13 - Red Bull Music Academy Daily

DAILY NOTE
MONDAY, MAY 20, 2013
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Fool's gold / Jean grae at the chelsea hotel / giorgio moroder
THE DAILY NOTE
LAST NIGHT
New York pride is complicated. We all feel it, but we’re
so conscious of feeling it that we feel guilty about
feeling it. Sure, New York is amazing, but sometimes
it’s worth pulling back and examining why that is,
which is what we did for this issue’s cover story on the
late, great 99 Records. The label’s influence has far, far
exceeded its tragically small but impeccable catalogue.
Boundary-bursting artists like Liquid Liquid and ESG
couldn’t have been born anywhere else, and while
they’ve thrived in our collective musical memory, 99
Records ultimately disintegrated. It’s a knotty story
that is as compelling to read as the music is to listen to.
Richie Hawtin being
interviewed by Todd
Burns in the RBMA
lecture hall. Photo
by Dan Wilton
In this issue we look at the origin of the ubiquitous
Fool’s Gold logo; track the history of 158 Bleecker,
which has played host to a number of important
venues; and talk to Giorgio Moroder about his recent
resurgence. (He’s playing tonight at Output and he’s
bringing a vocoder. Have you heard? We can’t seem to
shut up about it.) If that’s not enough, rapper Jean Grae
writes about her childhood living in the Chelsea Hotel.
Sure, Patti Smith did it too, but this is different. Times
change, New York gets cleaner, more organized, and
then dirtier and more chaotic again. We live in a city
that accumulates stories as quickly as it discards them.
It’s worth making sure they aren’t forgotten.
ABOUT Red bull music academy
MASTHEAD
Editor in Chief Piotr Orlov
Copy Chief Jane Lerner
Senior Editor Sam Hockley-Smith
Senior Writer/Editor Vivian Host
Contributing Editors Todd L. Burns
Shawn Reynaldo
Staff Writer Olivia Graham
Editorial Coordinator Alex Naidus
Creative Director Justin Thomas Kay
for Doubleday & Cartwright
Art Director Christopher Sabatini
Production Designer Suzan Choy
Photo Editor Lorenna Gomez-Sanchez
Staff Photographer Anthony Blasko
2
Contributors
Sue Apfelbaum
Adrienne Day
Jean Grae
Laura Levine
Mike Rubin
Nick Sylvester
All-Seeing Eye Torsten Schmidt
The content of Daily Note does not
necessarily represent the opinions of
Red Bull or Doubleday & Cartwright.
The Red Bull Music Academy celebrates
creative pioneers and presents fearless new
talent. Now we’re in New York City.
The Red Bull Music Academy is a worldtraveling series of music workshops and
festivals: a platform for those who make a
difference in today’s musical landscape.
This year we’re bringing together two
groups of selected participants — producers,
vocalists, DJs, instrumentalists and
musical mavericks from around the world — in
New York City. For two weeks, each group
will hear lectures by musical luminaries,
work together on tracks, and perform in the
city’s best clubs and music halls. Imagine
a place that’s equal parts science lab,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and
Kraftwerk’s home studio. Throw in a
touch of downtown New York circa 1981, a
sprinkle of Prince Jammy’s mixing board,
and Bob Moog’s synthesizer collection
all in a 22nd-century remix and you’re
halfway there.
The Academy began back in 1998 and has
been traversing the globe since, traveling
to Berlin, Cape Town, São Paulo, Barcelona,
London, Toronto, and many other places.
Interested? Applications for the 2014 Red
Bull Music Academy open early next year.
3
FROM THE ACADEMY
UPFRONT
“To see [Skrillex] onstage with one laptop
destroying 25,000 people — I don’t know if we
would have even dreamed that when we were
listening to a Derrick May set with 200 people
in Detroit 20 years ago. That fascinates me.”
— Richie Hawtin on EDM, May 19, 2013
TONIGHT
Deep Space @ Output
Giorgio
Moroder
First Ever
Live DJ Set
WE FEEL LOVE
the circle k
François Kevorkian is a New York legend, whether you know it
or not. Tonight at Deep Space, the classic party he founded
ten years ago, he welcomes Giorgio Moroder, who is bringing a
vocoder along for his first-ever DJ set in the US. Following
his stint as a busboy at Studio 54, the producer, remixer, DJ,
label head, and A&R man has spent decades pushing dance music
into new and unexpected places. As a tribute to François K and
his tireless commitment to making the city as fun as humanly
possible, here’s a glimpse into his expansive universe.
E
veryone at Daily Note HQ is almost embarrassingly giddy about disco
hitmaker and electronic music innovator Giorgio Moroder’s gig tonight
at Output as part of Red Bull Music Academy 2013. It’s his first US performance ever and last month, in between some deep breaths, we sat
down with the man himself to talk about fantasy collaborations, Soundcloud
outlaws, and what we can expect from tonight’s show (spoiler alert: it rhymes
with schmocoder).
REMIXES
U2, the Cure, Eurythmics,
Mick Jagger, Diana Ross,
Arthur Russell, Yoko
Ono, Thomas Dolby, Joni
Mitchell, Pet Shop Boys, LCD
Soundsystem, Coldplay
STOMPING
GROUNDS
On the
Sudden
Soundcloud
Appearance
of His Rare
Old Material
To be honest,
it’s not me that
did it. Somebody
in my name, I
don’t know how,
is doing it. Not
one record company is complaining, though. And
I don’t own many
of the masters,
so... I’m happy
it’s there. Those
old songs don’t
make any money
anyway, or very
little. So it’s
nice that people
can listen to it.
Studio 54, Paradise
Garage, the Loft, Cielo,
Zanzibar
François K
On Not
Sweating
the Details
I don’t care if
there are... not
major mistakes,
but in “Take My
Breath Away”
for example,
the sound of the
bass was saved
on a computer, but I lost
it. I couldn’t
find it again.
So basically,
that song was
something that I
played. And I’m
not a very good
bass player. That
song has a lot
of little things
that were not
well done. But
it seemed to do
okay.
On Bob Dylan
I do remember
that Sylvester
Stallone, when
he was making the
third Rambo film,
absolutely wanted
a song with Bob
Dylan. I wanted
to work with
[Dylan] too, he’s
such a legend. So
I scored the song
and Sylvester
liked it. I presented it to Bob,
and he was listening to it...
I think he heard
it seven or eight
times, but he
eventually said
no. I don’t know
why maybe it
wasn’t the right
movie or song
but that was one
of the artists
that I wanted to
work with.
On Tonight’s
DJ Set
It is the first
ever in America.
I did one kindof-a-DJ thing
for 12 minutes at
a Louis Vuitton
show last year.
And then I did
one DJ thing for
Elton John in
Cannes last year.
But this will
be the first one
where I play an
instrument... and
some vocoder.
Read the full interview at redbullmusicacademy.com/magazine/giorgio-moroder-interview.
LABELS &
PARTIES
COLLABORATORS
Larry Levan, Derrick May,
Carl Craig, Danny Krivit,
Walter Gibbons
HOOKED ON SONICS
UPCOMING
EVENTS
Tammany Hall
Brenmar
Nick Hook
Sinjin Hawke
More
MAY
21
Knitting Factory
DRUM MAJORS
Mannie Fresh
Boi-1da
Young Chop
DJ Mustard
More
MAY
22
Santos Party House
United States
of Bass
Big Freedia
Afrika Bambaataa
Egyptian Lover
DJ Magic Mike
DJ Assault
DJ Funk + Many More!
MAY
23
SRB Brooklyn
The Roots
of Dubstep
Skream
Mala
Plastician
Hatcha
MAY
24
12 Years MAY
Of DFA
The whole
label family on
four stages
NYC producer Nick Hook gets inspired at the Red Bull Music Academy.
Photo by Kareem black
STUDIO
PRODUCTION
4
20
Grand Prospect Hall
Prelude Records
(1978-1982), Body &
Soul (1996-present),
Wave Music (19952000), Deep Space
(2003-present)
KRAFTWERK,
DEPECHE MODE,
ERASURE
MAY
The two most common questions in conjunction with a mention of Nick Hook’s name are
“What does he do?” and “What doesn’t he do?”
This jack-of-all-trades—who splits his time between an apartment in Chinatown and a music
studio in Greenpoint—counts producer, engineer, DJ, bartender, synthesizer mastermind,
diva whisperer, and vibe warrior among his
many titles. The lifetime that Hook, 34, has
spent honing these skills is no doubt what landed him a coveted participant spot at the Red
Bull Music Academy in Madrid in 2011. And in
the two years since, Hook has gone from slinging sake bombs to traveling the world and working with the likes of Azealia Banks, Hudson Mohawke, and El-P and Killer Mike (he’s currently
recording vocals for their new project Run the
Jewels). He’s also been working with former
Academy participants like LA beatmaker Salva
and Mexican singer/songwriter Andrea Balency.
“2011 was a really transitional year for me
as a human being but also as a professional,”
Hook says. “I had been working on music for
ten years. I broke up with my girlfriend. I
had just finished the Cubic Zirconia and the
L-Vis 1990 records, and Azealia’s ‘212’ hadn’t
hit yet. I was like, ‘Do I do music for the rest
of my life,’ or is it like, ‘Am I going to go back
to working at an advertising agency?’ I really
had no idea what the Academy was going to
be like. Then all of a sudden it was Thanksgiving and I was in Spain, away from my family,
and they sat me in a chair and I was playing
guitar with Bootsy Collins, RZA had just given
me his email, and I had 30 new best friends.
And it was like… All the bullshit that I failed
on and all the things I sacrificed were worth
it. It was very clear to me afterwards that this
is what I’m meant to do.”
-Vivian Host
Nick Hook plays with Brenmar and Sinjin
Hawke on May 21 at Tammany Hall, 152
25
The Well Brooklyn
The DoOver NYC
Special
Aloe Blacc &
Many More
MAY
26
Saint Vitus
Oneohtrix
Point Never
Evian Christ
Bill Kouligas
More
MAY
26
RECORDED LIVE
FOR RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY RADIO
TUNE IN AT RBMARADIO.COM
Orchard St., Manhattan.
5
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Q&A
MORTON
SUBOTNICK
An electronic music pioneer spends the 1960s painting sound.
PHOTOgraphy Dan Wilton
At what point did you conceive of what became the Buchla
Series 100 synthesizer? What did you want to be able to
get out of it? That was ’61 or ’62. I made a piece that was performed in 1961 in San Francisco that had two [tape recorders]
so I could get sound all around the room. I had two two-track
tape recorders, four musicians, lighting flats, and a person who
spoke. It was a big multimedia piece that was about 45 minutes
long, and when it was over the audience went crazy. The critics
said a new artform had been born and we performed it three
times in three weeks. People called me and wanted to tour the
thing. It was amazing. I put it away and I didn’t tour with it,
but I decided that I was going to dedicate myself to whatever
this new thing was to be.
I was thinking 100 years in the future. What would be the
kind of thing that would progress at that point? I was thinking of something I called an “electronic music easel,” something you’d have in your home and you could make any sound
you wanted with it. You could paint sound. You’d be able to
create new things. I didn’t know what that was going to be.
One thing I need to get across: I didn’t want to go to a new
technology and make music that could’ve been made with a
black-and-white keyboard on a piano. It wasn’t just sound; it
was an entire new music that would come about. I had an idea
of how it would work, what it would do—but not how it would
be made—and put an ad in the paper to invite an engineer to
help me make it.
What did the ad say? “We want to make the future of music”? I wish I could get ahold of it, but I have no idea what
it said. I didn’t think I was doing something historic at the
time so I never kept a copy. It was one ad—it probably cost
$20 for one week. “Looking for an engineer to make…” Well, I
think I probably called it an “electronic music easel.” Easel is
a nice metaphor for it—you can paint music. Three guys came
by. This was 1961. The LSD movement—the psychedelic movement—started in 1964 or ’65, so this was two or three years
before that. I had no idea that one-third of San Francisco was
on drugs; none of us did. The first engineer came. I thought he
had an eye problem. His eyes were looking in two directions
at the same time. He was incoherent; he couldn’t talk, so he
left. The second one came and he was pretty much in the same
condition, so I began to figure out what was going on. Then
the third came, Donald Buchla, and he was someone you could
talk to. He was good.
already had a similar idea so he was completely prepared to
move forward.
It seems like a large break from tradition to say, “We don’t
want this synthesizer to have keys. We don’t want it to
look like what came before.” It seems like a big break. Remember, at the time I imagined what we’d be involved with
wouldn’t come into being for 100 years. I had no idea what it
was going to be, but the notion was I didn’t want to continue
the Columbia-Princeton [Electronic Music Center], the big RCA
synthesizer [from] the late ’50s. The whole notion seems odd—it
still does today—to think we’ve got all this technology, so now
we just play music we can already play. When I did the album
Silver Apples of the Moon on the Moog, they did Switched-On
Bach. People thought that was electronic music. No! That’s Bach
played on an electronic instrument. It’s not a new artform! Let’s
do something the technology demands.
I was a trained musician, so I thought the way to go about
this was to start without anything that resembles the tradition.
So you get rid of the black-and-white keyboard immediately. I
don’t know what the music is going to be, but it should come
from the object itself. And now we’re looking at something
much bigger than that—a new metaphor for music itself. ’Cause
now music is going to be made by people who didn’t necessarily
grow up learning music. The first person who hit two sticks
together, the first person who hummed the same thing one time
after another until it caught on and other people hummed it—
that’s what I was looking for.
Describe what it is you did with this synthesizer. The fineart world was devastated by it. In 1966 I was helping to create
the Electric Circus, which was a big discotheque in New York,
upstairs from the Andy Warhol, Velvet Underground [space]. I
was really dedicated to the idea of the democratic equalization
of things, that everybody could get their hands on it. This was
originally before I started making Silver Apples of the Moon.
I was already working on that [music] as part of the opening
for the discotheque. It started with a heartbeat. It was a fancy occasion; everybody was in tuxedos because they had Seiji
Ozawa from the Boston Symphony. The Kennedy family was
all there. The people who had the money for the Electric Circus
had brought all these people down ’cause it was a big deal. We
started in the dark with a heartbeat that ran at [a certain] tempo. Buchla designed the electronics of the place. The subwoofer
was attached to the floor of the dance hall so the whole floor
shook, literally—you were inside the speakers, so to speak. All
light bulbs were controlled by the Buchla synthesizer. We had
people who were hired from circuses on tightropes, dressed in
white with blacklights so they would shine blue as they walked
across. One was eating a banana as he walked across. He would
appear again and again in different spaces and it would keep
building and building and building until you get to this music.
Lo and behold, when the lights got big enough, you could see
that actually everyone was dancing to it, which never occurred
to me anyone would do. I was thinking of this frenzy, a sort
of primitive experience with technology. I had no idea anyone
would groove to it.
Were you surprised that Silver Apples of the Moon dented
the charts? Oh, yeah. In hindsight it makes sense, but at that
time the world was moving towards a new paradigm—the record player was taking the place of the piano in the home as
something to hear music with. These were all things I predicted back in ’61. This was the machine that wasn’t supposed to be
bought by anyone, but was a model for what the world would
be like in the future. This was a world in which people would
walk around with plugs in their ears­—I didn’t see that [coming], in particular, but [just that] music would be personal and
everybody would be doing it. I made music that was electronic
and visceral. Most of the music you were listening to then was
[made] so you could go to a concert and understand it, but this
was visceral music.
Interviewed by Todd Burns at Red Bull Music
He was the only one not on drugs. He was probably on drugs,
I don’t know, but he was coherent. Not only that, but he had
6
Academy Madrid 2011. For the full Q&A, head to
redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures.
7
feature
feature
Lesson
no. 1
From ESG to LCD, the lasting
influence of Ed Bahlman’s
punk-funk record label, 99.
WORDS Mike Rubin
PHOTOGRAPHY Laura levine
Glenn Branca on
his rooftop in
the Bowery, NYC
1980.
8
the nondescript exterior doesn’t show it,
but musical history was made at 99 MacDougal Street in New York’s Greenwich Village. The
address currently houses a couple Indian fastfood joints, one specializing in a sort of Punjabi burrito, but three decades ago a different
kind of cultural fusion was being cooked up.
Downstairs, in what is now another faceless
Village comedy club, was the headquarters of
99 Records, a record-store-turned-record-label
vital to the evolution of New York dance music,
post-punk, and hip-hop.
Despite only 15 releases in less than five
years of existence, 99 was among the most
influential independent labels of its era, and
that influence still reverberates today. A quintessential New York City label, 99 (pronounced
“nine-nine,” not “ninety-nine”) sits somewhere
between an American answer to the British
label Rough Trade and a punky precursor to
DFA. The label’s sound was both distinct and
diverse, touching on post-punk, disco, dub reggae, and even avant-classical, highlighted by
the exhilarating experiments in dissonance,
repetition, and volume of guitarist/composer
Glenn Branca; the mesmerizing minimalist artfunk of ESG; and the percolating, polyrhythmic
grooves of Liquid Liquid.
Though basically a shoestring operation
run out of the MacDougal Street record store,
99 sold a remarkable amount of records with
only minuscule distribution, and was briefly
the most successful indie label in New York.
ESG songs like “Moody” and “UFO” became
club hits and would eventually provide sample
fodder for hip-hop artists like Public Enemy,
Big Daddy Kane, and the Beastie Boys. Liquid Liquid songs like “Optimo” and “Cavern”
(the latter boasting one of early hip-hop’s most
recognizable basslines) would inspire a generation of musicians, producers, and DJs making the uncharted transition from indie rock
to dance music. The label’s lasting legacy was
underscored when LCD Soundsystem chose a
reunited Liquid Liquid to open their Madison
Square Garden farewell performance in 2011.
“LCD Soundsystem started with James [Murphy] and myself, almost in homage to Liquid
Liquid in particular,” explains LCD drummer
Pat Mahoney. “They are our heroes.”
The man (and the mystery) at the center of
the 99 saga is Ed Bahlman, now in his early
60s. Back in his mid-20s, the Brooklyn native
was an occasional club DJ and soundman
with an omnivorous taste for cutting-edge
music. In a 1998 interview with the zine Tuba
Frenzy, Bahlman’s brother Bill (himself a top
NYC DJ during the late ’70s and early ’80s)
said of Ed, “He has a remarkable ear. I know
when I listen to music with him, he picks
things out that I think would pass by so many
other people.”
The label’s seeds were planted in 1978 at 99
MacDougal, in a clothing boutique called 99
run by British expat Gina Franklyn, and offering London-style punk fashions. Franklyn and
Bahlman began dating, and he started selling
independent singles out of her store. Franklyn
invited Bahlman along on her buying trips to
England, where she introduced him to Geoff
Travis of Rough Trade, the West London record
shop that had recently launched its own label.
Franklyn and Bahlman would cram their suitcases full of the newest releases, and 99 soon
supplanted Bleecker Bob’s as New York’s hippest store to score the newest British imports,
winning a regular clientele of music fanatics
including Thurston Moore and Rick Rubin. (“I
spent hours there every day,” Rubin recalled in
a 2011 book.)
Another 99 store habitué was Branca, who
brought in singles by his experimental rock
bands Theoretical Girls and Static to sell.
Branca had recently begun composing what
he called “19th-century classical music played
by a rock band,” and Bahlman was excited
by the Branca live shows he’d seen. At Branca’s urging, and inspired by a pep talk from
Buzzcocks’ manager Richard Boon, in March
1980 Bahlman issued 99 Records’ inaugural
release, Branca’s Lesson No. 1. The 12-inch EP
would sell a few thousand copies, and Bahlman soon released two 7-inch debut EPs by
the Bush Tetras (a jaggedly funky, predominantly female quartet featuring former Contortions guitarist Pat Place) and Y Pants (a
performance-art-inspired all-female trio playing ukulele and toy piano, led by Branca’s girlfriend, the artist Barbara Ess). The Bush Tetras’ “Too Many Creeps” achieved local radio
9
feature
feature
“99 repped a sound... A direct 4/4 forward
motion, a nod to the dancefloor, a nod
to the avant-garde, and a nod to some muse
that only a few possessed”
- Jonathan Galkin, DFA
airplay and became a club hit that sold nearly 30,000 copies, touching off a “punk-funk”
fever on both sides of the Atlantic. Thurston
Moore would later write that, at the time, he
thought the Bush Tetras were “probably the
greatest band in the world.”
Funk aficionados would argue that that
superlative is more accurately applied to the
Scroggins sisters, aka ESG (which stands
for Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold), four African-American teens from the E.R. Moore
Houses in the South Bronx. Their mother had
bought them instruments to keep them out
of trouble: Renee on guitar, Marie on congas, Valerie on drums, and Deborah on bass.
As family bands go, the Scroggins girls were
sort of a cross between the Isley Brothers and
the Shaggs. Self-taught, they tried harnessing
James Brown’s soul power, but their brandnew bag proved more idiosyncratic, with
a sparse, stark, DIY sound: echo-drenched
vocals buried deep in the mix, jagged henscratch guitar, infectious basslines, and reverberating layers of percussion.
Bahlman met the band at a talent contest;
they came in last, but he was impressed enough
to sign on as their soundman and manager;
soon they were playing New York clubs like
Hurrah. A gig opening up for the British band
A Certain Ratio led to a meeting with Factory
Records’ Tony Wilson, who released their debut
7-inch single in England in early 1981 (“You’re
No Good”/ “Moody”/“UFO,” produced impeccably by Martin Hannett), which Bahlman paired
with three live cuts to fashion the ESG 12-inch
EP on 99. Within a few years they’d play both
the opening night of Factory’s Haçienda club in
Manchester and the closing night of New York’s
famed Paradise Garage, where “Moody” was
listed as one of the all-time top 50 tracks.
Equally cherished by DJs is the solid output
of Liquid Liquid, a band of New Jersey émigrés
who coalesced around bassist Richard McGuire
(now a successful graphic artist whose work
appears regularly in The New Yorker). The
group regurgitated all the reggae, dub, Fela,
Can, Clash, Slits, and early hip-hop they’d been
digesting into powerfully tribal “body music”
full of spellbinding rhythmic accents (the relentless batucada-like beats of “Optimo” possess the absolutely perfect amount of cowbell);
singer Sal Principato’s caterwauling, often unintelligible vocals were influenced by the Peruvian singer Yma Sumac. “I was into creating
aural vistas that listeners could appreciate and
immerse themselves in,” says Principato. “I just
10
ESG, clockwise from top left: Valerie Scroggins, Tito Libran, Marie Scroggins,
Deborah Scroggins, Renee Scroggins, NYC 1981.
wanted people to get an impression, an emotion that they could build upon and interpret.”
“Both bands have a scarily minimalistic
approach to songwriting, recording, and performing,” says LCD Soundsystem’s Mahoney
of ESG and Liquid Liquid. “It’s like a Chinese
painting—the empty space is just as important as the notes played and the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. That was a huge
influence on LCD in our live shows up until
the end.”
On Bahlman’s UK record-hunting trips he
connected with other kindred spirits from
whom he licensed an eclectic range of grooves,
from deep roots reggae (the Congos and the
Adrian Sherwood–produced Singers & Players)
to dub-inflected post-punk (Vivien Goldman
and Maximum Joy). “Ed was a very open-minded, interesting fellow,” says On-U-Sound Records founder Sherwood, who became a friend
of Bahlman’s. “A bastion of good taste.”
Goldman, now a music journalist and adjunct professor at NYU, concurs. “He was a bit
of a musical adventurer, trying to go into previously uncharted territory,” she says. “He wasn’t
just searching for the next big thing, he wanted
to be exploring on the edges.”
Bahlman not only carefully selected his
artists, he also produced many of the records
he released and even mixed sound at the performers’ live shows. Unlike the abrasive, atonal
downtown no wave bands, 99 artists were unit-
ed by their body-moving abilities. Even Glenn
Branca’s thunderous, multiple-guitar-ensemble
compositions like “The Spectacular Commodity” had a hypnotic, transcendent momentum.
The label also had a profound influence on
early hip-hop. Bahlman mentored Rick Rubin and helped him distribute the initial Def
Jam releases. More notably, ESG’s work, especially “UFO,” was sampled prolifically—and
without permission.
In fact, the issue of uncredited appropriation led to 99’s downfall. For six weeks in the
fall of 1983, “Cavern,” from Liquid Liquid’s
Optimo 12-inch EP, was a surprise hit on New
York radio giant WBLS. The record sold 30,000
copies and then the airplay suddenly stopped,
replaced by a track that sounded eerily similar:
“White Lines (Don’t Don’t Do It)” by Grandmaster & Melle Mel. (Contrary to common misconception, the song actually has no connection to Grandmaster Flash, who had left Sugar
Hill a year earlier in a dispute over unpaid royalties.) “White Lines” didn’t sample “Cavern,”
but rather Sugar Hill house-band bassist Doug
Wimbish played McGuire’s bassline, while
Principato’s lyric “slip in and out of phenomena” was repurposed into the rap song’s refrain,
“something like a phenomenon.”
Bahlman filed suit against Sugar Hill, a label long reputed to have underworld connections. Though 99 eventually won (setting important legal precedent), Sugar Hill declared
bankruptcy instead of paying up the $660,000
judgment, and the legal fees ultimately bankrupted 99 as well. Today Principato is reluctant
to revisit the details, saying only, “It definitely
was a learning experience.”
The 15-month legal battle broke not just
Bahlman’s bank but his spirit as well. His relationships with Branca and ESG had soured,
while McGuire’s departure had destabilized
Liquid Liquid. In late 1985, Bahlman decided
to eighty-six 99. The 99 store had a clearance
sale and Bahlman subsequently withdrew from
the music world. Stories abound that Bahlman
was “taken for a ride” and shaken down by the
Mafia, that the mob repeatedly smashed the
front windows and trashed the shop, that he
suffered a breakdown, that he set fire to the
99 master tapes—but no one I spoke to could
corroborate these reports. Bahlman himself
has been infamously impossible to reach, at
least if the subject is music. In response, several of the 99 artists have reissued their records
without his permission—and thus without access to the master tapes—usually on British
Above left: Bush Tetras (L-R: Dee Pop, Cynthia Sley, Laura Kennedy, Pat Place) backstage at Hurrah, NYC 1980.
Above right: Liquid Liquid (L-R: Dennis Young, Sal Principato, Scott Hartley, Richard McGuire), NYC 1981.
Below L-R: Maximum Joy, Stretch; Liquid Liquid, Liquid Liquid; Liquid Liquid, Optimo; ESG, ESG;
The Congos, “At the Feast”/“Music Maker”; Glenn Branca, The Ascension.
labels to exploit the legal gray area. Soul Jazz
Records compiled ESG’s work in 2000, for example, while Domino issued a UK-only Liquid
Liquid collection, Slip In and Out of Phenomenon, in 2008.
Though 99’s demise might have spelled the
end of a unique period in New York’s music
scene, the label’s reach stretched far beyond
the city limits. In Detroit, a young Carl Craig
first encountered ESG’s “Moody” and Liquid
Liquid’s “Optimo” when he started going to
the Music Institute in 1988. “My mind was
blown because I hadn’t heard anything like it
since ‘Shari Vari,’” says Craig, who would later
sample Liquid Liquid for his Paperclip People
project. “It was like discovering the Lost Ark!
‘Moody’ and ‘Optimo’ took James Brown’s jungle music and made it more tribal. When I hear
either today I still get excited.”
“Optimo” and “Moody” proved to be leftfield favorites of groundbreaking disco DJs
like house originators Larry Levan and Tony
Humphries and Chicago house instigators
Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy. House leg-
ends Chip E. (“Like This”) and Murk (“Reach
for Me”) launched their careers with grooves
based on “Moody.” In Scotland, Optimo’s
JD Twitch and his partner Johnny Wilkes
named both their DJing duo and their weekly
Glasgow party after the Liquid Liquid song.
“I was completely enchanted by that period
in New York’s cultural history, and Optimo
the club night was my way of taking those
influences and doing something contemporary with them,” says Twitch, who also wrote
a widely circulated history of 99 for Optimo’s
website in the early 2000s. “I think all the
99 releases had an impact on me in different
ways. There isn’t a dud amongst them.”
Over the last decade, 99’s innovations
have impacted and inspired New York City’s
dance-music community. “99 repped a sound
to me, within its very slim catalogue, that definitely helped define a certain distinct style of
arrangements and songwriting,” says Jonathan
Galkin, a cofounder of DFA Records. “A direct
4/4 forward motion, a nod to the dancefloor,
a nod to the avant-garde, and a nod to some
muse that only a few possessed at that time—
Liquid Liquid definitely did, more than anyone. It was a big part of the equation when it
came to the foundation of the DFA remixing
too—those grooves and drums and cowbells
could lock in and go on forever and build in a
style like the best acid house.”
Given his accomplishments, Bahlman’s disappearance is one of music’s more enduring
enigmas. On tour in Japan, Optimo’s JD Twitch
even met an Osaka man wearing an “I Know
Where Ed Bahlman Lives” button. I know
where Ed Bahlman lives now too (in Brooklyn),
but he still wouldn’t talk to me for the purposes of this story, despite repeated email requests
and a conversation I had with his partner. Yet
it turns out Bahlman hasn’t vanished completely. Over the last few years he’s appeared
frequently in neighborhood Brooklyn newspapers and even The New York Times, speaking
out about wildlife and safety issues in Prospect
Park. At the very same time I was trying in vain
to track him down for this piece his picture
appeared on the front cover of The Brooklyn
Paper, accompanying a story on the dangers of
rickety thin-ice rescue ladders.
So far nothing has tempted Bahlman to
break his silence on the 99 years. “People don’t
normally turn their back on their art side as
completely as Ed,” says Goldman. “One is only
left to wonder what traumatized or disillusioned him to such an extent that he cut himself off so completely.”
One can only hope that some day Bahlman
decides to come back in from the cold. Deserving of a new audience, the full 99 catalogue
demands to be properly reissued and available
domestically. In the words of DFA’s Galkin, the
label’s legacy is “a treasure map or blueprint
for future generations, drawn by some sort of
happy accident.”
For those interested in going deeper, the 99 story is covered in meticulous detail in issue #4
of the Chapel Hill, NC, zine Tuba Frenzy, which
is still available for purchase (only $4!) via
tubafrenzy.org.
11
COLUMNS
COLUMNS
L A N D M A RKS
158
Bleecker
A column on
the gear and
processes that inform
the music we make.
THE BRONX
The places, spaces,
and monuments of
NYC's musical past,
present, and future.
past featured landmarks
1 max neuhaus’ “times square”
what i remember most about grime was the
blood in my ears. It was the price we voyeurs
paid—raw production values and low-bitrate
rips did a number on our collective hearing,
but there was thrill in the suffering. If you
tracked grime and garage you might remember Tesfa Williams, who debuted on Black Ops
as DJ Dread D with the raw, tugboat bass of
“Invasion.” As T.Williams, the Red Bull Music
Academy 2013 participant now makes house
music with a deep sense of soul and production polish, but grime and garage are embedded in the bones. I interviewed Williams about
his transition.
RBMA: What were some of the sonic elements
of grime production that you really liked?
LO G O S
The origins of
iconic images from
NYC's musical history
explained.
sometimes it seems like the streets of
this city are paved with gold—Fool’s Gold,
that is. A slight exaggeration, but you don’t
have to go far to find the hybrid dance-music and hip-hop label’s stickers underneath your feet, slapped onto sidewalks
and curbs as well as most any other available surface. Shaped like a gold brick and
spelled out in bulbous, hand-drawn geometric letters with the counters filled in,
the Fool’s Gold logo and the name it bears
reflect the Williamsburg brand’s tonguein-cheek take on hip-hop posturing. “We
wanted something that could have the
swagger of hip-hop but not be so on the
nose—something that didn’t take itself too
seriously,” says Nick Catchdubs, who cofounded the label with fellow DJ/producer A-Trak in 2007. The approach from the
start was “let’s have an artist-run label for
the sorts of oddball records we were playing in our DJ sets,” he says.
In the beginning there was also an eclectic “minister of art” sharing the helm:
12
Joshua Prince, aka Dust La Rock, the man
behind that sticky image and all of the label’s artistic output for its first few years.
For a generation reared on the Nickelodeon channel, Prince’s cartoony logotype
is especially merry and familiar. Writing
from his current base in LA, Prince says
his process involves doing extensive research into any and all elements related to
the content. In this case, what he turned
up was “gold, in all its many forms” and
“late ’80s and early ’90s house and hiphop record-sleeve and label graphics.” He
cites design influences ranging from the
Designers Republic’s work for Pop Will Eat
Itself and the Warp label to Genesis P-Orridge’s Psychick Cross and the occult.
The solid-gold identity lends itself well
to merchandise, of which they sell plenty,
and to the label’s own Mr. Goldbar mascot,
who could give Mr. Peanut a run for his
money. “A lot of dance music, it’s very,
very self-serious,” says Catchdubs. “This is
supposed to be fun.”
-Sue Apfelbaum
Tesfa Williams: The main thing I liked about
grime was every producer’s unique style and
sound banks. People would go out of their way
to create a unique bass sound that nobody
had heard before, or put together a drum kit—
which wasn’t traditional—with weird sounds
for hi-hats or snares. RBMA: Did you consciously try to distance
yourself from grime? TW: I had always been into garage or, as it was
called in the early days, “house and garage.” I
was no stranger to 4/4 drum patterns and
had always been experimenting. So back then
I’d make grime and a little bit of house. Now
I make house and a little bit of grime. There
was nothing to change or shake. Just a bit of
growth in my production skills. RBMA: What are some tricks from grime that
you imported into your current production
work?
TW: I have definitely retained the bass edge
of my grime past. I can’t imagine making music without putting a focus on the bottom end.
Also, knowing not to overcook a track. If it’s a
basic groove, keep it basic. People can always
appreciate quality simplicity. RBMA: What’s the single biggest revelation
as a mixer/engineer that has affected how you
assemble your music?
TW: The discovery of side-chaining. It freed
up a lot of space for me to play around. RBMA: How do you start a track? Do you
have a go-to work flow? TW: I always start from scratch. I find it keeps
me creative to always have a blank canvas.
Sometimes I will draw on past ideas once I’ve
created a drum loop. But the main point is that
it’s fresh.
-Nick sylvester
from 1958 until 1993, 158 Bleecker Street was the
site of the renowned Village Gate jazz and folk club. In
many ways, the club was the fulcrum of the Village’s
folk and beat scenes: Aretha Franklin sang her first New
York show here; Bob Dylan wrote “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” in its basement; and Pete Seeger, Miles Davis,
John Coltrane, Jimi Hendrix, Tito Puente, and Dizzy
Gillespie were all Gate regulars.
But the attractive Beaux Arts building has humble
roots. Mills No. 1, as the structure was originally called,
was designed by architect Ernest Flagg in 1897 as a hostel for poor gentlemen, and many thousands took refuge
from the streets there. (Flagg was an advocate for “social
responsibility” in architecture, and was instrumental in
passing groundbreaking zoning regulations regarding
the height and setback of buildings in New York, allowing light and air to reach the streets below.)
The Village Gate closed in 1993, passing its license to
the dance club Life, which opened in 1996 in a portion
of the old Gate space (a CVS drugstore now occupies
the rest). Justine D., a DJ and former promoter, hosted
her very first gig at Life, shortly before the club shut
down in 1999. In 2008, David Handler and Justin Kantor opened Le Poisson Rouge (LPR) in that space. Justine D., by then a nightlife pro—having co-organized the
roving Motherfucker parties since 2001—booked events
there alongside Ronen Givony (Wordless Music) and
Brice Rosenbloom (Boom Collective). “What I like about
LPR is that the musical direction is really about collaboration,” she says. “I was able to bring in DFA, the Fixed
guys, ESG, even Throbbing Gristle.” DJ Rekha recently brought her long-running Basement Bhangra party to LPR, after a 15-year run at SOB’s.
She starts each event—held the first Thursday of every
month—with a bhangra dance lesson, which evolves
into a late-night dance jam. “Every month we feature
bhangra artists from around the world, but we blend in
other styles like hip-hop and dancehall, and that’s what
makes it a New York party,” she says. “This kind of thing
could only happen here.” -Adrienne Day
Top
5…
Borough
Anthems
PRESENTED BY
Many ’hoods have been repped in hip-hop since
Boogie Down Productions’ breakout tracks “South
Bronx” and “The Bridge Is Over,” both responses
to MC Shan’s “The Bridge.” BDP and Shan’s legendary dispute between the Bronx and Queens constituted one of rap’s very first feuds and established the template for a borough anthem. Borough
by borough, we gathered our top five hits that
were spawned by local arguments. Break out a map
and choose your side.
2 The Thing Secondhand Store
3 The loft
4 Marcy Hotel
5 Andy Warhol’s Factory
6 Queensbridge Houses
1
7
7 Record Mart
8 Deitch Projects
6
5
8
5
9 Area/Shelter/Vinyl
7
10 Studio B
QUEENS
5
11 Market Hotel
2
12 Daptone Records
9 8
10
3
8
MANHATTAN
4 12
12
11
What: The Village
Gate/Life/Le
Poisson Rouge
Where: 158
Bleecker Street
When: 1958-present
Why: Multigenre
performance
space
STATEN ISLAND
BROOKLYN
1 2 3 4 5
Brooklyn
Jay-Z feat. Santigold,
“Brooklyn We Go Hard”
Let’s just say they
don’t call Brooklyn
the County of Kings
for nathin’. Jay-Z
manages to unite a
divided Brooklyn.
Flipping a warning
call from Santigold,
this track reps for
both the borough’s
do-or-die natives and
the stream of artists
and musicians who’ve
made it one of the
world’s current hotbeds of creativity.
Queens
Mobb Deep, “Shook
Ones, Pt. II”
The biggest borough by size, Queens
occupies an equally
big space in hip-hop
history, spawning rap
legends like Run DMC,
Nas, A Tribe Called
Quest, LL Cool J, and
50 Cent. Though there
are plenty of classics of the genre, no
track has managed to
replace Mobb Deep’s
Queensbridge call-toarms for sheer power
and badass poetry.
Manhattan
Jay-Z & Alicia Keys,
“Empire State of Mind”
With the opening
line, “Yeah I’m out
that Brooklyn/Now
I’m down in Tribeca, right next to De
Niro,” Jay-Z crossed
into Manhattan and
cemented his place as
the city’s ambassador
to the world. There’s
no question that the
bright lights and big
dreams live in the
skyscrapingest borough of all.
the Bronx
Lord Tariq & Peter
Gunz, “Deja Vu (Uptown
Baby)”
The Bronx can reasonably claim that, for
the first few years
of hip-hop at least,
every song was a Bronx
anthem. But it’s a
slightly more recent
entry that takes the
title. The Steely Dan
sample and the chorus
of “uptown baby” get
forwards from every
New Yorker north of
110th Street; this
one commands the BX’s
undying loyalty.
Staten Island
Wu-Tang Clan, “Protect
Ya Neck”
With nine official
members and an entourage known to roll a
thousand deep, hiphop has never experienced another act
with quite the same
footprint as the WuTang Clan. “Protect
Ya Neck” is the posse
cut that best encapsulates the overwhelming boots-onthe-ground force that
they can bring.
13
New york story
I remember
you well
A hip-hop artist comes of age at the Chelsea Hotel.
“What do you think this is? A hotel?!”
It was the only non-apropos statement that my
mother used regularly. “It is a hotel,” I would mutter
under my breath while slinking away. Except for that
one time I yelled it back at her, which in retrospect
was a terrible idea. I can see why she reacted, well…
not so lovingly.
I know what she meant. She didn’t want my friends
traipsing in and out of the apartment at ridiculous
hours, being loud, being teens. I never thought we
were that bad, though. I respect the sentiment, but it
was one she couldn’t use effectively. It just made me
laugh. We did indeed live in a hotel. The Chelsea Hotel.
You would think that my mom would realize how
unfitting the statement was, but I understand now
why she didn’t. I don’t think the residents of the
Chelsea ever thought of it as a “hotel” in that sense.
It never felt like it. It was just home.
You know how weird it is, as a child, to explain
to your friends that you live in a hotel? It’s pretty
fucking weird.
“So what, like your family is poor and you have to
live in a hotel?”
“No,” I would answer, angrily. “Why do you live in
a hotel then?” they would prod.
“Because it’s the CHELSEA HOTEL. That’s DIFFERENT,” I’d retort, rolling my eyes. “It’s FAMOUS.”
“Whatever. You live in a hotel.”
Thankfully, the parents of my close friends were
of the artsy and more alternative communities. They
totally understood where their kids were staying for
sleepovers. (Let’s be honest, it’s also a bit weird to
tell your parents that you should be allowed to go
spend the night at a hotel.)
My parents moved there in 1977 and had the apartment until just last year. After the Chelsea was sold in
2011 and began its conversion into the boutique hotel
it is destined to become, I had to decide whether or
not I wanted to be vocal about the shitty treatment
that the tenants were receiving. The management
company is made up of terrible, terrible people. They
told us we would all be fine, but they lied. Evictions,
court, buyouts, health-harmful construction… it’s a
whole other story. I had to move my mom and brother
back to Cape Town, South Africa (where we are from).
Our home of over 30 years is all a memory now.
14
Did that home impact my life? It did, in every
possible way. I say a lot that “I’m so motherfucking
New York, you don’t even know.” And I absolutely
mean it.
Let’s talk about growing up in that neighborhood,
watching it change and evolve from the 1970s to
2013. I’ve seen the most extreme gentrification occur
right on me. Which sounds like a strange choice of
words, but it didn’t feel separate to my growth as a
person, an adult, and definitely as an artist.
The ways that the community changed are
mind-blowing. I remember my old block: the OTB,
the bodegas, the comic-book store right downstairs,
the fishing tackle shop (clearly we needed to go
fishing on 23rd Street). The businesses that came
and went; the ones that stood the test of time (see:
El Quijote).
I grew up in the middle of everything. Literally between the 1, the A (which used to be the AA), and the
C trains. My mom took us to Central Park every Saturday to watch the roller-skating circle or to ride the
carousel (an easy trip if the train is half a block away).
We walked to Macy’s on 34th and Seventh, and ate
at the Fountain on the fifth floor every weekend. We
didn’t have trees, a backyard, or a stoop, but we played
in the marble hallways throughout the building.
I learned to ride a bike in the hallway. I learned to
roller-skate there too (before going to Coco’s Roller
Rink on Christopher Street). The Village was always
just a walk away. It all seemed like one world, from
my elementary school, P.S.3 on Hudson, up through
Chelsea and into the Fashion District.
In my early teens, we were in the middle of all the
clubs: Limelight, the Sound Factory, Home Bass, Octagon. We could walk down to Little West 12th and
go to the Muse. I clubbed hard. I still have no idea
how the hell they were letting us into these places
when we were 12 years old, but I’m glad they did.
Walking to clubs all the way on the west side
in Chelsea was walking through CHELSEA late at
night. No, not the 2013 six-dollar-coffee Chelsea, but
the old Chelsea. The projects are part of the neighborhood and always have been. Shit was not fucking
sweet at all.
Walking down to West 4th Street to convene at
3rd and Sixth Avenue. Then you walk the circle: up
Sixth Avenue to 8th Street, over to Broadway, down
to 3rd and head right to Washington Square Park.
Then you chill there forever. Walk the circle in different ways. My friends always came over because
I lived so close. End up at Waverly Diner. Everyone
back to crash at my house.
You know the movie Kids? Fuck that movie. We
were in the park. They shot around us. That was us,
portrayed poorly. Out of that group of friends came
amazing rappers, skaters, artists, filmmakers, and
photographers. Sadly, a lot of mind-numbingly talented friends from that time are no longer around.
It was the same energy as the Chelsea, this new
group of people. I felt it all the time in my building
and I gravitated to it outside—my safe haven for mutants, misfits, people who “find their tribe.”
I thank my parents everyday for being artists. Besides the Chelsea, there wouldn’t have been another
place for them to be accepted and to call home. It
allowed me to grow up beyond limits, beyond filters, and with an acceptance of myself and others.
I learned super-fucking-quickly about artistic pain,
struggle, and beauty. It wasn’t just inside our apartment, it was reflected in the neighborhood.
I learned about gentrification, community, and
the fights of independent business owners. I learned
about the club scene, the drugs, the seedy underbelly of NYC, and how to not get murdered.
The Chelsea, my neighborhood, and the years of
radical change I witnessed have shaped me into who
I am, who I will be, and the lessons I will give my
future kids. It was an inspirational and limitless way
to grow up.
I was born in Cape Town, South Africa. I claim
that, and I claim being a New Yorker.
“I grew up in the Chelsea Hotel” is not so weird
to explain to people now. So maybe I’m the only
person ever yelling out “CHELSEA!!!” in response
to “Where you from?” at rap shows. That’s okay. I’m
proud of it and always will be.
Rapper Jean Grae was born in Cape Town, South
Africa. Her parents are the renowned jazz
musicians Sathima Bea Benjamin and Abdullah
Ibrahim. She starred in the film Big Words,
directed by Neil Drumming.
Photo by emmanuel dunand/afp/getty images
WORDS jean grae
Technicolor
Coding
Brenmar
Nick Hook
Sinjin Hawke —LIVE
tuesday May 21
Tammany Hall
152 Orchard St 9Pm $5
Red Bull Music Academy New York 2013
April 28 – May 31
236 ARTISTS. 34 NIGHTS. 8000 ANTHEMS. 1 CITY.
www.redbullmusicacademy.com
Discover More
On Red Bull Music Academy Radio
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