No New York/Brian Eno [Import]

No New York (Artist), Brain Eno (Artist) | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (January 1, 2004)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Format: Import
• Label: Phantom Sound & Vision
• ASIN: B000051SBL
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #757,659 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Track Listings

1. Dish It Out

2. Flip Your Face

3. Jaded

4. I Can't Stand Myself

5. Burning Rubber

6. The Closet

7. Red Alert

8. I Woke up Dreaming

9. Helen Fordsdale

10. Hairwaves

11. Tunnel

12. Puerto Rican Ghost

13. Egomaniac's Kiss

14. Lionel

15. Not Moving

16. Size

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 51 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars YES, NEW YORK, by a currently optimistic ex-member of DNA, May 22, 2003

By 

Robin Crutchfield "DNA and Dark Day keyboardist" (New York, New York United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No New York/Brian Eno (Audio CD)

The 'No New York' album, originally released back in the post-punk, disco-funk era of 1978, charted a course that changed the direction and validity of rock music to this day. For better or worse, the deconstructionist tendencies put forth by these American experimenters to their three-chord counterparts in the British punk scene, opened the previously restrictive door for several generations, and thousands of emerging rock wannabes, to do their own thing. I should know, because I was there, as keyboardist/founding member of DNA, the band that closes out this collection.

At the time there were only two New York City clubs to play at: CBGB's and Max's Kansas City. And only two or three fledgling indie labels. Now, alternative shops and online services have propagated and proliferated to the extent that they clog the arteries of the worldwide web with thousands of indie labels and artists, making it virtually impossible in the new world of virtual reality for any one of the do-it-yourself visionaries to realise success by standing apart from the crowd and find their audience. The price of open opportunities and affordable technology as a means of expression has its downside. With so many voices crying over each other to be heard, who is left to listen? Let this then, be an introduction.

Brian Eno had a vision and an ear for the efforts of the untrained to express themselves, and enough pull to get this material waxed and released, albeit hushed and buried by Island Records on a lesser label after hearing the mastertapes, until proudly reclaiming it now, twenty-five years later, after many have lauded the album with critical acclaim..

The Contortions wrench open this collection with an over the shoulder kick in the direction of James Brown and a high-octane, speed-induced brand of squeak-and-squawk sax-led punk-funk.

Teenage Jesus And The Jerks follow with angry, minimal, abbreviated and punctuated, blessedly-brief, but ingeniously constructed, bursts of aurally antagonizing little ditties, owing inspiration to "Diddy Wah Diddy" forebearer Captain Beefheart. Their drummer used a single snare drum and club-sized drumsticks with a Bamm-Bamm Rubble of the Flintstones approach, pounding out a beat that echoed Lydia Lunch's tortured vocal line, offset by mimicking whiny and strangulated bottleneck guitar lines and abusively battering-ram bass lines.

The third act on this collection (three is a magic number) is very dear to my heart. Mars was a four-piece unit evenly divided between the sexes with low alto hallucinogenically somnolent female vocals alternating songs fronted by a manic male voice frenetically approaching falsetto in its fear-inducing intensity. The instruments meshed in varying timeframes and textures reinventing a 'fill spectre caterwaul of sound' with cascading rhythms and pitches shifting over one another like the Velvet Underground through a distorting glass riding Niagara Falls.

Closing the album, and making way for things to come, was DNA with a perfect fusion of elements present in the previous three bands, recombinant into a strange new beast. With the psychotic vocals of the Contortions, the minimalist noise and pattern structures of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, and the falling wall texture of Mars, DNA took up where the Plastic Ono Band left off eight years previous, balancing a juggling act of equal parts of chaos and order into a blend that expressed the repressed feelings of the frustration of youth at the time (the eternal ongoing theme present in the most enduring perpetrators of rock and roll).

The lyrics of all four bands expressed extremes in mental, emotional, physical, psychic and sexual abuse, and the title of the album negated existence of a life of contentment, fulfillment, or substance in late '70s New York City.

And so, they say, the rest is history. This album once again rears its ugly head in the new millennium with Island now proudly reclaiming the bastard birth by stamping its logo on it in place of the original Antilles subsidiary logo, as well as a hefty, super-inflated price tag, acknowledging its importance as a trendsetting footnote leading into the 21st century.

Despite the landmark nature of the album and the importance its role played, its rerelease on CD in no way benefits the sixteen participating individuals on it, as none receive a penny in royalties from its greedy, overbloated reissue price here.

If you want to find out about the source of today's indie proliferation, by all means purchase this disc. However, if you want to pay tribute by supporting these artists, I suggest you seek out their individual efforts elsewhere, for instance online search engines (as I am prohibited from listing my own website here but take "dark-day" as a clue).

You might start by purchasing the release of my new CD, Dark Day-Strange Clockwork, available here at Amazon.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Where to begin........., November 5, 2000

By 

Adam Naworal "~.a.~" (Florida USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: No New York/Brian Eno (Audio CD)

Oh my, where to begin, where to begin....... Well, I'll describe the bands on this wonderful A+ compilation. Mars is a bit on the free-jazz/noise rock side. DNA was basically a happier version of A.C.; short songs with lots of dynamics and energy. Teenage Jesus and The Jerks is punk to the limit: short songs, lots of rancor, angry as hell. Finally, James Chance and the Contortions are crazy jazz/funk-inspired noise rock. this compilation is one of the only places to find DNA on record, and for that reason alone it's worth every penny. but the other bands are wonderful, too.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yowza., April 25, 2004

By 

E. Burlingame "ZombieJesus" (Mauston, WI USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: No New York/Brian Eno (Audio CD)

I bought this used on vinyl at a thrift store for forty cents. I had NO idea what the record was like, it was stuck between a bunch of gospel records and it kind of stuck out to me. So, I took it home, got high with a friend, and listened to the record with him. When the opening bassline from "Dish It Out" by the Contortions started playing, I knew that this record was going to be something different than anything I'd ever heard before, and I wasn't prepared. It was just nuts... all those instruments seeming to be played randomly but still coming together to create something listenable. The record sounds to me like they stuck two microphones in a room and had everyone fight with eachother to see who could play the loudest. The bands on this album all have a strong energy to them, and it makes me wish I'd been around back then to see them perform (and I bet the chances of video-taped performances being available are nil). Yes, at times the quality of the audio leaves something to be desired... but there's still something about this record that makes it engaging.