“…. Do you have records you can’t get enough of, even after you’ve heard them a thousand times before? Ramones Leave Home, Wire Pink Flag, Brian Eno Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), Zombies Odyssey and Oracle, La Monte Young Well-Tuned Piano, The Shaggs Philosophy of the World, Damon Song of a Gypsy, Fallen Angels It’s a Long Way Down, Velvet Underground Velvet Underground, Guided By Voices Bee Thousand, P.M Dawn. Jesus Wept, Jackson C. Frank Blues Run the Game, Fairport Convention Liege and Lief, Linda Perhacs Parallelograms, 13th Floor Elevators Easter Everywhere, Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul, Ornette Coleman Dancing in Your Head, Albert Ayler Spiritual Unity, Captain Beefheart Safe as Milk, Damned Damned Damned Damned, Pink Floyd Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk Son of Bazerk, The Millennium Begin, The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour (US version), Love Forever Changes. But ask me tomorrow and you might get a completely different list. …”
Dust & Grooves
Tag: Music
Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City – Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77
“This is the 20th anniversary 2015 expanded edition of one of Soul Jazz Records earliest definitive releases: Nu Yorica: Culture Clash In New York City – Experiments in Latin Music 1970-77, a stunning and ground-breaking collection of music, bringing together Latin, Soul, Jazz, Funk and more from the melting pot of New York City in the 1970s. Out-of-print for more than ten years, this new edition has been fully digitally remastered with new tracks. Nu Yorica! is one of Soul Jazz Records most critically acclaimed albums of all time. The album features seminal Latin artists such as Eddie Palmieri, Joe Bataan, Machito, Ocho, Grupo Folklorico, Cortijo, Ricardo Marrero, Cachao and many more. …”
Holland Tunnel Dive
Discogs
amazon
YouTube: Soul Jazz Records Presents Nu Yorica! Culture Clash In New York City: Experiments In Latin Music 1970-77 17 videos
Mink DeVille – Full Concert – 06/07/78 – Winterland
“… Most of the best material from his early albums is present here, including ‘Spanish Stroll,’ ‘Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl,’ ‘Guardian Angel,’ ‘Cadillac Walk,’ ‘Steady Drivin’ Man,’ and ‘Soul Twist.’ He gives a memorable vocal performance on a number of these songs, especially, ‘Soul Twist.’ … By the late-1970s, he had formed his own band, entitled Mink DeVille, which operated as a group and as a musical foundation for the songs DeVille was writing and singing. They quickly gained acceptance by the punk and alternative music scene, which revolved around New York’s legendary CBGB club. After doing three songs on the indie compilation, Live At CBGBs, Mink DeVille was signed to Capitol Records and produced by legendary Phil Spector/Wall-Of-Sound arranger, Jack Nitzsche. DeVille had an affinity with the classic Spector recordings and the music of the Brill Building, and he also had a deep love of Latin, blues, and folk music. …”
YouTube: Full Concert – 06/07/78 – Winterland 40:59
Oh Bondage, Up Yours! – X-Ray Spex (1977)
“Strictly speaking, X-Ray Spex is a British punk band, not an American riot grrrl act. That being said, it’s hard to talk about Riot Grrrl without talking about the band’s 1977 single, ‘Oh Bondage, Up Yours!’ Though X-Ray Spex frontwoman Poly Styrene says the track is more anti-capitalist than it is feminist, it’s become synonymous with the riot movement. A lot of that has to do with its opening line—’Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard / But I think, oh bondage, up yours!’—but it’s easy enough to draw a direct line from Styrene’s guttural wails to similar sounds and sentiments delivered 15 years later by riot grrrl icons like Bikini Kill’s Kathleen Hanna and Bratmobile’s Allison Wolfe and Molly Neuman. Whether she intended it or not, Styrene planted the seed for a movement that would take root and blossom more than a decade later.”
AV Club
W – Oh Bondage, Up Yours!
YouTube: Oh Bondage, Up Yours!
Un Peu De L’Âme Des Bandits – Aksak Maboul (1980)
“In March of 1978, a handful of European prog rock bands performed at a small music festival in London called Rock in Opposition. The event was conceived by the outsider British band Henry Cow, who had found kindred spirits in avant-prog outfits in countries like Sweden, Belgium, and France, and their slogan was, ‘The music the record companies don’t want you to hear.’ For a couple years, RIO became a quasi-formal anti-establishment collective, and the arty Belgian avant-rock band Aksak Maboul joined its ranks as part of a second-wave expansion. At the time, Aksak Maboul were exploding their experimental ambitions, a charge spearheaded by co-founder Marc Hollander. The weird, tangled sophomore album they released in 1980, Un Peu De L’Âme Des Bandits, is just now receiving its first vinyl reissue on the same pivotal independent label it spawned nearly 40 years ago. …”
Pitchfork (Audio)
W – Un Peu de l’Âme des Bandits
bandcamp (Audio)
YouTube: Un Peu De L’Ame Des Bandits [Full Album]
The B-52s – Wild Planet (1980)
“Following the viral success of their first single, ‘Rock Lobster’, off their 1979 self-titled debut album, The B-52s had to prove they were more than just a wacky novelty act. Hailing from Athens, Georgia, the eccentric quintet had already won over New York’s downtown club scene and even inspired John Lennon to write again, but they had yet to get everyone to join their party. The group’s motley mix of surf rock, new wave, girl group and post-punk sounds confused critics and audiences alike, but The B-52s’ sophomore album, Wild Planet, was about to live up to their title of ‘World’s Greatest Party Band’. The B-52s don’t engender the same kind of cultural criticism as, say, Devo, Talking Heads and their other new wave contemporaries, yet they were post-punk pioneers in their own right. With their dissonant jams, absurdist lyrics and kitschy 60s aesthetic, the group ambushed the pop mainstream, and their influence now looms larger than their towering bouffants. …”
‘Wild Planet’: How The B-52s Partied Out Of Post-Punk’s Bounds (Audio/Video)
W – Wild Planet
Spectrum Culture (Video)
YouTube: Private Idaho (Live), Give Me Back My Man (Live)
YouTube: Wild Planet 9 videos
Dial-A-Poem Poets – Big Ego (1978)
“American label set up in 1972 by the poet John Giorno, the earliest releases were exclusively poetry collections of the ‘Dial-A-Poets’ (John Giorno, William S Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Allen Ginsberg, John Cage etc.): ‘In 1961 I was a young poet who hung out with young artists like Andy Warhol, Bob Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, as well as with members of the Judson Dance Theatre. The use of modern mass media and technologies by these artists made me realize that poetry was 75 years behind painting and sculpture, dance and music. And I thought, if they can do it, why can’t I do it for poetry. Why not try to connect with an audience using all the entertainments of ordinary life: television, the telephone, record albums, etc? It was the poet’s job to invent new venues and make fresh contact with the audience. This inspiration gave rise to Giorno Poetry Systems.’ – John Giorno”
Discogs
Discogs: Various – Big Ego
UbuWeb (Video)
Joy Division – Closer (1980)
“If Unknown Pleasures was Joy Division at their most obsessively, carefully focused, ten songs yet of a piece, Closer was the sprawl, the chaotic explosion that went every direction at once. Who knows what the next path would have been had Ian Curtis not chosen his end? But steer away from the rereading of his every lyric after that date; treat Closer as what everyone else thought it was at first — simply the next album — and Joy Division‘s power just seems to have grown. Martin Hannett was still producing, but seems to have taken as many chances as the band itself throughout — differing mixes, differing atmospheres, new twists and turns define the entirety of Closer, songs suddenly returned in chopped-up, crumpled form, ending on hiss and random notes. Opener ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ was arguably the most fractured thing the band had yet recorded, Bernard Sumner‘s teeth-grinding guitar and Stephen Morris‘ Can-on-speed drumming making for one heck of a strange start. Keyboards also took the fore more so than ever — the drowned pianos underpinning Curtis‘ shadowy moan on ‘The Eternal,’ the squirrelly lead synth on the energetic but scared-out-of-its-wits ‘Isolation,’ and above all else ‘Decades,’ the album ender of album enders. A long slow crawl down and out, Curtis‘ portrait of lost youth inevitably applied to himself soon after, its sepulchral string-synths are practically a requiem. Songs like ‘Heart and Soul’ and especially the jaw-dropping, wrenching ‘Twenty Four Hours,’ as perfect a demonstration of the tension/release or soft/loud approach as will ever be heard, simply intensify the experience. Joy Division were at the height of their powers on Closer, equaling and arguably bettering the astonishing Unknown Pleasures, that’s how accomplished the four members were. Rock, however defined, rarely seems and sounds so important, so vital, and so impossible to resist or ignore as here. …”
allmusic
Guardian – My favourite album: Closer by Joy Division
W – Closer
YouTube: Closer (Full Album) 9 videos
Signals, Calls, and Marches – Mission of Burma EP (1981)
“Signals, Calls, and Marches is an EP and the debut release by American post-punk band Mission of Burma. It was released in 1981 by record label Ace of Hearts. The album’s first track is ‘That’s When I Reach for My Revolver,’ which features a singable, anthemic chorus that helped make it one of the band’s most popular songs. Though Mission of Burma’s live performances were characterized by noise and chaos, Signals, Calls, and Marches has a notably ‘cleaner’ sound in comparison to the band’s live performances and subsequent recordings. Marc Masters of Pitchfork called this different sound ‘somewhat misrepresentative’ of the band, as ‘[Producer Richard] Harte’s production cleaned up the band’s brutally loud live sound.’ Guitarist Roger Miller noted that the sound probably helped the band become more accessible, recalling. …”
Wikipedia
Pitchfork
YouTube: Signals, Calls and Marches (Full EP)
Chairs Missing – Wire (1978)
“Chairs Missing marks a partial retreat from Pink Flag‘s austere, bare-bones minimalism, although it still takes concentrated listening to dig out some of the melodies. Producer Mike Thorne‘s synth adds a Brian Eno-esque layer of atmospherics, and Wire itself seems more concerned with the sonic textures it can coax from its instruments; the tempos are slower, the arrangements employ more detail and sound effects, and the band allows itself to stretch out on a few songs. The results are a bit variable — ‘Mercy,’ in particular, meanders for too long — but compelling much more often than not. The album’s clear high point is the statement of purpose ‘I Am the Fly,’ which employs an emphasis-shifting melody and guitar sounds that actually evoke the sound of the title insect. But that’s not all by any means — ‘Outdoor Miner’ and ‘Used To’ have a gentle lilt, while ‘Sand in My Joints’ is a brief anthem worthy of Pink Flag, and the four-minute ‘Practice Makes Perfect’ is the best result of the album’s incorporation of odd electronic flavors. In general, the lyrics are darker than those on Pink Flag, even morbid at times; images of cold, drowning, pain, and suicide haunt the record, and the title itself is a reference to mental instability. The arty darkness of Chairs Missing, combined with the often icy-sounding synth/guitar arrangements, helps make the record a crucial landmark in the evolution of punk into post-punk and goth, as well as a testament to Wire‘s rapid development and inventiveness.”
allmusic (Audio)
Everyone Stopped In Their Tracks – Wire’s “Chairs Missing”
W – Chairs Missing
Genius
YouTube: Chairs Missing 42:36
Punk Scrawled Artist 