“Filmed in 1978 and released the following year, Rude Boy captures the Clash and its fanbase right before the band shifted gears away from their punk background and released London Calling, their cross-genre masterpiece. Spliced between the 17 (!) full-length performances is the lolling narrative of Ray (Ray Gange), a dole-cashing, sex-shop employed yob who serves as the band’s roadie during a brief jaunt through Scotland. Ray’s story is the stuff of an Afterschool Special, metonymic of Britain’s youth falling prey to alcoholism and dangerous right-wing ideology, and is filmed in a minimalist, yawn-inducing verité style. The ‘Just Play The Clash’ special feature, which cuts out the dramatic scenes and just shows the concert footage, is a welcome one. While it’s no artistic tour-de-force, Rude Boy makes good some two decades later as an insightful depiction of punk’s collapse. …”
Slant
W – Rude Boy
“Rude Boy”: Late ’70s Clash concert footage mixed with racist right-wing roadie rants
amazon
YouTube: Rude Boy (Trailer)
Month: November 2018
ESG (EP – 1981)
“ESG is the debut EP by American post-punk band ESG. It was released by 99 Records in 1981. The EP received positive reviews from music critics. ‘Moody’ became popular with house DJs, and ‘UFO’ came to be one of the most sampled tracks in hip hop music. Ed Bahlman discovered ESG while serving as the judge for a talent show and became the band’s unofficial manager. Tony Wilson from Factory Records approached the band after a performance at Hurrah in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and three days later they began recording with Martin Hannett. They recorded ‘Moody’ and ‘You’re No Good’ in the first take. Hannett had three minutes left on the master tape, so he had the band record ‘UFO’. … ‘Moody’ was released off of ESG as the band’s debut single. A 12-inch remix single followed, and both versions found popularity at clubs in New York and London. Because of the single’s release through Factory, many New York DJs assumed ESG was a London-based act. Paradise Garage listed the song in its top 50 all-time tracks. It became a foundational track for the emerging house music scene. …”
Wikipedia
40 Years of Dancing: In Conversation with Renee Scroggins of ESG
The Quietus: “It’s Music That Makes You Dance” – ESG Interviewed
YouTube: Moody+REMIX, UFO, Dance, Earn it ESG Hey
Experimental Music: Cage and Beyond – Michael Nyman
“Michael Nyman’s book is a first-hand account of experimental music from 1950 to 1970. First published in 1974, it has remained the classic text on a significant form of music making and composing that developed alongside, and partly in opposition to, the postwar modernist tradition of composers such as Boulez, Berio, or Stockhausen. The experimentalist par excellence was John Cage whose legendary 4′ 33” consists of four minutes and thirty three seconds of silence to be performed on any instrument. Such pieces have a conceptual rather than purely musical starting point and radically challenge conventional notions of the musical work. Nyman’s book traces the revolutionary attitudes that were developed toward concepts of time, space, sound, and composer/performer responsibility. It was within the experimental tradition that the seeds of musical minimalism were sown and the book contains reference to the early works of Reich, Riley, Young, and Glass. This second edition contains a new Foreword, an updated discography, and a historical overview by the author.”
amazon
Concerning Temporality in Music
Book Review: Experimental Music on Your Bookshelf
[PDF] Experimental Music – Library of Congress
[PDF] File:Nyman Michael Experimental Music Cage and Beyond 2nd
The Raincoats – Fairytale In The Supermarket / In Love / Adventures Close To Home (1979)
“Over the course of its career, the band has released four full-length albums; toured extensively early on; was revered by the likes of John Lydon of the Sex Pistols, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, and Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth; and has most recently collaborated live with Angel Olsen. The emotional resonance of The Raincoats’ post-punk sound combined with a preference for inventive originality over standard technique has provided a notorious impact across genres and generations. It mostly began when Birch and da Silva met at Hornsey College of Art, where they were both studying, and started going to punk gigs together. They saw bands like the Sex Pistols, the Buzzcocks, and Subway Sect, but it wasn’t until they saw the Slits play their first gig in London in 1977 that their brains were jolted. …”
40 Years of Fairytales: A Retrospective of The Raincoats
Tidy Tune #73: Fairytale in the Supermarket (Video)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Fairytale in the Supermarket, In love, Adventures close to home
Earth & Stone – Kool Roots: The Classic 1977-79
“Albert Bailey and Clifton Howell were an obscure vocal duo who cut several Jamaican hit singles for Channel One producer JoJo Hookim under the name Earth & Stone in the mid-1970s. Kool Roots, which compiles most of the group’s Channel One output, was originally released in 1978 as a double album (standard vocal mixes on one LP, dub versions on the other) in a gatefold sleeve — an almost unheard-of packaging extravagance for a reggae act at the time. Little more is known about the duo, and they dropped from sight after Kool Roots was released. But the haunting single ‘In Time to Come’ has endured, and this reissue, which combines both LPs on a single CD, shows that Earth & Stone was capable of producing consistently high-quality material. Bailey and Howell’s sweet harmonies are the main attraction, but a good portion of the credit for this album’s success must also go to the Revolutionaries, Channel One’s crack house band. …”
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Earth & Stone – Kool Roots – 1978 (Full LP) 1:06:16
Cabaret Voltaire – Red Mecca (1981)
“It isn’t without reason that Red Mecca is often referred to as one of Cabaret Voltaire’s most cohesive and brilliant records. There are tangible bumpers (the record is buttressed by squealing/wheezing interpretations of Henry Mancini’s music for Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil), so by that aspect there’s a tangible center. And taken as a whole, the record contains all the characteristics that have made the Sheffield group such an influential entity when it comes to electronic music of the untethered, experimental variety that isn’t afraid to shake its tail a little. Unlike a fair portion of CV’s studio output, Red Mecca features no failed experiments or anything that could be merely cast off as ‘interesting.’ It’s a taught, dense, horrific slab lacking a lull. Dashes of Richard H. Kirk’s synthesizer are welded to Chris Watson’s tape effects for singed lashes of white noise, best heard on the lurching ‘Sly Doubt’ and the jolting ‘Spread the Virus.’ …”
allmusic (Audio)
Brainwashed
W – Red Mecca
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Red Mecca [Full Album] 40:20
Clayton Hats
“… In 1986, Clayton Patterson and Rensaa began designing and fabricating custom baseball hats which they sold in the storefront at 161 Essex which they branded as Clayton Hats. The idea to make custom hats came from Clayton instructing Ben Booksinger, a cap maker on Avenue A, to embroider around the cap – off the peak. Clayton realized Ben could make a drawing on his old fashioned embroidery machine when he saw Ben make a copy of a Savage Skull Patch and duplicated it as an embroidered patch. Clayton got Booksinger to embroider Clayton designs on the front and on the sides of the cap. Thus the birth of the Clayton cap- the first designer branded baseball cap. The Clayton cap was the first baseball cap to have the embroidery all around the cap, and had the first signature and label on the outside of the cap. An embroidered signature on a repeated design, and a hand signed label for the custom one-of-a-kind designed caps. As Booksinger gradually retired from manufacturing, Patterson and Rensaa took up the business of embroidering their own designs on hand made hats with a 100-year-old Bonis embroidery machine. The hats, designed by Patterson and made by Rensaa, were immediately popular with artists and were picked up by Elle and GQ. The GQ article by Richard Merkin, named Clayton Hats as one of the two best baseball hats made in America. Some of Clayton Hats’ notable customers included artists Jim Dine and David Hockney, actor Matt Dillon, directors Gus Van Sant and Rob Reiner, the Pet Shop Boys, and Mick Jagger, for whom they designed a custom jacket back piece. …”
W – Clayton Patterson: Clayton hats
Clayton Patterson Brings Back the Clayton Cap With a Little Help From His Friends
Elie: Clayton Patterson Welcomes the Public to His ‘Outlaw Art Museum’
on Essex Street After 10-Year Absence
Punk
“Punk was a music magazine and fanzine created by cartoonist John Holmstrom, publisher Ged Dunn, and ‘resident punk’ Legs McNeil in 1975. Its use of the term “punk rock“, coined by writers for Creem magazine a few years earlier, further popularized the term. The founders were influenced by their affection for comic books and the music of The Stooges, the New York Dolls, and The Dictators. Holmstrom later called it ‘the print version of The Ramones’. It was also the first publication to popularize the CBGB scene. Punk published 15 issues between 1976 and 1979, as well as a special issue in 1981 (The D.O.A. Filmbook), and several more issues in the new millennium. Its covers featured Sex Pistols, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Blondie. Punk was a vehicle for examining the underground music scene in New York, and primarily for punk rock as found in clubs like CBGB, Zeppz, and Max’s Kansas City. …”
Wikipedia
Punk magazine’s John Holmstrom
Punk Magazine
Punk’d: The Seminal Downtown Zine of the ’70s Celebrates an Anniversary
amazon
YouTube: Flashez: Punk Magazine Interview (1977)
The Slits – Typical Girls / I Heard It Through The Grapevine (1979)
“This evening, as some of the world’s most bold-named and beautiful women make their way to the Met Gala in honor of ‘Punk: Chaos to Couture,’ the scene will be a full 180 degrees from what made the original punk promise so compelling for many women: It was about the rejection of popular standards of female attractiveness. Most of the women who self-identified with punk would not have imagined a day when Vogue or any mass magazine would canonize their nonconformist stance. With names like the Muffs, X-Ray Spex, and the Castrators, these ladies were trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the subscribers of those magazines. … Watch lead singer Ari Up perform crazy dance moves in a public park before an unsuspecting group of ‘normals.’ She looks pretty great with her short skirt, boots, red blazer, and long bangs. …”
Watch: The Slits Perform Their Classic Punk-Feminist Anthem ‘Typical Girls’ (Video)
Discogs
YouTube: Typical girls, I Heard It Through The Grapevine
Little Johnny Jewel – Television (1975)
“‘Little Johnny Jewel’ was the first recorded work that the world ever heard of legendary New York post-punk band, Television. The song was released in 1975 by the storied New York City label Ork Records and is a blast of seemingly disconnected avant-garde guitar noodling that as the song progresses, suddenly begin to congeal into a song. The twin lead guitars of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd (who had recently replaced Richard Hell, who after a rift with ever-moody Verlaine had left to form The Voidoids) intertwine, providing an almost counterpoint quality atop the foundation laid by the rhythm section of Billy Frica and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith. … While Television were always lumped in with their punk peers – something easy to do given the time frame that they emerged and that they played the legendary early New York City dive-bar-come-punk club, CBGB with regularity, in many ways Television were both pre-punk and post-punk. They favored slow tempos, clean guitar tones and protracted improvisation. While punk was initially all about speed, brevity, and aggression (both sonic and lyrical), Television were all about languid improvisation and the bizarre poetry of Tom Verlaine‘s lyrics. …”
Song of the Day: Television “Little Johnny Jewel”
Little Johnny Jewel (Part One) b/w Little Johnny Jewel (Part Two)
Discogs
YouTube: Television – Little Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2)
Punk Scrawled Artist 