May 28, 2003
10 East-Coast Post-Punk Left-Overs 1977-1981.
Hi! It’s me wasting yet more energy on this pale shadow of real-life intercourse. Force-feeding you casual fellows with my fan-boy drivel. Trading precious gems with anonymous strangers for nuts. Pimping this imaginary identity of mine on the WWW. It’s my birthday today! Blows out one candle and the cell goes black. On a positive note it all works out cheaper than a psychoanalysts bill.
I’ve put these records together because they’re all lesser-known right-coast rarities. This “special-a-roonie” matches the Krautrock one I did a few thousand years ago, and is the conceptual sister of the Launderette spiel. Not necessarily classics but drooly record collector stuff. All have splendid sleeves. I take pride in the fact that I spent under £10 on all of these records, apart from the Y Pants one which was a bit dearer. On topic I’m coming to New York in June so if you fancy buying me a bud drop me a line. I am extremely abnormal.
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impLOG: Holland Tunnel Dive (Lust/Unlust 1980)
As we say in advertising, put your best stuff at the front. Come in with a bang! Stick out yer tits! I’m going to single-handedly take credit for the re-discovery of this record, cos why not? I found it in La Dame Blanche in Paris. I paid 50 francs for it, that’s about $6.4528. At last my research into the lack-lustre Love of Life Orchestra paid off! This release is affiliated with them (more on this later)......
I showed it to my (even sadder) friend Gwen, who always pretends to have seen every record before, but is sometimes unconvincing, tell-tale signs include an undisguisable curiosity in the eyes. Gwen introduced Autechre to Bernard Parmegiani by the way. I also put it on a tape for Mr. Reynolds which he sweetly told me he played at his Millennium party (a donkey, a duck and a bottle of meths- don’t knock it!), thus time-stamping his introduction to the track. GOTCHA! Simon recently told me he saw it racked up for $40 in NYC. I also sold a copy for a song to Jon at Atlas (Small Fish) Records, another standing stone at the Post-Punk Party.
Here are the lyrics, amongst my favorites of any song EVER, which lace a pre-Night Drive Thru Babylon sub-Suicide grubby synth drum pattern. The speaker is contemplating a plunge into the Holland Tunnel/Underworld. It’s the one of the original modern “death/motor” records, giving Warm Leatherette a good run for it’s money:
No Support,
No Bridges to cross,
No Wood to burn,
Nothing to learn,
No Soul,
No Love,
No Dinner tonight,
No Woman,
No Cry,
No Respect,
No Equal rights,
No Garden to hoe,
No Seed to sow,
No Food in the fridge,
No TV shows,
No Emotion,
No Devotion,
No Trips to the ocean,
No Time to play,
No Lays,
No Way,
No News,
No Blues,
Nothing to lose,
No Soap,
No Car,
No Cigar,
Leaving for the other side
Going to Take a Holland Tunnel Dive
Oh what a ride
Going to Take a Holland Tunnel Dive
And after the WHOOSH of the car accelerating down the tunnel, then you get this improbably placed afrobeat-styled saxophone solo. You wouldn’t like it………;-)
Love of Life Orchestra: Geneva (Lust/Unlust 1980)
While we’re on the subject of LOLO we might as well address the issue. Start sniffing around this era and pretty quickly you come across LOLO. Peter Gordon co-produces Arthur Russell’s Go Bang*5. LOLO are Laurie Anderson’s backing group. Collaborations with David Byrne. David Van Tieghem pops up everywhere. Lower East-side hipsters. I’ve always assumed that this should mean their records are good and so keep buying them, even when they disappoint. I have Geneva, Casino and the Extended Niceties 12”. And they’re all CRAP! Ha ha. Well that’s only semi-fair. Geneva sounds exactly like Tortoise would do if they were naffer. Terrible cheesy synth lines over pub/prog/punk squeezings. There are moments, a couple of nice Reich-ian minimal piano tunes on Casino. But really I’m glad I persist. See Above and below.
Peter Gordon: Star Jaws (Lovely 1977)
On the uptown Lovely records label who also put out sterner avant-garde stuff by Alvin Curran, Gordon Mumma and Robert Ashley. All these 10 Post-Punk records are distinctly European, like an unfunny-era Woody Allen movie. This one is no exception. The killer track on this is the semi-daft ‘Intervallic Expansion’ which floors everyone I play it to and sounds like a Canterbury outfit (think The Soft Machine, Caravan etc) on a Jazz Funk tip. Almost like Teletubbies music (I bet the guy who scored that is some Mike Batt-esque 70s wash-up with a rural studio in Stratford-upon-Avon). The dance guys love this track. Wonderful. Why such terrible inconsistency Peter?
Polyrock: Polyrock (RCA 1980)
I searched for this record for ages and then was disappointed when I found it. I’m actually listening to it now, and its GREAT! That’s nice. The reason for my interest was that Phillip Glass and Kurt Munkasci (his engineer) produce it. I think Phillip Glass is cool, and I hate The Wire’s knee-jerk line that the hairier guys like La Monte and Terry Riley are somehow more valid than Phil. If you want hairy, check out Phil’s heavy early recordings on Chatham Square. I have a number of these and they’re rock hard. I’ve always respected Brian Eno for sticking to his guns and defending Phillip Glass. Glass was the guy who really started pushing the amplified thing and the Rock textures (yeah I know La Monte had a “jet-plane roar” of his own). But unlike La Monte who “drew-a-line-and-followed-it”/”arse-froze in-the-sixties” (depending on which person you believe) Phil moved on. He did a fucking opera! I love that Laurie Anderson story about how after Einstein on the Beach everyone she met was “working on their opera”. I’m well up for any Postmodernism if it serves to deconstruct social and cultural boundaries.
Back to the record in question. It’s like a mildly atonal version of The Feelies “Crazy Rhythms”, and hell it’s good. Which brings me to…..
The Feelies: Crazy Rhythms (Stiff 1980)
This is a really tremendous record and one of the rare instances when my affection for music has infected all my mates. As 19 year-olds we would get really stoned and listen to this, A trip as good as the nascent acid-house. Everyone loved it. I was strong-armed into finding copies for loads of people and spent my life taping it under threat. Later Feelies records are also very good. The Good Earth in particular is wonderful. Amazingly I found a lot of entrenched rockist anti-feeling towards the record. There’s almost no dirty feedback on it. Mercer and Million plugged their guitar straight into the mixing desk, so it has an exquisite up-close ‘headphone’ sound. Maybe this record was also vilified for the band’s preppy look, quite sweetly nutty and in a “real” and “street” way, though surely spawning the likes of (yuk!) Ween. Anton Fier went on arty projects like The Golden Palaminos (never delivered as far as I could make out). A classic!
Pylon: Gyrate (Armageddon 1980)
Pylon were from Athens Georgia, progeny of the same scene that gave us the B52s, R.E.M and Love Tractor (anyone?). There are quite strong comparisons with them and the B52s. Drop the B52s slightly off-putting NOO WAVE personality shtick and mix in a little Neu! and you get Pylon. I’ve always believed (perhaps erroneously) that the New Zealand bunch got as much out of Pylon as they did The Feelies. (Back to work Jon!) Pylon are ripe for re-discovery, the whole day-glo PP zeitgeist is incredibly Pylon. Pylon Pylon Pylon Pylon. Also great is the ‘Cool’ 10” EP and their swansong LP Chomp which I’ve unaccountably mislaid. As with all these records, if they were reissued tossrags like Q and Mojo would give them *** (three stars out of five) and witter on about historical specificity and their status as minor curios. IGNORE. This stuff is awesome. I once sent Pylon a postcard in 1990, I wonder if they got it?
Glenn Branca: Lesson One (99 1980)
Glen’s classics got buried in Ed Bahlman’s 99 personality problems for years. Ascension has just got a re-issue it’s a very STRONG record. It’s a piece of ART, right down to the Longo cover. Also great, a bit less strident and maybe more approachable is Lesson One which is like a cleaner Sonic Youth circa Daydream Nation and the gay twin of Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio. Branca is very cool.
Y Pants: Y Pants (99 1980)
Here’s another 99 records classic. The Y Pants are nice. They meet every year on each-others birthdays. They’re New York’s answer to the Raincoats with better production. Instruments used here include Toy Piano and Baritone Ukelele. Branca did this record (not Bahlman) and I believe it’s been reissued with other Y Pants stuff on a CD recently. So check it out….
DNA: A Taste of DNA (Rough Trade 1981)
Utterly brilliant EP. No Wave at it’s most inspired and infectious. Blonde Redhead, the track gets a particular mention……er, because its really good!
Arto/Neto: Pini Pini (Ze 1979)
Subject of a famous anecdote in which Blixa “swamp-rat” Bargeld accosts Arto “then grown-up” Lindsay after a NYC Neubauten gig and screams (distorting smack-tortured face) “I have Pini Pini.” The quote wrongly relayed in one un-namable publication (The Wire) with the record title in question as “Penny Penny”.
What a mad record! Neto (who he?) delivers a bizarre story about a woman (the Pini in question) getting married to a “bull-cow’. All the while Arto is having random epileptic convulsions on his guitar in the background. There’s a secret partner to this record on Marion Brown’s Geechee Recollections LP. Get your coat and get hunting!
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Many records ommitted (wan tes me! you wind up ded!) but the aforementioned deemed apposite. You lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky, people. Altogether to the tune of SPAM: "Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog! Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog!"
Posted by Woebot at May 28, 2003 10:39 AM