Home run!

 

" Free Speech in America, it's back!"

 

 

RIP David Johanson Jan. 9, 1950- Feb. 28,2025

I loved David Johansens' first album when it came out in 1978. I played it constantly,  along with Patti Smith's Easter, bookends - the best releases of that year. Especially this song - great guitar (the album's production put the guitars up front), great lyrics and castanets for extra flare. David was the great "shouter"  of Rock n' Roll. No one had ever really done that before. Maybe Joey Ramone but he got it from David. I saw him twice only.  The first time was Friday Feb. 16, 1979 at The Indochinese Refugee Benefit Concert at The Palladium on 14th Street (NYC). The Second show. The bill had Todd Rundgren, Blue Oyster Cult, Rick Derringer, Patti Smith and David on it. All performing compact sets. The gig started at midnight pronto. It was freezing cold out with lots of frozen snow mounds all over the streets of NYC. Needless to say the late start gave us (I went with three other guys from High School) a lot of time to, how shall we say, imbibe - which we did. By midnight my eyes were out on stalks and I was extremely psychedelicized. We all were (tripping our balls off). David got it all going - I can recall his set was pure energy, consisting of nothing but songs from this album, which made me happy. He was a highlight! Blue Oyster Cult was just plain scary, Patti Smith was just fuckin' weird singing the Tomorrow song from the then hit musical Annie and Todd Rundgren was church, coming on at three in the morning. We got out just as the sky was changing - black night to dawn's grey light. We even took a wrong turn off the FDR on the way home and ended up in Queens just as the sun was coming up. I remember "orange" - orange detour signs, orange traffic cones & a cold, faded orange sunrise resembling Velveeta cheese. Somehow we got back onto the FDR near the GW Bridge. When I got home my father and mother were already up having coffee. They were cool, they knew it was an all nighter plus it was a Saturday so I didn't have to go to school or work.  I had great parents, I really did.

The next time I saw him was at the Poetry Project Benefit in June 1984 at The Ritz on 11th Street. He did another compact set, but he had more of a selection of material, a little more varied in tone. Todd Rundgren played that gig too. I was on the guest list!

David Johansen was a good showman, clearly in love with his art. It was just a couple weeks ago that I learned of his illness and felt bad for him. But also grateful - he lived a good life, he always seemed positive & he always looked like he was having a ball. He was known to have a spiritual side leaning toward Buddhism. He died on Losar - Tibetan New Year - completion. Listen, enjoy. I wish you were there.

https://www.loudersound.com/news/david-johansen-new-york-dolls-dead-rip

Part of the Patti Smith segment  (Gloria)  From The Indochinese Refugee gig can be found here:

https://www.pastemagazine.com/music/patti-smith/listen-to-patti-smith-hit-new-york-with-a-commandi

 

Flashback Friday

Birds n' Barbed Wire. 1984. Approx. 9" X 12" Graphite & oil paint on paper.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Life Is Good!

Detail from the Black Books. Pen/ink. Drawn in 1986

 

The best song ever written about addiction!

From The Black Books (2024)

What are the Black Books? The Black Books are 8.5" X 11 " softcover Moleskin books that come 3 to a pack. I've been working on & in them for about 20 years now.  The main point for me is to have no preconception about what I will do on a given page. Most of the time, working in them feels like a jam session a musician would have. And, like all my art, (except my photography) I start somewhere and end up somewhere else entirely.  Unsuccessful pages are sometimes ripped out entirely or made to work with other pages that are more resolved. Everything is up for grabs - pen & ink, marker, coloured pencils, crayons, block prints, finger smears, watercolour, photographs, Christmas and Birthday wrapping paper, envelopes, postmarks, tape, CD stickers, business cards, things found on my walks, sticks, coins...I cross reference with my "plein air" sketch books for points of departure. Themes come and go.  I don't work in them every day. Months will go without me even looking at them, then I'll work in them obsessively for days or until I finish a volume. 

I've been working in books since 1980 when I started School of Visual Arts in NYC  -  I still have most of them. For some reason the sketchbook or art journal has always felt like my most important art form. I've always loved the feel of a sketchbook. And the fact I could have it with me anywhere and everywhere. I've always felt I'm at my most honest when working in one of my books. Certainly, I'm at my most immediate. Sometimes you say it all in a sketchbook and anything after that feels flat.  I've also always thought it'd be great to have a show of one's books. Not the over-arty "Book as Art" bullshit that art institutions are so fond of - with lots of overworked, over-sanitized, precious, clever visual puns, posturing and virtuosity. No, I'd rather see the raw, immediate, rescued pages of one's creative process. That's where the goodies are. And they wouldn't be for sale...that is...unless someone begged for one.

I once saw one of Van Gogh's sketchbooks at a show at the Met in NYC in the early 80s.  It was delicate as opposed to his violent style of painting, in his books he had a light touch & was precise in detail. I went through stacks of Sally Michel Avery's sketch books when I worked for her in the late 80's - largely contour sketches with color notations. There were also the original Studying Hunger Journals that Bernadette Mayer let me take home for a few weeks in Autumn 1985 - they were in her own hand, in different colored inks and had some abstract drawings. The underground cartoonist R. Crumb was able to buy a castle in France with income generated from the sale of a small stack of his sketchbooks. And Patti Smith once showed pages of one of her sketchbooks on The Mike Douglas Show in the Winter of 1977 while somewhat immobile with a neck-brace (she'd fallen off a stage months before). There are occasional exhibitions of Jack Kerouac's notebooks which are small, pocket sized affairs written in pencil. I once saw a photo of him typing with small stacks of his notebooks all over his work table. And I heard the poet Ted Berrigan's journals were truly something to behold.  Books are cool!

 

From The Black Books - 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sticking with Current Events...

"...what they need's a damn good whacking..."
 

The week in Review

 

=

And I want my fuckin' money back!

 

 

William S. Burroughs (Feb. 5, 1914 - Aug. 2, 1997)

 

Portrait of William Burroughs. 9" X 12". Graphite on clay coat (c. 1998/1999)

Five interesting facts about Wm. S. Burroughs:

He had a son (Billy Burroughs, 1947-1981)

He considered himself a Conservative

He detested Liberals

He believed abortion was murder

He loved cats

William Burroughs hit the narrative form out of the ballpark by fearlessly incorporating chance methods, dreams, stream of consciousness, tape recordings, found objects & cut-ups. His writing is uniquely hallucinatory in its seamless weave of brutality, violence, humor into sheer, utter beauty.  I found a copy of Naked Lunch (with a Salvador Dali cover,) at a bookstore in Paramus Park Mall in 1975 when I was 15. It made me love reading. I became a lifelong devotee. His work opened up whole other universes to me. 

When I interviewed John Giorno at 222 Bowery in December 2002 he took me down to Burroughs' former basement apartment (The Bunker). It was complete with several of Burroughs' typewriters, his bed, a old cane and an old shotgun of his...It was a renovated gymnasium (the building was once a YMCA built in 1884). Burroughs' bedroom & bathroom were once the old Boys Locker Room appropriately enough - The bathroom was all marble with checkered tile with those old, heavy, porcelain utilitarian urinals that come up to your chest, there was a row of them before you got to the stalls. There was a Keith Haring work on display under Plexi and it was extremely haunted, so much so that I called to John to make sure he was still there - he was. John let me touch William's typewriters, hold his old cane & gun and sit on the bed.  How great! A true honor!

My first job out of high school in 1979 was making lift-off tape for typewriters with The Burroughs Corporation in Park Ridge, NJ, oddly enough or not so oddly enough. William was the grandson of William Seward Burroughs I - the founder of the company. There was also a Burroughs plant in Nashua, NH - about an hour South from where I  now reside. Burroughs' was fond of synchronicity and there's some to be found here.

I salute William S. Burroughs, a true American original!

 

 

 

 

Remembering Marianne Faithfull (Dec.29, 1946 -Jan.30, 2025)

 Marianne Faithfull with my personal fave

A survivor of the twilight of heroin addiction, she emerged again in 1979 as a powerful singer with a voice that was beautifully rough n' ragged with life experiences most people will never get near. Of this song she once said,  it is about the residual dilemma of the addict, even clean - the repressed rage that's such a part of addiction and how we always carry that around within. 

My favorite Marianne Moment came on October 9, 1990 at Town Hall on 43rd Street in NYC. Literally a quarter block from Times Square, I was with Ex my Jeannine Wall (1961-2006), going for a second chance. It was about 85 degrees with maximum humidity - New York heat! From the minute she took the stage Marianne could do no wrong. But nothing could compare with the minimalist version of The Rolling Stones' Wild Horses she did with only Barry Reynolds on acoustic guitar - you could hear a pin drop when she finished. Time stood still. She held us, breathless, in her hands and, in turn, the audience gave her all the love and respect she deserved. We left in a daze, trying to make sense of what we'd just experienced. True beauty, a moment forever frozen in time & mind.

Marianne Faithfull was a survivor who handled every twist and turn  of life with grace and class. God Bless her, she was a major artist.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cp8k931j423o

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inauguration Day 2025

 

God Bless America!

God Bless President Trump!