As part of our ongoing fascination with dead celebrities who have a connection to the Chelsea Hotel here’s 
the list of top earning dead celebrities as published by Forbes.com. The 13 icons on the sixth annual Top-Earning Dead Celebrities list collectively earned $247 million in the last 12 months. Andy Warhol is number six on the list with earnings of $19 million. And now we learn that Andy Warhol’s Mao has just sold for a record $17 milion.
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Thanks to our guy in Australia and youtube.com here’s a 5 minute excerpt from an episode of "An American Family," the very first reality show which was filmed here at the Hotel Chelsea. From the looks of things, he had a room with a huge closet. We’re extremely jealous.
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The NY Art Book Fair takes place this weekend (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday). The Fair features
contemporary art books, artists’ books, art periodicals, and ‘zines offered for sale by over 70 international publishers. Former Chelsea resident Stefan Brecht’s newly released book of photographs, 8th Avenue (onestar press) will be available at the fair. In his review of Brecht’s book, Ed writes:Every morning, Stefan walked up 8th Avenue to the Hotel Chelsea from his home in Greenwich Village, recording his journey in photographs. The photographs are not what you might imagine, however, not street scenes or portraits of Chelsea neighborhood characters. They are instead photos of the sidewalk itself, the actual pavement over which Brecht walked, with all its cracks and crevices, its grease stains and gum spots, revealing the history of the many generations of feet that have trod over it. The photos, in black and white, have a striking, abstract expressionist quality.
Be sure to stop by, and you might find books by other Chelsea artists as well. Printed Matter is located at 548 West 22nd Street, NYC. The hours are from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 11:00 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Sunday.
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Last Thursday we were lucky enough to catch the New York premiere of Paul Festa’s fascinating film, Apparition of the Eternal Church at St. Bartholomew’s on Fifth Ave. As the brochure
for the event states: “In this documentary Festa interviews over thirty artists listening and reacting to Messiaen’s rarely heard but powerfully provocative organ work Apparition of the Eternal Church. Their responses range from astonishment to fear, from repulsion to unfettered joy.” Sponsored by the Premiere Commission (founded by the Chelsea’s own Bruce Levingston) in conjunction with Rooftop Films, this documentary about the work of composer Olivier Messiaen was followed by a live performance of the Messiaen composition by organist William Trafka.It was fun to watch the participant’s faces as they listened to the piece over headphones, and to hear their comments and try to figure out what they were listening to (Messiaen’s piece wasn’t audible to the film’s viewers). They were an eclectic bunch, apparently all people of some renown, though I had heard of only three of them, Harold Bloom, John Cameron Mitchell, and Kiki (Justin Bond). (The organist Albert Fuller, Festa’s inspiration for the project, was the most interesting and entertaining of the subjects.) There were a couple of drag
queens, a bondage aficionado, a woman who wore flaming antlers, and a man who was dressed as a zombie. Many of them said the music was painful, discordant, a torture, that it evoked the flames of hell or an old horror movie, that if they heard it in a cathedral it would surely make them repent of their sins right away. One guy said it sounded like Bach on a really bad day. A couple of people had to remove their headphones because the sound was so intense.It became clear pretty quickly that the film is about not only the Messiaen piece but also about how music in general affects us, and about how we can express it. It’s extremely difficult to talk about music, but the people Festa interviewed did it well, especially considering the fact that there
were lights in their eyes and a cacophony blaring in their ears. But perhaps there’s a lesson to be learned from that; perhaps they were so distracted that they were able to open themselves up and let it flow to a degree they would not ordinarily have been able to do. The music seemed to transport them to another realm, a meditative state, a state of altered perception, where their tongues were loosed and they could express the ideas straight from their unconscious mind without the censorship of the ego, 
without worry of sounding stupid or being off the mark. The movie demonstrated, like no other I have seen (and in a truly original way), the primal power that music can exert on the human psyche.I’ll say one thing for the movie: it really succeeded in making you want to hear the piece, that’s for sure. With a buildup like that I felt for sure the actual performance was sure to be a letdown. William Trafka played beautifully, and as far as I could tell flawlessly. Though I could understand the remark about Bach (it sounded like that Bach piece from the Phantom of the Opera), I’m afraid that I didn’t agree that the music was torture. Maybe it was the headphones, but in the setting of St. Bartholomew’s the piece was ethereal and lifting. True, it started out a bit eerily, but soon it began to build, soaring to the otherworldly heights of the cathedral’s vaulted ceiling. It transported me back to my childhood, listening to the–much more modest–organ in the little Catholic church in the town where I grew up, and reawakened in me the feeling of awe and mystery that I associate with my early religious experience. I think the fact that a number of the interviewees made similar remarks is significant as well: it took us back to a time and place of innocence where we could speak our minds without fear.
(In the same sense childhood can also be painful. And I have associations with Christianity that are painful as well—it does certainly have its dark side, as the director points out with his quotes on the torture of martyrs that follow the interviews—making the Messiaen piece, though rewarding, ultimately not my idea of easy listening.)
Anyway, for anyone interested in music, it’s a film not to be missed. Go see it if you can find it anywhere. If not, go see Borat (Ha Ha!—though actually Borat is pretty good too.) Ed Hamilton
Other reviews — queerspace.com -
Snarkycharming took these photos of Edie Sedgwick’s note to Andy Warhol after he was shot by Valerie Solanas. Sedgwick’s note is on display at the Warhol Museum. And oh, by the way, what’s up with "Factory Girl", the Edie biopic starring Sienna Miller? Is it really too awful to release? Surely it would be impossible to make a bad movie about someone who lived at the Chelsea, with the hotel’s rich history and palpable creative vibe. (But if, in some parallel universe, it were possible, we know it would be called "Chelsea Walls".) Today marks the 35th anniversary of Sedgwick’s death.
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Okay, the second e-mail made believers out of us. So, Cindy Gallop (or Imelda Marcos as we
affectionately call her here on the blog) is graciously going to host a few former McBurney Y members in her home in the Y Building. We’re choosing our guest list carefully. Hopefully we can have a productive discussion with Cindy on the impact of gentrification on the neighborhood. This isn’t the first time we’ve been invited to be guests in the home of someone whose home we had previously written about. The last event turned out pretty good. The worst thing that happened was that the host introduced us to his other guests as “eccentrics” from the Chelsea Hotel. Heck, that’s a compliment. While the other host also owns a very impressive art collection he doesn’t own a gold plated Gucci chainsaw. Or, at least he didn’t have it on display. Instead, he has a sculpture of a puppy being burnt in a toaster.
If anyone has any questions for Cindy, we’ll be happy to pass them along.
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We must admit, we were puzzled by those dog-napped flyers posted in the elevator last night. Fortunately, this very helpful e-mail landed in our box this morning.Outlaw Bloggers Please Help!Heartbreaking news, but some yet-unmasked Super-kriminal lurking the Chelsea’s hallways has cruelly dog-napped our beloved companion Uk-Peesch (ook-peesh), a rare mix of German Shepard,
plexiglas and gorilla glue who faithfully stood sentinel over the 2nd Floor residents ever since being rescued from certain incineration at least a month ago. So far no ransom demand which has us worried shes finally fallen prey to cultists. If anyone has information leading to the recovery of Uk-Peesch or the swift apprehension of her captors, your identity will be kept in the strictest confidence. Uk-Peesch, if you’re reading this, we love you. Please Come Home. -
Beware the mysterious old man inserting objects into the stolen monkey head. It seems the child is showing an unhealthy interest in his activities. And rest assured, his little eyes took in much more than that leopard print chair. Years later, if this diabolical building has not been cleansed of its artistic spirit by yuppie condo conversion, Conor may well return, lured by the siren song of bohemian obscurity, and then all will surely by lost.
The Hotel Chelsea…when we checked in before the concert, we had to wait in the lobby for the bellman to show us to our room. Conor sat on one side, playing his Game-boy and Chloe and I on the
opposite side. An older man sat down next to Conor. He had a carved, wooden monkey head in his hands, and he was putting things into the hollow bottom of it. Conor looked over at me with a question of concern. I assured him that he was OK with a hand gesture and he settled into his curious observation mode just in time to catch the story of the head. The man in possession of the monkey head told another resident of the lobby that this head had belonged to him at one time. He had owned it about 15 years ago and then someone stole it from him. He said he found it today in a store and stole it back. The head was from East Africa and was quite attractive, I could see how someone would become attached to something like this.When we got back to the hotel after the concert and arrived on the 7th floor where our room was, we could see bright lights beyond the door in the direction of our room. We tried going the other way, because we weren’t sure exactly which way to go, but then realized we did have to go toward what we then realized was a photo shoot of…a woman wearing a corset. It was about 11 PM. We opened the door and the photographer apologized to us. No, we said, we’re sorry to interrupt. Conor claims he didn’t see anything other then the leopard print chair that was turned over on its side on the floor.
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(via curbed) The most beautiful building in Manhattan returns to its full glory today as the scaffolding is removed!
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On a rainy night last week, Susan and I were cutting through Washington Square Park on our way to a
reading at the Bowery Poetry Club. A soggy homeless man wrapped in a blanket shambled toward us across the lawn. “Excuse me people,” he said. “I want to tell you something that the CIA doesn’t want you to know.”Always on the lookout for scraps of suppressed information to bolster my various conspiracy theories, I was eager to hear what the man had to say, but Susan grabbed me by the arm and hurried me along.
“I’m J.F.K Jr.!” the man called after us. “The knowledge of that could get you killed!”
Gee, thanks for telling me, J.F.K. I’ll be on the lookout for black helicopters.
When we got to the edge of the park, two other street people, a man and a woman, were arguing on the street corner:
“Where’s my money?! Give me my money, bitch!” the man said.
“I don’t have your money! You owe me five dollars!” the woman retorted.
“I want my money!”
“Give me my five dollars!”
Continuing to scream at each other to that effect, the couple stepped out into the street, blocking traffic. Cars couldn’t get by, and they all started honking their horns. The couple were standing right in front of a cab and the cabbie leaned his head out the window and yelled at them to get the hell out of the road. I turned around to watch, and, doing so, stepped backward and stumbled into a tree well.
“Don’t watch them,” Susan said. “They’re trying to create a distraction so that someone else can commit a crime. Do you still have your wallet?”
I felt my pocket: I did. Then I noticed I was standing in an inch-deep puddle in the tree well. The street people really had it in for me tonight. “I think they wanted to create a distraction so that I would step off into the mud,” I said. (Ed Hamilton)
