Daily Travels: Javits Center

As seen by Liz Maher at the JANY Show

On the Scene: Arctic Monkeys at Madison Square Garden, 02.08.14

 

Liz Maher reports: Arctic Monkeys took the stage for a sold out show at Madison Square Garden clearly elated at having sold out tour t-shirts and pom pom hats. They also put on a good, not great show, though I’m sure audience adored them even in the death grip of Buyer’s Remorse at $30 for an acrylic hat which looks all too twee. Hell, I adore them - sooo cute! Remember best-beloveds, as the poet wrote, ‘the world is mud-licious and puddle-wonderful’. Monkeys would have been better, same show, at Alt-Venue-Shift-Delete-MSG which manages to distill almost every concert to the intimacy of a podiatry exam – then sports fans will tell you there is always the danger of falling off the step seat levels if you experience a Deleuzian moment of transcendence – of becoming Monkey. Another gripe is the show only covered 20 songs including encores. Yesterday’s annoying-in-an-amusing-way twits from Sheffield are today’s corporate slugs. (Continued after the jump.)

Sandy Benefit: Flood The Art Market Silent Auction & Party

At the Music Machine, London, 1979 by Janette Beckman

The excellent shot of two Clashes, one Sex Pistol, one Sham 69-er, and, er...(who was the drummer?)...by Janette Beckman, will be one of the items up for auction on Monday. The Flood The Art Market Silent Auction & Party will be raising funds for artists affected by hurricane Sandy. Artists include Todd James, Zephyr, Jamel Shabazz, Charlie Ahearn, Cey Adams, Jane Dickson The Sucklord, Hally McGehean, David Corio and many more.

Cristin Tierney Gallery 

546 W 29th St

January 28

http://floodtheartmarket.com/

https://www.facebook.com/floodtheartmarket

Daily Travels - West 30th St

On the scene - Marcia Resnick Bad Boys opening last night

Marcia Resnick & Maripol

Currently on at the Deborah Bell Gallery - Marica Resnick's Bad Boys exhibit opened last night with a very nice party attended by Maripol, Godlis, Danny Fields, and others. Check out the show if you can. Marcia's website can be seen here.

Godlis

John Espinosa

Godlis

Maripol & Danny Fields

All photographs here taken by me and are ©Stupefaction.

Marcia Resnick - BAD BOYS photo exhibition

New York-based photographer, and all around legend of rock 'n roll, Marcia Resnick is having a show soon entitled Bad Boys: Punks, Poets, and Provocateurs. Here's everything you need to know:

Bad Boys is a photographic collection of punks, poets and provocateurs by Marcia Resnick (American, b. 1950) that studies the various ways in which power and maleness manifested themselves in New York City in the 1970s and ‘80s. It explores aggression, fame, sexuality and the ironic gamut of interpretations for the word “bad,” from “evil” to “naughty” to “cool” to “good,” and extends the meaning of the word “boys” beyond that of male child. These visually evocative portraits of “enfant terribles” include Divine, Johnny Thunders, Jean-Michel Basquiat, John Belushi, Quentin Crisp and others whose clout add to the mythology of their “badness.” All photographs in Bad Boys are vintage silver gelatin prints and have never before been exhibited as a group.

Resnick’s photographs are in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; George Eastman House/International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, NY; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Santa Barbara Museum of Art; Tampa Museum of Art; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the collection of Hallmark Cards, Kansas City; The Jewish Museum, New York; Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam; and numerous private collections.

The exhibition will be on view from January 14th – February 26, 2011. Gallery hours are Tuesday-Saturday from noon-6pm. An illustrated brochure is available.

Deborah Bell Photographs
511 West 25th Street Room 703
New York, NY

Daily Travels - Phoenix at Madison Square Garden

Phoenix (with Daft Punk), Madison Square Garden 10-20-10

Spoon at the Garden, Madison Square that is

For all of the hoopla surrounding Arcade Fire's headlining status at Madison Square Garden, I haven't heard much about label mates Spoon opening slot. NYCTaper has been kind enough to provide a recording of Spoon's set from the Garden...check it out here. As he states, "You know Merge Records must be having a good year when one of its marquee acts, the always-enjoyable Spoon, is only the opening act for another Merge artist...". Props to Merge Records. They really had all of this set up Properly - with a capitol "P"!

Spoon
2010-08-04
Madison Square Garden
New York, NY USA

An acidjack master recording

Equipment: DPA 4021>Denecke PS2>Sony PCM-M10 (24/44.1)
Position: Slightly LOC, floor, about 5 rows behind the SBD
Mastering: 24bit/44.1kHz WAV>Audacity (set fades, EQ, downsample to 16bit, tracking, amplify and balance channels)>FLAC ( level 8 )

Tracks [Total Time 55:47]
01 Me and the Bean
02 Nobody Gets Me Like You
03 The Underdog
04 Stay Don’t Go
05 Trouble Comes Running
06 The Ghost of You Lingers
07 Written in Reverse
08 Don’t You Evah
09 I Turn My Camera On
10 Don’t Make Me A Target
11 I Summon You
12 Jonathan Fisk
13 You Got Yr Cherry Bomb
14 Got Nuffin
15 Black Like Me

Spoon website here. Merge Records store here.

All hopped up and ready to read

This weekend, if you happen to be in the area of Woodstock, NY, in conjunction with the Golden Notebook, there will be a reading & signing for Tony Fletcher’s new book All Hopped Up and Ready to Go: Music from the Streets of New York 1927-77.

There will also be a panel discussion about the NYC music scene, featuring:

Tommy Ramone (The Ramones)
Eric Weissberg (The Tarriers, Dueling Banjos)
Elda Gentile (The Stilletos)
Fred Smith (Blondie, Television)

Free and open to the public.

When: Saturday, Nov. 7, 5:00 P.M.
Where: Kleinert/James Arts Center, 34 Tinker St., Woodstock

Other upcoming discussions about the book, and it's subject matter, happening in NYC are as follows:

Friday November 13
Barnes & Noble, Lincoln Triangle,
1972 Broadway, Manhattan, 7:30pm.
Panel discussion with Arlene Smith (The Chantels), Peter Stampfel (Holy Modal Rounders) and Seymour Stein (Sire Records).

Wednesday November 18
Strand Books,
828 Broadway, Manhattan, 7pm.
(Discussion hosted by Jim Fouratt)

Grace Jones - Hammerstein Ballroom

Man, do I hate the Hammerstein. They ought to fit it out with a decent sound system and a stage high enough to suit the room. Anyway, Grace Jones performed last night to a ROUSING reception from the packed house. Not bad...

A Trove of Old 78s Heads to Syracuse

As reported back in February, Morton Savada, owner of Records Revisited in NYC passed away. Following that, many folks wondered about his records...where would they go? I certainly had no idea. Now, thanks to Lost City pointing this article out, we know...all of Savada's 78's will be going to Syracuse University.

Like the recently deceased Barry Lederer, Mr. Savada was a music fan thru & thru. I will treasure the tape of rare sides Johnny Hartman cut for RCA in the 1950's that he taped for me back in the mid 90's.

Here's the story from the NY Times. If you want to see a neat video clip that goes along with the story, click thru here:

For 30 years, the turntable tucked in the corner of Records Revisited rarely rested. All day it spun at 78 revolutions per minute, whirling some aging pancake placed lovingly on it by the shop’s owner, Morton J. Savada. A heavy needle was always burrowing into the scratchy grooves of those brittle old discs to bring forth the music of Harry James, Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and others from the first half of the 20th century.

The records were rarely repeated, yet the supply — perhaps a quarter-million 78-r.p.m. discs — never ran out.

Records Revisited was packed floor-to-ceiling with discs of a vintage and variety that drew a steady stream of record buffs to 34 West 33rd Street. The shop, more like an archive than a store, held approximately 60 tons of swing, big band jazz and other style, forming one of the largest collections of 78s in the world.

The shop has been closed since Mr. Savada’s death in February. Last Thursday, his son, Elias Savada, was poring over a cardboard box, one of 1,300 being filled with records and put on waiting trucks. The collection will be sent to Syracuse University’s Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive, which will now have the second-largest collection of 78s in the United States, after the Library of Congress, university officials said.

Elias Savada seemed flush with nostalgia and pride as he opened Box 495, and reached in to pull out a record for one last spin.

What do you know? It was Gene Krupa’s “Drum Boogie.” The elder Mr. Savada would have noted the obvious: that Krupa had a big hit with the lively jump tune and was featured with his big band performing it in the 1941 film “Ball of Fire,” with Anita O’Day singing and Roy Eldridge on trumpet.

Now only Mr. Savada’s handwriting remained, offering some scribbled details of the recording, on the brown paper record sleeve. Mr. Savada placed the disc on the record player and dropped the needle down, filling the store with the music that Morty Savada lived for.

“This is what dad loved, this sound,” Mr. Savada said. “He always had a record on when he was here.” When he was here, Mr. Savada ran the shop himself. Actually, he stopped doing business two years ago when his health declined, but he often visited his beloved collection, which remained in the shop after he died at his home in Harrison, N.Y., on Feb. 11 at age 85.

Many die-hard collectors used to gather at Records Revisited to find obscure singles on those 10-inch disks that featured one song per side, and which Mr. Savada kept organized alphabetically and by style on white floor-to-ceiling shelves lining the walls and the many narrow aisles.

After the Krupa record, Mr. Savada unpacked another box and pulled out MGM record 10160-A. It was in fair to good condition and had a perky yellow label from which Mr. Savada read out loud: “Marion Hutton sings ‘My Brooklyn Love Song,’ from the R.K.O. picture ‘If You Knew Susie.’ Orchestra conducted by Sonny Burke.”

The song featured humorous lyrics delivered in exaggerated Brooklynese, culminating with the claim that a boy’s love for the Brooklyn Dodgers has diverted his concentration on his “goil.”

Mr. Savada did not use a computer to keep track of his records, opting instead for index cards filed in a tan metal cabinet. The cabinet was still there, and Elias Savada scooped up a bunch of loose business cards scattered on it. There were cards from WCBS radio, as well as WNYC, WGBH, and the BBC and Reader’s Digest. There were individual clients, including a business card from Carol Hemingway, who according to Mr. Savada’s notation on the card was “Ernest H’s daughter in law,” who, he also noted, bought a Dwight Fisk recording put onto a cassette by Mr. Savada, which sold for $10.

Elias Savada said that neither he nor his brother or sister had any urge to take over their father’s business. Still, Elias is something of an archivist — he is a consultant in the movie industry whose specialty is determining whether certain television shows and other material has fallen into the public domain.

He said that his father, always an avid record buff, ran the family’s apparel company, but that after acquiring a small collection of 60,000 records, he opened a record store and got out of the garment business, which was flagging anyway because of competition from importers.

The Syracuse University archivists couldn’t be more pleased with the obscure records arriving in numbered boxes. Not only is there a huge swing collection, but also recordings of country, blues, gospel, polka, folk and Broadway tunes. Suzanne Thorin, the university’s dean of libraries, said the truckloads of Mr. Savada’s records — at least, the tiny percentage sampled so far — has revealed fascinating auditory treasures, including Carl Sandburg reading his own poetry while accompanying himself on the guitar, and Hazel Scott, the pianist and singer. There are also many rare recordings preserved only on V-Disc records produced for American military personnel overseas in the 1940s.

Mr. Savada said that his father had a policy of never selling the last copy of a recording. “He was running a business, but he knew he had an important archive here and he had a responsibility to maintain it.”