I recall my first show at the Milk Bar on Adams Street in downtown Jacksonville
It was "The Mighty, Mighty Bosstones" and "The Pietasters"
my friend copped free tickets cuz he worked in promotions at Planet Radio 93.3
he told me to muss up my hair so they wouldn't think I was part of the establishment
the club was in the basement of an abandoned building and I stood in a line that snaked up and down the cracked sidewalk
the diversity harbored the fever of the dying American dream
there were goths and punks and bangers and lackeys and nerds and straights
accessorized by
nose rings, tattoos, chained wallets spiked bracelets, a rainbow of unnatural hair color shaved heads, reverse mohawks, Serial Killer and Porn Star t-shirts, Jinco's that dragged the ground, Dickeys, Doc Martins.
combat boots
Djarums puffing in teenage mouths upstart poets, future musicians Sinatra look-a-likes leather pants gays, lesbians, anarchists, communists guys in zoot suits, girls in flowered sun dresses
all at an average age of 25 or under
As we walked through the doorway the burly guard droned
"No Chains! No Dope! No Shit!"
over and over like a Hell's Angel macaw
I remember the smells clove cigarettes Boone's Farm M.D. 20/20 leather Cool Water Teen Spirit sweat body odor
sex
I slammed five malt beers in the green room before the mayhem started
the only illumination was a black light and a half dozen incense sticks burning brightly along the perimeter
I was drunk and writhed through the entanglement of flesh like a serpent
(I felt so alive)
the young ladies had transformed for the evening into "Riot grrrls"
wearing black lipstick and purple nail polish
(that resembled dried blood)
dressed in cupie doll t-shirts with "Bitch" or "Sex Kitten" iron-ons
when I fell in the mosh pit a skin head
(with an X'd out Nazi symbol on his grease monkey button up)
pulled me to my feet
The music was alive and jumped with arcs of electricity
white guys who had crossed reggae and punk to give birth to "Third Wave Ska"
When it came to the end I was breathless
the icy night air chilled my sweat drenched body and I couldn't help going on and on about the moment
Feeling that I was on the front lines of a scene that would blaze up
shine bright
then smolder out and be forgotten
As doomed as it was though it was our chance to gobble up life
and to bookmark those days to remember
when joy was electricity and we had the courage to absorb the raindrops in the lightning storm.
For the cost of two thin dimes, you were treated to one of the milestones of the genre, the death of Spider Man/Peter Parker’s girlfriend Gwen Stacy.
It’s a touchstone moment that rings throughout the sacred halls of pop culture.
Gwen Stacy has been portrayed in films, television, video games. Hell, she even has her own action figure.
Her latest incarnation is as the White Widow in the ongoing Marvel Comics series Spider Gwen.
Why does the death of Gwen Stacy continue to reverberate? Why is that one event stuck so firmly in the minds of comic book enthusiasts and why did it crossover to become general knowledge in pop culture?
I think it has to do with first loves.
I work at a bookstore. People tell me stories. A woman came in whose father’s memory was beginning to fail. She was asking for books on memory loss. As I took her to the section she told me that he couldn’t remember important recent events, but he could remember his first girlfriend like it was yesterday.
I was struck by this.
I told her that a young man’s first relationship is a seminal event in his life.
I felt uneasy for days after writing this. Sort of all mixed up, like when I was a kid. I came to the doors where I work wondering how I was going to mentally get through my day. There was a guy in a baseball hat that opened the door for me. I turned to thank him. That’s when I noticed it was Stephen King...
In 1973, Robert Fripp collaborated with Brian Eno on the brilliant ambient album No Pussyfooting.
Eno had recorded his debut solo album Here Comes The Warm Jetsearlier that same year.
Fripp and Eno have worked together in some facet on 13 albums from 1973 to 2006/2007. Their partnership has remained vibrant for 34 years.
That’s longer than some marriages.
In his off hours from the various incarnations of King Crimson, Fripp has worked with many different artists from Matching Mole, Van der Graaf Generator, Talking Heads, David Bowie, Blondie and many more.
In 1971 J.G. Bennett established the IACE Sherborne, which offered a 10 month instruction/introduction in the Fourth Way. Fripp said "When I found Bennett, the top of my head blew off.” Fripp broke up King Crimson when he entered Sherborne in 1974, and his later pursuit of "small, mobile and intelligent units" is traceable to Bennett. Fripp remains involved in the promotion and dissemination of John Bennett's ideas, and continues to work with people that he met at Sherborne in the 1970's.
Robert Fripp as "Lemmy Caution" and Debbie Harry as "Natacha von Braun" from the never made remake of Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville (film). It was set to be directed by Amos Poe who went on to make "The Foreigner" in 1978 instead. Debbie Harry starred as "Dee Trik" in that project, but Fripp wasn't part of it.
What can I say about gentrification that hasn’t already been said? In CBGB’s 33-year run from 1973-2006, they gave stage to 50,000 bands, a handful of whom changed the face of music in ways that still ring out today. I doubt very much that a John Varvatos clothing store will be able to produce a resume’ that impressive.
To be fair, Varvatos maintains a stage and still allows bands to play there.
King Crimson in the hotel garden, Tokyo, December 1981
Robert Fripp visiting Tower Records just after playing some Frippertronics, that sounded a bit like No Pussyfooting, using two Revox reel to reel recorders and his Les Paul in the store (they asked for no photos during that show), Campbell, CA 1978.
“I met him, his brother and mother while The Lounge Lizards were waiting to soundcheck before opening for a new band called Discipline (later named King Crimson) on May 8th, 1981 at the University of Liverpool!! I bought Bill Bruford a cup of tea that afternoon because the little old ladies didn't have enough change for his 10 or 20 pound note. :) Fripp was wandering around the University's Student Union without anyone bothering him, and Adrian Belew sat in the foyer re-stringing a few guitars, again with no one bothering him. Tony Levin got a chuckle out of my Peter Gabriel tour T-shirt! :)”
The 1986 Berlin discotheque bombing, which killed 3 people including 2 U.S. soldiers, was the last straw in a series of acts - including the 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks, the Libyan occupation of uranium rich Chad, Gaddafi's continued support of the I.R.A., The Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades in addition to the Gulf of Sidra incident - which precipitated the U.S. bombing of Libya on April 15, 1986 (10 days after the Berlin attack) ordered by President Ronald Reagan.
The bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on December 21, 1988 is believed to have been a retaliation for the April '86 bombing raid.
Pan Am Flight 103 was a regularly scheduled Pan Amtransatlantic flight from Frankfurt to Detroit, via London and New York. On December 21, 1988, N739PA, the aircraft operating the transatlantic leg of the route, was destroyed by a terrorist bomb 38 minutes after takeoff, killing all 243 passengers and 16 crew, in what became known as the Lockerbie bombing.
The bomb exploded at 7:03 pm on December 21, 1988. The wreckage left a 20 foot crater.
February 21, 1973 - Libyan Flight 114 shot down by Israel over the sinai
Chadian - Libyan conflict 1978-1987
August 31, 1978 - Disappearance of Musa al-Sadr in Libya
1979 - U.S. places Libya on the “State Sponsors of Terrorism” list
August 1981 - U.S. shoots down two Libyan planes
April 17, 1984 - Yvonne Fletcher murdered outside the Libyan embassy in London
December 27, 1985 - Rome and Vienna airport attacks
March 1986 - Gulf of Sidra incident
April 5 1986 - La Belle Discotheque bombing 1:45 a.m.
April 15, 1986 - Libya bombing raid - 12 minutes
December 21, 1988 - Pan Am Flight 103 bombed 7:03 p.m
2001 January 31 - al-Megrahi found guilty of 270 counts of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. His co-defendant was found not guilty.
August 20, 2009 - Megrahi was released from a Scottish prison due to terminal prostate cancer.
October 20, 2011 - Gaddafi captured and killed during the Battle of Sirte
May 20, 2012 - Megrahi dies of prostate cancer. No one else has ever been charged for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103.
Frank Terpil was a rogue CIA operative who helped Gaddafi set up terrorist training camps in Libya along with Edwin P. Wilson. Wilson was convicted but ultimately released from prison on September 14, 2004, after being incarcerated for 22 years. Terpil was believed to be hiding in Cuba. It is unclear whether or not he faked his own death Prior to President Obama's historic visit to Havana.
Clipper Maid of the Seas, Pan American World Airways Boeing 747-121, N739PA, takes off at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) March 12, 1987. The bomb exploded below the "P" in "PAN AM".
This is a simulation of the Lockerbie Bombing performed by the U.S. government in the 1990's. One can only imagine what this would have been like on a plane travelling 30,000 feet in the air going 499 miles per hour.
Large sections of the aircraft crashed onto residential areas of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 11 more people on the ground. The plane was carrying 50,000 gallons of jet fuel. The explosion split the fuselage in 2 and the pieces of the aircraft fell 6 miles to the ground. The wreckage was spread out over a mile.
The British Geological Society, which was located 14 miles away, registered the impact of the wreckage as a 1.6 on the Richter scale.
At least 3 of the victims, including 1 of the flight attendants, survived the initial impact, but died shortly after.
The flight crew were still strapped in the nose section and the instrument panel was flickering.
There are 10 men thought to be chiefly responsible for the bombing of Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland - 9 Libyans and 1 Swiss. Of the 10, 5 are dead. 3 of these, which includes Muammar Gaddafi, died of distinctly unnatural causes. 1 of the 5 died of cancer while being besieged until the moment of his passing to make a deathbed confession. 1 had a heart attack. 2 are in prison. 1 of the 2, Abdullah Senussi, was sentenced to death by a Libyan court in July of 2015 and it is unclear whether the sentence has been carried out. 1 is missing. Being that he was a high level official in the Gaddafi government, I don’t believe chances are good in post revolution Libya that he will be found alive. 2 are free. 1 of the 2 was acquitted by a Scottish court and the other, Swiss nation Bollier, has never been charged - although it could be argued that he is the one that bears the brunt of the responsibility and therefore has the most blood on his hands. He developed and sold the timer that was used in the suitcase bomb to the Libyan government.
July 30, 2000 interview with Robert Fripp conducted by Dick Tooley
RF: Originally Joanna Walton and I had this idea of entertaining friends at home in our lounge. Her with puppets or some performance piece and me with this series of tape improvisations. And we decided that since we would probably be evicted if we did it at home we should do it in a public situation, which was the Kitchen Arts & Video loft. And in order to find an appropriate name for the event, and this was only a one-off on a Sunday brunch concert, I came up with the name Frippertronics. Mainly because it was silly.
DT: Before we get into listening to North Star, I have to make a comment on the words to the album. Joanna Walton contributed the words, getting into some conceptual things, making the differentiation between the doorway and the door, the hallway and the hall, the window and the wind. Marvelous words.
RF: Remarkable woman, remarkable woman. When I first met her, she was not prepared to put up with too much nonsense from Robert or as she used to say, "YOU SEXIST LITTLE PIG!" And yes, it was an experience which enabled me to grow emotionally and catch up on some seven years of emotional hibernation as a member of a touring band in which one is generally prevented from experiencing oneself since it makes oneself more liable to manipulation by parties not really interested in one's personal development. So I had a short time to catch up quite a lot, and Joanna as I say in this particular fashion certainly helped me. Remarkable woman, she spent five years at Harvard doing philosophy and theology under Galbraith and all the Harvard heavies of the early sixties. Then left to become an actress, working quite a lot with Harvey Keitel. But when Harvey became successful and Joanna could have been, she in fact went to England and became a therapist, and founded a body called the Women's Free Arts Alliance. She moved to New York with me at the beginning of 1977, she's in fact a native New Yorker, and one level Exposure has to do with the kind of way a man and woman relate to each other in a contemporary situation, trying to be free of all the archetypes and so on. And how difficult that might be. So You Burn Me Up, I'm A Cigarette is my love song to Joanna. I May Not Have Had Enough Of Me, But I've Had Enough Of You, Chicago and North Star are her love songs to me. North Star, that point needed, that orientation needed in a relationship between man and woman. This is the very first time in his life Daryl Hall had ever sung these words. It's substantially a first take, he didn't even rehearse it. The backing track was recorded, I said, "There's the tape, there's the microphone, here's the words, go sing." And he sang.
You can now own your own copy of the original musical vision Robert Fripp had when he started recording his first proper solo album. You will need a copy of “Exposure – 25th Anniversary Edition” and “Sacred Songs” by Daryl Hall. Now follow my tracklisting below for a glimpse of what might have been:
01 Preface (Exposure Disc 1)
02 You Burn Me Up I’m a Cigarette (Exposure Disc 1)
Hey Ho Let’s Go: The Story of The Ramones by Everett True
Lucking Out: My Life Getting Down and Semi-Dirty in Seventies New York by James Wolcott
Heroes: David Bowie and Berlin by Tobias Rüther
Please Kill Me by Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain
Bowie in Berlin: A New Career In a New Town by Thomas Jerome Seabrook
Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever by Will Hermes
From The Velvets to The Voidoids: The Birth Of American Punk Rock by Clinton Heylin
David Bowie’s Low by Hugo Wilcken (33 ⅓)
Marvel Comics The Untold Story by Sean Howe
Spider-Man: Death of Gwen Stacy TPB
The Night Gwen Stacy Died by Sarah Bruni
For Your Viewing Pleasure:
David Bowie: Five Years (2013)
CBGB (2013)
Bowie in Berlin: Ein Dokumentarifilm 1976-1979
Brian Eno: 1971-1977 - The Man Who Fell to Earth
Blank City (2010)
Alphaville (1965)
Blank Generation (1980)
The Foreigner (1978)
Recommended Albums:
No Pussyfooting - Fripp & Eno 1973
Horses - Patti Smith 1975
Marquee Moon - Television 1977
Blank Generation - Richard Hell and the Voidoids 1977
Sacred Songs - Daryl Hall 1977
Scratch - Peter Gabriel 1978
No New York 1978
Parallel Lines - Blondie 1978
The Roches 1979
Exposure - Robert Fripp 1979
Fear Of Music - Talking Heads 1979
Discipline - King Crimson 1981
I Advanced Masks - Andy Summers & Robert Fripp 1982
Robert Fripp & The Death of Gwen Stacy Soundtrack:
I Wanna Be Your Dog - The Stooges 1969
Baby’s On Fire - Brian Eno 1973
Love → Building on Fire - Talking Heads 1977
Heroes - David Bowie 1977
Here Comes The Flood - Peter Gabriel 1977
Marquee Moon - Television 1977
Warszawa - David Bowie 1977
Blank Generation - Richard Hell & The Voidoids 1977
Fade Away And Radiate - Blondie 1978
I Zimbra - Talking Heads 1979
North Star - Robert Fripp 1979
Under Heavy Manners - Robert Fripp 1980
Frame By Frame - King Crimson 1981
Overview
In 1973, comic books were only beginning to escape the formulas by which they had been produced for decades. Many of the conventions of the traditional comic book story were being challenged by Stan Lee's still young Marvel Comics. Conventions that for years had continued unquestioned: every story will be complete in an issue, no story will refer to events of a previous issue, nothing of any consequence can happen to change a character, and no one ever, ever dies.
