Seeing some of my favorite films again (The Damned, The Conformist) as well as The Night Porter and thinking about Cabaret — all during this constant German film festival they seem to be having here in New York City — I wondered if the Nazis (or the Narzis as Mel Brooks would say) really sat around in garter belts all the time singing. And it got me to thinking about decadence. Some people insist on equating anything about Nazi Germany with decadence, decadence with fashion and the ultimate chic; ergo-Nazis are chic. Certainly Nazi films are in.. .but somehow the whole thing seems so.. .well, two years ago to me. I remember being on Portobello Road with Richard and Dennis Katz and Lou Reed and all of us looking at the Nazi medal booths; Dennis bought one Nazi flag and came home to proudly drape it across the couch in his RCA Vice President’s office. That was in 1972. Ron Asheton always had an incredible Nazi memorabilia collection — medals, armbands, coats, jackets, postcards.. .the whole lot. But all of this always seemed so harmless; like Dennis’ flag, it was like a little boy sticking his fingers in the fire, playing at something.

And then there are all those supposed Nazi bands. All I really know about them is that Murray Krugman of Columbia Records seems to have something to do with some of them. Or at least The Blue Oyster Cult and now The Dictators. For a start, Blue Oyster Cult really only has that semi-swastika flag; (Fran Lebowitz said that if you wear a semi-swastika that means only one of your grandparents was a Nazi), and Danny Fields says that The Dictators are just about leather and vomit. They don’t even really vomit onstage like Iggy did (nothing so healthy as Lillian would say), they sing about it. We once heard about a band called Hitler and the Belmonts that Marty Thau was interested in; they lived near Philadelphia under a bridge and the lead singer stripped to his boxer shorts during auditions and ran around his living room. Anyway — we all know that the only Nazi bands were The Stooges and Nico. So much for that.