RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,160
(sunshine? superman? foretold?)
As far as it went, I never
much like the Village Fugs,
nor Cat Mother and the All
Night Newsboys either. They
were two local east-village
rock bands, of their own
sort. Loose, oily, garage-band
sounds. In the case of the
Fugs, more scatological
than anything. Silly things
like 'After we ball, I hope
that won't be all.' Their
record label, whatever it
was, wouldn't produce them
with their original name, The
Fucks,' so the slipshod other
name had them as The Fugs.
They were actually marginally
successful for a while. On the
other hand, along 2nd Ave and
such, Cat Mother was more a
'let's get laid' band. Miserable
college smirks and all. (That
would have been a good band
name, back then: Miserable
College Smirks). I've always
hated irony too.
-
Ed Sanders, and Tuli Kupferberg.
They, or Ed anyway, had the
Peace Eye Bookstore, on 10th
street alongside Tompkins Square
Park. Pretty cool; mysterious, back
then. Esoteric, let's call it. And, at
the corner, near to Peace Eye, was
the famed 'Psychedelicatessant' -
you can check my spelling because
I could be wrong. That was a 'space
out space,' as I called it. You could
zone out there, high on whatever,
and sit in one place for three days
and it would all be excused because
you were 'grooving' - on where or
what no one ever much said. My
place at 509 e11th was right around
the next corner, so I'd pass it all the
time. I went in some too. It was just
a cool space, oddly painted, maybe
in spacey purples and stuff, sort of
dark and not much lit by normal
lighting, music usually pumping. I
used to like to watch the girls, and the
weirded out guys too - all together
they seemed a crappy sum-total
of the famed 'Summer Of Love.'
There were one or another other
rooms too, but I little knew what
went on there. This is all funny now,
60 years later, with drugs and pot
and all the rest of that crap now
made proper and accepted, even
legal. Now that's ironic! With the
the 'Government' no less now so
involved in the trade and changing
what was once 'lawlessness into
now a new version of ironic
and accepted fun - dispensing
centers and trade-inventory. No
accountability for all the lives ruined
and imprisoned over the last
50 years because of their stupid
attitudes coming (then) first. If you
once thought that handing out
(my mind wants to say 'Novocain'
but it's not that, even though that
funny), methadone was dumb, this
now is the latest version of dumb.
-
That entire area was pretty crazy,
and one could walk the range and
see it all - from Gracie Mansion
Gallery - which came later, when
for a brief time the East Village
actually made a stab at being a
new 'arts and galleries' area (BIG
flop), to the bicycle repair guy at
10thm who'd set up his outdoor
bicycle-repair curb most every
day, and stay busy at it too: axles,
chains, bearings, adjustments and
re-fittings too. Bars and pop-up
storefronts for whatever seasonal
moment was underway. In ways of
making money, it always seemed that
the inveterate New Yorkers had a
million tricks up their sleeves. The
small and obscure eating places, and
the weird forms of delivery too. Yes,
something was always underway.
-
Maybe even the places I've mentioned
were part of that : rule-free zones that,
eventually - it was hoped - would
draw the miserable 1967 dollars or
change out of someone's pocket, for
whatever crap could be peddled. It was
like that with the music too - the Fugs,
and Cat Mother, to use just two, then
local, examples. The music sucked, it
was actually horrid, but - in the
broader ethos of those days, like
today - you were supposed to check
your judgment at the door, just go for
cool, get it, and laugh along. It was
loud, fast, rude, and foul and ironic
too. Back then, a regular prole would
not have a sense of the 'ironic' factor,
of course. It had not become so vainly
established as it did later. All those pop
songs, and Beatles and Dylan and the
rest, suddenly self-consciously and
wryly about themselves, singing! With
a wink. You try to listen to 'Leopard
Skin Pillbox Hat' now, or 'Rainy Day
Woman, #12 & 35' and it's really all
you can do to keep from barfing over
what you hear, The irony and self
conscious wink-factors were so broad as
to be patently offensive. Like 'Tomorrow
Never Knows,' 'I Am the Walrus' and
all the rest. Different fish, same school.
-
I remember the titters and sneers, in
school, when learning about things
like 'Lake Titicaca' in Peru, or -
another time - when some woman
friend of mine began snickering, and
said - about a baseball player named
Albert Pujols - 'I can't believe they're
cheering for a guy named 'poo-hole.'
I meant to say back, 'Yes, and ha ha,
this whole twisted world is a funny
place.' But more to my matter was
the idea of the huge waste that had,
by now, and then too, gone into
belittling the world, for what it is,
maybe too for what it can be, or is
headed to be. In 1967, the hordes
of young kids swarming into the
east village were meant to be no
harm, do nothing negative but seek
and have their own sensated fun. Of
course, it never turned out that way.
Nor did I ever see it that way. I found
that I just could not get into the fabric
of that ill-fitting suit; oh though I
tried. And then, one day, just like
that, after the deaths and the riots,
the protests and the hiding outs, and
all the rest, I realized that, truly, all
was lost. Those miserable trends had
actually taken root and spread and
had been assimilated into the society
at large. And no one blinked. No one
cared. The Vietnam Death Choir raged
on, the irony there being the anarchy
of soldiers. Killing, but with a new
and redefined definition of what that
killing was. On the NY city streets,
that same redefinition broke down
everything else - the dry-rot of
the 1970's, and then the rococo
sick glamor of the '80's tried so
valiantly to give meaning to pathos,
shape and form to a blob of misery
that, by then, and perhaps ironically
too, had spread everywhere : Schools,
cafeterias, encounter groups, therapy
session, marriage counseling, drug
clinics, art-therapy session, rap sessions,
polyester and double-knit clothing.
The entire mid-afternoon martinis
crowd, flambe'd and sickened of
itself, turned to irony, killed their
own nation, and merrily tumbled
along their way. 'Sunshine came
softly to my window today. Could
have tripped out easy, but I changed
my ways.' Sunshine? Superman?
It was all foretold....
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