Hellish punk anthems for a decidedly sinful New York
This Halloween season finds New York City in a state of awkward transition to whatever post-pandemic world will eventually be shaped by the COVID outbreak, which continues to strut and fret its prolonged hours on the world stage.
Our city, the epicenter of the Coronavirus outbreak, is setting a template for recovery and establishing post-pandemic standards that make sense. It’s still a struggle in a lot of ways. Companies are struggling to hire enough workers to keep business going, while also struggling with return-to-office plans for a workforce that does not want to work in an office five days a week. “The Great Resignation” continues to churn as companies compete for workers at all levels and even entry-level positions can become bidding wars.
Public transit is far from being able to handle a return to normal. Our transit system was falling on its face before the pandemic, now bus and train routes are regularly canceled for lack of drivers and train operators. Crime and quality of life continue to be a persistent problem.
New York has always been a place where sin is welcomed and the need for law and order is informed, if not restrained, with the libertine permissiveness that has characterized our Gotham since Dutch times. But there is a need for balance. A law-abiding person should be able to walk down the street with an open can of beer, they shouldn’t be stepping over piles of homeless people and their rancid detritus on every corner, or robbed or worse on their way home from a night out.
New York has reached an imbalance; the tolerance for the night life and marijuana has been accompanied by a very real and dangerous rise in real crime. People find themselves being robbed by criminals that a few years ago would not have been back out on the streets from their previous arrest.
But amid this tumult, New York is working to return. While people are understandably in no hurry to return to offices, people want music, and theater, and art, and even want to watch sports teams like the New York Jets. These regular joys have been forcibly dormant by a historic pandemic, and should return with a historic vengeance.
So good news comes this Halloween season with the return of Green Hell, New York City’s Misfits cover band that has entertained dozens of people since 2004 (full disclosure: I have served as Green Hell’s bass player since their second show in 2004, giving me more rights to claim “Original” membership than Doyle of the Misfits). Green Hell has two shows lined up on Halloween weekend: one at Manhattan’s excellent Otto’s Shrunken Head and the other at The Shillelagh Tavern in Astoria Queens.
Misfits songs are fantastic anthems for any Halloween, and it feels very fitting that our modest band of middle-aged punk rockers get the band back together as the Coronavirus is (hopefully, for real this time) on its way out. They are fun to sing along to and not difficult to learn how to play. And no matter what nonsense the “Original” Misfits get into, these songs have stood the test of time.
Green Hell was last seen in 2016, and two members who live far out of town are braving the skies to fly back to New York for two shows. In true Green Hell tradition, we will have time for only one rehearsal, and in true Green Hell tradition I can guarantee that absent of someone’s on-stage death, we will play a tighter set than the Misfits.
We’ll be in excellent company both nights with some of the best bands one could hope to share the stage with, and I will not be satisfied until Green Hell singer Marc Sucks shouts “Fuck the MTA” with Shillelagh owner Russ.
New York continues to suffer the effects of a global pandemic and domestic neglect. This Halloween, as it resists both the death dirge of disease and the growing savagery of its streets, it will have the sounds of raucous horror punk rock to voice its orgiastic rage against an uncaring world.
Whoa!
RIP Walter Lure
This year has seen the departure of some great musicians: Little Richard, Charlie Daniels, Neil Peart from Rush, Frankie Banali of Quiet Riot and W.A.S.P., Fleetwood Mac cofounder Peter Green, Power Trip lead singer Riley Gale, the list goes on.
Walter Lure’s passing is a loss that hits home for music fans, especially punk rock fans. Lure was one of the founders of The Heartbreakers, the band led by former New York Dolls Guitarist Johnny Thunders. The Heartbreakers were immensely influential in shaping punk rock. Lure helped write many of the band’s most famous songs and was part of the vanguard that brought punk rock to the world. After the Heartbreakers, he continued to play and record music with his own band, The Waldos. His musical virtuosity extended beyond his own groups as well. If you ever hear a guitar solo on a Ramones record, chances are Walter Lure is playing it. He was the one holding things down and singing lead vocals oftentimes when Johnny Thunders, addled by drug use, would nod off on stage.
Lure struggled with his own addiction, and recounted in an interview that an arrest for buying drugs on his lunch break and almost losing his job was what finally drove him to beat his habit. He worked in the financial world, running large clearing operations, and eventually retiring in 2015 from Neuberger Berman.
“The funny bit was that back in the 90s when I was in charge of all those people on the job, a lot of them would come to my shows and laugh at the fact that their boss was playing punk rock music onstage. My clothes closet had all my work suits and ties on one side and the other side had all the beat-up stage clothes. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde here you are!”
And here is another way in which Walter Lure continues to inspire so many musicians. The rock stars you see on the covers of magazines are an exceedingly small percentage of the people who are out there playing music every night. Most musicians who make music don’t make money at it and have to hold down day jobs to keep a roof over their head. Walter Lure was a big enough musician that if this were a just world, he would have had mansions all over the world, but he held down a day job and continued to make great music.
My band Blackout Shoppers got to play with The Waldos in the basement of CBGB’s 13, which was part of CBGB’s but not the more famous main stage. Walter Lure had played that main stage plenty of times and would later be one of the last acts to play when CB’s shut down a few years later.
He would have had every right to carry a massive rock star ego or bristle at the idea playing on a small stage in a basement with a bunch of unknown bands, but there was none of that from him. He showed up with his band and rocked, playing lots of the famous punk rock songs he helped write. He gladly took pictures with people who wanted to and hung around and chatted with everyone afterwards. He stayed true to the punk ethos to his dying day.
One of my friends whose band was on that same show commented, “We all got to play with Walter Lure, how lucky were we all??”
The world was lucky to have Walter Lure making music for so long. RIP and thank you Waldo.
Old punks don’t die, they just do more cocaine
Capturing the New York punk scene better than anyone since the death of Lester Bangs is The New York Waste, and picking up the Waste is a must. When I first started reading it almost two decades ago, it introduced me to the best punk rock bands on the scene at the time. It featured cool photos of the Lunachicks and the Toilet Boys and the Bullys, awesome mention of The Spunk Lads and others. Paging a little farther, what did I find but ‘Last in Line for the Gang Bang, a comic biography of G.G. Allin.’
For those unaware, G.G. Allin was a punk rock musician infamous for his violent and obscene performances. He may be better known today as his legend has grown with retellings of his stories and the admiration of musicians who have broken into the mainstream. But in the early 2000s, only a select and disturbed few were allied in their admiration of the late self-described “scumfuck.” (Insider’s note: despite his violent habits, G.G. Allin was a gifted songwriter who left a prolific legacy of excellent punk rock and country music before his untimely end at age 36 in 1993.)
So the fact that someone was producing a comic strip serial biography of G.G. Allin bowled me over. That such an awesome artistic endeavor was underway and had an audience getting it free through the New York Waste made me realize I had found a great home in the punk scene of New York. The Big Apple became a little less lonely knowing that there were other sickos out there.
Discreetly inked into the margins of every comic strip was a web site address for a local punk rock band, World War IX. The band’s guitar player, Justin Melkmann, was the talented cartoonist documenting G.G. Allin’s life.
At the same time, I began looking to start my own punk rock band, and was soon working on original songs with, as the luck of the Internet would have it, Bruce Steinert from the band Buzzkill. We needed a singer.
“I’m friends with a guy who our band would play with back in the day in New Jersey. He used to do things like take bloody meat out of his pants and throw it at the audience,” Bruce mentioned at rehearsal, speaking of the New Jersey band Daisycutter.
“That sounds like our guy,” I said. “Call that guy.”
Soon afterwards, Seth Amphetamines entered the picture and became the singer of what would be Blackout Shoppers. There are not too many people who can command a stage and make the entire venue the center of punk rock chaos in the way that Seth can, and that’s a good thing. It’s an acquired skill to engage with the audience in a mosh pit with great passion without creating lasting hostility or becoming one of the bogus tough-guy copycats that have created so many boring hardcore bands over the last few decades.
Seth is the only singer I’ve seen who has gotten members of the audience angry enough to throw beer cans at him only to have them share beers afterwards. Whatever violence he dishes out is in without hate or malice, and in sincere appreciation of old school hardcore punk.
I went to see World War IX at CB’s basement, which was part of a still-existent CBGBs at the time (where Blackout Shoppers would play its first show in a complete fluke later that year), and introduced myself to Justin. He was glad to meet someone who enjoyed his comic and we vowed to stay in touch.
Not soon afterwards, World War IX and Blackout Shoppers played the first of many shows together. It’s an alliance that has lasted about a decade and a half. We’ve put out a split seven-inch record together. Blackout Shoppers’ guitar player Mike Moosehead now plays in World War IX, and World War IX’s drummer Johnny Special K has filled in on drums for Blackout Shoppers. Blackout Shoppers came back from an official hiatus at a show where World War IX bid farewell to its singer Philthy Phill. It’s an incestuous bouillabaisse that only works in punk rock or among inbred Mormon fanatics, and we love it.
This month, both Justin and Seth turn 50, and the bands are celebrating with a show together at Otto’s Shrunken Head, one of our favorite places to play. It will be an evening filled with alcohol, music and good times. Please join us.
Punk rock’s champion leaves NYC
I knew it was a possibility; he had told me about the idea. But when I got word from Philthy Phill that he was leaving town I was still shocked.
Phill Lentz, better known to the New York punk rock world as Philthy Phill, is the singer for World War IX. He’s much more than that though. Over the 13 years he’s been in New York he’s excelled at stand-up comedy, writing, podcasting, concert organizing, and being a creative jack-of-all-trades that would be the envy of most Big Apple newcomers. He’s conquered New York City without losing the Midwestern disarming charm and good humor that drew some of this town’s finest musicians, artists, and comedians into his orbit.
I first got to know Phill when he was the lead singer in a band called Sexual Suicide. His singing style captured the necessary aggression of the genre while also displaying a keen sense of humor; a you-are-being-subjected-to-our-noise-but-we’re-in-on-this-together vibe. Bands with no sense of humor are miserable to watch. If you had any doubts about Phill’s take on things, the highlight of any Sexual Suicide show was when Phill would put on a Spider Man mask and sing a song about performing cunnilingus on Mary Jane Watson.
He came to New York City from the suburbs North of Chicago in 2003, following a girlfriend who had moved here. Three years later they broke up and he considered moving out of town at that point but decided to stay and drown his sorrows in punk rock.
Phill not only sings but also plays guitar and drums. Over the years he has served as the drummer for Joey Steel and the Attitude Adjusters, the Misanthropes, and toured Canada and Europe with the Scream’n Rebel Angels. I was fortunate to play with him in New Damage.
Phill wrote a book, a long-form short story, written from the point of view of a down-on-his-luck New Yorker who made a living as a Spider Man character for kid’s parties. It was a great read because it celebrated, among other things, the joy of the creative act. Read Self Poor Trait if you are down and feel jaded as a creative person, you won’t be sorry.
To top that all off, Phill worked the stand-up comedy circuit and played some of the top clubs like Caroline’s. And he co-founded the Dispatches from the Underground podcast.
Earlier on in my time in New York, I discovered the comics of Justin Melkmann through the New York Waste. I was so impressed that someone was doing a comic strip about the life of GG Allin, that I made it a point to go see the artist’s band, which was subtly advertised in each strip with a discreetly inked URL. Catching my first World War IX show at CB’s Lounge and meeting Justin was a turning point in my punk rock life. Blackout Shoppers have played numerous shows with World War IX and there’s nothing we like better.
A few years after I got to play my first show with World War IX, they were looking for a singer, and I and I’m sure a whole bunch of others called and told them to get Philthy Phill.
Having Philthy Phill join World War IX was like Beethoven coming back from the dead to conduct the London Philharmonic – it’s the supreme punk rock combination that had to happen. And it did.
World War IX entered a new period of productivity and creativity and produced some of my favorite songs over the past several years. I had the honor of playing a villain in a few of their videos, including the video for my favorite World War IX song, Cutlass Supreme. Phill’s acting chops earned him roles in other punk rock videos as well.
“Without a doubt, I will miss my World War IX and the friends I made playing with that band,” Phill told me. “We’ve toured many times, put out an envious number of high-quality music videos and some outstanding music to boot. Anyone who has partied with us at a show can tell how well we all get along because it comes across in what we did. Unrelated fun fact: everyone in the band has wanted to fight me at some point.”
Phill also met his wife among the punk rock fans that came to his shows. He and Erin married in 2012 and last year they had twin boys. While they excelled at making a family of their own, they have no other family in the area, at all. That, coupled with the high cost of living and the need for more space, was the deciding factor in making the move to Indianapolis.
Sometimes, the people who best embody the humor, creativity, and egalitarian grit of New York City find it is best to leave New York City.
There’s also a trap that New Yorkers fall in to easily, thinking that the world revolves around what happens in the five boroughs and believing that residing in the New York City area counts as an artistic achievement in and of itself. While surviving in New York is an accomplishment, we’d be kidding ourselves to think that any work of art is somehow automatically superior if it originates from an NYC zip code.
This Saturday, Philthy Phill will sing with World War IX for one last time at Otto’s Shrunken Head. My band, Blackout Shoppers, will be joining them, along with Controlled Substance. It will be a packed house and there will be lots of music, loudness and alcohol.
Phill hasn’t stopped being creative, and he’s already working on his next project, which he’s keeping under wraps for now.
While people will forever come from all over the world to pursue their creative dreams in New York City, the point is to keep being creative and live a good life while doing so. Great art, music, and literature can be found wherever there are people great enough to do great work, wherever the creative spirit ignites a spark that leads to more ideas, wherever there are people like Philthy Phill.
RIP Big Bertha, New York City’s punk rock pickup truck
When I moved to New York City to live as an adult more than 20 years ago now, one of the things I most looked forward to was being able to live without a car. The 10 years of being a car owner had been miserable. My first car broke down a lot and was finally consumed by flames in an engine fire. I replaced it with a 15-seat passenger van I purchased from an inebriated redneck in the back woods of Northeast Georgia. The van also broke down a lot. The drive shaft fell off on Highway 285 in Atlanta and I give it to charity in hopes of getting a tax write-off rather than try to sell it.
But time and life circumstances change, and six years ago my then fiancé and I decided to get a vehicle together as we were building our new life. I was playing a lot of punk rock shows at the time and we needed something affordable but that would carry a lot of musical equipment as well as be suitable for camping and hunting. We couldn’t afford much, but we managed to find something that fit the bill and was reliable at an affordable price: a full-length pickup truck that we named Big Bertha.
The name was an homage to my then-finance-now-wife’s great grandmother Bertha. It was also an alliterative reference to Blue Betty, an ill-fated blue van that I came to possess for several months and was able to use for only one punk rock show. Driving a barely-functioning van from Suffolk County to Brooklyn while having to shift into neutral at every stop to keep it from stalling out is a harrowing experience that builds character. How that van made it as far as it did is a miracle. We were never able to get it working and eventually sold it for scrap metal and got $300 for it, which didn’t fully cover what I had spent to insure it.
Big Bertha performed flawlessly for every punk rock show, every camping trip. When my wife and I went on our honeymoon, we drove Big Bertha to Maine. A missed highway exit took us through Lowell, Massachusetts, where we stopped by to visit Jack Kerouac’s grave (“You don’t look like typical Kerouacers,” the woman at the cemetery office told us, which we took as a compliment). When my wife was pregnant with twins, she found it convenient to use the truck. When our twins were born, Big Bertha enabled us to take our offspring home from the hospital safely.
Perhaps the greatest immediate benefit was ease of getting to shows with equipment when playing music. When my band Blackout Shoppers came home from playing Philadelphia and needed to blast some classic Whitesnake to the hipster-infested Lower East Side, Big Bertha had the power. When we did a short tour with Two Man Advantage, Big Bertha took us through the bitter cold. I somehow managed to park the nearly 20-foot truck in the East Village when we opened for Joe Coffee and 45 Adapters at Bowery Electric.
Driving and parking in New York City is not easy. It is especially difficult to do with a large vehicle. Where we live in Queens makes owning a car a bit easier, as street parking is possible and there are residential streets with more available parking than other places. Owning a vehicle as large as Big Bertha would be impossible in Manhattan and more popular parts of Brooklyn.
Our punk rock pickup truck persevered, until it didn’t. Its transmission, which was never 100%, began to decline rapidly over these last months. When I attempted to drive it to see SLAYER at Jones Beach, I had to quickly change plans and use the family minivan for the trip.
We had Big Bertha towed to our mechanic and the prognosis was not good. Bertha’s transmission was gone and it would be costly to replace. She had taken her last ride and it was on the back of a flatbed pickup truck.
Luckily, our friend Amy Jackson happened to be looking for a buyer for her Jeep Grand Cherokee, and we could not find a better person to help replace our truck. Amy is a photographer and adventurer. When a friend of hers was seriously ill a few years ago, she quickly organized and produced the Gentlemen of Punk Rock calendar to raise money. She accepted our offer and will be using the money to fund her trip to Antarctica. Amy Jr. will be part of our family and while she will never have the enormous presence of Big Bertha, she will be a lot easier to park.
Like many aspects of city living, owning a car is tougher here than elsewhere, but we find our ways to make it work. A decade ago I never thought I would own a vehicle again, and now I have two vehicles registered in my name. Wish us, Amy, and Amy Jr. good luck and smooth travels.
Bidding a hellacious farewell to SLAYER
Big Bertha the pickup truck was not herself. My vehicle was over-revving, lurching, and I smelled something burning. I was afraid she wasn’t going to make the trip to Jones Beach. I picked up my friend Javier from downtown Flushing and headed back home, where we were able to use the minivan. Javier helped me take out the car seats to make room for Beast and Sid, and we headed back to downtown Flushing to pick them up. We got a late start, but we weren’t going to miss a minute of SLAYER.
Slayer has embodied the best of thrash metal for nearly four decades. Coming to the world in the early 1980s California, it mixes the rapid-fire, unrelenting aggression of hardcore punk with the guitar virtuosity of more traditional heavy metal.
Over the years, Slayer has become easy shorthand for aggressive music that rejects any and all self-indulgent niceties or attempts to soften its image. Years ago I was dating a woman who was destined to soon break up with me. Even though I was coming off a long period of unemployment I shelled out to treat her to a performance of Handel’s ‘Messiah’ at Carnegie Hall. One of my biggest regrets of that time was not screaming “SLAYER!!!” in the famous venue between movements. I would have enjoyed the performance much better and it would have brought that relationship to a quicker and more merciful end.
I’ve had the good fortune to see Slayer several times, including with the definitive lineup that included Jeff Hanneman before his untimely death in 2013 and drummer Dave Lombardo. “No Jeff, no Dave, no thanks,” was a refrain that some Slayer fans abided by in these later years, and I hadn’t seen them since Lombardo was fired in 2013 after disputes over money.
For whatever reason—and maybe being in the same band for nearly 40 years is reason enough—Slayer is calling it quits. If you needed another reason to pay to see Slayer again, this was it. They even patched things up with Dave Lombardo.
So on we rolled out to Long Island to see Slayer’s final show in the New York City area. Opening for these godfathers of metal were other excellent thrash metal veterans Anthrax and Testament along with Napalm Death and Lamb of God. The name of the concert venue there changes every few years to that of a different corporate sponsor, but everyone just calls it “Jones Beach.”
Jones Beach can be lacking as a concert venue. Even though I quit the drinking life long ago, it is an outrage that the amphitheater only allows alcohol in one restricted area with no view of the stage unless you pay even bigger bucks as a VIP. And the prices on concessions are ridiculously inflated. While I had enough cash in my pocket, I was not going to pay $5.50 for a bottle of soda that costs $2 elsewhere. Six dollars for a hot dog? No thanks.
But Jones Beach gets good shows. A lot of the big concert tours don’t come to the five boroughs. I asked the peanut gallery of social media why this is. The two biggest concert venues within the five boroughs—Madison Square Garden in Manhattan and the Barclay’s Center in Brooklyn—share space with sports teams for much of the year, so there are fewer concert dates available. Also, the city is more expensive and so much of a logistical nightmare it is easier to go elsewhere.
Forest Hills Stadium is a great place to see a concert. I saw The Who there a few years ago and it was a great show. It’s intimate for a stadium and it has the kind of food and craft beers that both younger and older crowds enjoy. That venue tends to more mellow acts (Van Morrison, The B-52s with Culture Club, Imagine Dragons) because it’s in a residential area and the people who own homes in Forest Hills probably aren’t very interested in listening to live thrash metal at 9 p.m.—their loss.
Whatever the drawbacks of Jones Beach, the Slayer show rocked. All the opening bands were good; no one disappointed. And Slayer played the best kind of farewell show they could have played. They closed with ‘Reign in Blood’ and ‘Angel of Death’ and then thanked the crowd for supporting them.
Someday we can hopefully make it easier for bands like Slayer to play within the city limits of our beloved Gotham more frequently. Music, and New York City, deserve it.
A Punk Rock Anniversary
Mike Moosehead is the hardest working man in punk rock, and this weekend he’s playing shows with five different bands. Four of those bands are playing a special show to commemorate his and his wife Xtene Moosehead’s 10th wedding anniversary. The two are both punk rock bass players, though Mike plays guitar quite a bit also.
The Cobra Club in Brooklyn is the venue where the show will be. It is in a now-trendy area of Brooklyn where the remnant industrialization means a greater chance to find parking if you are driving there.
Full disclosure: I’m playing guitar in Beer Drinking Fools, the opening band of the night that features Mike on bass. The name of the band pretty much gives you the story: songs about beer. But there are some really great songs not directly related to beer that make me love Beer Drinking Fools long after I left the drinking life. Songs like ‘Work Sucks’ and ‘Let’s Get on Welfare’ offer common anthems for anyone frustrated by the standard dirge of working life. And even if you don’t drink, ‘Drinking 40s on the Subway’ is a great homage to the spirit of freedom that makes life worth living.
The second band playing that night is a special guest, and the name of the band will not be announced in advance. I happen to know what band this is and I can say first-hand that they will be in keeping with the spirit of local New York punk and hardcore with a sense of humor and chaotic stage performance.
Skum City features Mike on guitar and Xtene on bass. They started this band in 2007 and played their first show in 2008. Some former members are going to be coming back to play, and it will be a great time. Skum City blends old school punk rock with West Coast style early era hardcore. If you are looking for down-tuned grunge music to fall asleep to, look elsewhere.
Mike is also a guitar player for World War IX. World War IX was a band I learned about from reading their founding guitar player Justin Melkmann’s biographical comic strip of G.G. Allin in the New York Waste. They have been friends and comrades for years and they made my punk rock dreams come true when the inspiring Renaissance man Philthy Phill became their lead singer. I have had the honor to play some villainous characters in a few of their music videos. Who will they proclaim to be the King of the King of the King of Beers? I’ll have to find out (will not be me).
Headlining the night is Philadelphia’s Loafass, a band I have loved since I saw them open for Murphy’s Law on St. Patrick’s Day in 2003. Their lead singer, Fish, was the officiant at my wedding. Few bands are able to harness the sense of humor that punk music requires as well as Loafass. If a ramshackle jalopy with Pennsylvania license plates careens across the highway in front of you in a blaze of marijuana smoke and empty beer cans, the band playing on that car’s stereo is Loafass.
The show is only $5 dollars and requires you have an ID that says you are 21 or older. Mike and Xtene have put together a great show and the longevity of their band and marriage is a testament to the notion that making great music together can make a lot of people happy. I hope to see you there.
A Brooklyn Survivor Prepares to Exit
The stars were aligned the right way and we got the band back together. This past Saturday, the 2008 version of my band Blackout Shoppers played five songs at Hank’s Saloon. It was somewhat of a miracle that we managed to play a halfway-decent half set, given that we hadn’t played together in years and didn’t have time to rehearse.
It was good to be among friends again playing music. And it was fitting that we held this fleeting reunion at Hank’s Saloon.
Hank’s Saloon is a quintessential New York institution and it’s a miracle that it’s still standing. That being said, it will be closing down sometime after September, the latest music venue to close up shop.
Hank’s is both a dive bar, a music venue for every type of music imaginable, and a holdover from a past New York era that has managed to live on while its surrounding succumbed to the Brooklyn real estate juggernaut.
Characterized by the flames painted on the outside as well as the band stickers that some reckon are holding the building together, Hank’s is a small place with a concrete floor and a stage that is barely a foot off the ground. Tucked into the back, playing the Hank’s stage is a bit like playing in a cement box. It is hard to see the stage from most of the bar, and the sound can be wonky unless you are close to the stage, but some of the best shows I’ve ever seen or played have been at Hank’s. It is home to many genres of music and like any perfect dive bar, just about anyone can feel at home there.
Hank’s has an interesting history as well. Before it was Hank’s, it was called The Doray Tavern and was frequented by Mohawk Indian ironworkers who were regulars there up until the 1990s.
But late last year the inevitable news came out: Hank’s will be closing after this September. It stands to reason: in today’s Brooklyn anything remotely soulful or authentic is strangled to death by the high cost of doing business. Someone can make more money putting up an absurdly expensive apartment building there, so why don’t they? Good music, which is priceless, can’t often pay the rent.
There was a time not long ago when I would have railed to the uncaring sky about the injustice of it all. I would have felt rage instead of pity towards the naïve hipsters spending their parents’ money on overpriced apartments in the slums their grandparents worked hard to avoid. Instead I am grateful for the good times I have had at Hank’s and other places. I am thankful I was able to play at Hank’s one last time, to enjoy the music and the moment and take a lot of photos.
Hank’s can go out proudly, having outlived most of its competitors in a part of the city that is gentrifying at a dizzying pace. It has a special place in the hearts of New York music fans.
The Greatest Bastards on the Ice
On August 20th 2003 I went to a show at the Knitting Factory, which was then still located in Manhattan, to see a punk rock show. What drew me to the show was that a former Lunachick was playing with her current bands—Squid’s Team Squid—but I was interested to see what other bands were playing.
As Two Man Advantage took the stage, I was prepared to be disappointed. People who wear sports jerseys outside of sporting events tend not to have a lot to offer the world, and now the whole stage was custom-made hockey jerseys. I figured out they were hockey jerseys because one of the guitar players was wearing an old-style goalie’s face mask.
The music kicked in and it was really good, aggressive punk rock that the world needs more of. And by the time lead singer, with ‘Drunk Bastard’ on the back of his jersey—all are numbered ‘69’—hit the stage, I realized this was a band with a sense of humor. Hardcore bands with a good sense of humor are rare, so I settled in to enjoy the show. But I found that even though I had never seen this band before, I was drawn to get close to the stage and join in whatever way possible. I took a few lumps in the mosh pit at that performance if I remember correctly, and it would not be the last time. But I left the Knitting Factory a confirmed Two Man Advantage fan.
Their songs are almost all hockey themed and include “Zamboni Driving Maniac,” “I Got the Puck,” “Hockey Fight,” and “I Had a Dream About Hockey.” The band is so good that listening to Two Man helped get me into watching hockey; going to a Rangers-Red Wings game a few years ago sealed the deal. Hailing from Long Island, most of the band are die-hard Islanders fans, though one of their guitar players, SK8 (“Skate”) is a Rangers fan, and drummer “Coach” supports the Pittsburgh Penguins.
In the intervening years I’ve had the good fortune to not only share the stage with Two Man Advantage but to put out a split 7-inch record with them through my band Blackout Shoppers. We did a short weekend tour with them to promote the record a few years ago and it was a blast. I’ve had many good political and philosophical discussions with The Captain, who has forgotten more about math and music than most people will ever know. Two Man’s drummer, Coach, and lead singer, Spag, DJed my wedding. We visited Spag’s home to plan out the music and it had the most records I’ve ever seen in one place outside of a record store. Spag had the good sense to talk me out of blasting Iron Maiden’s “Aces High” at the reception.
Two Man Advantage began as a one-time performance as a joke at a Halloween party. The band was comprised of people who had played shows together in other bands writing a few songs about hockey.
This past weekend I drove out to Long Island to see one of two shows the band played to celebrate the two-decade mark. I got there just as the very excellent Refuse Resist, who recently celebrated their 10th anniversary as a band in their native Boston, was about to play.
True to keeping their sense of humor, the show began with a recording of the national anthem, to see who among the band members and audience would “take a knee.” A few band members and audience members did so, as Coach gave a preamble joking lamenting how politics had reared its ugly head at their show. Everyone enjoyed the levity of the moment, and no one got offended and left.
It was great to see the Two Man members again and I was at the front of the stage when the show started. I’m not as game for a mosh-pit bruising as I was in 2003, so I enjoyed most of the show from a safer distance, returning to the danger zone only once more later. It reminded me how much I enjoy music and miss making it.
Two Man Advantage played a lot of favorites and a few deep cuts, and did it all with ferocity and sincerity that the world needs more than ever.
Thank you, Two Man Advantage, for 20 awesome years.
Chasing down the last vestiges of punk rock youth
The other night I left home to walk to the Parkside Pub in Whitestone, Queens to see an excellent hardcore punk rock show. I love punk rock music and this show was so close it took only a few minutes to walk there. I have loved punk rock for a long time and knew some of the bands that were playing from playing with my own band, Blackout Shoppers (currently on hiatus).
It was late and I didn’t have a lot of time to spend there, but as I set out I noticed an envelope that needed mailing, so I figured I could drop it in a mailbox on my way to the show.
Publisher’s Clearinghouse is a shitty lottery that only requires you mail back a form. Of course my chances of winning are next to zero, but instead of spending two bucks on Powerball I spend only the price of a stamp. That’s a very low-cost form of gambling, though it does come with the added humiliation of having your name on a Publisher’s Clearinghouse envelope.
I didn’t run across a mailbox until I got the block that the Parkside Pub was on. How can I show up at a hardcore punk rock show with a Publisher’s Clearinghouse envelope? Would that make me a horrible old poser? I had no choice. Those Publisher’s Clearinghouse millions are destined to me mine. If I win enough money, I’ll spend part of my fortune on starting a new non-profit arts venue in New York City that will feature punk shows. As I neared the show, I hoped no one would see me drop the sweepstakes envelope into the mailbox. No one did, or at least had the kindness not to call me out on it.
It was glad to see the show was packed. There were people there old and young and the bands were excellent. It was great to see friends from many different bands there. Some of them are my age or even older and many of them also have kids.
Being a parent with serious bills to pay and a job that requires long hours means I don’t get to very many concerts anymore. So any time I can steal away for a few hours and subject myself to the full blasting fury of as much aggressive music I can take.
The show at the Parkside did not disappoint. The bands were excellent. And even if they hadn’t been, it was worthwhile to see people you haven’t seen in a while. There are a lot of people that I know and love to see but only see them in the context of going to shows.
There are people like my friend Pete, who I ran into at the show. I have known Pete for years but don’t know his full name and couldn’t tell you what he does for a living. I’ve seen him at numerous shows for my band and others. I’ve spent hours talking to him at bars and on sidewalks outside of music clubs. I know he lives in Douglaston, Queens and used to have a girlfriend named Nicole and he loves punk and metal music, and that’s all I need to know. We love the music and the scene around it and so it doesn’t matter what we may or may not have in common.
Because while the band one plays in may not last, the friendships and the love of music will endure. People have been writing punk rock’s obituary since the 1970s. It’s still here. And as long as I can stand on my feet, I’ll make it to shows from time to time. No regrets. See you there.
A Father’s Day Quest for Laziness
This Father’s Day my quest is to be as lazy as possible without appearing to be ungrateful or a bad father. If I could move my couch and laptop to the nearest White Castle and camp out for a day feasting on delicious burgers and watching hunting shows.
There were days before I had children that I enjoyed extreme forms of laziness. I have spent some days doing nothing but eating and watching ‘Law & Order’ reruns. I’m not proud of being that lazy, but sometimes you just have to be. I spend the rest of my time trying hard to achieve ambitious things, so a day here and there of intense couch warming is not out of line.
But having children means that those days of restorative sloth are behind me for the time being. If you are the father of small children you have some kind of work to do just to make sure your children don’t wander into traffic and get themselves killed. Children have to be fed every day, and if you don’t change their diapers with regularity they begin to smell bad and behave strangely.
This coming Father’s Day I will relax as much as possible and I plan to travel with my family to Staten Island to the Punk Island festival. This will be the first time in several years that our band Blackout Shoppers is not playing the all-day FREE festival (our guitar player will be out of the country). I’m eager to be able to go and enjoy it without having to worry about bringing equipment or being ready to play. My wife and I plan to bring ear protection for the girls and they can walk now so it may be a chore keeping them out of the mosh pits because they love to dance when they hear music. But any stress will be well worth it.
I am very lucky to have the father I have. He raised me with a good sense of right and wrong and a love of reading and the arts. Not everyone is so lucky, but having a good father is not a prerequisite for being one. I’ve discovered that fatherhood is a lot like hunting. If you have good instincts and are willing to put in the time, you’re chances of success will be much greater.
At the end of the day Sunday I will have relaxed as much as I can and my children will have survived my indulgent slacking off.
Of course I’d like to do better than having children that merely survive. I want my daughters to be willful and strong, and smart enough not to be subservient to the societal groupthink that is slowly choking the life out of the American intellect. I want my girls to be able to be legendary warrior-poets and forge their poetic souls to the cause of their people and be among the elite of their future world. But I’ve got to get them potty trained first.
Brooklyn Isn’t Safe for Rock & Roll
Last Friday, my band Blackout Shoppers was fortunate enough to be one of several bands to play for the last time at The Trash Bar. A great music venue, The Trash Bar has been a great place to see a show. They have a great sound system and manage to bring a wide array of music there.
Trash Bar is the kind of live music venue that used to thrive in Manhattan, and now it’s found itself priced out of Williamsburg. It’s the latest victim of the city’s own success and Brooklyn’s transformation from downtrodden borough to one of the most expensive places in the world to live.
The Williamsburg section of Brooklyn used to be a bad place. Frank Serpico was shot not far from the Williamsburg Bridge. Apartments in that building are now listed for sale at up to $1 million.
Williamsburg is where young artistic types began moving to at the end of the last century because space was cheap and the area was close to Manhattan. But creative young people can’t afford to live in the popular parts of Brooklyn anymore. The kind of people more likely to move to these areas now are wealthy people who had traditionally occupied the more upscale parts of Manhattan. A recent episode from the TV show Broad City captured this perfectly. One of the show’s main characters is chatting with three high-priced lawyers. They all tell her that they currently live in Murray Hill (a high-priced part of Manhattan) but that they are all moving to Williamsburg.
It follows a familiar pattern, a pattern we saw in the East Village and Lower East Side of Manhattan: A run-down area attracts enthusiastic artists and musicians because living is cheap. Those artists make the area desirable, which raises property values. Those property values drive away the artists and their venues that began the rejuvenation.
While it was the place that music venues fled to when Manhattan became too overpriced, Williamsburg is losing the art and music that made it attractive.
Bushwick has become the new Williamsburg, although the pace of gentrification seems to speed up in some respects. Prices on apartments start to rise in advance of the vanguard of gentrification that makes a neighborhood safe. Williamsburg has been relatively safe for a while now, but Bushwick is still more dangerous with higher crime.
This kind of gentrification has been going in the city for years. Since the time of the Dutch settlers, this has been a city in flux. Nothing stays for too long. The churn of commerce and change is constant. The city wouldn’t thrive otherwise.
It’s true that the city is losing some of its trademark characteristics and grit. No doubt part of Big Apple lore is lost forever. It’s not all bad though. I’m glad I can walk down the Bowery without being afraid for my life, though I’m sad that there aren’t as many music venues there.
Williamsburg been overpriced for years, but I didn’t think that Trash Bar would get priced out of existence in a decade. It brought in big crowds and even catered to the obnoxious yuppies and hipsters with some of its live music and its karaoke. The show we played Friday night was well attended. The bands played great and it sounded excellent. Everyone left it all on stage and we walked out with our heads held high.
And that’s all you can do as a New Yorker. Change is never going to stop, so don’t let it stop you. There will be new places to make and see music. The pioneer spirit that brought the Dutch to the New World and brought rock clubs to formerly desolate and dangerous parts of the city can’t be killed off, it’s just moving to a new neighborhood.
Matthew Sheahan 
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