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No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. by Byron Coley, Lydia Lunch, Thurston Moore
ericfheiman's review against another edition
3.0
Very intriguing history of the No Wave music scene I previously knew nothing about and hadn't heard a single recording of. The book is nicely designed and features some great photography. As is with most hindsight-viewed art/music scenes, there is this sense of nostalgic overimportance, but at least this oral history has somewhat of an arc and the authors do a good job of filling in the inevitable gaps. I'm not convinced—from both reading this and hearing the music—that No Wave is as influential as everyone involved with this book thinks it is. (Nothing like the self-aggrandizing nature of scenesters and would-be artists.) But I can appreciate the unfiltered aggression and intellectual ambition that, even if the music actually made ultimately was more or less unmemorable "noise," had an appealing renegade spirit that wasn't as base as punk.
brdgtc's review against another edition
3.0
Wonderful pictures and interviews, but not much context. Definitely an "insider" history.
blevins's review against another edition
4.0
Terrific collection of photos that document the brief blast that was the "no wave" movement in NYC in the late 1970s. The photos really put you into that scuzzy, dangerous, lower east side/soho neighborhoods pre-gentrification. It truly was a vastly different time with those parts of NYC resembling bombed out urban landscapes of blight and misery.
Side note, Theoretical Girls is one of the all-time greatest band names!
Side note, Theoretical Girls is one of the all-time greatest band names!
partypete's review
5.0
i was lucky enough to find a copy of this at the resale store i worked at right before i left. excellent little document on a scene i knew little about before reading about kathy acker. downloaded some of the music and its rad - my favorite part of the book is the interview with brian eno where he describes his desire to document the scene because these things are typically so short-lived/the bands in the scene blaming eno for causing rifts in the scene by only recording a few bands on one record (the consequence of recording the movement was its own destruction.)
xterminal's review
3.0
Thurston Moore and Brian Coley, No Wave. Post Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980. (Abrams Image, 2008)
While I was writing up the (insanely good) doco We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen for an article earlier this year, I opined that in most cases, pieces of art that attempt to document a moment in music history tend to be of the “you had to be there” variety (because We Jam Econo is such a glorious exception to that rule). It doesn't matter what the genre is you're looking at, such books and films tend to be overviews made by someone so entrenched in the scene that they forget the rest of the world doesn't speak the language. This is true in all cases of geek-produced material, of course, but it always seems much more prominent to me in the music world for some reason.
No Wave is right in line with such other tomes as Steven Blush's American Hardcore and Moynihan's Lords of Chaos in this regard; you kinda had to be there. With Blush's and Moynihan's books, though, I actually was, whereas I was still a bit on the young side for No Wave (though more commercial bands running in the same vein, such as Talking Heads, penetrated by aggressively-AM radar in the late seventies; I didn't discover there was music outside the mainstream until someone said “you gotta hear this band called Black Flag!” to me in 1982...). I've read a lot about the period over the intervening years, and I'm as big a fan as any of a lot of bands who were spiralling around New York back in the day (and an even bigger fan than most of Poe and Kral's document, The Blank Generation). But still, I wasn't there, unlike Moore and Conley. I can grasp the atmosphere, but I never breathed it.
In another write-up for that same article (I can't remember which new Eurocrime film I was talking about, possibly 13 Tzameti), I talked about the new breed of European crime films and how much I loved them, then compared and contrasted to critics who were so blown away by Godard, Chabrol, Melville, etc., who were making the same sort of low-budget crime films in the fifties and sixties. I've never seen the appeal of Godard, honestly, but watching movies by Babulani and Tarr and all the rest of the bunch I can understand why it is that people like Ebert and Rosenbaum and Phillips are so bowled over. I feel the same way about No Wave, except that I like these bands a lot more than I do Godard and Melville's flicks. But I still feel like I'm missing something, and this book, while being another good overview, didn't quite fill that hole. I suspect, quite strongly, that someone who's a few years older than me, who was actually listening to this stuff at the time, maybe even going to the gigs, will be a lot more affected by this than I was. Which is not to say in any way that it's not worth getting; if you weren't, there, you'll probably hear of at least three or four bands you'd never heard of before. *** ½
While I was writing up the (insanely good) doco We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen for an article earlier this year, I opined that in most cases, pieces of art that attempt to document a moment in music history tend to be of the “you had to be there” variety (because We Jam Econo is such a glorious exception to that rule). It doesn't matter what the genre is you're looking at, such books and films tend to be overviews made by someone so entrenched in the scene that they forget the rest of the world doesn't speak the language. This is true in all cases of geek-produced material, of course, but it always seems much more prominent to me in the music world for some reason.
No Wave is right in line with such other tomes as Steven Blush's American Hardcore and Moynihan's Lords of Chaos in this regard; you kinda had to be there. With Blush's and Moynihan's books, though, I actually was, whereas I was still a bit on the young side for No Wave (though more commercial bands running in the same vein, such as Talking Heads, penetrated by aggressively-AM radar in the late seventies; I didn't discover there was music outside the mainstream until someone said “you gotta hear this band called Black Flag!” to me in 1982...). I've read a lot about the period over the intervening years, and I'm as big a fan as any of a lot of bands who were spiralling around New York back in the day (and an even bigger fan than most of Poe and Kral's document, The Blank Generation). But still, I wasn't there, unlike Moore and Conley. I can grasp the atmosphere, but I never breathed it.
In another write-up for that same article (I can't remember which new Eurocrime film I was talking about, possibly 13 Tzameti), I talked about the new breed of European crime films and how much I loved them, then compared and contrasted to critics who were so blown away by Godard, Chabrol, Melville, etc., who were making the same sort of low-budget crime films in the fifties and sixties. I've never seen the appeal of Godard, honestly, but watching movies by Babulani and Tarr and all the rest of the bunch I can understand why it is that people like Ebert and Rosenbaum and Phillips are so bowled over. I feel the same way about No Wave, except that I like these bands a lot more than I do Godard and Melville's flicks. But I still feel like I'm missing something, and this book, while being another good overview, didn't quite fill that hole. I suspect, quite strongly, that someone who's a few years older than me, who was actually listening to this stuff at the time, maybe even going to the gigs, will be a lot more affected by this than I was. Which is not to say in any way that it's not worth getting; if you weren't, there, you'll probably hear of at least three or four bands you'd never heard of before. *** ½
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