Angela Jaeger: KICKWANTS ONLY: excerpts from the punk diaries
Angela Jaeger is a New York-based singer and poet who has collaborated with a diverse group of musicians including PigBag, David Cunningham, Bush Tetras, The Drowning Craze, Billy McKenzie, Amy Rigby, Jim Sclavunos and Alan Licht. She has published with glass eye books, Green Panda press, Principal Hand and the Brooklyn Rail. Her punk diary project is based on her own teenage journals from the mid-late 70s East Village, a graphic text that has inspired readings with writer/ journalist Byron Coley.
Alan Licht will read from An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn (Drag City Press, 2002), a “both sides now” extended meditation on the 80s, the 90s, New Wave, Grunge, Post-Rock, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Philip K. Dick, and the pets.com sock puppet. Some rock-geek described Licht’s tome thusly: “A thoughtful and entertaining look at how music and culture infect (“cross-pollinate?”) each other, Alan Licht’s An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn succeeds by being real.”
Alan Licht is a New York-based guitarist and writer. Author of Sound Art: Beyond Music, Between Media (Rizzoli, 2007), he has written for the WIRE, Sight & Sound, Modern Painters, Village Voice, and other publications. A composer and improvisor who has performed with everyone from Tom Verlaine to Michael Snow to Devendra Banhart to the late Rashied Ali, he is the co-founder, with Sonic Youth’s Lee Ranaldo, of Text of Light, a group which combines free improvisation with screenings of experimental cinema.
Pat Irwin was a founding member of the ground-breaking instrumental band ”The Raybeats” as well as ”Eight Eyed Spy,” formed with Lydia Lunch and others from the New York “No Wave” scene of the late Seventies and early Eighties. Pat also played guitar and keyboards with ”The B-52′s” from 1989 through 2007. He has also composed the scores for numerous independent films (including My New Gun, But I’m A Cheerleader, Bam Bam & Celeste) and cartoons (including “Rocko’s Modern Life,” “Pepper Ann,” and “Class Of 3000.”)
As lead vocalist of the ”Bush Tetras,” Cynthia Sley produced some of the most distinctive aspects of the Tetras sounds. Sley’s spoken/sung vocals in songs like “Too Many Creeps” and “You Can’t Be Funky” created hypnotic trances offset by Pat Place’s guitar rhythms. “Too Many Creeps” was a mainstay of the infamous early Eighties New York “No Wave” club scene.
Together, Pat Irwin and Cynthia Sley have started to record and perform as Command V.
www.patirwinmusic.com
www.myspace.com/commndv
CHRIS BROKAW was born and raised in and around New York City. After attending oberlin college, he moved to Boston, Massachusetts, where he continues to reside.
In 1990, he began recording and performing internationally with CODEINE, with whom he played drums and guitar on 2 records for Sub-Pop. In 1992, he left that band to pursue songwriting, singing and guitar playing with COME, who recorded four albums for Matador and toured internationally over the course of 10 years.
Since 2002, Chris has recorded four solo albums: the instrumental “RED CITIES” (ATAVISTIC/KIMCHEE/12XU, 2002), the solo acoustic “WANDERING AS WATER”(NORMAL, 2004), the film score “I WAS BORN, BUT” (ATAVISTIC/12XU, 2004), and the rock/vocal “INCREDIBLE LOVE” (12XU/ROCK ACTION/ACUARELA, 2005).
He has performed on over 2 dozen other recordings, performing as a member of the following bands: THE WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY, THE NEW YEAR, PULLMAN, CONSONANT, and THE EMPTY HOUSE COOPERATIVE; as a guest on recordings by COBRA VERDE, MANTA RAY, ROSA CHANTSWELL, KARATE, and VIA TANIA; and as an accompanist to recordings and performances by STEVE WYNN, EVAN DANDO, THALIA ZEDEK, ALAN LICHT, TARA JANE O’NEIL, crime writer GEORGE PELECANOS, and RHYS CHATHAM.