'80's! i'm livin' in the '80s!

with many apologies to akadashi-san, AKA mr. bean, i have found a station i just lovelovelove! (although i love your station, too, karly-warly.) i can't believe they are playing Gene Loves Jezebel right now! OMG!!! AIIEE! i am suddenly transported back to Club Schmel, AKA the Melody Bar deep in the bowels of New Brunswick, NJ (Motto: It's a Shithole…but it's OUR Shithole.) Matty Pinfield, who took his bald head and made it as an MTV DJ in the '90s, spun records here on the weekends before he ever glimpsed fame (and fortune? who knows – the half-life of an MTV DJ is about the same as that of a dragonfly). i used to pester him to play The Smiths every saturday night, and we would spin around the room dancing to “bigmouth strikes again” and “hand in glove” while the neon picked up what little white we might have had on (please, even then, i only wore blackblackblack at night.)yep, jaaaaane, me, lynnard (and her ID du jour), glamourous miss jackie – all riding down suydam in jackie's ancient VW bug to that smelly old firetrap. we didn't much like the roxy across the street, but we loved fuzzy navels (everytime i see peach schnaps, i think of my beloved pal suzanne!) yep, karin and i liked to have guinness at the Whalin' Bitch (the Ale N Witch), but the mel was *the* place to see poseurs side by side with executives in town from Johnson and Johnson with the latest dregs that poured in from g-d-knows-what-sewer, with lots of bouncy college kids thrown in for good measure. the place on “That *80s Show” is so sanitary. it just doesn't compete with our old hangout – a place that was repainted, resculpted, and redecorated nearly weekly by basquiat-pretenders and anyone else who took a fancy to spray painting walls. big hair, big neon, big fun.

so, what's become of club schmel? what, indeed. they paved paradise, put up a “for sale” sign.