Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (42 page)

After some gigs at CBGB and an independent single, the Idiots began to move away from their punk sound into more rhythmic, percussion-oriented territory. On the side, they’d begun playing with a 13-piece Liquid Orchestra, a percussion improv group that harked back to the original Idiot concept. When Orchestra marimba player Dennis Young joined Liquid Idiot, McGuire switched to bass, while Principato took up percussion and fiddled with voice echo devices. A name adjustment seemed appropriate, so in early ‘81 the quartet became Liquid Liquid. “The punk thing was over and I wanted to do something different than heavy guitar,” says McGuire. “We were listening to all this heavily percussive music – Fela Kuti, reggae,
Can
– so it just seemed like the logical direction. Liquid Idiot had a sort of punk aesthetic to the name, and the band was getting more sophisticated and groovy. But we already had a name as Liquid Idiot, so I didn’t want it to change too much.”

As Liquid Liquid began gigging around New York, the group met Ed Bahlman, a hip downtown record store owner who had begun putting out his own releases. Bahlman was working with another bass-and-percussion-heavy outfit,
ESG
, and was interested in making a record with Liquid as well. With only the studio budget to record two songs, the band added three live tracks and released its self-titled debut EP on Bahlman’s 99 Records. The unusual mix of post-punk weirdness with funk rhythms and dub effects on tracks like
Rubbermiro
(which features the trumpet of actor and original Sonic Youth drummer Richard Edson) prefigured post-rock a decade and a half before that term was invented.

David Pajo, Tortoise /
Slint
:

John McEntire [of Tortoise] turned me on to them. I think that was a big influence on Tortoise before I was in the band. Tortoise does stuff that’s similar to what they were doing. A lot of bass and percussion, and some electronic songs.

By the group’s second EP,
Successive Reflexes
, the band had landed in the center of a diverse early ‘80s art and music world. Between McGuire’s pursuits in visual art and the band’s eclectic sound, Liquid Liquid were at a crossroads between the burgeoning hip-hop music/graffiti-art scene uptown, rising downtown art stars like Keith Herring, no wave-inspired rock of Sonic Youth, and the post-disco dance scene of clubs like the Danceteria (Madonna’s early hangout). “It seemed like there were all these overlapping worlds,” McGuire recalls. “By 1980 there was this big New York New Wave Show that debuted the work of Keith and Jean-Michel Basquiat [whose graffiti partner, Al Diaz, played a homemade “metalphone” on Liquid’s records] and a host of other graffitti artists. Merging all of that with the punk and new wave stuff, me included. Photographers like Robert Mapplethorpe, all those no wave people like Arto Lindsay [of
DNA
] and
Lydia Lunch
. Music and art colliding.”

Liquid Liquid’s most fully realized recording and their biggest success came in 1983, with the release of a third EP,
Optimo
. Tracks like
Cavern
and
Optimo
combined disco beats and aggressive basslines with obscured chants and lyric fragments to construct music that unified body and mind-dance music as art rock.
Cavern
in particular became a hit on the dance charts and a favorite at area clubs. Hip-hop DJs such as Afrika Bambaataa were spinning it regularly uptown, while downtown DJ (and future Madonna producer) Jellybean Benitez used it to close his sets at the Danceteria. Liquid was in demand at clubs all over the city, and they found themselves sharing the stage with acts like Chaka Khan and the Treacherous Three. And when a young Irish band known as U2 canceled on an opening spot for the Talking Heads’ European tour, Liquid was invited to fill in.

Dairy I McDaniets, Run-D.M.C.:

Liquid Liquid has the jam. I was definitely listening to them. Every time we did a park jam or something, we would freestyle over Liquid Liquid. As a DJ, you had to have Liquid Liquid in your crate.

Cavern
was so popular that it was no surprise when the song reached the ears of leading hip-hop DJ Grandmaster Flash. Yet Liquid Liquid’s reaction to Flash and Melle Mel’s late 1983 single “White Lines” – which was almost entirely constructed around
Cavern
’s melody and bassline and even adapted some of the lyrics – was mixed.) “We were really big fans of his [so] I was just amazed,” McGuire says of “White Lines.” But it was a mixture of feelings. You’re excited that this guy you admire is doing this – and I remember an article at the time where [their label said they] had every intention of giving Liquid Liquid what they deserve – but then everything got kind of muddled.”

“White Lines” went on to become one of the best known early rap songs (its catchphrase “something like a phenomenon” was invoked by countless rappers, and even became an album title, LL Cool J’s 1997 Phenomenon), but Liquid Liquid did not receive a cent in royalties for over a decade. An agreement with Flash’s label, Sugar Hill, was not reached until 1995, when Duran Duran’s cover of “White Lines” forced a settlement. By then the cost and hassle of legal battles had long since exhausted both Liquid Liquid and 99 Records. As early as 1985, both were defunct.

McGuire, who left the group before it finally ended (and turned down an offer to join the Beastie Boys’ backing band), focused on his artwork and has since distinguished himself as an illustrator in the New York Times, creator of children’s books, toy designer, and picture book author. The other members of Liquid Liquid, who released one more 12-inch single before disbanding, have continued to be involved in music to various degrees. To a large extent, however, Liquid Liquid’s contribution to modern music has been overlooked in the years since the band’s demise.

In 1997, Sasha Frere-Jones, bassist in post-rock group Ui, and the Beastie Boys’ record label, Grand Royal, joined forces to make Liquid Liquid’s three EPs available on CD. It is the first step in what may be a radical reassessment of the band’s place in the history of cutting-edge dance music. McGuire, meanwhile, is delightedly bemused: “We were a garage band, and I think it’s hilarious that some of what we created ended up making its way into hip-hop culture and ultimately in a tiny way into mainstream culture. We are still being played in clubs. I would never have guessed in a million years that this quirky little band would have an afterlife!”

DISCOGRAPHY

Liquid Liquid
EP
(99, 1981)
; the fantastic debut, most of which was recorded live at the group’s first gig.

Successive Reflexes
EP
(99, 1981)
.

Optimo
EP
(99, 1983)
; the final EP, which contains the legendary
Cavern
.

Liquid Liquid
(Grand Royal, 1997)
; contains all of the quartet’s recordings, on CD for the first time, and adds four live tracks from 1982.

THE POST-INDUSTRIAL WASTELAND

Though this chapter is loosely designed to identify groups important in the early development of industrial music, not all of these bands are, strictly speaking, industrial bands. More generally, they are bands whose music in various ways uses as its backdrop the gray and decaying wasteland of post-industrial society. Throbbing Gristle and Einstürzende Neubauten did this explicitly, by incorporating industrial sounds and images into their music. The others, in more impressionistic ways, aimed to create a soundtrack for what they saw as the horror story of modern-day life.

As with other genre classifications, the question of just what constitutes industrial music is problematic. Though Throbbing Gristle is recognized as the first group to describe its music as “industrial,” the ideas pursued in the music by no means started there. Important precursors include early 20
^th
-century composers Luigi Russolo, whose 1915 essay “The Art of Noises” outlined the need for new music that reflected the sounds of the industrial age, as well as
Erik Satie
and Edgard Varese, who incorporated modern sounds into their work. Later,
John Cage
extolled the musical virtues of all sound, even those unwanted sounds generally known as noise. Postmodern literary techniques, such as those used by William Burroughs in his cutup works, were also important to the development of industrial music.

In the late ‘70s, with Throbbing Gristle and its Industrial Records label, a new crop of bands that closely identified themselves as industrial arose. These included Cabaret Voltaire, Clock DVA, and SPK, as well as other bands pursuing musical ideas along similar lines: Nurse with Wound, Laibach, This Heat. The idea was to pursue music in the context of the late industrial (or post-industrial) society, a dehumanized world increasingly alienated from nature. In addition, industrial musicians wished to focus on issues of the modern age, where propaganda and the access and control of information were becoming the primary tools of power.

Genesis P-Orridge, Throbbing Gristle:

“Industrial” has a very clinical ring to it. It’s not like that kind of romance of “paying your dues, man”; of being “on the road” – rock‘n’roll as a career being worthwhile in itself, and all that shit. So it was cynical and ironic, and also accurate. And we liked the imagery of factories – I mean, we just thought there was a whole untapped area of imagery and noise which was suggested when we thought of “industrial.” [from Industrial Culture Handbook]

A second strain of industrial music, even more indebted to
Cage
and 20
^th
-century art music, arose shortly after Throbbing Gristle coined the term. Led by German band Einstürzende Neubauten – and including groups like England’s Test Department and American percussionist Z’ev – these groups took the industrial idea literally and employed industrial material to make music. Using power tools and assorted metal objects, they created new instruments out of the rubble of industrial society. This was clearly industrial music in its purest form.

By the time industrial music entered mainstream consciousness in the late ‘80s and ‘90s through bands such as Ministry and Nine Inch Nails, industrial music had changed quite a bit. To a large extent, these bands were inspired by groups like Chrome, the Birthday Party, and Big Black, who manipulated traditional rock instruments to create metallic, industrial sounds. While popular industrial bands were inspired by the music of these early groups, new technology meant bands no longer had to use power tools to achieve the sounds of sledgehammers or electric drills. Instead, they could simply sample from earlier industrial bands who’d done the work for them.

In addition to the tools used to create industrial music, the genre itself has shifted in the ‘90s. No longer tied to the avant-garde, popular industrial bands have applied industrial sounds to what are essentially pop songs. Though some of the sonic characteristics remain, current industrial music has to a large extent been removed from its original context. With young bands like Gravity Kills and Marilyn Manson, industrial music has emerged as one of the defining sounds of commercial “alternative” music in the ‘90s.

THROBBING GRISTLE

Genesis P-Orridge, Throbbing Gristle [from Re/Search #4/5]:

[Music] is a platform for propaganda. And it’s also a way to apply our ideas to show that without any musical training or background, through applying our philosophy to music, we made the music work as well... The philosophy must have something in it or the records wouldn’t have worked and we wouldn’t have had an influence worldwide.

The history of industrial music as we know it begins with Throbbing Gristle. With their label, Industrial Records, and their pseudo-corporate slogan, “Industrial Music for Industrial People,” they provided the genre with a name. Not so much a band as a group of art terrorists who chose sound – noise, tape effects, documentary material, and songs as well – as the best medium for their attack. TG’s reputation, then, is based less on compelling music than the power of its ideas.

King Coffey, Butthole Surfers:

Throbbing Gristle threw out all the rules altogether. We had the greatest amount of respect for them, we still do. They took the promise of punk rock to the highest level, where they no longer became a rock band. They threw away any kind of structure from their songs, from the chorus-verse to the instrumentation. The whole aesthetic of making the industrial sounds of a modern society part of their music was revolutionary.

As a general approach, the group claimed to fight an “information war” aimed at breaking the mass media’s control over what the public sees and hears. Using do-it-yourself methods and a mischievous tendency to disseminate misinformation, TG went out of its way to cover topics clearly not found in newspapers or prime time television. They investigated a post-industrial nightmare that included fascism and its related atrocities, the dehumanization of factory labor, and social deviance in all forms. In TG’s worldview, nothing was sacred and shock was an avenue to pure freedom. Much of the group’s material is designed to offend, and succeeds quite well. They shrugged off accusations that they were exploitative, or irresponsible in their use of Nazi symbolism, or degenerate in their choice of subject matter. In provoking a strong reaction Throbbing Gristle felt it had done its job.

Adopting the cutup techniques of avant-garde writer William Burroughs and artist Brion Gysin, Throbbing Gristle pioneered the use of cut up and spliced tape material in the rock world. They were also early champions of cassettes – which were cheap and easy but not yet accepted as a commercial medium – and helped create a cassette underground that enabled independent and extreme music to flourish. Their musical successors include Nine Inch Nails – whose Trent Reznor has worked with members of TG – and just about anyone else who’s ever set foot in the world of industrial music.

The roots of Throbbing Gristle go back to 1969’s radical performance group Coum Transmissions, which was directed by future Gristlers Genesis P-Orridge (Neil Megson) and Cosey Fanni Tutti (Christine Newby). They spent a number of years shocking and provoking even the most open-minded members of the avant-garde art world with shows featuring body fluids, dead animal parts, and nude photos of Cosey (a part-time stripper), that pushed the limits of obscenity and taboo. By the mid-‘70s, the group – which by then featured Peter “Sleazy” Christopherson and Chris Carter as well – determined that the best avenue for continuing their cultural assault was music. Using an array of instruments (most of which they couldn’t play), as well as tape machines and various electronic effects, the quartet renamed themselves after the northern England slang for an erection, Throbbing Gristle.