The Cicada Invasion of New York City Has Been Canceled
Name: Danny Lama
Occupation: Singer / Songwriter
Location: 5th and A.
Time: 5:45 on Friday, May 30.
I’m a songwriter. I guess the way to label my music is rock, post-punk, punk. I played reggae and I played Doo-wop. I guess I’m a blues-rock player by trade.
I was born in Manhattan — in Harlem. We lived on Amsterdam Avenue but when that became the wild west we moved up to the Bronx. I was in Catholic grammar school — I’m surprised I never got thrown out. I guess it was because my parents had to pay tuition. They thought of me as the devil worshipping, cult leader, Charles Manson junior. I could not take to that God-according-to-them stuff.
The nuns once called my mother in and said, “Danny’s doing this terrible thing, he’s reading this Hunter Thompson 'Hell’s Angels' book, it’s pornographic.” And my mother said in her Irish accent that was thicker than the nuns, “That book is on The New York Times bestseller list. You should be proud. None of your readings are up to his standards. You can’t teach him to read like that. You should be thankful. A year ago he was reading comic books and now he’s reading Hunter Thompson. We pay you good money so shut up and leave his reading habits alone.” Isn’t that cool?
My mother was a nurse from Ireland. She let me go to the Fillmore East four years before anybody else. The Fillmore East brought me to this neighborhood. The music and the freedom was the thing that drew me here. My father was 20 years older than my mother. He was from a different generation. My mother used to let me go to the early shows at the Fillmore as long as I was back home in the Bronx by midnight before my father got home from work. I lost my virginity in this neighborhood. I got picked up by a woman down here — she took me back to her house on 9th street and I couldn’t leave this neighborhood once the sun went down because you’d hear screaming on the streets at night.
At the Fillmore I saw Eric Clapton, Humble Pie, Lee Michaels, Cactus. And I had tickets for the last week in ‘71 that they closed, but I got in trouble with the nuns. After that there was the Academy of Music on 14th street, which later became known as the Palladium.
Senior year of high school and freshman year of college, I was already reading poetry and getting the craft of songwriting down. The real arty punk movement was in the 70s. I was always in the neighborhood. There was a drummer in The Cramps that lived here and one thing led to another. I used to roadie at CBGBs from 75-79. I was a roadie for Talking Heads and Television. I was a kid and so I would roadie for them to get in.
I moved here officially in ‘81 or ‘82. I’ve lived in the same apartment for about 31 years. Back then I was working for a printer and then I was a ghostwriter for a jingle house, in advertising on Madison Avenue. They were just using my ideas and riffs. And then I got picked to be in a music school for the recording industry and that led to an internship, where I became a publicist for Arista Records. I worked for a publicity director for R&B and Jazz for Arista. And then I worked in retail and wholesale records because of my record collection and my knowledge of all that stuff.
In the early days I was in a band called Mona Rock, nobody will remember that, Thorns Grass, Maloney’s Touch, Espionage, The Good Life, Moving Up, Bad Politics — we were one of the house bands along with the Beastie Boys and Hi Sheriffs of Blue at a venue on the corner of A and 7th. That lasted from '81 to '85. Then there was Convulsion Cabaret in ’89. James Chance played keyboard. The guy who just died, Ray Manzarek, he played with us.
I’ll give you a little history as we’re walking. This building here on 3rd and A ... used to be a bunch of row houses of the same size. There was a woman in there who used to type up my manuscripts for poetry and lyrics. This was in the 80s and she used to run a business typing for a dollar a sheet for prose writing, poetry, song lyrics. She was very good with the poetry and the spacing. She had a great idea of the cadence and the rhythm of it without even hearing it. I really liked the way she did it. Anyway, her landlord went into the basement with a jackhammer and did a number on the main support beam. It crippled the building.
This other building around here was known as the toilet. It was actually written about in many books and novels. The toilet referred to a brand of heroin that was sold out of there. There were lines every weekday morning sometimes. Lines from the building to the corner. People in business suits on the way to work in Wall Street, waiting to buy it. It was then taken over by homesteaders. A bunch of the other surrounding buildings belonged to homesteaders as well. I used to go on the roofs around here to practice shooting guns. It was fucking crazy around here for awhile.
"[It's got] nothing to do about rent, it's about business. It can't be generalized because the neighborhood in this spot really changed. Changed so much," he explained. "I have maybe 5% of my customers left. I was fighting until the end, but it was already bad a year ago."
"I spoke with Citi Bike workers about an issue I had docking a bike at the 13th Street station. The two workers explained that someone has been vandalizing the mechanism for docking a bike at the station .... and they found four bikes with punctured tires [yesterday] morning.
"They also said it this was not the first time this station has been vandalized."
[EVG from 2008]Yes-the blarney cove is closing it's doors on June 30th. the property has been leased to another company. the stretch of land on 14th street where the blarney resides will be forever changed. so -get you ass in so I can see you again & say goodbye.and that means during the week, tuesday and wednesday.-not just the weekend. let's plan those blarney blow out parties
From The Wall Street Journal this morning:Facebook Inc. is moving its New York office south and nearly doubling its space, marking the latest technology company to set up shop in the city's Midtown South neighborhood.
Architect Frank Gehry will design the space, which will include a cafeteria with its own chef, smaller kitchens with snacks and drinks and an open floor plan.
Facebook employees will probably just blend in with the existing NYU students, only they'll have nicer living arrangements and more expensive sneakers.
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The St. Mark's Church Greenmarket, which has connected the East Village with local food and farms since 1981, reopens for the season on Tuesday, June 4. Vendors include:
• Kernan Farms Vegetables, including the first of the season’s asparagus and strawberries from Cumberland County, New Jersey
• Bread Alone Bread, pastries and pies made from local flour, from Ulster County, New York
• El Mirador Farm Vegetables, Mexican specialty produce, and herbs from Monmouth County, New Jersey (New Farmer Development Project Participant)
St. Mark’s Church Greenmarket
East 10th Street and 2nd Avenue
Tuesdays 8 a.m. – 7 p.m. from June 4 through November 26
* WIC and FMNP checks accepted at individual farmer stands.
* EBT/Food Stamps/Debit/Credit accepted at market info tent from 12p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
Written by William Harms and featuring artists Angel Unzueta and Ty Templeton, the story takes place in Cap's past but also his present, where he battles Cobra, a member of the Serpent Society, attacks the original Kiehl's store at 3rd Avenue and 13th Street ... thinking that the remnants of the old super-soldier serum are in the basement.
