My vote goes to Lou Reed's "Dirty Boulevard."
17
@fast/furious - Absolutely!
What struck me when I listened to 'Brother Can You Spare a Dime' was how closely the lyrics expressed the frustrations of many in our country. It made me feel so sad.
In any case, being a person from 'flyover' country, I really loved reading this article. My daughter has lived in the lower east side for many years and I am familiar with the neighborhood.
10
I grew up there in the 1960's (and worked as a 12-year old in the Blimpies on 2nd and 7th) and was fortunate to see some of the Peace Love and Understanding in that little strip of 2nd Avenue even amongst the poverty and squalor there. I long for that time.
30
@Jim Carrol Seeing your name reminded me of Jim Carroll, who was quintessential LES. i'm not for one to ask the author why this or that was not included, but just another name to throw on the pile.
8
Thanks, John Strausbaugh.
For a close look at Lower East Side's musical ferment in the late 60s and early 70s, check out Patti Smith's memoir "Just Kids."
36
The Lower East Side has literally been taken over by the wanna be hipster Wall Street/finance industry set. To them innovation is the latest app on a tiny little screen. They wouldn't know innovative art if it was in sitting in the middle of Bowery. In fact they would call DSNY to come haul it away and then complain to Mayor De Blasio! This article is nothing but nostalgic tacky kitsch.
4
Leaving out the Ramones on this list is blasphemous. Out of all the CBGB’s bands you pick Television, who fuzzed out after only one album, where the Ramones pushed on for decades past the original LES music boom, having a massive influence on music and culture that can still be seen today. The Velvets, who are undoubtedly the first “Punk” band”, famously first performed at the Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village which is not even on the LES. After being recruited by Warhol from those shows they became more musically linked with Warhol’s Factory and Max’s Kansas City, also both not on the LES. Also, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, New York Dolls, Heartbreakers, Blondie, Talking Heads and even more recently Jonathan Fire Eater, The Strokes, The Moldy Peaches, all those bands are LES through and through.
8
My recollection of the East Village in the 60s, huge cockroaches and water bugs on the streets late at night, sometimes during the day, the lower East side? Pickle barrels, kosher 1/2 sour and sour....yum.
3
Charles Mingus lived for a while on East 5th Street and Avenue A. Friends of mine who lived in that building would hear him rehearsing.
8
"Band of Gypsies" IMHO Hendrix' greatest album, and a personal favorite of Miles Davis.
2
Thanks for mentioning the Jewish immigrants who were fleeing pogroms, who wrote such great music. Amazing.
5
What a jaunt down Memory Lane !!!
Brilliant crossovers, some faulty samples though.
Ya hadda be there... or somewhere real nearby.
WoW What a Kick. thanks
You left out David Peel.
8
What about "Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side/ Slum goddess gonna make her my bride..."? Was that the Fuggs?
5
How could the story leave out the Fugs? Big oversight.
3
@JacquelineJill
That's the first thing that came to mind - yes - by the Village Fugs, Slum Goddess, and I'd add Nothing . . .
About half of this article refers to things located above Houston Street, which is not the Lower East Side, but is in fact the East Village. Not sure why.
6
@Kate Check out a map of the area. The East Village refers to (the eastern part of) Greenwich Village possibly east of Fifth Avenue (and above Houston Street) only I think of it as east of Second Avenue. At Houston Street the big north/south numbered avenues end, anything below that is just different. In the early days the lower east side (Orchard Street) was a Jewish and/or an Italian ghetto, think Little Italy also Chinatown. There were so many ethnic groups in huge numbers settled there that I suppose some of the names just evolved....
Spotify! A subscription service. Why would the NYT send us to that music source? YouTube is free.
And hey, the NYT could have streamed all of these itself!
4
@J Boyce YouTube has commercials. So is that really free?
Naturally, an article such as this will disappoint many, but to not mention a single band from the 90s or early 2000s is somewhat egregious.
1
My memory at 70 ain't what it used to be …. but I haven't heard the name Genya Ravan (or had a thought of her) since … oh, who knows? … but not more than 20 years after I saw The Velvet Underground at Café Wha, nor less than 10 years before the result of a successful lawsuit in which I represented The Allman Brothers Band against Arista and Clive (Cheater , not Skeeter) Davis.
5
@Thomas Murray Interesting recollection. Just a thought, the Cafe Wha was not Lower East Side but smack dab in the middle of Greenwich Village. Ever see Superman Victor Brady there, the most incredible steel drum band EVER!
1
Somehow, I get the feeling we’re not going to hear much interesting music from the lower east side in the future where the $1,000,000 + condos are rapidly displacing the creativity and the vitality of the area. This was the neighborhood I grew up, where my family lived for generations and where I now can’t afford to live.
The city is becoming an overpriced, boring vertical suburb.
29
Allow me to speak up for a seminal LES band: the always underrated, under appreciated, but eternally influential...and great...NEW YORK DOLLS.
Pick a song. Any song.
18
Famous Blue Raincoat
4
"I'm Waiting for My Man" is about Lexington and 125th. "Dixie," well...
How about the Fugs, "Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side"? Now that's the right vibe.
6
@Onward and Upward , "Up to Lexington, 1-2-5" was my first thought too. But then "But then you got to split because you got no time to waste"...presumably back down to the LES to feel so good and feel so fine. :)
In the late '80's/early '90's, when I spent a lot of time on the LES, no subway uptown was necessary. A walk halfway down the block was probably as far as one needed to go.
I love that song--probably the most realistic description of being an addict ever.
1
A better song for the Lower East Side is "Money," given the massive Essex Crossing Mega-Development. I love the Westside Hudson Yard project--it's Shanghai on the Hudson, but to take over LES and destroy the community there, that's unforgivable.
5
anybody besides you know who heard the "laughter down on Elizabeth street?"
2
@rich I get the reference to Dylan, but is something more implied?
New York City spawned so much great music, it defies belief. So did San Francisco. So did Boston. So did Austin. Back when musicians could actually afford to live there. Back when clubs could actually foster talent and let bands develop. Back before streaming music was omnipresent in stores, gas stations, restaurants, and individual earbuds.
Those days are, sadly, long gone.
20
@Maple Surple Amen!
The fact that the Velvet Underground recorded a nefarious piece of distorted minimalism like "Heroin" in '65, while the Beatles were still mop-toppers, still blows my mind. & serves as a testament to how creatively cutting edge downtown NY was at the time.
40
love this article - love all the comments - love the music
but you nailed it- you nailed nailed it with
Marquee Moon, by Television----
pick of the week--- and so timeless----- !
9
@Robert L. So good--totally agree.
2
If memory serves I heard Big Brother at a Jewish theater on Second Avenue in the late 60s just after Cheap Thrills was released, every hippy and music fan knew about them. They filled up the place for a number of nights, it only held a few hundred. The word was that Bill Graham heard them and a week later they played at the Fillmore East, I heard them on the same bill with BB King. That night BB's drummer was out sick so for the first 1/2 set Buddy Miles (Electric Flag) sat in. THAT was something!!
9
great days in the east village.. 7st little ukraine in the early 80's! rent over 100$ a month didn't exist.. days long gone.. miss the pierogies & kielbasa
11
If you want to see, hear, smell, be in cbgb 1981 check out the Bad Brains filmed live in 1981. Available on dvd and of course you can view a stolen version on YouTube. But worth the 57 minute investment. This is anthropological. Raw.
12
It is hard to imagine the Lower East Side without the exploits of The Cro-Mags. Their story, in and around the Lower East Side, is one right out of a Hollywood script.
6
@Big Andy oh yeah... caught them w/ Motorhead at Ritz.. '86? Ears still hurt.
Ornette Coleman moved into an empty school building at Rivington and Pitt St in the early eighties He had dreams of turning the building into a jazz performance center. I went there a few times in an official capacity where his name was listed as the owner, but he never answered the door buzzer. I was very much into jazz at the time as well, but just not what he was doing.
http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2015/06/remembering-jazz-great-ornette-coleman-and-recalling-his-stint-on-rivington-street.html
3
@Patrick I interviewed Ornette in that building in 1984, when I was a writer for the Hartford Advocate. He was gracious and talkative, and gave me insight into the electric music he was doing at that time.
5
I’m not entirely sure what this article is trying to impart. Why so few songs, and why such a jarring and bizarre selection of songs?
Television but not Richard Hell? No mention of Downtown 81? I assumed I’d missed Santogold’s LES Artists, but nope, a selection of songs about the Lower East Side without mentioning the song that has it in the title?. No mention of the “Meet Me in the Bathroom Scene?” Fischerspooner? James Murphy? 7A?
So weird. 2/10. Must try harder.
3
"the $25 rent that Cale split with a roommate in 1964 would be around $200 today"
NY is no longer the place it once was, that's for sure. I used to live downtown in the early Tribeca days, but there's nothing about being there that feels as compelling as it once did.
6
I am pleased to see that the vibrant, seminal new york hardcore scene (NYHC) was mentioned here. When you distill such an legendary, fertile location into a short list, you're bound to omit something. The influence and significance of 1980's hardcore punk cannot be understated, and the scene that emerged from a handful of small clubs in the LES is among the most important. You could easily insert songs by Agnostic Front, Leeway, Reagan Youth etc with the more well known classics here.
8
@Harry
ABC No Rio
6
@Harry Doh -- overstated*
2
David Peel deserves a mention, perhaps sideways for this 'Lower East Side' . Not only a song, it was the name of his band
13
No Willy DeVille?
“Venus of Avenue D” anyone?
Doesn’t get any more East Village than that.
7
@Joey Flan
Amen to that! Willy and his band, Mink DeVille, are forever firmly ensconced in my pantheon of great musical acts. He had such soul, a great stage presence and one of the greatest voices ever. RIP Willy
6
@R.F. I miss him, too.
Sitting here looking at the Velvet Underground with the banana on the cover and by the way still unpeeled. Other groups like the Fugs. Oh, New York City lived there in the late 60's into the 70's and even when I lived in Jersey my cousin Allan and I would take the bus to the city. Parents could never understand why we wanted to go to the city. It had it all and eventually my late wife Tina and I met when we were social workers for the City of New York at the Veterans Center 529 8th Avenue just up from the Port Authority. Those were the days. Saw many acts at the Fillmore, Doors at the Gardens and other venues in the Village. Every week it was the Village Voice to see what was happening. Wish I could go back especially since it would mean that Tina would be with me. Jim Trautman
70
@trautman Oh the Fugs. Kill kill kill for peace sung in this tiny venue with folding chairs. A highlight of my life in the 60s.
5
what about Joey Miserable and the Worms (1981).
3
Not a fan of this kind of "relive the past glory" stuff. The LES is now full of $5,000-a-month 1BR apartments, yuppies, boring rich people who are as dull as they are moneyed. I'm not saying the neighborhood is done but god there are a lot of posers and various hangers on. One does wish Thanos could click his fingers occasionally.
21
@Joe I'm not quite on board with generalizing. I'm quite certain there were exceedingly dull people in the LES back when and quite possibly some genuinely amazing folks right now. Rose colored glasses and all that....I was 18 in 1962.
5
before fillmore east...there was the original fillmore.....dont get too heady.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fillmore
3
no matter what your writer(s) deem worthy for this or other list, the village fugs or simply the fugs featuring ed sanders and tuli kupferberg will always be the ultimate east village band. from "slum goddess on the lower east side" to "kill for peace" and "supergirl", the fugs were not only groundbreaking but earth shattering and are one the reasons the east village became a music magnet for all those others on your "list".
21
@Karen "Morning, morning", a great ballad
3
@Karen John Strasbaugh has written about Tuli and the Fugs in the past. I'm surprised there is no mention of them here. Maybe he thought the Velvets would cover that period and he wanted variety. He missed the Anti-folk folks of the 1990s.
3
@Karen
And add "Nothing . . . " which seems more apropos today . . .
Nothing on Dan Lynch?
1
@Bill yes! live blues almost nightly for no cover except a few bucks on saturday nights. the homes bros were regulars. johnny winter was visiting one night and sat in with the local band.
1
Sonic Youth must be sobbing, having been so superficially lo eas side cool, and left now unadored.
10
It's bizarre to see “I’m Waiting for the Man,” by the Velvet Underground here. The song is about scoring drugs in Harlem.
9
@Chunky Peterson You're projecting. Run it again and wonder why a junkie living on 23rd street at the Chelsea would have to go all the way to Harlem to score junk. "You've got to run run run run run, down Sixth Avenue." Sixth Avenue ends at Central Park and 59th street. Are you actually from NYC? Read Claude Brown's book Manchild in the Promised Land and you'll see the connection between Harlem and the Village. There has always been a lot going on in the Village including the best talent from uptown coming downtown to jam.
5
@YogiOnefromObie Possibly in the late 50s early 60s junk was easier to score uptown. Mid late 60s East Village for sure. I had a friend from Brooklyn who swore by Harlem 'treys'. $3 bags of smack, 1969, only then they were delivered.
@YogiOnefromObie
'...the connection between Harlem and the Village ... ' was often a gypsy cab cheap enough if there were a few of us, if not the 7th ave express was pretty quick from 125th to sheridan square ... or the famous 'A' train ... God, life was simple then
You need a NYC geography lesson. Hardly any of these venues are Lower East Side, its all East Village between Houston and 14th st. LES is south of Houston, north of Grand, east of Bowery. I thought this article would be about Mercury Lounge, Arlene's Grocery and bands like The Strokes.
19
@Patrick
"East Village" did not exist pre-1960. LES' gentrification caused by hipsters, Beatniks, etc. caused displacement and creation of "East Village" in the 1960s. So just like "East Williamsburg" - it's a name that has more to do with NYC real estate.
So the author is historically correct to refer to these areas as LES.
16
@Patrick This neighborhood used to be part of the LES before the great balkanization of neighborhoods in Manhattan started in the 70's.
6
@Patrick
Back then people WALKED everywhere, so I never noticed the dotted lines on the street which people draw on maps. It's a tiny area, so all those names flowed together.
High and happy, it was just one doorway full of promise after another .... Yikes !
Almost ruined me for real life.
1
The Ramones
23
@Golfhard Sitting here in Queens, eating refried beans!
Would have loved to see something from one of the bands out of C-Squat, like Leftover Crack. They were extremely active in the area in the late 90s and early 2000s, and the story of how the collective group of artists and squatters they were part of renovated C-Squat and fought for the right to buy it from the city for $1 is a great piece of neighborhood history. What they did is really inspiring, especially in an era where it feels like the people who do the legwork of shaping a neighborhood's character are often disposable and powerless.
3
That Eric Bellinger song is not terribly interesting. Seems quite interchangeable with much of pop music today. Maybe I’m just getting old, but I personally doubt that VR will significantly affect the direction of pop music, or that that song will endure much beyond this article.
6
So good.
Thanks to all who participated in this article.
I saw the Allman Brothers at Fillmore East.
Now you know.
9
*Checks for the Fugs*
*leaves*
11
I'm a big Jimi Hendrix fan but including him on this list because he performed at the Fillmore East is silly. Meanwhile you left out this...-Leonard Cohen, “Famous Blue Raincoat” "New York is cold, but I like where I’m living / There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening."
56
@A
In case you hadn't noticed Jimi had a recording studio on w. 8th st ... I think it was called 'Electric Ladyland Studio' after his awesome album ... And "you're just like crosstown traffic, so hard to get thru you" was not about Los Angeles or London.
3
@cd Just Electric Ladyland. Got in once, I remember murals on the walls, or was that Sausalito? It's all a blur....eats side west side east coast west coast.......
Ahh, Marquee Moon. Sad how many people have never heard this song.
23
@Adrift Stone cold CLASSIC!
1
@Adrift A masterpiece. Ain't no more to it.
1
@Adrift I never got to see the original Television but did see a re-formed version (w/ Tom Verlaine) at the re-formed Fillmore in San Francisco in 2015.
It does seem more than a stretch to view Hendrix as a NYC artist though.
8
@Jay
Hendrix moved here in '64. It was in NYC that he first found fame in the clubs and where he began his recording career. It was in NYC that he built Electric Lady Studios. Maybe he wasn't born here, but it was certainly enormously significant and influential.
10
Jimi Hendrix is hands down the most original guitarist I have ever seen. I saw him play in Louisiana when I was 13 years old. I had a General Admission (which meant standing on the main floor) ticket. It cost $3. The $4 and $5 tickets had seating. I waited a long time right in the front of the line then ran in and got right under (what turned out to be) his monitor. 4' away from him. He was unbelieveable; blew my mind. I already owned his first album. I became a guitar and bass player on the spot and for 20 years afterward. I am a huge Jeff beck fan, plus countless others I have seen many many times. Jeff is the greatest (living) guitar player, imo.
14
@Easy Goer I am in the Mick Taylor club in regards to who is the greatest living guitar player.
3
Before we get too gushy about Bill Graham, it’s worth remembering that he despised The Velvet Underground. After booking them for one weekend in May 1966 at the Fillmore in San Francisco, he vowed never to book them again and never did. Instead, thanks to promoters Ray Riepen, Steve Nelson and Don Law, they found a welcome home at The Boston Tea Party, which Lou Reed declared on stage there in December 1968 to be “our favorite place to play in the whole country.”
12
BTW, Electric Lady Studios was on West 8th Street (between University and 6th Avenue) for years after he died. I went there when I moved to NY City in the 1980's. Still, seeing him live in Louisiana at age 13 from 4' (four feet) away was like nothing I have ever seen. Brilliant.
6
Bill did a lot oif good things, on both coasts. I mean the guy gave so many artists a terrific venue. Judging him simply because he felt this way or that way about 1 particular artist doesn't even come close to all he gave to people. It was much more than whatever money he received. It was about the artist's venue he provided. Much more than the guy who owned the place on East 11th Street (I forget the name) near 4th Avenue. It may be gone now. It was close to Grace Church and the Strand Bookstore (another great place to spend a rainy day).
4
@Easy Goer Yes, Bill did a lot of good for a lot of bands. But this article is about the musical creativity that came out of the Lower East Side, and when it came to the VU, he blew it.
1
I have been listening to the same Velvet Underground LP for seven decades now but you really should have posted Heroin - it spawned multiple generations of punk rockers and I still enjoy it at 11.
Here is a nice curated video of it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFLw26BjDZs
8
Monk at the 5 Spot is good! But remember that he was a product of the Upper West Side. You could do a similar story about that neighborhood.
9
"In The Flesh" by Blondie. First big hit ever, in Australia of all place, namechecks "The Lower East Side."
11
@Big Fan
Blondie was from New Jersey, but that's not important; So was Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, Phoebe Snow, and a host of great jazz musicians.
@Big Fan indeed. and ms harry, on return to nyc when asked by rolling stone what was the best thing about oz, replied, "the smack."
saw them at the state theatre. was grouse as.
This purely immigrant yet such American musical and cultural tradition has mostly been forgotten. In these days of toxic xenophobia we’d do well to remember that America defines the postmodern paradigm, where a mash up of contradictory artistic expression (Dixie played at Lincoln’s funeral, Jolson in blackface) still invigorates our culture to no end. I was privileged to hit 16 in 1968 and took the bus into the City to scarf up a $3.50 seat at the Fillmore. There Graham, as obnoxious a character as he was, integrated what was best from worldmusic, from the Dead, to Miles Davis, the kazoo music of Mungo Jerry to electrified Bach. This article is timely as Lou Reed’s tribute will be held down at the Electric Bowery in March...where cool venues still celebrate the raw and vibrant energy of the LES.
10
This made my day, thanks.
3
No Sonic Youth?
1
No Bob Dylan?
No Fugs???
Dan Kravitz
13
@Dan Kravitz Literally the end of the second paragraph: "Here, a handful of representative songs scattered across the years." What do you expect, an exhaustive musical history in this small piece about an exhibition at the NY Historical Society?
Music..yes. But much more. I lived at 95 Second Avenue from 1971 to 1973. 5th-floor walk-up. A half-block or so from The Fillmore East. Gypsy families on the 2nd floor - kids sitting outside the front door of the building sticking pins into dolls. (“Oh, it's Gary, your roommate.”) Hells' Angel bikes roaring down the Avenue at 3 AM every morning on route to their East Coast headquarters on E. 3rd Street. The original “Kitchen” on Broome... where ‘alt-art’ in all forms takes root. The Blue Note, of course, and Electric Circus - both around the corner on St. Marks. Playing bassoon in jazz loft scenes and galleries (Gunther Hample and The Galaxie Dream Band). Dixie style avant-garde, midnight marches down deserted, frigid February SoHo streets (when SoHo was still empty factory warehouses, winters were still frigid, and the avant garde was much less guarded.) CBGB and Gildersleeves thrived on Bowery – adjacent to the men’s homeless shelter. Best memory of The Fillmore East – sitting through a good segment of “Empire”, Andy Warhol’s 8-hour epic, one-shot movie of the Empire State Building. But that memory may have been more hallucination than fact. avant-garde
23
@Stuart thanks for mentioning The
Great Gidersleeves. Went there alot, and then after closing time at 5:30 am, would go to the Kiev for blintzes. Saw Angel and the Bratz there, so when I heard Zappa's Punky's Whips I knew who he was talking about, and had a good laugh. Patti Smith's Because the Night was on constant rotation on the sound system. Gritty local girl made good, making us proud.
2
@Stuart
I said Hi to Warhol in the lobby of a hole in the wall theater that was premiering his film "Women In Revolt."
He was there with Jane Vorth.
A mention of Sonic Youth would have been nice...
18
@Tom S I was just going to add the same comment.
We could go further and include people like Glenn Branca and Philip Glass, and others who aren't coming to mind at the moment.
I would have included Sonny Rollins, who we all know practiced on the Williamsburg Bridge to avoid disturbing his Grand Street neighbors. " East Broadway Rundown", perhaps?
5
so basically, nothing good has come out of the neighborhood since the 70s. thats what this piece described. this is the weakeast list ever compiled if it aimed to hail an alleged creative musical hotzone. this piece did nothing to sell whatever it was selling, cause I forgot what the starting point was...god awful.
4
@Boregard
Dear Boregard,
Au contraire. I'm Waiting for My Man, Changes, Marquee Moon are weak songs?
What would you prefer "Feelings", "I Did It My Way", "The Candyman".
Boregard, the tunes noted in this article were seminal, though not mainstream. The basic but crafty turns
of a note or chord informed so much music that came behind.
Is there music that has been more professionally executed, of course, but these tunes had the grit of true everyman music.
I truly love Mozart, but if Lou Reed singing about waiting for the man does not bring a tingle up your spine, rigor mortis has set in. All the best.
2
@Boregard Anti-Folk star Jeffrey Lewis was born on the Lower East Side and started his international career at the much missed Sidewalk Cafe on East 6th and Avenue in the late 1990s. There was quite a gathering of singer/songwriters there and in other clubs nearby.
1
Finally! I was searching all the comments for a mention of the Anti-folk scene of the Sidewalk Cafe, which is a treasure trove of artists otherwise unclassified but makers of some seriously great music! Jeffrey Lewis, Regina Spektor, Toby Goodshank, Lach, Huggabroomstik, the Wowz, the list goes on and on and on.
Nutty! Ya, that's it.
1
Yip Harburg and Ira Gershwin were assigned seats next to each other in the first grade.
4
I was a teenager in 1967/68 and remember going to the Filmore East on weekends. I came in from NJ, so I guess I was your classic B & T kid driving in and looking for excitement when I could. I remember having to look for parking, and finally finding a spot somewhere close to Ave. C, then walking back to the FE. It was the scariest neighborhood I had ever been in. I walked along hyper-aware of everything going on around me. I felt safe when I made 2nd Avenue. Both a little rank and dank in the summer, but lively. There always seemed there was somebody from the neighborhood around the FE, somebody already drugged out, trying to sell all kinds of drugs out of a brown shopping bag before the shows. Walking up and down the entry line trying to drum up some business. Fond memories!
7
@Richard You're right about it being scary. I remember walking near Thompson Sq Park one early morning and passing a fellow carrying his silver pistol in his hand for all to see, I avoided eye contact (as all smart New Yorkers knew to do).
1
If Lou Reed were alive today and writing about the LES, it wouldn't be 'Heroin' but 'Double Caramel Latte'
72
@Nick
*Soy
15
The assertion that New York City was the definitive birthplace of the lofty-defined genres like 'punk' and 'new wave' is as myopic as it is flat-out wrong.
15
@Kevin
OK, what then would you suggest as the "the definitive birthplace of the lofty-defined genres like 'punk' and 'new wave'"?
For me it's either NYC or London, or better yet, both, but please educate me about just where you think the music was "born". Give us your opinion
1
@Kevin
I don't know about 'definitive birthplace' ... these days, the way music is made and distributed, it can often seem to be erupting everywhere at once. But in NYC and other dense, pedestrian cities there are often enough people in the same place at the same time in the flesh to feel like something is happening spontaneously and organically all at once ... I guess you had to be there, and resentment isn't helpful.
Donald Fagan, the engine behind Steely Dan, reports in his memoir taking the train from NJ to NYC as teenager, talking his way into Lower East Side joints like Five Spot, being given a soda and a table up front and warned to stay put. He listened hard and created his own pop-jazz fusion sound. Fagan pays tribute to this experiences on the Lower East Side in a song titled "Parker's Band"--as in Charlie.
16
@Leopold
In his autobiographical "Eminent Hipsters" Fagan recounted witnessing as a teenager Charlie Mingus screaming "uncle Tom!" at Coleman Hawkins. Man, my HS years were nothing like that.
17
@Jay Good one!
2
@Leopold
He also used the first few notes of 'Song for my Father' a gorgeous bit of afro cuban music by Horace Silver on his big hit 'Ricky don't lose that number' ...
I expected to see, "Sidewalks of New York"..."East side, west side, all around the town." It has such a haunting melody.
6
As a 60's teenager I loved the Fugs and my favorite song of theirs was "Slum Goddess from the Lower East Side"
28
@Kerry OH Don't forget "Saran Wrap."
3
@Kerry OH You beat me to it. The Fugs are what I think of proto-punk three decades ahead of the time.
Take a listen to them at the Filmore East in 1968 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hadRsj4W4qg
10
@Kerry OH
And the tragically still-topical "Kill For Peace," written by Tuli Kupferberg, co-founder of The Fugs with Ed Sanders and Ken Weaver.
6
Thanks for a lovely, century-spanning list that has deep context and includes less-famous but important figures like Genya Ravan.
24
"Among them were 'Heroin' and 'I’m Waiting for the Man,' shockingly raw evocations of the dope culture that was rampant in the neighborhood in the mid-60s."
The latter song contains the lyric, "Up to Lexington/1-2-5/Feel sick and dirty/More dead than alive," which is, of course, a location in Harlem, not the Lower East Side.
Nice to see the mention of 56 Ludlow Street, though. Tony Conrad, the late artist/musician/filmmaker/SUNY Buffalo professor/activist who gave the paperback version of novel "The Velvet Underground" to either Cale and Reed, also shared the apartment for a time. The underground filmmaker Jack Smith later lived in the apartment with Conrad, and underground filmmaker Piero Heliczer also lived in the building.
Undoubtedly the cheap rents of the L.E.S. in the 1960s contributed to the absolutely revolutionary artistic and musical developments of the time!
38
Playground for the rich now.
We suck without the scrappy poor.
23
Joel, true. If you wanted heroin you were obliged to go uptown to get it. I did buy my first hit of acid on St Marks Square in 1967 from a stranger. No worry about getting some adulterated mystery drug back then.
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@Paulie St Marks Square is not a place in NYC. Tompkins Square maybe?
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