INTRODUCTION
TO THE FIVE BOROS
New York City and New York Rock mean different things to different people. Everyone has ideas of “what it’s all about.” There are no absolutes. New York’s a city in constant flux, so it’s tough to call anything quintessentially NYC.
The city represents endless possibilities. It’s a cross-collision of art and commerce, style and substance, subversion and illusion, and tension and danger. Walking down the street, one can feel the ghosts of players past. Every inch of terrain has been trod. There’s relatively little new artistic ground to cover. So it’s all about reinvention, reflection, and retrospection.
New York Rock breaks down the rock scene’s half-century connection to art, film, theater, poetry, and politics, in relation to the city’s kaleidoscopic socioeconomic, racial, and sexual variants. It analyzes New York Rock’s distinct subculture through the prism of influences, crosscurrents, and psychoactive distractions.
New York’s rockers range from a handful of impressive stars to a glut of historically relevant washouts. The point of the 1,500-plus musicians, clubs, and labels discussed in this book isn’t to retell every fact—books have been written on many of these characters—but rather spell out how they played into the making of New York Rock. So, the prerock “Precedents” sections don’t even try to recite well-known facts about New York City jazz, blues, disco, minimalism, et cetera; rather they identify how each of those fed into the creation of the city’s rock subculture.
My years as a New York journalist, editor, publisher, promoter, DJ, and filmmaker (the latter with director Paul Rachman) have made me privy to some unreal behind-the-scenes situations. I was not onstage, but I was more than a cultural voyeur taking mental notes.
My father was born on Rivington Street in the Lower East Side. He and my grandfather ran a small printing shop at 195 Christie Street. That’s where I spent much of my youth in the ’70s. There I picked up an understanding of publishing, and discovered at a young age the sins of the city. At around thirteen, I heard a weird band rehearsing upstairs that I peeked in on. Years later, I realized that was Talking Heads. During my forays, I frequented the local bars serving minors, one of them CBGB. I also stumbled upon the punk subculture on St. Marks Place. My father knew plenty of riffraff. One of them was Arthur Weinstein, to whom he was like a father figure (he attended my father’s funeral). Arthur owned the “new wave disco” Hurrah, and then the after-hours clubs the Jefferson and the Continental, and then the legendary World. Arthur brought me to his clubs and other nightspots, so I saw a lot of crazy action firsthand, at an early age. This book was born of years of lifestyle, not Web research or Facebook interviews.
In my four years in Washington, D.C., I was lucky to live through and be involved with that city’s burgeoning hardcore punk explosion. Then, back in New York, I booked a few Downtown club shows that some people still talk about. I spun records at more than a few cool clubs and parties, and wrote for, edited, or published great magazines. Regarding Don Hill’s, Cat Club, Mars, Love Club, Carmelita’s, 428 Lafayette, Metal Bar, the Pyramid, Paper, Details, RIP, Seconds, et cetera—I likely had a hand in it. Of the post-’80s bands, I worked in some capacity and/or socialized with most of them.
One thing I’ve learned from this process is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Each generation goes through the same bullshit, each subject to the same egotism and petulance and foibles, sparring over who’s “legit” or “old-school” and who’s “fake” or a “sellout.” The research also shows that most every genre or movement in the annals of modern culture traces straight back to New York, and if anything, New York rock musicians and scenesters deserve way more credit than they’ve received. Most of these folks were too busy livin’ it to ever monetize it.
American rock has two epicenters: New York and Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a story unto itself that I will tell at a later date.
New York Rock was a twentieth-century art form, and means something very different in the twenty-first. Some “hipster” bands refer to what they do as “post-rock.” They are correct: we are living in a post-rock era.
The New York Rock of the Velvet Underground, New York Dolls, and Ramones symbolically ended when CBGB closed. New York Rock is a relic, like a museum piece, removed from its original intent as the soundtrack of the radical fringe.
Perhaps some kids are about to come along with a new sound to blow us all away, worthy of a new chapter for the next edition of New York Rock.
—Steven Blush
New York City, 2016
Copyright © 2016 by Steven Blush
