The People's State of the Union Hey, join your local RESISTANCE group and watch the PEOPLES STATE OF THE UNION

Hey,  join your local RESISTANCE group and watch the PEOPLES STATE OF THE UNION report  ..or invite some over some friends who did not vote and now wish they have and watch citizens committed ot taking back an America that knows diversity strengthens out Union mad equality for all makes America strong  Please share   watch people we recognize refuses to self-censor themselves and not afraid to speak and step up ... 

LOOK What popped up today; an artifact from my Club years THE beat DOES go on ,,now in the streets!

Wow, Chris Butler ... forgot about this ad I placed in the Village Voice .... the basic dispute with the "owners" and the backroom boys that resonated throughout my club years, was that I was paying the bands too much money I was paying what i thought was fair ...The headliner got 75% of the door and the opening act 25%. Strictly enforced regardless of what agents and management wanted.This booking policy was the primary reason HURRAH was successful again. One of the owners also wanted to replace one of my two DJ's with a former DJ from Hurrah's disco days. The DJ was a sweet man and a good disco DJ., but I refused.  I had tried him for 30 days ar the beginning of my teny=ure but he was just not tight for the concept I  HAD,, Mark Kamins and Sean Cassette created the perfect beats for the HURRAH dance floor landscape. I was not going to change it. Despite the fact that HURRAH under my creative curatorship ing had gone from dead as a shuttered church to a widely celebrated temple of style because of my choice in new live music and the DJ beats that mirrored the best of Larry Lavant's Garage magi and the foreward thinking fashion, and art. A staff that looked and acted like the public that Alef and Howie (well trained by me in the aesthetics of the door mix that made HURRAH the uptown place to be for downtown art-driven sophisticates of all colors, orientations, genders, age  and economic position. They were genius at doing their job with the fabulous attitude. I remember telling the staff who came ot me who wanted to be loyal (not all) asking me what hey should do. I told them, as I did later at Danceteria: " thank you for asking ... please, you were hired to help create HURRAH for what it is, and I know that most of you need these jobs because you are creative people who are here to pay your rent and have a good time. I had hired and trained a rock journalist, Ruth Polsky, to be my assistant. I wanted to mentor a woman into the mostly male-dominated music industry. She always was one step behind me and hired when I left a club I had made a success to pick up the pieces We remained friends. I had six months of booking when they changed the locks on my office,. She was given the key, I when U opened the first DANCETERIA with R. HURRAH closed.
What was important to both Ruth and i was the presentation of the best modern music live we could find: from Suicide to Phillip Glass, from the B-52' s to Noh Mercy; From the Rotating Power tools (Lounge Lizards) to Human Sexual Response from.ZE'V to Branca,. from Certain Generals to Pulsalama ], from Human Switchboard to Feelies, From James "Blood" Ulmer to Kid Creole and the Coconuts, from the Method Actors to REM , from ESG to the Screamers, from Tuxedo Moon to Pylon,... and these were all American bands as well as the artists from the UK that NME called band of the month. Like Gang of Four, Mekons, Soft Cell, etc. _thanks Chris, Bulter for finfing snd sending me this menory, you are a master musician and a trusted friend indeed, for finding and thinking of sending this forgotten ad to me. I always saw my club work an extension of my political work and called myself then a cultural worker. Today I prefer culturalinstigator (one of my blogs) .... the beat goes on... it is true because I refused to become the property of some crime family I was shut ot of doing clubs..Yes, that was NYC in the 70's and 80's) .but I continued to discover and share the best of music, art, and fashion in other ways.

George Harrison - The Last Performance (John Fugelsang)

George rarely spoke publicly ... so this is a rare treat .. and his insights are as timely today as that were in this his last pubic performance .. Earlier today I sat with firends who had jusr seen a moving playing about Lester Bangs at the Public theater as part of the Under the Radar program organized yearly by Mark Russell and staff. I highly reeomend yo go see it .. it is a lesson in how to write the

UNDER RADAR HOW TO BE A ROCK CRITIC Lester Bangs comes a live : MUST SEE HOW TO BE A ROCK CRITIC at the public Theater if you are a writer or love great wrting

Lester Bangs was a writer's writer ... and he lived in his words.Who he was, was embedded and sometimes spilled on the onion skin paper he typed on .. and anyone who actually took the time read it could not resist the power as outrageous as he sometimes was. Suggestion find some Bang's writing and READ IT ALOUD .. do that and you wil understand the ethos of punk rock He also was my friend,  Lester loved rock n roll .. and was very passionate on what he thought was actually rock n roll ... GO! 

HOW TO BE A ROCK CRITIC is a must see at the PUBLIC THEATER  as part of the annual Under the Radar festival... I was skeptical when I first heard about it ...but after meeting the writer .and director and learned they were responsible for the EXONERATED a brilliant political play done in documentary theater style. I became quietly excited. They told me that 75 % of the play ar Lester's own words.... GO! ... oh the set is so close to what Lester's pad looked like ... Billy Altman, the legendary rock critic and former roommate and lifelong friend of Lester's did a short talkback with the audience today .. nice ..

dates and tickets info  ...five more shows

https://www.publictheater.org/Tickets/Calendar/PlayDetailsCollection/UTR-2018/HOW-TO-BE-A-ROCK-CRITIC/

• Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen
• HOW TO BE A ROCK CRITIC
• Gonzo journalist, America’s greatest rock critic and inventor of the word “punk,” legendary music writer Lester Bangs was an American icon. Outsized, manic chaotic, and impossibly creative, Bangs traveled with some of the most mythologized musical figures of the 20th century: The Clash, Bob Marley, Lou Reed­—peeling away the veneer between star and audience and exposing the greats as flawed human beings. As the ragged, rebel ethos of the 70s gave way to the corporate pop of the 80s, Bangs lost the myth he’d built a life around and died of a drug overdose in 1982.
• This solo play by Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen (award-winning writers of The Exonerated and Aftermath) adapts Bangs' writing to chart the life, work, and death of one of the 20th century’s most ground-breaking, risk taking, pioneering voices.
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PENNY ARCCADE St Mark's Poetry Project annual New Year's Day Marathon : Penny Arcade On Happiness and Self Respect 2018 New Years Day Poetry ...