The King Of New York: NME : 4th December 1999
I was stuck inside some two-bit bar room on the West Side, watching the Yankees getting their asses whupped five to nine straight up in the eighth, with only a bad liver and a broken heart for company. Oh,
and my partner Davie The Dook, a crazy-ass punk, a cugine waitin' to get made. I was just about to make my peace with the angels and take a rain check when the phone rang.
"Hey, Johnny, it's Huey." Jumpin' jehosifer – Huey! The Fun Lovin' Criminal himself. The man who put the 'look' into Palookaville. The Matine Corps marriage maker. The croonin' consigliere
. Well how 'bout that?! He finally took the bait. "Meet me on the corner of Broadway and White in half-an-hour. Bring your friend." That was all he said. But I understood.
I know how guys like Huey operate. So I found the first free yellow box and hightailed it down there. Somethin' told me this was gonna be a long night.
I was in town undercover, for those of ya who hadn't already guessed. The DA was bustin' my balls about some kinda croonin' and loungin' racket downtown, with Huey planin' the capo di tutti I capi
. I knew him best for his record with a buncha hip-hopped-up wise guys in on the funk-punk tip, a bit hit with the ladies and a big noise in the old country. But this shit was
different. He was playin' it cool now, turnin' down the heat and switchin' off the electrics, comin' on all Hawaiian on some joint called 'Mimosa' I didn't even pretend to understand.
Either way, I had to go in there deep cover with the main skipper and find out just what the frankie knuckles was goin' on down there. So here I was. Guardian angels look away now, this could get messy…
"Here's ten bucks, keep the change, mac." I tip him good – you never know who might start talkin' – and stop a coupla blocks up east so I won't be tailed.
And there he is, in shades and sweat parns, smokin' and pacin', pacin' and smokin' on the corner like Bobby De Niro whacked up on the whizz. He seems itchy, and I figure I should keep it
pretty discreet. So I walk past him and he falls in next to me. "Let's take a walk," says Huey through the side of his mouth. "Some cops were lookin' my way
just ten. You can't do nothin' in this city no more. I got picked up here for smoking a joint while I was riding my bike. They threw me in jail for, like, two days, 'cos I resisted arrest. The punk
in me came out a little bit." Yeah, he's singin' like a canary. He figures I'm a compare, a coombah. Not to mention, a green-assed limey babbo
on account of my connections over the water. I think to myself, "Boy, has he got a flicked tit comin' his way!" He takes me across White, up Sixth, round Seventh, through 11th and West B, then doubles back
to Ninth, until we come to some joint with a velvet rope outside. Huey's place. Fun Lovin' Criminal central. I guess this where things get interesting.
"Heeeeeey, Huey!" the manager comes over and shakes his hand. In facr, everyone in the place comes over and shakes his hand, puts their arm around his shoulder, and welcomes him like
Jesus into Jerusalem. I can hear some crazy drag act up onstage, crackin' jokes. Huey gets us a drink. He doesn't have to pay. Then he takes me through a side door, leaving my partner Davie
The Dook upstairs casin the joint for peabodies who might be packin' some heat.
There's a single 40-watt bulb, and a single chair. I site down. Then I notice there's a noose above the chair. What the fuck?! Who's the fuckin' fall guy here? Am I some Daniel thrown to the fuckin' lions or what?
"Er, yeah, sorry," says Huey, "just our little joke, you understand." He takes out a bag of goof grout and rolls a fat one. "Hey, try some o' this… finest Hawaiian."
That right? The Hawaiian connection, huh? That figures. 'Mimosa', lounge music, cocktails, club tropicana shit. But wait up. There's a sucker born every minute, right? Maybe he's tryin' to
soften me up. But he short-changed the wrong meat-eater today. So I cut to the chase. What's all the loungin' and croonin', Huey? I though you was running numbers down on the Lower East Side?
"It's all the shit I grew up with – Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennet, Mel Tormé. And it's a case of who would cover (Ozzy Osbourne's) 'Crazy Train' like that. We like to freak people out a little." You got that right, amigo.
We initially got the idea from playing parites where we'd do lounge versions of 'Scooby Snacks' and 'Bombin' The L'. But since we got successful, we got loads of people hitting our website and
wanting to get hold of all kinds of shit, and we figure we might as well put it all out on one album. We didn't want to make a big deal out of it. It's for the fans who want to hear this shit
but inevitably there's a commercial manoeuvring as well. The timing's pretty shameless, before Christmas."
So I try to probe a little deeper. Hawaii, hih? What was you doin' when you wasn't croonin' and loungin' then, Huey?
Sounds familiar. So Huey, it must be a real fly in your pastrami when people think you're some kinda gangster… Then right on cue, there's a knock on the dooe. Some compadre comes in with a brown paper bag.
"Huey, someone dropped this off." "Fantastic," he says. "Yeah, nice. Thank you very much." He reaches in to the bag, and God strike me down if my jaw don't hit the floor like a baby hits
the Hudson, he pulls out a goddamn GUN! I look at him trying not to betray any surprise. "For extreme situations?" I ask.
"It's just something I ordered," he says. "Finally came through. I got it on the Internet. Heh heh heh." Internet. Yeah. That'd be right.
He slams in the clip. I feel a bead of sweat down my back. You usually packin' heat, Huey? "No, I don't normally carry a gun. I mean, only if I need one but y'know… we're not gangsters.
People think everyone with a Cocknet accent or anyone from New York is a gangster, one of Reggie Kray's friends. Communication will bridge that gap." Communication. That what you call it? So what's all this,
"Hey hey, free Reg Kray" I heard you singing' in London a while back? A friend of yours? "Yeah, he's an interesting guy. He does a lot of music, actually, man. It's weird, it's really
tripped out when you imagine the shit that he saw. So we're gonna hopefully get some shit together for him." Wouldn't wanna see you glorifying that shit, though, my friend. Somebody could get hurt. When
you're telling stories you never know who's gonna wind up the stiff in the storeroom, right? "It's just the folklore of where we gre up The mythology, the law of Manhattan. So I guess
we're drawing attention to it. But it's more about why people want to do soya cocaine – you heard about that shit? You can play it safe in life like that, or bug out and act crazy, right?"
It's funny, I always though of you as a pretty respectable kinda gentleman, Huey. You never dressed down like these crazy kids today, you dressed, kinda like a goodfella. So people start talkin'…
"Well, there's bands like Blur and those guys don't even bother washing any more! I mean, that's cool, I guess it saves time in the morning. But I guess from being at Catholic school and in the
Marines you want to present yourself well when you've earned your money. It's a working-class pride thing. "When we were growing up in our neighbourhood there was always just these guys who where
always impeccably dressed, and yet they didn't really seem to do anything! They just hung around. We were like, 'Maaan, my man's got green alligator-skin shoes and a matching green
suit. And he's a white guy!' You see a lot of that nowadaya because of hip-hop, but not then. And of course we realise now what they really were – they must have been in a band!"
I like that. He's a funny guy, Huey. But he shouldn't get too funny with me. I might not get the joke, kapultz? Besides, I'm hearing whispers from the gibbons down in Hell's bathroom that Huey's been
hanging out with this Ian McCulloch guy. I hear he used to be some kinda wiseass bunnyman. Oh yeah? Tell me more… I wanna announce now that we're gonna produce his new record. I don't know whether he really
wants us to but I think it would be a good idea for him. His music is cool, he's a good friend of ours, and a month or two in Acapulco ain't gonna kill nobody."
Acapulco, huh? That's were Carlo the Crap-shooters's been hiding, I hear. But I don't wanna bust his balls about it. I figure it's better to be the lion-tamer rather than the performin'
fuckin' seal in this little three-ring circus. So we go upstairs and get some drinks. Huey whispers in the ear of some guy and before I can say, 'God Bless Frank' they've cleared some
buncha schmucks from the corner table and we're shown to our seats. Then I glance at the wall and there's a plaque, saying 'Fun Lovin' Criminals Corner'. So, it's that kinda deal, huh? He who
pays the piper calls the tunes. So anyway, Huey's holding court as the empty suits queue up to shoot the bull with the borgata, so I sit back and listen.
"There's this guy comin' over later who might wanna meet us. He's pretty Mobbed up, so, uh, you don't like to get on the wrong side of him, know what I'm saying'? Name's Tony The Horse. He's
in with these new Ukrainian guys who are muscling in, but he himself is Turkish. He likes the band, and I guess I'm kinda like a Frank Sinatra to his Sam Giancana. He's a pretty heavy guy.
He killed a guy once, beat him to death with a briefcase." Jesus. Now we're into the red stuff. "Yeah. He was carring this case for his family, and some punk tries to stick him in the street! So
he overpowers this guy and then – boom boom boom! He's beat on him with the edge of the case, and killed the guy! So he calls the guys who he's carrying for, and they come over and crack the
combination lock, take out all the incriminating shit that's in there and leave just the empty case. But Tony's blood's on there somehow, or his prints or some shit, and he still gets caught and
takes the rap, ten years or something." Once of the guys across the tables looks as if he knows the story. "Didn't he slice that guy up in a suitcase in that nightclub as well?"
"Nah," says another guy, "wasn't that Apocalypse Bob?" "Naaaah, it was Mickey The Mincer, the promoter guy." "Oh yeah. I read about that."
This conversation's writing me cheques my conscience can't cash! My bank manager'd have me arrested! But no rest for the wicked. No sooner have we plugged up the mouth-run whan we're
summoned to the basement to meet the man himself. Sheesh. I didn't get this heat filing forms for the fag force back in the day. I can tell ya. But without a mug nobody gets any coffee, right?
I ascertain immediately that our Mob friend is not one to fuck around. A big bear of a guy, 6ft 3ins and 250lbs if he's a day, he invites us in a pulls out a bad of crystals. Call me a
mind-reader, but I suspect he ain't offerin' me a present for the wife, capresto? Well, I figure when you're fighting devils sometimes you gotta break bread in hell, and I ain't
about to refuse the guy's kind offer. So I hold out the back of my hand and he pours a pile of the pure white stuff on it. I snort it up, and ball me backwards if it doesn't damn near shoot my
heart through my brains. These are snowflakes backed in the devil's own oven! And then he says, "How's that for ya! Not doin' much? Here, have another!"
And he pours another heap out on my other hand! I remember some highfalutin philosopher once wrote, 'Beware all ye who fight monsters, lest ye become a monster'. Well I gotta tell ya, after
two whiffs of this dragon smoke I was ready to stalk the Himalayas! So then he turns to Davie The Dook and offers him one. "Hey, man," says Davie, trying to back out politely, "I don't wanna use up all your stash…"
"What you talkin' about, man?" yells Tony, and pours another big mound out on his own hand. "Look at that," he says. "Phwooof!" And damn me to hell if he didn't blow the whole lot onto the floor.
"See?" he says, it's nothing to me. Nothing! I got this shit comin' outta my ass! Heh heh heh heh!" Davie gets the message and dutifully sniffs up the next consignment.
Tony's roaring now. He's marked us out as a coupla green-bellied limey cafones, and he wants to tell us a few stories. I don't dare but listen.
"I'm in the construction business," he explains with a wise guy grin on his face. "And lemme tell ya, I never get refused plannin' permission. 'Co people know what happens when they fuck with
us. A while back, there was this Korean guy, and he decided he could make things difficult for us. He thought he could show us no respect, that we were all talk. So we stabbed him in the
neck six times with a fuckin' corkscrew." Now all the time I'm thinkin', "Is this guy for real?" I mean, this is some cartoon shit outta
GoodFellas, right? Someone's having a big joke here. Huey's hired this guy to put the frighteners on our ass. But the more I see of him, the more I think this guy's for real. For one
thing, Huey's lookin' sheepish, tryin' to keep his distance from the big guy. There ain't much nudgin' and winkin' goin' on. Anyways up, the stories keep comin'…
"You can't do nothin' in New York City any more", says Tony. "It's the safest city in America. You could go out and wave a thousand bucks in the air and no-one would rob you, they'd run
away. We have to make trouble for ourselves these days. Hell, a friend of ours goes out dressed as a faggor so he can go ou and pick up transvestites and beat up on 'em!"
That right? Nice guy. Then Davie The Dook pipes up, like mine own executioner… "Why've you got a prblem with tra…" I kick him in the ankle before he puts his foot in his mouth.
"So, er, you like Huey's band?" I ask, changin' the subject. "Yeah, I like all kinds of shit," he says. "You know who I particularly like?" "No?" "I really like Wham!. Those guys were the greatest!"
"Yeah," I say, "I mean, those songs that they wrote in the '80s are still timeless pop classics…" "Naaah," he laughs, "I'm shittin' ya. I don't like that garbage."
"Ha ha, yeah," I say. "They were shit, weren't they?!" "Now George Michael on the other hand…" "Oh yeah, George Michael, great songwriter. Great guy, too."
"Yeah, I like George Michael. Or at least I did until I found out he was a faggot!" "………" I figure discretion is the better part of valour here. But not so Davie The Dook. "Why've you got a problem with fa…"
I punch him discreetly in the nuts, and move on. "Huey's sounding really good on the new record," I tell Tony. "His voice sounds like a proper crooner." "Yeahm but there;s only one Sinatra," says Tony.
"oh yeah, of course," I say. "I tell you who has a really great voice," offers Davie. "Karen Carpenter!" "Karen Carpenter?!" barks Tony. "What kinda cheesy shit it that?"
I guess guys like him don't do post-ironic kitsch appreciation of our musical history. And it doesn't do to wind them up too much.
"But Karen Carpenter's like Sinatra," says Davie, like a dog with a fuckin' bone. "She's got a voice like she's sittin' in your lap." "What's this guy talkin' about?!" asks Tony, non too amused.
"Well," explains Davie. "Imagine if I was singing to you now, but sitting on your lap…" Tony looks like he's about to pop a venticle.
"Er, I think what Dave means to say, "I interrupt, "is that they both have resonant voices, that ability to fill a room with sound… uh, anyway, it's time we were goin' back upstairs, I left some shit up there… uh…"
"Heeey," says Tony, "how 'bout a little livener before ya go?!" He pulls out the crystals again. Jesus. My liver's screamin' murder one, and at this raye I'm gonna be Exhibit A: the fuckin' Corpse!
So we finally escape, to find Huey shootin' the shit with some dames back in the bar. "How was the yayo?" he asks. "Uh, a little stronger than I'm used to," I say, as my heart tries to kick holes in my ribcage.
"Well I hop ol' Tony didn't put the fear up you there. He comes here every so often, and he's always interested in what we're up to. And I thought it'd be good for you guys to talk to him.
Get an idea of what these people are really like. Because you seem I ain't no gangster. That's a fuckin' gangster. That's the real deal."
Thanks for puttin' me straight, bambino. I think we just met a real fun-lovin' criminal. Or maybe it's all a big scam to sxare the hit out od the limey wise guys.
Either way, next time, I thnk I'll take that job chasin' indie schmuck round the Camden chicken run and leave the guns and the goodfellas where they belong. There's a million stories in this
crazy city. I don't plan to be one of them. |
It was the kind of nights when birds fly backwards on account of the smog in their eyes. The city was
smokin', and I ain't talkin' tobacco, mister Giuliani, kapeedle? Dealers were doublin', pimps were pumpkin, whore were honkin', but coulod I get a piece o' that action? Nah, for crazy martyrs like me the
night was slowly twistin' in the wind, sent artic delivery straight off the Hudson.