He Wrote the Songs that Made the Whole Town Barf

We can argue as to whom the BEST NYC songwriter was, but to me there's no competition for the WORST category. I'm talking the guy who made more guys puke than any other: Mr. Barry Pincus of Williamsburg. Yup, that's him, Barry Manilow, the Sulton of Schlock.

During the 70s BM had a series of hit singles which appealed heavily to young women, who swooned for him in the manner that their older sisters did for David Cassidy and Bobby Sherman. But unlike those turkeys, BM not only sang, but he wrote the corniest, dumbest, most asinine lyrics ever to emerge from our fair city. Needless to say, the males tended to cringe when he came on the radio. Who can forget?

"Oh, Mandy.
...You cam and you gave without takin...
... You kissed me and stopped me from shakin'...."

Worse yet, the salute to the fabled Copacabana night club:

"She sits there every night and drinks herself half blind
She's lost her little Tony, now she's lost her mind
At the Copa, Copacabana,
The hottest spot north of Havana...."

Actually, BM served a vital function for many of us. If somebody we were interested in was a fan of his, it was a good warning signal. "Danger, Will Robinson!" A BM fan will probably have 2 dates before she wants to drag you off to a schlock wedding at some gaudy catering hall decorated like a tacky Atlantic City casino. Cool women did not listen to Mr. Pincus.

One night I was seated with my then fiance in a diner in Sheepshead Bay that had those little jukeboxes at each table. I popped a few quarters in and selected some tunes. Nothing happened. Then, about five minutes later, some pseudo-Latin voices started singing "Nueva York, Nueva York." It was BM's salute to our town "New York City Rhythm." I hit the Cancel button. It stopped. Blessed silence. A few minutes later the damn thing started up again. Eventually we had to move to another table, and got the manager to shut the jukebox down.