Customer Reviews

No New York/Brian Eno

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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.

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.

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.

25 years old and this album STILL sounds ahead of it's time. I was lucky enough to see DNA perform at CBGBs and James Chance at the Bond. I felt kind of bad when James threw a girl off the stage and she landed on her head. I seem to recall that she wasn't wearing any clothes. I think Mr. Chance had some issues.
I am not qualified to review this album. I don't think it can be summarized in words. You just have to hear it for yourself.

I remember playing this album as a teen and my mum yelling for me to turn the noise down. Those were the good old days of Anarchy and dishing out attitude. This album/cd is nothing but historic. James White and The Blacks, Lydia Lunch and Teenage Jesus and The Jerks, DNA and Mars just thrashing out that wonderful noisy energy that at the time that was so tolerable and needed. The album is chaotic, minimalistic, loud, angry, annoying, and emotionally provoking. You have Lydia emitting guttural angry sounds, James's sax play unaccompanied tunes, while there's thunderous unpredictable percussion playing odd non-melodic drum lines. The noise is simply everywhere and all over the place. This is a gem. It is a classic, and it is rare at the price of $37.00 at Amazon (same at Ebay so, don't bother). I remember when you could buy it for $3.00 or like one reviewer said 40 cents at a thrift shop, well that is inflation for you. You must acquire this piece if you are into this sort of thing.

No New York is an essential recording for any lover of the alternative music scene of the last 35 years. Many of todays outfits owe a lot to the pioneers featured on this recording. Play loud, chow down!

I owned the album years ago,and loved it. James Chance (also get James White and the Blacks...Off White) Mars, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and DNA..( Arto Lindsay and Peter Scherer have a great disc out called Pretty Ugly ..which is an aural sculpture)
This is from the days of the likes of Alan Suicide (Dream Baby Dream ..and Radiation) And the Bush Tetras(Pat Place who used to be w James Chance)
This is a must have for anyone who loved and remembers these bands.
What ever happened to violinist Walter Steding.." I'd rather watch it on TV?"

This collection of no-wave and avant-noise music, compiled and produced by Brian Eno with absolutely no frills, is extremely influential on the more out-there, and, strangely, more commercialized disco-punk that's been coming out of Manhattan recently (think the Rapture - whose sax player shows an occasional James Chance influence). The four bands inside this album are the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, and DNA.

The first and best band is the Contortions. Led by a man with the moniker of James Chance, the Contortions played a particularly homicidal brand of funk, complete with atonal accents in the organ and open-tuned slide guitar, sheet-metal bass, warped chicken-scratch lead guitar, and disco drums. Topping that all off were the sneering vocal screech (which did bear a slight resemblance to Richard Hell at his most bilious, though generally far more intense) and hideously gurgling, Ayler-influenced alto sax of Mr. Chance. He often squiggled across the stages he would play on one foot, like a Jerry Lee Lewis high on mescaline and raised on performance art. The four tracks here are all uniformly excellent, with "Dish It Out" leading the pack on a merciless bassline and a disfigured introductory sax solo. Chance's vocal here was perfect, nearly tripling the aggression with his entrance alone: "Sick of beeiiinnnnn'!!!!!! on the losin' end!!!!!!!!!!!" The band hurtles along with murderous intent, making this track a startlingly brilliant song. "Flip Your Face" follows with slide guitar snapping like a rubber band across the sonic spectrum, and what follows this rather grating little intro is a loping midtempo groove with charm and panache, with, of course, a trademarked ugly sax solo that would give Lindsay Lohan nightmares. Mr. Chance croons in a voice that would send Captain Beefheart into hearty titters about flipping your face over lightly, and that you aren't all there, anyway-yuh. I wouldn't say this was my favorite song of all time, as apparently Steve Albini did, but it is definitely its own song, and very fun, in a warped sort of way. "Jaded" opens with a hilariously off bass note, and then staggers forward with no desire to live, a disgusting little dirge with Chance's nonsensical vocals putting the finishing touch on it - brilliant. A truly - and I mean *truly* - inspired cover of James Brown's "I Can't Stand Myself" ends the Contortions songs, flying along at top speed with Chance posing, sassing, howling, shrieking and generally making himself a genius frontman, while the band detonates behind him. If only all white funk sounded like this.

The quality then takes a swan dive into the Grand Canyon with the next four songs, from the generally excrable Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, fronted by the infamous Lydia Lunch. I personally can't really tell three of the four songs apart. They are all really slow, static in fact, and most of the same chords pop up, and Lydia always moans at the exact same, sickeningly shrill pitch, and it all generally sounds like the musical equivalent of medieval torture. "Burning Rubber" and "I Woke Up Dreaming" are practically alike in musical structure, everything. "The Closet" at least has guitar that sounds actually nauseated - I don't know how Lunch did it, but the instrument sounds like it's about to throw up while playing the same chords she always does. I don't know - some people really do like this stuff, but I just can't get into Lydia Lunch. The one song of hers on here that I truly do like, though, is "Red Alert," an instrumental that is absolute, unbridled, furious aggression piled into 32 seconds. The bass is high-pitched, and slides between a couple notes again and again; the drums actually have some drive to them, for once; and Lunch shuts up and turns her guitar into an unbelivably high pitched sonic dentist's drill - really something. That they chose not to elaborate on "Red Alert" seems practically perverse.

The next act is called Mars. Mars had a lot of bad music, and were responsible for the no-wave opera "John Gavanti," as horrible a musical experience as I have ever had (though with two honest-to-goodness genius numbers on it, "Gavanti Samba" and "Mirror Mirror"), but here they realize their vision of noise-as-beautiful-expression, if only in flashes. "Helen Fordsdale" has a locomotive rhythm driving it; with the chattering, unutterably malevolent guitars, screaming vocals and the chordal catchy bassline, the noise becomes a song, albeit something almost ridiculously aggressive. But the smarts are there, making it an amazing slice of dementia. "Hairwaves" then takes about 3 minutes to go absolutely nowhere. "Tunnel" is flawed - not really very compelling - but the introductory guitar is astonishing, sounding exactly like a train chugging down the subway tracks. But "Puerto Rican Ghost" might be the best Mars selection here, with spasming drums, something which might, at a base and perverted level, be called funk bass, and of course the howling guitars and vocals - only this time, the vocals make chilling sense (the lyrics don't, really, but frantic gibberish was always Mars's stock in trade anyway): "Mommy, close the door!" Utterly terrifying, and only a minute long - one of Mars's absolute greatest songs.

The compilation ends with four good-to-fantastic songs by DNA, a power trio of sorts led by Arto Lindsay, whose solo albums are gorgeous. Arto sings here not in the soft, sensitive croon he employs on many of his other musical outings, but in an incomprehensible yowl that sounds like someone who just swallowed a jar of marbles trying to be swaggering and sexy. He also plays free-form, atonal electric 12-string guitar that somehow always sounds tremendously exciting and strangely musical. Robin Crutchfield, who would later leave the group for his own Dark Day, filled in the monolithic electric piano that proved the base of the band, and Ikue Mori played jerking drum rhythms around the others. Crutchfield was later replaced by ex-Pere Ubu bassist Tim Wright, but here the band is still with his lead-fingered keyboard, which often provides the songs with actual melodies. "Egomaniac's Kiss" is an absolute laugh, with Arto's vocals completely sending it over the edge into hilarity: think Bozo the Clown doing cabaret in a crack house and you may have an idea of it. "Lionel" is like a bombastic intro stretched into a two-minute instrumental: pure power, with Lindsay's frenetic strumming and Crutchfield's pulsing keyboard at one. "Not Moving" actually sounds like a hit song - from Neptune. Nonstop keyboard glisses and Arto's idea of blues bends make way for monotone vocal stylings and a relatively straight rhythm. "Size" ends the compilation on a glorious two-minute high with an amazing, irreplaceable riff and the band at its' most ecstatic. Brilliant art-noise.

This is quite influential on many musicians. I personally love the Contortions, really like DNA, appreciate Mars when they aren't just making noise, and really can't stand Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. But your tastes might be different.