Y PANTS

Y PANTS

Y Pants were an all girl three piece art-rock band from New York city in the late seventies early 80's known for stripped down art-performance no wave minus the jagged screeching guitars but rather using a much quieter assult of thumb drums, ukeles and various toy instruments. Formed by Gail Vachon, Virginia "Verge" Piersol, and Barbara Ess who was an integral part of the NYC no wave emergence having been a prior member of Theoretical Girls and Static with her then boyfriend Glenn Branca. Branca produced their rare 1980 debut Ep on 99 records with the Rolling Stones cover "Off the Hook' reminiscent of The Slits, The RainCoats, and ESG. The band Later recorded a full length album titled Beat it Down produced by Wharton Tiers and released on Glenn Brancas Neutral Label in 1982. The Band was short lived as the broke up to follow their careers in Film, and Writing.

Barbars Ess (bass, ukulele, thumb drum, vocals)

Verge Piersol (drums, vocals)

Gail Vachon (keyboards, ukulele, vocals

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Marine

Formed in Brussels in 1980, Marine played experimental & funk influenced post punk. Their brand of punk-funk was said to have influenced Josef K. The short lived Belgian band reached mild success in 1981 when their single on record label Les Disques du Crepuscule  "Life in Reverse" hit number 6 in the UK on the NME indie top ten charts and captured the attention of John Peel. Having booked a session with Peel in conjunction with label mates and fellow Beligians The Names,  Marine disbanded during the recording of their first Peel Session. Splitting up over creative differences, singer Mark Demarais went on to form La Muerte influenced by The Birthday Party and The Stooges.

The Raincoats

The Raincoats were one of the most experimental bands that immediately followed the initial burst of punk rock in the late '70s. With their minimalistic approach to guitar-driven folk-rock, the band developed a distinctive, jagged sound, punctuated by a shrill violin. The Raincoats were also one of the first all-female post-punk bands, which wasn't common in the late '70s and early '80s. When they were recording, the band gained a small cult following in their native England and an even smaller audience in America; they broke up in 1984. (AM)


The Raincoats, released in 1979, was the debut album by The Raincoats. The album is perhaps best known for its off-kilter cover of "Lola" by The Kinks. The album was re-released on 9 November 2009 in vinyl with a free MP3 download and an extra track "Fairytale in the Supermarket" and as a special edition enhanced digipak CD including live footage from 1977 and 1979 and a video of "Fairytale in the Supermarket" on We ThRee, the band's own label in the UK and on the Kill Rock Stars label in the USA. (wikipedia)


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   Odyshape, released in 1981, was the second album by The Raincoats.





 




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James Chance & The Contortions Buy

One of the original punk jazz groups of the New York No Wave scene, the Contortions were led by saxophonist James Chance, aka James White. Their first recorded appearance, credited solely as the Contortions, was on the 1978 compilation, No New York. The following year, two albums were issued almost simultaneously on the ZE label, Buy the Contortions (an extreme jazz-punk LP) and Off White (a disco/standards hybrid released under the moniker James White and the Blacks, with one side vocals, the other side instrumentals). The same line-up recorded both records, although no one aside from Chance appears or is credited on the jacket of the Buy album. Following Chance and manager Anya Phillips' acrimonious break with many of the original Contortions, the line-up changed frequently.(wikipedia)

THE OFFS

Originally from San Francisco and eventually New York City, The Offs were punk/funk band from the late 70's. The Offs counted among their fans and friends numerous people in the downtown New York art/music scene, including artists Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, musician and actor Richard Edson, who played trumpet with the band, and Glenn O'Brien, the peripatetic chronicler of the scene for Andy Warhol's Interview magazine. In 1984, David Ferguson's label CD Presents released a full length album for the band called "The Offs First Record", with artwork by Basquiat.


The Offs were major players in the early days of the San Francisco punk rock scene. Their first record was a self-released 7" single featuring a cover of the Slickers' "Johnny Too Bad" with the Billy Hawk-penned "624803" on the B-side. Subsequent releases include the singles "Everyone's a Bigot" (which appeared on the Alternative Tentacles hardcore/art punk compilation Let Them Eat Jellybeans) and "You Fascinate Me." Lead singer Don Vinil was known for his outrageous on-stage behavior. Fellow San Francisco punk group, Dead Kennedys had their first show with the Offs in 1978. They frequently played at San Francisco's famed Mabuhay Gardens.

NEU!

Neu! was formed in 1971 in Düsseldorf as an offshoot from an early line-up of another seminal Krautrock band, Kraftwerk


Neu! was a German band formed by Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother after their split from Kraftwerk in the early 1970s. Though the band had minimal commercial success during its existence, Neu! are retrospectively considered one of the founding fathers of Krautrock and a significant influence on artists including David Bowie, Brian Eno, Iggy Pop, PiL, Joy Division, Gary Numan, Ultravox, Simple Minds, Negativland, Stereolab, Radiohead, The Horrors, and much of the current electronic music scene.


http://www.myspace.com/neu1