No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. [Hardcover]

Thurston Moore (Author), Byron Coley (Author), Lydia Lunch (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2008

No Wave is the first book to visually chronicle the collision of art and punk in the New York underground of 1976 to 1980. This in depth look at punk rock, new wave, experimental music, and the avant-garde art movement of the 70s and 80s focuses on the true architects of No Wave from James Chance to Lydia Lunch to Glenn Branca, as well as the luminaries that intersected the scene, such as David Byrne, Debbie Harry, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, and Richard Hell.

This rarely documented scene was the creative stomping ground of young artists and filmmakers from Jean-Michel Basquiat to Jim Jarmusch as well as the musical genesis for the post-punk explosions of Sonic Youth and is here revealed for a new generation of fans and collectors.

Thurston Moore and Byron Coley have selected 150 unforgettable images, most of which have never been published previously, and compiled hundreds of hours of personal interviews to create an oral history of the movement, providing a never-seen-before exploration and celebration of No Wave.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Art and music come together in this oral account of Manhattan's mid-1970s No Wave music scene. Moore, a founding member of the band Sonic Youth, and Coley, a music writer and editor, identify the likes of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA, Contortions and Mars as the "core bands" that built No Wave. Shedding light on the personal relationships of these close-knit bands, the surprisingly reserved volume-graced with exquisite black-and-white photos with occasional splashes of poster-art color-also looks at how the devastated state of the city influenced their sound and performances: "As everything's collapsing... the music became the rebellion," says Teenage Jesus's Lydia Lunch in her scowling, astute foreword. Music sometimes described as "a car crash" gets heartfelt and intelligent commentary from the likes of DNA's Ikue Mori: "it wasn't about technique; it was more about new ideas and inspiration." The authors' personal interviews with the movement's other pioneers elicit raw, honest hindsight; along with revealing photographs, this volume takes readers straight into the heart of this zeitgeist.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* In 1977, when New York City was still a place where young artists could survive on nothing but their wits, a group of disparate nihilist geeks and renegades coalesced in the vacuum of the postpunk era to test the boundaries of rock music. It was only later that their collective projects would be ascribed under the umbrella of the No Wave “movement.” If the punk rock of the Ramones and Blondie was a reaction against corporate stadium rock and disco that took rock back to its roots, the No Wave movement was a total break from traditions and conventions that blurred the lines between music, noise, and performance art. Foremost among the progenitors of the angry, acerbic sound was the unlikely pair of Lydia Lunch and James Chance, both featured prominently in photographs and interviews. Four of the bands (the Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars, and DNA) were documented on Brian Eno’s seminal No New York album; others (Blinding Headache, the Gynecologists, and Theoretical Girls) just faded into obscurity. Author Moore (of Sonic Youth) has gifted a treasure trove of rare photographs and oral history of a fleeting moment of New York underground that continues to reverberate 30 years later. --David Siegfried

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 144 pages
• Publisher: Abrams Image (June 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0810995433
• ISBN-13: 978-0810995437
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 10.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #101,889 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #100 in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > Theory, Composition & Performance > Sheet Music & Scores > Forms & Genres > Popular

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars eye candy and history, July 15, 2008

By 

David M. Madden "nonnon/dj_webern" (salt lake, utah United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. (Hardcover)

1970's New York, a time of polemic filth and fury with displaced art kids crashing head first into the detritus to form bands without which we would have no Rapture, Yeah Yeah Yeahs or (insert a hundred names here). Framed around this incredible gathering of black & whites are interviews (conducted by the Thurston Moore and writer/editor/et cetera Byron Coley) with artists deep in the thick of said scene (i.e. James Chance, Glen Branca, Ikue Mori, Robert Quine and the ever-verbose Lydia Lunch), club owners, iconic groupies and passers-by, including Brian Eno who gives his perspective on the immortal Eno "produced" No New York compilation. Having been active participants during this era, the authors do a spectacular job of detailing the tenuous camaraderie, insular tension and the seeds of No Wave's demise. Not simply for those who know the difference between "No Wave" and "New Wave", the eye candy and history lessons make for an illuminating, universally appealing document.

4.0 out of 5 stars Lesgal..., September 20, 2009

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Marcos T. N. Andrade "Marcos Thanus" (Rio de Janeiro) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. (Hardcover)

Legal o livro... um pouco chato o lance de ter um monte de entrevistas no meio da narrativa. Vc está lendo no fluxo, de repente um sujeito começa a dar um depoimento e passam 2 ou 3 páginas de fotos (incríveis, por sinal)... aí vc já não sabe exatamente onde, quando, etc... E podia ter mais free jazz (esse rótulo é um lixo, mas da pra entender do que estou falando). Não é o foco, mas as duas cenas estavam mais do que conectadas e isso é apenas mencionado.

Vale pelas fotos e o texto é lesgal... Se vc usar ele como "coffee table book" na sua sala de estar e uma menina chegar lá e não te achar um cara sensacional por vc ter ele ao invés de um do Matisse ou um de decoração de interiores é porque ela não vale a pena!!!

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The scene that never was, July 15, 2009

By 

Lovblad (Geneva, Switzerland) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. (Hardcover)

Basically if you were listening to music at the end of the 70's, beginning of the 80's, you had heard of all these people. Their records were available in most record stores world-wide, but nothing really became directly of it. This record documents this scene very well: we see a NY underground scene that intermingled with then and future celebrities (Iggy, Blondie, etc) but somehow did not connect. The whole scene centered finally on the Eno-produced No New York LP containing music by the more prominent acts in this book. While Eno seemingly had an eye on the future appraisal of the scene and merely wanted to document it (which shows as I wrote that EVERYBODY had heard of this scene, even my mom...). This book is surprising because while most of the rock books especially the ones covering this era tend to use mostly the same material and sources, this is fairly original stuff. It is based mostly (a little like PLease Kill Me) on personal recollections but without necessarily having a storyline. This does not matter since Moore and his collaborator get the vive of this underground scene beautifully. It is more a photo book with some essential anectdotes. Retrospectively a lot of intellectual bs has been put on the music that was really partly unlistenable and really hilarious stuff to annoy your parents or friends in the 70's who might like their rock music to be listenable. Mars and DNA is particularly atrocious as is some of the Lydia Lunch stuff (she was at the time the arhetypical indie queen and seems to have been a bad influence on everyone). Arto Lindsay ended up doing almost commercial stuff nowadays and Lizzy Mercier Descloux (God Bless her) had a huge afro-beat hit in France with "ou sont passees les gazelles". James Chance was more interesting and apparently still tours France. Anyway this is a splendid book, lovingly done by two people involved in a scene that existed while I was a teenager. I still have all these records and they are to be cherished because they really pushed some (not always artistic} boundaries by being simply too extreme. It was a scene that took itself way too seriously but which had some really very colourful characters. The book does indirectly explain on the one hand why they were extremely influential on the people who heard them, bought their records but failed to go beyond that for recognition. Anyway, it is also quite cheap for the work they have put into it and this kind of work must be supported.