NYHC (then) and NYC (now)

This week my tour schedule drew me back to the land of my birth, my cradle of consciousness, my city-as-muse, New York City. I'm back here at least once a year, and whenever I return to NYC I reminisce a bit, recalling my youth and the New York Hardcore scene (NYHC) of the early '80s. So I thought I'd take you on a little photo tour of NYC (using my camera's phone; sorry for the poor photo quality), and compare NY now to my NYHC scene then. laced with a few stops to recall my teen years as well, also spend in the East Village.

I began by getting off the IRT #1 subway in Greenwich Village, and walking down Christopher Street to Washington Square Park.

Washington Square was once the site of a marshy swamp, and later of a pauper's cemetery. In the days of the Revolution it was used by George Washington as a troop training area, and that's how it got its name. The fountain, above, was built uptown on 59th street, but moved here in the 1870s. Until 1964 the park was simply the arch and the fountain, and Fifth Avenue traffic rambled around it (below). The rest of the park was built in '64. Bob Dylan, Peter Paul and Mary, and Rambling Jack Elliot all played music and sang there in the '60s.

Washington Square before 1964, historic pic from this site.

Being a hot summer day, the fountain is watery and wet, and kids and teens splash around in it. In the fall, winter and spring, the fountain is dry, and becomes a hang-out for skate boarders and hacky sack players. In '82, a lot of Punks would skate there.

I learned to play Bluegrass by playing around the Square with some of the best NY musicians, especially Gene Tambor of the Minetta Creek Bluegrass band. Gene and I played from about '76 through the early '80s in a band called the New York Frets. He taught me nearly everything I know about performing. We would play on the streets of Greenwich Village, either in front of the wrought iron fence around the NYU chapel on MacDougal, or near his house on Bleecker St. There were a lot of weird things going on when one busked in those days. Once while we were playing, a guy began dancing. He took off his shoes and danced barefoot. Then he took off his shirt and danced bare-chested. Then he took off his pants, and danced naked. That wasn't the weirdest part. He then walked away, leaving his clothes in a neat pile in front of the band. (I couldn't make this stuff up...).

Of course people still busk in the Square. Most of it is crappy, but sometimes you hear someone really good. Today was a really-good day. I ran into some of my New Orleans busking buddies just outside the fountain area. Lyle (who plays with me in Odd's Bodkin while in New Orleans), Daniel and Jordan do exactly what I do every year, leave NOLA to tour up north. It was just happenstance that we all ended up in NYC today.

Jordan is playing a musical saw, and she's really good at it. Jason Mankey, who was walking around NYC with me for some of today, asked me "how does one learn to play a musical saw?" I told him that, while I imagine there are Youtube videos about it, one just watches other saw players and learns.

Before leaving Washington Square, I had to walk by 27 Washington Square North...

If you have read my poetry, you know that I've written a ton of poems about a girl named Kate. My CD Little Birds Of Desire is also laced with songs about this mystery girl: Compact, Bonny Kate, and Love Letter To NY are all about her. My reluctant muse Kate grew up right here, on the corner of Washington Square North and MacDougal Street. That was her living room window. The window right above it was that of Luscious Jackson and Moppy Skuds alum Jill Cunniff. The two girls were somewhat inseparable in '81 and '82. My crush on Kate was unrequited, I'm sorry to say. She ended up dating Cro Mags lead screamer/bassist Harley Flannegan, much to my depression and sorrow. Of course, to her credit, I was kind of a jerk in '81.

Jill Cunniff, Luscious Jackson alum, in '82. This was how most of the Hardcore girls looked and dressed, sort of Siouxie Sioux inspired bag-lady chic. Photo by legendary Punk music producer Dave Parsons.

Reluctantly moving on from 27 WSN, I headed down Washington Square North to Astor Place/Cooper Square, home of the Cube. Here are two views of the sculpture that sits at the center of Astor place.

The cube (actually titled The Alamo  and created by sculptor Tony Rosenthal in 1967) is a popular tourist site, and if you push it pretty hard it rotates on its axis, a favorite pastime of drunk NYU students. It's also a popular skateboarding hangout, and in '82 there were always a dozen or so skaters tricking around the thing.

Directly across from the Cube is Cooper Union college, one of the best design schools in America. In '82 Punks used to hold a makeshift flea market outside Cooper Union. Dave Parsons, of Rat Cage Records, would sell Punk records off a blanket on the sidewalk, and Punks would sell their old clothes, belts, and records, books and magazines on the sidewalk.

Today there were two kind of normal-looking girls spare-changing there. (I'm used to spare changers looking like, well, spare changers. Usually Crusties...)

Their sign reads "out of work; boss was a jerk." A sign of the times? When I walked by later there were signs for a poet who would write a poem on demand (a common busking career in NOLA), but I never did see the poet.

I walked down to Saint Marks Place, which in '81 was the hub of NYHC. Here is a pic of Saint Marks in '81, courtesy of Even Worse bass player Rebecca Korbet-Wootton (in center on stairs):

And here's the same street today. The stoop pictured above is just to the left of the Saint Marks Hotel and the Trash and Vaudeville shop (picture below), which was one of the first Punk stores on Saint Marks Place.

Upstairs is Vaudeville, and downstairs is Trash (see below). It was and is an awesome clothing shop, though a bit pricey. Still, if you visit Saint Marks Place, you ought to stop in there. The girl who worked at Trash and Vaudeville in the late 70s was named Angel. She was an early Punk rocker, skinny to the point of emaciated and pretty hyper. She used to rehearse her Punk band in the shop. The first time I ever shopped at Vaudeville Angel made fun of me because I was using my mom's credit card (hey, I was 15!). We became friends after that.

Here's the downstairs shop, Trash:

 The building nest to Trash, the Saint Marks Hotel, is a landmark building, and looms large in the Punk legend. Before the early '70s the building had housed the gay baths. I remember passing the baths in '68 and '69 on my way to shows at the Fillmore East. By the time I moved to the East Village in '72 it had become the hotel. Many Punk notables lived there at one time or another, including Spacely/Gringo, a weird crustie Punk who was often called the "Mayor Of Saint Marks Place." Someone did an indie film about him in around '82, and to promote it they painted a huge billboard of his face over Saint Marks and Third. While there is a legendary Punk presence there, in '82 the Saint Marks Hotel was largely populated by druggies and hookers. There was this one very cute but very strung out little blond hooker with asymmetrical eyes who always asked me if I wanted "a date." Whatever my morality may have been in '82, I never had any money. Poor asymmetrical eyes hooker... Third Ave and Ninth Street was a hooker area then, as was Second and Tenth, so many girls who made a living that way lived in the hotel. Most of the girls were pretty enough (as opposed to street girls since Craig's List made it easy for attractive addicts to hook-from-home). The East Village was pretty squalid back then.  Anyway, quite a few of my NYHC friends resided in the Hotel on and off.

Just down the street from the hotel is the Grass Roots Tavern, a Saint Marks landmark.

When I first returned to NYC after my couple of years in college up at New Paltz, I was looking for the Punk scene. My college friend and Punk princess Nicole hung around the Grassroots, and it was there I first met Bobby Bratz, one of my best friends in the NYHC scene. Nicole and I used to drink there (yes, I used to drink) with my high-school-GF-turned-Punk-buddie Alice.

Nicole died in the early '90s (a lot of my friends died...I'm the only one who isn't either dead or famous these days). Alice speaks to me on occasion.

Moving down Saint Marks, we come to the corner of Saint Marks and Second:

This used to be the Saint Marks Theater. In '73 and '74, you could see three movies there for a dollar (my first date with Alice was seeing Woodstock and the Jimi Hendrix movie at that theater. She left in the middle of the date). I saw a lot of art films there, and by '81 they used to do a midnight show of Clockwork Orange, a Hardcore fave. We would all go on Saturday night, then proceed en masse to A7 (I'll be getting to that in a few moments). 

Kitty corner across Second Ave is the Orpheum Theater. Stomp has been playing there for as long as I've been around the East Village, maybe since '73. I'm not kidding. This is one thing about the Village that never seems to change.

Moving a few yards down Saint Marks, we come to number 74. My teen-aged home!

Today this is the Kaplan House; when I lived here it was the Stuyvesant Residence Home. Long story which perhaps I'll tell one day... anyway I lived here form around '72-76. 

Next door at 78, there lived, in '73, two women who had been former Playboy Bunnies. One had a teen daughter, Kristen if memory serves, who played guitar, so we became buddies. Mom and her friends would throw parties on the roof, and invite the teenaged boys from Stuyvesant residence. Then the women would be topless or nude at the parties. The '70s were a fun era... Kristen's mom would date a lot of the teen boys and move them in when they hit 21 and had to leave the residence home (not me...I was not so lucky. I simply moved in with my girlfriend in the Vassar college dorms).

When you grow up in the squalor and chaos that is the East Village, you really don't know anything else. Now, looking back at my teen years, I often comment to myself "wow, I grew up amidst squalor and chaos!"  It's truly not most peoples' teen experience. I really need to write my memoirs someday...

Across the street from Stuyvesant Residence is the Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

In '81, this Ukrainian bar didn't stand much on legal drinking ages (in the Ukraine there is no legal age limit), so they would serve anyone who could pay. The little Punk girls all drank there, and not one of them was 18 just yet. Next door is Stromboli's Pizza, the best pizza in NYC in the '70s and '80s. I went there today and found that they had built tables and chairs (in '81 we stood outside, eating pizza as we leaned against parked cars), and that the pizza had become a bit mediocre... yet still better than anything outside of NYC and Jersey.

Speaking of food, down First Avenue at 11th Street we come to Veniero's Cafe, the BEST Italian pastry cafe in America!! Really.

Since 1894, this place has served delicious Italian pastries. In '81, the front room staff was all Italian school girls, and the dining room staff was all tall, blond Ukrainian girls.Today I was waited on by a young man of nondescript ethnicity, who served me this:

The iced cappuccino  is iced with coffee flavor gelato ice cream. OMG!!! It's like a cappuccino milkshake. 

Yes, that is a wall of chocolate cake.It extends across the length of the front room, maybe 20 feet. The next case is cheesecakes of all descriptions. Then come the fruit cakes.

Just down twelfth street is my old tenement apartment, where I lived from '79 to about '83. I write about the place a lot...

E 12 st and Avenue A, my home for many years. It was a hideous ghetto then... now it's beautiful. 

Those trees were not there in '81. 

515 East Twelfth Street. The sew-Top Cleaners was a tax service in '80-83. I lived in the back building. There is a courtyard behind this building, and a smaller building in the back of that. It's a nice arrangement, because the front building muffles the noise from the street, and it's quite peacful back there. 

I lived for most of that time with Carol Louderbach. Here's a picture of Carol and her BF Barbara Taylor from around '83:

Carol is the seated six-foot Punk girl. Barbara says Carol's mom was taking the picture, and they couldn't think of anything picturesque to do, so they shook hands. Barbara and I remain friends. She lives in London now with her teenaged daughter. We can't seem to locate Carol. Punks are currently scouring the Earth looking for her, but to no avail. It's a real life mystery. Carol was dating one of the Bad Brains, so I would often come home to find three Bad Brains asleep on my kitchen floor and one in Carol's bed. The Bad Brains were kind of homeless in '82. They mostly lived in the recording studios at 171 Avenue A, where they, the Beastie Boys, the Stimulators and Reagan Youth would all record. Other days it was my kitchen floor.

After visiting 515, I walked across Tompkins Square Park to what used to be A7. On the way I was stopped by this woman. She knew me, mentioned people I knew, that she had just gotten out of jail (intent to incite, I believe, whatever that is), and that she was so glad to see me. I have no idea who this is...

She does have a Baphomet tattoo across her chest... still, I cannot place her.

From the park you can see the building that used to be the center of Hardcore Punk in '82, A7.

The building that used to house A7, seen from the park. A gaggle of Hardcores would hang out here in the park until the doors to A7 opened, usually between midnight and one AM. Then we'd march over in an orderly fashion. Billy Idol used to drink at A7 every night, as did several of the Plasmatics. Bands that played there included the Even Worse, the Moppy Scuds (some of whose members became Luscious Jackson), the Bad Brains, Reagan Youth, the Beastie Boys, the Cro Mags, and the Young Aborigines. I played there regularly with a band called Mara. Here I am in '82 playing on the stage at A7:

Here is the wall art on the building today:

Joe Strummer, immortalized here, was the founder of the Punk band The Clash, as well as a one-time member of Irish Punk-Folk band The Pogues. He was a Punk legend, though he never played at A7. 

The NYHC scene was a time and place in pop culture that will never happen again: the time and place was just right, and when it faded it was gone. I am forever grateful to have been a small part of that time and place. The death of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch this year brought a lot of us Punks together on Facebook, and we all ended up recalling those days and comparing stories (and scouring the Earth to search for Carol). Those of us who survived the era have moved on with our lives, but I think we all cherish that moment in time and our places in it. I still write about it a lot. I have a novel I'm finishing up set in NY in '81. I haven't been able to find a publisher just yet, but Jason Mankey assures me I ought to self publish the ebook. Your thoughts?

I return to NYC each year to see what has changed and what has stayed the same. I'll be hanging around the NY area for another few days, then I'll be heading back to Ohio for Starwood, and to upstate NY for the festivals at Brushwood.

From squalid, chaotic NYC, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.

How and why I started busking, or Mommas don't let your babies grow up to be buskers!!

One of the things I do here in New Orleans that I simply won't do in most other places is busk. Busk, (busker, busking) are European terms that mean someone who performs on the street for money. “On the street” might really be a street, or maybe a park, pedestrian mall or subway station. I thought I'd talk here about how I began busking, an historical personal retrospective if you will, and then at some later date I'll talk about busking in NOLA.

To set the scene for my busking roots, we must roll the tape back to 1980. I was just out of college when the '80s began, living in the East Village, one of the vilest slums of New York City. I was heavily entrenched in the underground Hardcore Punk scene, and also playing a lot of Bluegrass and Country fiddle (it was something of a double life, like being a secret agent or Anthony Weiner). Before I had gone off to college I had known a lot of regulars in Greenwich Village, including a band called the New York Frets, who did a fair amount of busking around Washington Square. Now as '79 turned to '80, I returned from college and ran into these guys again. And as luck would have it, they needed a fiddler.

The New York Frets was the brainchild of Gene and Truckin', a couple of old hippies who shared a staggering knowledge of Country music and a true knack for street performing. Gene had moved to Greenwich Village in the '60s. He lived in a stylin' apartment over a Korean market, and had a stunning collection of instruments, including the ax he played with the Frets, a vintage Gibson banjo. Truckin' lived in a basement under a restaurant, and played a beat-to-crap Fender bass through a tiny, tinny Pignose battery powered amp. From a distance it sounded a bit like a cross between an injured cat and a broken calliope. Truckin' also had the ability to start a song at any tempo and end up at a speed that could have won races at Bonneville. He was tall and gangly, danced like a scarecrow when he played, and had a huge perpetual grin. You could not help loving him.

Almost everything I know about playing Country music I learned from Gene. Gene was handsome and brooding, and seldom spoke except when he was giving the band instructions or introducing a song. He had several “Gene-isms” as I call them, phrases which he used all the time. When he introduced the song “Different Drum,” written by Monkees guitarist Mike Nesmith, he would always say “this song proves the theory of evolution; it was written by a Monkee.” When he caught any of us eying the tip money collecting in the banjo case, he would paraphrase the Kenny Rogers song “The Gambler” by saying “There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the playin’s done!” And when he felt we had played enough for the evening, he'd say “we've reached the point of diminishing returns,” which was some fiscal formula that I never fully understood. Still, to me Gene was a sage, my guru, my Obi Wan, so when he said it I believed it and that ended it.

Before I joined the New York Frets (if you haven't figured this out, we were named on the model of NYC sports teams: the Mets, the Nets and the Jets. Frets are the fingering lines on a guitar) there had been a revolving door of female singers. That changed in the summer of '80 when Holly showed up. Holly and Gene shacked up, and Holly stuck around for a number of years. She was a good guitarist and an amazing singer, and she knew a ton of Country songs, so Holly was in, and that was that. She also knew how to keep perfect time, and I'm sad to report that this edged Truckin' out.

As for me, while I play several instruments (I was playing bass in Punk and Rockabilly bands at the time) I liked busking on fiddle best. It's easy to carry, it's a novelty to most people, and it gives me the option of stepping back and being a sideman, or stepping out as a front man on any particular song. So I was the fiddler/singer. By the end of '80 Truckin' had pretty much left the band, and for the next several years the lineup was Gene, Holly and myself. Gene's Gene-ism for this (and this might be funny only to musicians) is that the New York Frets were now a three-piece because “Bluegrass is never played past the third Fret.”

In busking, as in real estate and U. S. military aggression, the rule is “Location Location Location!” We would only play in one of three spots: against the wrought iron fence on MacDougal and Third; outside the Korean Market on Bleecker and Sullivan (under Gene and Holly's window), or down a little further on Bleecker between Sullivan and Thompson. Why? Because these spots presented the highest level of non-interference from local business, tourist interaction and visibility (we wouldn't get kicked out, everyone could see us, and people could stop and stand in that area). And tourists there were in plenty! Greenwich Village was a mecca for “bridge and tunnel” people, tourists from New Jersey and Long Island. On a Saturday night in Greenwich Village in 1980 you could hardly move down the sidewalk as it was so mobbed with tourists combing the streets and clubs of the Village looking for “The Next Bob Dylan.” This massive influx of musically misguided tourists made walking down MacDougal street a nightmare, but it was GREAT for our wallets!

The dress of the day: for males, topsiders, cargo pants, and polo shirts; for females, huge baggy tee shirts and skin tight spandex leggings, and hair in claw bangs. Also in the mix were disco hot pants, leisure suits, pants suits, maxi skirts, and wide leg jump suits. The eighties were truly the era that fashion forgot.

We went out nightly and played a mix of Bluegrass and Hippie Country. Most listeners stood for a song, maybe two, tipped, and moved on. Some, driven by either alcohol or poor social skills, had to interact with the band. This meant clapping loudly in a rhythm that was nowhere near the rhythm we were playing (and sometimes nowhere near the rhythm of any known musical form), sometimes stomping wildly, or on those very special occasions, doing a mock “swing your partner” or “do-si-do,” apparently learned from cartoons or from the movements of mating lemurs. In special displays of love, listeners would shout out song titles that were meant to be inclusive of the style we played. “Dueling Banjos” was a favorite shouted request (note that we had only one banjo), as was “She'll Be Coming Round The Mountain.” My favorite, of course, was that old chestnut, “can you guys play The Devil Went Down To Georgia?”

There were times when audience participation became unpredictable. Once a hippie guy was dancing spasmodically to a song. He threw off his shirt, and kept dancing. He then slipped off his shoes, and kept dancing. He then took off his pants, laid them with his shirt and shoes, and...left, walking away naked down crowded Greenwich Village streets. Public nudity while dancing on crowded streets was actually not uncommon, but wait, more on that in a moment.

We busked like this for about three years, and made awesome money doing it. Twenties and even fifties were not uncommon tips, and that was a good deal of money at that time (at least for two hippies and one disheveled Punk boy. Mind you, rent on my squalid one room apartment in the Alphabet Jungle was only $135 a month). But all good things must end. Greenwich Village had gone from being a '60s artists' mecca to being a model of '80s gentrification. Ironically the people who had bought in during the '70s to be in the artsy neighborhood where Henry and June and Bob Dylan had once caroused in artistic squalor, now found themselves living in high end real estate, and did not want smelly buskers devaluing their pristine streets.

To this end, the MacDougal Street Block Association elected a president who would go to any lengths to chase buskers off of their street. He called the police on every busker who set up on the block. In time the police ignored Mr. Block President's calls, and he had to find ways to escalate his war on buskers. This was graphically demonstrated one evening, in an incident involving (as promised) public nudity while dancing to the music of unkempt buskers.

Gene, Holly and I were playing in front of the Korean Market when a group of hippies began dancing. On girl was wearing a long, bell sleeved velor dress. She held one bell sleeve over her chest as she danced, maneuvering around behind the concealing fabric. When she lowered her arm, her breasts were exposed. She smiled a knowing smile at us, and kept dancing, boobies staring up at all who watched.

Now generally speaking, a little public indecency in NYC can often go unnoticed. But it seems Mr. Block President caught wind (or sight) of Miss Boobie-Dancing Hippie. War was waged upon us undesirable buskers.

We played, and the hippies (including Miss Boobie-Dancer) danced. People walked by, stopped, listened, ogled, leered, and tipped. In a few moments we noticed a mounted police officer ride up in a state of agitation. He halted his horse, looking frantically up and down MacDougal street. “That couldn't be for us,” Gene whispered. “A mounted cop?” We played on.

Two squad cars followed, then several beat cops, and another mounted cop. “That couldn't be for us,” Gene again whispered. “That many cops?” We played on. The brave boys in blue all gazed up and down MacDougal, looking both wary and bewildered.

Then they all seemed to notice Bluegrass and dancing hippies, and suddenly all eyes focused on us.

Gene knew one of the beat cops, and walked over to powwow with him. When Gene came back he was almost smiling (that would be like laughing hysterically for anyone else). The police had received a tip, an anonymous call, reporting that a man with a machine gun was walking down MacDougal. Hence the dispatch of a dozen or so of New York's finest. When the officers saw us, armed with only a banjo, guitar and fiddle and not one single AK 47 among us, it dawned on them who had placed the anonymous call. Yes, Mr. Block President.

That was the day we knew busking in Greenwich Village had died. There were other issues than the whole Block President situation. Portable amp technology was jumping ahead by leaps and bounds, and by this time full bands with portable amps and huge rock drum kits were setting up in the streets. A little acoustic Bluegrass trio simply could not compete with that level of volume. But do not worry about us, dear reader, we had our plan B. It seems the movie “Urban Cowboy” had caused all the discos in Jersey to become Country bars, and we were riding that wave of employment. We bid adieu to the profitability of New York's streets and began playing music as a five piece (adding bass and drums) in New Jersey Country bars. This proved to be gainful, steady employment.

My mentor Gene taught me some amazing lessons about busking that I carry with me today. In a club, you want your set to arc; that is, you start hard and fast, move into sensitive and slow, then move back up to emotional and hard hitting. But in the street no one is going to stay for more than two songs, so no long set lists: each song must be a universe within itself, displaying the bands' best talents, best playing, and utmost level of energy. We take turns singing lead so that everyone rests for two songs, then hits their hardest on their turn. Harmonies are important too. They sound good, and also give a sense of band unity. If people make requests and the band knows the song, do it. It makes the person feel special, and they'll tip more (the New York Frets knew every single Country song ever recorded, BTW, except for The Devil Went Down To Georgia). Discourage hippie girls from denuding themselves in public: it can be bad for business. Smile and nod when people clap and hop around like mating lemurs. And of course, “there'll be time enough for countin', when the playin's done.”

Members of the New York Frets still play around NYC in the the Minetta Creek Bluegrass Band. When I'm in town, I still play with them.

From NOLA, and reminiscing about the glory days of NYC, this is Kenny Klein explaining it all.