What The Dead Know
Marni Rice & Le Garage Cabaret/The Shirts/Bill Popp & The Tapes//CBGB//6/28/06
When I saw the gig listed, my first reaction was to go. I’ve been meaning to see the Shirts, since I’ve seen Annie Golden perform with the Rock Revue and I know she used to be in the band. And you know me—I always try to support bands that I get into from other bands. And you know me—I didn’t want to go. Not because I’m trying to keep an eye on the shows I’m going to and the film I’m buying and the film I’d then have to develop. I didn’t want to go because I’d feel like a hypocrite. But when I saw Marni at Joe’s gig and she gave me a card for the show, which she also played, I decided to go. And Bill Popp & The Tapes, who I have never seen and I feel that I should’ve by now. And that’s why, a year to the day after the start of The Spunk Lads’ Farwell Tour, I went to CBGB for the Shirts, celebrating the release of their latest CD, Only The Dead Know Brooklyn. And that’s why, with all this stuff to catch up on, I wanted to have the Epoxies show @ CB’s done.
I was going to say/write this at some point, but I wasn’t sure when to fit it in. First show I saw there: Flux Information Sciences/Skeleton Key/The Jesus Lizard//December 31, 1996. It was 4 below and I got lost on the way, somehow thinking the place was at 315 Bleecker. I don’t know why or how I did this, but I was reading TONY in those days because they’d list venues and the subways to get there and when I saw the trains listed, for some reason I thought I was a being a know-it-all and figured they were wrong. The F for Bleecker St? Huh? So I was running all over in the freeze, in the days before unlimited Metrocards. Or Metrocards in general. Every misstep cost me a token. The woman in the token booth explained how to get there, and she kept gesturing with her hands and pointing. There was something wrong with her hands, like they were burned or something, and in my panic I was staring at her hands and didn’t pay attention. And besides, when people say “It’s over that way, and then go there,” I can’t follow it. I ended up taking a cab the rest of the way, and I was pretty close in the first place. So I used to ignore CBGB as a destination for shows, always telling myself that that place is the place that’s difficult to get to. I had a mental block on it. So if CBGB can’t pay their rent, it’s probably my fault since I passed on a lot of shows there. I can’t remember which band brought me back there. Mental block, indeed.
I picked up an issue of TONY once when they had their music issue and a pullout section that ranks venues all over the city according to talent, sound quality, bar, ambience, facilities, and price. CBGB got like a C or C+. They said drinks were overpriced, considering what the venue is like. Hilly made the Press’s most recent list of 50 despicable New Yorkers. The Voice mentioned the shitty sound and shittier sightlines in their Joan Jett review. Still, when I go to some venues nowadays, I’m like, This isn’t going to last very long. (Cakeshop and the Delancey, for one.) Probably the bands that play there won’t, either. Wait, why am I saying probably? Maybe this is why venues celebrate first and second anniversaries.
I thought the times were weird: 7:00 doors, 7:15 for Marni, 8:30 The Shirts, and Bill Popp @ 9:30, but maybe they were expecting an older crowd who wouldn’t mind, or that’s what it is being a weeknight, so I went there straight from work. Of course the trains were fucked up due to a signal problem in Queens knocking out the V and they announce to take the F instead. Yeah, no shit. Who, at 23rd St. going southbound, would prefer the V? A crowd is gathering and of course it’s sweltering. A short, stocky, middle-aged woman to my left with a tank top that has a picture of a corset on it takes a roll of TP out of her purse and wipes her face. The light on the tunnel wall is weak, yet grows as they continue to announce taking the F in lieu of the V. Now there was a breeze that started off as a tease and really kicked up. At 4th St. they announce that we’re going express; next stop is Delancey. Fucking great. I get up and shove my way out, but right before I can reach the door, there’s a retraction: We will stop at B’way/Laff. Ok, fine. Then another announcement: This is the conductor speaking; we are going express to Delancey, then Jay. Shit, I just want to go 1 stop. And the conductor said we’re going express? Then who said we’re going local? Do you just let random people make announcements? Can I try?
Oddly enough, there’s a chill coming from the doorway of CBGB and I stand there, trying to bask in it. I press up against the door. I stare at the edge of the awning, frayed for a bit where someone cut it. Dude, that’s—no, that’s terrible. Vandalism is wrong. A man with his head shaved except for a strip down the back is sporting scalp abrasions and an unzipped fly, which I notice as he takes paper towels from his plastic bag and sits down with a magazine and a Steel Reserve. He asks me about my tattoo and I tell him that Gogo is the ambassador to Wackyland.
“Well, you’re talking to the co-ambassador to Wackyland. Can you do me a favor because you’re tall and I’m already sitting? Can you keep an eye out for the cops? I’m not supposed to be drinking while I’m on parole. Well, at least I’m not doing dope, right?”
So I head to the curb and don’t see any cops. Then he asks me about my T-shirt, and I explain that since The Shirts are a 70s punk band from Brooklyn, I chose a shirt from another 70s punk band that lived in Brooklyn.
“Do you live in Brooklyn?”
“No, Queens.”
“That’s okay. I won’t hold it against you. I don’t like Queens because it’s too close to Riker’s Island. Are you a hardcore punk chick?”
We discuss music for a bit and he tells me he that he heard The Shirts was supposed to be good, but he can’t wait for The Business on Monday. He grew up in the neighborhood and was almost killed a couple of times, what with drug deals and other things gone wrong. He once met Joey Ramone, and still has his autograph. He also told me that he used to be the drummer for Hammerbrain and they used to play Punkstock in the early 90s. About how when they found a rehearsal space in East Flatbush and they got there to find two big, rabid-ass dogs gnawing on some sort of carcass and they knew that that was the place for them. About how he used to see Choking Victim at some place in Coney Island. He forgot where and I was trying to figure it out. L’Amour’s. I told him it closed down and he said he’s been away a long time. He missed the big Leftover Crack show because he was still upstate. He tells me some dirty jokes and before one he asks if I happen to be Jewish. I say yes and he says we’ll skip the next one. Another woman comes by and when she lights up, he suggests they buy bulk paper, tobacco, and a cutting machine at one of the bodegas and he’ll roll them because it’ll be cheaper that way. People go in, oblivious to us waiting, and make a U-turn. “Could he have said that any nastier?” they ask upon hearing that doors were pushed back. The guy mutters something and asks me if I’ve ever had that.
“What?”
“Klonopin. It’s like Valium; it’ll calm you right down.”
He takes out a few sheets of paper and tells us that they’re his rap sheet. “No, my rap sheet goes from here to the next building. It’s my diagnosis. 13 pages; man, you know I’m fucked up. I’m trying to get SSI.” At least he’s not shooting up anymore, he says. “26 years of sticking a needle in my arm and I’m clean and sober. 16 months. I wish I could say the same about drinking and smoking.”
It’s a start, I tell him.
A young woman shows up to wait because her mom’s friend from high school is in The Shirts. The guy asks her to speak to her mom and see if he can get on the list, too. He promises to charm the pants off her mother. “My mother will be leaving her pants on, thank you very much,” she informs him. He apologizes and says to please speak to her because he really wants to go. “I live next door and I can hear all the bands play when I go to the bathroom. Of course I live with 50 guys.”
This is the part where you expect me to say that I passed on the show to hang out with my new friend or paid for him to get in, and in an alternate reality that’s exactly what happened. But since the crowd was primarily a sit-down crowd, I hung off to the side on an uneven patch of floor. There was a chair in front of the stage, but I figured taking it would make me look old. Marni’s set is appropriately bohemian enough, and with everyone sitting down it was all East Village café. One of her songs was about trying to track down an old friend of hers who used to go to CBGB w/her to drink when they were 12.
After her set, people start moving up. Marni tells someone that there’s so much character in this place. I was off to the left of the stage, so everyone going to the bathroom seemed to think nothing of touching me as they passed, like I’m the chair that used to be in front of the stage. And The Shirts? They were ok. I mean, yeah, I know they’re a punk band from the old days of CBGB that never quite hit it big like their other scenemates and gigmates, but I always felt that if they were that good, I’d have a CD of theirs, right? They’re like one of those older/classic bands that when they play now, people say, Oh, they’re still doing it? Lookit that. Good for them. Isn’t that nice? I guess I’m more into a different kind of punk. The biggest problem was their sax player. He has this nasty comb-over/weave going on and I don’t understand why/how the rest of the band is okay with this. They need to have a serious intervention. This isn’t one of those situations where the rest of the band jokes to each other in private about how could they get onstage in that getup. Their guitar player is bald; what, is there some rule that only one band member can be bald? Never mind that this is punk rock, this is rock and roll. Who could be that conceited about their age that they could go onstage like that? “How about some old Shirts?” a guy yells. “We are the old Shirts!” Toward the end of their set, I hear the woman behind me say something. I turn around and she’s in the middle of some tirade against me. I can’t hear a word she’s saying, so I ignore her. But she keeps it up: I have an attitude problem, I’m giving her an attitude, I shouldn’t even be there.
Okay. Of all the people to start with at a show, the person ignoring you is never it.
I have no idea what started her off, but she’s complaining to the person behind her and then the woman next to her. As soon as the set ends, she gives it to me in full. Do I have a photo pass, I have an attitude, and I shouldn’t even be there unless I was hired by the band. This is the first time my camera is bothering an audience member. What is it with my camera that just bothers people? Later on her friend apologizes for her; she was drunk and imagining things and she doesn’t know what brought it on. Yeah, I thought so. Still, I’m glad to be on the receiving end of a drunken tirade since she got it out of her system and you apologized for her.
Still, my night is pretty ruined and my back is killing me. The place clears out and I want to sit down, but of the 5 people still there, one is standing behind the tables with a video camera and I don’t want to duck in front of him and besides, there are 5 people in the whole place and if I sit further back, it would look bad. At least I thought so. Bill Popp & The Tapes auditioned at CBGB in 1981, admittedly with a different lineup, they said. Yeah, I see them listed a lot—at Kenny’s Castaways and stuff. They say they’re powerpop, but I always thought powerpop was that whoa-oh-oh stuff. What do I know? They covered Eleanor Rigby, which is pretty much their vein of powerpop. They ended at 11, with my back killing me, and they’re not allowed an encore. That’s sad. They should’ve at least had that.
Outside, 4 cops are standing around by the guy who lives next door. He’s still sitting there, clutching his diagnosis papers. One cop has a black latex glove on one hand. I don’t know what to do. I want to tell the cops that the guy wasn’t bothering anybody and besides, you can’t arrest him because The Business is playing Monday. Then again, the show is $15. How is a guy living in a homeless shelter going to go, or maybe he was looking forward to hearing it through the walls. Still, don’t they have actual criminals to go after? I tell myself not to get involved, and I feel bad for not coming to his defense and not paying for him to get in. Wasn’t I supposed to be keeping an eye out for the cops? Still, I walk away.
Across the street on Bleecker a sign advertising apartments hangs from a fire escape. 1 & 2 bedrooms, $3,184 and up! And up, exclamation point? Shouldn’t you be putting the “and up” in small print? Why are you bragging about how expensive things are? I mean, when you go shopping the “and higher” is usually in small writing.
When I saw the gig listed, my first reaction was to go. I’ve been meaning to see the Shirts, since I’ve seen Annie Golden perform with the Rock Revue and I know she used to be in the band. And you know me—I always try to support bands that I get into from other bands. And you know me—I didn’t want to go. Not because I’m trying to keep an eye on the shows I’m going to and the film I’m buying and the film I’d then have to develop. I didn’t want to go because I’d feel like a hypocrite. But when I saw Marni at Joe’s gig and she gave me a card for the show, which she also played, I decided to go. And Bill Popp & The Tapes, who I have never seen and I feel that I should’ve by now. And that’s why, a year to the day after the start of The Spunk Lads’ Farwell Tour, I went to CBGB for the Shirts, celebrating the release of their latest CD, Only The Dead Know Brooklyn. And that’s why, with all this stuff to catch up on, I wanted to have the Epoxies show @ CB’s done.
I was going to say/write this at some point, but I wasn’t sure when to fit it in. First show I saw there: Flux Information Sciences/Skeleton Key/The Jesus Lizard//December 31, 1996. It was 4 below and I got lost on the way, somehow thinking the place was at 315 Bleecker. I don’t know why or how I did this, but I was reading TONY in those days because they’d list venues and the subways to get there and when I saw the trains listed, for some reason I thought I was a being a know-it-all and figured they were wrong. The F for Bleecker St? Huh? So I was running all over in the freeze, in the days before unlimited Metrocards. Or Metrocards in general. Every misstep cost me a token. The woman in the token booth explained how to get there, and she kept gesturing with her hands and pointing. There was something wrong with her hands, like they were burned or something, and in my panic I was staring at her hands and didn’t pay attention. And besides, when people say “It’s over that way, and then go there,” I can’t follow it. I ended up taking a cab the rest of the way, and I was pretty close in the first place. So I used to ignore CBGB as a destination for shows, always telling myself that that place is the place that’s difficult to get to. I had a mental block on it. So if CBGB can’t pay their rent, it’s probably my fault since I passed on a lot of shows there. I can’t remember which band brought me back there. Mental block, indeed.
I picked up an issue of TONY once when they had their music issue and a pullout section that ranks venues all over the city according to talent, sound quality, bar, ambience, facilities, and price. CBGB got like a C or C+. They said drinks were overpriced, considering what the venue is like. Hilly made the Press’s most recent list of 50 despicable New Yorkers. The Voice mentioned the shitty sound and shittier sightlines in their Joan Jett review. Still, when I go to some venues nowadays, I’m like, This isn’t going to last very long. (Cakeshop and the Delancey, for one.) Probably the bands that play there won’t, either. Wait, why am I saying probably? Maybe this is why venues celebrate first and second anniversaries.
I thought the times were weird: 7:00 doors, 7:15 for Marni, 8:30 The Shirts, and Bill Popp @ 9:30, but maybe they were expecting an older crowd who wouldn’t mind, or that’s what it is being a weeknight, so I went there straight from work. Of course the trains were fucked up due to a signal problem in Queens knocking out the V and they announce to take the F instead. Yeah, no shit. Who, at 23rd St. going southbound, would prefer the V? A crowd is gathering and of course it’s sweltering. A short, stocky, middle-aged woman to my left with a tank top that has a picture of a corset on it takes a roll of TP out of her purse and wipes her face. The light on the tunnel wall is weak, yet grows as they continue to announce taking the F in lieu of the V. Now there was a breeze that started off as a tease and really kicked up. At 4th St. they announce that we’re going express; next stop is Delancey. Fucking great. I get up and shove my way out, but right before I can reach the door, there’s a retraction: We will stop at B’way/Laff. Ok, fine. Then another announcement: This is the conductor speaking; we are going express to Delancey, then Jay. Shit, I just want to go 1 stop. And the conductor said we’re going express? Then who said we’re going local? Do you just let random people make announcements? Can I try?
Oddly enough, there’s a chill coming from the doorway of CBGB and I stand there, trying to bask in it. I press up against the door. I stare at the edge of the awning, frayed for a bit where someone cut it. Dude, that’s—no, that’s terrible. Vandalism is wrong. A man with his head shaved except for a strip down the back is sporting scalp abrasions and an unzipped fly, which I notice as he takes paper towels from his plastic bag and sits down with a magazine and a Steel Reserve. He asks me about my tattoo and I tell him that Gogo is the ambassador to Wackyland.
“Well, you’re talking to the co-ambassador to Wackyland. Can you do me a favor because you’re tall and I’m already sitting? Can you keep an eye out for the cops? I’m not supposed to be drinking while I’m on parole. Well, at least I’m not doing dope, right?”
So I head to the curb and don’t see any cops. Then he asks me about my T-shirt, and I explain that since The Shirts are a 70s punk band from Brooklyn, I chose a shirt from another 70s punk band that lived in Brooklyn.
“Do you live in Brooklyn?”
“No, Queens.”
“That’s okay. I won’t hold it against you. I don’t like Queens because it’s too close to Riker’s Island. Are you a hardcore punk chick?”
We discuss music for a bit and he tells me he that he heard The Shirts was supposed to be good, but he can’t wait for The Business on Monday. He grew up in the neighborhood and was almost killed a couple of times, what with drug deals and other things gone wrong. He once met Joey Ramone, and still has his autograph. He also told me that he used to be the drummer for Hammerbrain and they used to play Punkstock in the early 90s. About how when they found a rehearsal space in East Flatbush and they got there to find two big, rabid-ass dogs gnawing on some sort of carcass and they knew that that was the place for them. About how he used to see Choking Victim at some place in Coney Island. He forgot where and I was trying to figure it out. L’Amour’s. I told him it closed down and he said he’s been away a long time. He missed the big Leftover Crack show because he was still upstate. He tells me some dirty jokes and before one he asks if I happen to be Jewish. I say yes and he says we’ll skip the next one. Another woman comes by and when she lights up, he suggests they buy bulk paper, tobacco, and a cutting machine at one of the bodegas and he’ll roll them because it’ll be cheaper that way. People go in, oblivious to us waiting, and make a U-turn. “Could he have said that any nastier?” they ask upon hearing that doors were pushed back. The guy mutters something and asks me if I’ve ever had that.
“What?”
“Klonopin. It’s like Valium; it’ll calm you right down.”
He takes out a few sheets of paper and tells us that they’re his rap sheet. “No, my rap sheet goes from here to the next building. It’s my diagnosis. 13 pages; man, you know I’m fucked up. I’m trying to get SSI.” At least he’s not shooting up anymore, he says. “26 years of sticking a needle in my arm and I’m clean and sober. 16 months. I wish I could say the same about drinking and smoking.”
It’s a start, I tell him.
A young woman shows up to wait because her mom’s friend from high school is in The Shirts. The guy asks her to speak to her mom and see if he can get on the list, too. He promises to charm the pants off her mother. “My mother will be leaving her pants on, thank you very much,” she informs him. He apologizes and says to please speak to her because he really wants to go. “I live next door and I can hear all the bands play when I go to the bathroom. Of course I live with 50 guys.”
This is the part where you expect me to say that I passed on the show to hang out with my new friend or paid for him to get in, and in an alternate reality that’s exactly what happened. But since the crowd was primarily a sit-down crowd, I hung off to the side on an uneven patch of floor. There was a chair in front of the stage, but I figured taking it would make me look old. Marni’s set is appropriately bohemian enough, and with everyone sitting down it was all East Village café. One of her songs was about trying to track down an old friend of hers who used to go to CBGB w/her to drink when they were 12.
After her set, people start moving up. Marni tells someone that there’s so much character in this place. I was off to the left of the stage, so everyone going to the bathroom seemed to think nothing of touching me as they passed, like I’m the chair that used to be in front of the stage. And The Shirts? They were ok. I mean, yeah, I know they’re a punk band from the old days of CBGB that never quite hit it big like their other scenemates and gigmates, but I always felt that if they were that good, I’d have a CD of theirs, right? They’re like one of those older/classic bands that when they play now, people say, Oh, they’re still doing it? Lookit that. Good for them. Isn’t that nice? I guess I’m more into a different kind of punk. The biggest problem was their sax player. He has this nasty comb-over/weave going on and I don’t understand why/how the rest of the band is okay with this. They need to have a serious intervention. This isn’t one of those situations where the rest of the band jokes to each other in private about how could they get onstage in that getup. Their guitar player is bald; what, is there some rule that only one band member can be bald? Never mind that this is punk rock, this is rock and roll. Who could be that conceited about their age that they could go onstage like that? “How about some old Shirts?” a guy yells. “We are the old Shirts!” Toward the end of their set, I hear the woman behind me say something. I turn around and she’s in the middle of some tirade against me. I can’t hear a word she’s saying, so I ignore her. But she keeps it up: I have an attitude problem, I’m giving her an attitude, I shouldn’t even be there.
Okay. Of all the people to start with at a show, the person ignoring you is never it.
I have no idea what started her off, but she’s complaining to the person behind her and then the woman next to her. As soon as the set ends, she gives it to me in full. Do I have a photo pass, I have an attitude, and I shouldn’t even be there unless I was hired by the band. This is the first time my camera is bothering an audience member. What is it with my camera that just bothers people? Later on her friend apologizes for her; she was drunk and imagining things and she doesn’t know what brought it on. Yeah, I thought so. Still, I’m glad to be on the receiving end of a drunken tirade since she got it out of her system and you apologized for her.
Still, my night is pretty ruined and my back is killing me. The place clears out and I want to sit down, but of the 5 people still there, one is standing behind the tables with a video camera and I don’t want to duck in front of him and besides, there are 5 people in the whole place and if I sit further back, it would look bad. At least I thought so. Bill Popp & The Tapes auditioned at CBGB in 1981, admittedly with a different lineup, they said. Yeah, I see them listed a lot—at Kenny’s Castaways and stuff. They say they’re powerpop, but I always thought powerpop was that whoa-oh-oh stuff. What do I know? They covered Eleanor Rigby, which is pretty much their vein of powerpop. They ended at 11, with my back killing me, and they’re not allowed an encore. That’s sad. They should’ve at least had that.
Outside, 4 cops are standing around by the guy who lives next door. He’s still sitting there, clutching his diagnosis papers. One cop has a black latex glove on one hand. I don’t know what to do. I want to tell the cops that the guy wasn’t bothering anybody and besides, you can’t arrest him because The Business is playing Monday. Then again, the show is $15. How is a guy living in a homeless shelter going to go, or maybe he was looking forward to hearing it through the walls. Still, don’t they have actual criminals to go after? I tell myself not to get involved, and I feel bad for not coming to his defense and not paying for him to get in. Wasn’t I supposed to be keeping an eye out for the cops? Still, I walk away.
Across the street on Bleecker a sign advertising apartments hangs from a fire escape. 1 & 2 bedrooms, $3,184 and up! And up, exclamation point? Shouldn’t you be putting the “and up” in small print? Why are you bragging about how expensive things are? I mean, when you go shopping the “and higher” is usually in small writing.
posted by heather @ 10:49 PM
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