lost NYC postpunk/nowave
 

there are so many awesome bands that no one has ever heard of from the late 70s-early 80s NY scene that spawned the Youth. so many great groups out of print or hard to find. No New York and the New York Noise comps are pretty awesome.

LIQUID LIQUID- one of the most ripped-off bands ever. super weird dancy dubpunkfunk. 'cavern' got turned into grandmaster flash's 'the message'.

MODEL CITIZENS- i've been listening to the song 'animal instincts' constantly. it's really hard to find anything about this band. fast, weirdo synth-punk that sounds like roxy music on PCP.


DNA- arto lindsay rules. this band is insane. sandpaper for the ears.

MARS- thurston said this was the band he thinks sy copied from the most when they started.


photos from the great nY no wave archive

Liquid Liquid is cool. They have a song on the new Tony Hawk game, which surprised me. Grand Royal rereleased a bunch of their stuff on a collection years ago and when I was gonna buy it, I couldn't find it anywhere.

Arguably, DNA would not be among the "lost" groups as they are probably the best know No Wave band along with the Contortions and Teenage Jesus & the Jerks (Lydia Lunch's first band) all of whom were on the No New York compilation, which is still the best known document of that scene. It's a great record, of course, right down to the Brian Eno cover (how interesting that the guy who invented ambient music was so into this early noise rock scene!) Compared to tons of bands who copped the ideas these groups invented, even the best know might deserve the "lost" title since they never got anything from their innovations.

There's a new scene in NY sometimes called neo-no wave (which, I agree, means absolutely nothing...)... There's a lot of great bands into that scene:

Liars
Gang Gang Dance
Animal Collective
Mouthus
TV on the Radio
Celebration
Out Hud
First Nation
Double Leopards
...

Agreed, I would recommend these to anybody.

 

 

Some of the stuff on those comps is really awful though. They are a real mixed bag I think.

Not a bad track on either to my ears.

And the first half of this is pretty good too:

 

I find some of the disco-y stuff embarrasingly dreadful.

edit: I think especially the Clandestine w/Ned Sublette one I really dislike and the Glorious Strangers and Felix tracks are pretty lame, to my ears at least. Those are all from vol.2 I think. But stuff like the Rhys Chatham, Red Transistor and Y Pants are really great.

Yeah, NicFit is in the game also

There's some great bands on that list, but I don't see how it can possibly be considered a "scene", other than that they exist in roughly the same place and time. I watched the movie Kill Your Idols that tries desperately to claim there is a scene based around No Wave Revival, and it was amusing how much Lydia Lunch and Jim Feotus and all those people hate the new stuff. The best groups, such as Liars and Black Dice and Gogol Bordello seemed to be doing everything they could to separate themselves from it too.

sorry to state the obvious but
theoretical girls.........

i think arab on radar are more in line with that whole bringing back no wave thing

!!! (aka CHK CHK CHK) too

Yeah, I've been fearing that... I'm quite interested in those, but I keep having second thoughts whenever I'm thinking of getting them. They didn't even put both of the Red Transistor songs from that 7" on those comps (vol. 2 I think).

No-Wave was a term made up for the No New York Compilation as far as I know.

Actaully the opposite. The term was a reaction to the poppier "new wave" in NYC, such as Blondie obviously, but also Bush Tetras, who now make it onto "No Wave" compilations somehow. The album title came very much as a product of the scene, and a lot of people were mad that so few of the bands made it onto the record.

To answer K-krack's question - No Wave was supposed to be rock music that didn't draw from any of the established rythm and blues tradition. So yeah, the whole idea of "neo-No Wave" is just ridiculous. The original No Wave bands were striving not to be influenced. You can certainly learn from their experiments and put that to use, but you won't be doing anything along the lines of what they were doing because it's just impossible.

The weirdest group to see on that list is Celebration because 1) they're from Baltimore not NYC and 2) they have a total Stonesy blues vibe going on. I love 'em, and sure they have some post-punk to their sound. However, I was actually hanging out with them a couple weeks ago, and I'm certain they wouldn't begin to call themselves No Wave, neo or otherwise. They're all about the rock 'n roll tradition, though they have a lead drummer rather than guitarist. They fucking rock up a storm.

i don't know if i'd consider some of that stuff as "neo-no-wave". some if it is psychedelic, while some of it is sort of avant soul-esque. some of it is just bad, though.

and if we're gonna talk about no wave bands, why not talk about one of the most overlooked bands who may be the missing link to early hip hop, ESG?

DNA- arto lindsay rules. this band is insane. sandpaper for the ears.


[/quote]
DNA rule.

do you guys happen to know a very cool band from NY, early eighties, produced by PHILIP GLASS that goes by the name POLYROCK?

they ruled.

www.myspace.com/polyrock - here are samples ripped from their lps