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ericka beckman - 135 grand street new york, 1979 - soul jazz records - cd

Genre: Wave / Pop / Rock

1. Theoretical Girls - Glazened Eyes
2. UT - Sharps Loose
3. A Band - Sand and Sea
4. A Band - Mirror Mirror
5. Rhys Chatham - Guitar Trio
6. Chinese Puzzle - Great Wall Of Prague
7. The Static - The Spectacular Commodity (excerpt)
8. Morales - Gay Girl In A Gay Bar
9. Youth In Asia - Taling Heads (part 1)
10. Youth In Asia - Amnesia
11. Steve Piccolo - Superior Genes
12. Chinese Puzzle - Chinese Funk (CD bonus track)
13. Jill Kroesen - Fay Shism Blues (CD bonus track)
14. Steve Piccolo - Its Hard To Be In Love In Time Like These (CD bonus track)
15. The Static - My Relationship (CD bonus track)
16. Theoretical Girls - Contrary Motion

Soundtrack tot the sametitled DVD; mid-Price CD with bonus tracks not in film.

Soul Jazz Records presents a unique film capturing New York’s No Wave scene in 1979. Ericka Beckman’s seminal rarely seen film captures the driving energy and posturing of early No Wave bands’ performing live in a sparse downtown loft and includes the only known footage of the Theoretical Girls, The Static and other No Wave bands of the period.

Garage band line-ups in varying degrees of post-punk musical destruction. Ericka Beckman’s film matches the rawness, minimalism and radicalism of the music - a fitting document and visual statement of new forms created out of New York’s anti-everything musical nihilism, circa 1979.

‘135 Grand Street, New York, 1979’ is history. This is a film about bands made up of painters, filmmakers, actors - and occasionally musicians - thriving and thrashing in the pulsating, vibrant post-punk world of New York where high art met low culture.

Ericka Beckman documented the cross-fertilizing art and music scene in New York in the mid-1970s.
Her film captures the driving energy and posturing of early No Wave bands’ performing in a sparse downtown loft. Featured bands include Theoretical Girls, UT, A Band, Rhys Chatham, Chinese Puzzle, The Static, Morales, Youth in Asia, Morales, Steven Piccolo and Jill Kroesen.

The film has currently been showing throughout the world as part of Sonic Youth’s ‘Sensational Fix’ touring art exhibition as well as screening before Glenn Branca’s most recent shows in New York City (Sep 2009).