Archive for June, 2011
Vestige of 1960s Greenwich Village painted over
NEW YORK A vestige of 1960s Greenwich Village has been painted over by a Mexican restaurant, prompting an outcry from New York City preservation advocates.
An old sign for the Fat Black Pussycat Theatre had remained for decades at its original site on Minetta Street, a spot taken over by Panchito’s Restaurant in the 1970s. Last week, Panchito’s covered the sign with bright red paint.
The coffee bar had been a beatnik haven, where some claim a young Bob Dylan wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” in 1962. Bill Cosby, Richie Havens and Tiny Tim were among those who had performed there.
Andrew Berman, executive director for the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, called the paint job “a shame.”
“It’s a tangible link to this incredibly important era in the neighborhood’s history, when so many great musicians and poets and artists used the South Village as a springboard to transform the world,” said Berman. “Less and less of it is left.”
In 2006, the society proposed that the city designate a large swath of Greenwich Village as a historical landmark. The Landmarks Preservation Commission designated a significant amount of the requested area, though the Fat Black Pussycat Theatre and the remaining sign was not deemed a landmark.
Panchito’s owner Bob Engelhardt said the nostalgia is misplaced, and that the preservation group doesn’t understand the spirit of Greenwich Village.
“The preservation advocates, from those I’ve met, were never in the Fat Black Pussycat, as I was,” said Engelhardt. “It was a cesspool.”
Engelhardt said he had never been told not to paint over the sign. It was on a faded front of bricks above the restaurant’s Minetta Street entrance. It’s a short, quiet street behind the more bustling, beer-soaked MacDougal Street.
“There are buildings that are worth preserving. Ninety percent of what’s in the Village isn’t,” said Engelhardt. “The Village was freedom. The Village was not rules and regulations set in concrete. It destroys everything the Village was always famous for.”
Record label responds to Joan Jett lawsuit
NEW YORK A record label that singer-guitarist Joan Jett and 1970s bandmate Cherie Currie are suing to stop the release of a tribute album in homage to their early punk band says the recording was made “with the best of intentions” to raise funds for cancer research.
Main Man Records said Friday it had not received a copy of the lawsuit filed in Manhattan, but said it would vigorously defend itself.
The two-disc album, “Take It or Leave It: A Tribute to the Queens of Noise,” features covers of songs by the Runaways, which launched the careers of Jett and Currie. It’s supposed to be released June 28.
Jett and Currie say in their lawsuit that the Easton, N.J.-based record label used their names to promote the album without their permission.
Eminem takes the big stage as rap rules Bonnaroo
MANCHESTER, Tenn. After a little more than an hour of a hard-as-nails set that had the bikini-clad rumps shaking at Bonnaroo, Eminem thanked the crowd and left the stage.
Nearly 80,000 fans chanted “Shady! Shady! Shady!” in a thunderous roar for five minutes until hip hop’s angry king returned to the stage for a triumphant encore of “Lose Yourself,” capping the day rap took over Bonnaroo.
Saturday kicked off with Big Boi and Lil Wayne laying down early morning sets inexplicably overlapping shortly after Arcade Fire’s Friday night finale, and the takeover continued with Wiz Khalifa on the big stage during a hot afternoon set before Eminem destroyed his Bonnaroo debut.
These weren’t the first rappers at the four-day festival down on the farm in Tennessee. The event is known more for its granola-flavored ethos than its urban cool, but Jay-Z turned in one of the most memorable sets in the festival’s 10-year history in 2010 and expectations were high for Saturday’s takeover the most concentrated collection of star MCs at Bonnaroo.
Big Boi mixed in his own songs with Outkast favorites. Lil Wayne played it naughty with the crowd and debuted tracks from his forthcoming album “Tha Carter IV,” rattling the port-a-potties with a thunderous bass well into the morning.
And Khalifa kept the crowd sky high by preaching the gospel of weed to a willing choir that included a man who wore a “Marijuana Cures Racism” T-shirt, dancers with flowers in their hair and joints in their hands, and girls in bikinis crowd surfing.
The day was full of odd juxtapositions. Khalifa dropped his hit “Black & Yellow” while just a few hundred yards away Mumford & Sons tore through a set of fiery folk rock as fans watched over a nearby fence and from atop ATMs. The sold-out crowd appeared to be evenly split among the two rising stars of their genres.
Later in the evening, a reunited Buffalo Springfield set up Eminem’s show with a fiery rendition of Neil Young’s “Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World.” Fans rushed into the festival’s largest compound as Young’s echoing guitar died away, entering another world.
Eminem opened with “Won’t Back Down” and “3 a.m.” and never let up, featuring a mix of hits and new songs from his 2010 return to the top, “Recovery.”
“It’s been a minute since I been to the South,” he shouted. “Did y’all miss us?”
Eminem was in top form, fast and angry as he stalked the stage in long camouflage shorts and a black t-shirt. He thanked his fans for standing by him before launching into “Not Afraid.”
Bonnaroo’s crowd may be a hippie enclave, but you wouldn’t have known it Saturday night as most fans rapped right along with Eminem, brightened the sky with lighters to the Slim Shady and Royce Da 5?9?`s “Lighters” and played along to a naughty call-and-response before “Love the Way You Lie.”