Ethel & Fred Mertz (Vivian Vance & William Frawley) in a still from an I Love Lucy postcard that I bought while in NYC. The physical exuberance depicted in this photo represents but 1/20th of that which was present in the mosh pit during the Circle Jerks’ show.
Click here for Part 2/no.24 for Psychic TV at Danceteria
Ticket Price = n/a
ORIGINAL 2014 BLOG ENTRY FROM OPENSALON.COM FOLLOWS BELOW
My final 1983 gig-going-entry recaps a couple of shows I took in during a crazy/nuts four-day trip to NYC.
While I will be discussing the performances by hardcore titans The Circle Jerks and post-Throbbing Gristle offshoot Psychic TV, I’ll also be looking at the madcap trip to Manhattan as a whole, recounting the hijinks that myself and others got up to.
If you’ve heard or read EP 25 on the Flipper show at Fryfogle’s, then you’ll have somewhat of an idea of what to expect.
The accompanying podcast looks at both NYC shows.
Tune in for destroyed hotel rooms; terrified cousins; “Peace, Love and Groove!”; Danceteria bathroom hallucinations; Brooke Shields’ husband, Broadway Bob; and pterodactyls and manifestations.
Next On Stage –> I am jumping back further into the past as I recall a cabaret show that happened between my first and second “official” gigs (Roxy Music at the London Arena on February 5, 1975 and Bob Seger at the London Gardens on May 19, 1978).
I saw the cabaret in Portsmouth, England, in August 1977, and it featured early-60s popster Susan Maughan, she of the 1962 hit, “Bobby’s Girl,” and possibly the legendary Tessie O’Shea.
Because the show has live music elements, I am going to revisit it for the mylifeinconcert.com podcast. However, I had initially planned to discuss it as part of upcoming compilation episode but have instead decided to make it a stand-alone episode.
The EP’s Special Guest is my 96-year-old mother—we’ll call her Vera Various Artists—who attended the cabaret along with me and my late father.
My mum shares her vague memories of the evening, including that she feels the legendary Tessie O’Shea was on the bill. If my mother is right, then boy do I wish I could remember that. I wouldn’t have known who she was then but I sure do now.
We do both remember humourist Pam Ayers and the Famous People Players being part of the show.
My mum shares her vague memories of the evening, including that she feels the legendary Tessie O’Shea was on the bill. If my mother is right, then boy do I wish I could remember that. I wouldn’t have known who she was then but I sure do now.
We do both remember humourist Pam Ayres and the Famous People Players being part of the show.
My mother also recalls (what she incorrectly thought was) the venue itself, the Portsmouth The Hippodrome but also The King’s Theatre in Southsea, as she grew up in Petersfield, but later moved to Portsmouth after marrying my dad, and both my elder siblings were born there.
In the interview, she discusses listening to the radio as well as records in the UK as a girl in the ‘30s, and also music and live shows she enjoyed after to moving to Canada in the mid-50s and onwards.
I also talk about my experiences on this trip in the ultimate UK punk year—1977—amid the Queen’s Silver Jubilee.
Tune in for dangerous radio batteries, hanging out in British record stores to hear the latest releases, what double album of my mum’s drove me nuts in the ‘70s, punk rock mania, not seeing The Sex Pistols, and what Ethel Merman was really like live.
That’s all coming up in Episode 31, Concert no. 001.5, entitled UK 1977: VA’s Mum on Ethel Merman and Susan Maughan at the Portsmouth Hippodrome and the Music of Her Life + My UK Trip Amid the Year of the Punk Rock Explosion and Silver Jubilee.
ORIGINAL 2014 BLOG ENTRY FROM OPENSALON.COM
023. Back Against the Wall: Circle Jerks, Reggae Lounge, New York City, New York, November 16, 1983, $ n/a
NOTE: While this first part of a two-part entry will touch on the Circle Jerks’ show — and 024 will cover Psychic TV at the Danceteria — these two entries are more about the hijinks, buffoonery and events experienced among my friends and I over several days in NYC in late ‘83.
Start spreading the news: at last I was on my way to New York, leaving on this day to be part of it. NYC had been my No.1 destination to visit for years owing to my long-time fascination with the city and its history, especially as a flash point for transgression and cultural innovations. Warhol. Lou & the Velvets. The Galleries. The Chelsea. Greenwich Village. These vagabond shoes were longing to stray.
The trip was put together by the University of Western Ontario art department where my pal M. Zeppelin was a student. Myself, our pal Miss Beach, M. Zeppelin and then-S.O. MP congregated on campus late that evening alongside a couple of dozen others for the NYC-bound bus. We’d be driving through the dark of this cool, late fall night, the 8-9 hour trip plopping us down in Manhattan in the early morning.
Ahead lay almost four days of Gotham adventures before heading back around dinner hour on Saturday. Plenty of time to feast on the city with a side order of mischief.
Upon boarding the bus, we gang of four staked out a cluster of seats, discreetly tucking stashes of pills and shrubbery into nooks and crannies so as not to have them on-person should anything come to light when it came time to cross the border. And before you could say “Needle Park Junkie,” the Greyhound strode out from campus — we left the driving to them (and Fred MacMurray was nowhere to be seen).
Off we went, eyes bleary but agape, energized to simply be here (ok, and maybe some of those black pills got our empty gas tanks non-organically refilled). I instantly loved the city’s hum, strum, and energy. I can’t recall many specifics of that first day but do distinctly remember being struck by two things in particular.
First, I was finally in a city where everyone paced at my speed. As someone who has always walked with a brisk gait, it was sympatico love at first stride.
The second thing was how friendly I found everyone. While those threading around us went about their business at a determined clip, we found that if we approached someone to ask for directions or information, they would routinely stop and generously give us a few moments of their time. To us, everyone seemed more than willing to be helpful New Yorkers, seeming to relish acting as city hosts when proffered to do so in sharp contrast to their reputation as cold and indifferent. It really shouldn’t have surprised me for, as a terminal outsider, I’ve always found the social mix of cities as welcoming places vs the received notions of small homey towns as the be-all end-all of welcoming friendliness. That’s of course as long as you fit neatly within certain limited parameters, something that often gets left out (those “others” don’t really count, do they?)
A few more numbers on, and the soundsystm faded sharply as the rasta/skinhead rotation do-si-doh-ed at this punky reggae party, with the dreads now taking over the wall seats and the leathered’n’studded mohicaned punques now swarming the floor as the Circle Jerks began making their way to the stage.
The Circle Jerks had risen from the same L.A. scene that produced Black Flag (vocalist Keith Morris had previously fronted BF, pre-Rollins), where a two-and-a-half minute song was seen as being pretentious on a Rick Wakeman’s Six Wives of Henry VIII-level. Indeed, the Circle Jerks’ debut album, Group Sex, sported 14 songs in 15 minutes. The shows were notoriously coupled with some of the roughest and most aggressive mosh pit action of the day. Correctly surmising things were going to be intense and with nowhere left to sit in the otherwise packed main floor, we decided to candyass it upstairs and watch it all from the balcony.
This was the first genuine mosh pit any of us had ever seen. Since most of us had come out of the punk community, we’d had plenty of experience being knee deep in rough and energized (but not violent) front-of-stage pogoing and flailing minions, but this was something else altogether. While stage diving, crowd surfing and body slamming are about as radical as a cup of earl grey and a shortbread these days, this was pretty out there 30 or so years ago. And even having witnessed and sometimes been part of some wild mosh pit shows through the years, this by comparison is still more like a soccer brawl in my mind.
From the moment the Jerks took the stage, it was instant human smash’n’mash, with a “Holy Doodles!” look from our Provincial eyes. I couldn’t tell you anything about what the CJ’s played because most hardcore sounds the same to me, so I’ll just guestimate that they played 100 tunes in 25 minutes, or something like that. By comparison to this, the audience moves from the Iggy Pop crowd from a year ago seemed more like hepped up quadrilles and the Flipper gig from a few months’ previous seemed more like a pinochle tournament.
After a period of taking in the young hormonal morass of slam dancers, with red red robin mohawks bob-bob-bobbin’ along above the heads of the flailing-limb crowd like a percolating pit of pass the potato-punk-piñatas, something suddenly occurred to one of us: where was Cousin B?
She had been with us downstairs and the crew assumed we’d all stayed together and migrated up to the balcony. But she was nowhere to be seen. We certainly hadn’t purposely tried to ditch her or anything, but clearly she somehow missed the memo that was were going up to the second level.
Which meant that … l’il Sandy Duncan was down there somewhere, among the warring gladiators.
Whoopsy-daisy.
It’s funny to write about the episode now but we were anything but laughing at the time. While we had twisted senses of humour and sometimes played tricks on each other, we weren’t inherently mean. We felt like we’d been entrusted to look after our kid sister only to find that we’d neglectfully let her slip into the hands of Karla Homolka.
The moment the Circle Jerks fled the stage, we headed back down and found the poor thing terrified out of her wits. She’d somehow lost sight of us and there were no breadcrumbs to follow. Finding herself wandering the battlefield in search of us just as the CJ’s and their audience hit Lift Off, she hastily scampered to the rear of the crowd, pinning her back against the wall so thoroughly she probably almost merged with it.
“Back Against the Wall” by the Circle Jerks. We unintentionally lost Miss B’s terrified cousin during the mosh pit melee of the show. I guess this number wasn’t totally inappropriate for The Reggae Lounge after all.
We split a couple of cabs back to the Executive post-show, with Cousin B quickly severing herself from us group of no-goodniks. Sandy Duncan spent the rest of the week exiting speedily if she so much as saw any of us coming as one might avoid a vindictive Cyclops with Legionnaires Disease.
Back in the suite, after a long day with little sleep, we were all exhausted yet far too wired on circumstances, substances, and each others’ company for a “Goodnight John Boy” moment any time soon. Instead, we threw on some music, spending hours into dawn talking, joking, drinking, and toking until we all noticed the sun was rising. Each camp spent those hours getting to better know the other, all of us hitting it off like a house on fire before all six found somewhere to pass out and venture deep into the land of nod, dreaming wistfully of degenerate behaviour ahead.
Day One: Mission Accomplished — A Success!!
Day Two in NYC extended our vampiric existence as none of us awoke until just before the late afternoon sun was heading down. At some point, M&M decamped down to the temporary House of Zeppelin with the intent that they’d be joining us later in the evening for tonight’s event which I was particularly excited about: post-Throbbing Gristle-offshoot Psychic TV performing at the hottest nightclub in the city at that time, Danceteria.
Next On Stage —> The NYC adventure continues with a trippy show by Throbbing Gristle off-shoot Psychic TV. Stayed tuned for flashing orange dots, (almost) flying hams on Madison Avenue, Mr. Brooke Shields, Pterodactyls and Manifestations.
024. Discopravity: Psychic TV, Danceteria, New York City, New York, November 17, 1983
© 2014 VariousArtists
Comments From The Original opensalon.com Posting
I can feel the energy in this one, VA. It’s an excellent set up for whatever’s coming next. You make it easy to jones for your stuff!
And that shot of Bowie packing heat, dayum.
Hey, Happy St. Patrick’s Day ~
discreetly tucking stashes of pills and shrubbery into nooks and crannies so as not to have them on-person should anything come to light when it came time to cross the border. LOLand the fact they split you guys up…:)I miss going every three months to NYC and have not been in over 22 years. I loved the food shops across from the hotels etc.. You could get anything.Danceteria.. saw The Clash there.. sigh..
VA, thanks for sharing this first part of your trip to the city! You really capture so much detail of that visit in that point in time of ’83! I take for granted the relatively short train ride I have to the city so it’s a reminder of how easy it is to get into NY as compared with the long bus ride you had. Nowadays I imagine the border crossing takes far longer, too.
I wasn’t in the city at all during the month of November, but was in on 12/21 of that year. Thinking back to my time on that day (which I also remember well) and then reading your account from the previous month is an added bonus for me!
Looking forward to the next installment to see what happens next!
Good grief — you mean there was ever a radio station worth listening to in London? I must have missed it. Granted, it was an earlier era, but we were plugged in 24/7 to the Big 8.
What a great time you lot must have had. Great descriptive writing as always, VA. Puts the reader right into the action. Poor Sandy Duncan, though.
koshersalaami: The music is only a small part about this one, it’s more about the youthful hijinks. And, yes, musical excess or minimalism can depend on context.
catch-22: It appears that David is gifted in many ways 😉
Part Two is even more eventful and madcap. Raising a Guinness to you on St. Patty’s, catch.
Linda: I remember you saying about how you used to go to NYC every three months: envy, Linda, envy! I haven’t been since the 80s either … Cublet and I keep planning a jaunt back but it keeps getting derailed by other plans. Also envious that you saw The Clash at Danceteria. Two nights of interesting circumstances there are yet to come.
designanator: And what were you up to on that day, John? Enquiring Minds want to know!
Boanerges1: I’m curious, what were The Big 8? Either let me know here or drop me a line.
Yep, the radio station was/is CHRW, the university alternative station. Five months after this trip, I myself began doing a show there and remained a campus DJ on it for a great 8.5 year run. My nephew is on there now, continuing the tradition.
VA, to answer your question I can tell you the following: I came into the city on a bus from CT since the train line I would normally use was being upgraded with a third rail at that time. I was with a RISD friend of mine and we took in a Chihuly show at a small art gallery on West Broadway and then walked over to Cooper Union where we were going to have lunch on East 7th St. at a place owned by another friend, but it was closed for the day. Undaunted, we made our way over to Bank St. in the West Village and had lunch at a cute place I had a meal at the previous year. After that we headed uptown to visit a classmate at her design office and then headed over to the West Side and had a hamburger at Burger King before we parted company for the day and I headed back to catch a bus back to CT. I should mention it was very cold that day and even started to snow for a while when we were having lunch–a typical winter day for that period of the ’80s.
Also, on the days in November you were in NYC with your pals I was busy in CT working on a large design project which crimped my style that month for getting into the city 🙂
Great account Various. I remember the frisson that overcame me on my first trip to NY, just a few years before your own. I too noted the fast walkers and was surprised because I seldom found folks who walked at my pace. By and by I reckoned it was due to herd mentality – the slowest was probably the weakest and therefore more susceptible to the prowling carnivores. The crime stories coming out of NYC were alarming in those days and only a bit exaggerated.
By the way, do you remember how much AIDS consciousness there was? I’d read an article in the Village Voice in September 82 when it was first being discovered. It was called GRID then and at that time seemed confined to the gay community.
You’re braver than I would have been in conveying contraband across the border. I’ve only done that twice and both times it was accidental.
Looking forward to more. I wonder what was with those weirdos who couldn’t fathom that a fellow might want a Guinness from time to time.
designanator: You must keep a journal to have that level of detail for a common-or-garden calendar day. I had never heard of Chihuly until now. Just looked him up online … Wow! Incredible glassworks, so thanks for that.
As for the photos, while I am still bestus pals with MZ, I’ve lost track with several others, so didn’t want to use any close up shots just to respect privacy.
Abra: I agree with you, re: the reason behind the brisk pace. But then most large cities move at a fast clip — except Montreal (well, the traffic is fast there, if not the foot traffic). And there was a lot of AIDS consciousness in NYC by that time, although much was still unknown (how it happened, no treatment options, etc.). Not at all the good old days in that sense. As for my bringing contraband across the border, “brave” isn’t quite the word the comes to mind for me now in relation to that … I think “stupid” is the word I’d be looking for.
The Big 8 was CKLW in Windsor-Detroit, then owned by RKO, a 50,000-watt clear-channel station. Got its nickname because it was at 800 on the AM dial. They were the third largest market station in Canada and the US, and broke the record scene wide open in the ’60s and early ’70s with everything from Motown to Bob Seger and back again under musical director Rosalie Tremblay.
Anyway, when I was at Western in the Stone(d) Age, there was no campus radio station. It’s good to hear you were involved with that development and that the family tradition lives on.
VA and The City! I need to spend a good long relaxing hour with your post, but already I know it’s gonna be great. New York City, the early 80’s, a hardcore show – classic VA! Great to read you again, and my apologies for being out of the loop for the most part.
PS – will there be an appearance by the Flipper groupies, aka The Putrid Barnacles?
Boanerges: Aha, now I know what you’re talking about. I have heard of that station’s history and impact and also know of Rosalie Tremblay. As for Western, they did try having an FM station heard only within campus at the tail end of the ‘60s/early ‘70s, but the project was eventually quashed (all the albums from that initial attempt remained in the library). The idea for an alternative radio station was re-booted at the turn of the ‘80s, initially available within campus and via a cable hookup, but went into open broadcast in the fall of 1981, still going strong today. I was a DJ there from 1984-1992.
rita: One of the things I wanted to explore in writing this blog series is longer-form pieces which I know aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but glad you read it through. It’s pretty darn cold and frozen here today too, such as it’s been during this particularly brutal and unforgiving winter, so I’m pleased this provided warmth and smiles (which is somewhat odd, given the circumstances described).
Chiller: Always great to see you here. Alas, there are no Putrid Barnacles but they are more than made up for by other “characters” and “situations,” particularly in upcoming Part Two.
I just loved this!!!
discreetly tucking stashes of pills and shrubbery into nooks and crannies so as not to have them on-person should anything come to light when it came time to cross the border.
LOL
and the fact they split you guys up…:)
I miss going every three months to NYC and have not been in over 22 years. I loved the food shops across from the hotels etc.. You could get anything.
Danceteria.. saw The Clash there.. sigh..
Linda: I remember you saying about how you used to go to NYC every three months: envy, Linda, envy! I haven’t been since the 80s either … Cublet and I keep planning a jaunt back but it keeps getting derailed by other plans. Also envious that you saw The Clash at Danceteria. Two nights of interesting circumstances there are yet to come.
I tried to leave a message on yr OS page, but can`t login for some reason.
The cookies were carob-based. which is why they tasted so bad.
:0
It was more than just a wee dash of carob that made the icky to the taste, yet wholly delicious in a completely different way.