Notebook
Bleecker Bob, the Village’s ornery record king
BY STEVEN WISHNIA
There are a handful of records for which I remember
where I was the fi rst time I heard them
as vividly as I recall where I was on 9/11, albeit
with more pleasure. Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,”
watching the BBC’s “Top of the Pops” show as a seventh
grader in Edinburgh. The Patti Smith Group’s
“Horses,” in a dorm room at Stony Brook University.
And the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the U.K.,” a Britishimport
45 I bought for $3 at Bleecker Bob’s on Macdougal
St. on a cold leaden-skied day in 1976, and
spun obsessively in my Brooklyn apartment.
The store’s last location, at 118 W. Third St., closed
in 2013. Its owner Bleecker Bob, born Robert Plotnik,
died Nov. 29 at the age of 75. He was the irascible
potentate of the scene of record collectors and rock
obsessives who perused its bins for obscure ’60s garage
band discs, bootleg LPs of unreleased Bob Dylan
songs and live Patti Smith shows, and the latest imports
from the British punk and post-punk scenes.
“For those who knew him, he was both lovable and
Bleecker Bob in the Village in his heyday.
extraordinarily obnoxious,” said Tommy Dog, who
started hanging out there as a precocious preteen in
the late ’70s. “He was a true force of nature.”
Bob used to throw him and rock scribe Lester
Bangs out “almost every Friday afternoon,” he recalled.
“We’d get into these debates and Lester could
be a tad loud, and being as young as I was, I really was
a fun challenge for him.” But there was “not a drop of
real anger in it,” he added.
Record geek and tour manager Bryan Swirsky fi rst
went into Bleecker Bob’s as a punk-obsessed adolescent
in 1978, spending more than $200 on discs by
the Buzzcocks and the Adverts. When Bob found out
it was his bar mitzvah money, he gave Swirsky a free
import copy of the Heartbreakers’ “L.A.M.F.”
“Whatever Bob was, that one moment overrode the
99 percent of the time he was a prick,” he said.
Guitarist R.B. Korbet, singer in the early-’80s punk
band Even Worse, said she learned a valuable lesson
in business when she sold the store a slew of 7-inch
records in the early ’90s. Bob paid her $5 for a copy
of Heart Attack’s “God is Dead,” Jesse Malin’s fi rst
record. He put it on the wall for $100.
“I was gobsmacked,” she said. “He said the price
wasn’t based on its actual value, but the fact that if
he stuck it up on the wall like that, someone might
eventually be tempted to buy it for that price.”
The store’s fi rst incarnation as Village Oldies on
Bleecker St. led to a seminal compilation: Future Patti
Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, who worked there,
was inspired to compile his 1972 garage-band anthology,
“Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic
Era, 1965–1968,” by the 45s in stock by the
likes of the Count Five and the Blues Magoos. Critics
coined the term “punk rock” to describe bands whose
drive and attitude exceeded their depth and talent —
and made great records both despite and because of
that. Music downloading and high rents have since
devastated record stores, and with that, their role as
have-you-heard-this social centers for music geeks.
My old band stopped selling our records at Bleecker
Bob’s in 1982. When they quickly sold out of our
second single, Bob called us up and barked at our guitarist,
“Hey asshole, I need another 10 copies.”
I still have that Sex Pistols 45, though.
14 December 27, 2018 TVG Schneps Media