Kate Moss | Blogging on Meds

Bloody Social Nights: The Ballad of Burke and Biden

Monday, August 25, 2008 - 11:03 am (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

NOTE: I originally posted this up here in Feb. But since Joe Biden was named VP, and this story is about his nephew Jamie’s band, I figured I’d repost it to remind you that other Bidens besides Joe are cool…I should’ve titled it “Just Don’t Make This About My Uncle…” Anyway, enjoy and check out Bloody Social.

New York Magazine commissioned this feature in summer 2007, but it never ran. My job was to spend a few months following the band Bloody Social, who feature Calvin Kleun male model Jamie Burke on vocals, Joe Biden’s nephew Jamie Biden on guitar, and Drew Beat from Bold on drums. My editor quit right as the story was finishing up. In summer 07 no downtown crew raged like Bloody Social. Endless thanks to Adam Fisher. Also to Vegas and JZ…

Bloody Social Nights: The Ballad of Burke and Biden

Jamie Burke and Drew “Beat” Thomas

1.
Downtown rock band Bloody Social are about to perform at a party sponsored by Myspace at Irving Plaza. But first the band has to takes some pictures. Every lens angles towards singer Jamie Burke, the London-born Calvin Klein model, a lanky, grunge-y longhair. His two black suction cup eyes mesmerize the paparazzi as they yell “Jamie, Jamie” without pause. Burke leans left and whispers to Bloody Social’s guitarist, who’s also a tall long hair named Jamie—Biden. He’s the nephew of Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden. The two Jamies wear all black, save Burke’s grey suit vest over a sleeveless tee and Biden’s grey bandana. The rest of the band is blurred among Bloody Social’s dozen-strong posse: a crew of club promoters, fashion designers, pro skateboarders, hairstylists, rockers, and models.

At 22, Jamie Burke is already an established playboy. A scan of Google images shows Burke in various states of boldface. Snowboarding in Aspen with Kate Moss. Smooching Lindsay Lohan outside Pastis in the Meatpacking District. Massaging a topless Sienna Miller on a Caribbean beach. Chilling with Boy George outside a club. Walking hand in hand with Courtney Love. Gracing Calvin Klein’s premier Soho billboard space on Houston at Broadway, his nose ringed blue steel stare and sexy man locks embracing model Lara Stone. A New York Times Style article headlined “Another Summer Of Love” using said billboard as a prime example of a neo-hippy fashion trend. Burke and crop-top Armani model Agyness Dean hugging nude in Vanity Fair, dubbed “Models du Jurs 2007.”

It’s 11pm, show time, but the thousand-capacity room is only half-full. Even amongst this sophisticated, guest list-only crowd of publicists, assistants, bloggers, editors, and label reps, Bloody Social are a band most have heard of but never actually heard. Taking the stage bathed in red smoke and feedback, Bloody Social blasts the spacious club with heavy Hollywood influenced blues-punk, a unique sound in New York’s current Brooklyn-centric 80s influenced rock scene. Burke shimmied across the stage doing a swerve dance, singing in a raspy, Weiland-y, voice. Biden breaks into a deep space solo.

A few songs in, the crowd polarizes. Men flee towards the (open) bar at the club’s rear while women swoon to Burke’s sermon. A girl at the bar points out that two of the band’s song choruses, “where do we go now” and “kick start my heart,” are already taken by Guns N’ Roses and Motley Crue respectively. Another girl, who works at Bumble and Bumble salon, says she could “never date a guy with better hair than me,” admitting that the entire band does.

Bloody Social formed just six months ago. Cocooned within a nightlife-fashion-celebrity nexus, the band has fast earned a reputation for unruly club shows and sordid after-parties. But with the record industry’s 20% annual decline hitting year seven, Bloody Social has no label bankroll and are in the unique position of being rock stars without a record. Leaving them stigmatized as male socialites trying to capitalize on connections. Still, the band’s first six months have been a montage of pure rock n’ rock mythology, complete with meddling starlets, battling egos, magazine photo shoots, tabloid gossip, and decadent trips to Miami, LA, and Brazil.

Ten minutes after Bloody Social’s set ends, I’m downstairs in the men’s room. Suddenly Burke bursts in with two sweaty, skinny women. All three huddle into a metal stall. This being a Live Nation venue with a North Korean police state vibe, one had to be impressed by Burke’s public Columbian orgy. A third girl pops in a few seconds later screaming, “Jamie, you fookin’ bastard!” in an Oxbridge accent. Burke opened the stall door and yanked her in too. Cheers, mate!

2.
“Just don’t make this about my uncle,” says Jamie Biden, 28, hiding behind thick plastic aviators and a newly grown beard. It’s a hot August afternoon outside the Belmont Lounge on E 15th St near Union Square. Biden is the Belmont’s newly hired “creative director,” and a previously upscale bar is now effectively a rock band’s clubhouse.
It gets better after jump…
(more…)

TAGS: 2004, attack, Bloggers, Brooklyn, Bush, drama, Drugs, free, Gorilla Biscuits, India, Joe Biden, Julian Schnabel, Kate Moss, kids, leak, Milk Studios, missing, model, Music, myspace, Nas, New York, New York Times, pennsylvania, Pete Doherty, political, Rehab, skateboard, skateboarder, Sports, Staten Island, The Box, The Strokes, Travel, vegan, Vice, Vice Magazine, war, wasted

Kate Moss, Page Six, and Gawker

Thursday, June 12, 2008 - 11:26 am (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

FROM GAWKER:

Kate Moss Left Party Because It Was Lame, Not Because It Was Coke-Free

We told you earlier about Kate Moss’s hissyfit at MILK studios during an Agent Provocateur party—according to Page Six, she left because they wouldn’t let her bring three friends into the bathroom, citing a “strict one-person-at-a-time policy.” (So basically they suggested she was a cokehead!) But Ray LeMoine, a blogger was at the affair (which happened in early May) says this is bullshit: “the bathrooms at MILK were big multi-stall affairs, and plenty of sniffing was audible from the men’s pisser. There wasn’t an attendant or anything.” Also?

MILK also has a basement party room where Moss’ old hook-up Jamie Burke’s band Bloody Social (who were also at the party) practice, so I’m sure the coke party could have moved down there. Also, I’m sure MILK owner Madzac Rassi knows Kate Moss and would’ve accommodated her. Most likely, Kate left the party because it wasn’t that great.

More importantly, why did a month-old party take so long to make it into Page Six? [Photo: Medicine Agency]

Much thanks to Gawker for picking up my post about Page Six breaking a month-old, bogus sounding Kate Moss story. And really, what’s better than Kate Moss, Page 6, and Gawker?

Kate Moss has been a constant in my life since 97, freshman year of college, when she was on the walls of every Joy Division-loving art school/liberal arts chick in Boston. By far the coolest woman of our time, Kate Moss refuses to stop dressing amazingly, dating funny people, acting awesome, going topless in Ibiza, sniffing blow with a dude from The Clash on video, and causing other mini-controversies.

Upon hearing Moss was hosting the Agent Provocateur lingerie party on the roof of MILK Studios back in May, I of course went. Jim Jones was there with Damon Dash; over 500 people drank free booze on a rooftop overlooking the Meatpacking District. Thankfully, no Lauren Conrad/Gossip Girl-level celebs were there. Rather, in attendance were a lot of regular old New Yorker—people who go to cheap Indian restaurants in the East Village for dinner or email one another about sample sales. Hardly the fabulous-life set. After all, Agent P is owned by Vivienne Westwood’s son and maintains a punk style. (Despite the above Gawker headline, I didn’t find the party lame at all. It just wasn’t VF’s post-Oscar jam, or anything crazy great.)

A month later, Page 6 runs this story about Moss wanting to go into the bathroom with three friends and being denied. P6 says she threw a fit and alluded to her being a coke head. I’m all for Kate Moss’ coke use, but this tale seemed a little out of whack.

MILK is a photography studio, one especially known for high-profile fashion shoots. The world of fashion photography is no stranger to cocaine. To think the world’s foremost fashion model would have to make a scene at a place literally designed to accommodate her is highly unlikely.

Last year I interviewed MILK’s owner Madzac Rassi for a story I was writing, finding him funny, accessible, and intelligent. Further reporting proved he had an excellent professional reputation. Surely Rassi would be smart enough to make sure Kate f–king Moss, supermodel of supermodels, had a point-person from MILK on hand at an event she was hosting. Coupled with the fact that several people I attended the event with had dealings with the party’s sponsor, and none heard of any Moss antics, the whole “Kate waited 20 minutes angry before leaving” thing seemed dubious. Even Moss isn’t crazy enough to cause a scene at her own event. And if she was, the story would’ve probably came out a month ago, when the party happened.

Anyway, this P6 piece just seemed like a weird window into gossip reporting. P6’s use of the phrase “the other day” would likely have readers thinking it occured more recently than 32 days ago. And they spoke of MILK’s “one in the bathroom” policy. But, as a person who attends these events with an eye for debauched details, the bathroom scene is something I always scope out. MILK’s men’s room was located next to a stairwell. It was like a school lavatory, tan-tiled and functional, with urinals and stalls. A MILK guard stood outside by the stairwell. Two gay guys were certainly doing cocaine when I was in there.

Now, I love Page 6—there’s no single more influential or entertaining news column—but here is a case where you wonder who the “spy” was and why/how this “story” came to light so late. So I wrote what I saw and thought.

Thankfully, there is an institution dedicated to probing media’s murkiest zonas. Gawker, for all it’s sarcasm, is a vital news source that has helped bring transparency to an industry known for “anonymous sources.” Gawker has a reputation for being harsh, unfair, and using questionable journalistic ethics. Yet over the past few months they’ve ran three posts from Med A and, in each case, Gawker were actually more professional and accomadating than they had to be. Sometimes you’ll read on Gawker “we don’t use fact checkers” but with us they have fact checked. And they’ve been open to dialouge like traditional news editors. All of this came as a surprise given the soiled reputation Gawker has. It goes to show that by attacking the media, Gawker’s been the subject of unfairly biased coverage.

TAGS: Agent P, attack, Boston, Cocaine, free, India, Jim Jones, Kate Moss, Milk Studios, model, New York, Pisser, Practice, Video

Page Six Breaks Questionable Month-Old Kate Moss Story

Monday, June 9, 2008 - 1:06 pm (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

Kate Moss Agent Provocateur campaign

Maybe there was another Agent P party, though I doubt it since I know people who do publicity for them, but I was at this party where Kate Moss reportedly left because she couldn’t sniff in the bathrooms at MILK. It was in like early May, and I posted about it!? If I remember correctly, the bathrooms at MILK were big multi-stall affairs, and plenty of sniffing was audible from the men’s pisser. There wasn’t an attendant or anything.

Why is this just leaking today?

June 9, 2008 — ALWAYS the rebel, supermodel Kate Moss was pitching a fit about the bathroom occupancy rules at Milk Studios the other day. “Kate was at the Agent Provocateur event,” said our spy, “and she was trying to get into the bathroom with three friends.” An attendant told the model - who was once caught on video snorting cocaine - there was a strict one person at a time policy. Moss flipped out, saying “But I’m hosting the event,” according to the source. “Kate said, ‘forget it’ and walked away. Twenty minutes later she left with her group, yelling about finding another place.”

Sounds like bullshit to me. MILK also has a basement party room where Moss’ old hook-up Jamie Burke’s band Bloody Social (who were also at the party) practice, so I’m sure the coke party could have moved down there. Also, I’m sure MILK owner Madzac Rassi knows Kate Moss and would’ve accomadated her. Most likely, Kate left the party beacuse it wasn’t that great. I mean, I was there so how good could it have possibly been! This low-blow (pardon the pun) example of seemingly shoddy, month-old gossip reporting is uber-flag raising.

TAGS: Agent P, Cocaine, Kate Moss, leak, Milk Studios, model, Pisser, Practice, Video

Agent P Party

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - 2:31 pm (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

New York rules because Jim Jones and Kate Moss can be seen in the same room.

Editors Update:
A month later, Page Six writes their own angle on Moss at this party. Ray calls out the story here.
Gawker covers it here.

TAGS: Agent P, Jim Jones, Kate Moss, Milk Studios, New York

205 RIP: The Box’s Ugly Stepsister Shut Down

Wednesday, April 9, 2008 - 11:13 am (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

Ew gross! 205 sucked. One less place for ugly people to go. Stay at Union Pool from now on, k?

Wow, Serge Becker and The Box folks are in the news today. After Gawker’s report that The Box can’t find a lawyer, NYMag reports that the State Liquor Authority has canceled 205’s booze license. Good riddance. Unlike The Box, which has a high-low culture last night on earth vibe, neighboring 205 is a lame electro disco.

Before it became 205, it had the same owners but was called 6s and 8s. That place was ran in part by longtime promoter Vegas. It was awesome too. Upstairs was sleek and lounge-y. Downstairs was a faux-casino with working slot machines. Once Kate Moss and Axl Rose were there at the same time. But after a hot opening, 6s and 8s’ business slowed. Vegas left. So the owners hired a sneaker-homey named “A-RON” to revamp the place. He renamed it 205, painted the upstairs an offensive silver, and made the basement a fake Lit. For awhile, 205 was “hot” but never fun. Still, it had a cabaret license, meaning, unlike most NY bars, you could legally dance there. So it’s a loss nonetheless.

TAGS: HBO, Kate Moss, The Box

5 US Troops Killed In Bagdad

Monday, March 10, 2008 - 6:10 pm (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

But you’d rather look at Kate Moss not looking druggy. At all.

From Liberation, Paris.

TAGS: Kate Moss, paris

Lohan Nude in NY Mag

Monday, February 18, 2008 - 7:47 pm (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

There death came hurtling along the boulevard in waning sepia light—Joyce Carol Oates, Blonde.

New York Magazine pulled a coup and got Lindsay Lohan naked for this week’s cover. You can’t even open the story right now on the mag’s website….

Last spring, when Lohan was in New York just before her big breakdown, I asked Simon Hammerstein, The Box’s owner, to describe his nightclub’s best customer, “Oh Lindsay, she’s our Marylin Monroe isn’t she…” This was an interview for, duh, New York Magazine. Now they’ve convinced her to get naked!

While reporting the Box story, I crossed paths with Lohan three times in one week. I dubbed her The Box’s “mascot.” She was some partier back then. Here’s a little “reporting” on Lohan (from Box notes):

The Mascot
Getting in to the Box proved incredibly difficult. In one week’s time I was denied entry four out of six nights (The Box is closed on Sundays). Being shut out one Tuesday gave me the chance to bounce around the club scene, where I was lucky enough to observe America’s favorite party animal, Lindsay Lohan, in captivity at the West Chelsea club Stereo. Lohan is the country’s most valuable partier: The Las Vegas nightclub Pure inked a deal to pay her—gulp–$400,000 to celebrate her 21st B-day there. She perfectly represents the nexus between celebrities, PR, and media that market upscale New York nightlife. She’s also been The Box’s best customer.

Inside Stereo, dirt-rockers The Bloody Social (Sienna Miller’s boyfriend’s band) had just finished playing. My neighbor, Michael Ruiz, promotes for Stereo and at his table sat Lohan atop a booth between her sex partner Colum Best (son of English soccer playboy George Best) and the DJ Steve Aoki. Lohan wore a waist length leather coat over a tight low-cut shirt; a black headband was wrapped around her bleached blonde hippy hair. A crush of hundreds surged and swarmed Stereo’s VIP section, but Aoki, looking very Rasta/Fu Manchu with dreads and facial hair, disbursed a Zen chill. Ten years ago Aoki was a student in Santa Barabra, CA, booking emo and hardcore shows at a house called the Pickle Patch alongside Kent McClard, founder of anti-commercial Ebullition Records and the man who coined the phrase “rage against the machine.” Times sure have changed. When Aoki got in the DJ booth, a hype man yelped in a whigger voice, “This is A-Ron, New York City. What up! Uh-Uh! Yee-ah!”

Past 2am, Lohan stood on the couch, slowly gyrating to a Swizz Beats song with a great chorus: “You know who it is: It’s me bitches!” Her table hosts were “JZ and Seamus,” two jobless skater dudes who share a 600 sq foot East Village studio dubbed “The Man Shanty,” or, hardly the ambassadors de fabulousity one would expect to find guarding the borders of Lohanistan. But that’s Stereo: the ultimate, traditional egalitarian downtown-minded club.

By cruising with downtown grime-sters and post-punk DJs, Lohan is taking the Chloe Sevingy cool, Kate Moss druggy vibe to a Hollywood, Madonna in the 80s level. She’s become the ultimate club kid, and thus a club’s best mascot. “She’d be our t-shirt,” Richard Kimmel said. A bold faced Lohan in print next to Stereo or the Box is nightclub PR’s equivalent of a politician getting a Washington Post endorsement.

The next night at the Box, a Wednesday, was a slow one. The room was half-empty, and, aside from a few gays and their fashion industry female stragglers, the crowd was all mid to senior level managers in open blazers with ridiculously good-looking women. Ditta Von Teese was walking around. Lohan arrived at around 2am, fresh from the Maxim Hot 100 party. (Aside from Stereo the night before, I’d seen Lohan at Tenjune the previous Thursday for a Nylon Magazine party, making this the third time in six nights I’d seen her partying past 2am, or: She’s a fucking champ!)

Lohan needs to write a memoir. Merely in that week alone she had released a feature film (it bombed), been sued by a paparazzi she’d crashed her car into, been caught bumping coke on camera, been in a public 5am brawl at the Soho Grand with make-out chum Colum Best, had a nipple-slip in the Bahamas, had grand larceny charges brought for robbing an model’s closet in LA (the judge dropped the charges for lack of evidence), and was named Maxim’s #1 on its Hot 100 Women list. “There is no other star in the world that causes more of a stir in the public eye than Lindsay. Her every move is watched and reported on,” said Maxim’s editor-in-chief Jimmy Jellinik. Let us watch.

The second show was about to begin, and Lohan’s party of ten sprawled across the stage-front couches. There were no “Man Shanty” dwellers, no Zen hip pop DJs, no downtownies with her. No one at The Box seemed to notice or care she was even there.

Such is the difference between Stereo and the Box: the former is an updated version of all clubs of time’s past and the latter is like nowhere else. “We wanted to put the club kids, the promoters on stage,” Hammerstein said. “We pay them to perform as opposed to paying them to party.” He added: “Even Lindsay has performed. She’s like Marilyn Monroe, isn’t she?”

Raven O was leading the crowd in singing happy birthday to Janet Jackson, who sat in a VIP booth above the stage. Lohan sat on the floor, wearing a short, sparkly black and blue dress, hardly caring that Janet was in “da house.” The curtain lifted and Mini-Britney appears in a red latex body suit, backed by the Hammerstein Beauties. An excited Lohan jumped to her kness, grabbed a digital camera and snapped some pics. Happy, distracted, young, might these have been the last days of Lohan?

Lohan left for LA the next day. A week went by and…There came Death hurtling along the Boulevard in waning Sepia light. That’s the haunting opening line of Joyce Carol Oates’ Blonde, her Marilyn Monroe fictional autobiography. At 5:30 am on Sunday May 27th Lohan was busted in LA for the scumbag trifecta: DUI, ditching an accident scene, and coke possession. Add “under-21” to the cause and you’ve reached starlet quagmire. But the next night she partied until 4am anyways.

Lohan’s depravity, her “Flirting With Death,” as an NY Daily News headline read, and her subsequent thuggish not giving a fuck, could be seen as a sort of coda for The Box: One life, drink, fuck, and be merry like there’s no tomorrow.

TAGS: HBO, Kate Moss, kids, Las Vegas, Madonna, model, New York, New York City, Steve Aoki, The Box, war

Bloody Social Nights: The Ballad of Burke and Biden

Thursday, February 14, 2008 - 9:02 pm (EST)
By Ray LeMoine

New York Magazine commissioned this feature in summer 2007, but it never ran. My job was to spend a few months following the band Bloody Social, who feature “It Boy” male model Jamie Burke on vox and Drew Beat from Bold on drums. It’s was a wild rided. There’s even a Lohan cameo or two. And Kate Moss gets fucked. My editor quit right as the story was finishing up, but it still probably wouldn’t have run—too much sex and drugs. In summer 07 no one downtown raged like Bloody Social. I still consider them the most unique band in Manhattan. Working for months on something for nothing is soul destroying, and I couldn’t even look at this thing for the last half year. But here it is. Endless thanks to Adam Fisher. Also, to Vegas and JZ for being the kings of NY nightlife.