New York, Old Ork

The Left Coast gets a lot of coverage here at th' House O' Foam©, and that's because it was - note past tense - the cultural hub of the twentieth century. From the 'thirties through to the back end of the 'seventies, L.A. (and to a lesser extent San Francisco) was the white-hot crucible of the culture known - and often derided - as pop.

But other stuff happened in other places, even in Gotham, and it was shadowy figures like movie fanboy Terry Ork who helped it happen. In spite of his best attempts, he avoided the Factory's icy clutches and set up Ork Records, signing street-buzz names and capturing the crackling neon zeitgeist of punk.

This is a swell compilation of Ork's finest, as essentially Gotham as a Weegee crime scene, before loft culture made Talking Heads and Blondie millionaires.