You may (or may not) remember McDermott's immortal harangues from Glenn O'Brien's TV Party. Exhibit A:

Designed to showcase, as Deborah Harry so succinctly put it, "neighborhood access to your friendly freaks around the block," TV Party was an anarchic and often brilliant forum for a coterie of artists, musicians and writers just on the cusp of fame (or, in some cases, obscurity).

A TV Party regular, McDermott is one of these true East Village eccentrics. Through his partnership with McGough, he has sought to live entirely out of time, viewing the present as a trap and a dead end. The past, however, is filled with endless possibilities.

Partially underwritten by a number of corporate sponsors, this new project pushes their quietly anachronistic work into a new realm of commercial possibility. Watch the trailer via the New York Times T blog.

COURTESY OF CHEIM & READ

While there’s a hell of a lot of clutter and noise on the internet, there’s also a lot to be discovered. By randomly clicking a link it’s possible to discover (or rediscover) a whole new world.

Like, for instance, A Diamond Age, Atlanta, Ga.-based musician M Leer’s ever-mutating (mostly) solo project. While he’s busy putting the finishing touches on his next record, you’d do very well to download his beautifully-curated mix tapes — very heavy on Technicolor psychedelia and rarities from the glory days of Cinecitta.

Whatever you do, don’t pass up Beguiling the Hours, Leer’s track-for-track tribute to Gareth Williams and Mary Currie’s collaborative project Flaming Tunes.

Williams’ post-This Heat project only saw limited release on cassette in the 1980s. Thanks to Mick Hobbs’ Life and Living Records, it was given a proper reissue last year.

When Leer, a dedicated This Heat fan, stumbled upon an FT bootleg in 2007, he was amazed to discover that the album wasn’t more well-known, even among the cognoscenti.

“What initially grabbed me was that it was in a different place from This Heat, but with a similar cadence. You could tell where it was coming from,” he said in 2009. “Essentially, [it’s] a pop record —a song-oriented, soulful thing.”

Cheers to Dan Selzer at Acute Records for alerting me to this wonderful video of Gareth Williams, filmed in the ‘80s and completed after his untimely death in 2001 by friend Colin Harrison.

“Nothing’s On” and other rarities can be downloaded at Flaming Tunes. (The links are very quietly hiding out on the right, under the photos.)

A Diamond Age, "Raindrops from Heaven" (from Beguiling the Hours, 2007)

Gareth Williams, "31" (demo)

IMAGE: LETTER FROM GARETH WILLIAMS TO MARY CURRIE, FROM FLAMING TUNES

Brighton group Ebsen and the Witch are a rather mysterious lot, all sepia-toned and wintry on their Myspace page. (Which is to say, I know next to nothing about them.) Today they released a limited edition single as part of the newly-reinvigorated too pure singles club—which is reason enough for me to pay attention to them. Reason #2 is a recommendation from none other than producer Mark van Hoen —always a sign of something wonderful going on.

Like the fog, this track tip-toes in on little cat feet. But it gathers in power as it goes along, turning into a storming, fuzz-drenched, JAMC-by-way-of-Phil-Spector-before-he-went-completely-psycho delight. (How I love bands that harken back to the glory days of shoegaze.)

The song’s mix of delicacy and power brings to mind Sian Alice Group, the Cocteaus (all those ringing guitars), with dreamy echoes of Julee Cruise, Beach House. Thematically, this is akin to AC Marias’ “One of Our Girls (Has Gone Missing)” —taking the dramatic ending of The Awakening as a starting point, a new beginning. (Like the book, both songs are melancholy but hopeful too.)

Welcome back, too pure, Kick my ass again with something this great, I dare ya.

Esben and the Witch, “Lucia at the Precipice"

PHOTO BY ANDREA FELDMAN

I’m still in quiet shock over Vic Chesnutt’s death. Some people have such an indelible presence that it’s impossible to imagine the world without them. Vic was one of those people.

Through his beautiful, incisive songs, the world seemed to blaze a little brighter. As Kristin Hersh wrote in her incredibly moving tribute:

I don't think I like this planet without Vic; I swore I would never live here without him. But what he left here is the sound of a life that pushed against its constraints, as all lives should. It's the sound of someone on fire. It makes this planet better.

A few years ago, my friend Giles wrote a wonderful post about discovering Vic's music for the first time:

Arriving home, I placed the A-side on my turntable. A few plucked notes that bent upwards, a plaintive harmonica, and then the first line, "I dreamed I was dancing with Isadora Duncan." I was smitten, and devastatingly so. ... This, this music, this little song, was simple, sad, and crushingly beautiful.

Rest in peace, Vic. You are missed.

***
Kristin Hersh has set up a Paypal donation page to help Vic's family defray the expenses associated with his recent hospitalizations and death. 100% of all funds raised will go to Vic's family.

For more about Vic’s music, visit Constellation Records.

Vic Chesnutt and Kristin Hersh, “Panic Pure" (live)]]> http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/2009/12/vic_chesnutt_1964_2009.html http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/2009/12/vic_chesnutt_1964_2009.html Obituary Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:49:06 -0500

A wintry mix tape for our wintry mix.

16 zipped tracks + artwork that you can assemble into your own little CD sleeve, if you so desire.

1) ICICLE WHEEL : the focus group
2) HOT SPRINGS IN THE SNOW : the creatures
3) AFTER TORINO : David Cunningham
4) JASZ : Dome
5) BRIMSTONE IN A BARREN LAND : Danielle Dax
6) SNOWS PAST : The Lowest Note
7) THE SCREENS : Atlas Sound
8) A DULCIMER'S FANCY : The Occasion
9) SUN DRAWING : Movietone
10) CORPOREAL : Broadcast
11) HEREFOREVERALWAYS : His Name Is Alive
12) LITTLE TIGER : Tune-Yards
13) BLUSH : Bows
14) DEATH + ANNIE : Quickspace
15) ZOMBIE CLOUD : Urdog
16) IN BRISTOL WITH A PISTOL : Third Eye Foundation

”Snows Past" sleeve art (1.7MB PDF)

"Snows Past” Winter Music Compilation (70MB .zip file includes artwork, MP3s and playlist)

ARTWORK BY ANDREA FELDMAN

In Dennis Potter’s classic mini-series The Singing Detective, characters frequently, and without warning, burst into song, channeling the sounds of the past in order to put an optimistic (and often ironic) gloss on a dark present.

As with Potter, the playful, sometimes eerie sound collages of British groups Broadcast, the Focus Group, Moon Wiring Club and Belbury Poly conjure up an alternate reality—an eccentric, occasionally unsettling combination of cold war dread and boundless optimism.

Belbury Poly’s Jim Jupp (also co-owner, with House, of record label Ghost Box International), pinpoints the off-kilter sound as the precise juxtaposition of “ancient and modern, or the cosmic and the parochial.”

Less a full-blown genre than a state of mind, “hauntology” (as it has been dubbed by Simon Reynolds) mixes such far-flung influences as early analog electronica, musique concrete, library 78s, Italian film soundtracks and old newsreels into something wholly other yet quintessentially British in flavor.

Studio maverick and musical (brico)lagist Raymond Scott is also revered, as is twisted folk from the 70s (Wicker Man and Valerie & Her Weeks of Wonders being particular touchstones), as well as sultry echoes of Tropicalia and other 8-track exotica.

Taking a cue from Scott, collage is the primary form, with sounds sampled from thrift-store finds, dusted off and given new life. Vocals are generally not sung, but intoned, with a bit of radio static for extra verisimilitude.

There’s a tinge of sci-fi to be sure — “the future is now” — mixed with nostalgia and the desire to recapture the idea of community in a pre-digital age, using digital tools as the medium. (These songs are preoccupied by yearnings for a pre-lapsarian, pastoral world; the Brutalist architecture embodied by the New Town movement is simultaneously revered and reviled, as is the very concept of Suburbia.)

Take, for example, Broadcast & the Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age (Warp), a new maximalist extended player from Broadcast in collaboration with Julian House, the like-minded mastermind of the Focus Group. This collagist kaleidoscope plays out like an album-length socio-ethnographic séance, sprinkled with quasi-historical references and half-remembered voices. True to its title, the resulting spectral sounds seem to emanate from an imagined future.

Oddly, American band Dymaxion was among the first groups to really hit upon this sampladelic, largely instrumental style.

Like Kurt Schwitters, this short-lived but fantastic band were expert at culling beauty out of junk; their retro-futuristic collage aesthetic consistently yielded surprising, devilishly catchy results. Their 1997 track “Haunted Radio” (written for a marvelous one-off Vesuvius compilation called Spooky Sounds of Now) could be a thesis statement for the ghostly sounds to follow. Their posthumous singles compilation, 4+3=38.33, may still be available from Duophonic. (Dymaxion principal Claudia Newell has begun posting new music on her blog, Maison Atomisée).

Oakland, California duo Crawling with Tarts pre-dates Dymaxion by a number of years, taking an abstract, musique concrete approach. Their two-song suite Grand Surface Noise Opera is composed for two turntables and uses “surface noise as a binding element” (to quote co-composer Michael Gendreau). It’s also about building narrative, layering voices and tonalities to create mood and to shift meaning (both linear and non-linear). In a 1999 interview, the Gendreaus traced the piece’s origins back to England, specifically, a record store in Portobello Road…

Broadcast & the Focus Group, “Love's Long Listen-in" (from Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age, 2009)

Dymaxion, "I-Man Transport (from 4+3=38.33, 2002)

Crawling with Tarts, “Grand Surface Noise Opera No. 3 (Indian Ocean Ship)" (from Operas 3 & 4)

IMAGE BY IAN HODGSON AKA MOON WIRING CLUB, FROM THE BLANK WORKSHOP

Things have gotten quiet around here (again!). I'm just back from a restorative week-long jaunt to the UK, where I saw my friends Scarce play a triumphant show (more on that a bit later), visited friends in London and Oxford, and generally had an amazing time.

While in the UK I missed by a hair's breadth a new dance from Michael Clarke, who frequently drew inspiration from the Fall's music for his choreography. His troupe even collaborated with the Fall on a ballet —the score of which turned into the Fall classic I Am Curious Oranj. (You can watch selections on YouTube, beginning with this cheeky adaptation of "Spectre vs. Rector.")

I adore Mark E Smith's way with words, even if half the time I have no idea what he's even saying. "New Face in Hell" is one (of many) I'm still working out — piecing it slowly together like the world's most complicated puzzle. The song unfolds with amazing verbal dexterity, unspooling like a John le Carré spy thriller, dense with paranoia. "A prickly line of sweat covers enthusiast's forehead as the realization hits him..."

While not every MES song works as a densely layered short story, many do, rewarding repeated, careful listens with "a-ha!" moments of clarity. (And confusion, too, but working through it is part of the fun.)

Fellow blogger Jon Underneathica must have a better handle on translating Mark's splenetic rantings, and he's turned it into a fun game. I give you Underneathica's Mark E Smith Mix n' Match.

Hours of fun! Collect all twelve! Let's see, there's the Peel Session version, the Brix Years, the Step Forward Years, the Brownies Blow-up Years, the post-Reformation Years, etc. etc.

The Fall, “Psykick Dancehall" (from It's the New Thing! The Step Forward Years, 2003)

THE GLORY DAYS OF ROUGH TRADE (WINDOW DISPLAY, RT EAST) // PHOTO BY ANDREA FELDMAN

Dean & Britta
13 Most Beautiful…Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests
RISD
October 3, 2009

A Walk into the Sea
Esther Robinson, director
T. Griffin, composer
2008

Unspooling in slow motion, Andy Warhol’s screen tests exert a strange kind of hypnotic allure.

Documenting the Factory superstars, as well as the hangers-on, artists, writers, musicians and infamous acquaintances that were pulled into Warhol’s orbit, the films collectively stand as a poignant elegy to the lost innocence of the 60s.

Made between 1964 and 1966, roughly 500 exist. Filmed with Warhol’s 16mm Bolex, each film runs two minutes, the length of a single reel. Slowed down to four minutes, every blink, sly smile and hand gesture takes on a curious gravity.

A single tear tracks agonizingly slowly down Ann Buchanan’s cheek, then hangs, suspended, like a jewel.

Lou Reed, looking very Street Hustler behind enormous shades, swigs aggressively from a Coca Cola.

Square-jawed, blond Paul America evades the camera’s gaze until he finally cracks up, smiling broadly.

Doomed Freddy Herko —the Judson dancer who sailed out an open window in 1966— looks anxious and drawn as he sullenly drags off a dwindling cigarette.

In her memoir, Swimming Underground, Mary Woronov (one of the 13) cannily notes that Warhol’s screen tests are remarkable because “you would see the person fighting with his (or her) image —trying to protect it. …After that it slips and your real self starts to show through.”

Encapsulating that sense of self in flux must have posed a challenge to Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips, the married duo who record as Dean & Britta. Looking to give the screen tests new life, the Andy Warhol Museum commissioned them to compose a soundtrack for a select group of 13.

(As principal songwriter for Galaxie 500 and Luna, Wareham’s music has effortlessly channeled a Velvet-y vibe for years. He must have seemed like a natural choice.)

The result, as it played out live last night before a packed house at RISD, was powerful —as sweet, funny, sad, desperate and ridiculous as the subjects themselves.

Mixing originals and covers, including Dylan’s “I’ll Keep It With Mine” (written for Nico) and a furious version of the recently unearthed Velvets gem “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore”, the score perfectly captured the hazy, narcotized momentum of the scene.

The instrumentals had the most frenzied energy. “Silver Factory” (for Billy Name) was shimmering and thunderous, like a wave cresting over and over. A Luna instrumental, "The Enabler" (re-titled “Herringbone Tweed") fit Dennis Hopper’s test to a tee, its swaggering, low-end twang a perfect corollary to his glowering presence. (He breaks character halfway through, reverting from tough to goofball.)

The most languid, dreamy songs were paired with the most tragic figures, like the aforementioned Herko or poor, haunted Ingrid Superstar, who disappeared from her upstate NY home in 1987, leaving behind her false teeth and fur coat. And who could forget luminous Edie, who died of a drug overdose in 1971?

Danny Williams was another Factory casualty. Warhol’s live-in boyfriend for a time, he worked as a film editor for the Maysles and designed the lighting for the Velvets’ Exploding Plastic Inevitable traveling show.

In 1966, after a grueling (and emotionally taxing) tour with the VU, Williams drove home to the Cape to see his family. Late one evening he borrowed his mother’s car to go for a swim. He was never seen again.

Thirty-five years later, his niece Esther Robinson stumbled across a treasure trove of her uncle’s extraordinary black and white experimental films. Intrigued, she set out to solve the mystery of his disappearance. The result is the documentary A Walk into the Sea (2008).

Brooklyn musician T. Griffin composed the film’s soundtrack.

Working with collaborators Catherine McRae and Bruce Cawdron, the three set up in Williams’ old house, put microphones everywhere and let the sounds of the sea and surrounding woods lend their own haunting naturalness.

Of the process, Griffin writes, “I wasn’t dumb enough to try to sound like the Velvet Underground. But I knew they’d be hovering in the background somewhere, along with the Jaynettes and LaMonte Young.

“Esther was looking for music just at the edge of hearing, something that signaled the music swirling around NYC in 1966, but was impossible to place. Suggestive, not descriptive. We wanted music that sounded like a yellowed newspaper, like a rusty set of keys.”

13 Most Beautiful is on DVD from Plexifilm; you can buy it from the Dean & Britta store. A Walk into the Sea is available from Shiny Little Records. You can find the film at Amazon.

STILLS: ANN BUCHANAN, FREDDY HERKO, EDIE SEDGWICK [© THE ESTATE OF DANNY WILLIAMS]

Dean & Britta, “Herringbone Tweed" (Live) (from 13 Most Beautiful…, 2009)

The Velvet Underground, “I’m Not a Young Man Anymore” (Live at the Gymnasium)

T. Griffin, "In Silver" (from A Walk into the Sea, 2008)]]> http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/2009/10/now_youre_older_silver_girl.html http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/2009/10/now_youre_older_silver_girl.html Live Sun, 04 Oct 2009 17:49:01 -0500

Extra Golden
Providence, RI
September 24, 2009

The saying “If there’s a will, there’s a way” fits Extra Golden to a tee.

The group’s certainly had to prove its resilience in its five years of existence: they haven’t let visa troubles, political unrest or the untimely death of a founding member get in the way of a joyous international collaboration between American and Kenyan musicians.

Formed almost by happenstance in 2004 when musicians Ian Eagleson, Alex Minoff and Otieno Jagwasi began playing one another’s compositions, for fun, just to see where they could take them, the group quickly coalesced into a full-fledged band.

Ian and Alex were American musicians from the Washington, D.C.-based band Golden; since 2000, Otieno had been assisting Ian in his doctoral research documenting benga, a guitar-heavy kind of dance music (similar to Congolese rumba) that has been popular in Kenya since the 1960s.

Over a couple of days, the group hashed out several songs, building them on top of rhythm tracks that Eagleson had recorded earlier with local drummer Onyango Wuod Omari.

Making due with less than ideal recording circumstances, they set up a laptop and a mixing board in the middle of a Nairobi restaurant. Three hours later, the majority of their debut album, Ok-Oyot System [Thrill Jockey], was complete.

Nearly five years and two more albums later, the unbelievable difficulties they’ve weathered haven’t touched the music, a jangly, funky, propulsive mix of rock and benga that transcends pastiche and achieves a rare grace.

Appropriately enough, summer returned with a vengeance in time for the band’s outdoor show last Thursday evening. Their sound —crisp, buoyant, insanely danceable, all forward momentum and frenzied riffage — cut through the heat with joyous abandon. And, while the crowd was a little thin, the group didn’t let that stop them from giving it their all.

By show’s end the motley audience —an oddball mix of hipsters and the drunks who practically live in the park — were all dancing like crazy, won over by the music’s effortless charm.

If you’re curious about traditional benga, you can buy CDs by Extra Golden vocalist Opiyo Bilongo and other Kenyan artists through Kanyo Kanyo.

Extra Golden, "Anyango" (from Thank You Very Quickly, Thrill Jockey, 2009)

PHOTOS BY ANDREA FELDMAN

Slumberland Records is having a phenomenal renaissance right now.

They've been releasing fantastic music for yonks (since 1989 or thereabouts). Inspired by the likes of Postcard, él, Fast Product, Sarah and early Creation, the label took C-86 (and its never-been-equalled mix of twee, lo-fi jangle and angular noise) as a jumping-off point for a musical aesthetic that's remained remarkably steadfast. Some 20 years and 80 releases later, the fickle public seems to have caught up with them at last. 'Bout time, I say.

Today, their stellar roster includes shoegaze babies Pains of Being Pure at Heart, young Glaswegian whippersnappers Bricolage, the Shangri-Las-by-way-of-Kleenex known as Liechtenstein, and latest signings The Champagne Socialists —aka husband-and-wife team of ex-Royal We frontwoman Jihae Simmons Meek and Bricolage frontman Wallace Meek. The first release from this poptastic duo channels the same girl-group-gone-dangerous vibe as early Shangri-Las. "Blue Genes" is a dark and twisted tale of love gone very wrong, sung with heartbreaking optimism. It's got handclaps! Luscious wall of sound percussion! And triple-tracked vocals! Does it get any more perfect?

Liechenstein's short but sweet debut is equally fab, hitting a happy medium amongst rough, tart and sweet. Riding echoes of Heavenly, Comet Gain, the Pastels et al., they effortlessly blend girl-group wistfulness with confectionery pop perfection. (Clearly I've got a thing for hand claps, harmonies and surfy jangle.) My favorite release of the year so far!

But wait! There’s more! (A great Bricolage video to be exact.)

Bricolage "The Waltzers" from Slumberland Records on Vimeo.

The Champagne Socialists, "Blue Genes" (Slumberland 7”, 2009)

Liechtenstein, "Roses in the Park"(from Survival Strategies in the Modern World, Slumberland, 2009)

LITTLE NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND (Windsor McKay)

View Nonstop Eating in Chicago in a larger map

OK, I'll admit it: I judge every city against NYC. To me, NYC is the ne plus ultra, the pinnacle, the über and the ür — even when it drives me crazy (which is most of the time).

Now that I'm back from my first-ever visit to Chicago, I realize that it's not fair to judge it by an East Coast barometer. It's completely different from NYC. For one thing, I didn't expect it to be so welcoming. Or quiet. (NYC, with its teeming sidewalks and incessant rush-rush-rush, is NEVER, ever quiet. I don't think the city even has a pause button.)

By contrast, Chicago takes its time. It's happy to let you discover its charms at your own pace.

Which I did. I didn't even see one thousandth of the city, but I like to think I got a real glimpse of the real Chicago. No, I didn't have any deep dish pizza. (Don't tell, but I'm a thin-crust girl all the way. Rhode Island represent!) And no, I didn't go to a Cubs game.

My Warped Reality co-conspirator Susan is off tomorrow for a weekend visit to my spiritual home, Manchester. I’m a bit jealous, because I’ve been in one of my non-stop New Order phases. Yes, yes, I heard all about Bernard Sumner’s new group, Bad Lieutenant. ::lalalalalanotlistening:: (Bernard, please, take a break. And stop watering down what is an incredible legacy with all this MOR crap.)

In welcome New Order-related news, I discovered a wondrous thing a few weeks back: New Order’s infamous Western Works demos. (Western Works being the Sheffield studio owned by Cabaret Voltaire.) Thank you, Analog Loyalist, for posting these incredible tracks —and in FLAC no less. I’m posting my favorite here:

New Order, "Homage" (from the Western Works Demos, September 1980)

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I myself am off to Chicago tomorrow for a few days. Not for P-fork (as you might imagine) but for a work-related conference. I’ll be seeing Dave McKean while I’m there, but I don’t think I’m going to make it to a single show. Which is criminal, given that Chicago is such an incredible music city.

In honor of tonight’s Tortoise Millions Now Living-fest, I give you my favorite Tortoise moment, EVER:

Tortoise vs. UNKLE, “Bruise Blood” (Tortoise:: Remixed, Thrill Jockey, 2001)

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Remember when home taping was killing music? (Ok, the RIAA would claim that it still is, but I digress.) Right now it's making my day. Tune Yards is a lo-fi cut n' paste project from singer/songwriter/collagist/uke slinger Merrill Garbus. She recorded her first record, Bird-Brains, on her lonesome, selling pay-what-you-can copies herself over the internet. Now she’s signed to 4AD; the record will be re-released on August 18.

Tune-Yards, “Sunlight” (Bird-Brains, 4ad, 2009)

It's got it all —wacked-out samples, nonsensical sing-song lyrics that sound like demented jumprope chants, distorted ukelele shanties and her wayward, fearless vocals that are marvelously all over the map, from husky to high-pitched and back again. Bird-Brains is as effortlessly listenable and danceable as the first Solex record, Solex Vs. the Hitmeister.

Here’s a live performance of “Fiya” from last month’s Northside Festival, filmed by Ray Concepcion:

tUne-YaRds: "FIYA" {Live} from Ray Concepcion on Vimeo.

PHOTO BY A. FELDMAN

Why hello there. I seem to have fallen off the map again. Perhaps literally — ever had a dream where you found yourself someplace supposedly familiar yet completely alien?

In my dreams, New Haven, Ct. is incredible... filled with turn-of-the-century brick brownstones with curved windows and intricate wrought iron scrollwork, criss-crossed by cobblestone streets and curved byways. Better yet, the town centre opens out on a beautiful vista of open ocean (!), presided over by soaring skyships with crimson red sails.

Where did this steampunk-New-Haven-that-never-was come from, I wonder? (It certainly bore no resemblance to any parts of New Haven I've ever seen —what a resolutely charmless city.)

On a more quotidien note, my computer curled up its virtual toes and I've been trying to rebuild my music library. I stumbled across some old and new favorites in the process.

Dress Up As Natives I discovered on the Typical Girls mailing list. Don't know much about them, except that they hailed from early '80s Pittsburgh and played incredibly catchy, skewed art punk.

Rema Rema predated the Wolfgang Press and included Adam & the Ants' Marco Pirroni and Gary Asquith from Renegade Soundwave.

I do hope the Cramps need no introduction. This beautifully unhinged live performance is from the unreleased Urgh! A Music War soundtrack. R.I.P., Lux Interior.

Dress Up As Natives, “You Had to Be There"

Rema Rema, "Feedback Song"

"The Cramps, "Tear It Up (Live)" (from Urgh! A Music War

IMAGE: NEW HAVEN TRAIN SCHEDULE, 1962

Speed Dating has the feel of a great lost mix tape. If you think about it, a 7-inch is basically a band’s thesis statement. Speed Dating captures that headlong rush of great pop ideas —the fizz and pop— many times over. Stylistically restless but aesthetically consistent, Speed Dating is also a reminder of a more innocent time, when a band could make its mark with an A-side and a record label’s careful connoisseurship still meant something.

Luna’s Dean Wareham once said of Terry, “You meet two kinds of people at major labels —those who live for music, and those who live off music. Terry lived for music.”

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PICTURED: TERRY WITH DEAN WAREHAM, 23RD ST. PHOTO COURTESY HOWARD THOMPSON

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Originally a Deadhead from New City in Rockland County, Terry’s musical paradigm was forever shifted in 1978 when he moved to NYC. Turned on to punk rock by his boyfriend, who ran a small record label, Terry was enlisted to take records around to Ed Bahlman’s influential 99 Records on Macdougal.

It didn’t take long for Bahlman to offer Tolkin a job. From there, he became involved with the day-to-day operations at the store and at Bahlman’s label, 99,* home to ESG, Liquid Liquid, the Bush Tetras and Glenn Branca, among others. At this time, he also started DJing and booking shows at NY venues like Danceteria.

It was the start of a career that would include A&R jobs at Touch & Go, Dutch East India Trading Co., Caroline, Rough Trade and Elektra, where he became VP of A&R from 1992 to 1996, signing Stereolab, Luna, the Afghan Whigs, Scrawl and Jennyanykind.

He started No. 6 in 1989, when he was at Rough Trade, and disbanded the label ten years and fifty releases later. During that time, he released records by Dean Wareham, Tindersticks, Cagney and Lacee (Dean Wareham’s band with his first wife, Claudia Silver), Ornament (an Afghan Whigs offshoot) and Unrest, among others.

The high-flying “alt-rock years” finally ended at Elektra in 1996 with a huge personnel shake-up. This was an incredibly dark time in Terry’s personal life as well —his apartment building collapsed and he lost everything in the resulting fire, including all the No. 6 masters and artwork, as well as his three cats and his record collection. (This period is covered in great detail in Dean Wareham’s memoir Black Postcards.) Terry currently lives on a farm, as far away as you can get from the insanity of NYC.

Terry chatted at length with me about the genesis of the label and his wayward adventures in the record industry.

INFLUENCES
At what age did you first get interested in music? What were some of the first bands to make a lasting impression on you?

My Mom says that I always liked and reacted to music. [My parents] spent a lot of time (and money) sending me to different music lessons on all kinds of instruments. It always ended the same way: "Terry just doesn't want to play music.” I remember performing in front of my family and at a couple of recitals and just hated being stared at!

I [went] to the same summer camp in upstate New York for 11 years from 1967 to 1978. My counselors were all Dead Heads and would go on weekends to see the Grateful Dead when they would play. At night they would load up the reel-to-reel and play their tapes of live Dead shows as we went to sleep. By the time I was 12 I knew the words to most of their songs and I still love and listen to them (up to and including 1979's Blues For Allah).

After Jerry Garcia started working on their movie and locking himself in an editing room with mountains of cocaine and heroin it all went downhill. But they remained an important influence on me throughout my "career.” For many years as a teen, the only records I owned were their albums and boxes of live tapes.

I grew up in New City, an upstate suburb of NYC. When I was 17 I moved into Manhattan on my own. I lived in a small studio above the Waverly Theatre in Greenwich Village. There were record stores all around me and I became friends with some of the employees.

That's when my music education really started to diversify. There was WNEW-FM in NYC. This was in the days when the DJs could play whatever they wanted, so it could be John Lennon then Bob Marley and then Elvis Costello all back-to-back. You would never hear that today. But the "Go-It-Alone" aesthetic of the Grateful Dead in their heyday still inspires me now.

When you first moved to NYC, you worked at the original 99 Records shop on Macdougal. 99 only released a handful of records over the course of its short history, each one of them reflective of owner Ed Bahlman’s impeccable ear. Working alongside Ed must have been an incredible learning experience.

Working with and becoming friends with Ed Bahlman was one of the most important relationships that I ever had. It was one of those relationships that sends your life pinging off into a completely different realm.

I went to the store every Friday after I got paid. Ed would be spinning records and a pile would start to develop. I always left by telling him that if he ever needed to hire someone that I would take the job. He worked at the store seven days a week and worked as a maintenance man at an Upper East Side condo building full time.

After about four months he asked me if I would start working there. I didn't even give notice at the office job I had been at for a year. I just started the next day. I went from making about $300.00 a week to $125.00. I didn't care. I thought I had the best job in the world.

NYC Premiere for No Wave Cinema Doc Blank City
Dan Selzer [Acute Records]: A year or so ago some friends of mine asked me if I wanted to help out on this movie they were working on, a documentary focusing on the no wave cinema scene that emerged in NYC in the late 70s. I talked my way into becoming the “music supervisor” of their movie, Blank City, and began suggesting music to use.

I didn’t realize how serious the project was until I finally saw the rough cut, which was about 8 hours long. The film was beautifully shot, excitingly edited, masterfully directed —and covered so much more than just no wave cinema.

While the no wave film of the late 70s and the cinema of transgression of the 80s are the focal point, the movie goes further back to discuss influences in NYC and underground film, from Warhol and Jack Smith through the punk films of Amos Poe.

And in discussing the scenes, they paint a more expansive picture of the times, the artists, the musicians, the lifestyle. So while the focus is certainly on the movies that were made, the movie should interest anybody with an interest in that time period.

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Simon Reynolds on Totally Wired, his new book of interview outtakes from Rip It Up and Start Again: I feel that music now has become a paradise that's become a hell. … Any young person can immediately drown themselves in virtually, absolutely everything. … And I don't know what kind of consciousness or creative consciousness can survive that kind of inundation. It feels almost like a cultural catastrophe.

I mean, obviously, sometimes it's great if I can, say, find some really obscure BBC Radiophonic thing that barely came out at the time but is up there on the web. But at the same time it seems to have gone wrong somehow. It's like getting everything you wished for as a music fan and it turning out to be a terrible nightmare.

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Jon Savage, author of England’s Dreaming, in conversation with Wilson Neate, author of the new 33 1/3 volume on Wire's Pink Flag: “We were trying to be stupid, but we weren't stupid — you know, we were just playing around with ideas of simplicity and earthiness, really.”

”Black Box Disco” [from New York Noise Vol 2, Soul Jazz]

Bauhaus, “Third Uncle” [Brian Eno cover]

Dome, "Jasz" [Bruce Gilbert/Graham Lewis/Russell Mills/Angela Conway]]]> http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/2009/04/underground_usauk.html http://www.warpedrealitymagazine.com/2009/04/underground_usauk.html Sun, 26 Apr 2009 21:57:30 -0500