Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #64028 in Books
• Published on: 2008-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 144 pages

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.
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About the Author

Customer Reviews

eye candy and history
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.

The scene that never was
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.

The definitive chronicle of the late '70s New York art-rock scene.
No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980.Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth) and music critic Byron Cooley have created the definitive chronicle of the late '70s New York art-rock scene. Together they skillfully depict the culture, politics, and environment that formed the still-obscure and quietly influential bands of that era. The details are vast and at times daunting; all the who-dated-whoms, whens, wheres, and whys are included with factual reference points, oral histories, and extensive quotes and photography. The scene, created largely by emerging artists, was rich in photographers and creative writers, and a lot of the never-before-seen source material in No Wave is worthy of a book alone. No Wave fans, especially the art-school-leaning types, will appreciate the reproductions of Lydia Lunch fashion calendars, black-and-white behind-the-scenes photography, record covers, and concert flyers.

-from AlarmPress.com
http://www.alarmpress.com/4089/book-reviews/no-wave-post-punk-underground-new-york-1976-1980/