On Saturday, January 11, Chris Frantz sat down with Guy Trebay at Pequot Library in Southport, CT, to discuss Trebay’s newly released memoir Do Something: Coming of Age Amid the Glitter and Doom of ‘70’s New York.
Trebay discussed his chronicling of the drag queens, artists, and writers, who were inventing themselves by escaping the confines of convention in New York City during the ‘70’s.
Frantz, Co-Founder of Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, and author of the memoir Remain in Love, complemented Trebay’s discussion of 70’s New York City culture with his discussion of the New Wave and Punk Rock scene, CBGB’s and the loft on Chrystie Street that Frantz, wife Tina Weymouth and David Byrne shared as a newly formed band where they wrote many Talking Heads’s songs with the accompaniment of keyboardist Jerry Harrison.
They both gave lively accounts of their own journeys as artists at the peak of creativity during “Andy Warhol’s” New York, replete with many vibrant and colorful stories.
As a result, much nostalgia arose among the two artists and the audience for a New York that’s since been colonized by larger corporations, department stores and caters to corporate tourism.
As Trebay points out, when you gentrify a place, artists can’t afford to live there anymore. Consequently, New York City’s creative scene has since moved from places such as SoHo, Chelsea, the East and West Village and the Bowery down to lower Brooklyn.
Trebay wrote for the Village Voice, and lived through the destructive aids epidemic when many of his personal friends passed away. Currently he is a reporter for the Style section of The Times, writing about the intersections of style, culture, art and fashion
This book is for everyone and anyone that misses, or is curious about the bohemian and creative New York City that we all loved.
Here’s the live stream of the wonderful conversation at Pequot Library, between Guy Trebay and Chris Frantz, including an audience Q&A.
The Cultural Easton 