Bash Compactor: Imaginary Boys
The East Village is 100 square blocks of NYU-dominated real estate. On a Saturday night, its bars are all packed with out-of-towners. But the real-world hood shares space with another place of the same name: a dreamscape of gritty tenements and vacant lots, where a 40-oz.-fueled teenage adventure is always around the corner. The middle-aged, Queens-born rock n roller Jesse Malin knows both places like the back of his hand.
In the early-90s, copping a page from The Dolls, he fronted glam-punk outfit D-Generation. Now he co-owns several highly successful neighborhood bars, including Bowery Electric, Black & White and Niagara.
On Wednesday, a group of die-hard fans packed into Black & White to hear Love It To Life, Jesse Malin & The St. Marks Socials debut album. The video of the records single, Burning the Bowery, made it all the more obvious which version of the hood is Malins.
A curmudgeonly Handsome Dick Manitoba was much more interested in talking about the 69 Amazins than mythical neighborhoods. Asked about rock n roll though, he focused intently. He growled: Im trying to protect it! I love it as much as 63 when I first heard it.
The type of character that has been around forever but looks half his age, Malin is usually friendly, but if a notebook comes out, he clams up like Lou Reed. However, his dedication to his New York cosmology is the only thing that matters. He wore a black bowling shirt and gray tweed cap pulled down to the side. Now in his 40s, Malin has had more time to perfect his well-fed Johnny Thunders look than Johnny himself did. Hero-worship is equally audible on the new record, which features a string of proto-punk anthems about life in a still ungentrified present-day New York. Sure, its make-believe, but so what?