Steve Reich - 70th bday retrospective

[BruceH]

Yeah, aside from the fact that On The Corner is a total piece of shit as music/recording, it exists as an 'influence' totally based on Lester Bangs' ravings...another example of how White nerds are always ready to discover 'Black' music that Blacks never even knew existed, much less cared for. Like 'Underground Hip Hop'.

In that case, where do I get my membership card for the white nerd club?

Does it get you 10% off purchases from Filene's Basement?

[Guest youmustbe]

Well I still like Tom Verlaine after 30 years, although on his own. Television was ok but Lloyd was nothing. Heard him a few months ago at Bowery Ballroom. I'm not a guitar freak but does he have chops! Like in that Silent Movie thing he does duo with Jimmy Ripp.

[Kalo]

But that 'sound' and that 'idea' was in the air here in NY and it has always awed me how the same thing but in a different context sprung up at the same time in gentified lower Manhattan and in the projects in the Bronx.

Indeed, the group Television always struck me as very much minimalism as applied to rock 'n' roll. Also working in New York, also at the right time... Then of course, there's the Ramones.

Interesting. I agree with you that the Ramones were minimalists, but in a totally idiomatic Rock and Roll way. Television, on the other hand, garnered frequent Grateful Dead comparisons at the time; I mean, they had those long long guitar solos and shit. To my ears, Talking Heads was the NY band that at the time was consciously borrowing Reich and Glass's stuff, them being art school conceptual types and all.

And, of course, Reich and Glass were themselves influenced by the brutal rhythmic primitivism of rock.

[BruceH]

But that 'sound' and that 'idea' was in the air here in NY and it has always awed me how the same thing but in a different context sprung up at the same time in gentified lower Manhattan and in the projects in the Bronx.

Indeed, the group Television always struck me as very much minimalism as applied to rock 'n' roll. Also working in New York, also at the right time... Then of course, there's the Ramones.

Interesting. I agree with you that the Ramones were minimalists, but in a totally idiomatic Rock and Roll way. Television, on the other hand, garnered frequent Grateful Dead comparisons at the time; I mean, they had those long long guitar solos and shit. To my ears, Talking Heads was the NY band that at the time was consciously borrowing Reich and Glass's stuff, them being art school conceptual types and all.

And, of course, Reich and Glass were themselves influenced by the brutal rhythmic primitivism of rock.

Point taken. Of all the NYC bands mentioned, I think Talking Heads is far and away the most likely to have been consciously influenced by modern classical minimalism. At least on the first album. (Buildings and Food has always put me more in mind of Stravinsky and Webern...but maybe that's just me.)