This old school funk band, playing on the street in midtown Manhattan, sounded great a block away. A perfect formula, pumping bass, drummer dragging the beat, scratchy guitar and soulful sax. I wish that sound, the era that Chic dominated, would come back.
We spent some time in midtown this visit, soaking in shows at the Modern, the Met and the new Met Breuer, and I couldn’t get over how good the fake Buddhists are. They look the part, shaved heads, orange robes, innocent smile, and people were giving them money. Don’t people read the news?
We walked through the park to get to the Metropolitan and stopped at the pond where a miniature sailboat race was taking place. We thought we would start with the Cornelia Parker piece on the Met’s rooftop but we had to work our way through the Roman sculpture garden, one of my favorite stops. We found Julian Schnabel in there holding hands with a young woman. He was wearing his pajamas. I got a photo of the two as they walked away. The rooftop installation, the facade of a house like the one in Psycho which Hitchcock based on a house in an Edward Hopper painting, struck me as a dumb art project but I got over that in a hurry. The house was really otherworldly against a backdrop of modern skyscrapers.
Peggi and I celebrated our fortieth anniversary over dinner at an Italian place. The waiters were Hispanic and they played early seventies pop. So bad some sounded good. Two of the worst got stuck in my head, Chicago’s “Saturday In The Park” and whoever does, “Take It To The Limit.” The playlist led to a discussion of how punk rock saved us from this shit. And then Alan Vega died that night.
5 Comments
I remember seeing Suicide in NYC with you guys in the seventies. I was new to the scene and they blew me away. Seriously changed my life.
Happy Anniversary! I had a friend who was Schnabel’s personal assistant for a few years, late 90s. She couldn’t stand him. But then, I ended up not being able to stand her! She met a Mexican guy on a film shoot and ended up having the staff at the Chelsea Hotel let her into his room (secretly) so she could wait for him in his bed. Then she showed up one day at his place in Mexico, though they were barely involved. She was a red head. Utterly without common sense. Maybe she and Schnabel were actually a good fit. Just thought I’d toss that out there.
Holy cow, I just googled her and she has become a fully licensed Personal Coach….for executives and ‘creatives’… the world gets stranger and stranger
“Holy cow” – great phrase to put into a post on fake Buddhists.
The Eagles.