…we had Max’s Kansas City, which was one of the first places I started hanging out. It had been there since ’60s, and when I first started going there, it was run by Tommy Dean, and this guy, Peter Crowley, booked the shows there. Max’s saw the beginning of hardcore, but closed in 1981. I saw a lot of great shows there, everyone used to gig there — Bob Marley even played there, opening up for fucking Bruce Springsteen! But yeah, all the punk bands used to play there when I was a kid.

Read more here.

According to the Brucebase website, before tonight, ‘Bishop Danced’ is known to have only been played in concert a handful of times, with five of those taking place during a week-long spell at Max’s Kansas City in New York in early 1973. Its performance on January 31 was recorded for the ‘King Biscuit Flour Hour,’ and wound up on the 1998 four-CD box set ‘Tracks.’

Read more here.

I first played Max’s Kansas City and C.B.G.B. around 1975-1976. Before that, we played anywhere we could, the leftover husks and places from the hippie times (The Electric Circus and places like that). I did a show there with Alan Vega and Marty Rev of Suicide when they released their first EP “Suicide” together. There were around 40 people there and Suicide chased most of them away. They fled screaming in their bellbottoms!! Hee! Hee!

Read more here.

You’ll see that almost all hot creative fads, art movements, and anything tapping into the zeitgeist emerges around or has a night scene. The Abstract Expressionists had The Cedar Tavern, Warhol’s people had The Factory, downtown heads had Max’s Kansas City and The Mudd Club, and on and on. This just shows that nightlife also impacts creativity because it harnesses very sensual experiences. It’s in the space of the bar, club or on the dance floor where we feel the most human.

Read more here.

…watch “Lost in the Flood,” filmed at Max’s Kansas City in New York City in 1973; “Sandy,” filmed at Nassau Community College in Garden City, New York in 1973; “Kitty’s Back,” filmed at the Carlton Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey in 1975; and “Rosalita,” filmed at the Houston Coliseum in 1978.

Read more here.

The quote: “Downtown New York at the time was this place that was in limbo, there were places where we could have lofts here, so available, so cheap and so big and where you could have your experimentations, your laboratories and playgrounds, swimming pools of ideas. It wasn’t for business, none of these was for money, it wasn’t a purpose to photograph this for magazines as it is now, it was a different time. We were looking for directions and experimenting and Max’s Kansas City was a place where everybody went, it was the only place at the time where all the art scenes could mix together without having geniuses and superstars…”

Read more here.

Moyra Davey was born in 1958 in Toronto and lives and works in New York. The medioum she engages with is photography, video, and writing, exploring fragments of daily life and the effects of time. Dust, old diaries, a pile of newspapers, a collection of lps, five years’ worth of empty liquor bottles—Davey considers these banal, forgotten artifacts, revealing their inherent, quiet beauty and sense of melancholy. In the rush of the moment, Davey slows things down, avoiding spectacle, focusing on process and change. Currently, Davey’s photographic piece Darling, 2011 is on view at the Whitney Biennial and her film Les Goddesses will be screened April 11 through 15 at the Whitney Biennial as well.

Text by Boshko Boskovic

An official statement reads: “Patti Smith has announced the June 5th release of her eleventh studio album, Banga. This highly-anticipated album marks Smith’s first collection of original material since 2004, when she made her Columbia Records debut with the critically-acclaimed trampin’. ‘April Fool,’ the first single from Banga, (featuring Tom Verlaine) is available digitally today. Banga was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City and produced by Patti Smith and her band: Tony Shanahan, Jay Dee Daugherty and her long-time collaborator Lenny Kaye. Featured guests include Tom Verlaine, Jack Petruzzelli, Smith’s son Jackson and daughter Jesse Paris. Inspired by Smith’s unique dreams and observations, Banga’s poetic lyrics are a reflection of our complex world – a world that is rife with chaos and beauty. Praised for her storytelling abilities, Smith has crafted an album that captures a wide range of human experience.”

Huffington Post reports: Aerosmith has reunited with Jack Douglas, who produced the band’s key 1970s albums, and quietly recorded a new studio album even as its lead singer traded jokes with Jennifer Lopez on “American Idol.” Steven Tyler said Aerosmith was finishing two final songs for the as-yet-untitled album, its first since 2004’s “Honkin’ on Bobo,” and that he expected it to be released in about three months. Joined Wednesday by Joe Perry, Tom Hamilton and Joey Kramer at a Los Angeles mall, Tyler revealed three track titles: “Legendary Child,” `’Beautiful” and “Out Go the Lights.” Earlier in the week, the band announced that its 18-stop US “Global Warming Tour” begins June 16 in Minneapolis. “We will not let you down,” Tyler told reporters and cheering fans.

More info here.

The quote: “In this memoir, singer-songwriter Patti Smith shares tales of New York City : the denizens of Max’s Kansas City, the Hotel Chelsea, Scribner’s, Brentano’s and Strand bookstores and her new life in Brooklyn with a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe–the man who changed her life with his love, friendship, and genius.”

Read more here.