Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (40 page)

Ryan Adams, Whiskeytown:

Children of God
really changed my view of music a lot. Because that was something that took rock and made it triumphant, like an opera. That record is undeniably one of the greatest records of all time. I like the way he orchestrates acoustic guitar, making it really droney. When I was 14 and 15, we would fancy these bands out in the shed after the Swans.

In 1989, the Swans veered as close to mainstream as they would get when they signed to MCA Records and released their most slickly produced and song-oriented album,
The Burning World
. The band’s major label flirtations would be short-lived, however. An overall disaster, the record brought the Swans few new fans, alienated many old ones, and left the group deeply in debt. When MCA dropped the Swans after one release, Gira felt deeply shaken by the experience. Determined to maintain complete control over his music, he started his own Young God label and steered his music away from
The Burning World
’s sound.

Lou Barlow, Sebadoh:

They started out incredibly ugly – with lyrics about being raped in a jail cell and beaten by cops, or autopsies – and slowly developed into the band that did
Children of God
, where they brought in male/female god themes. And that was kind of the time I met my wife, so they kind of mirrored my life for a while. From that kind of self-hatred, moving to this idea of redemption and beauty. At the time I was just young enough to allow it to speak to me. I really liked the way the band was determined to evolve and flesh out this concept. That was something that influenced me in a philosophical way: Find what you do well, even if it’s the dumbest thing and people don’t understand it at all.

The Swans’ ‘90s music has been largely defined by their synthesis of the earlier rhythm-oriented post-no wave sound with the more melodic and acoustic elements of later albums. Following 1995’s return to form with
The Great Annihilator
, Gira announced that he would be disbanding the Swans following a final album and tour. He felt the group had become burdened with too many preconceptions and failed to inspire the interest it once did. With the double CD
Soundtracks for the Blind
, the Swans ended on a high note. Since the Swans’ end, Gira has divided his attention between two projects, an instrumental sound-collage work called Body Lovers and more song-oriented acoustic recordings under the name Angels of Light. Now based in Atlanta with Jarboe, who has continued her solo career, Gira also plans to release new bands on Young God Records, and reissue much of the Swans’ catalogue.

DISCOGRAPHY

Filth
(Neutral, 1983, Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; reissued on 2-CD set with the 1982 debut EP and live
Body to Body
album.

Cop
(K.422 / Homestead, 1984; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; the beginning of the band’s most brutal period; reissued on a double CD containing all 1984-86 material, including 1984’s
Young God
EP.

Greed
(K.422 / PVC, 1985; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; a more varied sound, with the addition of Jarboe; reissued on a double CD containing all 1984-86 material.

Holy Money
(PVC, 1986; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; a companion piece with Greed; reissued on a double CD containing all 1984-86 material.

Children of God
(Caroline, 1987; Young God / Atavistic, 1997)
; a more textured and acoustic release; reissued in a double CD package with the collected works of the Skin side project, entitled
World of Skin
.

The Burning World
(Uni / MCA, 1989; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; largely an anomaly, this is by far the group’s most accessible album; reissued on a two-CD set with the ‘91-‘92 studio material.

White Light from the Mouth of Infinity
(Young God / Sky, 1991; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; a deliberate retreat from
The Burning World
, with which it is reissued.

Body to Body, Job to Job
(Young God / Sky, 1991; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; a compilation of outtakes and live tracks from the band’s early years; reissued on 2-CD set with the group’s first two releases.

Love of Life
(Young God / Sky, 1992; Young God / Atavistic, 1998)
; reissued on a 2-CD set with all other ‘91-‘92 studio material.

Omniscience
(Young God / Sky, 1992)
; a live album of material from their 1992 tour.

The Great Annihilator
(Invisible / Young God, 1995)
; a return to full strength.

Kill the Child
(Atavistic, 1996)
; a live album featuring performances from 1985 to 1987.

Soundtracks for the Blind
(Young God / Atavistic, 1996)
; the band’s two-CD final studio album.

Swans Are Dead
(Young God / Atavistic, 1997)
; a two-CD live album, one of material from the group’s 1995 tour and the other of their final tour in 1997.

MINIMALIST FUNK

In the early ‘90s, the bands in this chapter all worked on the periphery of a larger musical movement – hip-hop – and attempted to distill the essence of ‘70s funk using limited tools and/or a more focused approach. Thus they share a certain affinity as “minimalist funk.” But while Liquid Liquid and ESG stripped down the instrumentation (and recorded for 99 Records), Trouble Funk streamlined the song structures (with the D.C.-based go-go sound).

Go-go arose in the late ‘70s out of Washington, D.C.’s African-American neighborhoods. Just as DJs in the Bronx started to isolate and repeat the best section of funk records in order to create more inspiring dance music, go-go bands like Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers did away with all but the hyper-rhythmic funk “breakdowns” in their live sets. By getting rid of the song and retaining the nonstop, full-on dance beat, go-go became the preferred music at parties in the capital area throughout the ‘80s, with groups like the Junkyard Band, Rare Essence, and E.U. (who gave go-go its biggest mainstream hit with 1988’s “Da Butt”). With its heavy audience interaction in the form of shout-outs and call-and-response chants, go-go was by design a live, community-oriented music. For that reason, the music never translated fully on record and therefore never reached a national audience. The complex polyrhythms of bands like Trouble Funk, though, have lived on through their inspiration on others.

Around the same time, 250 miles north in New York City, a small record store in the Village was becoming an outpost for the post-punk sounds coming out of England. Run by Ed Bahlman, 99 Records specialized in imports that fused punk with dub reggae, spacey funk, and other experimental sounds. Bahlman decided to turn 99 into a record label in order to release the music of no-wave composer
Glenn Branca
, but soon he steered toward bands that were offering a hip, New York version of post-punk’s funk and dub fusion. Though Liquid Liquid came out of the downtown Manhattan art scene (punks who found the groove) and ESG were teenage sisters from the Bronx (disco kids who fell in with the new wave), together their releases molded a unified “minimalist funk” sound for 99 Records.

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:

99 Records became this hangout for us. All these imports would come in and they’d play them. It became our own little slice of England. Then they put out bands like Liquid Liquid and ESG and 99 turned into this completely heavy, hip thing for us. I think there was this whole group of people like the Beastie Boys and the Luscious Jackson girls who were kind of a half-generation younger than us, teenagers who grew up [with that stuff] in New York.

Go-go and 99 Records formed two distinct strands of a funk avant-garde in the early ‘80s. Though they were little recognized at the time – and continue to be largely overlooked today – the contributions of these scenes can be heard in everything from dance pop to hip-hop to techno to post-rock.

TROUBLE FUNK

Johnny Temple, Girls against Boys:

Trouble Funk taught many of us D.C. kids the true meaning of the word “groove.” Trouble’s nonstop rhythms, best captured live, were mesmerizing and drew even the stiffest among us onto the dance floor. In American hardcore, D.C. was one of the first [punk] scenes to see the introduction of swing into the otherwise straight and rigid music. First in Soul Side (which included three GvsB members) and now in GvsB, we have always plumbed the depths of our low ends, searching for hidden grooves. Trouble Funk showed many of us that music could be just as sexual as it was aggressive... It was Trouble Funk that told us not to fear the groove; instead, ride it and sink way down low into it.

While Trouble Funk was not the first go-go band, or even the most commercially successful, it was certainly among the best. In accentuating the most appealing aspects of go-go pioneers, Trouble Funk stripped down the music to its groove essentials and virtually defined the genre for generations to come. What’s more, in its willingness to intermingle and connect with other music worlds – including D.C.’s hardcore punk scene and New York’s hip-hop scene – Trouble Funk served as the premier ambassadors of go-go. So while the go-go scene never got far beyond the capital area, Trouble Funk enabled the music’s rich polyrhythms to cross into both rock and electronic dance music, and leave a significant imprint on modern music.

DJ Spooky (Paul Miller):

Trouble Funk was absolutely brilliant with their multi-percussion shit. It’s going to take the drum ‘n’ bass kids years to match that kind of complexity. All the layering and the call-and-response thing, the way they interact with the crowd, is brilliant. My drum ‘n’ bass is more like go-go in a way, with multiple layers, and a fusion of West African stuff with sci-fi imagery.

Trouble Funk was together as early as 1978, but it wasn’t until the following year, when the group started sharing bills with original D.C. go-go band Chuck Brown & the Soul Searchers, that it found its sound. Trouble Funk’s leaders, keyboardist Robert Reed and bassist Tony Fisher, were so impressed by the Soul Searchers’ ability to distill the essence of funk – the James Brown-style instrumental breakdowns that all but discarded the song in favor of the dance grooves – they decided to adopt a similar approach. Soon the group had formulated what would become the standard go-go band lineup, which included the slap bass and bright horns of most funk bands, but diminished the role of guitar, added electro-funk synthesizers (often more than one), and most of all, focused all its attention on the beat.

Trouble Funk’s three percussionists built multilayered rhythms using congas, timbales, toms, and a variety of other drums and noisemakers, not the least of which was a steadily clanking cowbell. Instead of having a singer leading the group, Trouble Funk, like other go-go bands arising around D.C. in the late ‘70s, opted for something closer to a lead “talker.” Like early hip-hop DJs, the vocalists directed the group and audience members through party chants, call-and-response games, and shout-outs to nearby towns and neighborhoods (well-known examples include: “We gonna drop the bomb on the Southeast crew!” and “Fee fi fo fum, tell me where did you come from?”). By the time the group released its debut record, 1979’s
In Times of Trouble
, go-go was beginning to catch on as a distinct style and Trouble Funk were among the scene’s leaders.

Jenny Toomey, Tsunami / Licorice:

One of the things I loved about Trouble Funk is they never leave the audience alone. They’re always baiting the audience, making fun of them, getting them to dance, breaking them in half, pitting audience members against each other, and really involving the audience in the show. That’s something we do with less success. I spend a lot of time baiting the audience when Tsunami plays, definitely, because I really feel like it should be an exchange.

Three years later, go-go had grown into a major attraction at parties and dances in the mid-Atlantic. Though bands remained almost entirely centered in D.C., word of the music extended up into New York, where the local rap scene was exploding on a national level. Sensing that go-go might be the “next big thing,” prominent early hip-hop label Sugar Hill (who’d introduced artists such as Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash) signed Trouble Funk and released its breakthrough album,
Drop the Bomb
. With its loose, live-in-the-studio atmosphere, the record was among the first go-go releases to successfully translate onto vinyl the party vibe so crucial to the music. But more than that,
Drop the Bomb
connected Trouble Funk and go-go with the world of rap music and a far wider audience.

Wyclef, solo / the Fugees:

Trouble Funk was hot, the mixture vibe of go-go: the funk, the rock, the combination. Our stuff incorporates all of that. Like if you listen to the end of “Anything Can Happen” [from The Carnival], we’re using go-go beats.

More connections between hip-hop and go-go began to raise the music’s profile even further. Rick Rubin, an early go-go fan who ran the New York-based Def Jam label, sampled Trouble Funk in songs by the Beastie Boys and, most notably, LL Cool J’s “Rock the Bells” (in the ‘90s, Rubin and Henry Rollins’s Infinite Zero label would reissue two Trouble Funk collections). The group also recorded with early rapper Kurtis Blow, and later with the controversial rap group 2 Live Crew. And hoping to do for go-go what the film Wild Style had done for hip-hop, a film called Good to Go attempted to inspire wider interest in groups like Trouble Funk.

Meanwhile back in Washington, Trouble Funk was building other musical bridges. Though D.C. in the early ‘80s could boast of active music scenes in both go-go and hardcore punk, the two worlds rarely coincided in the largely segregated city. That changed, however, on September 23, 1983, when “The D.C. Funk-Punk Spectacular” brought together Trouble Funk with local hardcore heroes
Minor Threat
and visiting Texas punks the Big Boys. The show offered the mostly white punk kids a taste of Trouble Funk’s nonstop rhythmic assault, and had an enormous impact on the previously funk-deficient hardcore scene.