by Andrew Frisicano

DOWNLOAD: Mary Halvorson & Weasel Walter - Lapis Lazuli Nights (MP3)

Weasel Walter @ Bug Jar, Rochester, NY, 9/21/08 (photo by Joe Tunis)

"I'm hard-pressed to find contemporary free jazz that I can relate to. I want to hear really violent fucked-up free jazz records, and I don't hear anybody else makin' 'em, so I make 'em myself." -[Weasel Walter in L.A. Record]

Drummer/composer/improviser Weasel Walter is visiting Bard College Thursday (3/5) to give a video lecture on "the NYC No-Wave sound, complete with rare footage and audio from bands involved in the movement." (Walter wrote an introduction to Marc Masters's book on the subject, No Wave.)

He then comes to Zebulon in Brooklyn on Saturday (3/7) for a jazz improv gig with NYC guitarist Mary Halvorson. The pair played together during Walter's last NYC stint in September. Expect a disquieting, dynamics-filled set that touches on both Halvorson's melodic debut CD, Dragon's Head, and Walters's tension-heavy drums.

Among the releases coming from WW's ugEXPLODE label is a possible Walter/Halvorson/trumpeter Peter Evans CD-R, out this summer. From MySpace: "i'm toying with the idea of putting out some stuff of that trio from our previous gigs, but haven't discussed it with them formally yet. there was a lot of video shot of two of the sept. shows, and we may release some of that as well."

Hardcore/metal group xBxRx, which features WW on drums, is currently mixing its next record, which Walter described as "some improvised tracks as well as songs...sonically rich and varied. totally intense, as usual."

The Flying Luttenbachers project is disbanded, but the group's punk & avant-jazz-filled second album, Constructive Destruction, featuring Ken Vandermark, Jeb Bishop, Dylan Posa, Chad Organ and Weasel Walter, is now up as a free download at ugEXPLODE.

All tour dates and live videos (including Sept 19, 2008 @ Zebulon) below...

Continue reading "Weasel Walter - a No Wave lecture @ Bard, Zebulon, other tour dates & free downloads"

photos by Lori Baily

"So Teenage Jesus and the Jerks played the Knitting Factory in N.Y.C the other night.... (the legendary No Wave band that Lydia Lunch fronted way back in the late 70's) 2 shows for 1 night only and I wasn't there. I wasn't even remotely in the neighourhood, I was stuck in London, England." [The Dark Forest]

Of all the strange and short-lived periods in the history of experimental music in New York, no wave is perhaps the strangest and shortest-lived.

Centered on a handful of late-1970s downtown groups like Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, DNA and James Chance's Contortions, it was a cacophonous, confrontational subgenre of punk rock, Dadaist in style and nihilistic in attitude. It began around 1976, and within four years most of the original bands had broken up.

But every weird rock scene -- and every era of New York bohemia -- eventually gets its coffee-table book moment. This month Abrams Image is publishing "No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980," a visual history by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley.

On Friday the book will be (was) celebrated with an exhibition opening at KS Art, at 73 Leonard Street in TriBeCa, and, across the street at the Knitting Factory, the reunion of Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, whose blunt, aggressive songs had instrumentation so minimal that on its records the percussionist was sometimes credited as playing simply "drum." Lydia Lunch, the former lead singer, is flying (flew in) from Barcelona to play the show.
[NY Times]

Thurston Moore played bass.

More pictures, and video, from the late show at Knitting Factory on Friday (June 13, 2008), below...

Continue reading "Teenage Jesus & The Jerks @ the Knit, NYC - pics & video"