2-27-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #55 (Preparing to move to the U.K. for Keeps. . .)

(great pic of young Nervus Rex me by SF photog. who needs to remind me of his name & whereabouts!)

My leg had now healed from my great skiing adventure with Nervus Rex. We’d played a few more gigs, but signs were pointing to a parting of the ways with the group. Two years before, we were so hopeful; two years later, everything was an uphill effort, and people in the band didn’t even seem to like one another. We’d recruited a young lead guitarist, Seth, who was a wonderful musician and a sweetheart of a guy, but our musical arrangements onstage had become long and somewhat overblown, though brilliant (the intro to “There She Goes,” our opening number at the Peppermint Lounge in the spring of 1981, was pretty over the top. . . five minutes of spacey, then driving, guitar riffs with the Panther organ and synth sounds -- not exactly poppy any longer, which suited Shawn’s mood but not the audience’s expectations).

Around this time, Nervus Rex had gone into the studio with a young Mike Chapman protégé, a recording engineer named Doug. We recorded a demo of a few tracks for our second album that we thought were pretty cool: “Funky Surfer Boy,” “Out of Love,” and “What I Really Want” (“We Learn To Live With a Little Pain, My Dear” was the chorus of another song Shawn was writing at the time -- a song that Shawn did later on with his pop group, Burning Puppets). At any rate, the titles of those songs sure are telling, hm? Whatever was going on in his brain, Shawn wasn’t into the relationship, and I was fed up, too. The record company passed on our demo, and Nervus Rex was label-less, too.

Shawn and I had been fighting for a year, and after my leg broke, we had pretty much broken up -- there were other romantic interests and a lot of “flirtin’ and hurtin’” happening. I reacted a lot to how I was being treated (I got mad and kind of suspicious when I was not invited out with Shawn when he hung out with his druggie drinking friends, and assorted “midget models” -- ouch and ouch). One young man I was “seeing” briefly (probably to hurt Shawn back -- yup, that was bad) lent me his cool black leather motorcycle jacket and wound up giving it to me (I’m lucky, see?). Crossing 14^th street on foot, he even said, “I’ll marry ya if you wear that leather jacket.” (Sadly, he was the wrong guy at the wrong time -- I was getting bored because he wasn’t real smart, just good hearted, which is good, just not enough for me.) After him, I was seeing a guy who was a real smooth talker and a big fan; he came from a well to do family in Connecticut (!!) but was kind of slimey -- of course hard drugs were involved. He was friends with a guy at Madonna’s record company who’d helped Madonna get a deal in return for sexual favors, so I thought all that inside info was quite titillating. . . anyway, it really was a mistake to date that guy but hey, I was young and had a right to make some pretty big errors in my life -- right? (just go with me on this!)

Above all, I’d wanted to move to England for some years. . . . and as if an answer to that prayer, I got a letter from my friend, Glenn Tillbrook, who knew I wanted that. He said, “Come on, move to England; you can stay in my flat in Blackheath for a few months.” He also hinted around that he and Chris Difford wanted to produce a recording project with me as the singer. Wow! Who wouldn’t jump at such an offer!

In the course of a few months, I sold my synthesizer, my Panther organ and a guitar or two (keeping my old acoustic Guild F-30), found a subletter for my apartment (and my mean- spirited calico cat, Claudette), and borrowed money from my sweet old Grandma.

Ask a relative for money? I really didn’t know how to do that, and was pretty scared and confused if it was the right thing. . .

1-23-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #21 (What I did for the Porn Industry in ‘70’s NYC)

Now, don’t get too excited -- or horrified -- by this entry down sweet ol’ memory lane (LOL -- nothing was that pretty back in the day, so it’s ironic). I worked for a few kind of raunchy magazines -- as a writer and a proofreader.

Yes, I created and facilitated content for magazines whose pictorials were beyond suggestive; they were XXX rated. I had to laugh, though, because it seemed so stupid to me that people would fetishize sex to the point of it seeming unappealing and downright disgusting. Sex should be healthy, playful, intense, loving, and pleasurable, in my mind.

At SUNY Purchase, one of my creative writing class colleagues, Mara, told me she was editing copy at a place called National Screw Magazine (a sideline to the National Screw paper and Midnight Blue cable TV Adult show with the very unappealing Al Goldsstein) and wanted me to write for them.

In writing class, we would quietly share a laugh at the instructor, who called hyperbole “Hyper Bowl.” (He was definitely an autodidact). At first, I wasn’t sure it was the same hard-core porno pub that peeked out of the newsstands at Gem Spa and the like, but when she confirmed it she said, wryly, “Gotta find work that pays, and it’s not always easy.”

Later on, when I discovered another friend of mine was secretly turning tricks as an S&M prostitute (she did both/either -- versatile girl!), I didn’t bat an eyelash, either. Somehow, very little surprises me, but I always look at the absurdist angle because, let’s face it, in every predicament, in every bummer, there’s something blackly humorous if you look hard enough.

For National Screw, I wrote “Talkin’ BunkMate Blues,” a semi-fictional story of being a tough chick who shunned living with roommates because of dissenting tastes in music and a need for privacy (to bring over boyfriends and have sex was the implication -- though I didn’t have to write about sleazy sex acts, thankfully).

Then, I was sent on assignment as the National Screw “Punkophile” to write about the great New Wave band, Television. I quoted -- or misquoted -- a lyric from a TV song, “I Don’t Care”: “’Cause when she whispers in my ear/I get so hard, I get so hard. . . “ Was that really the lyric? I don’t care (ha ha). It sounded like the words, and it made sense, and I knew they’d want to bold face that line in the story, so I went with it. Sorry, Tom Verlaine, if that wasn’t right -- maybe it would work, don’t you think?!

My greatest -- and last --job in the porn industry was as a proofreader for a XXX rated glossy mag called Cheri. Diana from New Wave Rock Magazine was the editor, and I think my friend, Fran, recommended me for the position of proofreader there at Cheri.

The receptionist was a sweet girl from Georgia named Rusty, whose alias was “The Cherry Bomb” at Cheri, a cover girl for this really raunchy magazine. She had the hugest tits you ever saw -- just mammoth -- and she would pose any old way they asked her to in addition to being the receptionist at the magazine. One pictorial showed her frolicking with a one-legged also-naked woman who had a pegleg that was strategically positioned on the Cherry Bomb’s ass -- as if pegleg lady was buttfucking her.

As my dad might have sarcastically commented, “Mmm, deLIGHTful!” Other than Rusty the Cherry Bomb, there were a few other characters in the office, though the rest of us looked kind of dorky and we’d NEVER be good pictorial material.

As proofreader for Cheri, I went to the copy editor to ask questions like, “SO, in this story, are we using c-u-m or c-o-m-e?” or “What caption do you want for this sex pirate pictorical, ‘Pardon my buccaneers?. . . ‘” It was surreal. I think I made about $150 per week, net.

That job, as a proofreader at Cheri in midtown, paid all right but only lasted a few months. When they downsized, I was history. Luckily, I was eligible for unemployment and got paid a princely $75 per week, about half of my previous earnings. Oh well.

Unemployment in the 1970s -- another surreal experience. . . NEXT time!!

1-22-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #20 (Shawn gets equal time to make an aside re Nervus Rex in ‘70’s NYC)

This memoir writing is really funny when it’s shared on FaceBook because people who were THERE have different memories. . . and as much as this blog is about ME recounting personal history -- with a twist -- sometimes, I have to agree to disagree and if it’s interesting enough, share what other people say. I’ll include some of my retorts, too.

From Shawn Brighton on FaceBook: “Lauren, here's history for ya - you're not quite correct. That invite (to play a loft party on Mercer Street) didn't occur until we (actually I) already knew the 52's. The first NYC gig they ever did was co-headlining with Rex at Max's and it was awkward. I talked to Kate beforehand and told her that we weren't opening for them but, rather, co-headlining as we had already played there many times. . After that gig, I became good friends with them - took them on a tour of Goodwill stores, thrift shops, and rag bins to find them vintage clothes for their onstage outfits, then we'd hang out at Eno's apartment on 8th Street which they were subletting, and I spent a week getting them acquainted to the NYC scene. One of my fondest memories is of you, I, and Ricky going to Coney Island and riding the Mighty Mouse, a rickety wooden roller coaster. As the thing was chugging up 1000 feet in the air and we were just about to take our first plunge, Ricky turned to me and, in his thick Georgian drawl, said "Shawn, I think we made a mistake." And then we plunged to, what at the moment, we considered our last moments on Earth. Poor Ricky. I was really fond of him. A really decent, unpretentious, giving human being who died way before his time.”

My reply: “Well, Shawn, maybe at this point I have to agree to disagree because I do not remember the B-52's gig, THEN the party (I thought loft party was first, then the gig). . . and I NEVER ride roller coasters; they're much too dizzying for me and I'm terrified of getting a migraine in public from dizziness. But I'll take what you wrote and put in my blog for equal time, OK?? It's certainly interesting, and cool to have different POVs. Love, L. PS - I thought Ricky was a real sweet guy too, but didn't know him real well. We also played the Mudd Club with the B's, right?

Shawn: “YOU didn't ride the roller coaster. It was just Ricky and me. Now I know why.

Ricky was a great guy. It was a tragedy when he died. . . I'm not sure we played with the B's at Mudd. I remember that we played there a couple of times and I remember seeing the B's with, of all people, Richard Lloyd (of Television) hanging around on stage and riffing and screwing up their set. It was like listening to 2 different radio stations at the same time. I wish there was a recording of that. Strangest thing I'd ever heard.”

Anyway, to use another of my dad’s favorite phrases, “That’s the way the cookie crumbles.”

1-19-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #17 (The Roots of “The Rex” -- Second Wave band Nervus Rex in ‘70’s NYC)

Even though my memory isn’t a paragon of accuracy, with dates and timelines I can be all right. With Nervus Rex, Shawn and I met in late ’76 (my upper east side apartment era). By early ’77, we knew we needed a drummer and a bass player. Although I later had a passionate affair with the electric bass (circa 1991) that continues to this day, in Nervus Rex, I was to play rhythm guitar, some keyboards eventually, and sing harmonies. (I also danced around because I’m kind of antsy and when I hear the music, it gets me boppin’.)

We got Miriam Linna (ex Cramps) to play drums a la Mo Tucker of the Velvets (lots of floor tom) and a very chipper, slim, curly-headed young guy on the bass, Lewis Eklund. He was into the Stones, and who could fault that in a bass player? Real rock & roll rhythm section!

Back to Shawn for memory: “Our first gig was at CBGB, early '77. It was early - about 10 PM and we were doing a soundcheck and then, without even leaving the stage, the sound guy said, "You're up now. This is your set.". So, we just started playing. People were just starting to drift in and get seated while, petrified and ambushed, we tried our best.”

From there, we kept improving, playing in the Krushenick’s loft, getting tighter. I had written lyrics for a melody of Shawns for an early N Rx song called “Dubrule 1250.” In true Velvets fashion, it was about a guy named Norman DuBrule who had horrific dreams, so he went to a hypnotist, Dr. Weems, who put him into a trance. . . Norman saw people burning, crosses -- much worse than what Neil Young sang about in “Southern Man.” I had looked up the Albigensian Heresy in history -- they were a French religious cult who were persecuted and burned at the stake circa 1250 A.D.

Anyway, after that song, I didn’t get to co-write in Nervus Rex with Shawn (bummer! That was to change in future groups) and “Dubrule 1250” got phased out of the set after Miriam left. As to WHY Miriam quit the band, I wasn’t totally sure why; sometimes I think I’m the last in line in the game of telephone, but then again, I didn’t clue in, sometimes: too much internal conflict and drama going on for me to be truly aware, esp. in the past. So I go to others who knew the score, luckily:

(From Shawn Brighton, co-founder of Nervus Rex) “Miriam left when she met Billy. I was there for that event - went with her to his apartment, which looked just like hers; wooden record bins filled with vintage vinyl. I could see the look in their eyes and knew they were meant to be. She also was more of a purist and wanted to do roots rock and roll rather than the arty stuff I was coming up with at the time.”

In sum, Shawn says, “But I really think it was because she was in love and wanted to play with him.”

(from Miriam Linna, first N Rx drummer) “I only left the band because I ran off with Billy! I knew you guys were on the road to success, I absolutely knew it, and I loved the music we were doing together. I wish our time in a band together had been longer, but such is love and life.”

Regardless who sat on the drummer’s throne, we became scenesters of a sort. Shawn continues, “Don't forget the ‘happening’ that we had on Mercer street at my parents loft. It was considered the first official "punk" party. There were about 500 people in the street outside trying to gain entrance to the packed loft. We had 3 bands, us, The Fleshtones, and The Zantees - Miriam played with us and the Zantees that night - it was pre-Jonathan. It even made the event column in The Daily News the next day. It was just supposed to be a regular party but turned into an event. The cops shut down Mercer Street because of the crowds. Hilly Kristal was pissed. No one went to CB's that Saturday night.”

Right -- the loft parties back then. Wow. I do recall that one, dimly, but especially the one where we invited a young, out-of-town group from Athens, Georgia to play a party as their entrée into the NY music scene.

. . . But that’s for the next blog!!

1-18-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #16 (Pt. 2: Real Estate career, or moving often and well in ‘70’s NYC)

Back to finding an apartment downtown. That rat-infested hellhole on the 4^th floor on Mott Street was history. Keep in mind, at that point in NYC real estate, there really were enough cheap places on the market to keep starving artists – painters, writers, musicians, etc. – living in the city, especially downtown. Gentrification was just a gleam in its daddy’s eye, and neighborhoods were kind of dirty and needed repair, quite often.

Still, it was nice to be able to live cheaply and locally. And if an article paid me $75, and I worked a job that paid me $100 per week, I was doing well enough to pay rent and eat. Clothes I’d find in thrift stores or in my mom’s closet, at home (she had cool ‘50’s dresses and stuff – but I couldn’t wear her shoes, as she had large, size 11, feet).

Very luckily, I found one quickly, on St. Mark’s Place, between 2^nd and 3^rd Avenues. Manic Panic was across the street, which was a cool place to visit & hang. Tish and Snooky became friends; they were very sweet, open, fun-loving and just cool. The apartment at 26 St. Mark’s was on the second floor, in the back. It was a long, rectangular-shaped studio that was in constant disrepair; water damage by the rear window caused the plaster to bulge and bubble out, comically. I think the rent was around $200 a month?

That’s when we were all pretty darn broke -- in ’78 -- and people like the waitress at Dojo’s took pity. We also ate at Kiev, mostly – also Veselka and Odessa and all kinds of Russian/Eastern European type places that served generous portions of delicious soup with buttered Challah bread, and great pierogis, fried or boiled.

Shawn said, “(Kiev) had the best pierogis with caramelized onions ever. And remember the bread? I always told people to order the ‘Buddy Holly’ bread and they tentatively would and then it would arrive - buttered challah bread but, with the Ukranian accent, it always sounded like they were asking if you wanted ‘Buddy Holly bread?’” Nice.

What we would have done without such places I don’t even know. . . but good food when you’re hungry is always great, and affordable good food, greater still.

But I digress – so my last apartment, and the best, was 131 Thompson Street -- kind of Soho, kind of South Village. I wound up there because my former SUNY Purch roommate, Jane, wanted to sublet it out and I thought it was too cool to pass up. I found an old friends, James, who needed a new place so I sublet to him with the condition he could take over lease when the time came. He and his cat, Gully, moved in and lived there in decrepit boho digs for a few years, I think.

In Soho, Jane charged me $225 a month (when I took over the lease, it was less). Apartment 5E was a typical tenement five-floor walkup, lots of light in the front room, eastern exposure, front-facing railroad flat.

I took it, and stayed there for almost 30 years, rent stabilized, small, old, but cozy. An elevator was installed after ten years, which I tried to not use much (stairs are great exercise!). I just hoped I wouldn’t grow old and die in that apartment. . . that became a motivating force in my life, to figure out how to escape from New York.

. . . Still, I love New York – just not to live in the belly of the beast.

1-17-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #15 (Real Estate career, or moving often and well in ‘70’s NYC)

Hmmm. I knew that if I started writing, Shawn would set me straight about stuff I couldn't remember rightly. It's 'cause I feel like a lone wolf so much in life, sometimes the people who were with me melt away. . . sorry for misremembering, Shawn.

Or should I say, dismembering? Anyhoo, no harm meant. These are MY memories, and they are faulty, emotional, and probably disjointed – but hopefully fun for others to read and very therapeutic and fun for me to tap away on.

So, Shawn said after my last blog: “Lauren, that was *me* at Spring Street Bar. I was with people, said hi to you, and then, while ordering, had that encounter with the waiter and his Bulemic miming. It was hilarious. Also, remember Dojo's which you lived right above on St. Mark's Place? We were dead broke at that point and the waitress would dole out free meals in exchange for a decent tip so we wouldn't starve and she could make her rent.”

All right, guys. Since I was writing about places in the Soho area, I didn’t write about restaurants in the East Village. But yes, Dojo's was great -- I ate all the vegetarian stuff -- and I am so glad that Shawn remembered that waitress, too. Also glad he said "dead broke" and not "poor," because one is a changing state, and one is a dead weight. Clever, kindhearted waitress (but devious, of course). "When you live outside the law you must be honest. . ." a conspiracy of thieves all around in struggling NYC circles in the '70's. .

So I’ll talk a little about my real estate career in Manhattan when I moved there back then. My first place was 344 East 65^th Street, between 1^st and 2^nd Avenues, and it really fell into my lap one night when I overheard a very brash, brassy broad talking at the bar in CBGB’s. It was Jody Jeshurin, Handsome Dick (of the Dictators) Manitoba’s girlfriend at the time. She was telling a friend how she didn’t want this “APAWtment” on 65^th Street, even though it was closer than the Bronx.

“I’ll take it if you don’t want it,” I piped up. This was in ’76, and I was really tired of sofa surfing when I came to town, albeit my friends were kindhearted and helpful (my boyfriend and friends like Tina and Chris of T-Heads). I was ready to transfer schools anyway, because SUNY Purch was too far from the city. The rent was $165 per month for a small one-bedroom.

So, I moved in to a railroad flat in an upper East side tenement, a rear apartment on the 2^nd floor that didn’t get much light, but if I’d been a nightclubber and slept all day it would have been great. But no, I was a struggling depressive college student and writer who worked daylight hours and needed whatever little sunlight that trickled into my south-facing rear bedroom, where I worked on a typewriter at a desk that folded down from my tall oakwood art deco style secretary. I took baths in the kitchen (great tub-- covered with a blue-painted slab of plywood when not being used for bathing), lived alone, and dreamed of making music downtown -- and writing songs.

From there, I figured a year later that uptown was too far to go after gigs & socializing downtown. After pounding the pavement and looking at the Voice apartment for rent ads, I found a little fourth floor walkup in a Mott Street tenement just south of Houston (242 Mott). Another small one bedroom in a tenement, probably around $175 per month.

Lower East Side, there I went: there I left when a very large, sewery-smelling rat showed up on top of my toilet seat (gnawed a big hunk of pumperninkel bread atop my fridge!) one rotten morning. Ugh! I was so freaked out, I threw on clothes and ran down the stairs to my landlord’s real estate office a few doors down. These guys looked like real guidos and acted phlegmatically no matter what.

“There’s a huge rat!!”

“So?” The smooth faced thirty-something with dark hair and eyes regarded me, bored. His two other pals sat at their desks, quietly.

“I, I, I – I need to leave. I’m leaving my apartment.”

“Oh, so you’re breakin’ your lease? You don’t break your lease, are you crazy? Do you know who you’re dealing with here?”

“I don’t care. There’s a rat! I’ve got to leave. Take your apartment back!”

I don’t remember what else they said, but I used every shred of righteous anger I could muster and cancelled my lease then and there. I’m sure they laughed at me after I left their office. Did I get my deposit back? I probably fought for it, but don’t remember if I did.

That apartment had a very depressing vibe, anyway.