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Mercer Arts Center

Mercer Arts Center

240 Mercer St, New York, NY 10012


Before the Mercer Arts Center collapsed in 1973, it was where underground theater, glam rock, video art, and performance art briefly intersected in the early 1970s—planting the seeds of what would become known as “punk.”

Stories

Women In Early Video

People

For the first time, women played a large role in developing an emerging technology. Of the nine Videofreex, four were women, and they participated equally in most of the technical aspects of the productions. Unlike the film industry—which had a significant barrier to entry for women, as Shirley Clarke discovered firsthand—video emerged at a time when gender roles and relations were transforming in the United States. “It just all collided at a lucky moment in history,” Wendy Clarke said, “in terms of being able to be among the first people to explore a medium. That was so unique, and I feel so lucky to have been around then.” The Videofreex’s Nancy Cain said, “With the video camera, I was seeing it for the first time and so was everybody else, males and female, everybody. It was a level playing field. You all began with a same amount of knowledge: none. I must say that the men in the Videofreex, they were great. Everybody taught each other, and then you went out. We truly were equal, and I could do whatever I wanted. It was the best thing.” Steina Vasulka, another early video pioneer who cofounded the Kitchen in the Mercer Arts Center, maintained that so many women were involved with video because it was an underdog medium. “There were no men there saying, ‘Let me direct this scene,’ or anything like that,” she said. “So this allowed women to take control of the video-making process, like Shirley. She had a huge success at the Cannes Festival, and came back home and thought that Hollywood would be waiting for her, but they didn’t want to have anything to do with her.”

From Chapter 22 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Patti Smith Pivots from Poetry to Music

People

Reading poems to an unruly Mercer Arts Center audience that was waiting to hear the headlining rock ’n’ roll act schooled Patti Smith in the art of crowd control and stage presence. “I read my poems, fielded insults, and sometimes sang songs accompanied by bits of music on my cassette player,” she recalled, and by the summer of 1973 she was hitting her stride. “I took to ending each performance with ‘Piss Factory,’ a prose poem I had improvised, framing my escape from a nonunion assembly line to the freedom of New York City.” Lenny Kaye described these early shows as being very loose; they were still not thinking in traditional rock band terms and instead just followed their instincts after he began playing with her again later in 1973. “You’re right next door to where the loft jazz scene is taking place, you’re in an area in which experimentalism is encouraged,” Kaye said. “That experimentalism was so far off the mainstream that you didn’t really worry about it—you didn’t think you’re going to suddenly have a hit record. You’re doing it for your peer group, essentially.”

From Chapter 27 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Ruby and the Rednecks at the Mercer Arts Center

People

Several of the bands that played at the Mercer Arts Center came out of theater—like Ruby and the Rednecks, which straddled the glam and punk eras. “I formed a band out of the musicians who played with the Play-House of the Ridiculous,” recalled Ruby Lynn Reyner, “and I said, ‘Why don’t we play these songs from the shows?’ I asked John Vaccaro’s permission and he said he didn’t care.” Ruby and the Rednecks’ staple, “He’s Got the Biggest Balls in Town,” was a favorite from Jackie Curtis’s Heaven Grand in Amber Orbit. “Ruby sang quite a few songs from Heaven Grand and Cock-Strong, and some original material,” said Play-House of the Ridiculous actor Michael Arian, a backup singer for the group. “All of her songs were not so much singing as little theater pieces, like Bette Midler did. Ruby was just extraordinary and was very, very entertaining.” Reyner often acted out the lyrics while contorting her rubbery face or shaking her glitter-slathered breasts like maracas to a Latin beat. Ruby and the Rednecks were one of the staples of the Mercer’s scene, appearing on the bill at a legendary New Year’s Eve 1972 gig with Jonathan Richman’s Modern Lovers, Suicide, Wayne County, and the New York Dolls. “Patti Smith was an opening act at Mercer Arts Center for a couple of shows when I played with the Dolls,” Reyner recalled. “She went on early, reading her poetry, so not that many people were there. She didn’t have her musicians yet, but she picked up the music pretty fast.”

From Chapter 27 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Suicide Terrorize Audiences at the Mercer Arts Center

People

“At the Dolls shows at Mercer’s,” Paul Zone said, “there would be opening act Eric Emerson and the Magic Tramps, and Patti Smith would be doing poetry, and Suicide would be in one of the other rooms.” Suicide keyboardist Marty Rev and frontman Alan Vega eschewed the traditional rock group lineup by forgoing bass, drums, and guitars altogether—opting instead for synths, drum machines, and vocals. “We weren’t interested in rehashing the same rock ’n’ roll,” Vega said. “We wanted something new, and we weren’t even necessarily thinking musically, but theatrically.” Suicide tried to bring Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty into music by breaking down the boundaries between performer and audience. As he physically and psychologically terrorized the audience, a rigid Rev produced a wall of sound from behind a bank of primitive keyboards and other crude electronics. “As you were leaving Mercer’s, you would hear something,” Zone recalled. “You would open the door and it would be Suicide, with no one in there, and of course we would go in. Alan would be in silver makeup and wearing a blond wig.” Vega wasn’t that crazy about the New York Dolls’ songs, which to him sounded like backward-looking 1960s party music. “The Dolls’ audience definitely didn’t like what we were doing,” Vega said, “but when we played the Blue Room their audience had to walk through it when they exited, because it was like a central corridor. If the Dolls’ room was like a party, our room was like a scene of carnage. Sometimes I would block the exit if people tried to leave. People thought I was fucking insane, and I guess I was, but I never, ever tried to hurt people. Myself, yes, I hurt myself. I would cut myself with a switchblade. I would always do it so that I got the most amount of blood with the least amount of pain.”

From Chapter 27 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


The Kitchen Mixes Ingredients at Mercers

People

The Kitchen was founded by Steina and Woody Vasulka, two European immigrants who wanted to create an alternative arts space at Mercer’s that programmed everything from video to electronic music—though they also made room for rock ’n’ roll. “The New York Dolls started in the Kitchen,” Steina said. “They rehearsed in the Kitchen and then they performed there, and it got very wild. Their audiences were very out there.” She recalled one night when she saw a bag of heroin on the floor during a Dolls show; Steina ran over to hide it from the police just outside the room, but an enterprising audience member snatched it up first. The Vasulkas also helped incubate an all-male ballet troupe founded by Larry Ree. “Les Ballets Trockadero started in the Kitchen, after he performed his dance in Vain Victory,” she said, referring to Ree’s interpretation of Anna Pavlova’s famous dance, “The Dying Swan.” “I knew Larry through Jackie Curtis,” Steina added, “and he asked if he could rehearse there.” Steina gave the Kitchen’s keys to Ree, who used it as a rehearsal space for his troupe, which was originally named Trockadero Gloxinia Ballet Company (some members eventually branched off and formed the well-known Les Ballets Trockadero de Monte Carlo company). Many other contemporary dancers also performed at the Kitchen, including Shirley Clarke collaborator Daniel Nagrin, who asked the composer Rhys Chatham to accompany him in 1971. “I saw these Slavic-looking people that Daniel also invited to come play, and it was Woody and Steina,” Chatham recalled. “Steina was on viola and Woody had his synthesizer. So we hit it off.”

From Chapter 27 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


The Mercer Arts Center Opens

People

The Mercer Arts Center was the brainchild of air-conditioning magnate Seymour Kaback, a theater lover who turned an old downtown building into a large maze-like arts complex with several theaters and concert rooms. In addition to two three-hundred-seat theaters and two two-hundred-seat theaters, Mercer’s had an art-house cinema, jazz lounge, bar, restaurant, two boutiques, and the Kitchen—an experimental film and performance venue housed in the hotel’s old kitchen. All the rooms in Mercer’s emptied into a central gathering space that had an all-white design, which some people called the Clockwork Orange Room. “Whatever you were going to see,” Tony Zanetta recalled, “you would run into other people who were going to see something else. That’s what made it more interesting. So maybe you were going to see One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest and I was going to see Wayne County or the New York Dolls. We would be sitting in the same room before or after the show, but we might not have been in that room otherwise.” On some nights, David Bowie could be seen slouched in a bright red plastic chair next to a massive antique mirror, absorbing the atmosphere. Eric Emerson invited the Dolls to open for the Magic Tramps at Mercer’s, and they sent a jolt through the downtown scene by reminding folks that enthusiasm trumped technical proficiency. For drummer Jerry Nolan—who started out playing in Wayne County’s Queen Elizabeth before joining the New York Dolls—David Johansen and company returned rock ’n’ roll back to basics.

From Chapter 27 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Downtown Freaks Take Over Public Access Television

People

There were few places to present video in the early 1970s, aside from screening venues like the Kitchen (in the Mercer Arts Center) and the pirate broadcasts of Lanesville TV. Into this vacuum emerged public access channels on cable television. In the early 1970s, public access stations began popping up around the country, channeling underground culture into people’s living rooms. Before Chris Stein cofounded Blondie in 1974, the guitarist collaborated with his friend Joey Freeman and some former members of the Cockettes on a public access show called Hollywood Spit. “It was the four of them—Fayette Hauser, Tomata du Plenty, Gorilla Rose, Screaming Orchids,” he said. “They considered themselves kind of the Drag Beatles. We just edited in the camera, carefully in sequence, as we were shooting, and it was just a weird, ahead-of-its-time drag situation comedy. Unfortunately, the tapes were destroyed in a fire in my friend’s loft.” Interview magazine contributor Anton Perich—who documented the scenes at Max’s Kansas City and the Mercer Art Center with his Super 8 film and Portapak video camera—also began making his own public access show, Anton Perich Presents, which debuted in January 1973. “Video was the freshest flower in the machine garden, fragrant and black and white,” he said. “The Portapak was this miraculous machine in a miraculous epoch. It was truly a revolutionary instrument. I was ready for revolution.” In one infamous episode of Anton Perich Presents, downtown scenester (and soon-to-be Ramones manager) Danny Fields acted out a scene in which he tried to cure a television repairman’s hemorrhoids by inserting a lubricated lightbulb into his anus. “The show was censored during the cablecast,” Perich recalled. “They inserted a black screen and Muzak. It was the biggest scandal. Every major media outlet did a story about it.”

From Chapter 28 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Shirley Clarke at the Kitchen

People

The Mercer Arts Center’s many rooms provided a home for underground rock, contemporary dance, Off-Off-Broadway, and even Shirley Clarke’s video experiments. The former filmmaker embraced the egalitarian potential of video as an alternative to broadcast television, a mass medium that encouraged passive media consumption. “It was very important for her that it should go back and forth in a two-way type of communication,” recalled Andrew Gurian, her longtime assistant. “She was very democratic and ahead of her time in that way. And I think she really was excited by the fact that all this equipment was getting smaller and smaller and more accessible to everyone.” Clarke also found creative ways to subvert the masculine-coded domain of electronics. “One day Shirley just painted all the equipment pink,” Gurian said. “You associate it with six-year-old girls and their dolls, which I think was the point. She constantly would refer to what we did as being ‘playful.’ We were adults playing around. So if you wound up with a pink screwdriver, there was something lighthearted about that. It desterilized the equipment so it became an extension of your eye and your hand.” Clarke’s aim was to make the hardware feel more user-friendly, so that no one felt excluded. The Kitchen, cofounded by Steina and Woody Vasulka, provided a testing ground for Clarke and others to imagine these new modes of electronic communication. “Shirley’s idea was to have video always going, constantly there,” Steina said. “So the first programming we had was video on Wednesdays, an open house where anybody could come in and show stuff.”

From Chapter 28 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


The Vasulkas Make Room for Video

People

“The Vasulkas videoed everything,” recalled Pork actor Tony Zanetta. “They didn’t just videotape theater, they did it all. They have an incredible archive of everything that went on downtown.” Steina and Woody Vasulka could be seen shooting a Fillmore East underground rock band or behind the video camera at an Off-Off-Broadway show. Steina taped her friend Jackie Curtis’s first play, Glory, Glamour, and Gold, as well as Femme Fatale and Vain Victory a few years later. “That’s how I discovered that this was what I should do, shooting video,” she said, “and then after that, Jackie would always call when she thought we should be there.” In 1970, the Vasulkas got an opportunity to fix up the Mercer Arts Center’s old kitchen, which is how the venue got its name. “Everyone thought the Kitchen would sound mystical,” Steina said, “like we were going to cook art in there.” In addition to Shirley and Wendy Clarke’s Tee Pee Video Space Troupe and Videofreex, several other downtown video groups had formed by the early 1970s—Raindance, People’s Video Theater, Global Village—most of which made use of the Kitchen. “People would be coming with a tape, which was at that time reel-to-reel, just totally hot,” she said. “They ripped it off their equipment and ran as fast as they could down there to show it.”

From Chapter 28 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore


Lance Loud Forms the Mumps

People

After An American Family became a hit in 1973, The Dick Cavett Show flew singer Lance Loud, keyboardist Kristian Hoffman, and the rest of the band out to New York to perform on the show. The two best friends had already made one attempt at living in the city and returned to Santa Barbara in defeat—“We had our New York experiment,” Hoffman recalled, “and we didn’t meet the Velvet Underground”—but this time they stayed. After their television debut, various managers and record companies encouraged the band to change their name to Loud in order to cash in on their fleeting fame. “We hated that idea,” Kristian recalled, “and Neil Bogart, who ran Casablanca Records, also wanted us to call the band An American Family.” (They eventually settled on the Mumps.) By this point, Lance Loud and Hoffman had fully immersed themselves in the downtown underground and become regulars at the New York Dolls’ gigs at Mercer’s. “We went there every single show,” he said, “so we quickly met all these wonderful people like Paul Zone, who introduced us to everybody in the Lower East Side rock scene. Everyone happened to live in a one-mile-square neighborhood, and you would just see them every day. So we did everything together—the Mumps, the Fast, Blondie. All of these things intersected, and all of these crazy people hung out together.” Because of the hype surrounding An American Family, Loud was probably the best-known person in the nascent punk scene. “Lance was a larger-than-life figure,” Blondie drummer Clem Burke recalled. “He was probably the first bona fide celebrity I ever met.” He was a magnetic frontman, though not necessarily the greatest singer (but this was punk rock, so it didn’t really matter). “Lance loved performing, and he would sweat gallons,” said Persky, who became a good friend. “He was just so blissed out when he was onstage.”

From Chapter 32 of The Downtown Pop Underground — order online, or from a local independent bookstore