One of my favorite bands from the 70's british punk explosion are The Vibrators and I am please to find out that they are making a rare appearance at the Bell House this Saturday. Openers are New York's own The Waldos featuring Walter Lure formerly of The Heartbreakers. Also playing are The 45 Adaptors.
The fab Mr. Lee will be spinning the tunes starting at 9pm in the front lounge and in between all this fine live music all evening long.
Doors open at 10:30, I like that! Tickets are 12 bucks...a bargain!!!!!!
Still recovering from the fantabulous New Bomb Turks reunion show at the Bell House last Saturday. The heat has F.I.B unable to describe the sheer magnitude of their amazingness, so watch the video below as words are really not necessary!
Also. Ever get your stomach bit after a show at a club? This fellow did. Read all about that and mo' here.
F.I.B actually goes to things she pimps! This time I went to Punk Island on Governor's Island. I saw the few bands I knew. Negative Approach. The singer looks like the scariest boss you ever had in an office at this point and his voice is even scarier. DOA, from Vancouver were A-M-A-Z-I=N=G, the best punk bass playing since Dee Dee Ramone. CLASSIC! Newer bands were the Black Out Shoppers and another band I really dug called Bucket Flush, you would think out of over the 100 bands I could come up with more but half the time I didn't know who I as seeing, people are saving paper and not printing anything these days, if I had a quarter for each person asking me "what band is this?" or "where is stage ?" I would be a gizzillionare. I just have to say, in my day they didn't provide picnic tables and free peaceful islands!! We were sweating on the streets and in the abandoned buildings of the lower east side..i feel a bit like Rodney Dangerfield! Anyway the kids were cute with the mohawks and such. Not a hipster in sight! Yee Haw!
The whole scene was a bit bizarre. Picture all these punk people walking around, who, at this point are totally outcasts and freaks, at least in NY. Perhaps they are more common in the suburbs, more to rebel against out there, more boredom, I imagine, then mix in the people coming to the island to enjoy the history and the greenery but having to put up with 100s of bands playing all over the island. It was bit surreal to hear the anger of all these bands echoing allover the island. I found myself giggling many times and wondering if I was dreaming...
And probably some old ones too, like F.I.B, who only knows about 3 bands out of the over 100 (Negative Approach, DOA, Mental Abuse)and is intrigued by a band named "Yankee Doodle Blitzkreig". The whole snarling lot are playing between ten and five on Sunday. How crazy is that? Something like 17 stages scattered around the island. And it's ALL FREE BABY! Even the boat ride, which takes all of five minutes. There is gonna be punk art there too!
Click here for the full schedule of bands and info about ferries and wotnot.
FIB's own d.i.y fanzine from the 80's. Some things never change.
Back in December, William Wrigley and I made a documentary called "D.I.Y Publishing: Zines and Comics". It was a project for a class called "Visual Culture" at Brooklyn College (F.I.B starts the final leg of the Art Ed. graduate program there on Monday!) Basically we had to select a "sub-culture" and document it. F.I.B used be very much into zines during her punk rock youth and had one of her own called Rat Report. I suppose that's why blogging was a natural transition. And wouldn't you know it, we discuss the differences between zine culture and blogging when we visit the zine library at ABC No Rio on the lower east side! We also visited the King Con Comic Convention at the Brooklyn Lyceum and the House of 12 Comic Jam in Manhattan. It was a great experience and this film just scratchs the surface on the world of independent publishing. Anyway it is just under 20 minutes long and we had to show it in two parts as youtube has time constraints. Enjoy!
Wanna do something interesting and witness some historical legends? Show your solidarity! Dezerter are apparantly the Clash of eastern Europe, I have been listening to some of their tunes and I can feel the similarities except these guys REALLY were working for the Clampdown!
From the Rebel Waltz Festival's description:
Legendary Polish hardcore punks DEZERTER are coming to the United States for the 1st time in nearly three decades. The band - who began operations in 1981 as SS20 - remain one of Poland's most well-regarded underground punk bands and one of the few non-English-speaking groups to actually attain international notoriety outside of Eastern Europe. Their extensive catalogue shows the band only improving on their sound over the years, as clearly evidenced by 2004's politically-charged, pile-driving masterpiece, Nielegalna Zakojca Czasu (Illegal Time Killer, Metal Mind records). If you like bands like early-Killing Joke, Dead Kennedys, DOA, Subhumans (both, UK & Candian), The Clash, the Effigies and early No Means No, these guys are in THAT league.
This tour was organized by the Polish Cultural Institute and Polskie radio and are mainly being promoted to the Polish communities in the New York, New Jersey and Chicago areas. Please spread the word!
Please refer to the following information for more details:
Friday November 6, 2009 Europa Nightclub 98 Meserole Ave Brooklyn, NY 11222 (718) 383-5723 Club Europa $30.00 admission www.ticketweb.com w/Projektor Apteka, Prime Prophecy, Abstrakcja & DJ Bubell (Polskie Radio)
REBEL WALTZ FESTIVAL: UNDERGROUND MUSIC FROM BEHIND THE IRON CURTAIN This event is jointly organized by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York) Saturday November 7, 2009 Le Poisson Rouge 158 Bleeker Street New York, NY 10013 Le Poisson Rouge $15.00 admission www.brownpapertickets.com w/Kontroll Csoport (Hungarian 80s post punk) & Pankriti (77-era Yugo punk rock)Extremely Hungary
I a am week late on letting you know that, if you are unaware, non profit art spot, ABC No Rio is preparing for the demise of it's existing structure. I attended the wake for the building last week where I witnessed the cast canvas shroud of this lower east side tenement being ceremonially removed and dropped into a waiting casket. The wake ensued in the gallery space after a procession around the neighborhood.
Check out an exhibit or a performance now before you say "I should of.." and the before the building is gone or even better! DONATE some money towards their new GREEN building designed by architect Paul Castrucci. There are different ways to donate, you can even get yourself some hand screened holiday cards or a one of a limited edition pinhole camera print of the building by photographer, Michael Bayard.
LOUD FAST RULES! So F.I.B is switching gears now from the theater to an amazing punk rock show (for some!) taking place at the soon to be closed down as of January 2009 Knitting Factory in money makin’ Manhattan. I ‘ve mentioned before that F.I.B was a “hardcore kid” in the 80’s before discovering her love for 60’s garage rock but I’ll mention it again. New York City in the early to mid 80’s had a thriving largely undocumented punk rock music scene largely run by mostly teenagers. Most were from the Lower East Side and Queens. This is the scene that Beastie Boys spawned out of… Anyways…there was a club on Avenue A and 7th Street in the East Village called the A-7 club that was the epicenter of the scene, it closed in 1983, I actually never went there but I did go to it’s second incarnation in an abandoned building at the corner of 2nd Avenue and Houston Street which probably closed in 1983 as well! It actually collapsed a few years ago. Anyway this music came out of the Reagan era and this show is billed as “A tribute to the A-7 Club”.
From the shows MySpace page:CONFIRMED BANDS INCLUDE:*76% Uncertain (paying tribute to CIA &; Reflex from Pain)*The Abused*Adam 12*Antidote (w/Nunzio on guitar &; Drew Stone on vox)*Borscht*Butch Lust &; Hypocrites*Armed Citizens**Disgrace (feat. Butch Lust, Steve Wishnia from False Prophets &; Dave Manzullo from UV)*Fed Up!*False Prophets*Fatal Rage*Payload! (feat. John Sox from the FU's doing FU’s &; Straw Dogs)*Ism*Jerry's Kids*Major Conflict*Modern Clix*Nihilistics*Rapid Deployment*Reagan Youth*Sexual Suicide (feat. Ex-Anti-Christ Newsboys/Trenchcoat Army)*SUX (feat. Jack and Paul from AOD)*The Oppressed NYC [1980 Queens punks; 1st and last ever gig!]*Ultra Violence*Urban Waste (feat. Johnny Waste, John Dancey &; Kenny Ahrens)*US Chaos*Blackout Shoppers*Violent Society*Government Warning*Waste Management*Reason to Fight*Cardiac Arrest*Virus NYC (feat James Kontra)*Lost Generation*Psycho (from Boston)* MORE TO COME! STAY TUNED...
Check out some of these excellent photos by photographer Drew Carolin to get an idea of just how young the scene was. Navigate your way to “matinee”, he took a lot of photos of “the kids” back in the day. FIB is in none of these photos but many friends are!
Show is Saturday December 6th, doors open at 6:30, 3 floors of bands Knitting Factory is located at 74 Leonard Street, NYC.
I believe the reason this blog has been focusing on the past more than usual is because F.I.B is moving out of it's headquarters. After months of fighting my landlord against a "temporary relocation" (we all know where that leads these days - permanently relocated!) I'm moving seconds away from my current digs, just up the stairs! Despite my 12 step move I still have to pack and that involves going through 14 years of accumulation. I've mentioned before that F.I.B once had a zine and how I saw blogging as sort of extension of zine culture. My zine was completely handwritten and illustrated, as that was the norm in the pre-computer 80's. I have bins and bins full of great old NYC fanzines, amongst them I found a letter dated 1986 with an invitation to an event in Park Slope at a place called "The Living Art Space" which was located on 5th Avenue at 11th Street in Brooklyn. Performers that evening were David Huberman (creator of the INSOMINIACS poetry group), BUG, Robert Parody and get this TULI KUPFERBERG from the Fugs.
As I lived in Queens at that time and rarely step foot in Brooklyn except to go to Coney Island I did not attend. I had an experience in Park Slope as a teen going to a party where a dog appeared out of nowhere flung from a roof. SPLAT wasn't the word, kept me out of Park Slope for a while. Park Slope was tough at one time and kids knew when other kids weren't from their neighborhood, very territorial and Warriors like!This is what the "Living Art Space" is now. Photo quality bad I know but you get the idea. It's across from Timboo's. If ANYBODY out there has ever gone to this place, I would LOVE to hear about it!
Dating myself here as I tend to do but this was also recently unearthed in my closet. Johnny Lydon aka Rotten glaring at me at Danceteria when I went to see Brian Brain (Martin Atkins) in my early underage nightclubbing days. Martin Atkins was the drummer for Johnny's band P.I.L which had broken up by this time. This was probrably taken in 1983. Yeah F.I.B's no spring chicken (but how come I still feel like one?) Did you know that P.I.L played at the club The Brookyn Zoo (in Sheepshead Bay!) with JAMES BROWN?!! YES it's true! Music was so mixed up back then -such good times. I probably took this with a disc camera, anybody remember those?! He did ask me if "i had a fag?" later but I just giggled. Ah youth!
I am still tight with my girl posse from high school days and we got together friday night to see Carbon/Silicon at Irving Plaza. Carbon/Silicon is Mick Jones from the Clash's latest band. D,M & I pretty much ALWAYS get together when anything Clash related is happening and we are beginning to become like those middle aged women that follow Tom Jones around! I actually met D & M because I was wearing a Clash button back when everybody else was either into disco or bands like Styx, Journey or REO Speedwagon. (barf!) This girl (D) walked up to me in the MASSIVELY crowded high school hallway and said "you like the Clash?!" and I was like, "yeah" and then she told me they had an extra ticket to see them at Bonds International Casino in Times Square and we've been friends ever since. The Clash were playing a two-week residency there with matinees on Saturday for the underagers like us. I think the tickets were only 5 bucks! That show actually got cancelled due to overselling of tickets and "riots", which were highly exaggerated in the press and from the way I saw it and were made worse by the cops on horseback charging into the kids, go figure! It was a bit crazy. Anyway we went back again the next weekend and finally saw them, it was so amazing to me to be surrounded by kids my age from all over the city who were into the same stuff I was. I didn't feel like a misfit for once. I found my people!!! AND the Clash was EVERYTHING we imagined them to be. That show was the first of many that we went to together, not only did we see the Clash many times but we also discovered the NYC underground and the lower east side punk hardcore punk scene. Also much later in life I actually got to meet Joe Strummer and again he was exactly how I always imagined. He wanted to know where everyone lived, what we did for a living, normal stuff like that, here was a rock star actually INTERESTED in people! I was just about to leave NYC to move to San Francisco and he said, "WHY? New York is where it's at, you'll see." It's true! He said that to me! and then he kissed me. yup!
So anyway, Carbon/Silicon were surprisingly great. I really didn't expect much except to enjoy seeing my old friends. One surprise was that Tony James from Gen X was also in the band. If you don't know Mick Jones, he was the one that wrote and sang "Lost in the Supermarket" and one of my favorite soppy sentimental rock ballads "Stay Free". If you know that voice and guitar style you have a good idea what the show last night sounded like. It sounded like that but with of more of an easy "hey let's have a good time tonight" kind of vibe. The band just seemed so damned happy to be there as was the crowd. I looked around me and wondered, are all these middle age men the dreamy punk rock boys that were at the Bond's matinee show? I was experiencing some serious flashbacks!
The video above is them doing a song which probably is called "The Truth" and was the most Clash sounding song that evening. I loved all their other material but this is the only video that I was able to capture on my cheap camera. Jones also had another great band that I loved called Big Audio Dynamite and there were shades of them in this band as well. I believe that this band holds many of the same beliefs of the Clash as many of their songs have a sort of socialist "for the people" type of view. Y'know they're for the little guy, the underdog, the moms & pops, the average Joe, which made the night ultra surreal when I saw the Toll Brother's VP for Development David Von Spreckelsen at the front of the stage! Yup, it was him. This girl has been to one too many community meetings regarding the Toll Brothers and never forgets a face. I had to do about 5 double takes. I guess he wasn't always a corporate tool, and if he wasn't, it's too bad that he sold out just soooo badly! He needs to apply "the truth" to the reality of building condos on a toxic swamp.
In another note on how everything in my life is interconnected these days, today I had to take an exam as I may be going to grad school to get my art teaching certification. The topic of the essay? "The pros and cons of regulations and limitations on construction and development, examine each side and state your opinion" I kid you not. Needless to say it was a no brainer and I think I aced it!
I know I am late to discover this but I am happy I did. NYC Bloggers is a fab resource to find other blogs throughout the five boroughs. Brooklyn isn’t the only place on earth y’know! The best feature of this site is that you can click on any stop on any subway line and see who is blogging in that area.
The first issue of my zine was called “Rat Report”. I had difficulty sticking to a plan as I do today as the second issue was called “Bat Report” ”. All illustrations were done by moi. It was in the days before computer so it was handwritten with a thin sharpie and photocopied at my job. At the time I was working as a textile designer (at the tender age of 20!)for a very mainstream design house in the garment district. People always used to comment to me that I always seemed so intensely involved in my work. Meanwhile I was doing my zine! It was a free zine, which I would hand out at CBGB’s and also leave it at the infamous East Village zine store See Hear. In return I would get free admission to shows and free demo tapes and records from bands for a mention. I was satisfied with that.
Check out this page where I (I know it’s hard to read!) where I compare and contrast the changes in the punk scene. I complain that all the good shows are now in the suburbs and “commercialism is ruining the scene.” I have not changed that much (although now I listen to The Hollies rather than The Cromags!) Whether it’s commercialism or the development of luxury condos, it still makes me mad!
Anyway check out . NYC Bloggers and also the great Chelsea Hotel Blog. The Chelsea Hotel is in the midst of a corporate takeover. This blog covers it all in dignified Chelsea Hotel style. They are fighting the good fight against our city’s current trend of destroying anything remotely bohemian so please read it.
Man, am I glad I didn’t go to that drumming thing over at Brooklyn Bridge Park yesterday! Sounded like it turned out to be an over crowded nightmare. It was sort of fascinating to me that the Boredoms had managed to attract such a crowd. Was it the Boredoms or the hype of the importance of the date 7/7/07? OK I just answered my own question, clearly it was the latter….What did we do on 6/6/06? Does anybody remember?! On 7/7/07 I could NOT get out of bed or out of my house, it must have been the centrifugal force of the sun telling me to stay home and meditate or simply exhaustion. So, after the sun set I ventured out and it was quite a lovely evening.
A friend was in town from LA and wanted to meet at the Motor City Bar on Ludlow Street in Manhattan. I ventured out into the 7/7/07 night to join Margie aka Vena Virago and CalmX (long time East Village resident and artist).Well, we lasted about 10 minutes before fleeing. The saturday night bar scene on Ludlow Street is pretty soulless. The music at Motor City was loud yet you still couldn’t hear it. SO the three of us old timers ended up at the Mars Bar, one of the or shall I say THE ONLY old school cheap punk rock NYC bar left. It is now surrounded by what else? Luxury condos! The ugliest tall tower glass and metal kind with Whole Foods just a hop skip and a jump away. The Marz is still doling out the cheap drinks (2 really strong vodka drinks and one beer = $11.00)has ranting bartenders, (this evenings hostess started complaining at the top of her lungs when someone put some jazz type music on…’WHO PUT THIS SH*T! ON!!” Of course she intercepted it and put on what SHE wanted to hear, “Too many creeps’ by the Bush Tetras) and a cast of regulars right out of “Midnight Cowboy” mixed in with an eclectic bunch of others. There is a lot of coming and going at the Marz Bar (it is a total “I’m waiting for my man’ bar, IF you know what I mean) but it's sort of a punk rock "Cheers" for all the "black sheeps" of the family to feel at home. I salute you Marz Bar, long may you continue to be a zit on the airbrushed cityscape that our town has become. You are REAL.
One of my favorite bands from the 70's british punk explosion are The Vibrators and I am please to find out that they are making a rare appearance at the Bell House this Saturday. Openers are New York's own The Waldos featuring Walter Lure formerly of The Heartbreakers. Also playing are The 45 Adaptors.
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