Sarah Palin's Slightly More Crazy Twin?

Sponsors Leaving Glenn Beck Show

A Bronx Jinx?

WELL, NOW IT'S 0 FOR 2 on the 2009 season for me at the new Yankee Stadium following a loss to Texas this afternoon on a picture-perfect day for baseball. Good thing I don't have season tickets, because based on my track record the Yankees would be winless at home on the year. For the record, without my presence, they're 42-18 at the new Stadium this year.

We got there about an hour early, so we circumnavigated the huge ballpark. And who should we see pulling into the players' entrance but one Alex Rodriguez, driving his own black SUV. Who knew that would be the highlight of the day! Well, that and seeing ex-Yankee "legends" Ron Blomberg (MLB's first designated hitter back in 1973) and Oscar Gamble (he of the giant Afro and funky batting stance) signing autographs in front of one of the old souvenir shops across the street from the Stadium. But at $20 a pop, we bypassed their table and instead took our chances on a dollar street dog with all the trimmings before heading inside the park.

Starter A.J. Burnett had great stuff today, striking out 12 Rangers in just 6 innings, but he walked 7 men and gave up a 3-run bomb to Ian Kinsler in the 4th inning. He left the game trailing 3-1, but Phil Coke and the rest of the Yankee relievers couldn't hold it there, and the final score was 7-2 in favor of the visitors.

I don't know if it was due to a day game following a night game, but the energy level in the park was almost nil, despite a crowd of over 47,000. Boston also lost last night as well, so the division lead remains at 6 games with fewer than 40 left to play. Barring a New York Mets 2007/2008-type collapse, the Yankees will be back in the postseason again, where of course it's one big crapshoot, if I can still say that on the Webosphere. We've got tickets for at least one more regular season game this season, so it would be nice to see a victory in person and break this curse once and for all.

COUNT ME AMONG yesterday's teeming multitudes flocking to the last Summerstage show of the year. The price was right (free) to see two pretty good indie/alternative acts -- the Walkmen and Dinosaur Jr. -- as was the locale (Central Park). And if nobody is around to remember it or mythologize it in 40 years like a certain anniversary that just passed, then so be it; that's okay too.

The plan was to get to the Park at around 2:00, so that by 2:30 we were already inside with a decent spot for when the first band, the Walkmen, came on at 3:00. But nooooooo! For whatever reason, the promoters snuck a third band in the lineup, a heavily tattooed, shaggy-haired, leather-clad heavy mental band calling themselves the Saviours. They hit the stage at 3, and I can't say anyone was especially thrilled to see them remain there for the worse part of an hour.

The Walkmen were about what I expected, maybe a little better, especially when they used a 6- or 7-piece horn section on a few songs. One minor criticism is that too many of the songs were the same tempo. Toward the end of their set, they finally unleashed their best song -- The Rat -- a blistering new wave raver, and you wonder where that energy was the whole afternoon. Granted, the sun was beating down on everyone by then anyway, but still...

The headliners made it onstage a little after 5:00. By my highly unofficial account, they mixed in six classics from their first time around-- In a Jar, Freak Show, The Wagon, Out There, Feel the Pain and their scorching cover of the Cure's Just Like Heaven -- with stuff from the two newer albums. Farm (2009) and Beyond (2007).

Out There might be my single favorite Dinosaur Jr. song, with one of those patented J Mascis solos that sends chills up your spine like very few other living guitar players not named Neil Young. On the 1993 album (Where You Been), Out There leads right into the terrific Start Choppin, which unfortunately was nowhere to be heard yesterday. But I'm not gonna complain about getting my money's worth at a free show. What kind of example would that set for the kids?

A Razor In The Wind

WILLY DEVILLE, FOUNDER OF ONE OF THE ORIGINAL CBGB's house bands, passed on last week at age 58 after a battle with cancer. DeVille's group was lumped in with the burgeoning mid-'70s New York punk movement that featured acts as diverse as the Ramones, Talking Heads, Television and Blondie, but the soul-and-R&B-drenched sound of Mink DeVille was indeed most NOT like all the others in that groundbreaking scene.

As DeVille said of his time at the legendary punk club on Bowery Street: "We auditioned along with hundreds of others, but they liked us and took us on. We played (at CBGB) for three years. During that time we didn't get paid more than fifty bucks a night."

Actually, the Mink DeVille story -- "one of the greatest all-but-unsung legacies in rock history" according to AMG -- began many years before, when Willy DeVille left his native New York City for London in 1971, hoping to find like-minded musicians who were into old blues instead of all the groovy, hippie vibes left over from the '60s: “electric this and strawberry that,” as DeVille put it. The journey next took him to San Francisco, where he formed a band called Billy DeSade & the Marquees that played in some of the seedier bars of that city. After changing their name to Mink DeVille ("There can't be anything cooler than a fur-lined Cadillac, can there?") and reading an article about the nascent New York punk scene, Willy convinced his bandmates to drive cross-country in 1975.

Mink DeVille would catch on in New York quickly enough to have three songs chosen for the landmark Live at CBGB's compilation album a year later. The band was signed to Capitol Records after label executive Ben Edmonds was blown away by their exciting live show:

"When Mink DeVille took the stage (at CBGB) and tore into "Let Me Dream if I Want To" followed by another scorcher called "She's So Tough," they had me. These five guys...were obviously part of the new energy, but I also felt immediately reconnected to all the rock & roll I loved best: the bluesy early Stones, Van Morrison..., the subway scenarios of the The Velvet Underground, Dylan's folk-rock inflections, the heartbreak of Little Willie John, and a thousand scratchy old flea market 45s. Plus they seemed to contain all the flavors of their New York neighborhood, from Spanish accents to reggae spice."

Mink Deville's first two albums, 1977's Cabrera and '78's Return to Magenta, wear those influences on their sleeves, but played with an aggressively jaded swagger. Both records were produced by the legendary Jack Nitzsche, who called DeVille the best singer he had ever worked with. Cabrera features the band's best-known song, "Spanish Stroll," as well as its "punkiest" moment -- the dual guitar attack on "She's So Tough" from the first album would have fit in nicely on a Television album. But most of the songs:

"reached deep into blues and soul, the classic romantic pop of Ben E. King and The Drifters, with a side order of Spanish spices and New Orleans Zydeco swing. They favoured castanets over tom-toms, and accordion over distorted guitars, and Willy delivered his vocals with a sweet, tuneful flexibility that brought out the emotional resonance beneath his nasal sneer. What the wiry, dapper DeVille had that tied him to fellow CBGB resident bands like The Ramones, Television, Blondie and Talking Heads was an edge. He was drawing on some of the same musical areas that Bruce Springsteen’s epic rock dipped into, but Willy was an entirely different creature, a macho dandy in a pompadour and pencil moustache, with the dangerous air of a New York gangfighter and an underbelly vulnerability that came out through the romanticism of his music. Springsteen sounded like he was your friend in desperate times. DeVille sounded like he couldn’t quite decide whether to serenade you or pull a knife on you." [Daily Telegraph critic Neil McCormick]

By the time I saw Willy DeVille live -- New Year's Eve 1985, the Ritz on 11th Street, $35 ticket price -- he was incorporating even more flavors into the mix, especially Cajun music. Can't recall if there was an opening act that night or what time the show ended, but I was working at a liquor store on 88th Street and Second Avenue at the time while attending storied Hunter College. New Year's Day fell on a Wednesday that year, and so after the concert ended in the wee hours, I headed uptown to open up, catching a few uncomfortable hours of sleep on a desk chair in the back of the store before 10:00am reared its ugly head. Just a rock & roll snapshot as we remember Willy DeVille and his singular contribution to its history.

"Mink DeVille knows the truth of a city street and the courage in a ghetto love song. And the harsh reality in his voice and phrasing is yesterday, today, and tomorrow — timeless in the same way that loneliness, no money, and troubles find each other and never quit for a minute. But the fighters always have a shot at turning a corner, and if you holler loud enough, sometimes somebody hears you. And truth and love always separate the greats from the neverwases and neverwillbes."
-- Doc Pomus

Here's Venus of Avenue D, Spanish Stroll, It's So Easy, Bad Boy and She's So Tough, courtesy of Nevver.com

Retro Music Snob has an MP3 up of Little Girl

New York Times obit

New York Rocker tribute

When The Kids Had Killed The Man I Had To Break Up The Band

YOUR FEARLESS NARRATOR was actually almost in this band -- or more accurately I was the singer in an earlier incarnation of Kraut -- back in the very early '80s. Now that I have your attention, allow me to 'splain how I came to be the NYC Hardcore scene's version of Pete Best...

Two weeks ago, Big Mike, the Urb, the Admiral (aka Jimi the Greek) and me were having a smoke outside Stini Yiamis on Ditmars Blvd. when the subject somehow turned to the rock bands we tried to start back in our wayward youth. Putting the cart way before the dead horse, I'll reveal the absolute highlight for me came when I joined Urb's group, Peer Pressure, for an encore set at a small club in Sunnyside. Literally jumping onstage, I took my leather jacket off in dramatic fashion and grabbed the mike for stirring renditions of the Ramones' Rockaway Beach and the Clash's White Riot. Sadly, and to punk history's great detriment, no known footage exists of this seminal event.

Documentation, however, conceivably could still exist of the recording session our nameless band made at a Long Island City studio. I know Dave last had the cassette, which captured about an hour's worth of our covers-laden material. These were mostly punk standards like Blitzkrieg Bop, Garageland and Pretty Vacant. I was always fucking up the last song, jumping in either too soon or too late with the first line "THERE'S NO POINT IN ASKING YOU'LL GET NO REPLY" while waiting through the fairly long intro:





But we also had a few original compositions, such as my very own Stiff Little Fingers ripoff/homage STATE OF THE UNION:

THE PEOPLE I KNOW ARE ALL PATRIOTS
CONTENT TO LIVE THEIR LIVES IN FRONT OF TV SETS
THEY DON'T MAKE WAVES FOR FEAR OF A STORM
THEY PAY THEIR TAXES AND FOLLOW THE NORM

WELL I DON'T WANNA BE JUST ANOTHER JOE
I WANNA KNOW WHERE THE TAX DOLLARS GO
THE PENTAGON YELLS COMMIE, GIMME MORE MORE MORE
WHILE THE GHETTOS IN NEW YORK CRUMBLE ON THE POOR

YET THE POOR ARE THE ONES WHO GO OFF TO WAR
TO PROTECT BIG BUSINESS ON A FOREIGN SHORE
AS AMERICAN DEMOCRACY AND ALL IT STANDS FOR
MURDERS ITS CHILDREN FOR OBEYING THE LAW

THIS IS THE STATE OF THE UNION!
THIS IS THE STATE OF THIS UNION!!

Soon after we made a recording of this song, I parted ways with the lads. There was a fairly big age gap, with me going to college and just about to turn 21 while the rest of the band was 5 or 6 years younger than that. I wanted to do more original material and, even more important to me at the time, much more political stuff, like the lost classic above. I never imagined this band going in that direction, despite my constant history lectures (El Salvador = the next Vietnam), and so I just stopped showing up to Dave's basement on Saturdays after my film appreciation class at Hunter College in the the morning, and soon I lost touch altogether.

Amazingly, just a few short months later, Davey had a new band called Kraut made up of some of the guys I played with and some I didn't. Davey Gunner, who I knew as a drummer, was now the lead singer, and Johnny Feedback -- who used to hang around while we practiced -- was now on drums. By May of '81 they had secured an opening slot for the Clash at Bond's based on a demo tape of 3 songs! The Clash had originally signed on for a week's worth of shows at the legendary Times Square venue, but they sold too many tickets and had to play additional shows. Thus they needed opening acts on short notice, and Kraut enterprisingly got the tape in Mick Jones' hands, who evidently liked what he heard. According to the band's MySpace page, the Bond's slot opening for the punk icons was their first-ever live gig. Talk about your baptism under fire.



Their first single, Kill for Cash b/w Just Cabbage, was a self-made DIY affair that nevertheless sold out fast. I bought a copy at Bleecker Bob's in Greenwich Village, but alas sold it along with the rest of my punk singles and albums for a mere song about 10 years ago on the advice of a long-gone ex. I can still hear her saying, You never play them, they're just taking up space; you might as well get some money for them. It's my fault for listening to her, of course, but just like that about 100 vintage punk albums and 50 singles were history. Shortly after, I went on eBay and looked up what some of the 45's were going for. A copy of Kill for Kash was going for close to 100 bucks -- and that was before bidding closed. I ended up with about 150 dollars for my whole fucking collection.

Kraut contributed two songs to the essential hardcore compilation New York Thrash. Their first album, 1982's An Adjustment to Society, featured the Sex Pistols' Steve Jones on guitar for a new version of Kill for Cash. The video for All Twisted was in rotation on MTV. Later on, Kraut would become more of a speed metal band, but they had a nice little thing going on there for a while, and they're much more than a footnote in the history of New York Punk. Me, on the other hand...

My own crew in Astoria tried to get a few more bands together over the years, including one where I tried to learn an instrument. Big Mike had a huge, fretless jazz bass with an amp that he lent me, and I could play a few progressions, but soon found out I could not play an instrument and sing at the same time. No kidding. Anyway, we spent way more time trying to come up with catchy names for the band than actually practicing. I still remember trying to convince everyone that my idea to call us "Stavros and the Two-by-Fours" was a winner, to little or no avail. And so folk-punk songs of mine like the haunting, elegaic Momentless Times would go unrecorded.

Soon we finally gave up our musical dreams, Real Life being what it is. My friends would kid me about how right after I left, Kraut took off and made it big; how I coulda been a contender, etc., in the way your closest buds like to bust your balls just because they know they can. In reality, I never begrudge anyone's success or even harbor regrets in that way. In other ways, sure, but that's for another time, another place, another girl, another planet.














Portrait of The Warden as a young poseur