"A knife, a fork, a bottle and a cork, that's the way I spell New York"... Well maybe not, but New York City has always had sort of a mythical status for those of us who don't live there, We either hate it or love it - you can't be ambivalent about that town. If you can make it there you can make it anywhere the song says, but what the hell is it that all those people are trying to make it as? There's what - ten million of them crammed onto an island that was supposedly bought for some beads and trinkets from people who didn't think anyone could own land...a city started by a deal which cut corners, what more do you need to know about it?
Still, New York City...The one time I've actually wandered its streets was early 1981. The city was still recovering from the shock of John Lennon being gunned down outside his apartment building four weeks earlier. Stars don't get killed in NYC, only junkies and stupid people who go down the wrong dark alley at night or wander into neighbourhoods they don't belong in. During the day it was all broad avenues, full of people hustling. Tall buildings casting long shadows down canyons made of glass, steel, and concrete in the bright sun of the first week of January were replaced at night with neon strewn streets filled with the white plumes of exhaust streaming out of the constant caravan of yellow cabs flowing up or down stream. In the shadows of the night excitement and danger walked hand in hand waiting for some fool to make the wrong choice.
It was probably a mistake to have taken the pink micro-dot a friend had given me while in NYC - it was already enough like an acid trip for a kid from the tame streets of Toronto just in town for three nights and four days, but I had the idea that I wanted to go deeper into the experience of New York City. But you can't do that as a tourist - you can't get past the veneer no matter what you ingest. You have to have spent time inside its rhythm, develop a feel for its sound, understand the good and the bad - love her for both sides of it, and then be able to sit back and say shit - I lived through that. It takes great rock and roll to understand New York City and bring her back to life. Which is what you get, great rock and roll and New York City, by the truck load, on the new self titled release from Steve Conte And The Crazy Truth distributed by Varese Vintage, Steve Conte & The Crazy Truth
Willy DeVille said to me once that nobody's born in Manhatten, implying that everybody was drawn there from somewhere else, but if Steve Conte wasn't born there he sure as hell belongs there. He's guitarist for the ultimate New York City band, the New York Dolls, he's subbed as guitar player in the Mink DeVille Band during Willy's 2003 tour of Europe, and now he's released a CD which sounds like it was written in blood that pumped out of the city's heart. Yet this ain't just some dark and mysterious ride into the heart of darkness at the core of the city, because there's a real heart that beats at the core of both Conte and New York.
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Article comments
1 - Helmet Spraag
Amazing review about one of NYC's greatest rock and roll guitarists. Long live Steve Conte and the Crazy Truth and the New York Dolls!