Welcome to the Real Digital Underground

Fifteen years ago this week, the American army caught Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein hiding in an underground bunker -- also called a "spider hole." Nine months after the start of our ill-conceived invasion, the Butcher of Baghdad was still in hiding, moving around out of sight but not out of mind, staying underground as much as he could, and successfully evading capture -- until his luck ran out. Osama Bin Laden was a much more successful underground dweller, hiding out for almost a decade after 9/11 until he was found (not underground actually) and killed in Pakistan.

There's something scary but also exciting about the idea of an "underground" existence -- being  everywhere and nowhere, being alone but also free, being able to be who you want to be without anyone else rendering judgment. Being separated from a crazy, evil world, living on your own terms. Until, of course, your luck runs out. 

What does it mean to go "underground" or live in an "underworld"? How long can we do it -- before we get caught? 

My thoughts about what it means to be "underground" or in an "underworld" were further spurred when I read this article about a fellow NYC blogger who, for more than 25 years, has been producing a publication (first as a zine, then as a blog) about opera. He's a perfect example of someone who started out as an outsider, a troublemaker, an "underground" character, only to be embraced by the very people and world that, at first, would want nothing to do with him. The article says that his blog is still "underground" but, when you're featured in the Times and permitted access to a rarefied world, you are underground no longer. 

Except for once upon a time being linked to the New York Times now defunct City Room blog roll, Mr NYC has avoided any kind of mainstream, establishment attachment. Nary a magazine, a newspaper, an online publication, a TV or radio station, a podcast -- nothing! -- has corrupted this blog with any kind of attention. 

Detractors might say, it's because the blog sucks. Fans might say it's because Mr NYC is too good for, you know, Da' Man, The Squares, the bourgeoisie.

Either way, Mr NYC remains very much an "underground" phenomenon, adrift in the vast sea of the Internet, a digital secret -- like that great out-of-the-way neighborhood, or downstairs restaurant, or hole-in-the-wall bar (pick your analogy) that few people know about but, for those who do, they love it, cherish it, and hold it close. 

Mr NYC is probably the only thing in this city that isn't being colonized by money and attention -- and, for that, I expect you all to be very grateful. 

So, if you're a Mr NYC reader/detractor/fan/whatever, you have discovered the real digital underground, a real Internet spider-hole, an underworld all its own.

Congratulations! Enjoy your stay! 

The Romance of the Underground Writer

The idea of an underground, an underworld or, as I once blogged about, the underwelt, is something I'm constantly fascinated by. This blog is an underground blog if there ever was one -- totally outside the gaze of, and unconnected from, the mainstream media, the square world.

This makes me an underground blogger -- an underground NYC blogger to be precise.

The idea of an underground writer, someone's whose work is mostly unknown and whose readership is small but passionate, is certainly something I can relate to. Many of them write about subjects that don't interest most people (like this blog) even if they're about some universal like sex and politics -- or the world's greatest city.

So it's with great interest to read that the brilliant filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is currently making a movie (possibly his last) about an underground writer from the 1970s. Few details about this movie are known except that it's tentatively called The Movie Critic, takes place in 1977, and is based on the life of a movie critic named William Mangold nom de plume Jim Sheldon who wrote movie reviews for a porn mag. Making a movie about an underground critic is certainly bold, the kind of unexpected story that Tarantino usually tells and that makes his movies so great and different. 

And if any other movie director, especially one as good as Tarantino, wants to make a movie about an underground NYC blogger, i.e. me nom de plume Mr NYC, I'm is happy to serve as the inspiration for such a project. Get in touch! 

The City Beneath Our Feet

Late last year I blogged about the romantic allure of life "underground", of living at a remove from  polite society, of residing in a netherworld where the squares and scolds and scoundrels of The Real World dare not intrude. In some way, I mused, this very blog is an underground itself -- a totally obscure yet really cool little world within the vast universe of the Internet.

But only a privileged dude like moi could ever find the idea of underground life truly exciting -- or something that would make for a bearable way of life.

This massive journalistic photo project shows the literal underground life of New Yorkers in Queens who sweep our floors, clean our offices and homes, serve and deliver us our food, stock our shelves, and do all the brutal, nasty, boring work that most of us New Yorkers won't and don't have to do. They live in basements and basement apartments -- many of them illegal conversions -- often in bunks or with roommates. They have very little personal room or light, these places smell, and these underground lives are, to put it simply, rough. This is whole other city beneath our feet, a world most of us know nothing about but that keeps our city humming. 

But these folks, most of them immigrants (legal or not), persevere and keep working each day, sending money home, believing that better days for them and their families are ahead of them, that one day they will be able to emerge from this underground life and into the light of the good life. 

They're not oppressed -- they're optimistic. They don't complain -- they just work. 

And they are, truly, the best kinds of New Yorkers we have.

The Velvet Underground - Sweet Jane Live 1970

Anyway, there's some great news today for us Velvets fans: the release of a new boxed set called "The Velvet Underground Singles 1966-1969."

Known for their dark, offbeat music that had created a deep if not huge fan base, the Velvets recorded a bunch of singles during this time that they hoped would meet with some commercial success. None did, but the Velvets' impact went far beyond merely charting the tops: almost every great band and singer of the last forty years was influenced by them (think U2, New York Dolls, REM, David Bowie, Talking Heads, The Stipes, and on and on). It's often been said, "A lot of people didn't buy a Velvet Underground album but everyone who did started a rock'n'roll band."

One of their greatest songs was "Sweet Jane." I'm not sure if it's on this new boxed set but, if not, you can find it on their last album Loaded as well as other boxed sets. This version is from the Velvets' legendary run at Max's Kansas City here in NYC in 1970. This was just before they broke up. This song has been covered by man bands over the decades, most famously by the Cowboy Junkies (it was featured in the movie Natural Born Killers in 1994). But nothing, and I mean nothing, tops hearing the Velvet Underground do it live before an audience -- it's everything that makes this band and rock'n'roll great.

Remembering Sterling Morrison

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.

And in the Velvet Underground, my personal favorite band, it was Sterling Morrison.

So who was he? 

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.  

The Velvet Underground @ Max's Kansas City @ 50

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. 

Haunted Words

The definition of something being "haunted" means it's been "frequented by a ghost." What's a ghost? An apparition, a nebulous image of something or someone that used to exist, used to live, appears to still exist but is in fact dead.

In some ways, every word that has ever been written is a ghost -- each word is an imprint of someone's mind, someone's thought at the time it was written. The words might have been written a long time ago, the thought long dissipated, the writer might long be dead, but their words still live, the thought they were recording at the time still provoke.

The written word haunts us all.

Think about it. The phrase "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" still gives me chills even though its author has been dead for nearly a century. 

This idea of words being ghosts occurred to me recently when I read about a few perfect examples of their haunting power. 

As I wrote last summer, Quentin Tarantino was preparing a movie about an underground 1970s movie critic that sounded intriguing. I called the post The Romance of the Underground Writer and I expounded on the idea of writers (much like myself) whose words are read by few people but are beloved by those who do read them. Sadly it appears now that Quentin has dropped this movie and won't make it so this underground writer will truly remain underground. This unmade movie, like the writer and his words that it was about, will remain forever a ghost.  

Then there's a couple of Village Voice articles about music writers and their ghostly power.

Lester Bangs was a legendary rock critic who became nearly as famous as the singers and bands he reviewed. He was so influential and admired that Philip Seymour Hoffman played him in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. But even as brilliant as Lester was, he could get it wrong sometimes. In 1980, Lester wrote a long commentary about how the Rolling Stones 1978 album Some Girls wasn't that good and that, after almost two decades together, perhaps the Stones should break up. 

Just to give you an idea of how wrong Lester was, Some Girls contains, amongst other songs, "Beast of Burden" and "Shattered", brilliant, classic songs. And, of course, 44 years after this article was written, the Stones are still together, selling out shows. Even though Lester Bangs has been dead for more than 40 years, these words from this review still haunt him, even if his overall reputation remains deservedly undiminished.  

Another writer whose gone but whose words having staying power was and is Greg Tate. Another rock critic, he wrote about (mostly) African-American music and culture, and was one of the first critics to write about rap music seriously. He was so respected that he even became a professor at Columbia University.

Sadly Tate died in 2021 but he was just given a posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize and his words still inspire other writers and creative people to this day. He's a ghost who still makes our culture more alive.

Little Steven's Underground Garage

Driving home last night we tuned in a radio show that I haven't heard for a while: Little Steven's Underground Garage on Q104.3.

Little Steven is Steven Van Zandt who was a member of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band as well as an important songwriter and producer. Of course, he's probably best known for playing the mobster Silvio Dante on The Sopranos. Although he's made a whole career out of being the sidekick to famous guys from Jersey, on the Underground Garage, Little Steven is the absolute star.

This is an eclectic music show and nostalgia trip for anyone who loves or remembers popular music from the 1950s to 1970s. Although it's mostly a rock show, Little Steven also plays various offbeat songs and medleys. The first time I heard the show he played "Do the Mouse" by Soupy Sales and last night he played a bizarre yet hilarious version of Frank Sinatra singing Simon and Garfunkel's "Mrs. Robinson." Most of the songs he plays, however, are by bands I've never heard of but wish I had.

What's great about this show is you get the feeling that you're listening to a guy with the world's biggest, coolest music collection and with an encyclopedic knowledge about music. Little Steven doesn't talk much on the show but, when he does, he's hilarious. On last night's show, he talked about the character Frank Sinatra played named Tony Rome. He was, according to Little Steven, even cooler than James Bond because, instead of sleeping with lots of women, he turned them all down!

The Underground Garage is on Q104.3 every Sunday night from 10 to 12. It's one of the few interesting music shows left in NYC and a great cure to the Sunday night blues.

New York City Man: A Lou Reed Tribute

Lou Reed is dead.

After 71 years of agitation, defying expectations, spitting in the face of politeness and conformity, producing music that influenced musicians who went on to influence other musicians, Lou Reed did something rather conventional -- he died. But even that he did in a cool way -- on his Twitter page, he left a simple message and image: The Door.
 

Show's over. He's outta here.

The easy way to sum up Lou Reed's legacy is to rattle off the number of good, great, and holy songs that he composed and performed -- both with the Velvet Underground and as a solo artist -- over his decades-long career: "Sunday Morning", "All Tomorrow's Parties", "I'll Be Your Mirror", "Venus in Furs", "Pale Blue Eyes", "Sweet Jane", "Rock'n'Roll", "Perfect Day", "Walk on the Wild Side", "Sally Can't Dance", "Dirty Boulevard" -- the list is endless, and I know I've forgotten a couple dozen or two.

Most of these songs weren't hits in their day but people still listen to them and re-discover them all the time. I remember back in college in the 1990s, when I discovered his music, being amazed at how fresh sounding it was -- and most of it was over thirty-years old.

He did things with music and lyrics that no one else did -- and few have dared to do since.

"Heroin" is about the experience of doing heroin. That's it. Nothing more. It's just about what it's like shooting up and how "it makes me feel like I'm a man." And, original that he was, Lou Reed used words like "nullify ("nullify my life") in the lyrics. How brilliant -- and risky -- to write a nearly 7-minute song about doing drugs while using highfalutin words to boot.

Another song isn't really a song at all. Called "The Gift", it's a bizarre short-story set to music about a young man who literally ships himself in the mail to his girlfriend. Its ending is, to say the least, interesting.

Lou Reed only had one Top 40 hit in his lifetime -- "Walk on the Wide Side -- and it's probably the only Top 40 song ever about transvestites and to talk literally about "giving head."

And when he formed the Velvet Underground in the mid-sixties, Lou Reed and his band mates did something that few bands in the hyper-macho, testosterone-drenched, girl-chasing, boys club of rock'n'roll had ever done, then or since -- they hired a woman, Maureen "Mo" Tucker, to be the drummer.   

Lou Reed endlessly innovated. He released a two-album deal called "Metal Machine Music" that was just guitar feedback. No one, not even Reed, has ever listened to all of it but it was original, to say the least. Late in his career, Reed produced an album called "The Raven" based on the poems of Edgar Allan Poe. And he collaborated with everyone from David Bowie to Suzanne Vega to Metallica.

His influence is unbelievable. U2 and REM and many more have all claimed Lou Reed as an inspiration and have covered his songs. As the tributes poured in after his death, everyone from Nikki Six to LL Cool J to Weezer to Miley Cyrus hailed him. By being a musical iconoclast, by ignoring the mainstream and pursuing his own unique vision, Lou Reed's appeal became universal.

It's often said that not many people bought a Velvet Underground album but those who did all started bands. 

Yet Lou Reed's influence went beyond the musical. He was a revolutionary -- literally. The playwright Vaclev Havel was a huge VU fan who found freedom and a call to dissent in the music during the age of Communist oppression. Havel would eventually work to overthrow Communism in Eastern Europe and, when he became president of the Czech Republic in the 1990s, he called it the Velvet Revolution. (The 2006 play Rock'n'Roll by Tom Stoppard is largely about this.) 

Even the Vatican -- the  Vatican! that 2000 year old institution of conformity! -- Tweeted out a tribute to Lou Reed. God, apparently, is a fan, and now He has him all to himself.      

Of course, Lou Reed wasn't just a great musician -- he was also a great New Yorker. Like Woody Allen, he was one the artistic geniuses of this city, its spirit infusing his music. One of his great albums is simply called "New York", an album dedicated to the crazy life of his beloved town. One of his best late career songs is the jazzy tune "New York City Man", another is the soulful "Coney Island Baby", and many of his songs are peppered with illusions to the city -- particularly St Marks Place (like in "Sally Can't Dance"). If Woody Allen's New York is a city of museums, beautiful apartments, fancy restaurants, old movie houses, and yuppies, Lou Reed's New York is a city of the downtown scene and the underground (velvet and otherwise), of dive bars and back alleys, parties that go on all night in cheap apartments, kinky sex and misunderstood artists (and kinky sex with misunderstood artists), addiction and redemption, loving everything in life except the bourgeois. His New York City was the naughty place that years of gentrification have been washing clean but that people like us will never forget, thanks to Lou Reed.  

If you've read this blog over the years, you know how much I loved Lou Reed's music. This blog, for better or worse, wouldn't exist without him. If you like this blog, credit him; if you hate it, blame him. As I try to do in each post, I try to capture that spirit and psyche of NYC on this blog, and Lou Reed was doing that in music (and, of course, doing it WAY better) decades earlier. 

So now Lou Reed is gone and our city is a little poorer for it. But we won't forget him and his legacy is enduring. 

Farewell, bard of New York. As you take your last walk on the wide, may your trail be lined with heavenly wine and roses, into an eternal perfect day.  

Or as Lou Reed once was sang, "I'm a New York City man, blink your eyes and I'll be gone ..."