The times, they have a-changed

I recently got asked to write a short piece for Drum about the “underground” scene in New York, à propos of the Vivid Festival in Sydney, which Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson are curating.

This got me thinking about what sort of “underground” exists in New York these days, and what the term even means. We’ve spent a fair bit of time doing our best to permanently pickle our livers by going out pretty much every night to warehouse parties, small gigs and similar events of late, and it’s been interesting exploring what’s happening beyond the glitz and glamour of Manhattan.

Clearly, I haven’t been here for long, but it’s pretty obvious that the NYC you grow up in Australia romanticising – a mythic Manhattan of Bowery bums and ramshackle rent-controlled lofts and furtive street corner drug deals – just doesn’t exist any more, and hasn’t for some time. This is what I touched on in the post a few days back about Patti’s pessimism.

Admittedly, this is stating the obvious – no-one could expect the city to be the same today as it was in the decade where it gave birth to punk and then no wave – although it’s still interesting to observe just how different Manhattan is today to the grimy black-and-white photographs you see in Victor Bockris’ biographies and books like Please Kill Me.

But the scene isn’t dead; it’s just different. There’s still an absurd amount of culture to be devoured here. Certainly, in Melbourne, you don’t find yourself walking into a fundraiser for the local communist party that features three levels of music – a rooftop bar with Clash singalongs, a mezzanine of earnest performance poetry with young bespectacled men and acoustic guitars), and a basement of slamming left-wing hip hop. It was really great and completely unexpected.

Nor, indeed, do you find yourself fleeing the NYPD through a strange Hasidic neighbourhood at 3am, which is what we found ourselves doing this weekend past. We were heading to a party called Rubalat, which is a huge warehouse party that’s been going for the best part of 15 years, and is now something of an institution. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean it’s immune to being shut down by the police, which is what was happening right when we turned up.

We arrived at the party to find police cars out the front and several people in flamboyant costumes doing their best to edge discreetly away (difficult when you’re dressed as a giant pink palm tree). Happily our Melbourne black allowed us to blend a little better into the shadows, and we hightailed it around the corner before anyone noticed the bottle of cheap whisky that we’d been happily swigging from.

This after a half-hour hike around East Broadway in search of a liquor store, which are surprisingly few and far between, especially at midnight. Most likely, only five already somewhat pissed Australians would consider it a good idea to wander around the projects at night looking for a bottle-o. But still, we found one. And we found the party.

Eventually (after another close shave with the cops when answering a call of nature – apparently public urination carries a $100 fine, but hey, if you have to go, you have to go), we ended up at another warehouse, which seemed to be hosting some sort of techno party. On further investigation, it turned out that said techno party was actually a wedding reception, but the DJ seemed happy enough for us to stay. We debated the ethics of drinking the free alcohol for  a while, with predictable results. In our defence, we did do our best to stay out of the wedding photos. Still, we may well be going to hell.

The NYC underground, circa 2010

After the whole crazy evening, the Rubalat party – which we eventually got into at about 3am – was kinda a let-down, notwithstanding that it featured a swarm of bands and DJs and performance artists and crazy decorations. There were just way too many people – it seemed like a victim of its own success, a party that used to be dynamic and cutting edge and was now treading water. But then, no doubt there’s something else that’s gonna take its place. We just need to find it.

Anyway, the point of this whole anecdote is that there’s a fucking shitload of stuff to do and see here, and if that constitutes the “underground”, then all the better. But really these are just labels that mean nothing. What matters is that there are still people making interesting music and art – and there are. Loads of them.

Of course it’s massively easy to romanticise these things, and no doubt the scene is as plagued with politics and pretension as its antipodean counterpart. In a way, it’s nice not to know anyone – that way you have no preconceptions and are ready to experience anything and everything. And it doesn’t matter whose wedding you crash.

Bitch, that’s my tiger

So I want to share this story that our new friend Lucy told us the other night. It’s possibly the best story ever.

Picture two fairly ghetto girls on the subway. Their conversation goes as follows:

Ghetto Girl 1: Remember when your mom had that tiger?
Ghetto Girl 2: Oh man, that thing was so cute!
(much fluffing about how cute tiger was as a cub)
GG1: But it got big!
GG2: That thing was as big as a dog!
GG1: What happened to it, anyway?
GG2: Well, it got so big that my mom threw it out.
GG1: She threw it out?
GG2: Yeah, she just threw it out the back.
GG1: What did it do?
GG2: Oh, it hung around out the back for a while, then it kinda just disappeared.
GG1: That’s a shame.
(more fluffing about how cute tiger was)
GG2: Oh, but do you remember? I saw on the TV a couple of months later that some guy got mauled by a tiger? Man, I was watching it on the TV and I was like, ‘BITCH, THAT’S MY TIGER!'”

This country is not like other countries.

Tiger! Uppercut

Mexicola

The last of my travel blogs, for a while at least. Thanks to a recommendation from a friend, we headed from LA to Huatulco, a sort of proto-resort on the south coast of Mexico. You get the feeling that in about ten years’ time, it’ll be an insufferable tourist trap, but for now it retains plenty of charm. The people are lovely, my fair-to-middling Spanish got a good workout, we drank lots of margaritas, ate a colossal quantity of tacos and swam a lot. And that’s about it. That’s what holidays should be like.

Life's a bitch

Mexico reminded me somewhat of India – same friendly and generous-hearted people, same air of endearing anarchy (particularly in Mexico City, of which more in a moment), same… creative approach to problem solving:

Fridge goes up...

Fridge wobbles slightly...

...fridge comes down

While Huatalco was beautiful and relaxing, more interesting – from a writing point of view, at least – was the day we spent in Mexico City. For a city with a bad reputation, it’s a great place. We stayed with a French couple who had a small B&B and a large Nick Cave fixation, all good news from our point of view. If Mexico recalled India in general, then Mexico City most definitely reminded me of Bombay – it has a similar air of good-natured chaos, and is also as friendly and welcoming a big city as you’ll find. While it doubtless has its dodgy areas – as does any city, really – it’s a shame the whole place gets tarred with the same brush.

The area we stayed in – Colonía Santa Maria de la Ribeira, part of Cuahatemoc – was great, full of crumbling colonial grandeur and also an air of renewed possibility. Even on a short walk around the area, you saw plenty of old buildings that seemed to be being refurbished and renewed. There was also some amazing graffiti:

Sadly, we could only spend a night there. But we’ll go back at some point, no doubt. For now, it’s full steam ahead in NYC. There are certain moments when you get the feeling that you really should be enjoying them as much as possible, because they may not come around again for a while. The last time I felt so strongly like this was on a beach in Greece, floating on gentle waves and looking up at an empty sky. On some far away beach. I felt the same in Huatulco. Perhaps that’s as good as it gets. And lots of hard work awaits.

Soundtrack:

Brian Eno – On Some Faraway Beach

Coach class

If LA was strange, then Palm Springs is plain bizarre. It’s a middle-class retirees’ enclave of tennis courts and polo shirts, smack bang in the middle of the desert – a man-made oasis of wide streets and lush, immaculately manicured lawns. The very existence of Palm Springs is a sort of giant proof-of-concept, a demonstration of man’s ability to conquer nature and bring forth greenery (and golf courses) from some of the most hostile land on the planet.

It exists because it can. The cost, of course, is catastrophic – you can only imagine the environmental damage wrought by constructing it. But then, that’s just the point – the cost isn’t important. The place exists as a brash gesture of human endeavour and ability, Dubai before there was Dubai. There’s no question of co-existence with nature – nature is subjugated to human ambition. We’re a strange species at times. Our abilities are amazing. But our priorities…

Although happily, they do harness wind power.

Anyway, the reason we drove down into the desert is that Palm Springs also serves as the most convenient jumping off point for Coachella. And happily, we had some <a href=”http://www.thewanderingstars.com”>friends</a&gt; here. They were staying at the sort of place that makes you feel like you’re living the dream. It used to belong to Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh, of whom photos adorned the place left, right and centre. The decor wasn’t as opulent as you might imagine, but there was every movie star comfort – pool, jacuzzi, kit, caboodle.

It seems that Coachella plays up beautiful to the whole music industry idea of music coming a distant second to schmoozing – no-one seemed to actually have a ticket, us included, but that was fine… everyone just came for the parties anyway. Being too, um, intoxicated to go anywhere, we just hosted a party at our place, which was fine – we met some awesome people from New York, some decidedly strange Vice hipsters from LA, and stayed up all night.

We never did get to the festival. But then, neither did anyone else.

Living. The. Dream.

Driving down, we heard a hip hopper on the radio confessing that, “I want to be a billionaire so freaking’ bad”. It seemed appropriate. And then as we drove through the desert, three Chinooks flew overhead like giant insects. We’re in a foreign land, for all that they speak our language.

On the way back, though, we tuned into Henry Rollins’ program on the most excellent <a href=”http://www.kcrw.com”>KCRW</a&gt; – not unlike LA’s answer to RRR, for those back home. About half an hour in, he paid tribute to “an amazing Australian musician who passed away recently”… and played Rowland S Howard’s ‘Pop Crimes’.

Listening to Rowland as we rolled down the highway back into LA… Something I never imagined doing. And really quite moving.

Lost in LA

Having finally got this column/blog up and running, it turns out the first installment is gonna be about Los Angeles, mainly because I haven’t got to New York yet – not arriving there until late April. En route, we found ourselves in LA for a week.

I’ve certainly never had any great desire to visit before – it sounded kinda like Sydney, which can never be a good thing – but the idea of breaking up the flight and staving off morbid jetlag provided compelling motivation. And in retrospect, I’m glad I came.

I don’t to come across all ingenue-abroad-marvelling-at-the-differences-between-here-and-home, but LA truly is a strange, strange place. If New York is a hyper-condensed distillation of urban living, with everything and anything concentrated on a relatively small island, then LA is just the opposite. It’s like a city designed for giants. The scale is intimidating and somehow alienating. For miles and miles, it’s a succession of vast boulevards that stretch off as far as you can see, the emptiness only broken up by the Hollywood hills and the occasional massive high-rise, monoliths arising from an otherwise flat landscape. At night, the neon lights illuminate empty streets – it reminds me of the Manic Street Preachers’ line: “Under neon loneliness/Motorcycle emptiness”.

But even during the day, the streets are deserted. No-one walks anywhere, it seems, which makes sense when you take into account that it takes hours to get from place to place on foot. The shops all have tinted windows, so even when they’re open they look closed. If you ignore the cars, you could be walking through the streets of a city where everyone had mysteriously disappeared, like a giant suburban Marie Celeste.

If all this sounds overly negative, it’s not meant to. I didn’t *dislike* LA – it’s just really strange. Before we left, someone – sorry, can’t remember who – mentioned that LA left them with some indefinable sense of nostalgia, and being there, I can understand why. The place remains full of iconic imagery out of the ’50s:

The prevalence of this sort of stuff, along with the entire nature of the city, means it comes across – to a visitor, at least – as some giant monument to the American dream: everyone can live in the suburbs, everyone can have a (gigantic) car, everyone can have whatever they want. It’s a dream that’s faded, not least because the entire place’s economy remains in the shitter, and LA seems to be suffering intensely – but still, there’s a certain grandeur in the place’s faded glory.

And then, there’s this:

Once we hired a car, of course, it suddenly started to make sense – the distances are negotiable, and the fact that all the traffic is largely on the motorways means you can cruise unmolested everywhere else. Indeed, the boulevards are made for cruising in the car – the whole place is a testament to America’s love affair with the automobile. And again, this ties into the whole idea of the place being an embodiment of the American dream.

The other thing that suddenly made just a little more sense after a week in LA was David Lynch. I don’t mean his narratives suddenly became clear – that’ll never happen, and besides, that’s the whole point – but he captures the whole dreamlike atmosphere of the city perfectly in his films. The empty streets, the parties, the opulence, the decay beneath the facade… It’s all there, and evoked flawlessly. Mulholland Drive is the prime example, but also Lost Highway, even Blue Velvet… I love him even more, now.

And thus, in surely the most unashamedly fanboyish thing I’ve ever done – we found his house. You’ll recognise it from Lost Highway:

We hung around out the front, took a surreptitious photo, and drove off. I felt slightly soiled by our stalkerishness, but also exhilarated. It’s not every day you get to be in the presence of greatness.

Next: Coachella. Or, at least, hanging at the fringes of Coachella. With Tony Curtis. Sort of.

All photos by Leila Morrissey.