Hurrah! 5 great gigs from a forgotten NY club

"Please note: Joy Division cancelled"It wasn’t as early to the party as Max’s Kansas City, CBGB or Coventry, but Hurrah on West 62nd St. was the first big-time venue for punk and New Wave on New York’s Upper West Side.

Hurrah was open from 1976 to 1981. For the last two years, it benefited from the talents of legendary New York booking agent Ruth Polsky, who shook up the scene before her death on the steps of New York’s Limelight club at age 32. Polsky’s connections to emerging acts in the U.K. added another dimension to a club that already featured up-and-comers from Los Angeles, Boston and other domestic sources.

Five years was all it got … But along the way, Hurrah featured a dazzling array of local acts and out-of-towners and earned more than its share of notoriety.

At a Skafish show on Dec. 5, 1978, Sid Vicious (already on bail for the murder of Nancy Spungen) assaulted Todd Smith (brother of Patti), for which he was arrested a few days later. Like many other U.K. bands, Joy Division was scheduled to make its U.S. debut May 21-23, 1980, at Hurrah before singer Ian Curtis’ suicide May 18.

For a tasting menu of the talent that played Hurrah, you can’t do better than these five outstanding performances recorded for posterity.

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Kenny Baldwin and Locate Your Lips: Out of Milwaukee’s vaults, into your ears

Album cover of Locate Your Lips album "For Kenny."When I first traced five key bands of the Milwaukee scene from the late ’70s and early ’80s, one act remained a tantalizing enigma: Locate Your Lips.

Locate Your Lips’ drummer was the late Kenny Baldwin, founder of the Milwaukee alternative club The Starship, who passed away in September 2015. (Before his death, Baldwin was interviewed for the forthcoming epic Milwaukee music documentary Taking the City by Storm.)

A contemporary article in the Milwaukee Sentinel describes Locate Your Lips’ sound as “somewhere between the rock of the mid-1960s British Invasion and that of the recent new wave explosion.”

Beyond that fleeting mention, there has been precious little information available to me about LYL — and no public audio record of the band.

Now that gap has been filled with For Kenny, a two-CD release digitally edited and mastered by Otto & the Elevators’ Gary Tanin and slated for release April 5 that includes a live performance recorded in May 1985 for broadcast on WQFM radio as well as 10 tracks recorded in November 1984. Continue reading “Kenny Baldwin and Locate Your Lips: Out of Milwaukee’s vaults, into your ears”

Factory fresh: 5 acts processed by Warhol’s machine

Portrait of Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol, November 1975.

Most fans with even a passing knowledge of The Velvet Underground know about its close connection with Andy Warhol. The band coalesced as part of the retinue of performers and personalities (a k a “superstars”) connected to the Pop legend’s Factory studio on East 47th Street.

You’ve heard the story: Warhol introduced Nico to the VU’s front line, exposed them to New York’s intelligentsia at his “Plastic Exploding Inevitable” events, and enabled the production of its first album. Peel slowly and see!

Despite all the amputations, Warhol and his Factory remained touchstones for the band and its members after their partnership ended. From the characters in Lou Reed‘s “Walk on the Wild Side” to Reed’s and John Cale‘s reunion homage to their late mentor (Songs for Drella), the Factory is a cornerstone of the Velvet edifice.

But those were different times: After the Velvet Underground’s salad days, other participants in Warhol’s entourage would stake their own claims to rock-‘n’-roll history. Here are 5(-plus) acts whose Factory connections you should know about.

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Hunting The Frogs with 5 famous bands that loved them

Portrait of The Frogs
Dennis and Jimmy Flemion of The Frogs.

Nearly 40 years after The Frogs decided to take their wild musical collaboration out of the garage and onto Milwaukee stages, the team of Dennis and Jimmy Flemion has been largely forgotten by all but the most dedicated fans. But 2019 might be the year that the Flemions get the kind of attention that they (and superfans like Billy Corgan and Eddie Vedder) always knew they deserved.

We’re coming up on the 30th anniversary of their landmark album It’s Only Right And Natural. There’s one final, transcendent Frogs album being prepared for release. And a documentary crew has been painstakingly putting together a history of the band, capturing interviews with the folks who were there as well as fans and friends like Andy Richter, Sebastian Bach, Kelley Deal, Steve Albini, Butch Vig and many more. That doc, also titled It’s Only Right And Natural, will supposedly see the light of day in 2019 as well.

The Frogs were always prolific, completist and controversial. From their earliest days at the fringes of the Milwaukee scene, The Frogs meticulously documented their own history — from studio recordings to performance videos to comical films featuring pervy puppets of their own devising. They were satirists of the highest degree who rarely broke that facade, but also unrepentant goofballs and musical geniuses who could move you with a from-the-heart love song. It couldn’t make sense to most people, but for those it touched, the music — and everything else — made a lifelong impression.

But very little of the band’s vast catalog made sense for the mainstream. They created some lovely pop songs, but also produced provocative, sideways takes on homosexuality and race. Their work was never destined for the charts, though many Frogs songs were actually more thoughtful and forward-thinking than they were given credit for.

Above all, The Frogs refused to be edited or packaged. With older brother Dennis as spokesman, the Flemions consistently pushed back against the shorthand of marketing: denying genre, decrying articles edited for length and legibility, disavowing any move to cut their aesthetic down to size.

Mass appeal may have eluded The Frogs, but they had outsize influence on other musicians. The middle period of their epic journey intersects some of the most renowned musicians of the ’90s, who willingly contributed their cachet to the Frogs’ career. Pearl Jam and The Smashing Pumpkins are the biggest acts that befriended the Flemion brothers, but the list stretches much further.

With Dennis’ shocking death in 2012, the saga of The Frogs may have come to an end, but 2019 feels like the year it will be told. Here are 5 bands that played roles in that story.

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The Fast and 5 bands: Flyers from the Paul Zone collection

Backstage photo of The Fast.
Joe Poliseno, Louis Bova, Miki Zone, and Paul Zone backstage in 1979.

With a performance history that stretched from 1973 to about 1984, The Fast were among the most enduring of the first wave of New York punk bands — seminal but largely overlooked by mainstream rock history.

The band, built on the efforts of brothers Mandy, Miki and Paul Zone, made a mark at locations like Max’s Kansas City and Coventry and arrived early to the party at CBGB, playing with bands such as The RamonesBlondie, The New York DollsJohnny Thunders‘ Heartbreakers, Suicide and The Misfits. The Fast is also a testimonial to the LGBT roots of New York’s musical underground in the 1970s, playing an assortment of gay clubs in the city and beyond and eventually trading the Fast name for Man 2 Man.

As Gus Bernadicou writes in Punk Globe, “Paul Zone, with his brothers, created a brand of power pop and dance music that is instantly recognizable and addicting, yet catchy.”

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Remembering Elda Stilletto

EldaI never met Elda Stilletto, who died unexpectedly on August 6. But I’d corresponded with her on social media, and I’d hoped to interview her about her role during the New York underground’s crucial moment of artistic churn between Andy Warhol’s Factory and the rise of CBGB.

In her music and her friendships, Elda Stilletto (née Gentile) was at the center of a New York scene at the cusp of the ’60s and ’70s that included Warhol’s superstars; nascent icons of punk; and the luminaries of the city’s glitter-punk movement such as The Magic Tramps (whose lead singer, Warhol superstar Eric Emerson, was the father of her son Branch); The Harlots of 42nd Street; Teenage Lust; and Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys.

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Milwaukee rising: “Taking the City by Storm”

Kenny Baldwin at bar
Filmed before his death in September 2015, Kenny Baldwin was a musician in the Milwaukee punk scene and proprietor of the Starship, home of many formative gigs.

Milwaukee is among the smallest cities I’ve covered so far on FiveBands, but the passion and creativity of its rock-‘n’-roll scene has long rivaled the biggest towns on the musical map.

Sites like Milwaukee Rock Posters and social media groups like Lest We Forget: Deceased Milwaukee Scene are magnets for local lore, and scene veterans have been tireless in their efforts to make their history known.

Case in point: Taking the City By Storm, an epic documentary of the Milwaukee underground. Currently slated for release in 2018, the film is directed by Doug LaValliere (one of Milwaukee’s accomplished LaValliere brothers and a co-founder of the Prosecutors with Kevn Kinney, later of Atlanta underground sensations Drivin’ N Cryin’).

The producers are Judy Simonds and Clancy Carroll of the Dominoes and Clancy Carroll Band. (Carroll is also co-author of a new and improved book, Brick Through the Window: An Oral History of Punk Rock, New Wave, and Noise in Milwaukee, 1964-1984. Buy it via the Boswell Book Company site!)

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Never mind 2016: Here are 5 New Year’s gigs you should know about

"Sgt. Pepper's" style collage of 2016 deaths
2016 homage by Chris Barker.

Those of us who admire music-makers of renown shared many hard losses over the past year. And many us who treasure our own music scenes have lost local heroes as well.

Time passes, and young lions grow older — since their mortality reminds us of our own, and the music they made reminds us of our receding youth, it’s always personal. And for those of us of a certain age, 2016 seemed way too close for comfort.

But we’ll always have the music. On the eve of a year I hope will bring more good news than bad, I thought we’d take a quick tour of five shows from New Years past (and revisit some 2016 highlights from FiveBands): Continue reading “Never mind 2016: Here are 5 New Year’s gigs you should know about”

Fox Pass and the Modern Lovers connection: On the record with Jon Macey

Fox Pass' Michael Roy and Jon Macey in the studio
Michael Roy (left) and Jon Macey. (Courtesy Jon Macey)

I’m not just the author of FiveBands — I’m also a fan. Working on this project has given me the chance to discover groups I never heard of but would have loved from Day One. And of that growing list, Boston’s Fox Pass is one of my favorites.

Fox Pass started in 1972 as a high-school collaboration between guitarists/vocalists Jon Macey and Michael Roy. Early adherents of the New York sound of the Velvet Underground as well as Boston’s own Modern Lovers, Macey and Roy led Fox Pass through a succession of rhythm sections and hundreds of gigs until the band’s farewell performance at The Club in Cambridge on Dec. 27, 1978.

The duo moved to New York, where they joined their friend Tom Dickie to form Tom Dickie and the Desires (managed by the legendary Tommy Mottola). That band dissolved in 1982, and Macey and Roy parted ways until the late ‘90s. A reformed Fox Pass finally released its debut album in 2005 and a second in 2010.

While Fox Pass released just one single during the ‘70s, Jon Macey has generously shared some unreleased Fox Pass tracks from the era, which I’m honored to present here:

Let’s flip the FiveBands formula this time. Check out bands you know that crossed paths with Fox Pass:

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I was a teenage Street Punk: Peter Rossi, NY’s glitter-punk underground and 5 bands you should know about

Peter Rossi in hat.
Peter Rossi.

Peter Rossi is a Los Angeles-based filmmaker — but in the early ‘70s, under the name Peter Ashley, he played guitar in Street Punk, one of the forgotten stalwarts of the New York music scene that rose alongside the New York Dolls and presaged the Ramones.

Now Rossi is combining his professional passions with a film project aimed at documenting and celebrating the bands, street artists and poets of New York’s protopunk scene. (The working title is You’re In or You’re Out/Urine or UR Out.) Rossi describes the style — which is in pre-production through his company Tantamount Productions — as “cinéma vérité meets ‘The Last Waltz,’ and he’s networking with his contemporaries and other fans to raise the money to bring the project to a screen near you. (As actor and veteran New York musician Fenton Lawless remarked in a Facebook discussion, the project is “what Vinyl promised but failed sooo miserably. … It needed a Peter Rossi.”)

While many bands that powered the scene have expressed excitement about gathering for a live event 40 years later, Rossi emphasizes that he’s not looking to document a reunion that simply retreads the participants’ back catalogs. “This is about catching up with the artists who still have the fire in their souls,” he says.

Rossi is rallying some of the top acts of the era to top the bill again and demonstrate the chemistry that made New York a catalyst for a new generation of music.

In addition the chart-toppers, the event will provide an opportunity to hear other, worthy bands that played Coventry, Mercer Arts Center and Max’s Kansas City, including the Magic Tramps, the Harlots of 42nd Street and Teenage Lust (all of whom we’ve profiled here).

And the list goes on. Without further ado, here are five more bands that were essential to Peter Rossi’s scene:  Continue reading “I was a teenage Street Punk: Peter Rossi, NY’s glitter-punk underground and 5 bands you should know about”