Jesse Malin makes a triumphant return to the Bowery in Silver Manhattan (photo by Ehud Lazin)
SILVER MANHATTAN
The Bowery Palace
327 Bowery
Wednesday – Sunday through March 29, $52-$187
www.silvermanhattan.com
www.jessemalin.com
Upon entering the downstairs theater at the new Bowery Palace, audience members are greeted by an unusual sight: At the front and center of the small, crowded stage, surrounded by various chairs, tables with lamps, a drum kit, and vertical white fluorescent lights on a shimmering curtain, is an empty wheelchair.
It’s a haunting image, made all the more palpable when singer-songwriter Jesse Malin makes his grand entrance, carried down the aisle on a stretcher, his hands folded across his chest as if dead. But the Queens native, along with the crowd, is about to be resurrected by the power and glory of rock and roll in the heart-wrenching yet exhilarating Silver Manhattan.
“I love walking in New York,” Malin says after being placed in the wheelchair. “You hit the street, no plan, no agenda — then you bump into someone, talk to a stranger, make a new friend. You see a poster, you run into a show, a movie — you hear music from a bar, it draws you in. Next thing you know, you’ve danced all night, fallen in love, learned a good joke from a homeless person, fed a stray cat, and jumped back into bed as the sun comes up and the last garbage truck rolls by. Anything’s possible here.”
Some of those things might never be possible for Malin again, but that’s not preventing him from living his life to the fullest he can.
“The last time I walked down a New York street was May 4, 2023,” he says shortly before launching into his 2015 song “Turn Up the Mains” while sharing the story of the day he suffered a spinal stroke on his way to a one-year memorial party he was hosting and DJing for his late friend and former bandmate Howie Pyro, who he calls an “occasional Satanist.” Malin describes the event in graphic detail as the pain shot through his legs, he got down on the ground, and then was taken by ambulance to the hospital, where he received the awful diagnosis and was told that he’s “effectively paraplegic,” that he might never walk again without assistance.
The band — keyboardist Rob Clores, bassist James Cruz, drummer Paul Garisto, and musician and vocalist Bree Sharp — then kicks into the Rolling Stones’ 1971 track “Sway” and Malin picks up a guitar.
Doctor: Did you ever wake up to find / A day that broke up your mind? / Destroyed your notion of circular time.
Band: It’s just that demon life / Got you in its sway / It’s just that demon life / Got you in its sway.
Malin: Ain’t flinging tears out on the dusty ground / For all my friends out in the burial ground / Can’t stand this feeling, getting so brought down.
Malin, who was born in 1967, then returns to his childhood in Whitestone, where his single mother raises him and his sister. He recounts jumping on his bed to songs by Elton John and Paul Simon, being bullied because he has to wear an eye patch, and discovering such bands as KISS, the Sex Pistols, the Dead Boys, and the Ramones.
He sings, “Waiting on a midnight bus / To get me to the 7 train / Running from the chicken hawks / And I never went back . . . never went back . . .” in “Whitestone City Limits.”
As a teenager, he first forms the band Heart Attack (“Trendies”), then downtown punk legend D Generation (“No Way Out”). He goes solo in 2000, releasing such albums as Glitter in the Gutter, Love It to Life, and New York Before the War. He collaborates with Bruce Springsteen, Billie Joe Armstrong, Ryan Adams, and Lucinda Williams. He opens a club in the city.
And then, at the age of fifty-six, he learns that he might lose everything.
Jesse Malin is joined by his bandmates while telling his poignant story (photo by Ehud Lazin)
The preshow setlist blasting through the speakers sets the stage for the music that follows, from the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” and the Ramones’ “She’s the One” to Carly Simon’s “You’re So Vain” and Simon & Garfunkel’s “My Little Town,” letting the audience know that this is not going to be just a punk concert. Over the course of ninety pulsating minutes, Malin reaches deep into his back catalog, performing songs not in chronological order but how they relate to the narrative, which switches between his history and his efforts to not give in to his diagnosis, including seeking out special treatment in Argentina. He is joined several times by Satish Indofunk and Danny Rey on horns, adding another dimension to the songs. The often warm lighting is by Brian Scott, with propulsive sound by Angela Baughman.
Just as Marsha Ginsberg’s scenic design is cramped, so is the audience, seated in folding chairs on the floor or balcony and on narrow benches or standing in the back; it’s not the most comfortable way to enjoy music, but it works here, especially as Malin makes eye contact with as many audience members as he can as he chronicles his wild adventures, baring his heart and soul. And he never becomes treacly, even when adopting a mantra from his friend HR of Bad Brains: PMA, or Positive Mental Attitude. “Before him, I never thought how my outlook might effect where I end up,” Malin acknowledges.
He doesn’t wallow in self-pity or ask for sympathy but instead forges ahead, determined to beat the odds and, primarily, keep making music. His band doubles as characters from his life: DJ Jonathan Toubin, his doctor, his mother, Jack Flanagan, his physical therapist. As the evening progresses, he gets more and more pumped, waving his arms in the air and shaking his body in the chair. He has an infectious enthusiasm that dances over the room like a swirling disco ball. You don’t have to know anything about Malin or his music to fall for him and the presentation, which is reminiscent of Springsteen on Broadway and Bono’s Stories of Surrender, both of which were tied to memoirs; Malin’s Almost Grown (Akashic Books, $28.95) will be published on April 7.
Passionately directed by Ellie Heyman (Space Dogs, The Tattooed Lady), Silver Manhattan — named for Malin’s 2004 song that does not appear in the show; nor does his 2002 track “Almost Grown” — is an intimate journey into one man’s refusal to take no for an answer, through his entire life. It’s a thrilling, no-holds-barred celebration, tinged with loss and sadness, but ultimately it’s a triumphant homecoming for a man who has been part of the New York City music scene for five decades and is not about to stop now.
He saves some special surprises for the very end, then, as an encore, brings out a different friend each night; I saw Tony-winning actor and musician John Gallagher Jr. (American Idiot, Spring Awakening) playing the Replacements’ hit “Alex Chilton,” which features the line “I’m in love / with that song.”
Well, I’m in love / with this show.
[Mark Rifkin is a Brooklyn-born, Manhattan-based writer and editor; you can follow him on Substack here.]