical copy of which took me a further ten years to track down. The full EP is now available on Bandcamp if you're interested, though given the sometimes graphic nature of this post, perhaps you'll never want to think about Phlegm again.
My cousin's mother-in-law died back in January at the age of 83. In a full life she'd been a wife, mother, grandmother, college professor, business administrator, a long-time women’s rights activist and co-author of three books. She was also a force of nature. In her last 16 years alone she underwent 13 major surgeries for cancer of the lungs, neck and brain, eventually having one lung and part of the other removed altogether. Throughout this period of unimaginable suffering she remained positive, gregarious and very active.
Her husband, my cousin's father-in-law, passed away last week at the age of 94 after a long degenerative illness. In a life no less remarkable than that of his wife, he was decorated by his country with both the Flying Cross and a Purple Heart after being shot down twice in World War II, became an Emmy Award winning television producer for NBC, a successful CEO and co-author of a respected book on business. He was also a music lover and a very warm and funny man.
Several years ago, during one of my trips to New York, I spent a memorable long weekend with both of them while my cousin and her husband were otherwise engaged. They were the perfect hosts. We finished one particularly eventful day by watching a video of the 'Buena Vista Social Club' documentary together, into the wee small hours of the morning. When I crawled off to bed, they were still totally engrossed in the film. They loved Cuban music and whenever I've heard any since that night, I've thought of them.
The last time I saw them was in 2010 at a family celebration in New York, where, in spite of their physical frailties, they danced enthusiastically and joyfully hammed it up for my camera. They were on fine form that night, making the most of every single moment. That's how I'll remember them.
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.
It became a little ritual of mine that, on the
final evening of a visit to my relatives in
New York, I would spend a couple of hours at
the top of the World Trade Centre, watching
the sun set on the city, before catching up
with the family for one last dinner before I
headed home the following morning. At the time, they lived on 23rd Street, but in the summer of 2001 they bought an apartment in Tribeca, which, thankfully, they hadn't yet moved into by the September of that year.
By chance, I came across this photo a few days ago. I
took it on the final evening of my trip in
1996. The apartment that my family were destined to acquire, five years later, is in the brown building, at the very bottom and centre of the frame, with sunlight hitting the upper floors and what looks like just a small white roof between it and the base of the image.
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!)
In a previous life I spent 21 years working in record/CD shops, 7 for a small East Anglian chain & 14 at my own little store, so the environment is kind of in my blood. For this reason I still go out of my way to find and support cool stores when & where I can. Downloading is undeniably quick & useful, buying online is convenient, but there's nothing better than browsing and discovering in real time, in a real store - specially if the people behind the counter are cool too.
Step forward Marjorie Eisenberg of Permanent Records in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, New York. OK, so it's not on everyone's doorstep - even if you live in New York! - but trust me, if you do find yourself in the Big Apple, take the G train, make the trip & check out the store. Marjorie keeps a fine selection of new & used LP's & CD's, features a band playing live instore most saturdays and best of all, is very friendly & has great taste in music.
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