Download And Enjoy No Wave Assembled By Marc Masters Supplied As Print

interesting look at an interesting period in music, If No Wave hadn't existed, someone would have had to invent it, Not music I spend much time listening to, nor am I terribly tempted after reading the book, but the history was an engaging one very specific to a time and place.
Cool overview of No Wave This book has only confirmed that I was born about twenty years too late, Marc Masters No Wave is a comprehensive account of the ephemeral postpunk New York underground music and film scene of the lates/earlys.
The No Wave scene spawned the likes of Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Arto Lindsay, Nick Zedd immortalized in Pulp Fiction when Bruce Willis uttered the words, “Zedds dead baby, Zedds dead,”, Jim Jarmusch, John Lurie informed the aesthetics of the prolific Sonic Youth, and propelled the acting careers of Steve Buscemi and Vincent Gallo.
No Wave music was characterized by a minimalist, primitive sound and a nihilistic attitude one that differed from their punk forefathers in that individualism was treasured.
The same characteristics could be applied to a description of No Wave cinema, Blah, blah, blah. You can probably read a similar description on Wikipedia,

The first time I heard Lydia Lunch sing the Teenage Jesus and the Jerks song, Less of Me, was an epiphany.
Every cliche about growing up weird in the suburbs and finding something that spoke to that weirdness applies, The sense of alienation I experienced was compounded by the fact that I managed to be a complete social pariah in my extremely small lower, middle and high school i.
e. , my class hadpeople in it, including me, and the group hadnt changed sinceth grade, Essentially, I was an outcast in a school of/for outcasts, And thats kind of the crux of No Wave, Take for instance, a musician like James Chance, who started out in Teenage Jesus, and formed a bunch of other bands throughout his career, most famously, The Contortions, a trained saxophone player and punk rock enthusiast, he came to New York in the lates from the Midwest to play jazz.
Informed by the two competing aesthetics, he was unable to successfully assimilate in either scene as both demanded conformity into a distinct affectation, Even punk, which was characterized by a rejection of mainstream culture, required observance of the traditional three chord rock and roll musical structure, Chance sought to deconstruct the traditional musical configurations of jazz, punk, disco and funk, thus creating a distinctive, innovative, and singular sound, Weasel Walter probably best articulated the distinction between No Wave from Punk in the foreword: , . . it was something that truly screamed, “Fuck you all! I dont want to be like you!” Punk said, “Fuck them! We dont want to be like them!”

This book doesnt just focus on the music.
It also discusses No Wave cinema, which I was somewhat less familiar with prior to seeing the documentary Blank City, and reading this, Jim Jarmusch and John Waters are definitely the most well known filmmakers that this era generated, as well as Nick Zedd to a lesser extent.
Fun fact: the title character in John Waters Cecil B, Demented is based on Nick Zedd, OK, its not exactly a fact, but it has been openly speculated by Zedd himself, which is as good as factual, This is an actual fact: Nick Zedd has been banned from Canada because of his film War is Menstrual Envy, DIG. However, the Cinema of Transgression and Zedd, are but a mere footnote in No Wave,

One thing that struck me about the No Wave scene is the role of women and how gender seemed to be a nonissue, at least as portrayed by Blank City, and by Marc Masters herein.
Contrast this with the male dominated punk scene that preceded No Wave, and even the more recent incarnations of punk in thes i, e. , grunge, riot grrl where being a woman in a punk band became a novelty or a political statement, Thats not to say that women dominated No Wave, or were even represented in equal numbers, because they werent but they werent marginalized or treated as an oddity on the basis of their sex at least as depicted in the references Ive just cited.


What I loved about this book, in addition to the extensive information, photos, flyers, album covers, etc, was the gossip. Like this little tidbit: Arto Lindsay on leaving an early incarnation of the Lounge Lizards: “I left when John wanted to make it John Lurie and the Lounge Lizards.
I wasnt really interested in playing in that situation, ” While, not really salacious per se, it only adds to the picture of John Lurie I have in my head after researching him recently, John Lurie is pathologically narcissistic!

After seeing Blank City, a few months ago, and seeing Lurie interviewed in the documentary, I began to wonder what he had been up to.
A google search revealed that he has been on a selfimposed exile from the island of Manhattan for the past few years because of the acrimonious dissolution of a friendship he held with his former mentee, artist John Perry.
Exhibit A: sitelink newyorker. com/reporting/ The New Yorker article depicts John Lurie as a man that is completely delusional, paranoid and selfobsessed, To be fair, Im also completely selfobsessed, but I would hope that I would have the good sense to try to mollify the manifestation of this tendency when being interviewed for a national publication like The New Yorker.
The whole situation is crazy, And honestly, after reading other interviews hes made on the subject after the publication of the article in The New Yorker, as well as reading interviews and watching videos of John Perry, cut me some slack, Im unemployed and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future I have a lot free time, John Lurie comes off as the reasonable one.
Sure, Lurie has a deluded sense of self, but its that kind of selfconfidence that enabled him to become successful in several different artistic mediums.
Perry on the other hand, is a disturbed individual, On what planet would conducting aday hunger strike outside the apartment building of the man that has accused you of stalking him prove that you are NOT in fact stalking him Exhibit B: sitelink theatlanticwire. com/entert

A word on nostalgia, and then Ill wrap this up, Nick Zedd on the production of Blank City: “I remember when nostalgia was the exclusive domain of old people, This newfound appreciation for the past must be a recognition that our current era lacks authenticity, ” Exhibit C: sitelink com/nickzed

His most mainstream musical contribution was the theme song to Late Night with Conan OBrien, sitelink youtube. com/watchvPHHJ A fascinating scene populated by innovative and eccentric people, all rendered boring in tedious prose, Sigh. This book goes fully where Please Kill Me just skimmed, all the bands that participated in Eno's No New York compilation as well as the ones that didnt.
Marc Masters does a solid job describing the sheer variety of bands and personalities as well as the feel of the time amp place,

Reading it makes me want to start a no wave band,

The book was an awkward size too large to travel with and the printing/paper smells kind of funny, For someone interested in more experimental music, this history of a scene brief though it was offers plenty of detail and a sense of the lived experience of that time and place.
Now some dots that were previously unconnected, . . Glenn Branca, Arto Lindsay, Lydia Lunch, Rhys Chatham, . . have some sinew to hold them together, Linking the film arm of the "movement" makes the package complete Beth B, et al. Too bad it didn't come with a CD/DVD though imagining the music through Marc M, 's prose, good though it is, just isn't the same although this must be true of all music books, An EXCELLENT book with great footage from the NY' s underground movement! Great overview with lots of awesome pictures, Ok. Probably more than I needed to know about Lydia Lunch but what the hey, late's NYC, let me be a bit romantic, . . But one could find out more about the No Wave scene by doing a bit of googling and reading Please Kill Me and maybe The Cinema of Trangression book.
Most of the pictures were even from the We're Desperate photo book, I was originally excited about this book but on the whole it wasn't that informative, However, it's a good overview for sure and an entertaining read, Great overview of No Wave in a handsome, fittingly stark edition, but I do wish they either leaned more towards an art book and included a lot more pictures and assorted matter, or leaned more into producing a comprehensive history of the genre.
The small acknowledgement in the back of some of the bands not

included spurred a deep dive, amazingly thorough and provoking collective work chronicling the NO WAVE scene of lower manhattan in the late seventies that as short lived as it was, inspired an entire generation of music.
Birthday present I'm most surprised at what a nicely designed package the book is not a single review I read mentioned that it's loaded with pictures, flyers, original record covers, etc.
I've read several books that cover the movement in part, butof these photos are brand new to me, I think that Masters makes an excellent choice in focusing exclusively/predominantly on the actual "original four" No New York bands, each getting a bulky dedicated chapter, rather than making a more generic overview of the downtown scene of the era.
However, I kept wanting him to give more detail about the many surrounding sociocultural elements of NYC in that era that so heavily informed the No Wave and Downtown movements, like in Jeff Chang's otherwise underwhelming Can't Stop, Won't Stop, but the included pictures of bombedout Alphabet City do the job on their own, I guess.
I also appreciated the extra portions about Bush Tetras, ESG, Liquid Liquid, Material, even Swans and Sonic youth, to put things into context, but their inclusion also reminded me that the ultimate comprehensive "Downtown ''" book has yet to be written.
But that's not what Masters' book is meant to be, and as a microfocus on the micromovement, it's outstanding, No Wave traces the history of this noisy and uncompromising genre, from its most famous names down to its many offshoots and sidetracks.
From early pioneers like Suicide and Richard Hell, to forgotten treasures like Red Transistor and Bush Tetras, and descendants like ESG and Sonic Youth, No Wave charts all the cracks and crevices of a surprisingly diverse movement.


Flashing through the New York underground in the lates, No Wave was the ultimate antimovement, Its bands consisted of artists and poets untrained in music, looking to explode rock and disappear before the smoke cleared, No Wave tells the fascinating story of this radical, anarchic and hugely influential musical movement,

Best known for short songs and even shorter lifespans, No Wave bands fused disparate styles to fashion abrasive, rhythmic songs that were completely original and utterly compelling.
The primary perpetrators Lydia Lunchs howling Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chances skeletal Contortions, the darknoise groups Mars and DNA all drew on primitivism, performance art, and the avantgarde.


The book also delves into No Wave cinema, where pioneers like Amos Poe, Eric Mitchell, and Beth and Scott B, translated the aggression and innovation of No Wave music to the screen, Musicians often starred in these films, and figures like Jim Jarmsuch and Steve Buscemi first cut their teeth in this vibrant scene,

Illustrated with rare and previously unseen concert photos, record covers, and other ephemera of the times, and featuring exclusive interviews with key protagonists from the scene, No Wave is the definitive guide to a genre whose sounds and ideas still vibrate through alternative culture today.
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