travsd

R.I.P. to Trash and Vaudeville’s Jimmy Webb

This just in over the transom: Jimmy Webb, former manager and buyer at the punk clothing punk Trash and Vaudeville has died at age 62. NB: this is NOT the same Jimmy Webb who wrote “Up, Up and Away”, “By the Time I Get to Phoenix”, “Wichita Lineman”, and “Galveston”. There’s already confusion abroad about it.

For years Trash and Vaudeville was a landmark on St. Marks Place. Its move to East 7th Street a few years ago was widely seen as part of the gentrification of the area, and correctly so. The character of the strip has not been the same since. Located around the corner and a few blocks away from CBGB’s, Trash and Vaudeville supplied threads for musicians like Blondie, the Ramones, Iggy Pop and performance artists like Penny Arcade etc etc etc, and was a location in the movie Desperately Seeking Susan. Webb opened his own store I NEED MORE on Orchard Street in 2017.

I felt doubly connected to the place he managed: not just because of its status as a punk landmark, but because of its NAME, which will link me to it in perpetuity. No Google Search of “vaudeville” ever turns up without links to the store.

No word yet as to cause of death. I’ll update this as I learn more. For more info:

New York Post

Heavy

BrooklynVegan

 

Published by travsd

Writer and performer Trav S.D. (www.travsd.com) is best known for his books "No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous" (2005) and "Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube" (2013). He has written for the NY Times, the Village Voice, American Theatre, Time Out NY, Reason, the Villager and numerous other publications. Trav has been in the vanguard of New York’s vaudeville and burlesque scenes since 1995 when he launched his company Mountebanks, presenting hundreds of acts ranging from Todd Robbins to Dirty Martini to Tammy Faye Starlite to the Flying Karamazov Brothers. He has directed his own plays, revues and solo pieces at such venues as Joe’s Pub, La Mama, HERE, Dixon Place, Theater for the New City, the Ohio Theatre, the Brick, and 6 separate shows in the NY International Fringe Festival. In 2014 he produced and directed the smash-hit "I’ll Say She Is", the first ever revival of the Marx Brothers hit 1924 Broadway show in the NY International Fringe Festival.