135 Grand Street New York 1979

From: Soul Jazz Records

135 Grand Street, New York, 1979 is a unique film capturing both the aural and visual aesthetics of New York’s No Wave scene in its ascendant. Punk rock and non-musicianship fight it out with art world attitude. Garage band line-ups in varying degrees of musical destruction sit alongside post-everything poetry and experimental noise terrorists. Ericka Beckman’s film matches the rawness, minimalism and radicalism of the music - a fitting document and visual statement of new forms created out of New York’s anti-everything musical nihilism, circa 1979.

Filmed on super-8mm, the documentary captures the driving energy and posturing of early No Wave bands performing live in a sparse downtown loft. It includes the only known footage of the Theoretical Girls, The Static and a number of other No Wave bands of the period. This is a film about bands filled with painters, filmmakers, actors - and occasionally musicians - thriving and thrashing in the pulsating, vibrant post-punk world of New York where high art met low culture, where Glenn Branca, Rhys Chatham, Wharton Tiers, Taro Suzuki and the others featured here made the connections between John Cage and Joey Ramone, between the questioning of art and the Mysterians.

The film is currently showing as part of Sonic Youth’s Sensational Fix touring art exhibition as well as being screened before Glenn Branca’s most recent shows in New York City (Sep 2009). the dvd is also available as a pre-order through the Soul Jazz website. Pre-order your copy HERE.