Saturday, October 15, 2011

Love au Go Go

If you've noticed my by-line, you've probably understood its dual nature--my initials are indeed D.C., and I do dig Love big time. (I neither condone nor engage in the Conka-esque habits alluded to in the song, however.) So I was pleased to get an e-mail today from Bruno Ceriotti, author of a new Love chronology in e-book form entitled My Little Red Book: Love Day-By-Day 1945-1971.  As a fan of both Love and rock chronology books in general, I'll be buying a download of it post-haste.


Via.


Bruno also hipped me to a new documentary film he helped work on which is currently making the film fest rounds.  How I missed hearing about this movie before receiving Bruno's note mystifies me...I'm having vague semi-recollections of possibly reading about it and taking note of it a while ago, but if I actually did, the momentousness of the info didn't sink in at the time. Anyway, I'm on it now, and I really hope it gets screened at Hot Docs or NXNE next year. It's called Seven Years Underground: A '60s Tale.  The subject is the Cafe au Go Go, and it was made with major input from Howard Solomon's family.  Please peruse their official website and enjoy the tantalizing excerpts from the film on their Youtube channel.  [And here are more Cafe au Go Go Youtube clips.]











Speaking of docs and books...I wonder how Sid Bernstein Presents is coming along. And I want to thank Caryn Rose for sending me a copy of her fine new novel, B-Sides and Broken Hearts. I'm currently about 2/3 of the way through it, and it's a bi-coastal rock and roll romance of the highest order. The story is set mostly in Seattle and L.A., but has a heaping helping of NYC/Jersey flavor too.  With all the Sonic Youth and heartbreak embedded in its pages, it just might be the perfect read for our new post-KimandThurston world.


  

Friday, October 14, 2011

1978 Ads: Other Venues and Miscellany, Part 6

Well folks, just when the paper's coverage of the post-punk period would be picking up steam, I'm afraid I have to put the kibosh on this Voice project for the time being. It's not that I don't want to continue--it's that I've run out of source material. From 1979 onward, the archives range from nonexistent (many years are missing altogether) to extremely spotty (you're lucky if there are one to twelve issues available from any given year).  The few issues that are up there haven't been transferred well from their microfilm sources, so the resolution quality is even worse than what you've seen already.  (And I didn't think it was that bad, until I was contacted by a couple of documentary filmmakers who inquired if I had any higher-res versions since the ones I put up looked so dang lousy.)

I'll certainly keep checking the site regularly for future additions of missing issues. But during the year and a half that I've been gathering these ads, none of the missing material from 1966 through '77 has been restored, so I'm not holding my breath that the archives will be updated anytime soon.  I might be able to work up the motivation to do some old-school slogging through Voice microfilms at the T.O. Reference Library, but that would strictly be a fact-finding mission.  There's no way I could afford to make copies of all the ads I'd want--and if my memories of the Minolta microfilm copy machines at QBPL and NYPL are anything to go by, they'd look like overexposed crap even if I could.  Any posts that would result from such efforts would basically be lists of places/names/dates--interesting to a point, but truly lacking in visual stimulation.  My curiosity for such data is ever-burning of course, but that inquisitive impulse is at war with my desire to not spend a great deal of my free time cooped up in a library. (Spoken like a true MLS!  Just kidding, I love those institutions with all my heart--but I must admit that it's a blessing to be able to do intense hours-on-end research at home.)  We'll see which side wins out.      

I'm planning to re-do the '60s and 1970 ads, which came out too small for my liking.  When I started this project I hadn't yet "mastered" the art of enlarging the images, and also back then Blogger's photo uploader lacked the enlargement capabilities it now has.  But I want to get back into writing more essay-like posts as well.  If you've got any ideas for places you'd like to see covered here, let me know!


And check out yesterday's NY Times feature on Bob Gruen.



11/6/78 issue:



































11/13/78 issue:

















I think they've got the ALIAS, that you've been living UNDER!!!


11/20/78 issue  (I double-checked, but found no music listings pages):




















11/27/78 issue:




"Scenes" column excerpt.


















12/4/78 issue:






















12/11/78 issue (music listings were again missing in this issue, as well as in the following two issues):



"Choices" column excerpt.

















12/18/78 issue:




Excerpt from a special "Arts '79" center section.





Surely not that Dave Matthews Band.












12/25/78 issue:

























Reviews, articles, etc.:

11/6/78 issue: Abbie Hoffman reviews The Big Fix for "Scenes," Maybelle Carter obit, Mark Jacobson on Don King, Patrick Carr on Carl Perkins.

11/13/78 issue: "Scenes" on Waylon Jennings, Richard Price on the film version of The Wanderers, a Don Cherry recording session in a cave, Robin Williams profile, Ace Frehley solo album review.

11/20/78 issue: Diaries of Joe Orton, a disco song about Plato's Retreat.

11/27/78 issue: Randy Shilts on Mae West, Guy Trebay on Ashford and Simpson at the Palace Theater.

12/4/78 issue: Mark Jacobson on Bruce Lee, Peter Stampfel on "Making Music in the Money Business."

12/11/78 issue: Richard Goldstein on William Burroughs, Lester Bangs on the Clash's Give 'Em Enough Rope.

12/18/78 issue: Abbie Hoffman's "Fugitive on the Town," cult movies, Dick Cavett, Sylvester at the Capitol Theater in Passaic.




I generally had a hard time finding vids for most of the places I've filed under "other," but here are some Youtube videos for Talking Heads at the Entermedia Theater, August 1978.