First, sixty is a rather strange number to limit it too -- why not 50? Or 100? Sixty just seems so random.
Second, while a couple of these songs are obviousy, like "New York, New York" by John Kander or "New York State of Mind" by Billy Joel, the vast majority of them are obscure or more "meta" songs than heart and soul ones.
Third, there are MANY glaring omissions. No "New York City" by They Might Be Giants. No "Empire State of Mind" by Jay Z. And while there are a few Lou Reed songs on the list, there's no or "New York City Man" and nothing, nothing at all, from Lou Reed's classic 1989 New York album, especially no "Dirty Boulevard"! And no show tunes, nothing from "Rent" or "On The Town" and many others.
This is a perfect example of a list created by people who want to seem "alternative" and "different" and super-hip. I guess I'm a big softy -- I like the fun NYC songs. But to each their own.
I've blogged A LOT about my love for the music of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. (You can go back and read my various posts about him and his legendary band if you so wish.)
But in addition to being a brilliant musician and band leader, Lou Reed was an NYC icon, an artist whose work helped to define the city -- or, at least, a certain kind of NYC, that of the counterculture, the artistic and sexual underground, the downtown scene.
As we come upon the 10th anniversary of Lou Reed's death, there's a new book about him coming out that's subtitled "King of New York." He certainly was a kind of NYC "king", a musical and cultural one, a bard of the city, a voice of its dirty streets. (One of his songs is literally called "Dirty Boulevard").
Encapsulating Lou Reed's status as one of the city's "kings" in words isn't easy but it's probably best done in this New Republic review of this new book. The reviewer writes:
"[Lou] Reed was ... a divining rod for New York, tracking and manifesting the city’s raw energies. One subtext ... is the evaporation of New York’s counterculture in the wake of tangled -tions and -isms: gentrification, corporatization, conglomeration, rank careerism, and the ne plus ultra, the internet. Reed’s career arguably parallels the city’s ruthless professionalization—a cultural mode that shifted its calculus from DIY to ROI, from collectivity to the singular ... One other thing Reed has come to embody: a New York that exists only in memory, a city of unbridled id and romantic sleaze, 'something like a circus or a sewer,' as he sang. He connects us to a place where degradation was currency but redemption always in the offing—by some measures, the recipe for a perfect rock song. New York ain’t what it used to be. But as long as we pretend otherwise, Lou Reed will be its mirror."
Recently in the news there's been a lot of controversy about documents, specifically presidents and vice-presidents of both parties taking home classified materials from their times in office, presumably to be kept as mementos or to be monetized somehow. Government and corporate files, and what is done with them, can be a lightening rode of controversy, whether its presidential records, the so-called Twitter files that some people think are bombshells of corporate and political malfeasance or "nothing burgers" (as most people seem to have concluded they are), and even the British royal family has issues with their files, most of which are kept secret from the public at large.
Files, documents, papers, tchotchkes, and other stuff, the kind of things that are stuffed into draws and cabinets -- they are the history of our lives and times. A lot of this stuff might be considered garbage but some of it can be quite valuable, insanely valuable. Because if journalism is the first draft of history, the files and archives of a person, company or government are the raw materials of history; in many ways, they are history, history made read, tactile and indisputable.
They are stuff that our history is made of.
As any devout Mr NYC ready knows I'm a lifelong fan of the great NYC singer/songwriter Lou Read. (Talking about an archive, you can read my extensive Lou Reed archive here.) But even better, until early next month, you can go to the New York Public Library Performing Arts location at Lincoln Center and see "Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars" which is an exhibit of Lou Reed's personal archives that were donated to the library after his death in 2013.
The exhibit is an extensive display of the original cassettes and master tapes of Lou Reed's music, including from his time with the Velvet Underground. There are numerous posters from his concerts over the years, and some of his guitars and other trinkets. But my personal favorite are the letters that were sent to him over the decades, especially from such fellow legends as rock journalist Lester Bangs, Czech President Vaclav Havel (who dubbed the fall of Communism in his country as the "Velvet Revolution"), ex-Velvet Doug Yule, a fellow singer/songwriter named Paul McCartney, and even a letter from the White House. It's a reminder that Lou Reed's music meant a lot to many different kinds of people, and the huge respect he was held in by many.
I took some pictures of the exhibit and really enjoyed it. It's a reminder that the man and his music made an deep impact on our culture and our world, and here was the proof, right before our eyes.
Here are Lou's words about how his career started:
And here are some of the posters, from the last time the Velvet Underground performed together in 1970 at Max's Kansas City:
Finally, the aforementioned letters, some of which are quite touching and funny:
A person's archives, and what they reveal about a life, will forever fascinate me.
At the risk of being gauche, allow me to quote myself: a couple of years ago I described this blog as a "pastiche" or "a collage, a repository for memories, a collection of favorite things, a funhouse of nostalgia, a love letter to the past and future, a work of art, a self-contained world that invites you to visit a while and become absorbed in."
You might also call it a scrapbook.
In its way, Mr NYC is a digital scrapbook, roughly defined as a document of precious memories, a collection of souvenirs and mementos, and an opportunity to channel one's inner artist.
Scrapbooks need not be literal books full of pieces of paper and objects of one's past or journey thru life. They can be, more metaphorically speaking, things like diaries or autobiographies or videos -- or blogs like this one -- anything that captures and makes sense of the past and provides tea leaves for the future.
I recently encountered two examples of metaphorical scrapbooking, both of which fascinate me: a new exhibit about Lou Reed at the NYPL that is a collection of his papers, recordings, and various nickknacks, showing the work and evolution of this great and influential NYC musician; and a new novel by, of all people, the actor David Duchovny that is based on his memories of growing up in NYC.
This exhibit and this novel are, in a way, scrapbooks of these two very different NYC artists -- as is this humble blog.
When Anne Frank wrote her diary hiding out in that apartment in Amsterdam or when Marco Polo dictated his memories of China while literally imprisoned, these two people who would otherwise be lost to history instead were made immortal. They told their stories, they recorded and "scrapbooked" their lives, and in doing so not only made us better understand their times and adventures (told both from the perspective of two people who were literally trapped) but made us understand that the world was a greater place, and the human spirit more indomitable, than we could ever imagine.
Every successful band has "that guy" (or girl, let's not be sexist) who is neither the lead singer nor the front-man but who is the backbone, the conciliator, the person who keeps the band grounded and makes it good. In this case, this person isn't the third wheel but the third leg of a musical stool.
In the Rolling Stones, lead singer Mick Jagger and frontman Keith Richards were held together by their great drummer, the late Charlie Watts.
In the Beatles, lead singer John Lennon and frontman Paul McCartney were the flashy stars but guitarist George Harrison gave it an extra quiet cool.
In the new Apple TV documentary made by Todd Haynes, you get some idead but not much. The stars of that band were the irascible but brilliant and literary Lou Reed and the equally brilliant but stubborn muscial experimenter John Cale. Together, they crafted stunning, musically groundbreaking songs that influenced singers like David Bowie and bands like U2. But during the Velvet Underground's short but memorable run, with Reed and Cale making music history but also at each other's throats, Sterling Morrison's base guitart (and regular guitar) kept the beat going on.
Like Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison was a native of Long Island who met Velvet drummer Maureen Tucker during childhood and Reed up at Syracuse University in the early 1960s. Later, back in NYC, as Reed and Cale were putting the Velvet Underground together, they invited him to join. At the time, they were just a bunch of kids in their early 20s looking to make music and get noticed. They made music but success passed them by -- instead, they made musical history.
Morrison stayed with the band throughout its tenure, dealing with Reed and Cale's fallout, plugging away on the guitar as the band toured the country. But in 1971, very dramatically, he quit the band when they were due to return to NYC from Texas -- at the airport, he told his bandmates he was staying in Texas and moving on. Morrison then worked on tugboats, eventually becoming a captain, and also completed his PHD in Medieval History at UT-Austin, eventually teaching there as well. He would play around Austin, occasionally with his old Velvet friends, until he rejoined the band during its reunion tour in 1993. In 1994, he was diagnosed with cancer and sadly died in late August 1995, at the age of 53.
In 1996, when the Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock'N'Roll Hall of Fame, Reed, Cale, and Tucker performed a special song in Morrison's memory, a beautiful tribute to a great friend and talent.
Sterling Morrison was never the star, the frontman, the one everyone paid attention to and talked about. Instead, with him, it was all about the music, the work, helping to craft Reed and Cale's ideas into reality, making a great band even greater. And that's why, even more than a quarter century after his death, we remember him still.
It's hard to imagine that an episode of Saturday Night Live like this would ever air today -- one hosted by the most outrageous comedian of his time and, as the musical guest, one of the darkest and most groundbreaking musicians in rock history.
But this actually happened on the night of November 15, 1986 when bad boy comic Sam Kinison -- riding high as a comedy king and coming off the success of his movie Back to School -- hosted the show for the second time. He was his usual over-the-top self, jamming with the band, performing an over-the-top monologue, and yelling and blazing his way through several sketches. There was no comedian quite like Sam Kinison before or since. Sadly he died in 1992 in a car accident, but his comedic legacy lives on.
I can't find any clips of Lou Reed from this show but, according to the information I have, he perfomed the songs "I Love You, Suzanne" and "The Original Wrapper." I've posted those songs here.
This was just one of many shows in the long, long history of SNL -- but it was also a moment in time when the rebels, the contrarians, the lunatics of comedy and music crashed the gates and ran the asylum ... at least for this one night.
One of Lou Reed's great songs is called "Magic & Loss." He croons:
There's a bit of magic in everything
And some loss to even things out ...
Those words, to me, sum up life: life is magical, people are magical, nature and the world around us are magical, our creations our magical, everything and everyone contains magic ... but loss is magic's constant companion, it's sorrowful sidekick. And the best way to negotiate life is to love both -- the magic of everything and the loss that accompanies. They are both inevitable. If you can appreciate this paradoxical beauty of life, I believe, than you have achieved a simple yet greater kind of wisdom.
This concept of "magic and loss" occurred to me recently when I read several disparate articles about occurences that, more than anything, have impacted the soul of New York City. As you read and think about them, you appreciate the magic of the people we have in this city, the loss of many of them that this last year has inflicted, while also feeling somewhat optimistic about our future.
There is the loss of the legendary NYC radio host Bob Fass. His show "Radio Unknowable" was broadcast on WBAI for 50 years, where he interviewed Bob Dylan and many other brilliant artists, thinkers, and public figures. He was the closest thing that NYC had to an "underground radio host", as his obituary describes him. His show was part of the gritty Bohemian spirit of the city, the subconscious turned into radio signals. As someone who writes an "underground blog" about NYC, Bob Fass was a weird kind of soul brother for me, a fellow restless spirit who never lost his fascination for the city, its people, and all its crazy undercurrents. Magic & Loss.
Then there are these individual stories of New Yorkers who have been impacted by COVID-19 over the last year. These are the stories you don't see in the news but they are the quiet stories, the unique experiences, of people in NYC dealing with this global pandemic. It involves illness, death, misery but also survival and hope. It's about as clear an example of the Magic & Loss of and in life that I can think of.
But then, in the midst of all this, a miracle! Something has come back to life! Specifically the Village Voice. Four years ago it went out of business, totally shuttered. Now it's back and even in print! This long history of the notorious free rag and how it came back to life is worth a read. It's a story of the city, of the press, and how the two inform and shape NYC. The Voice coming back to life after it seemed dead and gone forever is miraculous. It's a bit of magic after the loss that proves how Magic & Loss are forever intertwined, constant companions, and never predictable.
In the summer of 1970 the Velvet Underground made its last hurrah in NYC. From June to August, for nine weeks, the band played two shows a night at the now vanished club Max's Kansas City on Park Avenue South. One of their shows, on August 23, 1970, was recorded and later released in 1972 as Live at Max's Kansas City.
The Velvets had a short and tumultuous existence. Formed in the mid-1960s, under the guidance of Lou Reed and John Cale, they produced four albums in almost as many years. But only a couple of years in, Cale left the band. The albums didn't sell. Their original partnership with Andy Warhol ended after their first album. So, by 1970, the band was on the verge of collapse. This nine-week gig turned out to be a finale (of sorts). Lou Reed would leave the band afterwards. Their final album, Loaded, would come out in November 1970 to little interest. And that, it would seem, would render the band to history -- forgotten, a failure, a footnote.
Instead, the Velvet Underground made history. It wrote volumes in the history of rock'n'roll. It will be remembered forever.
Generations of musicians and songwriters would cite the band as an influence -- including U2, Joy Division, Sonic Youth, REM, Talking Heads, and David Bowie. When the band re-united for a European tour in 1993, it was a sensation. They were inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. They've been included on soundtracks for movies like Juno and Orange is the New Black. They've even inspired museum exhibits. To paraphrase, anyone would bought a Velvet Underground album back in the day probably ended up starting a rock'n'roll band.
But history is only understood in hindsight -- it's made in the (then) present, forever grinding forward. In July 1970, before the famous recording was made, the Village Voice wrote a short article about this now legendary gig, about how the band sounded as good as it ever did, and that playing in NYC again after three years meant that they were "back where they belong."
P.S. The Velvets gig at Max's KC ended on August 28, 1970. Five days later my parents got married in NYC. History is funky like that sometimes.
Hard as it is to believe but, as the minutes tick down towards the end of the year, the second decade of the 21st century is ending and the third is about to begin. This very blog will also enter its third decade which, if you don't mind me saying, is something of an achievement.
So what happened in NYC during this past decade, the twenty-teens?
A bunch of stuff, some great, some awful. The New York Times has an interesting list of developments in NYC in the 20-teens that includes the following: the growth of ferry service around the city (good), the dramatic decline of retail stores and the preponderance of empty storefronts (bad), the phenomena of Hamilton that made Broadway relevant again (good), the rise of cashless businesses (neither good nor bad, just reality), the growth of massively tall, skyline-ruining "needle" buildings (bad), universal pre-K (great!), and others.
One thing this list also includes is the sale of the Chrysler Building for $150 million after previously selling for $800 million. It's truly bizarre that a huge NYC iconic building could sell for less than the most expensive apartments in town and lots of other big name buildings. The reason? It's very old and has tons of structural problems, dramatically decreasing the value. This tracks another big-name purchase that was sold for way less money than one would expect -- the radio station WABC, which was sold for only $12.5, much much much much less than most buildings or apartments in this city. The reason? Very low ratings with an ossified, dying listenership, and practically zero growth potential in the age of podcasts and the Internet. The Chrysler Building and WABC, once mighty NYC institutions, were victims of the changes of this decade.
Another big-time radio station in NYC that wasn't just sold but vanished altogether was WPLJ, where I used to intern, another demographic/technology victim. One thing about NYC in the 20-teens is that TV about this great city was better than ever: Mad Men, 30 Rock, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, and many others reflected the wild lifes and times, both past and present, of this town. New York City also lost of number of icons, some from death, some from infamy: Ed Koch, Lou Reed, Al Goldstein, and Stan Brooks all died during this decade, representatives, in their very different ways, of this city during the era I call "funky town." Of course, some other NYC icons are still alive but have fallen dramatically from grace: Harvey Weinstein, Anthony Weiner, Louis CK, and Charlie Rose all began the decade in great positions of power NYC only to end it in disgrace and irrelevance. The city also saw some physical transformations: Long Island City went from being a real estate desert to a real estate oasis. Hudson Yards opened, creating a brand new neighborhood in the heart of Manhattan. Pedestrian plazas and bike sharing exploded, literally changing the experience of the city streets. There were obviously political transformations: Occupy Wall Street (2001), a new mayor (2013), AOC and the Democratic takeover of the State Senate (largely due to elections in NYC in 2018), and naturally, a New Yorker was elected President of the United States but, instead of being a great thing, it was a national tragedy (2016). Sports: the Giants won the Superbowl (2012), and anyone remember "Linsanity" (also 2012)? As always, a lot happened in NYC during the 20-teens -- some things historic, some things just moments in time. I have no doubt that NYC in the 2020s will be equally, if not more, memorable. P.S. A couple of non end-of-the decade related stories you might find interesting: one is an obituary for an acclaimed activist-artist and another is a long story about how Robert Moses, in a rare feat of true public service, made the Met into the true "people's museum", marrying elite art with the masses, that it is today.
There are no two worlds in NYC as different from each other as Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and Coney Island out in Brooklyn. And yet they reflect and compliment each other in great ways.
One is the epicenter of business, advertising, glamour, elegance, and wealth. The other is the epicenter of wildness and fun. People go to Fifth Avenue to work and revel in the elegance of NYC. People go to Coney Island to let loose in the craziness of NYC.
That's why I loved seeing these two articles about 5th Avenue and Coney Island past. One is an article about a new collection of pictures of 5th Avenue from the 1960s -- one where the men and women are dressed very formally in Mad Men-esque attire. The other is an article from the 1970s about a gang member in Coney Island who's trying to go straight, living in the shadow and danger of the Boardwalk, a world unto itself. Then, of course, there are the famous events that takes place in both locales each year -- the Easter Parade on 5th Avenue and its famous bonnets and Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest on the 4th of July. Two great, totally different, NYC experiences. Heck, 5th Avenue and Coney Island are so iconic that there are even great songs about them! Lou Reed's classic "Coney Island Steeplechase" and Irving Berlin's Easter Parade. NYC is forever complimenting itself, a ying and yang all its own.
Hudson Yards is not the only big opening today -- at the New York Public Library, the Lou Reed archive has officially become available. It includes a vast array of Lou's writings as well as 600 hours of recordings. Now I just have to find some precious time to go down and look over all this!
By the way, the first 6000 visitors will get a commemorative Lou Reed public library card.
He's a New York City Man ... always and forever ...
If you've read Mr NYC for any legnth of time, you know how much I love the music of Lou Reed, and how romantic I am for the 1960s NYC that birthed his band The Velvet Underground.
This month also marks the 30th anniversary of one of his greatest solo albums, New York. While the album is certainly a love letter to the city, it's more complicated than that -- it's a cry of emotion about the complex feelings any New Yorker has for this place. Nothing about Lou Reed's music is easy or simple, and this album is no different. When it came out in 1989, New York explored a city that seemed to be in crises, that was dying, but that still contained a wondrous and inspiring spirit. And this album is as inspired as any that Lou Reed wrote.
So here is my little compedium to all things Lou Reed & NYC:
- My collection of blog posts about Lou Reed and The Velvet Undergroud.
- A review of the New York album. - How Lou Reed and NYC are inseperable, both in music and soul, and are practically addictive. - And a guide to NYC per Lou Reed's music. If you like Lou, this post is ... for you ...
This weekend the wife and I checked out the Velvet Underground Experience (it's not at a museum but an exhibition space).
This exhibit is not just "about" the Velvet Undergound -- as the name denotes, it's an immerse experience that transports you back into the world of the downtown 1960s New York arts scene, the time and place from where the Velvets emerged. It gives you a good sense of the cultural excitement, the political tumult, the social experimentation, the wildness and sexiness of a very different time and city that birthed one of the greatest, most musically brilliant bands in history. There are photographs and videos of the leading cultural figures of that time, including Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, and Allan Ginsberg (you are greeted at the beginning of this exhibit by an audiovisual recording of Ginsberg reading his great poem "America"), to put you into the mood and mindset of 1960s NYC.
Throughout the exhibit you learn about how the VU came to be formed and their musical evolution. There are these wonderful booklets that you can read that are short bios of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker -- the real Fab Four. There are also bios of the people who influenced and worked with the band, including the singer Nico. There is lots of "projection" in this exhibit, including a place where you literally lie on the ground (on pads thankfully) and look up at short films of the Velvets and The Factory's early years.
While the exhibit is amazing in many ways it also feels incomplete -- the exhibit focuses mostly on the Velvets early years and their relationship with Warhol (who only produced the band's first album). There is very little about the band's end or their penultimate album that produced perhaps the band's greatest song ever -- "Sweet Jane." Also, considering that this is one of the most influentual bands in history, the exhibit gives short shrift to its influence and legacy (there's only a wall with some posters and recordings of covers of the band's songs -- not much). Still, if you're a fan of the VU, and of this now legendary time and place, it's worth checking out.
And, if you can't get enough of Andy Warhol, you can go check out the big exhibit about him at the Whitney (I haven't seen it yet but hope to). You can also read these articles (here and here) about Andy Warhol and life at The Factory. When Warhol died in 1987, he went from man to myth -- and these articles try to seperate the two.
Perhaps it's not surprising that these exhibits are being mounted right now. The NYC of the 1960s feels like not only another time but also another planet, a world completely different from our own. Back then, NYC was a decaying city where culture was exploding. Today, the city is exploding (economically at least) but it has become culturally dull. We are no longer the city of The Factory -- we're the city of Amazon. No longer does someone like Andy Warhol define the future of NYC -- Jeff Bezos does (and he doesn't even live here!).
And so we remember -- the history, the myth, the legacy -- of Andy Warhol and The Factory, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, of NYC then and now -- and of a past that haunts us, for better or worse, that still shapes the city we live in.
In the classic NYC movie Moonstruck, Nicholas Cage declares "I love two things: I love you and I love opera."
Well, to paraphrase, I love many things, including two things: the music of Lou Reed and opera.
So it was great to read about two New Yorker the behind the music that I and so many people love.
One is an interview with Marsha Vlasic, a traiblazing music agent who represented many great artists including Lou Reed.
Another is the obituary of Alfred Hubay who ran the box office for the Metropolitan Opera and was responsible for tracking which operas would hit, which wouldn't, and basically kept the most famous opera house in the world afloat for decades.
Without music mavens like this, the business geniuses supporting the musical geniuses, we wouldn't get to enjoy the wonderful music we love.
I never had someone say to me, "Hey kid, I'm gonna take a chance on you, show you the ropes, provide you some guidance, introduce you to some interesting people, give you a shot."
I never had someone who took any interest in me or my career or my hopes and dreams. No one ever showed me the way. I've always done everything on my own, unguided, unmoored. I guess no one ever thought I was worth the effort.
But I'm not bitter -- because mentors aren't always a good thing.
Take the example of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. Roy Cohn was the lawyer for Joe McCarthy, the consigliereof Red Scare of the early 1950s, who also oversaw the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn moved back to NYC after McCarthy's death and spent the rest of his life (he was disbarred and died in 1986) representing all sorts of corrupt figures and people in organized crime. He also worked for Trump's company and was a mentor to the young real estate developer in the 1970s and '80s -- and much of the viciousness we see every day from this loathsome POTUS is the product of his mentoring by Cohn.
And yet ... mentors can be a wonderful thing.
Lou Reed, one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all times, was a poet at heart. His lyrics were as poetic as his music was harmonious. That's because, as a young man, was mentored by the great poet Delmore Schwartz, a Beat poet turned college professor who taught poetry to Reed as a young man -- and was a lasting influence and inspiration to the then young man.
The mentor/mentee relationship can be, at heart, a wonderful meeting of minds and energy or a toxic brew of egos and darkness. They can give us amazing art -- and ugly politics. They can inspire us -- or drag us down.
So if, like me, you've always craved a mentor, then, like me, you can feel the lack of one in many ways; and yet, at the same time, you can be glad that you've never let another person have so much power over you -- or your fate.
Several years ago a friend of mine and I were walking around Soho with a girl he was briefly dating. We walked passed a restaurant (don't remember the name now) and she pointed at it, noting, "My friend used to work there. She had sex with the chef on a table."
My immature reaction was, naturally, "Cool! (And can I get her number?)"
Of course, that kind of "hanky-panky" goes on in restaurants (and lots of other businesses) all the time; as we've learned, frighteningly, it isn't always consensual. It's never appropriate. But, for a long time, it was normal.
And yet ... there's always been a romantic allure to the high-end NYC restaurant world. While it's always been a exhausting, poor-paying, and incredibly insecure profession, it's also full of glamour, celebrity, and, yes, sex appeal. That's why people are trying to break into this business more than ever before.
Interestingly enough, the high-end hotel industry doesn't have quite the same allure of restaurants (how many celebrity hoteliers can you think of, besides Ian Shrager?) but, it goes without saying, there are many hotels in NYC where "if these walls could talk ..." Take, for instance, the Gramercy Hotel, the crash pad of choice for numerous rock stars like David Bowie, the Rolling Stones, and Lou Reed, just to name a few. Needless to say, back in the day, pure bedlam ensued at the Gramercy when these rock gods and their entourages crashed there.
That said, you can still seem some bedlam -- more to the point, dancing female bartenders -- at the infamous Coyote Ugly saloon. Yes, it's same place that a movie was made about several years back and it's still going strong. It recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. I have yet to go and should (after all, I've meet to the real Mystic Pizza that's in Connecticut!). In this #MeToo era, a long-lasting business in NYC that was established and run by women should be celebrated.
Eating, drinking, partying, and crashing in NYC -- you can't beat it.
One of the greatest, most influential bands in history, the Velvet Underground released their super-trippy album White Light/White Heat 50 years ago today.
This is probably the quintessential album by this quintessential NYC band, the most Velvety-Undergroundy of their four studio albums.
The songs are decidedly noncommercial and not radio friendly, they are wildly experimental and strange. In fact, there are only six songs on the entire album and one of them, "The Gift," isn't even a song at all but an 8 minute-long short story about a guy named Waldo who mails himself to his girlfriend. Yeah, it's a weird one. But it's truly great and a landmark in the history of rock.
Velvets frontman Lou Reed said just before his death, when White Light/White Heat came out, "No one listened to it" but it contained "the quintessence of articulated punk." And I'm sure people will be listening to it fifty-years from now.
I do. Not literally, of course. I don't believe in white-clad spirits rushing around to and fro, haunting houses and terrorizing people. I don't believe our deceased ancestors spy on us from "the great beyond". I don't believe in anything mystical or spooky or weird. I'm not into any of that kind of stuff.
But I do believe that certain places can still capture the spirit of a person -- or people -- who inhabited them long after he or she or they have physically left it, especially after they have died. If you ever go to Rome and visit the Colosseum or the Forum or any of the great sites of Roman antiquity, it's impossible not to feel the eternal presence of Julius Caesar and the other great Romans who built it. (Rome is, after all, the eternal city). Go to Philadelphia and Constitution Hall -- it's impossible not to feel the lingering shadow of the Founder Father as they hammered out the Constitution.
You get the idea. When people make a profound impact on a place, the spirit of that impact endures on it, even after they have passed on.
Such is the case of Lou Reed and New York City. The self-proclaimed New York City man wrote extensively about his hometown, naming a whole album after it and penning numerous songs about this place: "Coney Island Baby", "Coney Island Steeplechase", "NYC Man", "Sally Can't Dance", "Rock'n'Roll", "Dirty Boulevard", "Walk on the Wild Side", and on and on. I don't think I can ever travel to 125th street, especially Lexington Avenue, without the lyric from "I'm Waiting for My Man":
This past weekend, as Lincoln Center, there was an all-day tribute to the music of Lou Reed. People performed his songs and read his lyrics. People kept his spirit alive -- not that they needed to since it never died.
As 2016 began, so did the final season the PBS super-hit "Downton Abbey", the British upstairs/downstairs story of a great estate, set in the early 20th century, when "things were changing."
What kind of things? Well, women were getting the right to vote, this funky thing called radio was becoming popular, people were dancing the Charleston, and, basically, the landed gentry could no longer afford to own their huge, expensive estates and employ hundreds and hundreds of people. Pretty soon, the nobility would become more of a curiosity and less an imposing force.
This blog has exhaustively chronicled how NYC has been changing over the years. One of my favorites is from December 31, 2013, when I bade farewell to "Funkytown", remembering the deaths that years of Ed Koch, Al Goldstein, Lou Reed, and Stan Brooks, great New Yorkers all of a bygone era. As 2015 has now ended, we can add two more great New York icons to the memory bank: Janet Wolfe and Dr. Zizmor.
Who are they? New Yorkers who impacted our city in smaller yet wonderful ways.
Janet Wolfe, who died last year at age 101, was the founder of the NYCHA Symphony. After a career as a bit movie actress, doing PR, and working for the Red Cross in Italy during WWII, she founded this symphony orchestra (in her early 60s no less) for public housing residents in 1971. What a wonderful, imaginative thing to do! For four decades, she brought great music to people who would otherwise might not hear it, and she did with verve, with excitement, and with love. She was the best kind of New Yorker and, even though she lived a very long life, we lost her too soon.
And what about Dr. Zizmor? He's not dead yet (he's still a youthful 70-something) but the friendly dermatologist whose silly ads papered the subway system and local TV programming for decades has apparently closed shop and retired. No longer can people get appointments with Dr. Z to have their skin treated by one of his famous chemical peels. His ads were one of those things about the NYC culture that were just ... there ... never wavering ... and they provided a certain kind of reliability and comfort to people in an ever churning city. No more. And, as this article indicates, the old school, local pitchman in NYC is just another thing -- like the subway token -- that has gone away.
So "things" are always "changing" in NYC. Stay tuned.
