“Mars was a New York City No Wave band formed by vocalist Sumner (Crane) Audrey in 1975. He was joined by China Burg (née Constance Burg; a.k.a Lucy Hamilton) (guitar, vocals), Mark Cunningham (bass), and artist Nancy Arlen (drums), and briefly by Rudolph Grey. The band played one live gig under the name China before changing it to Mars. They played a mixture of angular compositions and freeform ambient noise music jams, featuring surrealist lyrics and non-standard drumming. All the members were said to be completely untrained in music before forming the band. …”
popsike
W – Mars
YouTube: 3E, 11,000 Volts
Tag: Music
Perfect Lives – Robert Ashley (1983)
“‘These are songs about the Corn Belt, and some of the people in it … or on it.’1 That’s what the man in the Perfect Lives Lounge says as you sit down with your drink, served in ‘a fluted plastic glass, sans ice’. Maybe he says it in Spanish, but you’re not sure. After all, even if you don’t speak a language, you can catch its drift if it’s sung. The Perfect Lives Lounge – let’s just call it The Bar – is sparse, but elegantly decorated. Colour scheme: hints of neon against inky black infinitude, here and there a blush of pink and baby blue. Seven vertical neon strips form The Bar’s sign. As your eyes adjust to the light, everything looks soft-edged, like a 1980s video or television broadcast, occasionally flecked with static. Come to think of it, from a certain angle, The Bar looks like a television studio set. Exact dimensions are uncertain; windows between interior and exterior dissolve rhythmically into one another. The man – Corn Belt Guy – is standing in the middle of the room. He has a full head of fine white hair, dusted with glitter, which is neatly parted down one side. His lips shine with gloss. He wears big tan-tinted glasses. …”
frieze: American Opera
W – Perfect Lives
Productions – PERFECT LIVES 1977-83
Lovely: Titles
YouTube: Perfect Lives 1 The Park Privacy Rules, 2 The Supermarket Famous People, 3 The Bank Victimless Crime, 4 The Bar Differences
Young Marble Giants – Colossal Youth (1980)
“There really ought to be more bands like Young Marble Giants, which doesn’t mean that there ought to be more bands that sound like Young Marble Giants. They came out of the nowheresville of Cardiff, Wales; they didn’t particularly have a local scene to buoy them up, or a niche to fit into. What they had was an aesthetic that was totally theirs, a sound and style that essentially had no antecedents. Play any six seconds of any YMG song and you’ll know exactly who you’re listening to, and probably be thunderstruck by its unsentimental beauty of tone. In a year when everyone was trying to make a big noise– but isn’t that every year?– YMG switched tactics, forcing their audience to lean in to hear them. It’s not simply that they were quiet, although substituting a drum machine that sounded like it had a thick quilt on top of it for a human drummer was a radical move at the time. They weren’t even all that quiet– they were just in love with negative space, and their lyrics were so much about things unsaid that the space was formally appropriate. …”
Pitchfork
Guardian
W – Colossal Youth
Genius
YouTube: Brand New Life (Live), Colossal Youth (Live)
YouTube: Colossal Youth -Full Album-
Einstürzende Neubauten – Kollaps (1981)
“Includes a large format 12-page booklet. Originally released in 1981, Kollaps is the seminal, form-destroying debut album by German industrial pioneers Einstürzende Neubauten (trans. ‘Collapsing New Buildings’). The band’s use of junk metal, power drills, jackhammers and other surprising instrumentation would come to define their challenging and continually inventive career, making them not only one of the originators of industrial music, but one of the world’s most influential and far-reaching forces at the intersection between avant-garde and rock music. Formed in 1980 in the wave of the Dadaist movement Die Geniale Dilletanten, after a series of devastating live performances and personnel changes (one of which briefly involving electronic musician Gudrun Gut), the band’s line-up cemented itself with core members Blixa Bargeld, F.M. Einheit (previously of Hamburg-based post-punk band Abwärts) and N.U. Unruh. On Kollaps, a violent collision of urban primitivism and punk sensibilities, the trio declared war on every conventional way of listening, combining an intense mess of atonal guitar drones with brutal scrap metal percussion. At a time in Germany in which the wall encircling West Berlin transformed the city into a state-subsidized, near-paradisiacal freak-enclave for artists, Einstürzende Neubauten offered cathartic cascades of noise, employing steel parts, tin drums, drills, hammers, saws and untuned electric guitars, all crowned by Bargeld’s bloodcurdling screams and feverish, apocalyptic texts. Kollaps, with its atonal essence, embodied exactly what the title suggested: decay and destruction, illness, doom and death. Years later, with the fall of the Berlin wall behind it, Kollaps still sounds as radical and extreme an artistic statement as ever.”
Forced Exposure
W – Kollaps
allmusic (Audio)
YouTube: Kollaps (Full Album)
BAM
“BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) is a multi-arts center located in Brooklyn, New York. For more than 150 years, BAM has been the home for adventurous artists, audiences, and ideas—engaging both global and local communities. With world-renowned programming in theater, dance, music, opera, film, and much more, BAM showcases the work of emerging artists and innovative modern masters.”
BAM
W – Brooklyn Academy of Music
NYT: Brooklyn Academy of Music
YouTube: That’s So New York: Brooklyn Academy of Music 150th Anniversary
Freedom of Choice – Devo (1980)
“Freedom of Choice is the third studio album by the American new wave band Devo. It was originally released in May 1980 on the label Warner Bros. The album contained their biggest hit to date, ‘Whip It‘. … According to the band’s commentary on The Complete Truth About De-Evolution DVD, the lyrics of ‘Whip It’ began as a tongue-in-cheek anthem for then-president Jimmy Carter. The lyrics were also inspired by Norman Vincent Peale‘s 1952 book The Power of Positive Thinking and the ‘can do philosophy’ espoused within. Devo co-songwriter and bass guitarist Gerald Casale also told Songfacts that the lyrics were written by him ‘as an imitation of Thomas Pynchon‘s parodies in his book Gravity’s Rainbow‘. …”
Wikipedia
Pitchfork – 33⅓: Devo’s Freedom of Choice
YouTube: Whip It, Freedom Of Choice
YouTube: Freedom of Choice – Full Album Live – 12 videos
Laurie Anderson – O Superman / Walk The Dog (1981)
“‘O Superman’ is a 1981 song by performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson. … In writing the song, Anderson drew from the aria “Ô Souverain, ô juge, ô père” (O Sovereign, O Judge, O Father) from Jules Massenet‘s 1885 opera Le Cid. She got the idea after seeing the aria performed in concert by African-American tenor Charles Holland. The first lines (‘O Superman / O Judge / O Mom and Dad’) especially echo the original aria (‘Ô Souverain / ô juge / ô père’). Susan McClary suggests in her book Feminine Endings that Anderson is also recalling another work by Massenet, his 1902 opera Le jongleur de Notre-Dame. The opera is one in which the arms of the mother—the Virgin Mary—embrace/bless the dying Rodrigo. Overlaid on a sparse background of two alternating chords formed by the repeated spoken syllable ‘Ha’ created by looping with an Eventide Harmonizer, the text of ‘O Superman’ is spoken through a vocoder. A saxophone is heard as the song fades out, and a sample of tweeting birds is subtly overlaid at various points within the track. The two chords of the song are A♭ major and C minor, the repeating ‘Ha’ syllable (a C note) acting as a drone. The song’s introduction consists of a repetition of the ‘O Superman / O Judge / O Mom and Dad’ stanza. …”
Wikipedia
O Superman — Laurie Anderson’s experimental hit proved to be uncannily prophetic
Laurie Anderson, Terry Riley, John Zorn (Video)
Selective Synthesis: “O Superman” (Video)
Genius (Audio)
YouTube: O Superman [Official Music Video] (Live)
YouTube: O Superman / Walk The Dog
Bush Tetras – EP Rituals (1981)
“In New York in the late ’70s & early ’80s, the Bush Tetras blazed brightly in the sweaty clubs of the Lower East Side, playing music that was a blend of funk rhythms & dissonant guitar riffs. Lead guitarist Pat Place had been the original guitarist & one of the founding members of the No Wave band The Contortions. With the Bush Tetras, she continued to pursue some of the musical ideas she had explored in that band, themes of driving rhythm & nihilistic trance…hypnotic, tribal, & dirty. Together with vocalist Cynthia Sley they produced the most distinctive aspects of the Tetras sound. Sley’s half-spoken, half-sung vocals, often repeating simple phrases over & over again, creating a hypnotic monotony similar to Place’s guitar rhythms. The Bush Tetras toured with the Clash & struck up a friendship with Topper Headon that lead to his producing this, the Rituals ep on Stiff Records in 1981. The Bush Tetras on Rituals were: Cynthia Sley – vocals; Pat Place – guitar; Laura Kennedy – bass; & Dee Pop – drums. …”
Digitalmeltd0wn
YouTube: Can’t Be Funky, Funky Instrumental, Cowboys in africa, Rituals
Patti Smith Group – Full Concert – 05/11/79 – Capitol Theatre
“Personnel: Patti Smith – vocals. Lenny Kaye – guitar, vocals. Richard Sohl – keyboards. Ivan Kral – bass. Jay Dee Daugherty – drums. Setlist: 0:00:00 – Privilege (Set Me Free) 0:04:01 – Stage Banter 0:04:43 – So You Want To Be A Rock ‘N’ Roll Star 0:12:51 – Stage Banter 0:13:52 – Dancing Barefoot 0:18:39 – I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry 0:19:24 – Redondo Beach 0:23:57 – Stage Banter 0:25:07 – Revenge (aborted) 0:28:46 – Stage Banter 0:30:06 – 5-4-3-2-1 0:32:55 – Stage Banter 0:33:45 – Citizen Ship 0:39:06 – Ask The Angels 0:42:25 – Crowd Ambience 0:43:19 – Poppies 0:53:31 – Lenny Kaye Intro 0:55:44 – Secret Agent Man 0:58:16 – Wave (incomplete) 1:00:22 – Revenge (take 2) 1:05:53 – Stage Banter 1:06:54 – Pumping (My Heart) 1:10:55 – Mr. Tambourine Man 1:14:34 – Broken Flag 1:19:45 – Stage Banter 1:20:59 – Till Victory 1:24:25 – Ain’t It Strange 1:34:42 – Cold Turkey 1:38:56 – Because The Night 1:42:40 – Stage Banter 1:43:15 – Frederick 1:49:12 – Seven Ways Of Going 1:56:55 – Stage Banter 1:57:36 – Gloria 2:03:39 – Encore Applause 2:07:14 – Pledge of Allegiance / Star Spangled Banner / My Generation 2:15:15 – feedback / crowd ambience”
YouTube: Full Concert – 05/11/79 – Capitol Theatre
Art Bears – The World As It Is Today (1981)
“If you thought Henry Cow was a pretty political band to start with, you may be even more taken aback by the Art Bears, which was put together following Henry Cow‘s demise by former Cows Chris Cutler (percussion), Fred Frith (guitar, violin), and Dagmar Krause (voice). On The World As It Is Today and its predecessor, Winter Songs, the Art Bears move away from the long-form art rock of Henry Cow and get much, much more politically explicit: song titles like ‘The Song of the Dignity of Labour Under Capital’ and ‘The Song of Investment Capital Overseas’ almost sound like Monty Python gags today, but if any humor was intended it was clearly meant to be mordant. Frankly, the lyrics are so overwrought and portentous that it’s hard to take them seriously. But the music is something else again. Cutler and Frith are natural collaborators; Cutler‘s drumming always rides a very fine line between the scattershot and the funky, while Frith bounces his horror-show guitar noise and carnival piano off of Cutler‘s grooves with manic abandon and fearsome inventiveness. And Krause‘s singing is just as inventive; she whoops, croons and screams her way through the density of Cutler‘s lyrics without a hesitation or misstep. Easy listening it isn’t, but it’s sure worth hearing. Frith fans, in particular, should consider this album a must-own.”
allmusic
W – On The World As It Is Today
Genius
YouTube: The world as it is today 31:24
Punk Scrawled Artist 