Acute Records is proud to announce the release of our 10th CD, Memory Span by The Lines. A few years in the making, Memory Span compiles all of the singles and EPs The Lines released. We’ve also included 2 bonus unreleased tracks and a fancy color booklet with photos, flyers, sleeve scans and a band history. What more can you ask for? Their two LPs? Those are coming next! Let’s focus on the matter at hand, which is the incredible run of singles and EPs The Lines recorded between 1978 and 1981. Songs like this one…

Two Split Seconds
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACU010/TheLines_TwoSplitSeconds.mp3]
control-click to download

and this one…

Nerve Pylon
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACU010/TheLines_NervePylon.mp3]
control-click to download

The Lines’ music was unique in it’s subtle charm. Many reviewers didn’t give them a chance the first time around, leaving them and their releases to develop the smallest but most rabid cult audience. It’s the kind of music that will work it’s way under your skin and into your brain and stay there, for good, if you give it time. In all my years as a music fan, I can think of very few acts who managed to release so much consistently great music while achieving so little notice. At this point in time, with many fans and critics sure that the post-punk era has been so thoroughly mined for hidden gems that there can’t be anything left, The Lines stands as the ultimate challenge (of course I think there’s always more great stuff to find of any era!). Here’s a band who’s history shares much of the growth of their peers, as the punk rock impulse underpinning post-punk gave voice to more experimental leanings. Music ranging from 60s inspired rock, angular and taut post-punk, krautrock, dub and disco influences and underneath all of this, solid and catchy song-writing.

You can learn more about the release on Memory Span’s web page which includes even more web-exclusive unreleased tracks, such as…

Cat Bug Jeep
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACU010/TheLines_CatBugJeep.mp3]
control-click to download

and photos, flyers and other goodies. I figured I’d take this “blogging” oppurtunity to dig a bit deeper into my personal thoughts on the band, as well as some thanks. Back again in the background…

The law of diminishing returns…the first few times I posted about my Viva Radio shows, I included a picture of the record’s sleeve and a paragraph or 4 about each selection. The last time, I skipped the artwork. This time, I’m skipping the descriptions completely. I have more important things to do, including writing about Acute’s latest release, Memory Span by The Lines. However I thought I’d share the playlists to the last three shows, all of which can be streamed from my Viva Radio show page, Pyjamarama. Maybe if I have time I’ll come back and rant about each track, for the two of you that would care.

O.K. Let’s Go
This was a return to my UK DIY roots. Not that I was listening to the Scrotum Poles while in middle school, but during the period when I was first discovering tape trading on the internet and making my first internet radio playlists (on Supersphere, which I think is gone). I think I stopped making mixes of this stuff because eventually I could just say, “go buy some Hyped2Death CDs” Some of these tracks are on the Hyped2Death Messthetics CDs, some I discovered from the 2 volume Instant Pop Classics bootlegs, some I got turned onto by Steve at Low Down Kids, a few songs care of fellow fans Michael Train and Joshua Gabriel and the rest here and there. These are mostly DIY, lo-fi, low-budget UK post-punk pop gems. The music ranges from twee and quaint to arty and avant-garde, but it’s all quite catchy.

1. I Jog & The Tracksuits – Redbox
2. The Funboy Five – Life After Death
3. Bathroom Renovations – Intensely Henna’d
4. Thin Yoghurts – Girl on the Bus
5. Scrotum Poles – Pick the Cat’s Eyes Out
6. The Farmer’s Boys – Drinking and Dressing Up
7. IQ Zero – I Must Obey
8. Grow Up – Missing
9. Steve Miro – Smiling in Reverse
10. Slight Seconds – New Me
11. One Gang Logic – Who Killed Sex?
12. Metropak – O.K. Let’s Go
13. Desperate Bicycles – (I Make the) Product
14. Mud Hutters – Water Torture
15. Club Tango – FTN
16. Beach Bullies – Windowshopping
17. To The Finland Station – Betray
18. Happy Refugees – This is Cold
19. Beyond the Implode – This Atmosphere
20. Tronics – Baby’s In a Coma
21. Versatile Newts – Blimp
22. Graph – Drowning

The Crunch
This is more post-punk, mostly, and of a decidedly more “funky” style. I wasn’t trying to do a strict “post-punk funk” dance mix or anything, just picking some more of my favorite post-punk type tracks that you could possibly dance to, depending on level of inebriation most likely. Or angst. These aren’t floor-fillers or anything, though Carl Craig did steal one of these, but they’ll definitely get you shaking in your seat. I know all over people say they play “post-punk” at their dance parties, which usually means Bloc Party and the occasional Gang of 4 selection. This is one version of a post-punk dance party.

1. The Nightingales – The Crunch
2. Boots for Dancing – Hesitate
3. Manicured Noise – Metronome
4. The Tea Set – Tri-X Pan
5. Funkapolitan – As Time Goes By
6. Au Pairs – It’s Obvious (Peel Session)
7. The Raincoats – Balloon
8. Dislocation Dance – Roof is Leaking
9. Gist – Clean Bridges
10. Design for Living – Red Ribbon Day
11. Family Fodder – Silence
12. Flying Lizards – Steam Away
13. Camberwell Now – Speculative Fiction
14. Scritti Politti – P.A.S

Transparent Radiation
This was describes as “kinda 80s, kinda psychedelic”. Not the most specific theme, just some slightly spacey stuff, 60s influenced post-punk type stuff. Some not that 60s or psychedelic, but just stuff I thought would fit nicely. I think I did an OK job.

1. The Tea Set – The Preacher
2. The Stranglers – Let’s Tango in Paris
3. Psychic TV – Just Like Arcadia
4. Echo & the Bunnymen – I’ve Read it in Books
5. The Teardrop Explodes – Camera Camera
6. Clinical Noise – Venus Comes
7. Schleimer K – She’s Gone
8. The Servants – Transparent
9. Sun City Girls – Soft Fragile Eggshell Minds
10. Meat Puppets – We’re Here
11. Robyn Hitchcock – Acid Bird
12. Opal – Happy Nightmare Baby
13. Sonic Youth – Tom Violence
14. Swans – The Other Side of the World
15. Live Skull – Demon Rail
16. Spacemen 3 – Ecstasy Symphony/Transparent Radiation (Flashback)

VS

Thursday afternoon, April 17th, catch the PART TIME PUNKS radio show special focusing on Acute Records. PART TIME PUNKS is the DJ partnership of Benny Shambles and Michael Stock. It’s a club night every Sunday at The Echo in LA, and it’s a radio show Thursdays on KXLU 88.9 FM from 2pm to 6pm PST (or 5pm to 9pm Eastern, or as I call it, normal time). So if you’re in the LA area thursday, be sure to tune in and if you’re anywhere else, you can stream at the KXLU website.

Benny Shambles and Michael Stock, photo: Alex Prager

And what’s so special? Well, they’ll be playing selections from many of Acute’s great releases, as well as some likeminded stuff such as the bands that got me into all of this like the Homosexuals and the Desperate Bicycles. They’ll also be playing some Carpark and Paw Tracks stuff, to make sure KXLU’s ASCAP reporting fills the fat pockets of my partner Todd Carpark. Even more special, they’ll be playing not only tracks off our upcoming CD Memory Span by The Lines, but some demo and unreleased material, including a track from the never released lost “3rd album”. And if that wasn’t enough, there will be a few CD giveaways. And if you act now, you get a second Flowbee, the Showtime Rotisserie and the football phone. Hurry while this offer lasts!

So spread the word. More info about The Lines releases coming to this website very soon.

Just thought I’d post the tracklists of my two most recent Viva Radio shows, both available in the archives of my show Pyjamarama. I’m gonna try to chill on the extended essays regarding each track, there’s gotta be some mystery in life, right? Actually I’m just too lazy.

The first show focused on the prettier side of early Detroit Techno and some likeminded sounds coming out of Chicago in the mid/late 80s/early 90s and some of the early UK IDM that drew so heavily from Detroit. This may not be “pretty” to some people, I guess one person’s ecstatic vision of a slightly-melancholic utopian future is another person’s mind-numbing repetition of bleeps and bloops.

I first got into techno via the likes of 808 State, the Orb, Moby and acts better left unmentioned, but the discovery in the summer before my first year of college of the just released Warp Artificial Intelligence CD, with massive US distribution thanks to Wax Trax/TVT, really blew me away. The concept of electronic music not made for dancing really jibed with my interest in the likes of Wendy Carlos and Vangelis, but the dance music influence was unmistakable. Within a few years, IDM as it would be titled, went further and further from it’s roots in more experimental, and to me less appealing, directions. No matter as my arrival to college lead me to the roots of this music…all the artists listed as influences in the very educational liner notes of the Artificial Intelligence CD. I knew the experimental/industrial/new wave side of things, but who was Rhythm is Rhythm? I soon found out and spent the next several years with a tape of Detroit Techno permanently in my car’s tape deck, driving back and forth between New York and Cleveland, Pennsylvania country-side flying by to the tune of what was surely the music of the future. Alternately, in my friends car with Black Dog’s Bytes and B.12’s Electro-Soma…he had a CD player. Not all of this is “dance music” but it’s all Techno one way or another and it all still sounds like the future to me.

SYNTHETIC EMOTIONS
1. Long Ago – A Relic
Derrick May and/or Carl Craig from the Transmat Relics comp

2. Model 500 – Infoworld
Juan Atkins techno perfection, also on Relics, from the Ocean to Ocean 12″.

3. Stasis – vcf
Early IDM, 1993 UK techno track from Steve Pickton, on the Redcell/Stasis compilation. Redcell was B.12.

4. Mr. Fingers – Stars
Chicago House god Larry Heard in 1987, I think it’s only available on bootlegs now. Stuff like this made me confused about what the difference was between House and Techno back then. Shockingly beautiful, surprisingly remiscent of Severed Head’s Dead Eyes Open.

5. Ron Trent – Altered States (Terrace Light City Mix)
Not sure when this came out, it’s been remixed and re-released about a thousand times. I think from 1990. The original version is pure minimal Chicago Techno House, this remix is from Terrace/Stefan Robbers from the Netherlands.

6. Reel By Real – Aftermath
Martin Bonds with Juan Atkins. This was on the Techno Two compilation, and thus made it onto my detroit techno tape, and along with Infoworld and many other classics, supplied the soundtrack to many 8 hour car trips along route 80.

7. B.12 – Telefone 529
B.12 were the purists of the IDM/Artificial Intelligence set, their CD Electro-Soma is about as perfect as Detroit Techno gets, no matter where it’s made. This track, released as Musicology, is on the Artificial Intelligence comp.

8. Fuse – Dimension Intrusion
Another classic from the early days of AI. Fuse was yet another project from Richie Hawtin of +8 records, at that point probably best known for Cybersonik. Most of Fuse’s tracks were minimal/banging techno cuts, this was like his ambient track or something. Has he done anything this good since? Has anybody?

9. Drexciya – Aqua Worm Hole
Even in the weirdest most experimental corners of the neo-electro revival of the mid 90s a group like Drexciya could still show that shimmering celestial quality of these heartfelt synthetic emotions.

10. Underground Resistance – Quadrasonic
Another group known best for noisier and more banging stuff, this is a relatively early UR track that creates and trippy, spacey atmosphere with a bubbly and yes, pretty, acid line.

11. The Black Dog – Techno Playtime
Another of the Artificial Intelligence/early IDM groups, the mysterious Black Dog were like the opposite of B.12. They mined the entire history of late 20th century dance music and threw it in a blender. Echoes of Detroit, Chicago, New York, breakbeats, disco, whatever, all thrown together with odd time-signatures and abrupt changes, defying you to actually dance to it, while still sounding like dance music. This is an early track. The CD Bytes is super essential, you can probably get rid of every other “IDM” CD ever if you have that.

12. 0733 – Synthetic Emotions
Far as I know there’s only two 0733 releases, both credited to one Casey Tucker. The first one, with production by Richie Hawtin and on Hawtin’s other label, Probe, features the songs Loner, which ended up on the ubiquitous Probe Mission USA CD which you’d find in the techno compilation section of every Sam Goody in America somewhere between Zoo Rave and Rave Til’ Dawn. It’s a pretty perfect song. The second release, without a Hawtin credit but again on Probe is the Intelligensia EP from 1992, which features this song, which gave this show it’s name, for obvious reasons. SO BEAUTIFUL!

The next show probably came from the urge to continue down an electronic dance path as I was feeling like I made too many rock playlists. I started with an old electro-funk playlist, got rid of some of the more obvious choices and made it more eclectic, grabbing some not quite electro hip-hop, some breakdance type stuff, even some techno and freestyle. Lots of vocoders of course. Some influence from a few classic compilations. Streetsounds Electro comps, the Beat Classic comp, etc.

SOMETHING FRESH TO SWING TO
1. Newtrament – London Bridge is Falling Down
UK electro-funk from the early 80s.

2. The Russell Brothers – The Party Scene
I don’t know anything about this more then what I read on the StreetSounds comp and quickly forgot. Pretty dope and slept on track.

3. Fearless Four – F-4000
Mike Simonetti used to play this all the time. I think electro-funk DJs don’t know this because it’s from a “rap” group. Some of the dopest vocoder rapping ever.

4. Kraftwerk – Computer World
They had to be in here somewhere.

5. Model 500 – Night Drive (Time, Space, Transmat)
Juan Atkins once again. He started with Cybotron which was New Wave meets Prince meets electro-funk. Night Drive, along with No UFOs and Future represent the transition from electro-funk to techno.

6. Freestyle – Don’t Stop the Rock
Pretty Tony electro-funk freestyle party jam. If this doesn’t get them dancing, it’s time to go home.

7. Rocksteady Crew – Rocksteady Crew
First heard this on Night Flight’s take off on dancing on USA cable tv late saturday night sometime in the late 80s. Pretty goofy but insanely infectious. Should they have stuck with their day jobs?

8. Fearless Four – Rockin’ It
Another from Fearless Four, rocking it to Kraftwerk’s Man Machine. They had another jam called Just Rock which is them rapping over an insanse version of Gary Numan’s Cars. This is one overlooked old-school rap crew due for serious hipster reappraisal.

9. Faze One – Get Buzy
I know nothing about this other then it’s from England and was on StreetSounds Electro 20, and is exactly the kind of weird shit that would never fly in America but ends up sounding like hip-hop from mars, and thus, pretty wonderful.

10. B+ – B-Beat Classic
1983 West End classic, Spyder-D re-arranging the Sessomatto break. This appreaed on the 1997 Beat Classic compilation, an awesome collection of hip-hop stuff that sorta fell through the cracks in the mid 80s.

11. Levi 167 – Something Fresh to Swing To
Getting further away from electro, more of a boom-bap hip-hop kind of thing but it seemed to fit fine. Levi 167 was a grafitti artist, this came out on B-Boy Records in 1987. The instrumental version appears on the aforementioned Beat Classic comp, but as usual, I like the rap.

12. Man Parrish – Hip Hop Be Bop (Don’t Stop)
I don’t think I need to say anything about this. How about another personal anecdote? First year of college, Sarge’s Records in Oberlin, Ohio was going out of business selling off all their vinyl for a buck or two a piece. Todd Hutlock, the same fellow who was hooking me up with Detroit Techno CDs said “go check out the sale, there’s some classic electro stuff there”, and I bought this 12″. Now I know it’s pretty ubiquitious, but I’d never heard anything like that before in my life. For what it’s worth, I like the flipside, Heatstroke, even better, it’s more electro-disco than electro-funk, but both sides are totally awesome.

UPDATE: Just got back from seeing the Nightingales second NY show on their limited tour of the states. They are perhaps the greatest live act in existence right now. Throw the Velvets, Captain Beefheart, Faust, Television, Link Wray, The Fall etc in a blender, pulse it on the “punk rock confrontation” and “post-punk angularity and angst” settings and you’re halfway there. They have one more show in Boston, so make the trip.

Believe it or not, when I’m not DJing or making amazing internet radio playlists, I sometimes find the time to work on a record label, and I’ve been meaning to post some sort of update about this so-called “record label” and catch up with some of the artists we’ve worked with.

THE LINES
If you want to know what we’ve been up to for the last few months…or years, the answer probably involves the Lines. We’ve mentioned here and there that this has been coming and now it’s finally happening. The first of our Lines CDs, Memory Span, compiling all of the band’s singles and EPs comes out in the end of May. It will also feature two unreleased tracks and a colorful booklet. If you’re unfamiliar, the Lines were a unique band who released an eclectic and continuously evolving body of work over several years during the late 70s/early 80s post-punk era, played with many of the great bands of the day, but always managed to fall through the cracks. From skeletal and taut post-punk scorchers to atmospherically recorded dubbed-out bliss, their music was consistently wonderful, yet they were criminally ignored during their own time, and outside of a rabid cult following, forgotten since. We hope this will change with our Lines reissues and you’ll be hearing plenty more about them. In the meantime, check out a few of their classic tracks online and be their myspace friend.

THE NIGHTINGALES
No, you didn’t read that wrong, we didn’t release any Nightingales records, but we put out the CD compiling the Prefects, the early UK punk band that would eventually evolve into the Nightingales. It’s a kick-ass CD and I think we still have some copies available.

Faults
[audio:http://acuterecords.com/sounds/ACT7/Faults.mp3]
control-click to download

Anyway, around the time of that CD release, Robert Lloyd hooked up with original Prefects guitarist Alan Apperly to form the latest version of the Nightingales and even brought them to the US for their first ever shows here. A year later they came back with a different drummer, and a new second guitarist, the teenage guitar sensation Matt Wood and they were totally awesome. Now they’re back in the states for a few shows. Anybody who saw them on their last visit, especially the show at Cake Shop, know they completely kill. Robert and Co. teach the kids how it’s done for the very best in post-punk angular skronk honky tonk kraut-rock and roll.

Thursday, March 6th
Club Midway, 25 Avenue B (between 2nd and 3rd), Manhattan
10$, 8$ in advance
Show has been mvoed to The Charleston, Bedford and North 7th, Williamsburg, 9pm, 7$
The Nightingales, Christy & Emily, Hotpants Romance, and Tatters and Rags (live debut!)

Friday, March 7th
Death By Audio, 49 S. 2nd St (between Wythe & Kent), Williamsburg, Brooklyn
8pm, $6, ALL AGES
The Nightingales, Hotpants Romance, and The In Out

Saturday, March 8th
Church, 69 Kimarnock Street, Boston
9pm, $8, 21+
The Nightingales, Hotpants Romance, The Konks, Apple Betty

IKE YARD
Another band reissued by Acute that’s back alive and kicking, New York’s Ike Yard, or at least 3/4ths of them, have been playing and recording steadily for the past year. Tons of recordings from recent sessions can be heard on their myspace page. They’ve also done a jam session or two with Sal and Dennis from Liquid Liquid, another great band from that great period in NYC music. They also remain busy with side projects including the continued existence of the Death Comet Crew and Ike Yard’s Stuart has cool events like the Dystopians movie night at Monkeytown, where Stuart will be joined by Bones and Norman Westburg of the Swans to provide a live socre to George Lucas’s THX 118.

FIRE ENGINES
Our most recent release, Hungry Beat by the Fire Engines continues to excite and amaze. After they reunited a few years back we were hoping to get the chance to have them come over to America for the first time and play some shows, maybe even in their spiritual no-wave home of NYC. I even had a pipe dream of setting up a tour of Subway Sect, the Fire Engines and the Nightingales. Alas, it wasn’t to be, but the guys from the Fire Engines have kept themselves busy. Singer Davey Henderson and drummer Russell Burns have recorded 2 fantastic singles as the Sexual Objects. Great, velvets-fueled rock, available from Creeping Bent and Aufgeladen & Bereit. Check out the latter label’s myspace page to hear a sample. Russell has another project called The Bum-Clocks, where he backs up his brother and proto-Fire Engines member Tam Dean Burn who essentially presents a Scottish poetry reciting of the works of Iggy Pop. They are joined by the amazing guitar of Malcolm Ross who previously played in obscure Scottish bands called Josef K, Orange Juice and Aztec Camera.

UPDATE 2: Check out Morgan and I on Viva-Radio Naked Fridays:

UPDATE: Check out the cool new radio bumper airing on Viva Radio:

[audio:BARMITZVAH.mp3]

The Environ Bar Mitzvah

SATURDAY 3/1/08

On March 1, 1995, Environ was born. Now, 13 years later, we invite you to come help us celebrate Environ’s passage into manhood… (details within)

I know I said at least one post a week and promised all kinds of subjects. I say a lot of things. And if I deliver on 1/6th the promises I make, that’s still quite a bit of deliveries. I’ve got some updates and recaps coming up as well as some news and briefings, but for now I’ll just tell you about my latest Viva Radio show, Strange Kicks, another collection of slightly off rock and or roll. Check it out soon before it’s replaced with my forthcoming Viva show which will be all techno, all of the time.

There was no particular theme or genre for this show, but I was probably inspired by a package of CDs I got from Overground Records in the UK which included reissues of records by Alternative TV, The Mirrors and Vic Godard & Subway Sect. It’s not even as if these three bands sound alike and it’d be impossible for me to explain what would tie this selection together. I suppose it’s all rock-n-roll. It’s all a bit damaged, a bit fuzzy at parts. I should just get started. It’s getting late and there’s a lot to do.

1. Lou Reed–Real Good Time Together
I was really late to this record, totally slept on it for years. Man how my life would’ve been better if I had a copy of this in high school instead of New York. I’ve always been a sucker for conventional wisdom and only recently came around to the bulk of Lou’s post Berlin, late 70s/early 80s output, and Street Hassle is arguably the peak. First of all, the production is some of his most fuzzed out sounds, no wonder Spacemen 3 wrote a song called “Ode to Street Hassle”. The whole thing sounds like it was recorded 1/3rd in the studio, 1/3rd live and 1/3rd in the bathroom. Awesome female backing vocals. Don’t even get me started on the song Street Hassle, 11 minutes of cellos, poetry residing somewhere between Transformer and the Blue Mask, and a visit from Bruce Springsteen.

2. Car-sick Cars–Rock ‘n’ Roll Hero
One of the great benefits of myspace.com, other then the free Macy’s gift card and the photos I can’t believe she would post them online, is the random friend requests from bands. I know you got 10 yesterday and they all sucked. Well I run a record label, which means I got 100 yesterday and they all sucked. Believe it or not, this particular post-punk reissue label is not interested in your heavy-metal emo trip-hop band from Moscow. But I try to take the time to check out the bands because for every clueless act that wants to get signed, there’s actually bands who are familiar with the music Acute has released, maybe they’re even fans.

One day I received three friend requests from bands/acts in Beijing, China. A bit of research led me to realize the common thread was an artist named Shou Wang, who seems to be a central figure in what is being called the “No Beijing” scene. The three pages were for himself, a project called White and the Car-sick Cars. The range of influences listed on the White page and his own page are wide-ranging and faultlessly hip, not to mention very much in line with my own. Einsturzende Neubauten, TG, Glenn Branca, Steve Reich, La Monte Young, etc. The music on those two pages are an eclectic selection of noise and minimalist inspired pieces.

I was more excited, however, by Car-sick Cars, his “rock” band. This particular list of influences pretty much sums up a large selection of my record collection. Branca, The Clean, The Fall, Joy Division, Neu!, Sonic Youth, Suicide, Swell Maps, Theoretical Girls etc. The music they make is noisy indie-rock with the minimal, chiming riffing of the early 80s post-punk and NZ bands and big accessible hooks like Daydream-era Sonic Youth. According to his myspace page, Shou Wang has played with Glenn Branca, Elliot Sharp, Neubauten and Car-sick Cars even appropriately opened for Sonic Youth. Hopefully they’ll get a full-length out soon, maybe they’ll even come play in NY. Check out all their songs on the myspace page, they’re great.

3. The Bizarros–White Screen Movies
What was in the water in Ohio in the 70s? Don’t answer that. The Cuyahoga River may have caught fire, but that was in Cleveland. Whatever was going on in Akron was equally bizarre. Like their counterparts in Cleveland, the Bizarros had a severe case of Velvet Underground fever. This song, the last on their 1979 LP, has that 1-4-5 repetition, chugging guitars and killer droning combo organ that so many of the best Velvets followers mined. It pretty much starts and never lets go. Also like some of their counterparts in Cleveland, the Bizarros have been severely overlooked. Post-VU rock that fell through the cracks of the mid/late 70s. Clearly too accomplished and too adult to be punk-rock, but too angry and too weird to be mainstream.

4. Mirrors–Another Nail in the Coffin
Speaking of Cleveland. For those new to CLE rock, well, the Velvets played there and Boston, so in the 70s we get Pere Ubu and the Modern Lovers. That’s the simplified story. There was an exciting scene of several interconnected bands, The Electric Eels, perhaps the noisiest band of the 70s, if not just in Ohio, the Styrenes, who had a considerably artier approach with keyboards and art-rock songs, and right in the middle of the two, The Mirrors, simply a great rock band, operating very much as I described The Bizarros above, a mix of post-velvets rhythm and the kind of grungey art-rock song that could only come from Ohio. What original recordings existed were compiled on Overground Record’s great “Hand in my Pockets” compilation, but the band reunited in 1989 and recorded Another Nail in the Coffin, now available in an expanded version on Roir. These songs, and many more that appear on this playlist, would fit nicely on an earlier Viva playlist I did called “Drano in My Veins”. Well worth checking out if I may say so myself.

5. Anthony Moore–Judy Get Down
Where do I start with Anthony Moore, or More, as he’s sometimes known. He wrote some of the lyrics on Pink Floyd’s Momentary Lapse of Reason record. No, that’s far from his greatest accomplishment, though I assume he’s friendly with Dave Gilmour and I’m always touched to see remnants of the Floyd’s past as a british art-rock band, like bringing Robert Wyatt on stage to do the “Hello…is there anybody out there” portion of Comfortably Numb. Anthony Moore has more interesting things in his history, starting in the early 70s when he ended up recording two wonderfully fun, slightly silly, often beautiful albums of minimalist type music, Pieces from the Cloudland Ballroom and Secrets of the Blue Bag, as well as another more quirky and less listenable experiment called Reed Whistle and Sticks. About that same time, Moore and childhood pal Peter Blegved, along with Moore’s girlfriend Dagmar Krause, formed my favorite band of all time, Slapp Happy, and recorded some awesome records with Faust as a backing band. I’m not going to spend hours talking about Slapp Happy, but will recommend you read Phil Turnbul’s essay here. I’ll write my own appreciation eventually, I’m sure! The mid 70s brought his first solo art-pop LP, Out, which features some delightful songs, but this was followed by two records, 1978’s Flying Doesn’t Help and 1981’s World Service which rock that punk/post-punk/new wave influence anger, angst and sound, but with his unique style of art-rock/pop. Judy Get Down/Lucia is the single taken from Flying Doesn’t Help.

6. The Fans–Dangerous Goodbyes
The Fans were arguably the first New Wave band in Georgia. Now, that may not sound impressive at first, but when you think about what followed…The B-52s, Pylon, Method Actors, The Brains, R.E.M., etc, an interesting picture emerges. The main players were Alfredo Villar and Kevin Dunn, and they both seemed to have, amongst various other classic rock influences, a very serious Brian Eno thing going on, which is not a bad thing. However, because of their English art-rock fandom, and having records come out on the UK label Albion (also home to the dB’s), people thought they were british. Some of the sources I learned about them seem gone from the internet, but I think like some of the NY punk bands, while they formed and were an influence as early as early/mid 70s, the records didn’t come out till later on. After their break-up, Kevin Dunn had a vastly underrated solo career putting out a series of LPs and singles that are very cool and well worth picking up, and you should still be able to find them cheap. Dunn also produced Pylon’s Cool and the B-52’s Rock Lobster, and if that doesn’t get him into the hall of fame along with R.E.M.(who’s Mike Mills played with the Fans on a few occasions)…

However, the song I’ve included here, Dangerous Goodbyes, was written by the more mysterious Alfredo Villar, who I think left the music biz. The fuzzy, droney nature of the guitar and snarling vocals and squealing noise has always killed me. The flipside, Dunn’s Cars and Explosions, is no less awesome, and I recommend this single to anyone who likes good music, and nobody who likes bad. The Fans released 2 other singles, which weren’t quite as good, but well worth checking out. True/Deathwish has a classy power-pop song backed with an artier new wave/rock number, while the very rare first single, Lonely Girls/Telstar/Ekstasis is alltogether something else, arch art rock pop and a version of Telstar. Apparently this single made it to the jukebox of CBGBs where it was set at the wrong speed, and the bizarro sped up (or slowed down?) version of Telstar was quite a hit.

One final note about the Fans…prior to breaking up they were joined on synthesizer by Larry Tee, later famous for Ru Paul, and even later, infamous for Electroclash. Now, I’m too young to say I was there when the Fans played in Atlanta, but at least I can say I was at the first (and second) Electroclash festivals. Fischerspooner stole the show, nobody was prepared for Monotrona, and A.R.E. Weapons were not at the top of their game playing to a giant empty nightclub.

7. Devo–The Day My Baby Gave Me a Surprise
Devo are an obscure band from Akron, Ohio who tried to ride the coat-tails of the Bizarros and Tin Huey. They formed in 1973 and are best remembered for several laser disk video releases in the early/mid 80s. Little else is known about them.

8. Adam and the Ants–Car Trouble
and

9. The Monochrome Set–Alphaville
Before he was Adam Ant and before discovering the Burundi Beat, before dressing like a pirate or appearing on american TV, he was a punk, and Dirk Wears White Socks is one of the coolest records of the era, and this song is one of the best songs of any era. Punk/post-punk/new wave/glam, whatever, it’s a great record. I love the burundi beat stuff, the pop stuff as well, but this is something else. Even this record however is a progression from his very earliest stuff. Check out this clip of a performance of “Plastic Surgery” which also appears in Derek Jarman’s film Jubilee, which stars Adam as a naive young punk singer. And this very vintage bit of London punk history, a video for the song Dirk Wears White Socks, featuring his co-star from Jubilee, Jordan.

Some of the line-up changes in this period involved 2 members, Lester Square and Andy Warren, leaving one after the other to form The Monochrome Set with the awesome Bid. The first similarity (or was it a reference?) is the first song on the Monochrome Set’s first LP, Strange Boutique, called “The Monochrome Set (I Presume)” which opens with what else, the Burundi Beat, as well as jungle noises. Not the most culturally sensitive moment for the Monochrome Set. Coincidence or a dig at their old bandmate?

Another fun discovery however was from a bootleg of early Adam and the Ants live material from when Lester Square was still in the band. Here they are performing a version of the song Fat Fun sometime in 1978/79, which The Monochrome Set would record later that year with a bit more fidelity on a Peel Session.

Adam and the Ants–Fat Fun, live 78 or 79
[audio:FatFun.mp3]

To hear the Monochrome Set version, I recommend picking up the compilation Volume, Contrast, Brilliance, which is a collection of their early Rough Trade singles and Peel Sessions. Some of the Peel Sessions tracks would end up on their first few albums, but often these versions are better. The song included in Strange Kicks is Alphaville, the b-side to their first single, He’s Frank which was Rough Trade’s 5th release. A severely underrated band, The Monochrome Set wrote tons of great songs that mixed arch/twee/camp with punk/post-punk awesomeness. Bid is still writing and performing as Scarlet’s Well and even made it to NY a few years ago to play a small show at Knitting Factory backed up by some Brooklyn indie-pop kids. Many Monochrome Set classics were included to my great pleasure.

10. The Fall–Entitled
Following a thread from the Monochrome Set on Rough Trade to the Fall during their post-Rough Trade, Brix era. I’m the type of Fall fan who thinks Brix added a lot to the band, from her back-up harmony vocals (and occasional lead, Hotel Bloedel is amongst my top 10 Fall songs) to her more accessible strumming guitar. Entitled is the B-side to Hey! Luciani, one of the singles from the mid 80s LP Bend Sinister. It’s also available on the 458489 B Sides double CD, something I hadn’t fully dug through for many years, and admittedly only came upon this song pretty recently. What was fun was noticing a melodic similarity to the recently released song Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem. Now, they’ve always worn their influences on their sleeve and I’ve never faulted them for that, there’s a difference between hommage and rip-off. But this is pretty subtle, less vocalizing in a manner reminiscent of Mark E. Smith but playing off his melody. Maybe I’m imagining it. Not that it matters, Someone Great is easily my top song of the last year, so I don’t care where it comes from. What this song really brings to mind is just how beautiful a melody Mark E. Smith could come up with, something not talked about enough.

11. The Nightingales–Which Hi-Fi?
The Nightingales and the Fall have often been mentioned in the same breadth. Both lead by cantakerous and irate working-class (or at least drinking class) British poets and surrounded by a revolving door of musicians. The Nightingales, and the punk band they grew out of, the Prefects, and several other Robert Lloyd projects were favorites of John Peel, giving Robert the second most Peel sessions after Mark E. and company. While researching for the Acute release of the Prefects recordings, I came across an ancient interview with Mark E. Smith where he chides Lloyd for being a great lyricist but not sticking with things. Well, Robert Lloyd has been back in action for a couple of years now and just keeps getting better. Our Prefects CD came out, a string of new Nightingales singles, reissues of the old Nightingales records and several tours. I’m not going to go on about how great they are live now because I need to post about their upcoming tour soon. Meanwhile, while looking for that old quote all I found was a recent one, Mark E. Smith saying “…as usual with Robert Lloyd, excellent lyrics.”

12. Subway Sect–Stool Pigeon
The Subway Sect was one of the original punk bands. Arguably they can be seen as the first post-punk band as well. While their contemporaries were dyeing their hair and ripping their clothes, the Subway Sect wore plain gray sweaters and trousers and sang dour lyrics. They can be seen as a template upon which The Prefects, Joy Division, Fire Engines, Josef K and other punk bands built their sounds and styles, a road different then emulating the Pistols or Clash, I suppose. After 2 singles, in early 78 they recorded their LP but it was never released and eventually lost. The band line-up completely changed and Vic Godard came back with a more old-fashioned style. Great songs, but not the primal seminal punk of the early years. Now, many years later, Vic got back together with some original members and some new and re-recorded the entire album as “1978 Now” and it’s available on Overground Records. As highly recommended as this comes, look for some of the Vic Godard/Subway Sect comps that have come in and out of print over the years so you can check out those early singles and some of the early versions of the LP stuff. You haven’t lived until you’ve heard Parallel Lines. Less essential for your listening pleasure would be the version of We Oppose All Rock & Roll/Sister Ray from the Clash White Riot tour where Subway Sect is joined by the Slits and Prefects.

13. Grow Up–River
Grow Up are a mysterious band, or I suppose, a band little is known about. Guitarist John Bisset played in the Spherical Objects and helped run Object Music, the weird ugly duckling of a record label that existed in the shadow of Factory Records. Object Music released a small but eclectic catalog of bands ranging from some pretty out there stuff to some perfectly accessible pop and rock and roll, none of it destined for popularity accept amongst the loyal cult following that would exist over the years (of which I’m a junior member).

The Passage had their first release on Object, which is probably as close to stardom as the label would get. Steve Miro put out two totally wonderful singles and some records. IQ Zero were “Manchester’s answer to Devo” and released 2 singles on Object including the classic “Everybody Kills Insects” which features our anthem “Quirky Pop Music” (lyrics to be posted at a later date).

Most interesting to me is Bisset’s non-Spherical Objects band, Grow Up. There’s 3 singles I know of, this one features three extremely short and extremely sharp art-punk/post-punk type songs that even remind me a bit of the Urinals. Another one, You Are the One/Night Rally is a bit more conventional, with the A-side a perfectly friendly bit of indie-pop. The next single Joanne, is an immaculately produced bit of jazzy new pop sounding like an even better Dexy’s Midnight Runners with great lyrics (will you marry me before I go gray? will you marry me before I go gay?). On top of that there were TWO LPs, neither of which I’ve heard yet despite asking many people including Bisset himself. Any help?

14. The Wild Stares–All We Want
OK this is getting too damn long and I really don’t know much about the Wild Stares so I should keep it short. I know they started as part of the Boston punk/post-punk scene in the early 80s on Propellor Records and were based around Steve Gregoropoulos. I know they moved to LA at some point and put out a series of weird, unique and cool records through the 80s and Steve ended up working with Lavender Diamond. Read some here.

15. The Stranglers–Bear Cage
Now I know I don’t have to go crazy writing about them, there’s this thing called google. Apparently they were a huge band, which probably comes as odd to most young american type music fans working their way back through punk…The Stranglers are one of those bands who’s records are everywhere and you’re supposed to avoid them. Anyway, I already wrote about them in my post about the Wave the Rave Goodbye mix.

16. Alternative TV–Strange Kicks
After being a pioneering punk journalist, a pioneering punk band, a pioneering punk/dub hybrid, Mark Perry of Alternative TV went in some pretty avant-garde directions for a bit with Vibing Up the Senile Man, The Good Missionaries, The Door and the Window. In 1981, Alternative TV perhaps took a stab at the charts with this totally charming and accessible LP on IRS, also issues on CD care of Overground Records. It even has one octave-bassline proto-electroclash new wave dance track in “Communicate”.

17. The Bilders–Starry Day
Oh man it’s getting late I really should just post the tracklisting and ask all my thousands of readers to fill in the blanks, I’m sure somebody can do more justice to Bill Direen then I can. Direen is an underrated and overlooked low-fi rock genius from New Zealand, an entire country of underrated and overlooked low-fi rock geniuses. Flying Nun records released a series of CDs compiling his stuff of which I have two, Max Quitz and Beatin Hearts. They are often every bit as good as Chris Knox/Tall Dwarfs, Xpressway etc etc. Jay from Detailed Tang/Agony Shorthand had more to say.

18. John Cale–Dead or Alive
Sometimes it’s the most accessible and typical songs that are the most powerful. There’s no brutal guitar, no Eno playing the Eno, no droning viola, just pure rock-n-roll heart of the highest order.

19. Lou Reed–Shooting Star
No need to repost the photo. You don’t need to see how cool Lou looks when listening to this song, it just seeps cool out of every note, every distorted guitar riff, every saxaphone blurt. And we’ve come full circle and the cycle is complete.

20. Clive Langer & The Boxes–Had a Nice Night
Or is it? Consider this a coda or something. This is a discovery care of college housemate Oliver, I think on the same mix-tape as Strange Kicks perhaps. There’s plenty to read about Clive Langer on the internet. He was the main songwriter and one of 3 vocalists for post-glam pre-punk art-school outsiders Deaf School. He produced big records for Madness and Dexy’s Midnight Runners with his partner Alan Winstanley and he wrote the music for the movies Still Crazy and Brothers of the Head (which I have on my DVR right now). But what people don’t talk about is his own music, which included this wonderful LP, partially produced by his buddy Elvis Costello. The entire record isn’t as good as this song…few things in this dreary world are, but there are a few highs. But even better was the EP he recorded for Radar/WB called I Want the Whole World. 5 perfect songs…not punk, maybe a bit of the british angry young man thing going on. I don’t know, I just love it. Really big, amazing production, really touching lyrics, easily one of my favorite records that nobody ever talks about. You can get one on eBay right now for 10 bucks. A deal at any cost.

So in thinking about what records to bring when I DJ We Fought the Big One in a few days, I started thinking about my old “post-punk” party Transmission and how I wanted to write about it, before the memories fade. I’m not sure if 5 years is a long enough time ago to get nostalgic about, but as my friend Nick once said “you’re the most nostalgic person I know” and what can I say, the memories are fading.

WARNING: Excessive self-indulgent nostalgia, shameless name-dropping and ridiculous romanticizing ahead…

I didn’t used to go out at all. I moved to NYC in 97 after college, and for a few years the only times I went out involved the occasional Oberlin-related parties, some of which I DJ’d disco and 80s stuff at. It was during that time that I got more and more serious about buying old post-punk records, and there was a bit of a resurgence of interest in it. I specifically remember the release of Marina’s Josef K compilation, which was a pretty big import at the cool stores here, as being a watershed moment. This was also the time I was starting Acute and that release made me think about the possibilities.

The music scene in NY really didn’t excite me that much, and to be honest I didn’t have the nerves or motivation to go out. There was the occasional indie-rock show, some techno DJs, but most of the rock bands were these post-Johnny Thunders poseurs and house and techno mostly stuck to their insular sounds and scenes.

There was plenty of DJing going on in clubs and bars, for dancing or not. Lots of punk and lots of boring electronica kinds of stuff. Then one night I was at a show at Brownies and I saw this guy walk in with a crate of records. In between the bands, he threw on some records. I think he actually played the Fire Engines. I know he played Malaria! It totally blew me away. I figured usually the sound guy just threw on a CD in between bands, and here was this guy playing really cool records. I wanted to do that so bad. I thought it would be so cool, people would come up to me and tell me how awesome the music was and say “hey, what’s that record?” and “hey, can I come home with you?” I got really jealous and mad and knew I had really cool records and wanted to play them in a bar in NYC, that it would be so awesome and would solve all my social problems. That guy, credit where it’s due, was Joshua Zucker (later of The Prosaics, for the ny scene trainspotters.)

Not long after that, I went to Plant Bar for the first time. It was a tiny bar, max occupancy of about 75 I think. It was owned by Dominique Keegan (now of The Glass) and Marcus Lambkin (Shit Robot). At the time, they were in charge of Plant Friday Nights at Centro-Fly, a big house/club night in town. Plant Bar was their little hipster hangout in Alphabet City, with a sound-system installed by their friend James Murphy. It was super hyped for a while, there’d always be stories of these big artists showing up unannounced to play with friends. Fatboy Slim, or Ad Rock and Kathleen Hanna. It was also one of the first lounges of its type, especially in that area. Guernica was around the corner, with it’s basement that used to be Save The Robots, but the idea of a tiny bar with absolutely no dancefloor boasting a loud system and a relatively proper DJ booth made for an interesting combination and got a lot of press.

The nights cycled through several different parties and hosts. Wall of Sound, Vice Magazine, Chez Music all hosted parties. At some point DJ Ulysses held a party called Funk Box. One night he had Morgan and Darshan of Metro Area as guest DJs. As a friend of theirs, hearing them spin were some of the few times I’d actually get out of the house. I went with my friend Ryan. As we’re sitting there listening to some boogie disco or whatever, Ryan pointed to the bar-back and said “remember that band The Rapture I was telling you about, the ones who sound like PiL and Gang of Four? That’s the singer.” He had just seen them and I was intrigued.

I had never heard The Rapture. Actually, I hadn’t bought a record that came out after 1982 or so since college. I knew the chicago “no wave” bands and had seen Computer Couger in concert, but had no idea of any new bands mining the records I was collecting. Despite not knowing anything about them, I walked up to Luke and introduced myself. Not something that came easy to me at that point. I said I liked funky/dancey post-punk records like Josef K, the Fire Engines and Marine and my friend says your band is into that stuff and I was thinking it would be cool for there to be a night in NYC where people played that kind of music, and mixed it with old cool disco. I think it would go over pretty well because it sounds great and may even be getting hip. He took my number and said he’d talk to the owners.

Not long after, Luke called me and said I could come in and DJ a happy hour, wednesday night from 6pm to 10pm. A few weeks later I came in and DJ’d. I didn’t tell anybody about it because I was really nervous. I put all my records in a crate, carried it to the F train, then carried it to the bar. By the time I got behind the turntables, my arms were so fucked from carrying the crate that I litterally had to use one arm to lift the other one to put the needle on the record! But I survived and was invited to come back weekly. I thought about names, I remember thinking Moody was a good one, though everybody kept thinking I was saying “booty”. Then my friend and fellow Joy Division/New Order fan Josh (later of The Affair), suggested Transmission. Here’s the first flyer, printed on laser printers at work, as usual…

Yes, I was ripping off the Dr. Mix 7″ sleeve, but Acute would license that a few years later, so it’s ok. Things started off well. Lots of my friends came, and as the bar was still somewhat hip, there were often people there I didn’t even know!

One of the great things about starting a party, or a band, is that a lot of your friends come every time. For a while. Eventually, most of them stop. Luckily I was meeting people. Online via the Typical Girls mailing list, I met Kevin Pedersen (What’s Your Rupture?) and Aileen Brophy for starters. They would be among the first guest DJs. I met people while handing out flyers…I gave a flyer to Michael Goodstein (soon of WFMU’s Choking on Cufflinks) and he recognized Kevin’s name so he came down. Joshua Gabriel came and guest dj’d a britpop night hosted by DJ Oil and Luke immediately told him to come to my party, knowing he found a likeminded individual.

Eventually, Monday nights opened up, and Dominique offered it to Luke, who’d graduated to bartender. And what a bartender! One night he made me something he called “The Flying Saucer”. I threw up for hours, got in a fight with a girl I was seeing because of it, and ended up out of that particular relationship for the time being. Anyway, Luke decided to put together the evening, calling it the Love at Night Social. Initially, Tim Sweeney was going to be involved but I somehow scammed him out of it by suggesting he switch to Wednesday happy hours. Somehow, monday night shaped up like this. Kevin, who’d spent plenty of time at my party, was also friends with the Rapture guys and some of their buddies, like Max Wowch and they ended up doing happy hour together, soon to be joined by The Rapture’s drummer Vito. Then I would take over sometime around 9 or 10 and play for an hour or 3. I was then followed by Brian Degraw and Leo Fitzpatrick.

Kevin, Max and Vito had a decent amount of friends who could be counted to come by for happy hour most, if not every, times. Most of them went to Wesleyan or were from Australia. Max played lots of AM gold and weird disco, Vito practiced mixing detroit techno and Kevin played Zarjazz or the Exploited. Here’s me and Kevin, photo by Lisa Garrett, I think.

Brian and Leo were very connected, Brian was already having success as an artist and his band the Cranium were fondly remembered by people of the post-hardcore persuasion. He’s now better known as a member of Gang Gang Dance. Leo was still remembered as “Leo from Kids” but I remembered him as Leo from West Orange because I played in a band with his older brother. Their buddies like Ben Cho and Matt from Imitation of Christ were regulars. Luke and I really thought this combo was going to be awesome, we really wanted the “chloe sevigny” crowd to come. It wasn’t all about hipster cred. When throwing events, especially on weeknights, you have to deal with the demographics. Who goes out to a bar on a monday night till 4 in the morning? NYU students, aspiring musicians, artists, trust fund kids, etc. I was lucky enough to have a job where I worked from 1pm to 9pm, so long as I was in bed by 5am I could get 7 or so hours of sleep. Some people did this while keeping regular jobs. I don’t know how. I think it involved cocaine and coffee.

There was some crossover, some of my friends and fellow record dorks were also friends with the happy hour crowd and vice versa, but the transition to night wasn’t as smooth. I remember thinking the late night crowd would show up while I was djing and be so blown away that they’d decide to come earlier. That never happened. No, even on my worst night, djing to some random stragglers, sure enough, 5 minutes after turning the tables over to Brian, 2 dozen beautiful young girls with weird haircuts and Smiths t-shirts on over lacey dresses would show up, stay for 20 minutes then leave. At some point while Brian was in the UK doing artist stuff, Leo suddenly moved their party to one of the new hip bars, either Lit or Pianos, which had just opened (and yes, if you’re newer to NY, those places were HIP, at some point).

Fact is, we had lots and lots of empty nights, nights where I’d just play records for Luke, or we’d take turns practicing mixing. I started playing more and more dance music because it was something to do, beatmatching club records was a more involved act then cueing up a punk 7″. The only reason it lasted was because The Rapture were on the rise and I think Dominique was keen to continue to humor Luke and let him have his fun. I was also getting really good press for the party, even if nobody was there. The Village Voice listed my night as a best, thanks to Douglas Wolk, and the following year Tricia Romano called me “Best DJ’s DJ”. Spin magazine, in a guide to what to do in college towns, for NYC listed Plant Bar mondays “where DJs with impeccable taste play 7″s worth more then your rent” or something. What it resulted in was a situation that I now realize is very rare. Most club/bar owners expect you to bring in the crowds and the money and if you don’t, you’re gone. The fact that Dom let us do it for so long through some really lean times, when he could’ve gotten any number of crap(pier) djs to come play more commercial stuff and please the east village tourists, was amazing and I’m forever grateful to him for that. Also the fact that Luke was the bartendar and considered it his “night” meant everything. Everywhere I’ve DJ’d, the best parties are ones where the bartender is involved, is into the music you play, becomes friends with your friends and remembers your regulars. It can make all the difference.

After the late night party left, I decided I wanted to go later but not too late. Luke and I brainstormed, who could we get to come DJ on a monday night starting at 1am? I quickly thought of Mad Mike NYC, aka CZKO, aka Alfredo Mas, aka Mikey, aka Freddie Mas, aka Michael. I met Mikey a bit before when I first started going out. The very first party I went to by myself was Bang the Party at Frank’s Lounge, and soon as I walked in I saw Dan Balis (now in Escort) who I’d met through Metro Area. Then a week later I decided to go to a monday night party at a club called Fun in Chinatown. This is the bar that had video cameras in the bathrooms so men and women could see each other wash their hands. It was very dot-com era and peaked during the electroclash era, I saw Adult. and I-F there. The party was advertised as “Disco Punk”, so I thought I should check it out. I nervously walk in the door, the second “dance” night I’d ever gone to, and by myself, and there is Dan Balis again. He introduced me to the host of the party, Mikey, who had just played Greater Reward by Severed Heads.

Now a year or 2 later, he’d become a semi-regular at Transmission/mondays at Plant. He lived with his fiance Juanita down the street. A few years later I learned her name was Rene. We asked him to take over at 1, and to bring his friend, Count Porkchopulous, the Disco Vampire, as well as Zebrablood. (These two are now in Excepter.) Mikey was totally unpredictable and totally amazing. Some nights he’d come in with no records only to be followed by Juanita 10 minutes later carrying a stack, on one night he came in with only one record, a copy of Stevie Nick’s Edge of Seventeen, with no sleeve, and proceeded to play it over and over again till the bar closed. Sometimes I stayed till the end, but often I’d leave a bit after my shift, which meant taking my headphones, so Mikey would just mix live. Sometimes it was a mess, but sometimes it was brilliant.

I continued to have guest DJs. I was going out a lot more now and meeting people “on the scene”. Mark Morgan of Sightings and Chris Freeman from Fusetron played a memorable mix of the German Shepherds and 90s hip-hop. The folks from Activaire and Record Camp joined me for a Factory Records tribute. Fitz from the Twisted Ones played a few times…the aforementioned Michael, Kevin, Aileen, Lisa and Joshua all played a few times. Mike Simonetti, who I met through Fitz, Rory from Trash, Tyler from !!!/Outhud, The Prosaics, Oneida, Nick from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Doug Mosorock, Robin Edgerton, Tim Sweeney all guested. Morgan Geist, Daniel Wang, Brennan Green and James Duncan played my 27th birthday party. If you include the happy-hour guests of Max and Kevin’s, it’s a pretty mind-boggling mix of just about every musician and record store clerk in their 20s/30s in NYC at the time. I’m blanking out on a lot of people but I’ll edit them into this as I remember! Writer Simon Reynolds started coming, he was researching Rip It Up and Start Again. He guest DJ’d one night.

Some nights were typical bar record nights, but there was some pretty silly themes. I think Ryan joined me for 3 hours of Cabaret Voltaire, that was a big hit. For a while, with the help of Michael Goodstein, we did “NY Single’s Scene” where you were only allowed to play 7″s. That went over very well. I did a tribute to Arthur Russell where I was joined by Kris Chen who brought a mini-disc of some of the recordings that would later turn up on Calling Out of Context. Arthur’s partner, Tom Lee showed up, somebody had forwarded an email about the night, so that was just incredible. Another absurd yet memorable night was when we finally had a release “party” for the first Acute CD, the Theoretical Girls. This was around the same time The Wire magazine did a “no wave primer”, so I invited Alan Licht to come play some records. Let me tell you, nothing rocks a party like rare live DNA recordings!

We also had a few live shows. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone was a good friend of the Rapture guys, so he played to a packed Plant Bar. Swiss Dot, a synth-pop trio of girls who were regulars played, Cause Co-Motion, friends of Kevin’s, played one of their first shows as did Excepter. I think those are the only 4 bands to ever play, pretty funny mix.

But to me, with all the ups and downs, the people coming and going, my social life roller coaster, what mattered first was the music, and second that it was presented in an unpretentious enough environment that the people who came felt welcome. I know a lot of people met at Plant Bar and I know a lot of people remember it fondly and that makes me happy. As for the music, I dug what I played. I learned a lot about DJing and nightlife and bars. I remember having trouble dealing with the party’s eclectic nature. One night I’d bring nothing but techno and some guy would walk in with a leather jacket and a mohawk and leave. The next week I brought all punk singles and some “ravers” would show up. They’d also leave. Sometimes I mixed it up really well but mostly I either kept to a theme, usually something really narrow and stupid, or on better nights, stuck with a basic aesthetic. Like I’d be thinking electronics and drum machines and mix italo-disco with new wave, or another night I’d be thinking live drums and mixing disco and stuff like A Certain Ratio. Now I think I’m better at navigating all sorts of sounds and genres, and doing it to a dancing crowd, and some of that definitely comes from practicing back then.

Near the end of the party, I started playing more dance music and every now and again a little dance party would break out. Sometimes a really crazy dance party would break out. Maybe it would only be 10 or 20 people, but in a place that small, with people crawling all over the furniture, there were some pretty wild times. This was the time of the Cabaret License crack-downs though. Friday nights there’d be serious parties and the cops started coming down on them. Personally, I think the Cabaret License was just a tool the cops would yield when developers were raising a stink. There are TONS of places in NYC without cabaret licenses where people dance and nobody cares. But Plant Bar was on 3rd street, a mostly residential block, and there were condos going up accross the street. If it wasn’t the neighbors down the street complaining, I figured the condo developers thought it’d be a good idea to shut down a nuissance before they tried to sell their apartments. Of course it was bars like that that were attracting people to the neighborhood. Same thing happened to the Knitting Factory in Tribecca except instead of Cabaret Laws they harass people for loitering on the street. Anyway, that’s another discussion for another post. So at some point in 2003 Plant Bar shut down and only reopened after promising to remove the DJ set-up. They sold the James Murphy “designed” sound system on eBay and re-opened with an MP3 jukebox. It eventually closed and was replaced with the Hanger Bar, which is still there, and still has DJs.

I had gotten sick of playing records when nobody was paying attention. By then I had my fill of DJing inbetween bands. It wasn’t all fame and glory like I imagined Joshua experienced at that show at Brownies, it was mostly playing a record on a broken turntable through only the left speaker while some guy soundchecked the drums. I tried to DJ more dance parties and am still trying. I’ve had a few good nights and a few great ones, enough to make all the shitty ones worthwhile. At one point a few years ago I had a regular party in Williamsburg that was pretty good for a while, but I probably played too many crowd pleasing hits (again, another discussion for another time). The hipsters moved onto a newer, cooler place, the dancers went somewhere, and I was left with drunken ex-sorority girls sloppily asking me to play Michael Jackson…while I was playing Michael Jackson. I longed for the chance to play weird dubby post-punk records to a crowd of 5. So we started Dazzle Ships, and sometimes, it even feels a little bit like Transmission. Awww, there’s that nostalgia again…

This friday, February 1st, there’s going to a Super-Bowl of Post-Punk. I’ve been invited to play records at We Fought the Big One, DC’s premier post-punk/diy/whatever record playing/listening party/gathering. I’m really honored to be their guest on this, their 4 year anniversary. I’m bringing all sorts of records…some 12 inches in diameter, some only 7. Post-punk, Punk, DIY, post-punk funk, post-funk punk. Punk-punk punk. CLE rock, synth-pop and other abbreviated and/or hyphenated delights. CD giveaways, drink specials and a big-time guest DJ from New York City, what more can you ask?

Friday, February 1st, 10pm – 3am, 21+ No Cover

Marx Cafe
3203 Mt. Pleasant St. NW
Washington DC

Great article in Wired magazine, or at least on their website, from David Byrne, who used to be in a band called the Talking Heads but you probably remember him best from playing guitar on the first singles by Dinosaur and Love of Life Orchestra. It’s called David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists – and Megastars. He discusses the roll of the record label, different types of relationships between artists and labels, and how these relationships may or may not work in the future, but mostly he compares the amount of control an artist has depending on the type of agreement they have with a label.