roots of the current freak rock/noise/spazzy hardcore underground

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Here I'm talking bands like Lightning Bolt, Total Shutdown, Coachwhips, LA Drugs etc.

I see the roots of this mostly lying in Funhouse (side two mostly) and No New York. Some of it (Luttenbachers mostly) takes hints from Ayler and his kind of whacko jazz.

What do you guys see in all this?

― Ian Johnson, Monday, 17 February 2003 21:39 (twenty-three years ago)

Some of it (Luttenbachers mostly) takes hints from Ayler and his kind of whacko jazz.

Uh, you do know that the Luttenbachers started as a jazz band, fronted by the late Hal Russell?

― hstencil, Monday, 17 February 2003 21:46 (twenty-three years ago)

hstencil: yep; though i'd say they're undeniably a part of the same scene as the other bands mentioned and thus probably share influences.

― Ian Johnson, Monday, 17 February 2003 21:47 (twenty-three years ago)

they get the comedy aspect from grind
the fashion shit from the vss
the artsy stuff from sonic youth

at the root they are all hardcore kids who expanded their record collection past the no idea/ebullution catalogue

luttenbachers are a different scene though right? they've been around for ages - long enough to actually be no wave?

― ddd, Monday, 17 February 2003 21:47 (twenty-three years ago)

Not long enough to be no wave. I think they started around '89 or '91.

― hstencil, Monday, 17 February 2003 21:50 (twenty-three years ago)

anyway, in no particular order: bulb records, what vermiform was peddling towards the end of the 90s (unnoticed for the most part), the industrial/pigfucker cassette underground of the 80s and early 90s, the 'ere blurred crossover between hardcore and metal, the mid-late 90s genre ominivorousness ("whacko" free jazz, noise, dub, IDM whatevah) as exhaustion from lack of anything else better to do, no-wave/new-wave revival, hardcore's lack of charisma.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 17 February 2003 21:50 (twenty-three years ago)

hah anything "noisy" in rock has its probable roots in funhouse and no new york

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 17 February 2003 21:56 (twenty-three years ago)

see:

http://www.pataphysics-lab.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?item_id=336&action=showitem

― msp, Monday, 17 February 2003 21:58 (twenty-three years ago)

the Coachwhips are a garage-y Headcoats type band.

did you mean Dwyer's other band Pink and Brown?

i think they got their influence from Lightning Bolt personally

― JasonD (JasonD), Monday, 17 February 2003 22:08 (twenty-three years ago)

yeah, now that i look at that list of bands i'm more firm to my point. all these bands are just hardcore matured.

freak rock/noise/spazzy = scremo/mathrock = just hardcore kids beyond the age of 21.

and from personal experience; they are more intelligent than regular hardcore but shouldn't even try and compare with 'classical' avantgarde music. experimental to a hardcore kid if years different than someone with a jazz or classical background

― ddd, Monday, 17 February 2003 22:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Having not heard a Coachwhips record, I'm not particularly able to comment. Live, though, they sound very very very noisy and unstructured. And Pink & Brown, yeah, were influenced by the bolt--coming from the same scene and whatnot.

Jess- while your answers are certainly valid, I was trying to stretch a bit backwards in time. mid-seventies at least. I would really consider the bulb roster/later vermiform etc. part of the scene I'm concerned with; where did THOSE bands come from? coming from hardcore and being burned out on it, as with MRP? did they just get bored? what's the sonic/social precedent for these bands? (i.e. what sounds like, or could be at the roots of, someone like Quintron, Amps For Christ, Mr. Brinkman). I think the comparisons to the industrial casette underground are OTM, but where does the corruption of that scene filter in? it's been continued in a much more pure version thru labels like Hospital Productions, ThunderRecords etc. (forgive my lack of knowledge on the specifics of the casette/industrial side of things--i only know thunder and hospital because they're local and i get exposure to them frequently. i'm sure there are larger/more important labels i'm missing)

... that's all mostly unredable. i wish i could get outside. i'm buried under much, much snow, not even at my own home, with a bunch of seven year olds.

― Ian Johnson, Monday, 17 February 2003 22:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Half Japanese. You seem to be asking about a kind of outsider/rock-associated lineage of clatter-producers? How about the groups associated w/ the LAFMS (The Doo-dooettes, Airway, Le Forte Four, Smegma, etc), and before that back to Beefheart really. Some of those French bands that Stapleton cites (Mahogany Brain, Horde Catalyique Pour la Fin, etc.) Yoko Ono. The Nihilist Spasm Band. The Godz, back in '66. Jean DuBuffet probably before that, I mean, he was rock right?

― Mr. Diamond (diamond), Monday, 17 February 2003 22:57 (twenty-three years ago)

destroy all monsters

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 17 February 2003 22:59 (twenty-three years ago)

industrial cassette underground... stuff like robert rental? (same vein as throbbing g. and cabaret voltaire...)

i think family fodder could be in the roots there. (1981) new wave and poppy... but very weird. hyper. over the top strange. devo? and all of that? the weirdoness of the screamers and such? laurie anderson? the girls?

perhaps the residents as a even earlier influence for mind bending?

SACCHARINE TRUST? zoogz rift? (invoking another earlier weirdo beefheart and so on?)

bruce haack and his tape slicing silliness...?

cleveland and so on?

herman's hermits?
m.

― msp, Monday, 17 February 2003 23:02 (twenty-three years ago)

tape stuff: i was thinking more of the sub-whitehouse/boyd rice stuff of early-mid 80s (sacher-pelz, etc.) then moving on though the japanoise network (akita, kk null, etc.), illusion of safety, et al

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 17 February 2003 23:09 (twenty-three years ago)

and obv the whole forced exposure thing: that semi-network of little pockets of likeminded weirdos through the 80s mailing their "sound art" to each other while listening to the cro-mags at the same time

― jess (dubplatestyle), Monday, 17 February 2003 23:14 (twenty-three years ago)

there's definitely a humor element that's involved ....

― msp, Monday, 17 February 2003 23:18 (twenty-three years ago)

how about the minutemen?

― vahid (vahid), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 02:08 (twenty-three years ago)

and the noisier side of VU?

― JasonD (JasonD), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 02:37 (twenty-three years ago)

all this means is that the 1985 happened about 4-5 years too late. they're bummed.

― mosurock (mosurock), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 04:29 (twenty-three years ago)

Weasel Walter credits The Residents as being the single biggest influence on the Luttenbachers. As for the rest... recently: Ruins, Boredoms among the others previously listed. Butthole Surfers. Flipper. The bands I tend to be surprised that people in this scene frequently *don't* know are Richard Hell, & The NY Dolls. As for the *NOISE* people, they tend to know their history all the way back to Dada and the Italian Futurists.

― Dave Fischer, Tuesday, 18 February 2003 07:30 (twenty-three years ago)

new flying luttenbachers influenced by magma? maybe?

― JasonD (JasonD), Tuesday, 18 February 2003 08:22 (twenty-three years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.