Vinyl, the Scorsese-Jagger production we’ve been looking forward to with bated coke-breath ever since it filmed in the East Village, finally hit HBO last night with an epic two-hour episode, and the critical reaction has been pretty much love it or hate it. Even if you’re with the East Village’s own Richard Hell in the latter camp, you’re probably going to watch at least another episode or two, just to bask/wallow in the ambience of the early-’70s New York City music scene. So here are some fun facts about the show that we’ve culled from around the net, and from our own archives.
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richard hell
Nevermind the Bollocks, Here’s John Lydon Giving St. Vitus a Taste Of His New Memoir
It’s not often you see Monty Python and John Lydon in the space of a week, but there was Britain’s other living legend at St. Vitus last night, chatting with Pitchfork’s Jenn Pelly about his new autobiography Anger Is an Energy. The book, out this week, tells how a childhood bout with meningitis shaped his personality (“I’m a shy, sensitive kind of fellow,” he insisted to the incredulous crowd at St. Vitus) and then goes on to recount his trailblazing and troublemaking with the Sex Pistols, Public Image Ltd., and, of course, his later dalliances with reality tv (that time he showed off his “fried-egg breasts” in I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!) and butter commercials (“the most anarchistic thing I’ve ever been presented with”).
James Franco Tackles Necrophilia, Dee Dee Ramone in the Park, and Three Amigos
This upcoming weekend, if you can make it to only one cinematic affair, it should definitely be the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) Film Festival, happening at venues all over East Village. The fest starts tomorrow and runs until the following Saturday, and this year’s films feature encounters with women of the Lower East Side.
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Richard Hell Will Chat With Robert Christgau Tomorrow Night
If you missed your chance to dine with Richard Hell, you’ll have a chance to see him for free tomorrow night when the punk-rock royal signs copies of his autobiography I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp (just released in paperback) at powerHouse Arena in Dumbo. The East Villager’s former band, Television, played its first show at CBGB 40 years ago this month.
That momentous performance may well be talked about during his interview Tuesday with Robert Christgau, who spent more than three decades as The Village Voice‘s chief music critic. Following the discussion, Hell will answer a few questions from the audience before signing books, according to powerHouse Arena’s events coordinator, Justin Levine.
Seating for the event, which goes from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., is available on a first-come, first-serve basis; reservations are encouraged via RSVP@powerHouseArena.com.
If you’d rather see him in Manhattan, he’ll be at The Strand on March 20, in conversation with Bryan Waterman, who penned the 33 1/3 about Television’s Marquee Moon album.
Hell of a Deal! Dinner’s On Richard Hell If You Bid in This Anti-NYU Expansion Auction
That star-studded auction aimed at snuffing out NYU’s forthcoming Greenwich Village towers went online today, and there are some big ticket items in addition to the previously mentioned shopping trip with Padma Lakshmi, acting lessons from Philip Seymour Hoffman, and lunch with Lewis Lapham. Maybe the most exciting addition: dinner with Richard Hell at John’s of 12th Street, down the block from Hell’s apartment.
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Watch the House Videographers at CBGB Call Richard Hell a Crybaby
As you may have read over at Rolling Stone, Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong — in what’s sure to be one of the highlights of the CBGB Festival — are screening some of their rare late-70s and early-80s concert footage at Bowery Electric tonight, between performances by Cheetah Chrome of the Dead Boys, Syl Sylvain of the New York Dolls, and Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols. We were lucky enough to have the authors of our weekly Nightclubbing column into the B+B Newsroom last Friday, along with Richard Boch, who’s working on a memoir of his time manning the door of the Mudd Club, and Pat Irwin, the guitarist for the Raybeats, 8 Eyed Spy and the B-52s, who spoke about his recently unearthed collaboration with Philip Glass.
If you missed Friday’s discussion, watch the replay above. Here’s what the gang had to say about Suicide (we spoke to Martin Rev of that band back in June) and the evolution of the Ramones.
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Nightclubbing | Student Teachers, 1979
Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong continue sorting through their archives of punk-era concert footage as it’s digitized for the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library.
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Nightclubbing | Richard Hell and The Voidoids, 1979
Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong continue sorting through their archives of punk-era concert footage as it’s digitized for the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library
It has probably reminded this self-deprecating and essentially very private man why he dropped from the public eye to begin with. The tension between his introversion and the will to perform has always been Hell’s biggest conundrum. And what better way to help relive that dichotomy than a book tour? Maybe it’s a form of therapy. We have the feeling he would rather chew glass.
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Nightclubbing | Richard Hell and the Voidoids
Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong continue sorting through their archives of punk-era concert footage as it’s digitized for the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library.
You can’t talk about punk rock without talking about Richard Hell. Television, the band he founded in 1973 with then best friend Tom Verlaine, was one of the groups – along with Blondie and the Ramones – that laid the foundation for the downtown scene at CBGBs. Sex Pistols impresario Malcolm McLaren purportedly looked at a poster of Television in 1974, pointed at Richard and said, “I want to start a band that looks like him.” More →
Nightclubbing | A Night at CBGBs
The Local is pleased to launch a regular column in which Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong sift through their voluminous archive of punk-era concert footage as it becomes part of the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library. They’ll share their favorite stories and clips along the way.
Pat: On a hot sticky night in July, 1975, I began videotaping punk bands at CBGBs. It was during the CBGB Rock Festival of Unrecorded Bands, with 40 groups that formed the core of the nascent music scene downtown. I was part of Metropolis Video, a video collective of eight, most of whom worked at MCTV’s public access department. That first night, we shot Blondie (still doing some covers, like the Velvets, Femme Fatale), the Talking Heads on their third or fourth gig out of RISD, and the Heartbreakers, a downtown super group with Richard Hell, who had just left Television, and Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan of the Dolls. It was their first Manhattan date. It was exciting and we shot now and then for about a year but the center would not hold and the collective dissolved.
Luckily, I met Emily Armstrong and after a night seeing Patti Smith at CBs, she agreed to work with me and a new partnership was formed. Our first band was the Dead Boys in 1977 and we continued for the next four years, often at CBs but also at other clubs like Max’s, Hurrah’s, Mudd Club, and Danceteria.
Emily: Now 32 years later, N.Y.U.’s Fales Library is making everything new again. The Downtown Collection is preserving and restoring the Nightclubbing archive of nearly 100 musical performances, 20-plus interviews, video art projects and more. It will be available for scholars (yes!) to rifle through and enjoy. I hope they do – I know I did. More →