V/A-No New York(1978; Antilles)

I haven’t posted in a few days mostly due to my anticipating this post.

In late April, 1978, Brian Eno showed up in New York to master the second Talking Heads LP. Not long after his arrival a concert took place at Artists Space in early May, wherein Communists, Terminal, Gynecologists, Theoretical Girls, Daily Life, Tone Death, The Contortions, DNA, MARS and Teenage Jesus and The Jerks played over the course of five nights. It was here that James Chance of the Contortions ended up beating the shit out of a Village Voice music editor and establishing The Contortions as one of the most talked about acts in town.

Eno had, of course, caught on to the East Village scene, and it wasn’t long before rumor was out that he had come to New York and was going produce a record: ten bands, two cuts apiece. Soon, this rumor was condensed and it was apparent that Eno was only going to record four bands, four songs each, and only East Village bands. The four selected turned out to be the last four acts of the Artists Space show that took place in early May.

“I was interested in it as an art historian. One of the things that really struck me was how brief some of these scenes are....The way I sold this record to Chris Blackwell, who was to put up the money for this, was I said this is a piece of history an I don’t expect that it’s going to make a lot of money now. It won’t sell a lot of records. But I think it will end up being an important document.” -Brian Eno

Released a few months later in 1978, No New York would soon become the signifier for No Wave. Before this record, MARS, DNA, Teenage Jesus and The Contortions were just a bunch of different bands whose only similarities were that they were all East Village bands and all friends. Bands such as Gynecologists and Theoretical Girls, who were much more definitive of the “No Wave sound”-the deconstructed post-post-punk noise melange, were not even featured, much to the surprise of pretty much everyone. Most of the musicians on the record were pretty disgusted with the results, and the underlying agreement seemed to be that Brian Eno had no idea what he was doing. Most of the bands were recorded doing their first takes, and featured recording of The Contortions’ “Can’t Stand Myself” was actually supposed to be a warm-up.

That said, there’s something beautiful about this record, and it’s possibly that the way it was recorded is in itself an act of the No Wave essence. Maybe the record is a compilation of single-takes and essentially live recordings, but that is precisely what the bands wanted to be. It’s not a produced album, but a documentation, and without it, the only reason anyone would remember James Chance was because he smashed their head in with a saxophone in the late seventies.

A note on the album cover: “I wanted pictures of everyone, from all the bands, on there. And of course ‘Oh god a photo session with all of those people, what a nightmare.’ Then I suddenly had this idea. In Europe we had all this stuff with Baader-Meinhof and the Red Brigade. eevry time you would go to a railway station or an airport you’d see these posters that had several identical-sized black and white photos of people who were terrorists or who the police were looking for. What was very interesting about those photos was that they were very different in quality from each other. Some were obviously cut from newspapers, they had different textures to them. And I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a good idea.’ So I just said to everybody, ‘Just give me any photograph of yourself that you have.’ And that’s what it was. Each person gave to me a photograph of themselves that they liked and I had them reduced all to the same size. And then for the front cover I went with photographer Marcia Resnick and all her gear and a few of the musicians to the World Trade Center and whilst in there took a picture with her camera. It was very poor lighting and I did everything wrong with the camera, but I was sort of intrigued with the image that came out. How ephemeral it looked. I don’t remember if the figures were someone in the group or not.” -Brian Eno


Get it here!

Art Bears-Hopes and Fears(1978)

Unsatisfied with the direction their next record was going in, three of the avant-rock group Henry Cow members decided to form a new group dubbed “Art Bears”, and the record in question became their debut release. The experimental mind-fuck that is Hopes and Fears is often considered the long lost Henry Cow album, and emphasizes a perceivable transition from the band to Art Bears. Hopes and Fears is laden with cross-cultural percussive endeavors and Cale-ish dissonance, but the key point here is Dagmar Krause’s witch-like alto and affinity for vibrato that makes Devendra Banhart look like he doesn’t know the meaning of the term.

Personnel:
Fred Frith – guitars, violin, viola, harmonium, xylophone, piano, bass guitar
Chris Cutler – drums, percussion
Dagmar Krause – vocals

Side one (Áhá: Palace courtyard):
1. "On Suicide"
2. "The Dividing Line"
3. "Joan"
4. "Maze"
5. "In Two Minds"

Side two (Mer: Irrigated land):
1. "Terrain"
2. "The Tube"
3. "The Dance"
4. "The Pirate Song"
5. "Labyrinth"
6. "Riddle"
7. "Moeris Dancing"
8. "Piers"

Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?zmmxfeycmy1

John Lurie-The Legendary Marvin Pontiac-Greatest Hits

John Lurie made his debut as the founder of the New York “fake jazz” ensemble, The Lounge Lizards. This first incarnation of the band-which featured DNA’s Arto Lindsay on guitar-released their first, self-titled record in 1981. In 1991, Lurie released The Legendary Marvin Pontiac-Greatest Hits, a posthumous collection of music by Lurie’s insane Jewish-African alter-ego Marvin. Marvin definitely has an affinity for the true blues tradition that is grimy lyricism, yet here, he’s not subtle about it in the least bit. Marvin’s voice is like a smoother Tom Waits-a deep, bluesy, nonchalant capacitator of filthy words, and his music, like Waits', expounds upon the blues structure insofar as to completely transcend genre...most of the time. Marvin Pontiac’s Greatest Hits is by far one of the most interesting records of the nineties-it could have been written one hundred years ago, or one hundred years from now. You should also check out his short-lived television show, Fishing With John, also from 1991.

“MARVIN PONTIAC was hit and killed by a bus in June 1977 ending the life of one of the most enigmatic geniuses of modern music. He was born in 1932, the son of an African father from Mali and a white Jewish mother from New Rochelle, New York. The father's original last name was Toure but he changed it to Pontiac when the family moved to Detroit, believing it to be a conventional American name.

Marvin's father left the family when Marvin was two years old. When his mother was institutionalized in 1936, the father returned and brought the young boy to Bamako, Mali where Marvin was raised until he was fifteen. The music that he heard there would influence him forever.

At fifteen Marvin moved by himself to Chicago where he became versed in playing blues harmonica. At the age of seventeen, Marvin was accused by the great Little Walter of copying his harmonica style. This accusation led to a fistfight outside of a small club on Maxwell Street. Losing a fight to the much smaller Little Walter was so humiliating to the young Marvin that he left Chicago and moved to Lubbock, Texas where he became a plumber's assistant.

Not much is known about him for the next three years. There are unsubstantiated rumors that Marvin may have been involved in a bank robbery in 1950. In 1952, he had a minor hit for Acorn Records with the then controversial song "I'm a Doggy." Oddly enough, unbeknownst to Marvin and his label, he simultaneously had an enormous bootleg success in Nigeria with the beautiful song "Pancakes."

His disdain and mistrust of the music business is well documented and he soon fell out with Acorn's owner, Norman Hector. Although, approached by other labels, Marvin refused to record for anyone unless the owner of the label came to his home in Slidell, La and mowed his lawn.

Reportedly Marvin's music was the only music that Jackson Pollack would ever listen to while he painted, this respect was not reciprocated. In 1970 Marvin believed that he was abducted by aliens. He felt his mother had had a similar unsettling experience, which had led to her breakdown. He stopped playing music and dedicated all of his time and energy to amicably contacting these creatures who had previously probed his body so brutally.

When he was arrested for riding a bicycle naked down the side streets of Slidell, La, it provided a sad but clear view of Marvin's coming years.

Marvin held the tribal belief that having a photograph taken of yourself could steal your soul, thus these candid shots are the only ones known to exist.

In 1971 he moved back to Detroit where he drifted forever and permanently into insanity. ”


Link: http://www.mediafire.com/?gl114ocnncz