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Save the Plaza

There’s long been speculation that the Plaza Hotel would close its doors. Hotels don’t seem to have a very long shelf life these days. New amenities are rolled out by competitors, new audio-visual and networking technologies are introduced, new demands are made of conference and banquet space. New hotels can build for the modern marketplace, but older hotels have to pay a fortune to be retro-fit. Add to that the usual wear and tear that a hotel goes through (carpets wear thin, wallpaper fades and let’s not talk about those mysterious stains that turn up in the strangest places), and you wind up with the need for a hotel to close operations for top-to-bottom renovations every couple of decades. Many hotels decide to forgo the renovations. They close down, tear down, go condo.

The Mayflower, the Stanhope and the Regent Wall Street are just a few of the hotels that have closed their doors in the past year. They’ve been supplanted new hotels like the Mandarin Oriental in the Time Warner Center and the so-hideous-it’s-beautiful Westin in Times Square. This cycle of openings and closings has been going on for a long time, which is why there’s been speculation about the fate of the Plaza for such a long time. The question comes up every time the hotel is sold. Donald Trump made some vague threats to go condo when bought the hotel in 1989, but that was just some macho posturing against the hotel workers union.

The truth is that the hotel has looked the worse for wear for a little too long, so when Elad Properties bought the hotel recently, nobody was surprised when they announced that the hotel would close for renovations in April and reopen as a mixed-use building, with condo apartments, retail space and a much smaller “boutique” hotel in one part of the building.

The hotel workers union rallied in front of the Plaza yesterday. The union has formed a Save the Plaza Coalition. They’re enlisting support from politicians, celebrities and members of the community. They’re filing for landmark status for interior sections of the hotel, but the company was likely to preserve that famous dining rooms like the Oak Bar and the Palm Court anyway.

A spokesman for Elad told the Daily News, “This isn’t about landmarks, this is about losing 900 jobs at the hotel.” So what if that’s the case? Since when are 900 working people’s livelihoods of no concern? That’s 900 people with good pay, health care and seniority. That’s an awful lot of middle-aged waitresses, cooks and room attendants having to compete with younger workers for new jobs that won’t pay nearly as much or have the same benefits and security. Elad’s callousness is astounding.

The Plaza will be saved. The building itself is a landmark and is in no danger of being torn down. The famous interiors of its lobby and dining rooms will likewise win landmark status and will remain open to the public. What is in danger of being lost is hundreds of jobs if the hotel closes the vast majority of its guest rooms to the public. I don’t support tax breaks as a solution to keep wealthy owners making a profit. I do think public pressure might convince Elad that gutting the Plaza is not worth their time, and the publicity might inspire a group of buyers to get together and “save the day.” Maybe Donald Trump will buy back one of his formerly prized possessions. He could make a TV show about the renovations. That might pay for the hotel right there.

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Shit In, Shit Out

Harvard President Lawrence Summers is sunk. He’s catching a lot of hell from his faculty and students over some stupid remarks that he made, by way of explaining Harvard’s gender imbalance in the sciences, that suggested that women aren’t as good as men at math and science. The controversy hasn’t let up, and as Summer’s character has been debated in the national press have come repeated complaints of his bullying and autocratic style, and constant reminders of how he chased Cornell West away to Princeton. It’s over for Summers. I’ve seen this movie before.

In my Junior year at Queens College, we brought down our president. Allen Lee Sessoms was appointed in 1995. He was Queens College’s first black president, one of the minority administrators appointed by Giuliani and Pataki in order to dismantle the hallmarks of the CUNY system and kick out thousands of minority students.

Sessoms wanted to break Queens College away from CUNY and make the college its own university, catering to middle class students from Long Island and out of state. He wanted to build dormitories in order to attract these students. He staked his reputation on a state-of-the-art AIDS research center. And he was a vocal supporter of Guiliani’s campaign to repeal CUNY’s 150-year tradition of open admissions (which meant that high school graduates from New York City’s public schools were guaranteed admission to CUNY; if they didn’t meet academic standards, they would have to take remedial courses to catch up, but could study at the university anyway).

When the Bar Association released a study on the open admissions debate in October of 1999, it included this passage:

New York State Education Law 6201, of course, does place a limit on the mission autonomy of the constituent institutions of CUNY. We were,
therefore, somewhat surprised to hear Dr. Allen Lee Sessoms, the President of Queens College, say that Queens is really more of a SUNY college, a “regional” university, than a part of CUNY, with almost half of its undergraduate student body coming from Nassau and Suffolk Counties rather than from the City of New York. Indeed, Queens College draws more heavily from Long Island than from the four boroughs other than Queens. Whatever the merits such an institution might have, this clearly does not fit within the statutory mission of CUNY to serve the New York City urban community and to give access to those who might otherwise be denied a higher education. Dr. Sessoms, however, believes that the key to increased funding is to build a strong connection with the middle class. He said that “the only people who benefit from open admissions are poor people and poor people don’t vote.”

With respect to raising standards, Dr. Sessoms was quite blunt in stating his view that excellence is largely to be measured by the achievement levels of the incoming students rather than a value added measure of raising the achievement of those less prepared at the outset: “[Expletive] in, [expletive] out. If you take in [expletive] and turnout [expletive] that is slightly more literate, you’re still left with [expletive].” He said that he was out to build Queens into a great University and the concept of “value-added” as a measure of excellence would not indicate to him that Queens is a great University. Dr. Sessoms has thus made explicit what may well be a large part of the unspoken reasoning behind the proposed Amendment, at least by some of its more vocal proponents in the political arena, i.e. , that standards and excellence can only be raised by reducing access to the urban population for whom CUNY was created and maintained.


The expletive was “shit.” He was calling us “shit.” It took a few weeks after the report’s publication for it to get circulated much on campus, but when it did, boy, was Sessoms in trouble. The teacher’s union was after him. The student groups were after him.

This is from a pamphlet that my own Young People’s Socialist League distributed:


“While we are outraged by Sessoms’ words, what we really oppose is the action behind the words. From his illegal eradication of remedial
education to his abrupt expulsion of thousands of poor students to his constant public CUNY bashing, Allen Lee Sessoms has demonstrated the contempt at which his words merely hinted.”

As the controversy raged, Sessoms sealed his fate by publicly guaranteeing that he had secured funding for his AIDS center. When the deadline for producing the money came and went, he had to admit that he was bluffing. His reputation couldn’t recover, and he announced that he would not seek re-appointment at the end of his first five-year term. Sessoms was gone by the end of the semester.

Summers, like Sessoms, is attempting to change the structure of the university he leads, seeking greater centralization of the university’s mostly-autonomous schools. This means that he came in to the university facing powerful, entrenched opposition. Such arrogance as he displayed is so unwise, it betrays a greater character flaw. Summers better start thinking of how he will finesse his exit, since it seems doubtful that he can change his ways and win back his campus. Allen Sessoms never tried to apologize for the “Shit in, shit out” controversy. He could read the writing on the wall. It was time to leave.

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The Music: The Movie!

“Ray” is not a very good movie, but, as it is essentially a string of re-enacted musical performances, on the chitlins circuit, in the studio and in “mixed-race” concert halls, you won’t really notice until the end of the movie. When the last three minutes of the movie are narrated by on-screen captions that begin “For the next 40 years…,” it feels like the shortcut of lazy screenwriters (which it is), but the truth is that this is a jukebox movie, and, by 1965, Ray Charles had recorded his most legendary work. What was left to re-enact? The Pepsi commercials?

The movie is compelling, but it is entirely because of Ray Charles’ brilliant body of work. A documentary might have better suited the material (certainly a talking head interview with Quincy Jones now would have been more impressive than Larenz Tate’s ill-suited pipsqueak impersonation of “Q”), but, the songs would likely not have the same “pop” if they were merely the soundtrack to a bunch of black and white photographs.

Jamie Foxx’s impersonation of Ray Charles is credible and professional, but it is not great art. I never “lost” Foxx in his character. It was always clearly Jamie Foxx impersonating Ray Charles during historic moments. I’m afraid this movie is indicative of a pattern that will develop and mature with the upcoming Johnny Cash biopic. Yeah, the tunes are classic and the stories are compelling, but I’d rather read a biography and listen to the records.

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The End of “The Song About The Record Company”

Wow. Oh, boy. Five bands on four stages. Simultaneously. How could it fail?

Sunday night’s Grammy’s telecast was the second lowest rated, ever. There are many observations one could make about the Grammy’s, but why bother? Dead people win awards, the best new artist will be forgotten in ten years time, the alternative award is an alternative to nothing, blah, blah, blah.

The real lesson from Sunday is that music is just not a mass medium. Sure, everyone listens to music, but their tastes are personal. Television can pump money into a sitcom or TV cop drama, advertise the program endlessly and showcase it at 9 p.m. Eastern (8, Central and Mountain) and millions of people will watch. Likewise, a big budget Hollywood spectacular will almost always recoup its investment, at least after it’s released in Japan.

But no amount of financing is necessarily going to make a record a mass hit. Most big hits are flukes, capturing a particular moment in time and culture. The “Record Industry” basically pours millions of dollars into the artists who have already sold big, hoping that lightening will strike again. The other, smaller artists are basically loaned money with which to record, promote and tour. If they happen to be this year’s fluke to sell a bunch of records, well, then they get paid.

It’s a lousy system and produces mostly lousy music. Between sticker prices and digital downloads, the “Record Industry” might finally die a merciful death soon, and allow the vast universe of innovative indies the space to pursue their art and provide us all with our own personal “stars.”

I’m happy about this, but I want to take a moment to mourn the eventual loss of one of rock-n-roll’s most entertaining traditions: the song about the record company.

I originally dreamed up this column on Sunday morning, while listening to the Smiths’ swan song, Strangeways, Here We Come, which features the delightful record label kiss-off, “Paint A Vulgar Picture.”

At the record company party
On their hands – a dead star
The sycophantic slags all say :
“I knew him first, and I knew him well”

Re-issue ! Re-package ! Re-package !
Re-evaluate the songs
Double-pack with a photograph
Extra Track (and a tacky badge)


Already, the Smiths had watched their singles, B-sides and album tracks get repackaged for both sides of the Atlantic, but they were yet to witness the post-break-up avalanche of “best-of” collections.

Their label was Sire, and its legendary president was Seymour Stein. Ten years later, Belle and Sebastian recorded a song about Sire’s attempts to sign them to the label, simply called “Seymour Stein.”


Half a world away
Ticket for a plane
Record company man
I won’t be coming to dinner

They didn’t sign with Stein, who famously snatched up the Ramones and Talking Heads in the 70’s. In the 80’s, Stein personally wooed the Replacements to his label. On their Pleased To Meet Me album, the
Mats made fun of how they “fell up” into the major labels.


One foot in the door, the other one in the gutter
The sweet smell that they adore, well I think I’d rather smother

(4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12)

Are you guys still around? (I don’t know)
Whatcha gonna do with your lives? (nothin’!)

The “whoops-are-we-supposed-to-be-taken-seriously-now, indies-to-majors” song is notable sub-genre of the song about the record company that Pavement did justice to on 1994’s “Cut Your Hair,” which, in between its Spinal Tap jokes about their recent drummer switch, observed:


Advertising looks and chops a must
No big hair!!
Songs mean a lot
When songs are bought


Another sub-genre of songs about record labels is the “fuck you” to the record label that just canceled its contract with the band. The classic is the Sex Pistols’ “E.M.I.” with its piss and vinegar take on the first of two labels to drop them before Virgin ultimately released Never Mind the Bollocks.


Don’t judge a book just by the cover
Unless you cover just another
And blind acceptance is a sign
of stupid fools who stand in line like EMI

Twenty years later, Spoon found unexpected pathos in their deceptive A&R man, Ron Laffitte, in “The Agony of Lafitte” (and its B-side, “Lafitte, Don’t Fail Me Now”).

When you do that line tonight
Remember that it came at a stiff price

The daddy of all songs about the record company is actually the B-side to the daddy of all rock-n-roll records, “Satisfaction.” The Rolling Stones’ “Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man” assailed a worthless PR dude in America.


I’m a necessary talent behind every rock and roll band
Yeah, I’m sharp
I’m really, really sharp
I sure do earn my pay
Sitting on the beach every day, yeah

The great irony is if that record’s A-side hadn’t been one of those fluke hits that captured the cultural zeitgeist and convinced the major corporations that music could be big business, well, it would be a curiosity rather than a harbinger.

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