“One Step Beyond . . . is the debut studio album by the British ska–pop group Madness, released by Stiff Records. Recorded and mixed in about three weeks, the album peaked at number two and remained on the U.K. Albums Chart for more than a year. The album has received much critical praise. It was ranked 90th in a 2005 survey held by British television’s Channel 4 to determine the 100 greatest albums of all time. … The title track, released as a single, was originally written and recorded by the Jamaican ska musician Prince Buster, and its ‘Don’t watch that, watch this …’ introduction is adapted from another Prince Buster song, ‘The Scorcher’. The track ‘The Prince‘ is a tribute to Buster and a re-recording of the band’s debut single, originally released on the 2 Tone label. Its B-side, ‘Madness’, was also re-recorded for the album. …”
Wikipedia
Guardian – Suggs and Mike Barson of Madness: how we made One Step Beyond (Video)
Discogs (Video)
amazom**
YouTube: Madness – One Step Beyond – Full Album 1 / 15
Watching a Choreographer Build: Trisha Brown’s Unusual Archive
“In a video recorded in 1989, the choreographer Trisha Brown demonstrates a few restless seconds of movement, as dancers in her studio try to follow along. An arm darts across the torso; the legs appear to slip and catch themselves. It happens fast. As the dancers attempt to do as she does, a viewer can imagine how useful the video would be for anyone learning this material. There’s no easy way to explain what she’s doing; you just have to keep watching. In her decades of dazzling experiments with the body, gravity and momentum, Brown invented movement so complex — so capricious yet precise — it could be hard to remember from one day to the next, let alone years later if the work were to live on. …”
NY Times
1969: The Velvet Underground Live – The Matrix, San Francisco
“1969: The Velvet Underground Live is a live album by the Velvet Underground. It was originally released as a double album in September 1974 by Mercury Records. … Spin magazine’s Alternative Record Guide included it in the top 100 alternative albums of all time in 1995. … On October 19, 1969, in the End of Cole Ave. club, Dallas, a fan who happened to be a recording engineer brought along his professional gear; and in November at The Matrix in San Francisco, the band was given permission to use the in-house four-track recording desk. The band were given two-track mixdown tapes from the recordings for reference, but nothing was done with them until 1974, after the band had dissolved and Lou Reed had become well known as a solo artist. …”
Wikipedia
**The Quietus – Low Culture 1: The Velvet Underground Live In 1969***
Discogs (Video)
amazon
YouTube: What Goes On, Beginning To See The Light, We’re Gonna Have A Real Good Time Together, Sweet Jane
Siouxsie And The Banshees – The Scream [Deluxe Edition]
“… The Scream’s contents were nonetheless compelling, not to mention significantly different from anything previously pigeonholed as simply ‘punk.’ Built upon the bedrock of Morris’ tribal, tom-heavy drums and McKay’s guttural, metallic guitar, ‘Jigsaw Feeling’ and ‘Metal Postcard (Mittageisen)’ were stark and monochromatic; the domestic violence-related ‘Suburban Relapse’ (influenced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho) was brutally harrowing; and even the record’s lone cover version – an eerie deconstruction of The Beatles’ ‘Helter Skelter’ – provided little in the way of respite. Contemporaneous critics, however, unanimously doled out five-star praise, and Sounds enthusiastically proclaimed the record to be ‘the best debut album of the year.’ … Four decades on, its primal power still cuts through loud and clear. …”
‘The Scream’: The Primal Power Of Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Debut Album (Video)
Discogs (Video)
amazon
The Jam – All Mod Cons (1978)
“In 1978, to a backdrop of tribal youth cultures and economic crisis, The Jam answered years of snobbish disregard from the London-based punk elite when their aggressive and melodic sound, previously sneered at by the capital’s hip art school set, came of age with the release of their third album, ‘All Mod Cons’. By 1978 The Jam had released two albums of R&B-infused teenage punk to transient acclaim. … This scathing reaction shook main man Paul Weller and sent the band into a period of severe creative drought. Hoping the location would provide inspiration, Polydor hired an isolated country house to record the third album. Unfortunately the fresh air left little impression on the cappuccino-loving Weller and the new material drew a blank with the label. …”
Clash Music
W – All Mod Cons
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: All Mod Cons (Full Album)
YouTube: When You’re Young (Live), Down In The Tube Station At Midnight (Live)
Joyce Theater
“The Joyce Theater is a 472-seat dance performance venue located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City. The Joyce occupies the Elgin Theater, a former movie house that opened in 1941 and was gut-renovated and reconfigured in 1981-82. The Joyce is a leading presenter of dance in New York City and nationally. In 1977, the Eliot Feld Ballet had begun exploring more affordable approaches to presenting its annual season of performances in New York City. Rental costs and house sizes of the theaters available to the company made these seasons financially risky propositions. … Major changes to the structure included the elimination of the original balcony configuration to create a steeply raked seating area on one level, new construction at the rear of the building to provide additional backstage space, and the installation of a 67 x 36 foot proscenium stage with a sprung floor. The completed theater had 472 seats. …”
Wikipedia
Joyce Theater (Video)
YouTube: The Joyce Theater Seat Renovation
Datapanik in the Year Zero 1978-1982 [Box] – Pere Ubu
“Pere Ubu’s troubles with record companies are legendary within certain underground rock circles. In perhaps the most bizarre turn of events, the group’s collected works of 1978-1982 — after being out of print for nearly a decade — were reissued by Geffen as a five-disc box set, Datapanik in the Year Zero. Named after the group’s 1978 EP, the set is arranged chronologically and occasionally substitutes live versions for studio tracks, but that hardly matters — nearly every song the band recorded during the five-year time span is included. In addition to the official Pere Ubu material, the box includes a disc of rare singles from early incarnations of Ubu and other Cleveland-area punk rockers like Rocket from the Tombs, 15-60-75, and Mirrors, which were released on David Thomas‘ independent record label. With this much material, it’s safe to say that the set is a definitive retrospective. However, if you’re simply interested in Pere Ubu, consider the set carefully before investing. Pere Ubu were indeed one of the most innovative and challenging bands of their era, which means that their music is an acquired taste. However, those willing to invest in the box will find a wealth of inventive, hard-edged avant rock & roll. …”
allmusic (Audio)
W – Datapanik in the Year Zero
Discogs
amazon
Archive – Datapanik in the Year Zero: 1975-1982 (Audio)
Book of Days – Meredith Monk (1988)
“Meredith Monk’s films and stage pieces contain visions of the past, particularly visions of her own Jewish heritage, which she uses to make sense of the present. Her early films Quarry (1975) and Ellis Island (1979) are silent, poetic meditations, using spare, black and white images, almost devoid of movement, to convey visions that are both thoughtful and urgent. In Book of Days (1988), her new film (released in two versions, one for theaters and a slightly shorter one for television), she tries to take the concerns and techniques of the earlier films and expand them into a full-length narrative with color and sync-sound. Her techniques do not make the leap into the feature-film format, and the formal devices she adopts do not convey her visions quite as powerfully as the ones she used in her earlier films. …”
The Films of Meredith Monk
Meredith Monk: Book of Days (ECM New Series 1399)
W – Book of Days (Meredith Monk album)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Churchyard Entertainment (Live)
DAF – Alles ist gut (1981)
“Stripped down to the core duo of Robert Görl and Gabi Delgado and with Conny Plank again behind the boards with crisp, focused production, with Alles Ist Gut (Everything Is Fine) DAF turned into an honest-to-goodness German hit machine, as detailed in the 1998 Mute reissue’s liner notes by Biba Kopf. Even more important and impressive was how they did it — keeping the electronic brutality that characterized them, but stripped down to nothing but Görl‘s massive drumming, electronic bass and synth tones, and Delgado‘s deep, commanding singing. The result was and remains massively influential — Nitzer Ebb, to mention one later industrial disciple, would be nothing without this album as a template, while the genre of electronic body music, or EBM, got its undisputed start with the doom-laden death disco here. …”
allmusic (Audio)
W – Alles ist gut
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Alles Ist Gut (full album) 34:49
Marcus Garvey/Garvey’s Ghost – Burning Spear (1990)
“This disc brings together Marcus Garvey, Burning Spear’s debut album, with its dub counterpart, entitled Garvey’s Ghost. The resulting package is one of the pillars of roots reggae, an album packed with thick, heavy grooves and uncompromising religious and political messages. Although this Mango reissue has been criticized as sonically weaker than the Jamaican original, it will sound plenty dread to all but the most critical ears. Songs like the title track, ‘Slavery Days’ and ‘Give Me’ (with its remarkably well-integrated flute part) all tremble with the intensity of Winston Rodney’s dark voice, and some of the dub versions (in particular ‘Black Wa-Da-Da,’ based on ‘The Invasion’) number among the most frightening ever created. There are no sing-along melodies here; Burning Spear has always been more about setting up a relentless groove and using it to get the words across. But that groove is glorious, and it’s more than sufficient to support the significant weight of the lyrics.”
allmusic (Audio)
W – Marcus Garvey, W – Garvey’s Ghost
amazon
Punk Scrawled Artist 