By 1981, Stiff and its original pub rock crowd had all moved on and matured, but there was still a great deal of talent playing pubs like the Hope and Anchor. The label couldn’t resist picking up one such band, Motor Boys Motor lead by a former Stranglers roadie, vocalist Terry Moon. Taking their name from Joe Strummer’s 101’s song, they went on to cut an album for Albion before guitarist Bill Carter and bassist Chris Thompson formed The Screaming Blue Messiahs, who had a mini-hit with "I Wanna Be A Flintstone".
As soon as the NME caught them live, they were in love. “Motor Boys Motor are an R&B band,” they reported in 1981, “and that doesn’t mean they have anything to do with Q-Tips or other pallid revivalist staxboys. No, Motor Boys Motor come out of a rougher place, where early Yardbirds meet Howling Wolf. There’s something more modern in there too, a bit of Pere Ubu and sound for sound’s sake –plus Beefheart and early acid sounds, really psycho-delic.” [SOURCE: STIFF RECORDS]
Active between 1979 and 1984, Tronics was the mostly solo vehicle for the inner workings of London artist Ziro Baby. Baby started out in Star Dogs, a group of kids said to be somewhere between a glam band and a street gang. Star Dogs failed to achieve much and at 16, Baby formed the Tronics, a strange hybrid of brittle punk and insular acoustic pop sounds. Purely self-sufficient, Baby started Alien Records to distribute Tronics sounds, self-releasing two singles: '"Favorite Girls"/"Suzie"' and '"Time Off"/"Goodbye"'. In 1981, Baby released the 'Shark Fucks' 7" as well as what would be Tronics' sole LP release 'Love Backed by Force'. 1981 also saw several cassette releases from the band, including 'What's the Hubbub Bubb', which would be re-released on CD by Wrench Records in 2001. Tronics also released a self-titled mini-album and another single before dissolving completely in 1984. As the years wore on, Tronics records became sought-after commodities by punk collectors. Apart from the Wrench Records reissue, New York indie label What's Your Rupture? reissued both the 'Shark Fucks' 7" and 'Love Backed by Force' in 2012. After his time in the Tronics, Ziro Baby would later change his name to Zarjaz and continue to register on the periphery of fringe culture as a visual artist. He was briefly a member of Sigue Sigue Sputnik and remained actively practicing music while also working in design. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
One of the great bands of the short-lived New York City-based "no wave" avant-garde punk scene of the late '70s, DNA had what barely amounts to a recording career, yet still managed to produce some crucial music. Originally comprised of guitarist Arto Lindsay, keyboardist Robin Crutchfield, and drummer Ikue Mori, DNA's music was sparse, loud, and noisy -washes of keyboards punctuated by Lindsay's atonal, free-form guitar explosions. DNA made their recording debut in 1978 on a sampler of no wave bands produced by Brian Eno ("No New York"), and, along with being one of the more interesting bands on the record, also exhibited the most promise. By the time they released their first record, Crutchfield had formed a new band, Dark Day, and DNA had replaced him with bassist Tim Wright, an original member of the seminal Cleveland band Pere Ubu. Now a power trio, and with Lindsay's guitar the manic focal point of their challenging music, DNA seemed poised to become one of the most exciting bands in American avant-garde rock. Instead, they became increasingly enigmatic, rarely played outside of New York, and never recorded again. After breaking up in 1982, Lindsay formed the exciting Ambitious Lovers, who released three tremendous albums fusing noise rock with slick pop/soul and Brazilian music (Lindsay is a native of Brazil). He has also produced records for Brazilian superstar Caetano Veloso. Ikue Mori is still performing avant-garde music in New York City, in 2008 celebrating her 30th year in the city, having moved there from her native Tokyo in 1977. In 1993, thanks to John Zorn's great Japanese import label Avant, a DNA CD of previously unavailable live recordings was released. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
In the mid-1970s, Robin Crutchfield moved to New York to participate in the growing conceptual and performance art movement. After several performances in galleries and alternative spaces which received critical acclaim, he broke away from the scene to pursue music. In 1979, after having formed the infamous no wave band DNA with Arto Lindsay and Ikue Mori, and recorded a single for Lust/Unlust and four tracks for the Brian Eno-produced “No New York” album, and having gigged with DNA for nearly a year, Robin determined the band was moving in a direction counter to his own interests and left to form his own project, Dark Day.
With the aid of Nancy Arlen (Mars) and Nina Canal (The Gynecologists and Ut), he released an initial single '"Hands In The Dark” b/w “Invisible Man"' on Lust/Unlust, Charles Ball’s fledgling label which had already released the historic debut recordings of Lydia Lunch’s groundbreaking Teenage Jesus & The Jerks, as well as the aforementioned DNA single.
Dark Day’s first album 'Exterminating Angel' followed in 1980. The band consisted of Robin, Phil Kline, and Barry Friar, but the lineup remained fluid, and at various times included Steven Brown and Peter Principle of Tuxedomoon, filmmaker Jim Jarmusch, Nina Canal and David Rosenbloom. The album’s release was followed with a promotional 12 inch 'Trapped' whose b-side “The Exterminations 1-6”, six hyper-reverse mixes, remains Robin’s favorite of his early work. During this time Dark Day played live concerts in New York City at The Mudd Club, TR3, CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, Hurrah’s, and Trax as well as M-80, the New No Now Wave Festival in Minneapolis. A mini-tour of Europe included gigs at Leuven, Rotterdam, and Amsterdam.
After a brief shift in aesthetics, Robin reformed Dark Day as a synthetic keyboard duo with Bill Sack and recorded a second album 'Window' on Plexus Records.
In the early to mid-1980’s, he wrote and published several short novelettes and did art performance readings at performance spaces like Club 57 and Joseph Papp’s Public Theater.
In 1985 he resumed Dark Day as a more or less medieval acoustic chamber ensemble composing music similar to Moondog, Penguin Cafe Orchestra and Dead Can Dance. This incarnation of the band consisted of Robin on pipe organ, Brian Bendlin on rattles, bells, and drums, Steven Cheslik-DeMeyer on cello, Shawn McQuate on recorder, and Bill Sack on hauntingly atmospheric ‘spirit guitars’. With this lineup he released a limited edition CD, 'Darkest Before Dawn' in 1989.
In 1997, Dirk Ivens of Belgian label Daft Records contacted Robin to release a compilation CD of the best tracks from the early Lust/Unlust and Plexus years entitled 'Dark Day: Collected 1979-1982'. Following its release, Robin went back into the studio to take up recording again. A new album of oddly rhythmic, cyclical instrumental works featuring a variety of unusual MIDI voices, was released in the fall of 1999, and was appropriately entitled, 'Strange Clockwork', and led to two others 'Loon' and 'The Happy Little Oysters'. Approach to the new work was like that of a railway conductor ticket-punching a computer-driven player piano, supplying gear-like layers of melody and rhythm with a comically sinister edge. Several years later, a 72-minute 20 track CD compilation of the best songs from these 3 discs was released under the title 'Strange Clockwork'.
In the Spring of 2000, quirky docu-director Errol Morris contacted Robin and used two Dark Day pieces for an episode of his Bravo TV series “First Person”. He self-published a number of faerie tales and exhibited his newly written and illustrated books in a gallery show curated by Norman Shapiro at the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation entitled "Verbal/Visual/Tactile: Book Artist’s Show". In 2006 Robin retreated from the cyclic electronic keyboard influences of the 20th century, to embrace acoustic material more in keeping with the ancient musics, and released two solo albums, 'Songs For Faerie Folk', and 'Toadstool Soup'. These feature daydreamlike improvisations on harp, tanpura, lyre, box drum and pixiefone based on some of the thematic elements suggested by faerie lore and the distant past. In 2007, he released 'For Our Friends In The Enchanted Otherworld'. This was followed by an album in the same vein, 'The Hidden Folk', in 2009 on the Important Records label. Robin Crutchfield continues to happily explore and provide acoustic glissando and drone harp soundscapes for the daydreamers of the world. [SOURCE: DARK ENTRIES RECORDS]
After leaving the soft rock band Easy Street, Richard Burgess formed a slick synth pop/jazz group called Landscape in 1975. In addition to Burgess, who sang and played drums, Landscape included Andy Pask (bass), Chris Heaton (keyboards), John Walters (keyboards, woodwinds), and Pete Thomas (trombone, keyboards). After building a following through touring, the band released its debut, 'Landscape', in 1980, which sold rather poorly. 1981's 'From the Tea-Rooms of Mars...to the Hell-Holes of Uranus' firmly accented synthesizers as the focus of Landscape's sound, and they scored a Top Five U.K. hit with "Einstein A-Go-Go." 1982's 'Manhattan Boogie-Woogie' was the group's most danceable effort, but by the following year, the lineup had been pared down to a trio, and the band broke up for good in 1984. Burgess had already begun a production career, working with artists like Spandau Ballet, Living in a Box, Visage, and King. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
The master of a raw and shambolic fusion of rockabilly, blues, and fractured noise, Tav Falco was, along with The Cramps, one of the earliest purveyors of what would come to be known as psychobilly (though his version of the sound lacked the campy horror movie ambience others brought to it), and he anticipated the fractured but hard-hitting blues wailing of The Gories and The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion by close to a decade. Born in Arkansas, Falco moved to Memphis, Tennessee in 1973 and introduced himself to the city's creative community as a filmmaker and performance artist while supporting himself with a variety of odd jobs. While making documentary films on blues artists in Tennessee and Mississippi (including a piece on R.L. Burnside shot at his legendary juke joint in 1974), Falco was inspired to pick up the guitar, though his first on-stage performance with the instrument involved him destroying a six-string with a chain saw.
In 1979, Falco put together the first version of his band The Panther Burns (named for a famous Tennessee plantation), a group whose revolving membership included Alex Chilton and James Luther Dickinson in its early incarnations. In 1981, Falco recorded his first album, 'Behind the Magnolia Curtain', which also included performances by Othar Turner & His Fife and Drum Band. The album won favorable critical notices, and Falco relocated to New York City, where he brought his frenetic roots music to the Big Apple's then-thriving no wave scene, which led to Falco's first and only major-label release, 'Blow Your Top', a 1982 EP issued by Chris Stein's Animal label. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Falco began dividing his time between Europe and the United States, and released a slow but steady stream of recordings with shifting Panther Burns lineups while holding down another career as an actor. He was featured in small roles in "Great Balls of Fire", "Wayne County Ramblin'", "Downtown 81", and "Highway 61".
Panther Burns issued their debut recording for the new century, 'Panther Phobia', in 2000. The group played festivals throughout the century's first decade, most notably at the It Came from Memphis series at the Barbican Centre in London in 2005, 2006's ArthurNIGHTS festival at the historic Palace Theatre in Los Angeles, 2007's Fondation Cartier in Paris, 2008's headlining performance at the Strade Blu Festival in Tredozio, Italy, 2009's Alternatilla Festival in Mallorca, Spain, and the Barreiro Rocks Festival in Lisbon in 2010. Falco also studied the tango -the music has been a lifelong obsession for him- in both Argentina and France, culminating in his role as a tango dancer in the French film "Dans le Rouge du Couchant" in 2003. In addition to acting in films, Falco produced and directed a number of short works, five of which were added to the official archive in Paris' Cinematheque Française in 2006.
Falco is also an author. With journalist Erik Morse, he collaborated on the two-volume encyclopedia "Mondo Memphis", a musical and psycho-geographical study of his beloved city. Falco's volume centers on the history of Memphis music from the Civil War era to the present day. In 2010, Falco and his ever evolving band -this one known as Tav Falco & the Unapproachable Panther Burns- went into a secret studio on the Saint-Germain-des-Prés and emerged with 'Conjurations: Seance for Deranged Lovers', which was released in May of that year in Europe. The album was released in the United States in October of 2011. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
The ambitious Swiss electronic duo Yello comprised vocalist/conceptualist Dieter Meier -a millionaire industrialist, professional gambler, and member of Switzerland's national golf team- and composer/arranger Boris Blank. Meier, a former solo artist who also spent time with the group Fresh Color, began collaborating with Blank in 1979, and the duo bowed with the single "I.T. Splash". After signing with The Residents' label, Ralph Records, Yello issued their 1980 debut LP, 'Solid Pleasure', which spawned the dance hit "Bostitch".
With 1981's 'Claro Que Si', Yello made its first forays into music video; their clip for the single "Pinball Cha Cha" directed by Meier, garnered considerable acclaim and in 1985 was selected as one of 32 works included in the Museum of Modern Art's Music Video Exhibition. Visual accompaniment remained a pivotal component of the duo's work after they signed to Elektra in 1983 for the LP 'You Gotta Say Yes to Another Excess', as the videos for "I Love You" and "Lost Again" received heavy airplay on MTV.
Despite the success of 1988's 'Flag', which contained the international hit "The Race", over the course of the next several years Yello grew increasingly involved with film projects scoring the comedy "Nuns on the Run". In 1991, the duo resurfaced with 'Baby', followed three years later by 'Zebra'. 1995's 'Hands on Yello' compiled reinterpretations of the group's songs by the likes of Moby, The Orb, and The Grid, while 'Pocket Universe', a collection of new material, appeared in 1997. Their tenth effort, 'Motion Picture', arrived only two years later, which was itself followed by 2003's 'The Eye', which featured Jade Davies on a number of tracks. 'Touch Yello', their 12th album, landed in 2009 and featured smooth jazz megastar Till Brönner on three selections. Incredibly the duo had never performed live in their long history, yet their 2016 album 'Toy' was released amid news that they would undertake their first ever live performance in Berlin later in the same year. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
Tiny Desk Unit was a psychedelic dance band playing around Washington DC in 1979. In its short and fiery history Tiny Desk Unit released one LP and one EP on its 9½" x 16" record label. The band first formed, rehearsed and performed at dc space on September 11th 1979. When the 9:30 Club opened its doors on May 30th 1980, Tiny Desk Unit was the first band to take the stage. The band rehearsed in the rat infested basement of the 9:30 Club and many of the band members lived within a few blocks of the club. On a few occasions Tiny Desk Unit were joined on stage by some of their favorite people, include Julius Hemphill of World Saxophone Quartet fame, and Laurie Anderson. Tiny Desk Unit stopped playing together in the winter of 1981. [SOURCE: DISCOGS]
November Group were an alternative musical group, and a participant of the Boston new wave scene in the early 1980s. The group was formed primarily around two female musicians, vocalist and guitarist Ann Prim and keyboardist Kearney Kirby. Other members included Joel Beale and Alvin Long. The band took their name from a group of early twentieth-century German expressionist artists known as "November Group". The group's musical style has been described as cold wave. Their first major album release was 'Work that Dream', released in 1985 on A&M Records. They also recorded an EP in Germany with Peter Hauke. [WIKIPEDIA]
The oddly named new wave duo Ēbn-Ōzn had one novelty hit, "AEIOU Sometimes Y" in 1983, and then lapsed into obscurity. Featuring Ned "Ēbn" Liben (synthesizer) and Robert "Ōzn" Rosen (organ, vocals), Ēbn-Ōzn was actually an eclectic act that saw no stylistic boundaries, venturing into synth pop, funk, and salsa with giddy enthusiasm. Ēbn-Ōzn was formed in New York in the early '80s. Rosen was introduced to Liben by an acquaintance of his girlfriend. Liben and Rosen were actually raised only a few blocks from one another, but they never met. Fans of punk rock and hip-hop, the two began spending time in clubs with one another, absorbing various forms of dance music from New York, Puerto Rico, and Europe. In 1984, Ēbn-Ōzn released their only LP, 'Feeling Cavalier', on Elektra Records. The single 'AEIOU Sometimes Y' became a staple on modern rock stations. However, Liben and Rosen were never heard from again after that, at least not together. Liben started working with Scritti Politti while Rosen created the house music outfit DaDa NaDa for his own label One Voice Records. Rosen eventually left the rock business, worked as a script analyst for Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone, and began writing screenplays. Liben passed away from a heart attack in 1998. [SOURCE: ALLMUSIC]
