From the desk of Sean Neil, teacher at juvenile hall and founding member of Aa:
"Regarding the inserts... I think that we were inspired by the Three Mile Pilot burlap wrapped version of Chief Assassin to the Sinister when we came up with the idea for multiple inserts, hand made by various artists. We enlisted the help of many of our friends in making 500 unique inserts for the record. A total of 1,000 records were printed, so I feel a bit sad for anyone who got a version after the limited edition version sold out. Our record label had some of their friends contribute as well. I'm gonna only talk about a few of the inserts.
Aron Wahl makes all the major artwork for the band, including album covers and show fliers. You can easily spot his work amongst the inserts. He hand drew, hand dunked in ink, or hand burned all the inserts he contributed. Nadav Havusha made 'My Body is a Temple Where Nobody goes to Pray' pulling the title from an old song we used to play called 'Fate Day'. Dav was always the masterful lyricist. I can remember a band argument we got into over his use of the word faggot in a song. I didn't want him to use that word. Mr. Quintron later had a song called 'French Quarter Faggot, and he defends his use of the word on the back of the album cover. I wish I hadn't been so uptight over Dav's use of the word. All his lyrics were spot on.
Our friend Becca Cohen made the sexy dirty lady insert. She played in a band called Split Me Wide Open, that played the first ever show at our house at 502 Warren. Both her and her band mate Giorgio sang and shook a box of cereal on the albums closing track. Our roommate at the time, Peggy Wang and I, played a one off show after that first show at 502 with Split Me Wide Open. We were called Office Supply, and we basically attacked one another while screaming into microphones and rolling on the ground. That band was the primary influence of her current band The Pains of Being Pure at Heart.
Marisa Jahn (co-founder of the Pond art gallery with Steve Shada) made the America's Next Top Model insert. I loved how she subverted the use of an advertisement for her insert. It reminded me of when we sang the line 'Everybody’s fighting for your attention' on the track ‘Fake War’. Both Marisa and Steve appear in the 'Good Ship' video I shot in Mexico and released with gAame. Sadly, they meet their horrible demise during the video.
John Atkinson made the ‘Ocular Aa Brain’ and then joined the band. We met at a Black Dice show and at the time, he was playing in a band called fuckface2k. When he joined Aa, he initially played his old high school saxophone. John played the saxophone at some of our early shows, but he quickly moved onto to electronics and breakables.
Our friend from Philadelphia, Brendan Greaves, made the see through insert. It's worth a closer inspection as he removed all the A's from the text. He played in a band called Wrists and Pistols, an offshoot of Lucky Dragons, and we all played multiple shows together both in NYC and Philadelphia.
John Dwyer made ‘Garfield Thinking of Boobs’. He informed me that he was really stoned when he came up with the concept. He wanted us to abuse the image in the copy machine, but I thought it looked great pure and clean. I do think we hand drew the Aa on them in green crayon though.
I taped together pages from old biology texts for my insert involving various animal life. We took this idea of multiple inserts to the next level when we had our friends create a music video for each song off of gAame. The band has always been a bit of a collaboration of sorts. Whenever we could we would involve our friends in our shows. We used to start off with a procession through wherever we were playing, and would have our friends march and play along with us. At an early show at Above the Right Bank, we cut off Bonfire Madigan before her set was over. This was an accident and simply bad timing.
Our first show was with Semiautomatic and The Lack, and many more after that. Like magic, all our band fights over names ended and we finally settled on a name that Aron was able to add to the flier. For our early shows, we tried to run all the electronics through one power switch so that we could turn the sound of all at once with the flick of a switch. I think I always fucked up the cables though so we were never able to dramatically drop all the sounds out at sets end.
I was so thrilled to play an early show with the Coachwhips and Guitar Wolf at the Happy Birthday Hideout (now Rubulad). That show led to the record deal with Narnack, who released the vinyl. I think I randomly dropped by the Narnack offices with a demo tape and they soon offered us the chance to play. Coachwhips were insane that night.
Linda Rosenbury played a viola like instrument for the final song. That drone is hers. We had many of our friends play on this final song. We would bring them into our basement studio at 502 Warren (my bedroom) to make whatever noises they could come up with. And then we recorded them chanting over the beat.
I remember when we recorded a song for Kyle Lapidus' daughter called 'Lil' Rama,' we set off fireworks in the basement of 502 to record the sound. I lost my hearing for a few days after that mistake. The song turned out great though, and was released by Luke Fishbeck of Lucky Dragons as a cdr that was reverse shoplifted into stores.
One of my favorite shows we played during this time period was with Japanther at a place called The Chicken Hut. The floors were completely covered with 6 inches of shit. Some guy was moshing while naked during our set, and at one point he crashed into my equipment causing it to drop into the muck. None of my stuff broke. We did have to throw away our clothes though because we couldn’t get the stench off them. Picture the smell, while listening to the music."
Full disclosure: I used to live at 502 Warren Street, played on this record, and attended most of the gigs discussed above.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Aa.
From the desk of Shawn Reed, record label mogul and organ player:
"A Sunday night 2am, post bleak show at a popular warehouse spot in town, something that seems defeating that I am maybe finally immune too for better or wrose, at least it wasn't a gig I performed at. A night of long discussions about going, staying, moving, traveling, confusion, mixed opportunities and limitations. Do I stay in Iowa City for another set of seasons for another year, I'm annoying myself with my flip flopping on the ideas of it. Do I move to New York, Portland, Austin? or do I stay? I'm fearful that miserable feelings related to this place will come back over and over again, but I worry that there is nothing else out there really that is any different even though I know there is. I keep staying because I am already set up, the total living space, cheap rent, practice space, silkscreen/art studio, storage all in one location and integrated into everyday reality no job just tapes, records, music, artwork, and plenty of financial limitations. Haunted in the house that I live in by the space itself, the time of it, the friends going, that major lost love harbored and dissolved in this place and house over years and now just a memory, the possessions themselves, the piles of tapes, records, amps, and artwork. The labor of love for life and all that it has to offer even the natural decay of it. A life dedicated to all that is creative in it more than to itself, to the constant push for prolific output and a never ending desire for more potential and opportunity. Imaginary momentum towards some unknown horizon, patience upon patience, waiting and working, worrying whether its in the making or the place. Like my father in his youth searching for something he never even knew what he was searching for like an instinct for something beyond the instinct. The feeling is limited, getting older in a Midwestern college town, near where I grew up, but with enough traveling and endless touring under my belt to know the road as well as anything. Changed by it for better or worse, addicted to the inspiration and humiliation of it. Endless horizons often ending at epic ocean views, amazing shows, the meeting of minds, and also broken vehicles, empty rooms, limitation, and harsh realitys.
I pluck away melodies on a bass guitar while I write this, something I have tried to write or sum up before but never could and still might not accomplish now. This one simple riff on a couple of strings speaks for more in my mind then I can even remotely speak for here in words. Sketching out ideas for new Wet Hair songs, bass parts to record onto four track tape to play over live. I'll probably stay in Iowa City another year just to do this band, Wet Hair. I've stayed here for years, to be in a band, to do another tour, to put out another record, to maintain forward momentum for the work that has already been done. Maybe there is nothing outside of me, nothing in me besides these creative instincts. Ryan is staying for his own reasons, stuck in his own confusion and financial limitations, much like my own. Wet Hair spawned out of a few generally miserable years of being lost. What was maintained in all that personal lost was a sense of direction in the spirit of creative act. I just want to see it through, to keep searching for the spirit in it, the potential in it and to realize that potential merging into the moment. I feel like we are getting closer to something, deeper, richer, more imaginative, something with more feeling. We work with spontaneity, years of playing and practicing together to the point of being almost uncritical or unknowing in the conception of songs. We just turn on the gear and start playing and what flows out before us is the result, we play it, practice it, hone it in until it takes the fully realized shape that we see before us, but it still lies outside our knowing our understanding, it just is a result. The visuals seem too much of the same way and just as much from the world, drawn from everything, anything and all experience. Wet Hair is changing it is always changing, we are getting better at it, being a two piece band, 4 hands, two minds. I had no idea when I started it solo in the basement by myself it would grow to involve Ryan so fully and sound like this now. A total change in approach and sound to what we were doing before Wet Hair, the maximal changed to minimal. The songs we are writing now, they are becoming more and more personal to me then ever before, they are just as spontaneous but more aware more critical of themselves, they are striving toward a harmony that I can't get to in words. They are getting closer to describing the ideas and feelings in me, less and more abstractly at the same time. They describe this labor of love that I feel in making the songs themselves, them being this conduit to the spontaneity of the experience of life itself. Wet Hair is just a journey, it's part of the journey, it took years and years to get to Wet Hair, and what lies beyond it I'm not sure, hopefully as much and more then what came before. The creative knowledge that grows from the experience, even in the repetition of things, the endless cycle, the natural decay even of a creative endeavor it speaks for itself. It's as much the process as it is the result. It's confusing to think of where audience comes into all of this, seems like to much for this already windy group of words so I'll think about that some other time.
I wonder if I will ever be done searching and wondering...ever be done playing in 'bands' working on 'projects' putting out 'records' going on 'tours'.... probably not, there is to much beauty even in the decay to stop looking for it, seems like I never even made the choice to express it, it just happens.
Playlist: Les Rallizes Dénudés - Romance of the Black Grief and But I Was Different over and over again, for some reason this seems relevant."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Wet Hair.
Irifi (Night People)
1. Blood Spirits
2. I Am The Jackal
3. Magnetic Youth
4. Could Want Nothing
Wet Hair EP (Night People)
1. Forever Young Ever One
2. Machete
3. On The Lilys
4. The Hermitage
Wet Hair CS (Night People)
1. Whitestrobe Void
2. Black Sand
3. Saturns Return
4. Cult Electric Annihilation
The Beach (Night People)
1. Ordinary Lives
2. Mesmerized
3. Hey Chrome
4. Reprise
5. Crucifix In The Waves
6. Radio Machines
7. Gold Chains
Dream (Not Not Fun)
1. Cult Electric Annihilation
2. Black Sand
3. Ordinary Lives
4. Radio Machines/Gold Chains
Glass Fountain (Not Not Fun)
1. Mesmerized
2. Crucifix In The Waves
3. When The Right Time Comes
4. Cold City
5. Stepping Razor (To Heaven's Door)
Beaches is a progressive pop band starring five hot chicks from Melbourne, Australia. One chick is a Dirtbag (full of Spider Vomit), another is my dear friend Antonia from Love of Diagrams:
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Beaches.
In A While b/w Halve (Pukekos)
1. In A While
2. Halve
09/3 // Seattle // Sunset Tavern w/ The Shackles, Del Mar
10/3 // Portland // Holocene w/ A Sunny Day in Glasgow
12/3 // San Fransisco // Hemlock Tavern w/ Nothing People
13/3 // San Fransisco // Amnesia
14/3 // Los Angeles // The Smell w/ Sun Araw, Love of Diagrams
17/3 // Austin // (SXSW) Submerge
18/3 // Austin // (SXSW) Rancho Relaxo
19/3 // Austin // (SXSW) Maggie Maes
23/3 // Athens // Caledonia Lounge w/ Love of Diagrams
25/3 // Brooklyn // Bell House w/ Crayon Fields, Love of Diagrams
27/3 // Brooklyn // Death By Audio w/ Total Slacker, Flight
28/3 // Philadelphia // Kung Fu Necktie w/ Love of Diagrams
30/3 // Washington, DC // Black Cat w/ Partyline, Love of Diagrams
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Black Flag.
Damaged (Unicorn/SST)
1. Rise Above
2. Spray Paint
3. Six Pack
4. What I See
5. TV Party
6. Thirsty And Miserable
7. Police Story
8. Gimmie Gimmie Gimmie
9. Depression
10. Room 13
11. Damaged II
12. No More
13. Padded Cell
14. Life Of Pain
15. Damaged I
"Teenage Jesus and the Jerks bit the dust in mid-'79 after a torrid European tour featuring a wheelchair bound Lydia Lunch, Jim Sclavunos on bass and Lydia's then-squeeze Johnny O'Kane on drums (in lieu of regular pounder and loose-cannon Bradly Field). Having sonically expressed so much about sheer terror in a corpus adding up to so few total minutes, it seemed that the group was cut down in its prime simply for the sake of sheer nihilism. After Lydia finished the sessions for her bizarre, almost torchy debut solo album Queen of Siam (ZE Records, 1980), she set about forming a new combo with Sclavunos on drums and added ex-Contortions bassist George Scott (who appeared on said solo album under the pseudonym 'Jack Ruby' in an allusion to his defunct '77 hard rock combo named after the famed assassin) along with guitarist Michael Paumgardhen and multi-instrumentalist Pat Irwin to make 8 Eyed Spy.
After debuting in Fall '79, the band lasted shy of a year, but packed a huge musical wallop, as evidenced on their classic, posthumous Live cassette release on New York City-based proto-indie ROIR Records. Operating in a totally different and more mature musical mode than previous Lydia Lunch projects, 8 Eyed Spy fused Beefheartian discord with Surf music and roots-rock earthiness while retaining the bleak lyrics and monotone caterwaul expected of their anti-charismatic front person. The Spy is undoubtedly a rock and roll band - hot, energetic, dirty and emotional. Their songbook included furious and scabrously performed covers of songs by the likes of Bo Diddley, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Jefferson Airplane and the Strangeloves' galloping 'I Want Candy' (beating Brits Bow Wow Wow to the punch by two years), but don't get the wrong idea here, kids: 8 Eyed Spy wasn't some fogey-ish '60s revival group - when it came to original material, this quintet delivered some truly gnarly, harrowing skronk! On the ROIR tape, ditties like 'Frantic', 'Love Split With Blood' and 'Boy Meets Girl' careen with berserk discord as the guitars pile up in a contrapuntal/polytonal gridlock on top of Jim Sclavunos' busy, angular drum frameworks. On many of the tunes, Pat Irwin (at the time concurrently playing in modernistic, Surf-influenced instrumental outfit The Raybeats with George Scott and fellow Contortions alums Jody Harris and Don Christensen) drops his axe and blows some piquant alto saxophone lines over the whole seething mess. There's a grungy, barwalking feel to the honking horn playing on songs like 'Sorry for Behaving So Badly' and 'Lazy in Love' which really expanded the tonal possibilities of the unit. Lunch is particularly effective as a vocalist when she really lets it rip, almost losing control on the cruelly spiteful dirge called 'Looking For Someone'.
By the Fall of 1980, after a string of killer New York City dates and some European touring, Lydia abruptly quit the band, remarking accusing Irwin in particular (who would later be seen mugging away in the B-52s corny 'Love Shack' and 'Meet The Flintstones' videos!) was trying to push the music into a more polished and cozy commercial Pop direction. To hammer an ominous nail into the coffin, bassist George Scott died of an allegedly accidental heroin overdose on August 8, 1980, pretty much insuring the end of the project. The four remaining members briefly regrouped later that year to record a few over-produced and ineffectual versions of some of their original material, bundling those tracks with a side's worth of live stuff to muster a forgettable eponymous album released in 1981 on UK-based Fetish Records.
The far-superior and vastly more energetic Live release seems to be culled from (perhaps) three separate shows. The versions of 'Sorry For Behaving So Badly', 'Innocence', 'Boy Meets Girl', 'Swamp Song', 'Run Through The Jungle' and 'Motor Oil Shanty' spring from the final live gig at Hurrah's, in New York City on August 3rd, 1980. Video footage of this particular performance surfaced on Lydia's recent Video Hysterie DVD, originally shot by video artist Paul Tschinkel for his defunct NYC cable access show Inner Tube. 'Looking for Someone', 'Ran Away Dark' and 'Frantic' are from a San Francisco gig at Mabuhay Gardens (featuring opening acts Johanna Went - the awesome, uber-messy performance/sound artist - and early-industrial junk-metal percussionist Z'ev) on February 9, 1980. The Bay Area-based video company Target Video filmed this particular gig and it appeared on a long-out-of print VHS video compilation. I'm not sure where or when the remaining quartet of tracks came from, but they sure sound great. All of the audio here was 'reprocessed' (i.e. mostly likely re-eq'ed) by dB's frontman Chris Stamey and the final product was released in late 1981.
Lydia Lunch continued on soon after to lead combos like the quasi-blues Devil Dogs (not the garage band, folks) and the Los Angeles-based death-rock band 13.13 (arguably her finest purely musical achievement) before concentrating on her solo music and spoken word work, amongst many other disciplines. Rock-solid axe-man Michael Paumgardhen would play briefly in Lydia's Devil Dogs and on one track appearing on Richard Hell's R.I.P. anthology before dropping off the No Wave map. Multi-talented Jim Sclavunos - who also was a member of such no-wave related acts like Information, Red Transistor and Beirut Slump - went on to some notoriety in Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds as well as playing in many other acts, including the recently reincarnated - and re-slain - Teenage Jesus line-up. Pat Irwin works steadily in the movie biz, supplying soundtracks to various films and cartoons. Like most of the classic No Wave ensembles, 8 Eyed Spy wasn't built to last, but rather existed to create something brilliantly urgent, jarring and incendiary.
Weasel Walter, Brooklyn, 3/1/10"
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, 8 Eyed Spy.
Live (ROIR)
1. Diddy Wah Diddy
2. Love Split With Blood
3. Sorry For Behaving So Badly
4. Innocence
5. Boy Meets Girl
6. Swamp Song
7. Run Through The Jungle
8. Motor Oil Shanty
9. Ran Away Dark
10. Lazy In Love
11. Looking For Someone
12. Frantic
13. Maintaing My Cool
I did not meet the members of Golden Triangle recently, it would appear.
OJ and I actually met many years ago at The Right Bank. It was a bar on Kent and Broadway, probably best remembered for the Lightning Bolt gig that is documented in the Power of Salad (if you look closely at the video you can see my glasses get knocked off my face by some drunk asshole). OJ's old band Mob Stereo played a gig there with Ferrari Testarossa one night, during which I ran out into the crowd and knocked some chicks' beers onto their boobs (although less intentionally than I am making it sound). We always had a special bond as our names are similar (there was also an NJ in Mob Stereo, although we didn't share the same bond).
Carly is a great photographer, and don't let the fact that she is super hot intimidate you.
Cameron and Vashti run the Live With Animals space, and the studio they share there with Raul de Nieves is one of the more calming rooms I've had the pleasure of entering. Surrounding yourself with beauty can actually add time to your life, so I will be toasting them with all those extra moments.
Alix scares me a bit, I'm not sure if I like it but anything that gets you outside of your comfort zone, etc.
I first met Jay High at some GoGoGoAirheart gig, I think. He has a great last name but he's a ginger so it must be tough going out there. He didn't play on this tape, but best of luck to you bub.
To my knowledge, the information contained on this cassette has been kept secret from the general public until now. OJ seems to recollect the era as being particularly debaucherous:
"Ok that show where the tape was recorded was at Gavin Brown's Passerby Gallery for Useless Magazine. It was the last show ever at that space supposedly. We just set up a mic in the back of the room and pressed record. It was actually the first time TraLaLa (our first bass player) ever played the songs -- I think it was the first time she was actually sober. Our friend Micki Pellerano started off the show by performing a zombie cannibal ritual. At one point he pulled out an eel and cut it open to pull out its heart, and proceeded to devour it and share it with everyone around him -- I even took a bite. Everyone remembers that that eel smelled like a giant dirty ass, though. It threatened to clear the room, but everyone stuck around and it was a rad show.
I also have a story of how we got our current bass player, Alix Brown. We had just played a show at Montana's Party Palace with King Khan and BBQ, and rushed over two blocks away to Don Pedro's to play a late show. It was one of those times where the PA didn't work , and everyone's gear was broken, but people were so wasted by then at 3am, that they were just going crazy for no reason. We weren't even playing songs. People kept jumping onstage and at one point someone got in a fight with TraLaLa, but we kept playing because that stuff always happened with her at shows. Well they kept scuffling, and eventually she was being strangled by a mic cord. Long story short -- she bashed someone with her bass and took off -- and we had to stop the show. We didn't see or hear from her for 8 months after that. We heard rumors that she smashed someone's face with a glass and nearly severed 3 of her fingers that night as well. Anyway, we asked Alix Brown to play bass shortly after this night as we had shows lined up.
This story may be old to some. We were on tour with Knyfe Hyts in early 2008 when we stopped for our show in a town-not-to-be-named. Show was ok -- the weirdness happened afterwards. Locals were warning us of an old abandoned factory where they made pencils, but is now used to hide dead bodies. Then we were offered some rollie cigarettes that may have been laced with I-don't-know-what since all the guys started feeling weird and lethargic and hallucinogenic and feeling messed up -- a couple of us got sick and started vomiting -- and smoking those rollies was the only common denominator. Then as the night wore on, and it was time to leave the venue, some guys offered us a place to crash, but they also strangely offered a separate house for the girls and we were like, 'noo -- sorry, we wanna stay all in one house'. So we all end up in this messed up decaying house, through the kitchen which had a pot of week-old dry mac n cheese on the stove. One guy at the house was like, 'hmmm, I'm gonna add some water and it'll be cool' so he added a cup of water and started stirring up this mess and they showed us to this room with 5 bare stained mattresses. We were scared to even lay our sleeping bags on them. One dude just kept hovering near the door and offered us mescaline and pills which we politely declined -- but he silently just stayed in the doorway anyway for awhile which was awkward. Finally he creeped us out by saying, 'I'm just gonna stand here all night and watch you pretty faces while you sleep.' Finally he went away and we passed out. We overheard someone coming down the stairs in the middle of the night, and heard him say, 'that was easy... I just had sex!!!' I can't really articulate the creepiness of that moment or remember the other details creepy of that night, so this story may not sound so special to read. Anyways we got up early and split the next day really quickly."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Golden Triangle.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Haunted Fucking.
Muffled Metal (Self)
1. Wooden Sword
2. I Want You
3. Wouldn't Go There Again
4. Front To Back
5. Saturday
6. Taunted Love
7. We Were Lying Down
8. ddrruummss
9. No I Couldn't Tell
Joan Of Arc (Hex Out)
1. Side A
2. Side B
Rare Stuff (Pukekos)
1. All It's Teeth Fell Out And This Had Nothing To Do With Telling The Truth Whatsoever
2. Second Guessing
3. Never Not A Vacancy
4. A Gift To Possess Apocrypha
5. Hex Out
6. I Can't Believe
7. I Can See The Differences
8. I Know Never Know
9. Looking So Lost/Give Yourself Away
10. Never Want To Go Home/Dreamworld
11. Whoo
"James Siegfried (born April 20, 1953) hails from Milwaukee, WI. James was trained on piano from age seven and by his late teens, wound up studying music at a conservatory. His wild keyboard style (informed by dissonant modernists Thelonius Monk and Cecil Taylor) alienated his more conventionally minded instructors. After about a year at school he began blowing saxophone -- a progression inspired by the savage, screaming bathos of Albert Ayler, the subtler bop phrasing of Art Pepper, Lester Young and Charlie Parker as well as the gutbucket funk of Maceo Parker, Fela and various bar-walking R+B honkers. A few years later, the fledgling musical malcontent ditched his studies and joining up with a Velvets/Stooges-style proto-punk band called Death, before splitting to New York City in an attempt to crash the thriving underground jazz loft scene. When James hit NYC in 1976, he was not as well accepted as he'd hoped. Maybe the confrontational outbursts of this overly aggressive upstart were a bit too extreme for the intellectual chin-scratchers in the audience. Maybe his playing was too blatantly raw, unhoned and chaotic for the competitive, dues-minded musicians. Maybe the fact that some bizarre, scrawny white kid from the Midwest was trying his damnedest to infiltrate a predominantly black-identified cultural scene spelled disaster. This lack of welcome possibly embittered James -- in the following few years the issue of race would be unflinchingly referenced (along with plenty of other topics) in interviews as well as on his albums. Obviously James' quixotic energy hit a nerve with a small faction of the jazz contingent, because established players like Bern Nix, Luther Thomas, Joseph Bowie and Henry Threadgill would all eventually pass through the ranks of his various ensembles. Bloodied but unbowed, James hunkered down and studied his saxophone with another young firebrand named David Murray (who would later ascend to the top of the heap of recognition in the jazz world).
Rethinking his approach, James started making the rounds at skuzzy downtown rock clubs like CBGB's. The early punk scene was well in progress, typified by such legendary bands as The Ramones, Suicide and Television. James Siegfried soon made the acquaintance of an equally misanthropic 16 year-old cocktail waitress and renegade from Rochester, NY named Lydia Koch. At some point soon after, the dynamic duo took on the pseudonymous surnames of Chance and Lunch, and the rest is history. A brief black and white movie clip from early 1977 of the two pre-cool icons can be seen in a rare documentary called 'Punking Out': A mute, painfully shy James grins goofily at the camera through huge, dorky glasses while chipper young Lydia, complete with feathered hair, giggles enthusiastically about serving up the Dead Boys her used maxi-pad!
One band from the Max's Kansas City/CBGB's scene that took an increasingly left of center approach was the band China, who would re-christen themselves Mars by the summer of 1977. The group consisted of four enthusiastically non-musical artist-types who took the Warhol/beatnik/Velvet Underground aesthetic and started steadily dismantling it even further, breaking their rock songs down into sheer noise. Mars began sharing rehearsal space with like-minded rock weirdos like The Cramps and a newly formed group called Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. The early Teenage Jesus consisted of Lydia on guitar and vocals, James on saxophone, a Japanese guy named Reck on bass and Cleveland transplant Bradly Field on drum and cymbal. This initial line-up began playing out in mid-'77 and recorded three songs that would be released two years later by ZE Records. The music reflected a primitive but obviously disciplined approach to bludgeoning minimalism consisting of dissonant, pounding repetition and blankly cold shouting. Teenage Jesus pushed the nihilism of punk even further while completely circumventing the comforting rock and roll elements prevalent in most other bands at the time. Pretty soon, another group of inspired incompetents called DNA (a trio featuring Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori) started practicing at the loft. Their own conception was based on deliberately skewed arrangements of brisk, lacerating noise and disorder.
By the end of the year there seemed to be too many egos in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks -- James' sax squiggles were too extroverted for the increasingly monolithic and faceless thud of the Jerks, so James split off to form his own combo. A few people filed through the ranks before the group began to take its definitive shape. James Nares (who directed the hilarious and chaotic 1978 film Rome '78 which featured a cameo by James Chance as a lowly slave boy!) was drafted on guitar. Pat Place, a visual artist who came to New York from Chicago in 1975, wound up wrenching slippery guitar racket with a slide. Reck held the bass chair for a while, but was replaced in December 1977 by George Scott, a tall, lanky surf music aficionado from Iowa who had been gigging with a prototypical no wave band called Jack Ruby. Reck's friend Chiko Hige manned the drums for a spell before both of them decided to head back to Japan, later establishing the long-lived punk/no wave/new wave band Friction. James had been occasionally sitting in with a bar band of transplanted Kansas boys called the Loose Screws and wound up codging their drummer Don Christensen. By early 1978, Nares was replaced by another member of the Screws named Jody Harris. Adele Bertei, who came from Cleveland and had played in a band called Peter and the Wolves with the late Pere Ubu founder Peter Laughner, pounded away noisily on a cheap Acetone organ.
The Contortions began developing a concept that fused brittle, jerky instrumental grooves with careening blasts of atonality. The rhythm section chugged away gratingly as if their prime directive was to substitute rusty razor blades for guitar picks and perform bizarro-world, amphetamine-jitter cover versions of The Meters songbook. Jody's clipped chicken scratch interlocked with George's brutally metallic bass tone and Don's odd, syncopated rhythm patterns to create a frantic foundation, both unnerving and danceable. Pat and Adele's contributions were more expressionistic and asymmetrical -- sharp fragments of sour, pungent sonic commentary filling the remainder of cracks in the sound. On top of the whole jagged musical puzzle James alternately screeched and crooned his own alienated, cynical lyrics or issued forth horrid torrents of saxophone glossolalia. Mr. Chance soon began turning his inner aggression directly towards the audience, issuing vitriolic verbal tirades or leaping into the crowd to smack some complacent bystander in the face. Confrontation became a regular part of the show, adding to the already violent sonic vibrations.
During the spring of 1978, the Contortions notoriety increased steadily while opening up for bands like Suicide, Mars and The Cramps. A pivotal event took place between May 2-6, 1978 as the crème of the Manhattan art/punk/noise bands were presented in a series of concerts at the Soho based Artist's Space gallery. The line-up included The Contortions, DNA, Teenage Jesus, Mars, Theoretical Girls, Terminal, Tone Death, Daily Life, The Gynecologists and Boris Policeband. The press had begun to tag these loosely associated groups with the stylistic demarcation 'No Wave'. At one point in the set James turned his attention towards harassing some unidentified woman when noted rock critic Robert Christgau tried to intervene and cool things out. The scene quickly turned into a bona fide skirmish, James emerging with a cut eye for his trouble. Progressive muso Brian Eno happened to be slumming the downtown scene and caught these gigs. He wound up masterminding a series of recording sessions by the first four units to produce a compilation entitled No New York which was released in November 1978. Although it has become de rigueur for anyone discussing this album to complain about the somewhat flat and muddled recording quality, the Contortions four No New York cuts give ample insight to a raw, feral intensity that would be missing from the later releases.
In the fall of '78 Adele left the fold and James' girlfriend, the notorious downtown scenester Anya Phillips, became the group's manager. Anya quickly involved herself with wide range of the group's affairs including photography (she's responsible for the cover art of these albums) and the cultivation of James' image as a debonair lounge lizard. It would be speculated that their business union signaled the beginning of the end for the band. Tension steadily escalated as Anya encouraged James to set his sights outside of the grungy downtown rock scene. Towards the end of 1978, ZE Records magnate Michael Zilkha supplied James with a large budget to create a disco album. Anya came up with the moniker James White and the Blacks and the band began recording the album Off White. The sessions featured guest appearances by a number of friends. Lydia Lunch (under the alias 'Stella Rico') contributed the distressingly erotic moaning on 'Stained Sheets' as well as some blasting guitar noise stabs on 'White Devil'. Kristian Hoffman, a member of the Sparks-like pop group the Mumps who is listed as 'Tad Among' on the album credits and Anya (a.k.a. 'Ginger Lee') gave their best lounge singer impressions on a version of Irving Berlin's 'Tropical Heatwave'. Bob Quine (who had become known for his utterly manic guitar ejaculations with Richard Hell and the Voidoids) guested on a few tracks. Vivienne Dick, director of the flick 'Beauty Becomes the Beast' featuring Lydia, scraped some violin on 'Bleached Black'. Even Adele Bertei returned long enough to pair off on some superfly-ghetto-race-rap with Ms. Phillips during 'Almost Black'. After the fact, George Scott claimed in print that he kept falling asleep while Off White was being recorded...
The first James White and the Blacks live show took place at Club 57 in New York City on Feb 2, 1979. Although the the Contortions were reaching their pinnacle of popularity in the New York club scene, James seemed to be making plenty of enemies -- for example, an anonymous saboteur ringed up the Village Voice (it wasn't anybody named 'Stella' however) and successfully instructed them to write 'cancelled' across the ad for the show. Local music rag New York Rocker began to document all of this interpersonal baggage as well as the increasingly outre and outspokenly negative behavior of James Chance. During the spring of 1979, several days of sessions for Buy would be recorded and abandoned - in print, James blamed the disaster on the incompetence of the musicians, while the band blamed it on James' technical ineptitude in the producer role. Emotions came to a head when James demanded that the rhythm tracks be re-cut again from scratch and Jody, Don and George decided to take a walk. The band reformed a few days later with Loose Screws/Chinese Puzzle bassist David Hofstra in lieu of George Scott.
At this point, James and Anya demanded that the musicians sign a contract relegating them to 'sideman' status. This reconstituted line-up soldiered on and laid down the final tracks for the album. Meanwhile, George made himself busy by joining John Cale's touring ensemble, as documented on the 1979 live LP Sabotage.
Buy is not considered by the members of the original line-up to be a definitive document (most significantly, Hofstra's neutral fretless bass tone is a far cry from the biting harshness of his predecessor's sound) cuts like 'Contort Yourself', 'Throw Me Away' and 'Bedroom Athlete' burn with plenty of real frenzy to spare. By the way, that's not Adele Bertei on organ (she was long gone by this point) but rather James himself torturing the keys here and there. 'Roving Eye' is a bonafide classic of white funk whiplash (it's hard to believe no one has sampled/stolen the main riff for some pre-fab dance or hip hop track!) Throughout the album, James' vocals set the mood, ranging from the utterly dispassionate to agonized fits of howling and screaming. Although the ragged freneticism of the Contortions live show is somewhat absent from this recording the rhythm section is certainly much better than serviceable and there's plenty of jagged glass guitar raking slathered all over the tracks.
The Contortions embarked on a brief Midwest tour before jetting off to Europe in Spring '79 for what would turn out to be their final show: a single concert in Paris held outside in a tent. The performance approached near-riot status as a cadre of French Communists flung hails of bottles at the stage in protest of some rather indiscreet comments James had made in a local publication. Or maybe it was just a bunch of enthusiastic nihilists, responding in earnest to the Contortions' rumored violence? James and Anya wound up hanging out in France for a while, but the rest of the group were left to find their own way home. By Fall 1979, James Chance/White reappeared fronting an all-new Contortions line-up (featuring Kristian Hoffman on slide guitar and Bradly Field on, um, bongos) in what would soon turn into a rapidly revolving door policy for side persons. James continued to seek out side musicians with more professional chops to fulfill his desire for a slicker group with a faster learning curve.
Off White hit the racks in Europe around mid-1979 and in the US later that year, while Buy saw release in September '79. Jody Harris, Don Christensen and George Scott joined up with multi-instrumentalist Pat Irwin towards the end of 1979 to form a modernistic neo-surf instrumental combo called The Raybeats. Jody also moonlighted in the Lizzy Mercier Descloux band as well as cutting a duo record with Robert Quine the following year. After a stint with Judy Nylon, Pat Place resurfaced in early 1980 with the urban dance/noise beat of Bush Tetras, which also briefly included Adele Bertei. George Scott went on to do double duty with The Raybeats and 8 Eyed Spy (also including Irwin and Lydia Lunch), before dying of a seemingly accidental drug overdose on August 5, 1980. Don Christensen made a few records in the early '80s under the moniker ImpLOG before going on to score cartoon soundtracks and working with Philip Glass. Jody Harris eventually played with John Zorn, The Golden Palominos, Syd Straw, Richard Hell, Kip Hanrahan, Matthew Sweet and others. Pat Place spent a few years in the mid-90s with a reincarnated Bush Tetras after having worked with people like Lydia Lunch and Maggie Estep.
Out of nowhere in February 2001, the Contortions took the stage for two New York shows -- one at The Cooler and the other at Irving Plaza -- with a line-up including James, Jody, Pat and Don. By all reports, the playing was solid and large portions of the sets were dedicated to classic Contortions material. Don't get excited though! It doesn't seem like this brief reunion trip is going any further. Perhaps the revolutionary events of the past should remain in memory, colored vividly by the revisionism of history. People tend to change and most of the time (especially in rock and roll) scenarios resulting from bygone times, places and personal chemistries cannot be merely reenacted like a television show brought to us in progress after a lengthy news report. When most groups decide to reform, the audience usually expects the sublime but is often offered the ridiculous instead. The music of the original Contortions erupted from a New York City that was still exciting, dangerous and full of possibilities. Those halcyon days of artistic insanity are long gone but the musicians remain . . . James continues to refract various musical angles with several groups, Don and Pat have been playing together in in a trio with latter-day Bush Tetra Julia Murphy on bass, while Jody, Don and Dave Hofstra gig about once a month with a singer under the moniker The Band of George.
Weasel Walter, February 2002
Thanks to Pat Place, Don Christensen, James Nares, David Hofstra, David Siegfried, Glenn Branca, Mark Cunningham and James Chance for clarifying details."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Contortions.
Buy (ZE)
1. Design To Kill
2. My Infatuation
3. I Don't Want To Be Happy
4. Anesthetic
5. Contort Yourself
6. Throw Me Away
7. Roving Eye
8. Twice Removed
9. Bedroom Athlete
Off White (ZE)
1. Contort Yourself
2. Stained Sheets
3. (Tropical) Heat Wave
4. Almost Black
5. White Savages
6. Off Black
7. White Devil
8. Bleached Black
I first heard Nervous Circuits in December of 1996. It was a dub of a dub of rough mixes that we listened to on my car stereo, the audio quality left a lot to be desired but that wasn't why we were listening. Leaks were harder to come by in those days, etc.
The VSS were like the Velvet Underground -- not many people saw them or heard the records, but those who did all started bands or labels. This was a different era when to go on tour was literally to take the message to the people. The only way to find out about new bands was to go see them -- if you were lucky enough to know about the show. Zines with ads for the tour would be be hit with delays and not come out until after it was over. If you were out of the loop, you missed it. It was an inscrutable world, and the only way to gain entry was to meet someone who already knew about it.
This record is important, so I asked Sonny Kay to tell its tale:
"Nervous Circuits was written and recorded in the early fall of 1996. The band had relocated to San Francisco from Boulder, and secured a rehearsal space in the Tenderloin, at what was reputedly the 'highest murder rate intersection' in the city, Turk and Mason. We'd been in limbo regarding a record label for quite some time. Our singles had all been issued haphazardly, far later than planned, and with countless aggravating personal strings attached that we just didn't feel like maintaining at that point (ironically, it would seem). I remember sitting at the bar in Bottom of the Hill one night, chatting with Lance Hahn, who was astonished that no one had stepped-up to offer us an LP deal. He did so on the spot and so the album was suddenly destined for release on Honey Bear (essentially Lance's 'wing' of Revolver USA). I believe that was the impetus that really set the wheels in motion.
The band had emerged from a fairly chaotic summer (including supporting Unwound on the west coast with a fill-in guitarist) and, with Josh back in the fold once again, set out writing the album probably sometime in early or mid-August. As I was the sole East Bay resident, I'd ride BART over during rush hour, emerging from the packed train at Montgomery Street where I'd promptly make a beeline for Taco Bell on 6th and Market, my usual meeting spot with Andy. A rock n' roll romantic might surmise that many a great idea was hatched at that Market Street Taco Bell. But in reality, only lice were hatching there.
I think we all perceived the album as being our most concise statement after a series of singles and EP's - although I don't think any of us suspected at that point that it would be the only LP. We'd been wearing our influences on our sleeves (literally, in Dave's case) since the beginning, and tasked ourselves with molding the quintessential hybrid; borrowing liberally from the Birthday Party, Pornography-era Cure, Gary Numan/Tubeway Army, early Public Image Limited, Swans, and The Doors. I don't remember ever sitting down and planning this out - we were all just in the same mindset, thinking like a hive-minded gang at war with the confines of the Ebullition-centric scene which we were struggling to differentiate ourselves from. The indifference towards 'hardcore' that had taken root in Angel Hair really blossomed with The VSS, although we were well aware that 'the kids' who identified with it were the ones coming to our shows. Of course, we knew we had allies - we could sense the boredom and redundancy other people were feeling - not to mention being aware of vaguely similar bands such as Mocket, Satisfact, and Brainiac. I think it's safe to say we felt as though we were fighting our way out of a box - using Rolands and flashing lights to counter the stiflingly dull earnestness of what was in those days called 'emo'. We wanted to inject a cold detachment and aesthetic opacity into what we perceived to be the phony world of 'woe is me' posturing typified by bands like, well, almost anyone on Ebullition, Council, Repercussion, etc. who all just seemed locked in homage to the truly great Rites of Spring.
For my own part, I distinctly remember struggling with the lyrics. Although I feel like I can write on command nowadays, back then it really didn't come easily. I would drive up to the overlook near Lawrence Berkeley Labs to try and clear my head, staring out at the Golden Gate Bridge while tapping my pen on an empty page. A lot of the content, I now realize, was my coming to terms with the frustrating reality of my existence - uprooting myself from the small-town college bubble of Boulder for the added expense and menial employment opportunities of post-graduate life in a big California city. I was striking back at traffic, rent, and exhaustion, and at the same time trying to embrace the precariousness of my/our situation. I mined relationships from years prior for inspiration, and I deconstructed the social fabric of the punk scene we were inevitably a part of. The overall difficulty/object was in how to say things in a manner that wasn't simple to comprehend - I wanted things to be abstract, poetic, and difficult - or at least challenging. Whether they are or not, I don't know. They certainly were to create.
The album was recorded in Denver in late October, culminating with our Halloween-night warehouse performance about 30 minutes after we'd finished mixing it. Ultimately, it was our only record. All I can say it truly represents is a brief window in the lives of four individuals who felt inspired to start with something old in the hopes of ending with something new. Beyond that, it's vague, inarticulate, moody, unpredictable and hopefully a little confusing - everything we meant for it to be."
Dave Clifford also felt compelled to add his two cents:
"Sonny's recollections are definitely very astute, and I look back at the time we spent creating that album as one of the most focused, clear-minded and incredibly inspired recording projects with which I've ever been involved. The thing that still impresses me about it today, despite the flawed, rushed mix and my limitations as a drummer, is that in the writing and recording process it seemed like anything was possible. And, while we were actively trying to create sounds that embodied many of our most bizarre aesthetic aims, it somehow worked without seeming completely hackneyed.
At the time, Andy Rothbard (bass/keyboards) and I lived in a small group house in the southern outer-reaches of San Francisco's forgotten zone, The Excelsior. We were all working grueling day jobs, then immediately proceeding to practice 5 nights a week, for 3-4 hours at a time working up a set of songs for the album. Afterward, Andy and I would sit up late into the night playing records and talking in abstractions about just how to distill certain essences of music into something different. Once, listening to a Stooges CD that suddenly started to skip, I thought, let's make a song that sounds like a skipping disc ('In Miniature').
I still clearly recall another night sitting in my room and hearing a Leonard Cohen record playing in Andy's room upstairs. Muted and transformed by the thick walls, Cohen's gentle acoustic guitar plucking sounded like a rumbling mechanical hum of a thousand synths, his voice like a droning choral lull. That became the foundation of the album's title track droning thud.
All the time in the year or so that we spent composing and ruminating on musical ideas it seemed I never listened to music for the music's sake, but all for a song's mood, how certain sounds smudged into a powerful new and unique voice. Repetition, layering, buried sound effects, rhythmic juxtaposition... we had a screed of odd sonic ideas, and just dove in head-first without hesitation.
The VSS certainly also aimed to revamp the chilly detachment of the post-punk era, inspired both by the faux-earnestness of the (by then) major label Grunge ubiquity and the sniveling of the screamo underground. We'd always felt somewhat looked down upon by the white belt coterie for being Colorado hicks playing what some said was too 'rock', and we brandished our over-the-top musical and visual assertiveness in the faces of the foppish, roll-on-the-ground screaming babies with whom we shared the basement and VFW 'stage'.
At the time, I was very fixated on the writing of Antonin Artaud, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari and a host of other highfalutin philosophers, whose every idea I seemed to try to find a way to apply musically. I was also listening to a lot of 'tribal' rhythm recordings, Balinese gamelan, Bulgarian folk singing, Funkadelic, 60s soul music, et al. Essentially, listening to anything other than what was going on in the contemporary underground. I'd only begun playing drums one year before we recorded the album, and I was hellbent on avoiding the Jesus Lizard-esque trappings that were so predominant in the era. Likewise, we were all very picky in the songwriting process about what was deemed worthy of keeping. While all of us were bringing in a vast array of influences and ideas, every one of us found a way to building upon the most abstract visions and creating something that I still think is pretty unique. I will always remember that time for our completely aligned sense of purpose and aesthetic."
I got this record the day it came out and I still listen to it. My copy sounds sounds great after all these years, and now you can hear it too.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, The VSS.
Nervous Circuits (Honey Bear)
1. Death Scene
2. In Miniature
3. Sibling Ascending
4. Effigy
5. Lunar Weight
6. Conscious
7. What Kind Of Ticks?
8. Chemical In Chemistry
9. Swift Kicks
10. Nervous Circuits
"almost a year ago i had surgery on my foot and they put me under twilight anesthesia, which is where you're not entirely unconscious but you also don't remember beans after the fact. so there i was, lying on the table, waiting for the drugs to take me away while about a dozen people scurry around in scrubs and get ready to break my bones. then this music comes on and i can't believe it because it's this intense, really clangy industrial noise music, and my doctor looks at me and goes 'hey jackie, you like the music we put on?' and all i can think is YOU ARE GOING TO BREAK MY BONES TO THIS? I HAD YOU FIGURED ALL WRONG, BUDDY, YOU ARE TWISTED! the guy always struck me as a who fan. but then the next thing i remember is waking up.
i go home and stay in bed for days. friends come by to say hi and i find myself repeating this story to everyone because i STILL can't believe that the entire room of people could have possibly agreed upon that music. so the next week when i go to the doc's office for my first follow-up i ask him for the band name so that i can listen to more of the soundtrack to my surgery. he goes 'what did you hear?' and i tell him and he laughs and goes 'jack, that was the drugs. we listened to classic rock.'
and i always think of that story now when people bring it up that 'buckets of bile' can be a misleading name for my music (my favorite: 'i was expecting 4 dudes from providence'). i guess deep down i'm not fooling anyone with this home-fried stuff, i'm secretly really all about harsh industrial noise rock."
Ladies and gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Buckets of Bile.
