Rest in peace Clarence.
Rest in peace Big Man.

Last week we all found out that Clarence Clemons had a stroke in his home in Florida. It took us all by surprise. We all thought he was invincible. Indestructible. Super-human. He’s the BIG MAN! Then comes that moment of terrified realization. Our heroes are only flesh and blood. They are susceptible. They are fallible. In a word. Human.

We prayed. We negotiated. We denied. We poured out or hearts and our feelings in support of the Big Man. And they were met with the greatest of all inevitabilities. Death. Yesterday our hero, our friend, our dad, our guru, our mentor, our sax player, shuffled off this mortal coil. Is he in a better place? Who’s to say. Until we shuffle off to Buffalo ourselves. Continue Reading > > >

Crazy Janey and her mission man were back in the alley tradin’ hands
‘long came Wild Billy with his friend G-man all duded up for Saturday night
Well Billy slammed on his coaster brakes and said anybody wanna go on up to Greasy Lake
It’s about a mile down on the dark side of route eighty-eight I got a bottle of rose so let’s try it
We’ll pick up Hazy Davy and Killer Joe and I’ll take you all out to where the gypsy angels go
They’re built like light and they dance like spirits in the night …

Bruce Springsteen . Spirits In The Night

New Jersey September 1974. I had just started my first semester as a photography major at Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) in wonderful New York, New York … just like I pictured it … skyscrapers and everything. I was living in an apartment with my sister Diane in Rahway, NJ and commuting every day to the fashion district of NYC. Walk a few blocks. Hop a train at the Rahway station … four stops later … Linden, Elizabeth, Newark … arriving at New York Penn Station. It was an amazing time of learning and spreading my newly found seventeen-year-old wings to fly. Continue Reading > > >

In 1980 I was attending school at  CW Post Center of Long Island University. I was also sharing an apartment in Oyster Bay Long Island with 3 women: Cande Roth, Ellyn Solis, and Dorothy (Orant) Morrison. The night I moved into this insane asylum I ended three years of being a non-smoker. I purchased that pack of Newports … and torched up the first smoke, and didn’t quit again until the early 90′s.

In my years at Post I was a communications major and later film major. I also did radio shows on the college station WCWP 88.1 on the FM dial. I also was a photographer for an NYC club magazine called Non-LP B-Side. Those were some exciting times. Musicly there was the whole UK & US punk explosion that brought so much amazing and exciting music. I use to spend a lot of my extra cash either at Bleaker Bob’s in NYC or a few of the independent music stores on Long Island that specialized in British imports. Buying the latest import singles & LPs my radio shows were something to hear. I loved bands like The Clash, The Jam, The Sex Pistols, XTC, Elvis Costello, Ian Dury And The Blockheads, Fashion, Richard Hell And The Voidoids, Tom Verlaine with or without  Television, Graham Parker, The Undertones, Ultravox, The Ramones, Talking Heads, all the assorted Stiff and Two-Tone bands and so much more. And what money I didn’t spend there I was spending on photographing some of these bands and paying to have the film processed at professional color labs, in NYC or on “Lonkisland”.

Dorothy was also an avid musicologist and fan girl of so many of those bands. That was one of our many connections. She also turned me onto a lot of stuff that she loved too. We influenced each other. Hell … when I met this girl she was “sittin’ on the hood of a Dodge” in the parking lot at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. A friend of mine and I were waiting to buy Springsteen tickets. We drove in from southern NJ the night before and slept in  my car. Early the next morning, before “the line formed”, I was wandering around the parking lot and here was this beautiful blond wild child, sitting on the hood of that car (but no soft summer rain) and asking me … “hey you like Costello too?” I was wearing an Elvis Costello t-shirt at the time. And that was that. We talked and that started the long slow process of friendship … and years later … a bit more.

Dorothy and I were in L. O. V. E. with the Clash. There was always something about their music, attitude and politics that resonated with us, and the world. They were so much less nihilistic than the Pistols. Plus they had huge hearts. You could see it in the passion they showed onstage and off. Continue Reading > > >

I’ve been a busy man these past few days. I’ve been scanning a lot of slides. As you can see in my previous few posts. It’s funny, I almost forgot I had these photos. When I dug out my slide pages from my closet, there they were.

It seems there’s been a lot going on in my head since I saw Springsteen at Key Arena last week. Like I mentioned in my previous posts about my friend Gary Croslin aka Junior Smoots. In trying to “refresh” my memory I was trying to see if there were any other websites that might have info about him or members of the band. That’s how I stumbled onto a website for The Upstage Club. The Upstage was a club on the Asbury Park Circuit that many a musician had passed through, including Bruce, my friend Gary and scores of other musicians. In the forums of the website was a post for another club in Asbury called Mrs Jay’s. Mrs Jay’s was the place I first saw Gary & the Smoots band play. Continue Reading > > >

I remember being there. I was high up almost touching the sky. Nothing could bring me down short of a bullet to the brain or some other grand misstep. I’d never been this high. Not to see a show at least. Not to see HIM. It was like an out of body experience. I’m here … and I’m somewhere else …

It was a beautiful sunny post-summer Sunday. September 22, 1974 to be exact. Having just finished my senior year at Linden High School, followed by a summer of “workin’ in Daddy’s garage,” then moving into a Rahway apartment with my sister, sliding right into my first semester at F.I.T. as a photography major … it was a welcome respite. Continue Reading > > >