George Tabb Benefit, Thursday March 13 at 10pm with Mike Watt + the Missingmen at Safari Sam’s, 5214 W. Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, CA, (323) 666-7267. Visit MySpace.com/HelpGeorgeTabb.
I have to admit to being way clueless. My apartment in Brooklyn is a scant 4 3/4 miles away from the World Trade Center, in a neighborhood heavily populated by firefighters, and apart from some vague sense that, ‘yeah, the air after 911 was probably pretty bad and I’m sure some people are a little sick’, I haven’t given it a whole lot of thought (given that I only live there part time and moved in over a year and a half after 911, I’d probably miss a little, but c’mon!). Randomly today I see a bulletin from Mike Watt in my rarely visited MySpaceship about the benefit show, and first I’m thinkin’, ‘I didn’t know George was sick’, I read a little and it’s ‘I didn’t know George lived in New York’ (somewhere in there is, ‘we both worked at MaximumRockNRoll and even though we met once or twice I dodn’t really know George’), and then I’m sucked into a new scary world.
Simple version: George lived downtown during 911 and shortly after that he got sick… and then he got very sick, and found out that not only was there not much help available for anything beyond a runny nose, but the possibility that a causal link existed was denied in the interest of homeland security. Read his whole story at MySpace.com/HelpGeorgeTabb. As always George dishes things up in a clear, direct and honest human voice. For more on the human wreckage caused by the attacks in the years since, see these pieces in CBS News, The Village Voice, and Discover Magazine.
Back in the nonreal world, you should also give a visit to George’s YouTube channel, which contains many fine installments from his punk TV joint Destroy Television.
