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DAILY NOTE
TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013
14 22
OF
LONDON CALLING
THE EXPORT OF NEW YORK'S UNDERGROUND
ITAL / HIP-HOP'S MOST EXCITING PRODUCERS / RIP ROMANTHONY
THE DAILY NOTE
LAST NIGHT
It’s the age of endless data, of the MP3 shuffle, of
having all songs at your fingertips at all times. Not
everyone’s thrilled about this easy access—in this
issue, writer Rich Juzwiak waxes nostalgic for the time
when music still had to be hunted down—but what’s
astonishing is how much it all makes sense. Music is a
conversation that transcends record-store genre bins or
Soundcloud tags and now we all know it. Artists’ behindthe-scenes stories are full of surprising connections
and inspirations that go beyond the limitations of
a “scene” or “style.” In today’s issue of Daily Note,
you’ll find an interview with Bowie producer Tony
Visconti, an exploration of the ways London and New
York influenced each other in the 1970s and ’80s, and
a guide to the big-name hip-hop producers playing
at Wednesday’s Drum Majors show at the Knitting
Factory. We talk to Haze about the EPMD logo and
celebrate the life of recently departed house music don
Romanthony. It’s a melting pot of sounds and ideas
with some common themes. Collaboration depends
on communication. Self-imposed limitations foster
creativity. Good ideas can come from anywhere, at any
time. Don’t be afraid to stretch your own boundaries,
and keep on shuffling.
Clockwise from top: Dope
Jams’ Francis Englehardt in
the mix at the Ace Hotel;
Dope Jams’ Paul Nickerson
brings down the house;
Academy participants heat
up the dancefloor; photos
by Anthony Blasko. Giorgio
Moroder in conversation with
Torsten Schmidt; photo by
Christelle de Castro
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
Contributors
Sue Apfelbaum
Adrienne Day
Rich Juzwiak
Laura Levine
Anton Pearson
David Stubbs
Nick Sylvester
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
Cover Photo Laura Levine
Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow, NYC 1981
All-Seeing Eye Torsten Schmidt
The content of Daily Note does not
necessarily represent the opinions of
Red Bull or Doubleday & Cartwright.
ABOUT RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY
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
2
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
“There was a German guy called Klaus Nomi who had one
piece, a classical piece, where he would sing, ‘Ah,
ah, ah,’... and I thought — not his music, but the way
he played would work quite well for Scarface.”
—Giorgio Moroder, May 20, 2013
TONIGHT
TAMMANY HALL
New York rap fans: prepare to be spoiled.
Tomorrow night, an unfair amount of
the world’s best hip-hop producers
from around the country converge at the
Knitting Factory to reinterpret their
biggest tracks live on stage as part
of Red Bull Music Academy 2013. From
legendary Cash Money don Mannie Fresh to
Chicago’s teenage sensation Young Chop
and ratchet king DJ Mustard, the lineup is
deep and diverse. Get familiar.
DRUM
MAJORS
MANNIE
FRESH
BOI-1DA
NEW ORLEANS
TORONTO
YOUNG CHOP
J.U.S.T.I.C.E.
LEAGUE
BANGLADESH
DJ MUSTARD
DRUMMA BOY
CHICAGO
TAMPA
ATLANTA
LOS ANGELES
MEMPHIS
SIGNATURE SOUND
Cheap sounds made
regal with a distinct 808
bounce.
Melancholy soul turned
triumphant.
Nihilistic, harsh, and
minimal. The sound of
pulverizing teenage rage.
Smoothed-out, stringladen jams for Mai Tai
sipping.
Snare-bashing and
bass-heavy with plinking
keyboards and buzzing
synths.
Godfather of ratchet.
Sparse melodies and
crisp handclaps.
Off-kilter and chaotic
with orchestral flourishes. Oddly infectious.
NOTABLE TRACK
Juvenile, “Ha”
Drake feat. Eminem,
Kanye West, and Lil
Wayne, “Forever”
Chief Keef, “I Don’t Like”
Rick Ross feat. Drake,
“Aston Martin Music”
Lil Wayne, “A Milli”
Tyga, “Rack City”
Young Jeezy, “Put On”
IMAGINARY PROJECT WE’D LOVE TO SEE HAPPEN
Musical director and costumed bandleader on a
Mardi Gras parade float.
Svengali and in-house
producer for a Canadian
supergroup featuring
Snow, Edwin, Buck 65,
Deadmau5, and
Nardwuar.
Collaboration with Danny Brown. (This could
actually be great.)
Executive producers
of the soundtrack for a
comic-book blockbuster about fringe Justice
League character
Elongated Man.
A collection of field
recordings of bees.
(RIP bees.)
Remixing ’70s soft-rock
band Bread... or maybe
Led Zeppelin’s “Hot Dog.”
Conducting a live MIDI
orchestra.
BRENMAR
NICK HOOK
SINJIN
HAWKE
MORE
RIP ROMANTHONY
Paying tribute to one of house music’s most enduring voices.
MAY
21
UPCOMING
EVENTS
the word began to trickle in late Saturday night while
we were still on the dancefloor: Romanthony, a New Jersey house music producer best known as the vocalist on
Daft Punk’s 2001 hit “One More Time,” had passed away
on May 7 at the all-too-young age of 46. Suddenly the
dancefloor wasn’t a happy place to be.
In the 1990s, when he began to release music on his
own Black Male Records, the man born Anthony Moore
developed a more experimental, song-oriented, and spiritual form of dance music—one that never devolved into
diva-house kitsch. Because Moore was a true songwriter
rather than simply a track producer (as well as his own
best vocalist), songs like 1993’s “The Wanderer” could
carry a personal, pathos-ridden narrative rarely found
in club music. Because he was a Jersey boy following in
the footsteps of DJs like Tony Humphries, and alongside
Garden State sons like Kerri Chandler, Moore could move
butts too. Soon enough “The Wanderer” was issued on
Chicago’s Prescription Records, and Moore was a global
house star. Romanworld, his 1996 debut album, was an
incredible Prince-like megamix of concept, soul, and jack.
By ’99 his place in the house music pantheon was even
more assured—he was releasing singles on Thomas Bangalter’s Roule label and a career-changing collaboration
with two world-famous robots beckoned.
As the 21st century progressed, Romanthony’s output
slowed down, though reissues and new remixes of classic
tracks diminished neither his profile nor his reputation.
He was reported to be collaborating with Boys Noize and
MikeQ at the time of his passing. According to his sister,
Mellony Moore, Anthony died in his home in Austin, Texas. The cause of death has not been confirmed.
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
GRAND PROSPECT HALL
12 YEARS MAY
OF DFA
THE WHOLE
LABEL FAMILY ON
FOUR STAGES
25
THE WELL BROOKLYN
RANDOM FACT
In 2009, he launched his
own label as a subsidiary
of Def Jam South called
Chubby Boy Records.
Before becoming a
producer, he worked at
discount Canadian department store Winners,
with “a bunch of 50-yearold ladies that couldn’t
push or lift anything.”
Once threatened to “sue
the shit out of Kanye
West.”
Their acronym stands for
Just Undeniably Some
of The Illest Composers
Ever.
He was a barber who
got into the industry
after passing a beat CD
to one of his customers:
Ludacris.
His real name is Dijon.
Yes, really.
His mother was a professional opera singer
and his father was the
first-chair clarinetist for
40 years in the Memphis
Symphony Orchestra—
the first African-American to hold that position.
IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“If you fit in that New
Orleans melting pot, you
can’t help but be great!”
“I always wanted to be a
basketball player until I
discovered Pizza Pockets.”
-Red Bull Music
Academy, 2011
-Hip Hop Canada, 2009
Red Bull Music Academy Presents
Drum Majors
Wednesday, May 22, 8 PM to 2 AM
The Knitting Factory
361 Metropolitan Ave., Brooklyn
“Every time they hear
me on the radio they call
my phone—my grandma
even called me: ‘I hear
you on the radio!’ I’m
like, ‘Grandma, you listen
to that and you be in
church?’”
-Pitchfork, 2012
“One of the main things
that a lot of people tell us
is that we just put so much
soul into our music and
that’s always a good thing
to hear. It’s the truth. We
put a lot of physical work
into our tracks and we just
try and go the extra mile
to make it soulful.”
-Champ Magazine
“‘A Milli’ changed the
sound of music. After ‘A
Milli’, like every beat on
the radio was ‘A Milli.’”
-The FADER, 2012
“I just keep messing with
the same people that I came
in it with. I don’t got no
manager. It’s just me and
my publicist and my lawyer.
Other than that I stick to
the same people, I don’t
switch off or nothing. At the
end of the day, I just want to
see the whole LA winning.”
-The FADER, 2012
“One hundred years from
now—even two hundred
years from now—I want
my music to be as alive
and timeless as the
strands of Moonlight
Sonata.”
-Huffington Post, 2012
THE DOOVER NYC
SPECIAL
ALOE BLACC &
MANY MORE
PLAYING
THE
FIELD
New York can be a bit headspinning for out-of-towners:
kamikaze cabs, street
preachers, Dr. Zizmor ads...
it’s a lot to take in. We
asked a few participants
from Term Two of Red Bull
Music Academy what city
sounds they’d like to
sample once they get their
bearings.
MAY
26
SAINT VITUS
ONEOHTRIX
POINT NEVER
JULIAN
CUBILLOS
LAVINA YELB
TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA
The sound of the
Statue of Liberty and
two clouds.
TOKYO, JAPAN
lavinayelb.tumblr.com
facebook.com/
ampcsound
I’d like to sample
NYC transit sound:
buses, trains and
other chatter. I’ve
thought of doing
this when taking the
Los Angeles Metro,
but I’d imagine NYC
transit serves up
only the finest of
clanks and squeaks.
SANTIAGO, CHILE
PLEASURE
CRUISER
A hot dog.
ANDRE LAOS
GOTHENBURG, SWEDEN
I would like to
record the tones
that the skyscrapers
make when they’re
moved by heavy wind.
I’ve never heard it.
Actually I don’t
think anyone has!
soundcloud.com/
andrelaos
EVIAN CHRIST
BILL KOULIGAS
MORE
MAY
26
NYU SKIRBALL CENTER
A TALK
WITH
JAMES
MURPHY
MAY
27
RECORDED LIVE
FOR RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY RADIO
TUNE IN AT RBMARADIO.COM
juliancubillos.com
4
5
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Q&A
TONY
VISCONTI
Britain, Bowie, and a Brooklyn producer’s trials by fire.
PHOTOGRAPHY GIANFRANCO TRIPODO
You’ve talked about making “destructive” decisions in the process of recording. In a live environment, how important is the element of performance and making decisions about what to keep
and what to leave? I have to set this one up. I produced a song by David Bowie called “Heroes.” They use
it for every heroic event, although it’s a song about alcoholics. Everyone loves “Heroes.” It’s a super-production—you’ll hear backing vocals and all kinds of instruments on it. We did it on 24 tracks in Hansa studios [in
Berlin]. We had one track left for the vocal. Talk about
destructive recording! So Bowie would do a vocal and
listen to it and say, “I think I’ve got one better.” And
I’d say, “Well, you know we can’t keep that take…” This
was before digital recording. So he’d pull his socks up,
take a deep breath, and go and do a better take than
the one he did before. And that was it—the previous
vocal was gone. We kept doing that. Having experience
in the studio, you have to know when to say, “I think
we’ve got the take.” There was no way of going back to
take five or take two—they were gone, evaporated. I
did a lot of records that way.
When you work as a team—as a producer, coach,
singer, artist—everybody’s on the same page and everyone is just hyped up with adrenaline. This is such a
good experience. I find this almost completely lacking
in today’s recording styles. I lecture students at NYU
in New York and I’ve been scratching my head. We
all know that we have playlists and we can save everything that’s recorded now, from the first groan
on day one to the last scream on day seven. What
I meant about having a destructive recording
was that this was going to be an eternal recording; it was going to outlive us. This recording we
were making was going to become tomorrow’s
history. Knowing that, you should really pump
up your adrenaline. It’s not about doing takes,
takes, takes and then just comping, comping,
comping. There’s no passion in that; there’s no
energy in that. So what I ask my NYU students
to do is think about that before they go in front
of a mic; to think, “The performance I’m going to
do will outlive me. I want people 50 years from
now to hear what I’m singing. If it’s no good it’ll
be thrown away. If it’s great, people 50 years
from now will hear my voice singing this song.”
So it’s almost a mantra. You have to really hype
yourself up to get that thing we used to get with
destructive recording.
6
Can you talk about moving from New York to the
UK? I always wanted to be in the record business,
but New York is probably the toughest city to break
into. I did some forays into session work, but I never
really produced in New York. I met a songwriter (and
my future boss) by the water cooler in my publisher’s
office. He said, “Hello” in a British accent and I said,
“You’re the first English person I’ve ever met.” He
asked what I did there and I said, “I’m the house record producer. I’m just doing demos for my publisher.” He said, “Well, you’re my American cousin! I’m
the house producer for this company in the UK.” His
name was Denny Cordell and he said, “Shall I play
you something?” We found a room with a turntable
and he put on an acetate of Procol Harum’s “A Whiter
Shade of Pale.” He’d just produced it; it wasn’t even
released yet. It just blew my mind that something so
beautiful and soulful could come out of the UK. It
was fantastic. So I helped him out that day with a
recording session. He came totally unprepared and he
recorded cats like Clark Terry on trumpet. I said, “I’ve
got to see this session. I’ve got to see the music.” He
said he had no music. I asked him what he was going
to do and he said, “I’m going to play the demo and
they’re just going to come up with an arrangement.” I
said, “This is New York, Denny. You’ll get charged triple for that.” I listened to his demo and it already had
horn and trumpet parts on it. So I wrote out the parts
very quickly, wrote out the chord changes, and where
the drums would have to stop and where they’d continue again. This is for about eight pieces. He had
hired top session players who I’d only read about but
never met. So we Xeroxed this one sheet of music, ran
down the street, and put it in front of Clark Terry, a
great trumpet player. The band looked it over and did
a few run-throughs and it was done in three takes.
I said, “Denny, how do you do this in the UK? How
do you expect it to happen?” He says, “Well, everybody
kind of saunters into a room, we roll a spliff, we listen…” I said, “No, no, no. Not New York in the ’60s.” He
expected those people to hang out eight to ten hours
to do this one song. So anyway, he looks at me with
great admiration in his eyes and says, “Would you fancy working with me in the UK, in London?” I said, “Oh
my god.” I pinched myself, ’cause at that time pop music in New York, in America, was very bland. The only
really good stuff was coming out of the UK—the Beatles and Stones and all that. So I jumped at the opportunity and I had to beg my boss to let me go to learn how
the Brits do it. I was only going to go for six months.
When I arrived I was working night and day on Denny’s sessions. He would leave me with Procol Harum
while they were making their album and go off and do
something else. I didn’t have that much experience but I
couldn’t let this man down. Production 101, on the spot.
I got laughed at and ridiculed. Also, the British take the
piss. Where I come from in Brooklyn those are fighting
words. If someone takes the piss with a Brooklyn guy,
you punch him. So I didn’t understand the culture,
but I made it through the first week.
I didn’t meet him, but during the first week I
saw Jimi Hendrix jam in a nightclub about three
feet from me. He got up on the stage in the dark,
picked up a guitar, and jammed. Every day I had
to pinch myself that this was really happening.
I heard the white label pressing of Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band three months before
it was released. This guy came to Denny’s apartment at midnight, took the white label out from
under his coat, we rolled down the shades, made a
huge joint, and listened to the Beatles record three
months before it came out. This all happened in
the first week. Eventually the six months was up
and I stayed 22 years. I didn’t want to go home.
Interviewed by Benji B at Red Bull Music
Academy Madrid 2011. For the full Q&A, head
to redbullmusicacademy.com/lectures.
7
FEATURE
FEATURE
Tom Tom Club’s
Tina Weymouth and
Grandmaster Flash
dance in front
of a mural by Lee
Quiñones, NYC
1981. Photo by
Laura Levine
TRANSATLANTIC
EXPRESS
New York and London’s
cross-cultural exchange.
WORDS DAVID STUBBS
in the mid-’70s, New York was a mythical place for the average Brit. It was
referenced and reflected in mainstream UK pop, in monikers like Manhattan
Transfer and in hits like Darts’ “Boy from New York City” and Hello’s “New York
Groove.” A steady stream of disco percolated through the British charts from the
mid-’70s onwards, direct from Studio 54 and accompanied by grainy promotional films conveying a distant nightlife universe in which checkered cabs transported partygoers to velvet-roped Manhattan clubs, and where jet-set celebrities,
sequins, sequencer rhythms, and disco balls were a huge ocean and an impossible dream away. Even England’s own megastars, from Bowie to Jagger, looked
awestruck in the glow of its chromium gleam. Hell, the Rolling Stones went
disco. The hugely successful Saturday Night Fever would seal New York’s status
as the world’s capital city of hedonism, spawning decades of bad imitations on
British wedding-party dancefloors. From the success of the sitcom Taxi, set in a
New York cab company (with its wistfully alluring theme tune), to Liza Minnelli
starring alongside Robert De Niro in New York, New York, the groundwork was
being laid for Manhattan as inspiration, a jumping-off point for future British
popular culture. This was the Big Apple, a nickname not much used by actual
New Yorkers, but a place that was fermenting in the British imagination—New
York was cool and stylish, everything was bigger and better and hipper and the
colors glowed that much stronger. To paraphrase Stevie Wonder from “Living for
the City”: New York, just like you pictured it, skyscrapers and everything.
The advent of punk rock in the UK in 1976 however, was huge. As the late
John Peel said, it changed absolutely everything. In the US, Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols is nowadays regarded as a milestone in the classic-rock continuum, somewhere between Springsteen’s Born To Run and Nirvana’s Nevermind. In Britain, however, it marked a transformation, one whose
implications only became evident when the smoke of its impact began to clear.
It was rock’s postmodern moment, blasting traditional assumptions up in the air
and allowing for a new way of music-making, in which ideas and attitude were
more important than aptitude.
One of the most significant ideas of punk was to reject the old, craven relationship toward America as the authentic rock ’n’ roll heartland. No more faux
American accents, no more Rod Stewart and his Atlantic Crossing. The punk
drawl was defiantly domestic and local in its accent, be it drawling Cockney
8
9
FEATURE
or scathing Mancunian. It would sooner take
inspiration from Europe than the States. The
new anthem, as struck up by the Clash, was
“I’m So Bored with the USA.”
And yet it was never quite that simple.
For sure, the West Coast and Midwestern
mainstays of ’60s and ’70s longhair hippie/
country rock fell out of fashion after punk.
New York, however, was a very different story. New York—cosmopolitan, urbane, facing
Europe-wards—was somehow exempt, not
the “real” America. The city would duly enjoy its own special subcultural relationship
with the UK. The Clash may have professed
to be bored with the USA but they spent a great deal of time
in the country, New York in particular (they can be seen capering about as extras in Martin Scorsese’s 1983 film The King of
Comedy). They also recorded “This Is Radio Clash,” taking on
board the rhythms and electricity of the city’s burgeoning hiphop scene.
Moreover, traveling back and forth between London and
New York was suddenly a realistic prospect in the late 1970s,
thanks to British airline entrepreneur Freddie Laker and his
transatlantic Skytrain, which slashed prices to £59 one way to
NYC. The Police were among the bands that benefitted from
this new deal, which enabled a two-way corridor of cultural
exchange. In acknowledgement of the boost that Laker gave
them in launching their career, the Police actually contributed to Laker’s fund to revive the airline when it went bankrupt in 1982.
The New York/Brit punk connection was first forged in
the mid-’70s. Prior to working with the Sex Pistols, Malcolm
McLaren had managed the New York Dolls, having met the
group at a fashion trade show in Manhattan in 1971. McLaren
understood, well in advance of most everybody else, the potential revolutionary impact of sartorial presentation. When
he was in New York, the sight of Richard Hell’s ripped t-shirt
gave him an idea.
In the UK, punk was able to send its shockwaves the length
and breadth of Britain, from Bristol to Glasgow. But in America it was largely confined to big city hangouts, which in New
York meant the fetid vortex that was CBGB. It was here that
the Ramones laid down the speed-driven, no-frills, minimalist framework for a more laconic, spat-out approach to rock
music. The style was a touchstone for the UK new wave, providing a shot of adrenalin to the UK charts in 1977 via Elvis
Costello, the Adverts, and others.
CBGB was also the crucible for Patti Smith, Talking Heads,
and Blondie, who all hugely impacted the UK charts. Patti
Smith was somewhat disdainful of chart success and disparaged Debbie Harry and Blondie for “going disco,” but she herself reached number three in the UK in 1978 with “Because
the Night.”
It was Blondie who would score the greatest number of
UK hit singles, having achieved success in Britain before hitting commercial superstardom in the US. But Blondie was
always more than a sexy story of new wave platinum-blonde
success, and the group used its status to engage with a whole
gamut of influences, from rap to avant-garde music and fine
art. Hanging out with such diverse characters as Andy Warhol (who added Harry to his pantheon of 20th-century icons),
Robert Mapplethorpe (who photographed her), graffiti writer/
budding hip-hop impresario Fab 5 Freddy (who appeared in
the video for “Rapture”), and beat novelist William Burroughs,
Blondie avidly absorbed all that the city had to offer.
No song showcased this more effectively than the 1981 hit
“Rapture.” This rock/rap crossover was acknowledged by legendary Bronx DJ Grandmaster Flash, himself name-checked on
the track, who in turn etched it into hip-hop history by sampling it on his own 1981 single “The Adventures of Grandmaster
Flash on the Wheels of Steel.”
10
FEATURE
Martin Rev and Alan Vega of Suicide, NYC 1980.
Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns
The New York rap scene began to impact the British charts back
in 1979, with Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” rising to number
three. However, with the exception of Flash and the Furious Five’s
groundbreaking 1982 rap “The Message,” the ensuing years weren’t
as fruitful for African-American rappers on the UK pop charts.
If an archaeologist were to arrive from the year 3000 and
examine evidence of the British charts between 1980 and 1983,
they might surmise that rap was a white innovation. In addition
to Blondie and Talking Heads offshoot Tom Tom Club (whose
“Wordy Rappinghood” hit in July of 1981), Caucasian popsters
who scored top ten “rap” hits in Britain included Adam and the
Ants (“Ant Rap,” January 1982); Wham! (“Wham! Rap,” 1983),
August Darnell (Kid Creole), NYC 1982.
Photo by Laura Levine
and Roland Rat, a rodent puppet who presented a morning television show (“Rat Rapping,” 1983).
It was clear that bubbling beneath all of this was a captivation with New York’s burgeoning hip-hop scene. The attendant
graffiti art and breakdancing culture was a source of fascination
to McLaren, who once again trekked to America like a latter-day
Dr. Livingstone in search of new discoveries. Looking for a support slot in New York for his latest protégés Bow Wow Wow, he
chanced on a block party and encountered
Afrika Bambaataa and the art of scratching.
McLaren assembled the World Famous Supreme Team and, with the help of producer
Trevor Horn, simulated the sort of scratch ’n’
collage from “The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel.” McLaren’s
“Buffalo Gals” was a UK hit in January 1983.
Here the pre-sample-era effects were largely
put together and orchestrated by Horn, costar
of the Buggles (“Video Killed the Radio Star”),
whose production work with ABC and Frankie
Goes To Hollywood would soon transform the
sound of pop.
This appropriation went both ways. In 1982, Bambaataa had
co-opted German electronic group Kraftwerk’s song “Trans-Europe Express” for his own “Planet Rock,” a track produced by
Arthur Baker, a Boston DJ who had moved to New York the
year before. The song was also the inaugural example of what
came to be known as electro-funk, in which rap and synth-pop
melded seamlessly together.
The neon pulse of NYC’s newly electrified club scene certainly affected the remaining members of Joy Division, who were
newly reborn as New Order following the suicide of lead singer
Ian Curtis. (Joy Division had never previously visited America,
and Curtis had hung himself immediately prior to their debut
tour of the country.) It was in New York that New Order met
Baker, with whom they created their 1983 hit “Confusion,”
melding their own portentous, gothic sensibility with a triumphantly dance-friendly, electro-funk mix whose appeal has
persisted for decades after the single’s release.
Synth-pop is commonly held to be a fancy, suspect Anglo-European invention, foisted on a reluctant US during the
Great British Invasion of the early 1980s. That said, the influence and impact of New York on the British electro-pop scene
shouldn’t be underestimated. Performance artist Laurie Anderson recorded “O Superman” in New York in 1981—it hit the
top of the UK charts that same year. Its minimalist pulse and
politically charged lyrics were in keeping with British pop sensibilities at the time. (British group the Flying Lizards had a
smash with their deadpan, machine-like reworking of Barrett
Strong’s “Money” around the same time.) Even if its conceptual implications weren’t fully understood by all who heard it,
“O Superman” can be regarded not just as a novelty hit, but as
one of the boldest-ever embraces of new music by English pop
listeners, who were warming up to the cool, alien tones of a
synth-dominated popscape.
There was also Suicide, composed of vocalist Alan Vega and
technician Martin Rev. The duo had formed in 1970 and even
coined the phrase “punk music” on one of their flyers. They
proved to be too punk for the punks; when they toured with
groups such as the Clash, Suicide found themselves bottled
off by disgruntled, lumpen audiences who felt that their onechord approach to music-making was two chords too few. Besides, where were the guitars?
In 1980, Suicide recorded a second, equally brilliant but
much poppier album at NYC’s Power Station Studios, produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars. This would prove to be a
template for subsequent British synth-poppers, most obviously the Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell, the latter who followed
the same vocalist/electronic template with instant success on
“Tainted Love,” a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic. (In
America it stayed in the Billboard charts for 43 consecutive
weeks following its US release in 1982.)
Suicide’s second album was recorded for ZE Records, a distinctively diverse record company founded in 1978 in New York by Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban. ZE’s music was released under
the banner of “mutant disco”; its artists included Was (Not Was),
Material, James White and the Blacks, and Kid Creole and the
Coconuts (which was led by the Bronx-born August Darnell, who
had previously fronted Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band).
THE INFLUENCE
AND IMPACT OF
NEW YORK ON THE
BRITISH ELECTRO-POP
SCENE SHOULDN’T BE
UNDERESTIMATED.
ZE was fully embraced by the British music press. NME was particularly enthralled;
the publication still enjoyed weekly sales of
230,000 in 1980, and was confident enough
under the editorship of Neil Spencer to follow the more radical instincts of writers
such as Paul Morley and Ian Penman. In parallel with The Face magazine, they championed a new and colorful breed of avant-pop with punk antecedents, abandoning
the gray despondency of post-punk in favor of a spiky, eclectic
pop in which style, wit, and appropriation took precedence
over staid ideas of authenticity and content. Indeed, “rockism”
was now a dirty word, and the best new pop was sourced from
elsewhere: Europe, funk, Bowie. To traditionalists it seemed
like new hedonism, but it was actually a defiant response to
the hard times of Thatcher’s Britain—the music was most popular in the parts of the country hit hardest by the recession,
such as the North of England and South Wales. The idea was
to dress it up, not down.
The exotic Stateside epitome of this new pop thinking was
the impossibly dapper Kid Creole. Darnell’s big-band music
was a pointedly pre-rock ’n’ roll throwback, an immaculately
conceived, cartoon-retro cocktail that referenced Cab Calloway,
Louis Jordan, Dizzy Gillespie, Carmen Miranda, and Marlene
Dietrich. Darnell had been conscious of the Clash; he had even
briefly flirted with the idea of a “punk phase” before conceiving
the Coconuts. He understood punk’s postmodern rip-it-up-andstart-again ethos. He hung out in London with the New Romantics and Boy George and—with UK hits like “Me No Pop I,”
“Annie, I’m Not Your Daddy,” and “Stool Pigeon”—he paid back
all that he had absorbed with interest, achieving a level of success and recognition denied him in his home country.
The transatlantic cultural exchange of the late ’70s and early
’80s made for one of the most exciting and
intelligent periods in pop history. It helped
colorize punk as it made the transition to
pop, helped expand its palette of reference,
and opened doors through which so much
music and fashion subsequently flowed. By
the mid-’80s however, new media channels
such as MTV were accessories to a new global homogeneity in
which image rather than ideas was the new currency. Blondie
and Grace Jones did not thrive in the MTV era; Madonna and
Sade did. This was a temporary displacement.
MTV is no longer a musical force. But the New York players
of that era still burn bright as reference points, their coolness
only intensified with time. Around the turn of the new century,
a new generation of NYC bands—informed by the post-punk
and radical dance ethos—erupted, among them the Strokes,
LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and the Rapture. All were
evidence of the smoldering influence of those strange times between London and New York, when everything was up in the air
and nothing could ever be the same again.
The Clash in an NYC taxicab, 1983. L-R: Paul Simonon, Pete Howard, Joe Strummer, and Mick Jones. Photo by Dave Hogan/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
11
COLUMNS
COLUMNS
LANDMARKS
The places, spaces,
and monuments of
NYC's musical past,
present, and future.
A column on
the gear and
processes that inform
the music we make.
daniel martin-mccormick makes dance
music as Ital. His records are lively but meticulous, warped but driving, with vocal samples that stutter and modulate as the tracks
build. It shocked more than a few when Martin-McCormick revealed he had assembled his
music in Audacity, the bare-bones freeware
sound-editing program. Seeking out compositional limitations, it turns out, is an integral
part of Ital’s process.
RBMA: How did you decide to use Audacity
for Ital?
Daniel Martin-McCormick: I liked that I
had my own system, that it was my own and
no one else’s. Although difficult, it challenged
my brain in interesting ways, and also I didn’t
have to spend any money on gear.
LO G OS
The origins of
iconic images from
NYC's musical history
explained.
erick sermon and parrish smith
met in high school on Long Island and
started making music together in the mid’80s under the name EPMD: Erick and
Parrish Making Dollars. Both were equal
parts MC and producer, and they stated
their ambitions plainly. Working the word
“business” into every album title, EPMD
took a calculated approach to getting
signed; the song “Please Listen To My
Demo” even details the doors that closed
on them before landing their first deal with
Fresh, a hip-hop imprint of Sleeping Bag
Records. In 1987 they put out their first
single, “It’s My Thing,” which opens with
the helicopters from Pink Floyd’s “The
Wall” before looping in the funk of the
Whole Darn Family and a vocal from Marva
Whitney. Street-smart yet playful, with a
laid-back energy that inspired the next
decade’s West Coast gangsta rap, EPMD
had the drive and skills to make it big.
Uptown graffiti writer Eric Haze was
just as driven. As a member of Marc ‘Ali’
Edmonds’ Soul Artists crew, Haze got to
know the Beastie Boys, started doing work
with them, and soon made a name for
12
himself. Since the downtown gallery scene
was already enamored with street art, “the
fine-art playing field was the only avenue
for us as artists to start developing careers
and trying to get paid for our work,” Haze
says. Realizing he preferred the written
word and letterforms to painting, Haze
went to the School of Visual Arts in 1982
and set out, he says, “to become the premier
logo designer of my generation.” In 1987 he
designed covers for Public Enemy’s Yo Bum
Rush the Show and LL Cool J’s Bigger and
Deffer, where he famously riffed on the
Kool cigarette logo’s overlapping O’s. Those
groups were repped by Russell Simmons
and Lyor Cohen’s hip-hop juggernaut Rush
Artist Management, which included EPMD.
Haze got hired by Fresh to create the
logo for the group’s 1988 debut, Strictly
Business, without having met the duo or
heard their music. “At that point, Run-DMC
was the sole existing iconic logo in hip-hop,
so I took my cues from the strength of the
bars in that logo,” he says. With that bold,
custom-lettered mark, Haze proved he was
no amateur, and made EPMD look like the
contenders they were.
-SUE APFELBAUM
RBMA: How do you think the stripped-down
nature of Audacity affected the way you composed?
DMM: All the changes made were destructive.
This means that if you put an echo on something, it doesn’t run that audio through a software echo box, which can be tweaked at will.
It actually changes the waveform so that now
there are echoes in the track. The difference
is that it makes it mostly impossible to tweak
tracks forever and ever. Decisions have to be
deliberate and toward a goal. If you want to
change that echo a week later, you can’t just
hit “undo.”
RBMA: You said that since Dream On, your
debut LP, you’ve ditched Audacity and gone all
hardware?
DMM: The decision came pretty naturally out
of all the touring I was doing. I really dislike
looking at screens in a live context. When I’m
playing live I want to feel the room. Plus, with
Dream On I think I really took the Audacity
route as far as I needed to go with it. Any more
hyper-editing and I think I would have lost
the core house groove that got me into making tracks in the first place. I didn’t necessarily want this to be my only thesis—this alien
digi-detritus electronica.
RBMA: Is your live rig the basis for your recording now too?
DMM: One hundred percent. Whatever gear
I’m working with is what the tracks are made
out of. So right now it’s an MPC, a DX Groovebox, and some outboard gear. I’m excited about
recording the entire track live directly from
my mixer, getting the levels right at the start,
then turning the lights down and getting into
an emotional headspace. I remember an engineer friend talking about working with bands
and being able to hear eye contact between the
players. I want my live experience to be in the
recorded performance, even if you can’t technically hear it.
THE
ANCHORAGE
THE BRONX
PAST FEATURED LANDMARKS
1 MAX NEUHAUS’
12 DAPTONE
“TIMES SQUARE”
2 THE THING
RECORDS
13 THE VILLAGE
SECONDHAND
STORE
GATE/LIFE/LE
POISSON ROUGE
3 THE LOFT
4 MARCY HOTEL
5 ANDY WARHOL’S
the brooklyn-based anchorage, located under
the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, is a striking
example of New York’s surprisingly ample supply of
utilitarian spaces retrofitted for creative purposes. It
might also be one of the city’s most unique art locales.
With eight rooms featuring 50-foot vaulted ceilings
and a brick-walled gothic-dungeon vibe, it’s hard to believe that it took a full century for the city to recognize
its potential.
In 1983, the public arts nonprofit Creative Time—
the organization behind lower Manhattan’s “Tribute
in Light” that commemorates 9/11—began hosting
avant-garde music, theater, art events, and installations
there. As the name suggests, the Anchorage acts as a
literal anchor for the Brooklyn Bridge: four suspension
cables held by huge cast-iron chains are set at both ends
inside massive masonry structures. For years the great
halls on both sides of the Brooklyn Bridge were used by
local merchants as warehouses. In the summer of ’83—a
year before the borough of Brooklyn abdicated its use
of the 212 area code for the far less desirable 718—the
cavernous space opened with Creative Time’s Art in the
Anchorage series, in honor of the Bridge’s centennial.
That year a handful of artists, among them Spalding
Gray, were commissioned to create works addressing the
“historical and visual qualities” of the space.
For the next 18 years, myriad events followed, many
in step with the socio-political issues of the day, such as
1987’s Guerrilla Girls retrospective, which addressed sexism and racism in the art world. A dance-friendly series
called Music at the Anchorage—featuring artists like A
Guy Called Gerald, Joe Claussell, Glenn Branca, and Carl
Craig—came after.
One of the last exhibits, Massless Medium, included
work by John Cage, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell. But
it was the Anchorage’s last season: following the attacks
of September 11, 2001, the Anchorage was deemed a security risk and closed to the public.
-ADRIENNE DAY
TOP
5…
LATIN CULTURE
HOTSPOTS
PRESENTED BY
If you live in New York or just happen to
be visiting, these five spots offer not
only some of the best mixed Latino music
and nightlife, but also delicious Hispanic
food. Here’s Being Latino’s top five
places to visit in NYC.
FACTORY
6 QUEENSBRIDGE
HOUSES
1
7
7 RECORD MART
8 DEITCH
6
5
8
5
PROJECTS
9 AREA/SHELTER/
7
VINYL
QUEENS
5
10 STUDIO B
2
11 MARKET HOTEL
13
3
9 8
10
8
MANHATTAN
4 12
12
11
WHAT: THE ANCHORAGE
WHERE: BASE OF THE
BROOKLYN SIDE OF
THE BROOKLYN BRIDGE
WHEN: 1983-2001
WHY: MASSIVE ART
AND PERFORMANCE
SPACE
STATEN ISLAND
BROOKLYN
1 2 3 4 5
COPACABANA
The legendary Copacabana (268 W.
47th St.) is one of
the most well-known
clubs in all of New
York. First opened
in 1940, it’s been a
springboard for artists such as the late
Cuban singer Celia
Cruz. If you like a
combination of Brazilian-style décor,
delicious Latin food,
and unforgettable
music, it’s worth a
visit.
DON COQUI
If the Caribbean is
your thing and Puerto
Rican flavors are
what you’re looking for, then Don
Coqui (28-18 31st
St., Queens), the
“shortcut to Puerto
Rico,” would be your
best choice to dine,
dance, and party the
night away.
LA BOOM
La Boom (56-15 Northern Blvd., Queens)
offers live bands and
artists like El Grupo
Niche from Colombia,
Porfi Baloa y sus
Adolescentes, bachata
singer Zacarías Ferreíra, and renowned
reggaeton singer
Tego Calderon, among
others. That lineup alone proves that
plenty of important
music comes through
here.
LQ NEW YORK
Although the lifespan
of a club averages
about five years, LQ
(511 Lexington Ave.)
has been in business
for the last 30. It
offers a wide variety
of the latest Latino
music and plays host
to a variety of DJs
like Alex Sensation,
DJ Lobo, DJ Cassanova, and DJ Bacán
Bacán.
IGUANA
Iguana Restaurant and
Lounge (240 W. 54th
St.) lets you experience real Mexican
cuisine with the
opportunity to dance
it off after you’re
done. Iguana also
offers free salsa
classes so you can
improve your moves.
-NICK SYLVESTER
13
NEW YORK STORY
NEW YORK STORY
(HEAD)
PHONING IT IN
Was music more compelling when you had to work for it?
WORDS RICH JUZWIAK
ILLUSTRATION ANTON PEARSON
i had a ticket to see Frank Ocean at Terminal 5 in July and I didn’t go. A
storm was brewing and the sky looked like a painting of Armageddon. The idea
of standing in a swamp of perspiration and atmospheric humidity in that giant
warehouse for a calm, sensitive show didn’t appeal to me. I couldn’t muster
the strength. I felt like I should work out or read instead. I’m getting older.
Besides, all the good stuff would be filmed from the crowd and wind up online
anyway, right?
I bought this ticket myself, so my absence was an act of frivolity. But it’s a
more subdued, less disruptive type of frivolity than that of my concert-going
youth, when I’d line up hours and hours ahead of time for a spot at a general
admission show, stand for more hours once let in, experience a chain of bands I
didn’t care about, whose warm-up sets often deadened my eardrums, so that by
the time the band I actually was there to see finally came on, I heard them with
the clarity of someone whose head was underwater. That’s what it was like seeing
Pulp in 1998 at the Hammerstein Ballroom.
Sometimes devoting an entire day to seeing a show at night had its advantages—I once lined up so early to see Elliott Smith during his Figure 8 tour that
he walked by me after his sound check. I talked to him for a bit and asked him
to play “St. Ides Heaven.” He stammered that it probably wouldn’t be possible
as this was a full-band tour. But it was possible. He did end up playing that
song solo-electric during the encore and it was a perfect moment of clarity—
sonic, emotional.
I started at NYU in 1997 and within days went to my first Tiswas party at Coney Island High, which was on St. Mark’s between Second and Third Avenues; I
think it’s a noodle bar now. This was when St. Mark’s was still synonymous with
heroin (or so my NYU tour guide would solemnly have had me believe) and when
Alphabet City probably spelled certain death for a 19-year-old who repeatedly
called it “Alphabet Street.” My friends and I would go to the under-attended
Britpop night and flail like children to New Order and Underworld, shout loudly
along to Blur’s “Parklife,” and drink gin and tonics because Liam Gallagher mentioned them in “Supersonic.” Or at least that’s why I did it.
During that time I would walk around everywhere with a Discman and booklet of no fewer than 20 CDs. I remember being stopped outside of class one day
by a fellow student who informally polled me on why I was listening to music in
public. I barely understood why she was asking—why wouldn’t a person listen to
music in public? Music scored reality into something cinematic. It made walks
fly. There was so much of it that I had to know all of it deeply and spend as much
time as possible studying it. I suppose now she was implying that by shutting
out the noise of the world, I was shutting out the possibility of social interaction,
even though she had proved it wrong—and music was a conversation always in
my head anyways.
Those were the days when CD shopping was an event—I would scour the
used bins at Kim’s on St. Mark’s for good deals and as-yet-unreleased promos. I
would visit Tower and Virgin, coveting import singles; they charged a lot for a
few songs and seemed like the ultimate in attainable luxury. I would arbitrarily
trust write-ups on index cards at Other Music and blind-buy albums I’d never
heard of from artists I’d never hear from again. I would listen to CDs in their
entirety and if I didn’t like them that much, I’d listen to them again and again,
willing myself to find something, anything, to justify the money spent.
The MP3 player was a dream come true, a sleek way of managing my need for
musical options. But it soon took me from musical love to compulsion. I am now
musically promiscuous—always on the prowl, always looking for new and better,
and finding it often enough to justify the search. As a culture consumer, sometimes I feel like I’m devolving. Whereas before I forged deep and meaningful
14
relationships with artists and entire albums, now it’s mostly a series of one-night
stands, one-off experiences. I’ve listened to Kate Bush’s The Dreaming probably
200 times. I don’t even remember what my favorite album from last year was
and I maybe listened to it all the way through a dozen times, if I’m being generous. It’s all so fleeting now.
In a way, that’s how it has to be, right? You grow up, priorities shift, the importance of leisure activities evaporates. I don’t listen to music less and I listen to
far more music than ever, but now it takes up far less emotional energy. I think
we can agree that when music became essentially free and available wherever/
whenever, it became a lot easier to take for granted. It’s just not precious anymore. I remember wanting to hear Stacey Q’s “Two of Hearts” so badly when I
was a freshman in college and having to sift through rows of ’80s compilations
to find the one that featured it. (Napster wouldn’t take over until a year or two
later.) There was a time when sometimes it was impossible to hear the song that
you wanted to at any given moment. There was a time, not even that long ago,
when discovering new music and cultivating taste was a bigger process than
turning on a faucet.
Fighting technology is a losing battle, and I’m not bemoaning progress. I’m glad
that I can carry around 140 gigabytes of music in my pocket so that I can hear literally every single thing I would ever want to hear at a moment’s notice. That comforts me. But it has also jaded me. I find myself a lot less impressed in general. I
saw Solange a few months ago and thought, “Okay, whatever.” She thinks her songs
are dancier than they are, that her charisma is more infectious than it is. I saw Disclosure more recently and was impressed by the energy they put into replicating
precisely what their music sounds like on record. I suppose had they showed up to
just press play I would have been pissed, like, “You babies think you’re Kraftwerk.”
I miss youth. I miss those internal gasps and roller-coaster belly drops. In
the early 2000s, the world seemed so open and ready for me, even when I knew
it was ridiculous. I went to Luxx a few times to experience electroclash and
the Italo-disco retroist scene, which made it okay to play beat-matchable music
without beatmatching, and where everyone thought they were Larry Levan. It
was intoxicating, the trashiness of the sound, the queerness of the boys. I guess
people were on drugs, but I never would have thought to take them. There was
too much stimulation as it was. Now it takes chemicals and/or a brilliant sound
system to really move me—the best, most comfortable I’ve ever felt in a club was
at Cielo when UK disco revivalists Horse Meat Disco played their handful of holiday-weekend DJ sets. (And even then, I sometimes get resentful for recognizing
so much of the second-tier canon they regularly play, like Cerrone’s “Supernature” and Chemise’s “She Can’t Love You.”) I was at a warehouse party in Bushwick recently, and everything sounded just alright until sonic architect Morgan
Geist came on and provided a depth of sound and clarity that was at least ten
times better than what was on before. That guy conducts a sound system like an
orchestra. That makes me excited.
But that excitement is fleeting, too. So often for me now, music is just a backdrop, something to acknowledge from time to time while in pursuit of different
fleeting emotions, something to half-realize I’m enjoying while I’m making out
with some guy in the middle of a sea of them. Things change, priorities shift.
Sometimes now I walk around the city with my iPod paused or even with my
headphones out of my ears. It’s not necessarily to conduct any kind of social
interaction. It’s to see what else is out there.
Rich Juzwiak is a staff writer at Gawker and a former judge on the
TLC show Toddlers & Tiaras. He has also contributed to This American
Life, The Washington Post, and Spin.
15
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.
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