Nico - Chelsea Girl (1967) (@256)

The story behind today's upload is the New York's Chelsea hotel, where many musicians, artists and writers (see a list here) lived and drawn inspiration. Many songs and books refer to Chelsea, and a number of movies were shot here.

For such place of cultural importance, the hotel's board of directors decided to drastically refurbish it and to convert it to a faceless, clean cut hotel, thus deleting a significant part of NY's art history; it's the city's second major cultural loss within a short period after CBGB. As part of their plan, Stanley Bard who had been running the hotel since 1955 (while his father was doing the same from 1946 to 1955) was ousted one year ago. Long term residents were horrified, and started a campaign to bring back the Bards as managers and majority shareholders of Chelsea.
Check also: Chelsea blog and Chelsea-dedicated page


One of the movies shot in Chelsea hotel was Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, where Nico (with many other 'members' of the Warhol Superstars) was playing. Nico's accordingly named first solo lp is a dream mix of first-class compositions from Bob Dylan, Tim Hardin, Jackson Browne and her V.U. acquaintances Reed, Cale and Morrison with her exceptional vocals.

album review link: here

download link: here (link removed due to a DMCA)

Ornette Coleman - live in Pallas theatre, Athens, Greece, July 11, 2008

Sometimes talk is cheap. Enjoy.

download link: here

Various - No New York (1978) (@256)

Once more, Brian Eno's contribution in the latest release of Coldplay is seminal. Read how wonderfully his way of working is described by Thomas Erlewine in allmusic. "Eno pushes them, not necessarily to experiment but rather to focus and refine, to not leave their comfort zone but to find some tremulous discomfort within it. In his hands, this most staid of bands looks to shake things up, albeit politely, but such good manners are so inherent to Coldplay's DNA that they remain courteous even when they experiment. With his big-budget production, Eno has a knack for amplifying an artist's personality, as he allows bands to be just as risky as they want to be..."

It was a very tough task to choose among the albums he has contributed as producer/ engineer and are considered as landmarks. Think... it is Bowie's Low, Devo's Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!, Talking Heads' Remain In Light, U2's Joshua Tree to name just a few. I've chosen No New York as a mere evidence of his cutting edge music horizons.

Janine Warren writes for her review in Mojo (issue 176, 7/2008) on the excellent recently published book No Wave: Post-Punk. Underground. New York. 1976-1980 written by Thurston Moore and Byron Coley: "No Wave was a short-lived anti-everything sonic assault arising from the embers of the New York punk scene and the experimentation of Suicide, exhaling such bands as Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, DNA, Mars and The Contortions, all of whom appeared on Brian Eno's now legendary 1978 No New York compilation and whose inclusion within these pages serves as testament to their far reaching influence."
Or as Ben Sisario writes for the New York Times: (no wave) "was a cacophonous, confrontational subgenre of punk rock, Dadaist in style and nihilistic in attitude".
There is also a very interesting interview that Thurston Moore gave to Ben Sisario for this book.
Check also the film Kill Your Idols from 2003, where many artists of No Wave are interviewed.
This is the trailer of Kill Your Idols


As for Brian Eno, you can also check the book On Some Faraway Beach: The Life & Times of Brian Eno by David Sheppard as well as this site.

Tracklisting:
A1-Contrortions - Dish It Out
A2-Contrortions - Flip Your Face
A3-Contrortions - Jaded
A4-Contrortions - I Can't Stand Myself
A5-Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Burning Rubber
A6-Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - The Closet
A7-Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - Red Alert
A8-Teenage Jesus And The Jerks - I Woke Up Dreaming
B1-Mars - Helen Fordsdale
B2-Mars - Hairwaves
B3-Mars - Tunnel
B4-Mars - Puerto Rican Ghost
B5-D.N.A - Egomaniac's Kiss
B6-D.N.A. - Lionel
B7-D.N.A - Not Moving
B8-D.N.A. - Size

album review link (allmusic): here
album review from 1979 (by Richard C. Walls, from Creem): here
download link: here