Page 7 - NYWaste-Spring2014

New York waste
resurrectioN issue 2014
7
By Robert Butcher
The name came from an orgy drunken driven night after the band played in a warehouse squat in Brooklyn, the donated beer drenched one dollar notes caused from a beer fight were counted and the drummer Mike leaned over looked down and slurred this is a BAD LOOK. Kurt crashed out in the after- math of the night and woke with a start nudged his drummer
and said that is the bands name, “what is?” a hung over Mike mumbled. “BAD LOOK.” Kurt said.
“Where’d that come from?” the drummer replied.
“You said it last night.”
“Don’t remember,” and Mike passed out a gain.
That was two years ago and the three piece band has been rocking up a storm ever since playing out in clubs and bars supported by Mayor Creep, Vulture Shit, Hounds Basket and other sundry Williamsburg and Bushwick bands. These bands are often on the same playbill having fun using each others equipment and drawing on each others fans. Not much money is made, just enough for beer, the occasional whisky and a pack of cigarettes.
Kurt has been living on his own since the age of 16 after his parents became homeless and living on the kindness of girls who have kept him from sleeping on the subways though occasionally you can find him there asleep clutching his beaten up guitar as he dreams of breaking out of this scene and playing out in Central America and Europe.
I’ve inherited this kid through my a ssistant Dilaila who sneaks him into my back room, I think he has been there for over a year and I am constantly getting complaints about his guitar playing from the hipsters that have taken over my building and renamed my suburb Forte Greene into some stupid name like SoBaMb to bring in more fucking white people for all the new high rises and sky-rocketing the rents...fucking hipsters with horrible
band names like Real Estate playing horrible music how fucking appropri- ate but that’s another story...
Back to Kurt whose main influences are Black Sabbath, Bad Brains, Penta- gram and the performances of Living Color, You can hear them in the riffs that come tearing out of his guitar backed by the solid diving bass of Duke
and the drumming of Mike. For years as a kid Kurt practiced his three chords up and down the fret board constantly being screamed at by his mother to play something else cause he was driving her crazy, and after three years he added a fourth chord rounding out his sound then joining bands of the sons of Bad Brains and Living Color creating and rehearsing his stage presence until the time he built up his confidence to create his own bands to showcase his
talents as a song writer and p erformer.
The Kid is good, the band rocks and the right combination of people behind him his dreams can come true... http://badlook.bandcamp.com
A Reading from Hell continued from page 7
leading up to the release of Marquee Moon, he unearthed many archived documents on Richard Hell. The day before the reading, they met for the first time over lunch. Waterman’s conceptual familiarity of Hell’s accomplishments at the expense of actual familiarity with Hell as a person marked most of the interview. Instead of asking informed questions about Hell’s approach to his early work and years in New York City, Waterman was more intent on confirming and elaborating on his own theories on what Hell’s thought processes were.
Hell, for his part, was gracious enough to avoid overtly contradicting his host and interviewer. He instead reworded some of the questions and offered alternate, if not contradictory, but far less intellectual explanations as to what inspired his sensibility. Grinning and rephrasing through much of the interview and through questions from the audience, it became clear that Hell’s work in music and literature and fashion were natural processes, more reactions to the prevailing status quo, albeit reactions informed by a discriminating and cocksure aesthetic cultivated over years of observation and reading. This extensive reading may be why fans insist his every move must have been a calculated statement, instead of the actions of a perspicacious teenager fully aware that the spotlight and all eyes were on him.
I see why Verlaine grew to dislike him. And why I do like him. His writing abilities notwithstanding he doesn’t come across as some deep and dark poet. For all his time as this lower east side junkie poet rocker who could’ve lost it all, any deathshead humor is delivered with a playful smirk creeping around the corners of his mouth. It’s a gesture that threatens to betray his own amusement and makes you wonder if you aren’t, in fact, what he finds so amusing.
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photo: Robert Butcher ©2014