By Martin Bisi

The explosion of energy I saw on Brooklyn's streets after the Obama win, recedes into the background. And I feel I'm looking at an economic and social playing field that is now undeniably different. The financial crisis has brought a shift in the dynamics of how the neighborhoods will change in the coming years. And I do believe neighborhoods like everything else, occupy the 4th dimension of time, so their identity exists in the context of history and change. The result of the election also has brought about a massive shift, in the mental realm - how 2.5 million residents see their connection with the rest of the continent. That these two forces would occur simultaneously, almost gives a sense of cosmic synchronicity - paradigm shifts occur at break points.

Compared to the near spiritual feelings about Obama's election, the downsizing of the economy in Brooklyn is the yang, to Obama's yin. I live across the street from an empty lot that has been the anticipated location of a mega Whole Foods market, with rooftop parking - for years. That plan is now dead in the water. If the company does open its first Brooklyn branch, the official plan is now to do it on a much smaller scale. Atlantic Yards, the gargantuan development project for Downtown Brooklyn, is also being scaled back by an indefinite amount. Common sense suggests it will be scaled way back. That project was so iconic of the over-development of Brooklyn, that it inspired the slogan "Don't supersize Brooklyn". Well I wish I'd gotten the T shirt with those words when I had the chance. Those words are not exactly relevant anymore, and that's what happens in a paradigm shift - concepts and words need to be re-defined, discarded, replaced.

I'll throw in another word - gentrification. That word was the lightening rod for all the cultural, economic and political ire of the last 15 years in Brooklyn. At issue was the opening of many businesses that catered to economically upscale customers, and the consequences of that. I can say for myself, that the termination of the Whole Foods project across the street, is making my living status feel more secure. The closing of a Starbucks a couple miles from me - in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn - must have a similar effect on some of the residents there.

So with the heat turned down from 10, to maybe 7, the whole phenomenon of gentrification can be looked at more objectively. Some of the obvious contradictions - like the mutual reliance of valuable culture and the influx of educated, moneyed residents - make the classic 'gentrification' analysis inadequate for the tensions sure to come. We are also now stuck with the harsh downside, that economic downsizing means less employment, and a different kind of challenge.

It seems things can only be perfect for a blink of an eye - sigh. So I'm glad I hit the streets of Brooklyn on election night - definitely, a unique moment of collective elation.  

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.

THE CRAZY HOMICIDES: Twilight of the Old Brooklyn

Waxing nostalgic for a stylish street gang and the spirit of the city they tormented.

Last month I took a car service into Manhattan from my neighborhood in Brooklyn. The driver was a Dominican or Puerto Rican about my age. The conversation quickly embarked on "the changing of the neighborhood," the most common form of small talk in NY since 'Where were you on 9-11?' This stroll down memory lane turned into a'Where are they now?' of a peculiar group of Brooklyn residents in the late 70's-mid 80's: The Crazy Homicides.

You could easily pick them out all over Park Slope, Sunset Park and Gowanus, cause they had a specific style. They all wore Civil War-type, Union cavalry hats--the kind with a small bill and a flat droopy top, and motorcycle-type leather jackets. My driver gleefully boasted, "My brother was one of their leaders. He was a very, very funny guy." I was stunned and shot back, "I was mugged once by a group of the them, and the one who did all the talking, was in fact, very, very funny!" The driver, without any sign of discomfort retorted "yep, that was probably my brother."

He continued with a gushing description of one of his brother's top career accomplishments--a victorious battle about eight blocks from where my recording studio was then, and is now. "[The rival gang] left the pool hall and were hanging on 10th St. My brother knew that they were waiting for more guys, so when they were about 30, he sent 20 of his guys down from 5th Ave., and another 20 up from 4th Ave. He had them trapped--six or seven of them ended up in the hospital." Ahhhh--epic Brooklyn history.

So, this is how my own "funny" encounter with The Crazy Homicides went, 27 years ago.

I was walking near my recording studio with Bill Laswell (Material, and major record producer). He was my studio/roommate at the time. Three Crazy Homicides approached from behind: "Hello, we're Brooklyn muggers, and you have to give us your money." The put-on announcer voice was disarming. I turn around to see three guys with big smiles, grasping big screwdrivers, in Union cavalry hats. The jovial tone made me decline the demand for money, and we kept walking.

Me and Laswell made the mistake of starting to talk about music. "Oh, artists," the funny guy says. "Now we'll have to throw you in the Gowanus Canal." The canal was, and is today, a fetid and toxic body of water on the edge of Park Slope. I quickly coughed up $40.

The mugging really ate Laswell up. A couple weeks later, we had seminal hip-hop artist Afrika Bambaataa at the studio. Bam, as everyone calls him, had himself been the leader of a gang in The Bronx called The Black Spades, that he later transformed into the pacifist and utopian Zulu Nation. There always were a handful of young devotees from the group following him around. Laswell had the vision of a great moment, The Zulu Nation taking an assertive stand against The Crazy Homicides in a defiant display of confidence. So, off they all go for "a walk," unbeknownst to Bam, to find the Homicides.

Laswell spots a few of them in a Blimpie. "Yo, why we goin' to Blimpie?" Bam inquires.

Now Bam had quite a gregarious style, as you might imagine an African king--leopard cap, lots of  jewelry, a staff. As they walk into Blimpie, the Homicides turn to face Laswell and Bam in a moment of silence. Then one of them bursts out: "Yo, it's Mr. T !" The two watch stonefaced as the Homicides burst into a torrent of laughter, practically falling out of their seats. "Hey, Mr. T!"

(For those too young to remember, Mr T. was a very popular black action movie and TV star who sported a heavy gold jewelry style, years before mainstream rappers like LL Cool J and Run DMC wore heavy gold chains.)

Back in the cab--2008--two men from Park Slope, Brooklyn are reminiscing about a neighborhood that's practically been erased from memory. I found myself lamenting the demise of a violent neighborhood gang, who had style and humor, and in that sense seemed kind of smart. We arrived at my destination, and the tone in the cab changed.

Sadness overtook the driver's face as he says, "Sorry about the $40." I don't think the look of sadness was about the $40, because he still charged me $30 for the ride. I think that in apologizing, it became clear that we'd moved forward, but that there's a trade-off. And that part of us that is mythologized with Jesse James and the OK Corral, and Don Corleone in The Godfather, is really just below the skin, periodically finding a toehold in our aspiring utopias.

By coincidence, I decided to buy a new lock for my door tomorrow, because I didn't feel safe enough. I think that ties it together nicely.

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.

WHAT IS PUNK?

Everything and nothing.

1977—I'm in high school. I ride the subway at night instead of giving 100% to my homework. Uh... “Why?” Graffiti. Yes, that was my empowering activity as a young man. I was contributing to the prodigious chaos that decorated the subway walls and doors of the day. Tellingly, we called this 'bombing' the trains This visual assault of color and seemingly meaningless words, was for the average subway rider, a perfect metaphor for the unhinging of society in the late 70's—the urban blight era that will surely have a mythic place in American history, similar to the Wild West.

Where does punk come in? It was being born concurrently. Well, truthfully, to use the child-bearing metaphor, it had already been conceived invisibly somewhere, and had developed anonymously, and had now been thrust into the larger world, with a name and identity. Punk rock was a living idea, something human beings bear into the world from time to time, and other human beings recognize as being ‘of them’.

That's what happened to me, and that idea was first articulated to me through the Sex Pistols. Punk appeared to be a musical extension of what I was seeking through graffiti. There were shared ethics of simple and neutral concepts—my tag was the utterly meaningless Tag-e—of self projection for its own sake—you just want to ‘get up’ and share a common reveling in the human chaos of society.

Graffiti collectively was a jumble, a mess, so as this was the year of Saturday Night Fever, of slick sharp clothing and dance moves, something downtown called me—loudly. Soon, I'd meet two or three punks, and found that punk was a vague ideal, already morphing, but threaded through everything that was downtown and underground.

When downtown, I quickly realized I had to shut up about the Sex Pistols. I also had to shut up about punk. It wasn't ‘til five years or so later—when it was timely to say 'post-punk'—that people from the downtown scene I knew would acknowledge the connection. But in the meantime, there was a scramble downtown to identify oneself with punk-like movements. People who would later develop indie rock, made no-wave. Avant-gardists like John Zorn adulated hardcore. I knew two places I could count on finding punks, Max's Kansas City, and hanging out upstairs at Mudd Club. They seemed to have their dedicated niches.

So I'll tell you what I thought punks in '77 were like. I ran two of my dicier assertions past bona fide punks Legs McNeil and Lydia Lunch and I'll also tell you what they said:

—Punk was working class. There wasn't a high value placed on sophisticated, nuanced lyricism.

—Punk was apolitical. Since Punk saw itself as re-claiming youth culture and rock n' roll from the 60's and the 'Age of Aquarius', punk wasn't very bleeding heart.

Legs McNeil, founder of Punk Magazine author of Please Kill Me—and coiner of the term ‘punk,’ responds: "For the most part, punk in NYC was tired of the Vietnam War and leftist politics that stifled creativity in the early 1970's, but that doesn't mean we were apolitical. And whoever wanted to be political was allowed to be. I mean, you didn't have to ask permission, that's what it was all about."

—Punk was masculine. Men wore leather jackets reminiscent of 50's gangs. The masculinity affected women in that they were either bomb shell types, or fairly butch—and of course an edgy, and socially outgoing personality was essential. The nerdy/ cool girl who was more bookish than brash, was celebrated in later post-punk/ indie rock.

Lydia Lunch, front woman of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, responds “…Or were butch bombshells—when punk first hit, there was a squadron of Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! Types—tough-talking bombshells who had graduated out of the glam scene which was all about style, sex and blurring the boundaries of what was accepted. Hot shit chicks who'd just as soon fuck you as fight you, or preferably both, simultaneously. Sex was still a pretty vicious weapon, especially when wielded as both bait and trap, wrapped in leather and tucked between a pair of thunderous thighs, whose greatest joy was squeezing the life out of an unsuspecting punk monkey.” (Yes, indeedy.)

—Punk bands put on a show. They may have eschewed large drum kits, fog machines and big lighting, but The Ramones still did similar rock posturing on stage to big commercial rock acts. Iggy the proto-punk, acted more like Mick Jagger on stage than Thurston Moore.

—Punks valued the will-to-do, over time-perfected know-how.

—Punks felt spontaneity was the best context, therefore the presentation of anything was best left haphazard and imperfect.

So music related to the punk movement, quickly veered away these original tenets. The Clash were punk, but the social consciousness so tiresome to the original punks, was part of their punk energy. The heavy dogmas of kids in the punkish Hardcore scene, were in contradiction to the nihilism of punk. College educated and ironic indie-rockers like Sonic Youth, still did Ramones and Stooges covers. The grunge/Nirvana era essentially proclaimed itself punk in the film The Year Punk Broke ('91). Metal technicians Metallica eventually cut their hair and covered Ramones songs. And recently The Dresden Dolls—with their heavy theatrical makeup and moody tango/ ballad interludes—hyphenated punk into their self proclaimed genre, punk-cabaret.

Why is punk such a grand concept, that so many scramble to define it in their own way, and appropriate it? Hyphenating punk never goes out of style, because punk directly reflected the vacancy of American life without truly escaping it. Because it gave the juvenile delinquent status as an intellectual. But were punks the first to do so? Maybe not. But when punk got its name, straightforward, unembellished (in true punk fashion) and a face or two (or nine or 17) to give it life, it became an archetype for Americans like me.

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.