Those shells of tenements feature prominently in the video and I recognized many of the other locations. That big bad New York of the past wasn’t in the past yet. My boyfriend told me about how one summer in the seventies he felt that he watch building after building going up in flames, usually a result of arson. His bedroom window faced north and from there we could see a line of buildings along Second Street that were nothing more than shells. The video opens with a shot of the Bowery Mission, only a few blocks away from where my boyfriend grew up in the housing projects on Pitt Street. The video that’s online for the song “40 Shades of Blue” has footage of the East Village as I remember it when I first started spending much of my time there at the age of eighteen or nineteen and into my late twenties. One was of a song I once knew but hadn’t heard in a long time.
I typed the name into a search engine and came up with a list of videos. Meanwhile, some exchanges on the internet put me in mind of a band I hadn’t thought of in a long time. I hadn’t seen my friend in a while, someone I’d known since I was sixteen. The only reason I considered it at all was the source of the invitation. The trend away from “New Year’s Eve” celebrations to “First Night” celebrations strikes me as a puritanism as misguided as Prohibition. I tried to push down the fact that I was ideologically opposed to the concept of “First Night.” I am a firm believer in the importance of the Dionysian impulse as an integral part of the human experience, and there are few opportunities we have for fully exploring those impulses. I had no plans for New Years Eve and I was happy to be invited anyplace at all. A friend had invited me to a “First Night Celebration” in New Hampshire. I might have to play it again twice as loud. Well, this place here, you know it is my home I think it’s easy to see why someone who feels constantly out of place might like this song. Admittedly, it’s not exactly, “uplifting,” but when you’re feeling marginalized, what other people find uplifting doesn’t always help.įor you to fall in love with Frankenstein? I like it even when I’m feeling good, but when I’m feeling rejected for being a freak or not fitting in, it makes me feel better for some reason. Yes, I know that it’s totally overblown and over the top, a bombastic mess, and that’s a large part of why I like it. So many times, I’ve been told that this is just an awful song, but I really, really like it for some reason. It’s “Frankenstein” by the New York Dolls. In fact, quite a few people have told me that it shows that I have bad taste. I love this song, and the fact that I love it totally appalls many people.
When I’m feeling crummy, there’s a song that always makes me feel better. You call it bad taste I call it my taste. Everyone thinks that their own taste is wonderful, but I’m perfectly happy to have a little chip on my shoulder on the subject of taste. So many times, I’ve been told that I have bad taste, I’ve almost come to embrace it as part of my sense of self. Do you have any songs that you listen to when you’re feeling down? My best friend tells me that he listens to Billie Holiday.
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