Commissioner of Licenses Joel Tyler calls the signing of this bill, colorfully and enigmatically referred to on an ancient Municipal Archives catalog card as a Theatrical Fingerprinting Bill, “one of the truly significant moments in New York City’s history.”

If this bold statement trips your skepticism, it’s to be expected. We’re by now well acquainted with the rehearsed hyperbole of the elected and the hopeful, and we’ve all learned to correct intuitively the tendency many pols have to fool themselves, overestimating the importance of their own little corners with a pride stemming as much from outsized ego as from an inbuilt solipsism. Political rhetoric seldom navigates this Scylla and Charybdis of junk talk to emerge successfully scanned as genuine; is this occasion any different? And sure, it’s a big day for the Commissioner of Licenses, but is it “truly significant?”

Yes. It is.

Listen to his voice. Don’t listen to the words; don’t listen to the tone; don’t scan for emotion. You won’t hear anything new there.

Listen to his voice distort. Listen to it sharpen and crackle. This is his tell.

The Greeks thought of inspiration as drawing in the divine breath of the Muses. Modern methods of public address and sound recording offer a curious reversal of the process - carrying the levelest voice through the air at unprecedented amplitude to be heard and felt and inspire anew. But the process suffers from an Achilles’ heel: waves that reach beyond a certain threshold get squared off at the margins, yielding a warm but unwelcome and unnatural distortion. Tyler, all too eager to have his voice heard and captured marking the moment, stands a little too close to his microphone, temporarily overwhelming the capabilities of the system in front of him, offering a subtle reveal of what the occasion really means.

The "truly significant moment" is the signing of the September 25, 1967, bill that would end cabaret cards.

New York’s cabaret laws had been on the books since 1927, born in the wanton days of the jazz age, but only really hit their damaging stride in 1943, when all musicians working in New York City were made to carry a “cabaret card” to perform in its nightclubs and bars, a license which could be, and was, snatched away or denied renewal at the slightest offense, effectively blacklisting an artist from performing in the City for years at authority's whim. New York’s cabaret card provisions were intended to be a force in the fight against the City’s criminal element, but the licensing requirement had the effect of undermining New York’s capacity as an incubator of art for decades. 

Take for instance jazz great Thelonious Sphere Monk (pictured above), who three times had his cabaret card revoked through the 40s and 50s, coming up for air all too briefly for his famous engagement with John Coltrane at the Five Spot in 1957. Thelonious saw some successes emerge during his intermittent ban, but only in spite of the unduly harsh law - Brilliant Corners, his classic recording from the period and one of the greatest jazz recordings ever made, one that was recently added to the Library of Congress’ esteemed National Recording Registry, was cobbled together with an underprepared makeshift band at a time when he could not legally perform in the City. Only in the 60s did he establish a stable band and commercial success, when he was arguably past his prime. Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday, and many other famous performers seeking a narcotic muse fell victim to the cabaret card law, but consider too, how many talents were rendered obscure or snuffed out entirely by the law’s Draconian demands. Frank Sinatra, in an act of kind solidarity with his fellow artists (and perhaps some underworld friends), famously refused to perform in New York during at least part of the law’s damaging run.

But perhaps jazz isn’t your bag. Consider instead The Ramones’ predilection for sniffing glue and violence against brats, or the band Television, bidden by "Venus" to impersonate New York’s Finest, or even nerdiest of the bunch, The Talking Heads, whose quasi-autistic psychotic visions would have read differently in the wake of Son of Sam. It is debatable whether any of these groups would have been able to hold on to such licenses for long in the dingy, dangerous, and paranoid New York of the 70s, particularly in the seedy confines of the Bowery. No CBGBs, no scene. No scene, no punk. No punk, no Pistols, no Clash (no future indeed). And it’s tough to say what would have happened to hip hop, which largely found its gestation in more informal atmospheres, but it’s development as an artform would have likely suffered as well, especially given the law’s moralizing aims.

It is thankful then that these laws did not remain in the books (though others lingered on). And that thanks is due to Lindsay, Tyler, and others, all present on this recording, for striking down a foolish decades-old law on September 25, 1967.

Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.

WNYC archives id: 92378
Municipal archives id: T2049