I will determine whether I've been naughty or nice this year by whether or not Santa brings me New York Noise, a fabulous new book by the nice people at Soul Jazz. A visual companion piece to their three-volume New York Noise CDs, it documents that especially fertile period in downtown New York where, as they say, "everyone in a band was also an artist, every artist was also a film-maker and every film-maker in a band." Featuring mostly unpublished photos of the likes of Keith Haring, Arto Lindsay, Debbie Harry and Fab Five Freddy, it looks like a great souvenir of the era.
To accompany this plug, I've uploaded a toon from the second volume of New York Noise. The first volume rounded up all the usual suspects (Liquid Liquid, Dinosaur L, ESG, Mars, James Chance), but the second and third go into more detail, looking at the second string players on the scene, such as Y Pants, Rhys Chatham, and The Static, who were Glenn Branca's second band (he also was one quarter of The Theoretical Girls, along with Wharton Tiers who also plays a big part in the no wave scene of the era). All this was before his guitar symphonies with future members of Sonic Youth.
Anyhoo, the sleeve notes of the series are pretty comprehensive, and along with the photo book, are required reading for the Optimo crowd. Here's a taster, then, of The Static.Download My relationship by Glenn Branca and The Static (deleted May 2008)
2 comments:
brian has been playing various youtube clips this evening which just sounded like noise to me. when i asked him what they were, he waxed lyrical that they were bands due to be playing at sheffield's freenoise nights. i told him id go along with him if i could wear earplugs as i reckon they'd be pretty cool gigs. from a cooldom point of view, not a musical point of view LOL :)
i like simon and garfunkel harmonies, as you know ;)
Well, you'd better take some earplugs when you go and see My Bloody Valentine next year, then!
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