no wave

11 Things: No wave

Thursday, May 22, 2008

No Wave is nihilism. No Wave is minimalism. No Wave is music. No Wave is film. "No Wave" is a recent book by Marc Masters with a foreword by Weasel Walter. No Wave is their book tour in the Bay Area this weekend. No Wave is the following interview with Masters. No Wave is an interview with no questions:

1. No: "The entirety of No Wave is contained in those two letters. Short, blunt and potent, the word represents all the possibilities in rejection and resistance. Contrarian to the end, No Wave even said 'no' to its own existence."

2. New York: "No Wave could only have happened in late 1970s New York. Abandoned and insanely cheap, the city offered desperation and potential in equal measure."

3. No New York: "The Brian Eno-produced compilation - featuring Contortions, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Mars and DNA - wasn't the best or most important No Wave record. But without it, a lot less people would've heard of No Wave."

4. No Wave versus New Wave and punk: "No Wave took from, reacted to and rejected New Wave and Punk. As Weasel puts it in the book's foreword: 'No Wave truly screamed, 'F- you all! I don't want to be like you!' Punk said, 'F- them! We don't want to be like them!' See the difference?"

5. Obscurity: "No Wave records and films have always been hard to find. It's fitting that a movement that dodged definition and defied convention takes work to discover."

6. Influence: "No Wave is hugely influential, but very few bands sound like the original No Wavers - because they didn't even sound like each other."

7. Mars and DNA: "Mars, the first No Wave band, deconstructed rock in just two years and 11 songs; brother band DNA featured Arto Lindsay speaking in fervent tongues."

8. Lydia Lunch and James Chance: "The two genius brats of No Wave. Lunch refused to please her audience, preferring to alienate them; Chance literally confronted his, physically attacking them."

9. Soho: "The neighborhood that No New York forgot had tons of great No Wave groups, particularly Theoretical Girls, whose Glenn Branca later injected No Wave into modern classical via his guitar symphonies."

10. No Wave Cinema: "No Wave filmmakers - Eric Mitchell, Vivienne Dick, James Nares and Beth and Scott B. - put the music's aggression onscreen, using musicians as actors and screening in rock clubs."

11. Marc Masters and Weasel Walter: Sign copies of "No Wave" and play music at 2 p.m. Saturday at Amoeba Music, 1855 Haight St., San Francisco; read and host Death Sentence: Panda and Ettrick at 9 p.m. Saturday at 21 Grand, 416 25th St., Oakland; and play No Wave videos at 5 p.m. Sunday at Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia St., San Francisco.

- Tim Sullivan, tsullivan@sfchronicle.com

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/22/NSO510P0H2.DTL

This article appeared on page G - 3 of the San Francisco Chronicle