Break It Up!

NEW YORK ART, ROCK, POETRY AND NOISE 1956-2022

2022-08-01 -

1 RICHARD HELL AND THE VOIDOIDS BLANK GENERATION

Where better to begin than a crucial document of NYC punk at its most louche and literate? When Richard Hell retooled Rod McKuen’s Beat Generation in 1976, he’d already formed and quit The Heartbreakers and Television – whose first review was written by Patti Smith.

Written by Richard Hell Published by Automatic Music Inc. adm by Warner-Tamerlane Pub. (BMI) / Doraflo Music, Inc., BMI / Quickmix Music, BMI / Warner-Chappell Music., Inc. 1977 WEA International Inc. USWB19904285 Licensed courtesy of Warner Music UK Ltd.

2 GLENN BRANCA LESSON NO. 1

The anthemic, pulverising solo debut of Downtown eminence grise

Glenn Branca, 1980’s Lesson No. 1 makes systems symphonics out of the raw punk frequencies of electric guitar. Not just a vital precursor to so much avant-rock that followed, Branca also provided a launchpad for some of those disciples: Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore both participated in his Guitar Orchestra in the early ’80s.

3 ALAN VEGA NOTHING LEFT

Born in Brooklyn in 1938, Alan Vega began his shift from visual art to confrontational music in the late ’60s, the epochal Suicide first performing as early as 1970. Vega’s belief in the primal threat and underground resonances of rock’n’roll never diminished, as this vicious throbber recorded in 2015, a year before his death, makes clear.

Written by Vega, Vaughn, Delran, Dwyer. Published by Saturn Strip, Ltd. (ASCAP / Harry Fox), Quonset Music / BMG (BMI), Hot Stream (ASCAP), Black Coda Music (BMI).

4 SOUNDWALK COLLECTIVE WITH PATTI SMITH

ETERNITY

Smith hasn’t made her own album since 2012’s Banga, focusing on live work and writing. But don’t miss her three albums with NYC’s Soundwalk Collective: this incantatory gem is on 2019’s Mummer Love, about her beloved Rimbaud’s time in Africa.

By Soundwalk Collective with Patti Smith, featuring Philip Glass & Sufi Group of Sheik Ibrahim. Copyright Control. &©2019 Bella Union. From Mummer Love. Patti Smith appears courtesy of Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment.

9 DIM STARS MONKEY

Not a bad line-up, as the unjustly neglected Dim Stars were a 1990s low-key supergroup comprising Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley, producer/guitarist Don Fleming and, upfront, the redoubtable Richard Hell. Plus also on guitar, the late great Voidoid and Lou Reed sideman Robert Quine.

Monkey (Spurts 2013 Remaster). Written by Richard Hell, Thurston Moore, Steve Shelley, Robert Quine. &©2022 Dim Stars courtesy of Dim Stars. From Spurts – The Richard Hell Story (Rhino). rhino.com/product/spurts-the-richardhell-story

10 JON SPENCER & THE HITMAKERS GET IT RIGHT NOW

An incendiary rabble-rouser through decades of piloting NYC scuzz-rock demons Pussy Galore, Boss Hog and, of course, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Spencer’s potency is undimmed in 2022. Hence the HITmakers, a volatile new outfit incorporating Sam Coomes and Janet Weiss of Quasi (though drummer here is Bob Bert, ex-Pussy Galore and, yep, Sonic Youth).

11 ARTHUR RUSSELL INSTRUMENTALS VOLUME 1 (PART 1)

Russell took disco and country into NYC’s febrile creative scene; a Buddhist avant-clubber with a unique aesthetic, and a cello. But on this gorgeous 1974 recording, he leads a Downtown combo through a piece that adds jazz thrust and swing to minimalist intricacies.

Published by Echo & Feedback Newsletter Music (ASCAP) administered by Domino Publishing 2006 Audika Records LLC under exclusive license from the estate of Arthur Russell. Licensed to Rough Trade Records in Europe. © Rough Trade Records Limited. From Instrumentals (Rough Trade Records) www.roughtraderecords.com

12 JONATHAN KANE MOTHERLESS CHILD

A collaborator of NYC minimalist godheads Rhys Chatham and La Monte Young, and the original Swans drummer, Kane branched out on his own with the motorik blues of his February project, and this 2005 take on the old spiritual. A connection with Arthur Russell’s

Instrumentals: bassist Ernie Brooks figured in both set-ups, as well as The Modern Lovers.

“I WANT TO RECORD ONE MO RECORD THAT’S WORTHY OF PUTTING OUT IN THE WORLD.” PATTI SMITH SPEAKS. INTERVIEW BEGINS PAGE 72

“DREAMS! ADORATIONS! ILLUMINATIONS! RELIGIONS! THE whole boatload of sensitive bullshit!” From Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, tuning into new visions before heading out west, to wave after wave of disruptive Downtown noisemakers, New York has been a crucible of radical art for decades. No wave, street jazz, garage jams, revolutionary poetry, deviant rock’n’roll, avant-noise, incantations, meditations, “sensitive bullshit” and senseless freakouts – it’s all on Break It Up!. Through these 14 tracks, certain key figures overlap, interact and recur: the artfully-distressed punk pioneer Richard Hell, for instance; or Sonic Youth, inexhaustibly creative standard-bearers bringing New York subcultures into the indie rock mainstream. And then, of course, there’s Patti Smith, this month’s wise and regal MOJO cover star. Smith’s enduring brilliance manifests in conjunction with the Soundwalk Collective on Eternity, from 2019, and is hymned by Jim Carroll in his 1980 tribute to her, Crow: “It was so sweet,” he observes, “when you brought donuts to the junkies.” To quote from Ginsberg again, “Highs! Epiphanies! Despairs!” – they’re all here, and much more besides. Break it up!

5 MOONDOG ALL IS LONELINESS

If the New York music celebrated on

Break It Up! often exists at the interface between street life and experimentation, few musicians exemplify the concept better than Louis ‘Moondog’ Hardin: a Sixth Avenue busker whose work inspired minimalist composers, jazz fiends and more. All Is Loneliness first turned up on his 1957 album, More

Moondog; fellow NYC icon Anohni covered it in the early 2000s.

Written by Moondog. Copyright Control. First released 1957.

6 SONIC YOUTH BASEMENT CONTENDER

While Sonic Youth released huge amounts of transformative music during their 1981-2011 lifespan, plenty more still lies in their vaults. For example: the righteous Velvetsy chug of Basement Contender, jammed out in the early 2000s and on this year’s very fine In/Out/In compilation of unreleased gems.

Written by Sonic Youth. Published by Sonik Tooth Music, administered by Songs of Kobalt Music Publishing (BMI) &©2021 Three Lobed Recordings. From In/Out/In. (Three Lobed Recordings); http://threelobed.com/tlr/

7 ALLEN GINSBERG HOWL (PART II)

A polestar for, and friend of, Patti Smith, Ginsberg wrote Howl in San Francisco, but much of its action and visions stem from his time in New York, at the dawn of the Beats. Here he reads from Part II, at the first recorded performance of Howl at Reed College, Portland, in 1956.

Written by Allen Ginsberg. 2021 Allen Ginsberg LLC. under exclusive license to Omnivore Recordings. All Rights Reserved. ©2021 Omnivore Recordings a division of Omnivore Entertainment Group LLC. From At Reed College; www. omnivorerecordings.com/shop/at-reed-college

8 LAURIE ANDERSON DARK TIME IN THE REVOLUTION

Players on New York’s Downtown scene in the ’70s and ’80s often blurred the lines between music, poetry and performance art, not least Laurie Anderson. Dark Time In The Revolution comes from her last new album, 2010’s Homeland, an O Superman-like state of the nation address that has only become more relevant over the intervening years. Anohni adds backing vocals.

13 GARLAND JEFFREYS THE CONTORTIONIST

An unstinting chronicler of the New York streets, Jeffreys fell in with Lou Reed at Syracuse University and turned up on John Cale’s Vintage

Violence before launching his own long and valuable solo career. The Stonesy funk of The Contortionist comes from his fine 2012 set, The

King Of In Between; listen closely to hear Lou Reed himself on backing vocals.

Published by Black & White Alike, Inc. (ASCAP) adm. Downtown DLJ Songs. From The King of In Between (Luna Park Records).

14 THE JIM CARROLL BAND CROW

The poet, memoirist and rocker was encouraged into a musical career by Patti Smith, his sometime flatmate. In return, he paid tribute on his 1980 debut album, detailing Smith’s fall off the stage at a 1976 Tampa gig, and pinpointing her literary passions, fomented as a bookstore cashier, “Surrounded by the history of your true loves…”

Written by Jim Carroll and Terrell Winn. Published by Missing Finger Music (BMI), Earl McGrath Music (ASCAP), &©1980 Fat Possum Records. From Catholic Boy (Fat Possum Records); https:// jimcarroll.lnk.to/CatholicBoy