Pump Up the Volume: The Rise and Fall of Pirate Radio in NYC

As a young'un, one of my favorite movies was Pump Up the Volume. It's about a miserably lonely teenager who starts a pirate radio station out of his bedroom/parent's garage that becomes a sensation in the desolate, boring Arizona town he's just moved to with his family. 

Operating under the name "Happy Harry", he speaks directly to the emotional pain and tumult of his fellow teenagers. Unlike his regular shy, reserved self (named Mark), "Harry" is funny, outrageous, profane; he plays wild music, calls kids who write confessional letters, and even prank calls the high school's guidance counselor. His craziness quickly becomes a target by the town elders and eventually the FCC -- and it all ends dramatically. 

As a teenager this movie "spoke" to me. It was and remains the most realistic, most accurate look at what it was like to be an early 1990's teenager. And the idea of creating your own pirate radio station seemed amazing to me at the time.

Of course, these days, we'll all pirate radio broadcasters thanks to the Internet. We can create YouTube channels, Facebook Live, or podcasts -- and, of course, blogs! Pump Up the Volume reminds you of a time where the idea of young, regular person reaching hundreds, thousands of other people to broadcast their lives was a truly novel, totally strange concept.

But pirate radio was a real thing! In Brooklyn, back in the 1990s, there was an amazing pirate radio station called WBAD, a hip-hop station that quickly become a local phenomenon (I remember a guy in one of my SAT prep classes talking about it). Eventually, of course, the media and the FCC got wind of it and pursued it to its grave.

Listen to this amazing Studio 306 segment about WBAD, a piece of NYC history, and remind yourself of another time when the idea of regular people broadcasting to the masses was a truly revolutionary idea 

"The Life and Times of Tim" Revisited

Eight years ago I blogged about a hilarious, obscure cable cartoon show called "The Life and Times of Tim" about a sad sack who lives with his girlfriend in NYC, has a crummy job and awful friends, and finds the world totally bewildering and scary and overwhelming.

As I said at the time, it felt like this show had been created just for me. It's viciously funny, its sense of humor is, well, like mine, and Tim even looks like me! 

The show only lasted for about three seasons and vanished into the cultural ether but it's great to see that, years later, this classic show is getting some revisionist love.

Best of all, you can find many of the episodes on YouTube so click here if you want to laugh your ass off about a guy who is, in too many painful ways to count, a lot like your friend, Mr NYC. 

Salvador Dali & Rikers Island - A Story Too Bizarre to be Believed

This is a story that's too bizarre, too weird, too only-in-New York to be believed.

It begins like this: Salvador Dali -- yes, that Salvador Dali! -- painted a picture for Rikers Island ... and that's not even the strangest thing about this very strange story of an inside-job art heist that went wrong ... or did it?

Read it and wrap your mind around how small decisions plus bad decisions plus bad luck plus dumb good luck can lead to some people's lives getting ruined and others prospering. It's a reminder of why life, and this world, is so unfair.

And what ever happened to the painting? We still don't know! 

Postscript: here's a clip from a documantary about Salvador Dali in NYC in 1965, the same year he painted this picture for Rikers Island.

'Tis the (Cultural) Season

This fall the culture of NYC is richer than ever.

We recently went to the just-closed Heavenly Bodies exhibit at the Met (the fashion show of Catholic Church and Catholic Church-inspired garb) and I'm itching to see the New York at Its Core exhibit at the Museum of the City of NY (it tells the story of NYC through the lives of important individual New Yorkers and 450 objects). 

Also this fall, if you can afford the tickets, is a booming season on Broadway of original plays. For the last several years Broadway has seen an influx of "blockbuster" musicals, many based on movies, and original straight-plays have become scarcer and scarcer. But this season is different. There's a bunch of new plays featuring great actors like Kerry Washington, Bryan Cranston, Daniel Radcliffe, and Cherry Jones that should make any fan of great acting and original drama salivate.

But what's got moi really salivating is this: the new Velvet Underground Experience exhibit. This a massive multi-media show of films, pictures, "projections", special events, and lots of other stuff that not only is about the band and its music but also about the late 1960s music and artistic scene in NYC that birthed and nurtured it. I cannot wait to see this!

So, this fall, as always, the cultural life in NYC never disappoints. 

Wall Street *Hearts* Democrats

Okay, not really, but lots of people in the financial industry are pouring huge amounts of money into Democratic campaigns to help the party win control of Congress next month.

Normally the financial industry gives way more money to their employees in the Republican party but, this year, it seems that all bets are off.

"Bet" is the operative word. A lot of this money is probably being given so that the financial industry will get access (and favorable regulations, etc.) from a Democratic congress, assuming the Democrats win. But it appears that raw greed and self-interest isn't the only thing motivating this giving: it seems that even people in the brutal, cut-throat world of Wall Street have some decency and don't like seeing their country slide into fascism.

If only the maniacs in DC had the decency of the people on Wall Street. 

NYC Protests Kavanaugh

Memo from NYC

To: Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia

From: The People of NYC

You are both disgraces to humanity and, specifically, women everywhere.

History will judge you both harshly.

I hope that neither of you ever enjoy a moment's peace and that people boycott your states.

We will never forget!

Power vs. Hope: Where Do They Lead?

We live in anxious times. Actually, times have always been anxious but especially now.

We have a distorted economy that works for an elite few and not the many. Foreign powers are trying to corrupt our democracy. Men are scared of being accused of sexual misconduct -- and women are even scared of accusing them. Social media rules our world in scary ways. The threat of terrorism is never far from anyone's mind.

More and more, NYC is being sold off to the highest bidders. And, oh yes, and the president of the United States is insane.

Lots of reasons to be anxious. The only thing that seems like a Balm in Gilead is that TV is better than ever. That's about it.

If you want to understand why, structurally, our society is so warped, read these two very different, but ultimately interrelated NYC tales. One is about how Donald Trump and his family used out-right fraud to increase their wealth. Another is about the bad decisions made by clueless rich people who drove the New York City Opera out of business. In both stories, you read about the arrogance of wealth -- the indifference to consequence, the belief that they can do no wrong even when they very wrong things, complete insouciance to the people who work for them or the society they live in. It makes for depressing, rage-inducing reading -- but explains a lot about how greed and willful blindness inflict so much damage.

But hope is always somewhere, glimmering on the horizen. It was true in the past and it's true today.

Read the original 1967 review of the Velvet Underground, predicting that this was an important band (indeed it was, it revolutionized music). And read a short interview with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the soon-to-be-Congresswoman who's bravery and brilliant political instincts will, hopefully, lead to a revolution in how this country is governed -- and how we might unwarp our society. There's always hope somewhere, fighting against the dominant paradigm, fighting against the power, always something good boiling beneath the surface, creating inevitable, positive change.

Full Van Morrison Concert - NYC, 1978

"Nighthawks" -- The Eternal NYC Noir Enigmatic Masterpiece

Some paintings are breathtaking for their beauty or dazzling in their imagery (think Vermeer or J.W. Turner or most Renaissance paintings).

Some paintings tickle our brain with their complexity (think Jackson Pollack or George Seurat).

Some paintings are iconic for what they represent (think the romance of the “Mona Lisa” or the fiery political passion of “Guernica”).

And some paintings are memorable for their mystery.

No painting is more memorably mysterious than Edward Hopper's 1942 masterpiece “Nighthawks.” 

It's the painting that defines New York City noir. It's haunting, beautiful, and simple. “Nighthawks” depicts the exterior of a coffee shop on an anonymous downtown street, most probably Greenwich Village. Light emanates out of the window onto a dark, empty sidewalk. Through the window we see two men in suits sitting at the enormous counter along with a woman in a red dress. A uniformed man behind the counter bends over.

What is the man doing? What is he getting under the counter? What are the man and woman sitting next to each other talking about? Why is the other man sitting at the counter alone? Where is the door that leads from the street into the coffee shop -- and why don't we see it? What time of the night is it? Why is no else around? What’s going on?

The picture is nothing but mystery -- unanswered, unanswerable questions, an eternal enigma. Its simplicity -- the chromatic uniformity of the people’s clothes, the street, the buildings, all of the images -- gives us little to go on. All we know is that the coffee shop is called "Phillies". And each cup of coffee costs five cents (the going rate in 1942).

That's it. That's all. 

That's genius.

When Edward Hopper painted “Nighthawks” in 1942, the world was at war. New York was still a city of factory workers, tenement dwellers, and average Joes. The city was recovering from the Depression along with the rest of the country. It was a time when the future seemed uncertain (much like now). The mystery of those times, the spirit of those times and the haunting the New York that captured it, is reflected in the painting, and that's what makes it masterpiece.

I've blogged a lot about my love of NYC at night -- the jazzy, sexy, mysterious, dangerous feel of it. There's a hint of crime, of secret transgression about it. “Nighthawks” not only captures that mood perfectly but defines it. Not for nothing this painting has become an American icon, parodied and lionized throughout American culture (for example, The Simpsons or TCM's Open All Night intro).

How did “Nighthawks”, this ultimate NYC painting, come to be? Why has it endured?

Listen to this extensive segment from Studio 360 about the painting's creation and amazing legacy. In many ways, it asks more questions than it answers -- much like the painting itself. Sadly you can't see Nighthawks in NYC -- it belong to the Art Institute of Chicago. So if you're ever in the Windy City, perhaps drop in and see this ultimate piece of New York lore.