DAILY NOTE

TUESDAY, MAY 21, 2013

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of

London Calling
The export of new york's underground
ITAL / Hip-Hop's most exciting producers / rip romanthony

THE DAILY NOTE

LAST NIGHT

Its the age of endless data, of the MP3 shuffle, of having all songs at your fingertips at all times. Not everyones thrilled about this easy accessin this issue, writer Rich Juzwiak waxes nostalgic for the time when music still had to be hunted downbut whats 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 todays issue of Daily Note, youll 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 Wednesdays 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. Its 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. Dont be afraid to stretch your own boundaries, and keep on shuffling.
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 All-Seeing Eye Torsten Schmidt Contributors Sue Apfelbaum Adrienne Day Rich Juzwiak Laura Levine Anton Pearson David Stubbs Nick Sylvester Cover Photo Laura Levine Annabella Lwin of Bow Wow Wow, NYC 1981

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

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 were 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 todays musical landscape. This year were 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 citys best clubs and music halls. Imagine a place thats equal parts science lab, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and Kraftwerks home studio. Throw in a touch of downtown New York circa 1981, a sprinkle of Prince Jammys mixing board, and Bob Moogs synthesizer collection all in a 22nd-century remix and youre halfway there. The Academy began back in 1998 and has been traversing the globe since, traveling to Berlin, Cape Town, So Paulo, Barcelona, London, Toronto, and many other places. Interested? Applications for the 2014 Red Bull Music Academy open early next year.

FROM THE ACADEMY

UPFRONT
DRUM MAJORS
Mannie Fresh
New Orleans

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 worlds 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 Chicagos teenage sensation Young Chop and ratchet king DJ Mustard, the lineup is deep and diverse. Get familiar.

RIP Romanthony
Paying tribute to one of house musics most enduring voices.
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 Punks 2001 hit One More Time, had passed away on May 7 at the all-too-young age of 46. Suddenly the dancefloor wasnt 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 musicone 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 1993s 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 Chicagos 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 assuredhe was releasing singles on Thomas Bangalters Roule label and a career-changing collaboration with two world-famous robots beckoned. As the 21st century progressed, Romanthonys 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.

Brenmar Nick Hook Sinjin Hawke More

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MAY

UPCOMING EVENTS
Knitting Factory

Boi-1da
Toronto

Young Chop
Chicago

J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League
Tampa

Bangladesh
Atlanta

DJ Mustard
Los Angeles

Drumma Boy
Memphis

Mannie Fresh Boi-1da Young Chop DJ Mustard More

DRUM MAJORS

22 23 24 25 26 26 27
5

MAY

Santos Party House

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.

Big Freedia Afrika Bambaataa Egyptian Lover DJ Magic Mike DJ Assault DJ Funk + Many More!

United States of Bass

MAY

SRB Brooklyn

NOTABLE TRACK

Juvenile, Ha

Drake feat. Eminem, Kanye West, and Lil Wayne, Forever

Chief Keef, I Dont Like

Rick Ross feat. Drake, Aston Martin Music

Lil Wayne, A Milli

Tyga, Rack City

Young Jeezy, Put On

Skream Mala Plastician Hatcha

The Roots of Dubstep

MAY

IMAGINARY PROJECT WED LOVE TO SEE HAPPEN

Grand Prospect Hall

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.
RANDOM FACT

A collection of field recordings of bees. (RIP bees.)

Remixing 70s soft-rock band Bread... or maybe Led Zeppelins Hot Dog.

Conducting a live MIDI orchestra.

12 Years MAY Of DFA The whole

label family on four stages
The Well Brooklyn

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 couldnt 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

PLAYING THE FIELD

New York can be a bit headspinning for out-of-towners: kamikaze cabs, street preachers, Dr. Zizmor ads... its a lot to take in. We asked a few participants from Term Two of Red Bull Music Academy what city sounds theyd like to sample once they get their bearings.

Aloe Blacc & Many More

Saint Vitus

The DoOver NYC Special

MAY

If you fit in that New Orleans melting pot, you cant help but be great! -Red Bull Music Academy, 2011

I always wanted to be a basketball player until I discovered Pizza Pockets. -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 phonemy grandma even called me: I hear you on the radio! Im 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 thats always a good thing to hear. Its 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 dont got no manager. Its just me and my publicist and my lawyer. Other than that I stick to the same people, I dont 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 noweven two hundred years from nowI want my music to be as alive and timeless as the strands of Moonlight Sonata. -Huffington Post, 2012

JULIAN CUBILLOS
Torrance, California

LAVINA YELB
Santiago, Chile

PLEASURE CRUISER
Tokyo, Japan

ANDRE LAOS
Gothenburg, Sweden

Evian Christ Bill Kouligas More

Oneohtrix Point Never

MAY

NYU Skirball Center

Id like to sample NYC transit sound: buses, trains and other chatter. Ive thought of doing this when taking the Los Angeles Metro, but Id imagine NYC transit serves up only the finest of clanks and squeaks. juliancubillos.com

The sound of the Statue of Liberty and two clouds. lavinayelb.tumblr.com

A hot dog. facebook.com/ ampcsound

I would like to record the tones that the skyscrapers make when theyre moved by heavy wind. Ive never heard it. Actually I dont think anyone has! soundcloud.com/ andrelaos

A TALK with James Murphy

MAY

FOR RED BULL MUSIC ACADEMY RADIO TUNE IN AT RBMARADIO.COM

RECORDED LIVE

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Q&A

Britain, Bowie, and a Brooklyn producers trials by fire.

PHOTOgraphy Gianfranco tripodo

TONY VISCONTI
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 publishers office. He said, Hello in a British accent and I said, Youre the first English person Ive ever met. He asked what I did there and I said, Im the house record producer. Im just doing demos for my publisher. He said, Well, youre my American cousin! Im the house producer for this company in the UK. His name wasDenny Cordelland he said, Shall I play you something? We found a room with a turntable and he put on an acetate ofProcol HarumsA Whiter Shade of Pale. Hed just produced it; it wasnt 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 likeClark Terryon trumpet. I said, Ive got to see this session. Ive got to see the music. He said he had no music. I asked him what he was going to do and he said, Im going to play the demo and theyre just going to come up with an arrangement. I said, This is New York, Denny. Youll 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

Youve 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 its a song about alcoholics. Everyone lovesHeroes. Its a super-productionyoull 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 Ive got one better. And Id say, Well, you know we cant keep that take This was before digital recording. So hed pull his socks up, take a deep breath, and go and do a better take than the one he did before. And that was itthe previous vocal was gone. We kept doing that. Having experience in the studio, you have to know when to say, I think weve got the take. There was no way of going back to take five or take twothey were gone, evaporated. I did a lot of records that way. When you work as a teamas a producer, coach, singer, artisteverybodys 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 todays recording styles. I lecture students at NYU in New York and Ive been scratching my head. We all know that we have playlists and we can save everything thats 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 tomorrows history. Knowing that, you should really pump up your adrenaline. Its not about doing takes, takes, takes and then just comping, comping, comping. Theres no passion in that; theres 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 Im going to do will outlive me. I want people 50 years from now to hear what Im singing. If its no good itll be thrown away. If its great, people 50 years from now will hear my voice singing this song. So its almost a mantra. You have to really hype yourself up to get that thing we used to get with destructive recording.

the drums would have to stop and where theyd continue again. This is for about eight pieces. He had hired top session players who Id 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 UKthe 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 Dennys sessions. He would leave me with Procol Harum while they were making their album and go off and do something else. I didnt have that much experience but I couldnt 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 didnt understand the culture, but I made it through the first week. I didnt 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 ofSgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Bandthree months before it was released. This guy came to Dennys 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 didnt 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.

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Tom Tom Clubs Tina Weymouth and Grandmaster Flash dance in front of a mural by Lee Quiones, NYC 1981. Photo by Laura Levine

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TransAtlantic express
New York and Londons 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 Hellos 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 Englands 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 Yorks status as the worlds 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 imaginationNew 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, Heres the Sex Pistols is nowadays regarded as a milestone in the classic-rock continuum, somewhere between Springsteens Born To Run and Nirvanas 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 rocks 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

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or scathing Mancunian. It would sooner take inspiration from Europe than the States. The new anthem, as struck up by the Clash, was Im 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 Yorkcosmopolitan, urbane, facing Europe-wardswas 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 Scorseses 1983 film The King of Comedy). They also recorded This Is Radio Clash, taking on board the rhythms and electricity of the citys 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 Lakers 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 Hells 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.

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 Gangs Rappers Delight rising to number three. However, with the exception of Flash and the Furious Fives groundbreaking 1982 rap The Message, the ensuing years werent 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 Yorks 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 protgs 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. McLarens 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 Kraftwerks 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 NYCs 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 singles 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 shouldnt be underestimated. Performance artist Laurie Anderson recorded O Superman in New York in 1981it 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 Strongs Money around the same time.) Even if its conceptual implications werent 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 NYCs 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.) Suicides second album was recorded for ZE Records, a distinctively diverse record company founded in 1978 in New York by Michael Zilkha and Michel Esteban. ZEs 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. Buzzards Original Savannah Band).

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 Thatchers Britainthe 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 influence and impact of New York on the British electro-pop scene shouldnt be underestimated.
the impossibly dapper Kid Creole. Darnells 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 punks postmodern rip-it-up-andstart-again ethos. He hung out in London with the New Romantics and Boy George andwith UK hits like Me No Pop I, Annie, Im Not Your Daddy, and Stool Pigeonhe 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 bandsinformed by the post-punk and radical dance ethoserupted, 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

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COLUMNS

COLUMNS

L A N D M A RKS

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 Itals 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 elses. Although difficult, it challenged my brain in interesting ways, and also I didnt have to spend any money on gear.
LO G O S

THE BRONX

The Anchorage
the brooklyn-based anchorage, located under the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, is a striking example of New Yorks surprisingly ample supply of utilitarian spaces retrofitted for creative purposes. It might also be one of the citys most unique art locales. With eight rooms featuring 50-foot vaulted ceilings and a brick-walled gothic-dungeon vibe, its 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 Manhattans Tribute in Light that commemorates 9/11began 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 83a year before the borough of Brooklyn abdicated its use of the 212 area code for the far less desirable 718the cavernous space opened with Creative Times Art in the Anchorage series, in honor of the Bridges 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 1987s Guerrilla Girls retrospective, which addressed sexism and racism in the art world. A dance-friendly series called Music at the Anchoragefeaturing artists like A Guy Called Gerald, Joe Claussell, Glenn Branca, and Carl Craigcame after. One of the last exhibits, Massless Medium, included work by John Cage, Dan Flavin, and James Turrell. But it was the Anchorages last season: following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Anchorage wasdeemed a security risk and closed to the public. -Adrienne Day

past featured landmarks

1  max neuhaus
times square

12 Daptone
Records

2 The Thing
Secondhand Store

13 The Village
Gate/Life/Le Poisson Rouge

3 The loft 4 Marcy Hotel 5 Andy Warhols

Factory

6 Queensbridge
Houses

7 Record Mart 8 Deitch

Projects

1 7 5 7 5

5 8

9 Area/Shelter/
Vinyl

QUEENS

10 Studio B 11 Market Hotel 13 3 9 8

2 10 8 4 12

MANHATTAN

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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 doesnt 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 cant just hit undo. RBMA: You said that since Dream On, your debut LP, youve 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 Im 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 didnt necessarily want this to be my only thesisthis alien digi-detritus electronica. RBMA: Is your live rig the basis for your recording now too? DMM: One hundred percent. Whatever gear Im working with is what the tracks are made out of. So right now its an MPC, a DX Groovebox, and some outboard gear. Im 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 cant technically hear it.
-Nick sylvester

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 mid80s 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, Its My Thing, which opens with the helicopters from Pink Floyds 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 decades 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
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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

himself. Although the downtown gallery scene was already enamored with street art, the fine-art playing field was no real 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 Enemys Yo Bum Rush the Show and LL Cool Js Bigger and Deffer, where he famously riffed on the Kool cigarette logos overlapping Os. Those groups were repped by Russell Simmons and Lyor Cohens hip-hop juggernaut Rush Artist Management, which included EPMD. Haze got hired by Fresh to create the logo for the groups 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

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. Heres Being Latinos top five places to visit in NYC.

The legendary Copacabana (268 W. 47th St.) is one of the most well-known clubs in all of New York. First opened in 1940, its been a springboard for artists such as the late Cuban singer Celia Cruz. If you like a combination of Brazilian-style dcor, delicious Latin food, and unforgettable music, its worth a visit.

Copacabana

1 2 3 4 5
If the Caribbean is your thing and Puerto Rican flavors are what youre 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.

Don Coqui

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 Zacaras Ferrera, and renowned reggaeton singer Tego Calderon, among others. That lineup alone proves that plenty of important music comes through here.

La Boom

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 Bacn Bacn.

LQ New York

Iguana Restaurant and Lounge (240 W. 54th St.) lets you experience real Mexican cuisine with the opportunity to dance it off after youre done. Iguana also offers free salsa classes so you can improve your moves.

Iguana

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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 didnt 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 didnt appeal to me. I couldnt muster the strength. I felt like I should work out or read instead. Im 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 its a more subdued, less disruptive type of frivolity than that of my concert-going youth, when Id 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 didnt 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. Thats 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 advantagesI 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 wouldnt 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. Marks between Second and Third Avenues; I think its a noodle bar now. This was when St. Marks 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 Blurs Parklife, and drink gin and tonics because Liam Gallagher mentioned them in Supersonic. Or at least thats 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 askingwhy wouldnt 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 wrongand music was a conversation always in my head anyways. Those were the days when CD shopping was an eventI would scour the used bins at Kims on St. Marks 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 Id never heard of from artists Id never hear from again. I would listen to CDs in their entirety and if I didnt like them that much, Id 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 promiscuousalways 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 Im devolving. Whereas before I forged deep and meaningful

relationships with artists and entire albums, now its mostly a series of one-night stands, one-off experiences. Ive listened to Kate Bushs The Dreaming probably 200 times. I dont even remember what my favorite album from last year was and I maybe listened to it all the way through a dozen times, if Im being generous. Its all so fleeting now. In a way, thats how it has to be, right? You grow up, priorities shift, the importance of leisure activities evaporates. I dont 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. Its just not precious anymore. I remember wanting to hear Stacey Qs 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 wouldnt 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 Im not bemoaning progress. Im 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 moments 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 youre 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 methe best, most comfortable Ive 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 Cerrones Supernature and Chemises She Cant 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 Im enjoying while Im 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. Its not necessarily to conduct any kind of social interaction. Its 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.

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Technicolor Coding

Brenmar Nick Hook Sinjin Hawke LIVE

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

tuesday May 21 Tammany Hall

On Red Bull Music Academy Radio TUNE IN AT RBMARADIO.COM

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