7-14-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #147 (The Washington Squares - Early Visuals 3)

More visuals for my personal oral history of the Squares. . . here’s a pic of my best friend at the time, Stephanie Chernikowski, an old fashioned photographer who lived in a storefront on the Bowery and processed her own black and white images in her own self-made darkroom underneath her loftbed. The smell in her groud-floor, mostly sunless apartment was acidic, mysterious, and agreeable because my father had a darkroom in the basement and I loved those smells. Stephie took a fair amount of my boyfriend, Rick, and me for the Village Voice quite often. Tom called Stephie “The Silver Fox” because she grew her hair out naturally gray & white at an early age so that her face remained pretty & unwrinkled (she had merry brown eyes, too) but her hair was quite different from almost everybody we knew. She was fifteen years older than me, too.

Steph shot and wrote in the ‘80’s mostly for The Village Voice; her Getting and Spending columns always waxed poetic (like the one here, where she referred to the passing of Andy Warhol, one of her heroes).

Originally hailing from Beaumont, Texas -- like our idol, Janis Joplin -- Stephanie moved to Austin, the hip college town. For a brief spell, she taught at UT at Austin, her most notable English student being a freshman George W. Bush (“Dumb as a post,” she said, wondering how he ever managed to finish school, much less transfer to Yale). 

When Stephanie moved to NYC in her thirties, she wasn’t expecting to get involved in the downtown music scene, necessarily. Her oeuvre was country music and in the seventies the Lone Star Café was the best place to catch all kinds of Nashville and Texas musicians (George “Possum” Jones, Delbert McClinton, Merle Haggard, Tammy Wynette, etc.). Her other best friend, Martha Hume, wrote for Country Music Magazine and the like so she always had work.  Then, when CBGB’s opened and started up, because Steph lived two blocks away, it was a cinch to go out and get early photos of the Cramps, the Ramones, Debbie Harry, Patti Smith, Television, Tish & Snooky. . .and then she met me.

We got along famously -- for 20-plus years.

2-08-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #36 (Growing Up in Public at CBGB’s pt. 2- 1975)

Like I said last blog, Wolcott had a great description of early CBGB’s in his excellent new book, Lucking Out, My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York:

“At CBGB’s, rough democracy reigned. There were no separate tables for press seating (unlike at the Bottom Line), no backstage VIP playpen, no caste system, no dress code, everything informally in flux, not even any strict restrictions on entering and reentering the club, which allowed everybody to circulate, spread their germs. The one checkpoint that had to be crossed was Roberta Bayley’s station at the front of the club. . . Reddish haired, pale, white thin, beautiful, smart, quick, Roberta was (to put it in Mad Men terms) the Joan of CBGB’s, the goddess gatekeeper who had the authority of decree, the power to banish.”

Yup, that pretty much sums it up. I like JW’s comparision of Roberta to Joan of Mad Men. . . and true, Roberta was also at times haughty, standoffish, and severe with people. I probably envied her skill at dealing harshly with people because I had a hard time dealing with anger, confrontation, and unkindness. She put people in their place effortlessly, remembered names, had great skill at dealing with one and all. Put it this way, she could be a smart bitch and I admired that!!

Luckily, I wasn’t much on her bad side, so getting by Roberta and into the club wasn’t a chore. I tried to make small talk sometimes, but I’m not really good at that with everybody and I think she had other fish to fry (I always try to respect when people are busy at their jobs & believe me, working the door at a place like CBGB’s on a popular night could be a Promethean task). I do know Roberta was very highly regarded on the scene, and her photography grew in depth and reputation; she was part of several prestigious photography shows in the past decade, along with shooters-in-arms Stephanie Chernikowski, Godlis, Ebet Roberts, Laura Levine, Joe Stevens, and George DuBose.

Come to think of if, my shyness aside, I really liked hanging out with the photographers, writers, and musicians. All of these creatives were kindred souls to me, and the general zooeyness of a place like CBGB’s was mitigated by these new-chum comrades-in-arts. To be honest, I guess we were kind of an avant-garde in the truest sense: we were on what a friend calls “the bleeding edge,” which precedes the cutting edge: and those on the bleeding edge aren’t as fortunate as the following wave. You see, the cutting edge gets kudos and the cash, whereas bleeding edge suffers derision and a gash. . . back to the topic, now.

Especially in the summer, much of our time at CB’s was spent outside, on the wide sidewalk, milling and/or mulling about. The honest-to-God Bowery bums next door at the Palace hotel would sometimes toss bottles out their window down at the street (maybe not always AT us, but that would depend on how soused or pissed off those Bowery bums got).

With all that intensity and intrigue indoors at CBGB’s, you really needed a break every now & then. Besides, how could anybody hear over all that loud rock music? LOL. Yeah, I might sound like an old duffer but hey, it always felt weird, trying to converse while not really hearing well and worrying about whether your talking into their ear was deafening or perhaps, unwittingly seductive (as in the old adage, “blow in my ear and I’ll follow you anywhere”). Ah, the perils of CBGB-ness!

Out on that sidewalk and inside the club, I met and became good friends with more than a few interesting people there: Stephanie Chernikowski, Fran Pelzman, Mary Harron, Judy Wilmot, Billy Ficca, Fred Smith, Tish and Snooky, and, of course, Chris and Tina. I’d talk to almost anybody, especially if they were nice, and wound up chatting with dozens, maybe hundreds, of others who I might still know by name and/or sight -- but perhaps I should describe the big macher of ‘em all, Hilly Kristal. . . next blog.

2-07-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #35 (Growing Up in Public at CBGB’s pt. 1- 1975)

Once I started rock writing for the Village Voice, covering rock concerts and such, I started leading an exciting double life. Back and forth to the city and SUNY Purchase I went, with occasional visits to mom in Douglaston, Queens -- where, oddly enough, the Christgaus, parents of fellow rockcrits Bob & Georgia (his sister), resided.

At any rate, I would occasionally haunt the offices of the Village Voice to see what life there was like -- and to possibly scarf up some more work (or would it be “scare up” ? -- in my case, probably both). Luckily -- don’t they say luck is 98% showing up? -- I met some cool & talented editors and writers, like Richard Goldstein, Karen Durbin, Jamaica Kinkaid, Guy Trebay, and James Wolcott. At times I felt a little out of my element, but as I aspired to be witty and urbane and very grown up, it was good to hang with older people -- even if most of them were only five or ten years my senior!

So. Having read some press about this interesting place, CBGB’s, then meeting another writer who offered to bring me along -- that’s how I got to “CB’s” and got into the habit of being there, early on. Although rather independent in thought and action, it’s comforting to go with somebody initially who knows the scene and is respected. You gain good rep by association that way, and have someone to “fall back” on if the insecurity or the dark ponies start waltzing around in your head (and believe me, they did!).

My initial impression of that dive, CBGB’s -- and oh brother, it was definitely a dive -- was that it didn’t smell good (sweat, beer, piss, dog poop -- yes, there really was dog poop on the floors, sometimes); was long, dark, mysterious; and seemed like a living, breathing thing or a “sentient entity.” I swear, the place had a schizo-affective personality and moodswings galore. Like the whaling ship, Pequod, of Moby Dick, its walls and ceilings pulsated with a quasi-sordid emotional history, the vibe of a past mostly violent, sad and pickled. However, the present and the future shimmered hopefully like a glistening patina of sweat trickling from the upper lip of a punk rock drummer, maybe Tommy Ramone or Billy Ficca. Then again, those guys on drums or offstage were too cool to break a sweat (and I do mean that they were damn nice guys, too).

The gatekeepers of the portals of the infernal early CBGB’s were either BG Hacker or Roberta Bayley. I guess I didn’t rub them the wrong way because I always got in -- generally as a comp (member of “the press”) or with a paying friend.

At any rate, Wolcott said it quite well in his excellent new book, Lucking Out, My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York. I’ll continue with a quote from him next blog. . .

1-9-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #6 (background/intro to Forming a popular New Wave Band in the Late Seventies: Nervus Rex)

Even with my writing work, college schooling, and aspirations to REALLY WRITE (not to “be a writer” – I‘m beyond that ‘cause I know I am), I also had an inexplicable itch to write and perform songs. At the tender age of 12, I appeared in a local Queens talent show for kids and sang “Both Sides, Now,” with my mom at the piano. From what I know of being 12, it’s such an awkward age. . . but I knew it was a good song and something about being on stage and singing was very appealing.

Mom was a piano teacher and church organist on Sundays. . . . we had a piano and an organ in our living room – a place otherwise filled with uncomfortable chairs and a sofa that had plywood under the cushions rather than springs. It was good that the couch in the TV room/den was nicer to sit on (somewhat!). But I digress.

As a baby, I started singing around the same time I started babbling, so I’ve always sung – especially in church on Sundays, as we had to religiously (no pun intended) attend Catholic Church as well as Catholic grammar school. We also heard music at home, almost non-stop, between mom’s music and our dad’s tuning in to WQXR FM (the local classical music station) every Sunday morning. We also listened to vinyl 33 1/3 rpm albums on the Fisher stereo set: Musicals like My Fair Lady or Fiddler on the Roof (Fiorello! Was one of my favorites) or the Dixieland jazz sounds of the Kenny Ball Orchestra’s Midnight in Moscow (fabulous song, BTW). At Christmastime, The Harry Simeone Choir’s Little Drummer Boy album dominated the stereo and we sang along to it nonstop.

In 1964, I was given The Beatles Second Album, and it was definitely exciting to dance around to and sing with them. Later on, Simon and Garfunkel, The Mamas and the Papas, The Zombies and the Cowsills filled my ears with wondrous harmonies. . . I never could get them out of my head. In church, when the key of the songs were excruciating for my voice, I’d find what I called “an alternate melody” (a 3^rd or a 5^th harmony, it turned out) and belt along as joyously as possible. Thankfully, nobody told me to shut up, or I’d probably have developed a complex and I’d never have kept making music.

Then I started copying down lyrics of my favorite songs that I’d listen to over and over. . . Joni Mitchell, Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt especially. From studying them (and rock & roll stuff I dug, esp. the Rolling Stones) I started writing my own lyrics. But I needed an instrument.

“Mom, how about I learn the piano?” I asked innocently, around age 13.

My comely red-lipsticked mom looked up from the sink where she was dyeing her thick hair a rich chestnut brown – or more accurately, covering up her gray hairs. She sighed.

“But Laurie, you’re too headstrong to learn from me! How about the guitar – would you like to play the guitar?” My big brother, Tommy, had a few guitars that I would borrow from time to time, especially a nylon stringed classical – and then, when he came back from a trip to Mexico, he brought a lovely, light, steel stringed guitar that started warping as soon as the climate change hit its untrussed neck.

Mom took me to the local Sam Ash music store and we picked out a cute Guild F-30 guitar that had a good neck and fit to my body (the curve went just under my right breast). Except for 2 guitar lessons with a teacher mom bartered piano lessons for (the hunky hippie, Danny Crowley), and a Mel Bay beginner guitar book that I impatiently eschewed, I mostly learned to play by ear. I still have that Guild (+ two others) and play it. Good quality is always a good idea. . . thanks, mom!!

With this background – as well as a short-lived stint in a few high school bands and talent show appearances, accompanying myself on guitar playing “Long, Long Time” (a schmaltzy Linda Ronstadt number) – I came to look at the music ads in back on the Village Voice one day in late 1976. I’d been out on the music scene, writing about it and digging the music, and I knew I could add some of my own noise – if I could find some simpatico bandmates to play with.

Little did I know how drastically that would change my life – and that by making that choice how it would affect my writing career. . .

1-8-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #5 (Working at the Strand Bookstore, Broadway & 12th Street, in Greenwich Village)

So. I have a rockin’ start to a creative writing career at the tender age of 18. Some wag calls me “The Downtown Joyce Maynard.” I take an instant dislike to Joyce Maynard, as she’s writing for The New York Times and besides getting great gigs, has a rumored affair with writing legend J.D. Salinger. Not that I want my personal life to sully my career or credentials – that would be against my independent nature -- but I do wind up with a semi-secretive relationship (because I wouldn’t want my personal life to sully my career or credentials!) with a fellow Village Voice writer whose intellect and sense of humor were great aphrodisiacs. (His memoir book that came out recently, Lucking Out, mentions none of his ‘70’s flames by name because, “it was a decision on my part to leave my romantic/sexual/personal life as blurred as possible, not only because I didn't think it'd be that interesting to the reader but because I didn't want to embarrass anyone I had been involved in. They might have moved on with their lives, be embarrassed at having the past brought up, you just never know, so I decided to play it safe.” – entirely forgivable, then.)

And even though ol’ Trixie A. Balm wrote for the Voice, Creem, Circus, Gig, and many other fine music publications. . . Lauren still needed another job to supplement income during college. She did what any aspiring writer and junior boho in New York with any sense of history would do: Look for work at the world famous Strand Bookstore, in the Village.

Tom Verlaine of Television (New Wave Art Rock geniuses) worked at the Strand, as did Patti Smith, and countless other infamous and famous alums cut their teeth in that venerable used book emporium. At any rate, to the Strand I went and got a job in the office in the basement, fulfilling people’s book orders sent in the mail (remember snail mail?). We would type up these forms, throw them into a suitably sized box, then send them upstairs to the “pickers” to pick the books and bring them back for us to finish the order (when a title wasn’t available, we’d have to notate that) and then we’d have to look up the price on the inside cover of the book, tally up the order, and add tax and shipping.

Keep in mind this was the era before ANYTHING was automated; everything had to be done manually, though of course accuracy never suffered on that account at the Strand!! Or, at least, it didn’t suffer much.

Anyway, I met one of the coolest people who became a friend and bandmate to me; Miriam Linna, originally from Ontario, was living in New York, and working at the Strand. She had just been given her walking papers (the nerve of ‘em!) the ultra cool retro rockers The Cramps, and was a sad lil’ drummer gal. I had just spent several months brainstorming a new band, Nervus Rex, with Shaun Brighton. We needed a rhythm section, and so it seemed like kismet to have met the fabulous Miriam Linna and be friends with her.

The pay at the Strand was probably minimum wage, like $2.30 an hour, but it was on the books. I worked there for a few months in 1977. . . then one day I was talking in a too-loud voice at my desk when there was a boss-bashing session. Fred Bass, our boss at the Strand, just happened to be standing behind me at the time (who knew?!), so I was canned, pretty much, on the spot. Oh well. Probably taught me a lifelong lesson: to NEVER badmouth the boss on premises – and to keep my voice volume better modulated, generally.

1-7-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Starter Job #4 (Village Voice freelance Rock Writer) & 1-6-12 (Happy Birthday, daddy!)

Okay, so it’s the summer of 1974. Beloved father dies, eldest daughter goes to her first rock concerts with her beau, Ira, from the hood in Bayside, Queens. They go to hear Mott the Hoople at the Uris Theater on Broadway, and David Bowie at Madison Square Garden. After attending my second rock concert, ever, I felt compelled to write a concert review, using as may “fifty dollar words” as I could muster, inspired no doubt by the effete stylings of Melville or something from the 19^th century. “Cynosure” was one of my favorite words, but I digress.

I mailed off my proud three-page double-spaced review to “Music Editor, Village Voice, NYC 10013.” I had just turned 18 that spring, and in the fall was heading off to college at SUNY Purchase. I was glad to have something to do to get my mind off that terrible loss of my father. I had no idea how to pitch a story or even the name of the editor. But I did it.

In early September, a letter came to my mom’s house, in Queens, from Robert Christgau, the new music editor of the Village Voice, responding to my review and telling me to “think more and write less.” God bless you, Robert Christgau!! It was one of the darkest times in my young life and it felt like a true miracle. He said to give a call, so I phoned Christgau from SUNY Purchase (at a pay phone down the hall in my dorm) and he assigned the new Jefferson Starship album & concert for me to review. With a new sense of purpose I dragged out my electric typewriter and GOT TO WORK.

For the next four years, while attending college (four different locations – a glutton for punishment, I transferred a few times due to changing location and interests), I wrote for hire as rock writer TRIXIE A. BALM.

Trixie A. Balm was a name I dreamed up on the LIE one night driving with the chunk-a chunk-a roar of tires against the buckling asphalt expressway, sitting beside my high school sweetheart, the aforementioned Ira (heck of a piano player and band leader at the time, although the band had a terrible name, “Chords Melody” – really!). “Trixie,” I thought, was a name so unlike me, so very like a peroxide blonde honky tonk angel, and “A. Balm” was a play on words that could mean “A bomb” or “a soothing unguent-type balm.” That, plus the initials T.A.B. were my favorite beverage at the time, Tab soda.

Trixie wrote for the Voice, Creem, Circus, Gig, National Screw, and many other fine publications. . . and earned her way through college on inspiration, perspiration, and a definite talent for a turn of phrase. This was a rockin’ start to a creative writing career.

1-6-12 Survival Jobs for Writer-Musicians – Remembering Dad and his Jobs on the Occasion of his Birthday (he would be 81 years old if still alive)

My father, Bernard F. Agnelli, was the first of three boys in a second-generation northern Italian immigrant family. His grandfather’s name was Bernard; his father’s name was Joseph: both names figure prominently in several generations. When I moved to Chester, CT, I found out that other Agnellis, our “country cousins,” settled there at the turn of the 20^th century. They were farmers who raised very impressive horses, I’m told. But Bernard Agnelli and Mary Corno, his wife, moved to New York City, where their children assimilated into American life and became executive secretaries (Aunt Toots) and Chief Financial Officers (CFOs) of the Bell Newspaper Syndicate (Grandpa Joe).

Grandpa Joe Agnelli married a non-Italian, Muriel Nissen, whose writing and cooking talent and frequent bouts of migraine headache I inherited. Of their three sons – Bernie, Joey, and Artie – our dad was the best and the brightest, purportedly. They dwelt in a nice little house in St. Albans, Queens, where Bernie met Bobbie (Barbara VDL), our mom.

But mostly, the Agnellis – and our dad – were mysterious. . . that’s the best word to express my frustration at how little we know about them, REALLY. The few dimly recalled facts that remain make interesting reading, nonetheless:

B.F. Agnelli attended St. Francis Xavier High School and Fordham University, majoring in Philosophy and Ancient Languages (Greek and Latin). Jesuit-trained, he thought for a while that his vocation was to be a Jesuit priest. For one year dad attended seminary (in Paris, France), but he came home and decided to marry mom instead.

When first married, dad worked as a reporter for the Bergen Evening Record in New Jersey. Then he went into the Army Reserves in Fort Benning, located in Columbus, Georgia. He was a lieutenant and wrote for the Fort Benning paper. Back in New York two years later, dad started working as a “P.R. Man” for Burston Marstellar, Western Union and Diamond International. He then became Publicity Director for the NY Blood Center. From there, he spent two years doing publicity for the Singapore Investment Center, and our family very nearly moved to Singapore in 1968 (mom wouldn’t hear of it – she loved Queens). After directing PR for the tiny but mighty new nation at the tip of the Malay Peninsula (Singapore!), dad went to work for J. Walter Thompson. About this time, he also went to night school for graduate courses in Economics. He became the head of a new business-focused division at J. Walter Thompson, Dialog. Bernard Agnelli, now the father of four, was doing well.

Then, at age 43, he passed away, a massive heart attack. And his daughter, Lauren, published her first piece, “Intimate Yet Objective: An Elegy to Bernard Agnelli.” Published in the local paper, The Little Neck Ledger, this In Memoriam piece was five hundred words typed on a Smith Corona electric machine, and was my first experience of the Red Smith adage: “Writing is easy. You just open a vein and bleed.” It is unlike the below adapted prayer -- one of many fun creative writing exercises I enjoy doing because it’s close to lyric writing, finding the right length/syllables word with the right sound and the right meaning, and maybe getting a chuckle or two.

Our father, who art in heaven, Bernard be thy name; thy kingdom done, thy had some fun on earth, if he is in heaven. Give us this day our daily blog, and forgive us our travesties, as we forgive those who travesty henceforth. Most of all, daddy, lead us not into tarnation, but deliver us from Tivo, Amen.

I love you, dad – Happy Birthday again.