ArtRock
New York and No Wave.
- Audio: The Velvet Underground & Nico. "European Son" in The Velvet Underground & Nico, Polygram ( 1967/1996)
The year 1967 is usually considered foundational when discussing Art Rock. Partly because it coincides with the release of two classics as different as Sgt. Pepper's, by the Beatles, and the debut album by the Velvet Underground, led by Andy Warhol. And although the term designates an admirable desire to broaden the horizons of the rock music genre, most of the time it is applied to bands showing more or less influence by the plastic arts, or it is a pretentious exercise in self-legitimation by a complex-ridden form of popular culture.
However, this podcast intends to take a look at a paradigmatic case: the New York of the second half of the 1970s, where the thriving creative scene would lead to the appearance of No Wave, an interdisciplinary phenomenon arising out of the fertile community of artists based in the city at the time. No Wave was brimming with filmmakers who shared the same premises of immediacy and nihilism as the musicians, many of whom appeared in films by James Nares, Vivienne Dick or Beth B.
But here we will focus more on the sound aspect, because many of the period’s witnesses, among them Beth B herself, found the emerging musical scene to be more vital and open than its counterpart in the visual arts. This was after all the period in which Dan Graham, another regular, would say that, unlike music, visual art was far from being able to express transcendent emotion.
It is unlikely that any of the artists represented below would take kindly to the name Art Rock. In fact, Lydia Lunch kicked out one of her musicians in Teenage Jesus for daring to conceive of the group in these terms. Nonetheless, it is useful for bringing together a series of musical manifestations linked to spaces traditionally associated with the production and exhibition of contemporary art.
No Wave arose in a United States still enduring the legacy of the Nixon administration. The country was in an economic recession, with the wounds of Vietnam still recent and the hippy utopia shattered. What No Wave did, more than define a specific style, was to reflect a state of mind of a certain time and place.
A New York on the verge of collapse that received young people hoping to escape the generalised anaesthesia of the times. These young people were drawn by the promise of emotions offered by the early punk groups such as the Ramones, New York Dolls or the Patti Smith Group. But the newcomers, in a sudden fit of adolescent denial, decided to turn their backs on their idols, severing influences and incorporating to the rock discourse elements borrowed from avant-garde genres. It could be free jazz or the New Music of composers following the trail of fluxus and minimalism. The results were a demonstration of what Jon Savage would describe as the true essence of punk: the sound of people discovering their own power.
- Audio: DNA. "Not moving" en No New York, Lilith (1978/2005)
In terms of style it is hard to find similarities among No Wave bands. The common denominator was perhaps the nihilistic attitude that their name suggests. This translated, on the one hand, into confrontation with the spectator, but even more so it translated into dissonance as the point of departure. Noise was considered a new form of exploration, a means by which to liberate rock from its tics. No Wave attacked rock's condition as commercialised entertainment and also its narrowness, derived from its fixation on traditional North American musical forms such as rhythm and blues and folk.
These two aspects, noise and fury, came together to perfection in the anomaly known as Suicide, the pioneering duo formed by Martin Rev and Alan Vega in the early 1970s. This was one of the few bands that did not feel the reticence of No Wave, in part because Suicide was the object of scorn and incomprehension wherever it went, and thus served as a mirror in which the new groups could see themselves.
- Audio: Suicide. "Las Vegas Man Live at CBGB'S 1977" en Suicide, Blast First (1977/1999)
Suicide is an exemplary case when it comes to Art Rock. Alan Vega had studied with Ad Reinhardt and his specialty was light sculptures, which led to him to be viewed as a North American variation of arte povera. His solo exhibitions in spaces such as Ivan Karp’s OK Harris gallery were complemented with the duo’s performances. And its early rehearsals and concerts would take place at MUSEUM. A Project of Living Artists, a self-managed space created to protest the nepotism of the New York museum and gallery system, and that also served as the headquarters for the Art Worker's Coalition, famous for having managed to close several museums as a form of protest against the Vietnam war.
At the time live music clubs were in something of a transition stage, so galleries, with their neutrality, seemed an ideal place. They were more accepting of a type of proposal that was not properly received by audiences of rock music. Suicide made music that was a hybrid of improvisation and rock n' roll performed with such energy that it seemed closer to action art than the mere execution of a repertoire of songs. This was accompanied by electronics reminiscent of European sounds and the minimalist beat inherited from New Music that could be heard in so many New York lofts. A sample of this can be heard in this 1973 piece written by Steve Reich for six pianos and performed in The Kitchen four years later.
- Audio: Steve Reich. "Six Pianos (1973)" in Live 1977, Orange Mountain Music (1977/2005)
Located in SoHo, the Mercer Arts Center was another key place for the actions of Suicide. Inside the Mercer Arts Center was The Kitchen, a project begun by Woody and Steina Vasulka at the beginning of the 1970s and that would end up becoming one of the most important spaces for the exhibition of video art. Its founding was linked to the ease of finding cheap rentals, mainly lofts, in New York, which favoured the creation of a fertile community comprised of visual artists, composers and choreographers.
In The Kitchen’s early years, Rhys Chatham, a young composing student who studied under La Monte Young, would be in charge of its music programming. In those days, it was quite common for concerts to be held in the lofts of the artists themselves, but Chatham forged a new path and organised them in The Kitchen.
During his first stint as the venue’s music director, from 1971 to 1973, The Kitchen would host such consolidated figures as the aforementioned La Monte Young, along with new composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. A turning point would come in 1976 when Chatham saw his first rock concert and had a revelation. In the Oscar Wilde room of the Mercer Arts Center Chatham saw the Ramones and in them he observed a minimalist approach adapted to rock. They played 3 chords and at the time Chatham was working with using just one chord. He came to the conclusion that if Philip Glass was using jazz instrumentations and Reich was using African rhythms, Chatham would work with elements of rock. He then founded the group Tone Death, as a vehicle for performing such compositions as Guitar Trio.
- Audio: Rhys Chatham. "Guitar Trio (1977)" in From The Kitchen Archives No.3 / Amplified: New Music Meets Rock, 1981-1986, Orange Mountain Music (1981/2006)1
One year after his epiphany while watching the Ramones, Chatham would return to his job as artistic director at The Kitchen. Between 1977 and 1983 he programmed both composers aligned with the SoHo aesthetics and also bands from East Village clubs such as CBGB or Max's Kansas City. In the end these artists found themselves playing at the venues of the others, and vice versa. For Chatham the connection was obvious, since by that time composers were leaving behind notation to delve into the world of improvisation, while those coming from punk rock were guided by instinct, making up for lack of technique.
- Audio: Teenage Jesus & The Jerks. "Eliminate by night (live at Artists Space, 1978)" in Shut up and bleed, Cherry Red (1978/2008)
We just listened to Lydia Lunch leading Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, an example of a band that played more at East Village clubs than at the usual SoHo enclaves. However, the recording in question is a live performance at one such enclave, the Artists Space, which in the end was the setting that witnessed the birth and the death of No Wave. This was in part due to the arrival in the city of Brian Eno, non-musician and art-rocker since he had been involved in Roxy Music. Working as a producer, Eno would be responsible for documenting the emerging scene with the record No New York.
In May of 1978 the Artists Space organised a series of concerts with 10 groups, which included practically all the bands playing in the incipient scene and the embryo of what would later be No New York. For this reason the event has come to be viewed as foundational.
For Brian Eno what he witnessed over those 5 nights was not comparable to the punk he had known in England. Those New York bands seemed to owe more to a tradition corresponding to the fine arts. Drawing an analogy with the early avant-gardes, Eno predicted that the energy of that scene would not last forever. So he decided to perform his duties as producer as if he were, using his own words, an art historian. His reasoning was that if a painter disappeared at least his or her paintings remained, but when musicians stopped playing, if there was nobody who recorded them it was as if they had never existed. So No New York as an anthology rescued from the junk heap of history such ephemeral projects as Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, DNA, Mars and The Contortions, while consigning others to oblivion. Curiously, it favoured the much more primitive bands of the East Village. Kim Gordon, of Sonic Youth, has pointed out that No New York brought the demise of the scene, because it reduced it to only four bands, creating a series of tensions that ended up causing it to disappear.
- Audio: Mars. "Scorn" in LP The Complete Studio Recordings NYC 1977-1978, No More Records (1978/2008)
Another identifying characteristic of the bands included in No New York was that, with exceptions, such as the saxophonist James Chance, the majority were non-musicians, to use a term that Brian Eno liked. Their pursuits in other fields were thus pushed into the corner. This is the case of Mars, whose members came from theatre, dance and the plastic arts. And DNA, where Arto Lindsay would set aside his writing and Robin Crutchfield would try to rechannel his experience as a performance artist in the group’s live shows. To the great displeasure of the other members of the group, Crutchfield was more interested in playing in galleries and studios than in rock clubs. This kind of ambivalence led to some surprising situations, such as an invitation being extended to the fluxus veteran Nam June Paik, asking him to share the stage at the CBGB. Paik reproached DNA for adapting to rock only the music of his contemporaries.
- Audio: Theoretical girls. "You got me" in Songs '77-'79, Atavistic (1978/1996)
Among the artists forgotten by No New York but who had participated in the Artists Space festival was the faction formed by the SoHo groups, that is, the bands of Rhys Chatham: The Gynecologists and Tone Death. But there was also another one: Theoretical Girls, where we find Glenn Branca. If Chatham represented the transition from serious music to rock, Branca went the opposite direction. He ended up leading huge guitar orchestras that would be the starting point of projects such as Sonic Youth.
When Branca landed in the Big Apple in 1976 he was a playwright with hardly any musical training. An encounter with Jeffrey Lohn, a pianist dedicated to conceptual art, turned out to be key. Their shared passion for theatre and the minimalism of Reich and Glass gave them the idea of forming a group. The debut of the group, even though it did not yet have a name, would take place at Franklin Furnace, a space created by Martha Wilson. There they shared the billboard with their friend Dan Graham. Finally they took the name Theoretical Girls, in reference to a conversation that Graham and Jeff Wall had had about the new generation of women working in the field of conceptual art. Graham would even produce the only album ever made by The Static, a parallel project undertaken by Branca and Barbara Ess. The latter is yet another example of an artist more interested in what was happening on the music scene than in the visual arts.
- Audio: The Static. "My relationship" in Songs '77-'79, Atavistic (1979/1996)
Apart from her musical activity, Ess, with the help of Branca, would promote Just Another Asshole, with the idea of playing with the potential of a publication. In seven issues, Just Another Asshole, went through several incarnations: from having a format similar to a magazine, to becoming an exhibition, Though Objects, and even being, in 1981, an album. This sound anthology reflects the interdisciplinary nature of the artistic community in which No Wave was immersed. Its more than 70 participants ranged from a then unknown Lee Ranaldo, to Barbara Kruger, Kiki Smith and Dara Birnbaum, whose contribution was the soundtrack of her video Kojak/Wang.
- Audio: Dara Birnbaum. "Kojak/Wang" in Just another asshole #5, Atavistic (1981/1995)
When Just another asshole appeared in the form of a record, it was a joint effort with another emerging creative space: White Columns. No New York and the festival that had given rise to it were no longer an anomaly, having instead become a point of reference, and this is when Noise Fest took shape.
By 1981, with the exception of DNA, practically all of the No Wave bands had dissolved. However, Noise Fest brought together figures already active in this early stage and also newcomers. The idea consisted of a festival in which every concert would be accompanied by an exhibition in which all the participating artists were musicians, whether or not the art shown had anything to do with the music. In this way, along with Robert Longo, Alan Vega, Glenn Branca and Barbara Ess, new names were presented, including those of Kim Gordon and Anne de Marinis. The last two were members of Sonic Youth, which at the time was a trio that rehearsed in Vito Acconci’s apartment and whose third member, Thurston Moore, was in charge of choosing the bands that would play at the festival.
A glance at the event’s program reveals that the idea was to recover the space lost by the most daring sounds in the circuit of galleries. The desegregation experienced by New York’s art community in the early 1980s brought with it a specialisation that ended up leaving the most heterodox musicians in no man’s land. The situation was further complicated by the difficulty of playing in clubs whose owners did not see any profitability in that horrible noise.
With Noise Fest our journey comes to an end, because it indicates a new phase that lasts up to our days. Just like John Cage when he said that there was no need to call his compositions music, the participants of that festival used the term noise, despite its negative connotations, to defend the possibility of creating new musical – or non-musical – forms, forms that three decades later have become consolidated as a language of their own, with their own codes, their own spaces and their own distribution networks.
We will close with a 1982 recording of Sonic Youth playing at another festival, on this occasion at The Kitchen, which according to descriptions of the event ended with police presence due to complaints by the neighbours.
- Audio: Sonic Youth. "The world looks red" in From The Kitchen Archives No.3 / Amplified: New Music Meets Rock, 1981-1986, Orange Mountain Music (1982/2006)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Mathieu Copeland (ed.). Alan Suicide Vega: Infinite Mercy, Lyon, Musée d'Art Contemporain de Lyon, 2009
- Thurston Moore and Byron Coley. No Wave. Post-punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980, Nueva York, Abrams Image, 2008
- Marc Masters. No Wave, Londres, Black Dog Publishing, 2007
- Dominic Molon (ed.). Sympathy for the devil: Art and rock since 1967, Chicago, New Haven, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Yale University Press, 2008
