Wednesday, 25 June 2025

UKRAINE VERSUS VLAD THE IMPALER

Stefan Lutak was Ukrainian. He owned the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark’s Place. Despite its name it was a beer-and-shot joint I stumbled into by chance after settling in the East Village.

The clientele was Ukrainian and didn’t care for strangers. A disapproving silence would attend my entry but after a while they got used to me. I liked the anonymity of the place and the prices.


Stefan told me he had played pro soccer in West Germany. Everyone had a story in the East Village of the 1970’s and I didn’t delve deeper.


One thing there was no doubt about – the local Ukrainians didn’t like Russians. They didn’t care for any empire, including Britain’s, and would occasionally congratulate me over some bombing in Belfast.


Much later on I played some gigs in the USSR, shortly before it collapsed, and witnessed first-hand the iron fist of that empire, so I celebrated with Ukrainian friends when their country gained independence.


Like most Americans I doubly celebrated the Ukrainian people’s resistance to Emperor Putin’s invading army over the last years; though the sheer scale of slaughter is staggering – over a million Russians and 400,000 Ukrainians dead or wounded.


The question remains, why doesn’t President Donald Trump share the same view? 


Doesn’t the man from Queens realize that if Putin does manage to subjugate Ukraine, he’ll then set about destabilizing Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and perhaps even Finland, in his zeal to restore the Grand Imperial Russian Empire.


Doesn’t he understand that Ukrainians have changed the very nature of modern warfare by their use of drones. He should, for when he rained down bombs and rockets on the Houthis in Yemen, he was soon forced to declare victory and skedaddle for fear of some US billion-dollar battleship getting blown out of the water by a Dollar General Houthi drone.


Leaving aside such treasured American values as freedom and democracy, think of the economics, Mr. Trump. There is so much to be learned from the Ukrainians and the Houthis that could lead to a slashing of American defense budgets. Advanced drone technology allied with AI will rule in the coming years no matter what you, or Hegseth and your other sycophants think.


But then, do you ever think? Or is life one big TV reality show – to be trotted out in neat chunks of blowhard fantasy week after week?


You disrupt the world’s economic system by slapping ridiculously high tariffs on China without ever considering that Comrade Xi controls 90% of the global supply of rare earth elements that enable cars to run and arms to function. Duh!


Didn’t one of your cabinet minions point out that little fact? Nah, they were too busy telling you how wonderful you are.


So now it’s back to square one in the tariff-bluster negotiations, and the ever astute Xi Jinping has your number. Luckily, you got out of the casino business or he could have really taken you to the cleaners.


All this talk about bringing back manufacturing, coal mining or whatever to the US is just that – talk! What young person wants to work in a factory - or even an office - when they can sit at home in their parents’ basement coding on their laptops, or dreaming of becoming an influencer – or even president.


Of course, there are people who would gladly work in factories or fields. But there’s not much hope in recruiting the undocumented with masked ICE patrols prowling Home Depot   ready to ship them off to rest homes in El Salvador or Sudan.


Not even 6 months into round 2 of the Trump regime and already Gaza is rubble, the Marines are on the streets of Los Angeles, Tehran and Tel Aviv are burning, Trump Family Inc. is cleaning up, Brian Wilson is history, and God Only Knows what plans Bibi has in Iran for an ever compliant US of A.


Stefan Lutik is dead a long time. Just as well. I wouldn’t be able to explain to him how an American president feels more comfortable propping up Vlad Putin the Impaler than supporting the freedom loving people of Ukraine.

 

Time for another beer and a shot in the ongoing fantasy of making America great again.

Thursday, 12 June 2025

SIN É - SHANE DOYLE!

I was on the Union Square subway platform when I heard the familiar notes cascading off in the distance. With the arrival or departure of a train they would choke into silence. But I knew those notes and the choice of chords that anchored them, and as I strolled closer I remembered hearing them for the first time in Sin É Café.


A young man was rehearsing on the makeshift stage, picking at what seemed like random chords on his guitar, worrying them into shape. He finally settled on a sequence that pleased him and began to sing, quietly, to himself.


I vaguely recognized the Leonard Cohen song that has since become an anthem. Jeff Buckley’s version of Hallelujah is now a standard, and 35 years later the busker in the subway was copying it note for note; it sounded as ethereal as when I first heard Jeff work on it.


It says a lot for Sin É - and even more for Shane Doyle - that Jeff Buckley and so many other artists found their way inside Shane’s bare-bones emporium on St. Mark’s Place.


I’m not sure there was even a sign outside the premises when I first discovered it in 1989, but I did notice a mention in the window that “Tea & Irish Scones” were available inside. So, I took a look.


The proprietors, Shane and his angelically handsome partner, Karl Geary, gave me the once-over too. We got talking about scones and Ireland, the price of turnips and whatever else was au courant in those days. Conversation tended to flow like water in Sin É.


I was trying to cut back on drinking and began frequenting this then dry hole-in-the-wall. Soon thereafter I came upon Jeff Buckley working on Hallelujah. It turned out he was the son of Tim Buckley, legendary for his ethereal voice and heroin habit. Father and son met but once.


Jeff was hard to ignore for he was tall and drop-dead handsome. Proprietor Karl Geary was no less stunning. I guess that was the reason the clientele of Sin É often tended towards young lonesome ladies.


Karl eventually took to the stage himself and wrote some beautiful songs – he is now a well- regarded novelist.


I don’t think Shane Doyle ever thought much about his own looks but he had charm aplenty, though he could be diffident and would sometimes retreat behind the counter to brew coffee and, no doubt, gather his thoughts.

 

He was not one of those in-your-face proprietors but when he turned his full attention to you he was very charismatic. 


He rarely spoke about himself, though I gathered that he came from a working class Dublin background. He was very curious about the world around him, and in particular of the show-biz and entertainment life.


His real genius, though, was that he appreciated musicians of all sorts, and in particular anyone who had made any kind of breakthrough in the artistic world.


He did not ask for auditions or audition tapes, instead he encouraged aspiring artists to just get up on stage and give their best. Those who showed any promise were added to a roster of hundreds.


Those who didn’t were treated equally well - given a cup of tea and a genuine thank you. In Shane’s recent New York Times obituary the names of the famous who gathered there: Sinéad, Bono, et al were trumpeted, but in truth everyone was welcome.


Black 47 even played a benefit for the legal defense fund of our friend Sean Mackin and nearly blew down the walls of this small space. All fine with Shane. He always appreciated a full house.


He had a sharp brain, unerring instincts for hospitality and publicity, and learned quickly how to work the entertainment business. He recognized that the agent, manager, A&R person were vital to any artist, and he didn’t hesitate to pick up the phone and let his contacts know when an emerging talent was performing in his sitting room sized cantina.


Sin É didn’t last forever. Rents rose, the nabe gentrified, and Shane moved on, a restless Dub forever seeking his particular grail.

But I still treasure that moment I heard Jeff Buckley magically transform Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah into a worldwide anthem in a bare-bones room on St. Mark’s Place called Sin É.