Possibly the best way you’ll spend four-and-a-half minutes today.
People like Jim Power -and the art he creates, and the community it, in turn, creates -are the reason I love New York City so much. But the fact he’s homeless is infuriating. Makes the stuff in Tampa right now a lot harder to watch, much less stomach.
Love electrorock? Hiphop? Electronica? Um… dancing? Check out early 80s New York band ESG.
They were so heavily sampled that they actually titled an EP, Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills.
They opened for The Yeah Yeah Yeahs and their work’s been sampled by acts like TLC, The Beastie Boys, Tricky, and Wu-Tang Clan. Pretty impressive for a group of sisters from the Bronx.
I love them because of their blend of old-school and new-school approach; they use traditional instruments (bongos, guitars, bass) to produce a futuristic, near-electronic sound that reminds me of Krautrockers like Can and Kraftwerk. ESG were able to produce some very atmospheric sounds with a mix of minimal melodics and maximum rhythm, capturing the magical madness of New York City like so many before and after.
ESG play their final gig in June at Le Poisson Rouge.
Go if you can. Thank me later.
I felt the need to share this on World AIDS Day. It’s a simply-done work about the numerous NYC-based artists who’ve died of AIDS. Keith Haring, David Wojnarowicz, and Robert Mapplethorpe are just a few of the names here.
Yes, there are millions who’ve died, many of whom never achieved the fame many of the people in this film did, any who will die nameless, faceless… but to us North Americans, the victims are far away, out of our reach, outside our scope of experience. Aren’t they? This film (and accompanying website) “Last Address“, challenges that attitude.
With simple shots of New York life, including birds, cats, people, roads, traffic, etc, the film shows the abodes (with addresses) of all the artists who died. The absolute ordinary-ness is striking. These are people, not statistics. People like you and I.
Ordinary people get AIDS. We are all ordinary, and we can do something that is ordinary, logical, and .. ridiculously right: demand a cure. It’s overdue.
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