It’s a No Wave, baby….

Or, how I learned to stop worrying and to trust Bill Laswell.

You guys remember the other day when I had a Hom sammich? Well today I got a box that said Roaste Beef on it. It was good...a bit tastier than Hom. Speaking of things that are similar in small ways....

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In which we find geniuses Bill Laswell and Michael Beinhorn stripping their No Wave Band down to just themselves and selected collaborators, and putting it on wax with Martin Bisi, natch.
Material originally started as the basic band for Daevid Allen’s New York version of Gong. As the No Wave scene ramped up its short life in the late 70s they morphed into whatever Bill wanted it to be. No Wave was a short lived NY scene whose basic traits were that everything crossbred. You had painters making music, musicians making films and random people just putting anything together. The music was a melange of everything downtown...Punk, Jazz, Noise, Disco....everything.
Material came out of that and just kept mutating. I wasn’t sure if I’d post this album first or if I’d do their earlier things, but I decided on this just because. Fun, fun record. I have a big soft spot for stuff like this. It’s a lot more influential than you’d think.

Fun fact, this is Whitney Houston’s first appearance on a recording, I believe. Points for that, but I think Memories is the low point on the album.
And similar? If you can tell me how this record is similar to another record I mentioned this week, you win a random object from my garage.

Material. One Down.
Celluloid Records, 1982