"We want the airwaves, baby!"

A bunch of loud-mouth, no-talent "nobodies" from Queens, N.Y.

 
Part of any genuine rebel movement is acquiring attention, sometimes by any means necessary, although the intention is to always have a firmly authoritative foothold on your audience's consciousness, which falls outside of a teenager's general parvenu. It's the main reason that my first outsider culture, punk, had to grow up. Heat, energy, and movement is fast fun, but after awhile, noise just makes your head hurt. Musicians with long legs in the game learned to play their instruments properly, and after my wild excesses of high school and college, I was sick of the stupid drunk parties. Raping frat boys and vomiting girls are not people one aspires to be around as an adult.

And so I moved on from my infamous New York State party school because I had enough, and I was bored with easy classes. It was a mature decision, and it cost me a lot to make it: studio credits well-earned but not accepted in the Ivy League, friends not confident enough to make it on their own without my constant steadying support, plus a boyfriend or two. I considered it (and still do) and great bargain to become educated, because the kids who couldn't follow along with me would be hangers-on, anyway. They'd hate my new life, studies, and interests. 

It opened up parts of my personality they didn't know (or like). My person changed, grew, and adapted, while my old friends peaked, stopped growing, and then just stopped, sometimes living. It made them extremely nervous around me, and they sought to sabotage my new life violently; a new life that was shifting in front of their eyes. 

One friend accused me of having a totally new signature as proof of my extreme changes, though in reality, it was brought on by being constantly busy as an apprentice in publishing (which she then mocked by prank-calling me at work to say that my new house was for nobodies, a sure sign of threatened youth) and my easy adaption to adulthood. My hand continues to develop into a busy-person's scrawl, not unlike the handwriting of a doctor who writes all day long.

Another friend wanted to sabotage my new group of friends by sleeping with a guy who used to date this girl I set him up with at school, then flirting with my boyfriend while he hung about my aunt's place, looking for a life in the city. In any case, I evolved past all of them, which was their great fear: not being able to ride on my coattails any more for the free fun ride.

One of the worst let-downs (though not totally unexpected) was my best friend from high school and SUNY, who decried me as a "sell-out" for my beginning salary of $17,500 a year at St. Martins' Press; a place I could only afford to work and compete with trust fund English Lit majors by using my aunt's place as a crash-pad. She tried to position it as someone who was looking out for my best interest as a children's book artist, though in reality, she wanted an object to show her students in class, to boost her rep as a new teacher.

The RISD girl was even worse. After giving her a place to stay that was huge and practically rent-free, she also chafed about my new learnin' and a-changin' and a-growin', by ripping out some ad from The New Yorker about a therapist specializing in "creative" people who stopped producing, because she couldn't torpedo the new production and design skills I was learning in the city if she didn't have layouts and drawings to look at.

It didn't stop at work or at home, either. Once I reached the coveted Art Department as a Manager who could do business and book design, the claws came out of the bitchy SVA show-pony crowd, which told me (yet again) how threatening I was to them and their system. 
A well-known Creative Director (then, an Art Director on the rise) has never stopped gunning after me. He bragged about setting balls in motion to harness, control, then humiliate, demean, and fire me at work by trying to position me with a lower skill set than the other one trick ponies at the stable. He told me dismissively in front of a group of designers that my name really meant "Secretary", after reading some pop culture book on name meanings (and repeating it often), because I was behind the slick city crowd in desktop publishing skills, but way ahead in life, and art. It was unnerving.

But all the madness I went through was purposeful and driven, though not always clearly defined enough for my competitors. How do I know it worked? You're reading it right now, because I AM THE MEDIA, and I have made it all the way to the top. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, suckas. Shout that from the mountaintops, baby.

"Generation X" by Doug Copeland for St. Martin's Press (© 1990's): produced by Twisne Fan, Marie Doucette, and Curt Alliaume in several consecutive, co-running, differently-colored versions. 

"We Want The Airwaves" 

Nine to five, and five to nine
Ain't gonna take it, it's our time
We want the world, and we want it now
We're gonna take it anyhow

We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby
If rock is gonna stay alive

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

Where's your guts and will to survive
And don't you wanna keep rock 'n' roll music alive
Mr. Programmer, I got my hammer
And I'm gonna smash my, smash my brain!

We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby
If rock is gonna stay alive

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

Oh yeah
well alright
Let's rock
tonight
All night

We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves airwaves
We want the airwaves, baby 

The New Black

Way before Orange is the New Black, my punk rock cousin Susan had already "been there and done that" while wearing the standard prison-issue jumpsuit. She was a model in the city during the CBGB music scene of the 70s, and DeeDee Ramone's girlfriend. She was beautiful, glamorous, and a drug addict. After her fling with the “sex, drugs, and rock n' roll” lifestyle, she rallied back from the hard bite it took out of her to work as an office girl in the city, while dating the "nice" safe Italian boy from her neighborhood. 

Unfortunately for Susie, the damage was done. No amount of shiny polyester shirts, tight pants, and Travolta-style pompadours could help her stay out of Studio 54, with all that free coke. What could compete with her troubled working class roots, with its' generic Queens row house, and her excruciatingly boring 9-5 job? Not much, and the allure of the forbidden was too much for her to resist. 

When I lived in Brooklyn, she used to call me loaded to chew my ear off, chain-smoking and enjoying the high. I asked her to write down some of her experiences from those days, but like everything else with my family, I'd have to do all the work, and there was no way I could take her on with all of her diseases. But, she told me enough of it for me to recreate a timeline in my head that's reliable.

After her Queens boyfriend broke up with her because she couldn't buckle down into their engagement and a normal, family-based routine, she went back to using hard again. When she was a model, another girl on the circuit taught her how to shoot up without leaving behind any visible track marks, because this was way before Photoshop could airbrush out any sins you may have committed. When I asked her how she did it, she spread her toes apart to show me how she injected heroin in between her big toe and second toe.

And that was the beginning of the end of the road for her. She was caught in a raid on a crack house that had become the center of a huge drug trafficking ring, and like most addicts, she sold to get high. From what I heard back then, it was a typical dirty-bare-mattresses-on-a-floor-with-scary-graffiti-covered-walls kind of joint. Old school New Yorkers will get it. It's the kind of place brokers try to sell as condos in Bushwick nowadays to stupid rich white kids who are priced out of Williamsburg, by selling it as an "up-and-coming" neighborhood, but I always knew better.

From there, she was shipped off to Rikers to do a stretch of hard time. It was unbelievable. Me and my brothers were working "The American Dream" hardcore in the country 'burbs of early 80s Rockland by studying and working part-time jobs. After she was raped in Rikers, they sent her to a prison in Pennsylvania to do the rest of her time. She told me about her affairs with other female inmates, the crescendo of her time rounded out by an affair with a male prison guard.

When she got pregnant by him in the joint, my father flew out there to give her away in a shotgun wedding after her release. I saw the pictures of her with a flower garland askew on her head during the ceremony, bleary-eyed and out of it. And that's how years before you all cashed in on a gang of girls gone mad, my cousin Suzy gave birth to a low-weight baby boy she named after Bob Dylan, her one and only child, not long after her Corrections Officer died of a heart attack.


(From Wikipedia) The writing and structure are both somewhat more sophisticated than the songs on their previous record. Guitarist Johnny Ramone relates: "We recorded them in the order they were written; we wanted to show a slight progression in song structure."^[3] Most of the songs were written in the band member's homes, rather than at a studio; "Suzy Is a Headbanger" was written in drummer Tommy Ramone's loft apartment.^[4]

"I wrote most of the stuff I contributed at my apartment in Forest Hills, before I left and moved back to a place in the city. I had no amp at home, just an electric guitar. I recorded it onto a cassette and played that back at rehearsal. We had better production, we were playing a little faster, and we had a lot of songs accumulated. We were in really good shape for that album."

A New York State of Mind

As a young child, I had no idea people lived in other places besides "The City". After all, it dominated every facet of my world. Our parades were shown on every major t.v. network, like The Macy's Parade on Thanksgiving, and The St. Patrick's Day Parade in March. Even though these days are national holidays, I always saw my city on t.v. Sesame Street looked like any block in Brooklyn (I like to think it greatly resembles Park Slope :),  and The Electric Company back in the 70s had a multi-ethnic cast (remember the Asian-American girl with the Crystal Gayle long hair?!). And it wasn't just t.v. 

The biggest, most famous movies in the world were set in New York, a list that's far too long to write, like King Kong and Taxi Driver, with New York actors like Robert DeNiro. Beloved and adored cartoon characters, like Bugs Bunny, were voiced by Mel Blanc in a distinctly urban voice, reminiscent to me of my grandfather, an Irish-American Con-Ed worker from Brooklyn, who worked in the lower East Side, an area where Yiddish was widely spoken. I can bust out a bunch of words I learned from him, like "meshugga", "shiksa", and a decent "Oy Vey!" that's full of feeling, to the surprise of some. Broadway plays, operas, Lincoln Center for The Nutcracker and ballet, The Rockettes, The Harlem Globetrotters, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, commonplace to kids from the area.

http://jennylens.com/dee-dee-ramone-changed-my-life/

That was just entertainment. Magazines and catalogs were adorned with models who worked and lived in New York, shot in studios in Chelsea or with city backdrops at locations around town. My cousin was a model and sometime girlfriend of DeeDee Ramone, voted "Best Legs" 1976 (or '77? Suzy, forgive me!), by an underground 'zine that catered to the punk scene. Like every New York girl, I had a fling with modeling, though I was too short for haute couture. And thankfully so, because I was already deeply immersed in my college education. Still, I took a runway walk class, got ripped off by a small-time NJ photographer for some photos, was rejected by Elites' receptionist right out of the elevator and told to go to the Petites division around the corner (bailed on that), booked a shoe show at The Javits Center with a less prestigious agency, then blew it off, as teenagers on summer break are wont to do. I had to make money, so I worked and hung out with friends. A kid from high school was already appearing in commercials as an actor, mostly famously for a board game ad, and dancing friends were auditioning for companies in the city or programs.

My parents met at a jazz club in The Village (that's Greenwich Village, in downtown Manhattan), and went to poetry readings during their courtship. Your parents didn't do that? Huh. I got a dose of reality in the 5th grade, when I wrote an essay about it for Miss O'Brien, a very young and earnest substitute teacher. I really liked her, but she took a red pen to my story, crossed out the word "bar" and replaced it with "restaurant", or something like that. The change riled me enough to give me the courage to go up to her desk after class and inquire about her alterations, a rarity for such a shy girl like me. She explained that it wasn't polite to write something like that, and she was making my story better. She was sure my parents wouldn't like it. I think I even went home and showed to them, and they laughed. She may have been a local from the area we moved to, a suburb which was still quite isolated and rural back then, surrounded by farmland, and accessible to New York City only by a local highway that still has no lights on it, courtesy of a national parkland designation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palisades_Interstate_Parkway

Songs were written about our fair city, broadcast on every radio station, famous anthems like "New York, New York" by Frank Sinatra. Everyone knew the Yankees and their iconic players, regardless of locale. My grandmother watched them at the stadium as a girl, and she's 96. Compared to most Americans, we have a long history. People come from around the world to see our attractions, like the tree at Rock Center, Radio City, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the Empire State, and the late, great Trade Towers. These weren't local attractions. I knew that because they were in such crowded areas, I had to hold an adults hand so I wouldn't get separated. The people on the streets spoke all sorts languages, people of every size, shape, and color that represent humanity. My first real boyfriend in high school was originally from Puerto Rico, though fully Americanized, and I had friends from Ghana, England, and the south of France. To this day, I have trouble in homogeneous and less diverse zones of our country. Where are the rest of the people?

http://www.ebaumsworld.com/pictures/view/597895/

The bubble from The Land of Oz finally burst for good in college, amongst a surfeit of Long Islanders. The girls' floor in our dorm was filled with sorority sisters who simply traded their town from downstate to upstate New York, sporting the same baggy Champion sweatshirts and topknot ponytails held in place by velvet scrunchies. I was horrified by their singularity and conformity, a herd mentality that signalled an utter lack of courage and individuality. If this was what was out there, I'll pass. I had the good fortune to meet a group of kids from the North Shore who skateboarded, surfed, and spent summers clam digging around bonfires on the beach. Cool. That I could roll with. I'm a beach kid who spent summers swimming the ocean of Long Beach Island. The first time I went to their dorm room, some great artist had pencilled an amazing drawing of The Ramones on the floor, at the entrance to their suite. Home sweet home.

From 1989, in front of Galway Cathedral.

I went on to travel a great deal. I got struck young and early by a restless wanderlust. Before the age of 19, I had already been to Amsterdam and Ireland, the first among my crowd to travel overseas, and in pre-Euro days. I would return to Ireland, travel through Italy, have a brief work stint in Germany, with side trips to Paris and Amsterdam, again. I would take incessant road trips around America, desperate to see what else was out there. I've found similarly sexy vibes in cities like New Orleans and Montrèal, but when you're from a place like New York, you come from a fabled land that's up there with London, Paris, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. Along with our many visitors, people come to our town laden with a head full of prejudices and media programming. Rest assured, most of us are normal, we just have a vision that's as grand and impressive as our skyline. My excessive nervous energy has been replaced by a contentment to be settled in a small town, in one of the largest cities 

in the world. Happy trails to you!

http://brooklyn.com/