(Black Dog + Soul Jazz)

Because I’ve slapped James Chance and/or his alter-ego James White; made William S. Burroughs laugh; hit on Lydia Lunch; and remember Tribeca’s Artist Space, Peppermint Lounge, Mudd Club and everyplace/thing else crumbling-ly Manhattan and SoHo before gentrification, these are for me. And for you, too — you, the DFA/LCD Soundsystem head who wonders where James Murphy’s references to tweaky disco, angular noise, and bleating avant-jazz on “Losing My Edge” came from.

No Wave

By Marc Masters; edited by Rob Young

(Black Dog)

www.blackdogonline.com

New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88

Edited by Stuart Baker and Paula Court

(Soul Jazz)

www.souljazzrecords.co.uk

Yes, these books are about noise, the unsentimentally edged NYC art that Brian Eno called “what would happen if…”,  work so radically different from his native UK punk rock that he’d produce No Wave’s first defining document No New York in 1978. But both books, one more narrowcast than the other, deal with the aggressively animated art/life of that moment, all experienced without expectations, regard or rigidity. While punk was little more than white rock ‘n’ roll spun harder and cheaper than the norm, No Wave and the scene that surrounded it — funkateers, reggae-loungers, jazzbos, art-damagers, performance artists, neo-realist directors and Glenn O’Brien — was freer, pissier, and more willing to experiment or improvise: to drop everything. That included melody and boundaries, aesthetic and physical.

Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t perfect. Or often good. As documented in Paula Court’s photos and the words emanating from New York Noise contributors Cindy Sherman and Laurie Anderson, it was an unholy mess. Artists made it up on the spot, loudly and ardently. But it radiated Manhattan’s disgust and joy — rap before gangster and bling, Jarmusch before ad agencies co-opted Richard Edson, Basquiat before Basquiat. And Masters’ No Wave focuses on the potently purposely irksome lo-fi lost souls (DNA’s Robin Crutchfield), braggarts (Chance/White) and genius-grant-getters (Glenn Branca) whose work found them scratching both literally and figuratively in the trenches with zip-recognition until words like “angular” became commonplace for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs of the world.

Both books – so necessary. A.D. AMOROSI

[Photo credit (top): Contortions, by Kate Simon]

[Photo credits (below): Mars, by Dan Asher; Arto Lindsay of DNA, courtesy Edo Bertoglio; Lydia Lunch, courtesy Tom Garretson; DNA, by Catherine Ceresole]