A Beginners Guide to the Musical History of New York
I won’t pretend to know too much about the renaissance, only that I regard it as highly overrated. We’re supposed to be impressed at the fact that art made a number of innovations between the late 14th to 17th centuries, but three hundred years is enough time where that hardly seems miraculous. The amount of time that has passed from the end of that period to today is about equal to the duration of the entire renaissance, and during that time we have expanded the very definition of art through the discovery of film, radio, television, recorded music, and the internet, while also inventing cars, airplanes, penicillin, feminism, and hamburgers. So you’ll forgive me that I’m not blown away by the fact that during that same amount of time a handful of people learned to paint better.
As someone who has always considered humans to be perfectly fine but mostly overwhelming, the only era in our existence that I would consider truly miraculous is the New York Music scene from the mid seventies and eighties. The fact that punk, disco, rap, house music, and the art of DJing all were created within about a decade already seems inconceivable. The fact that they were all basically created within one city makes me consider going to church.
That the city was on the verge of bankruptcy and beset by a level of violent crime that would now be considered the product of science fiction probably isn’t a tangential point. As we’ve seen in cities like Berlin and Detroit, artists are often driven to abandoned industrial centers the way termites are to damp wood. Whenever a population leaves a city for dead, artists invariably find a way to bring it back to life, after which they are usually priced out of the neighborhoods they resurrected.
The diversity of the artistic output of New York’s heyday was largely the result of the diversity of the population, who were often pitted against each other by divisions of race, class, and sexual orientation. The denim and leather clad punks of CBGBs were natural rivals of the glamorous disco dancers at Studio 54. Black kids from the Bronx and Brooklyn weren’t particularly welcome at either and were relegated to the block parties and roller skating rinks where hip hop was founded. These events were mostly unwelcoming to a gay community who would be left to find their own refuge with the private parties that led to the creation of house music. These disparate cliques and communities were bound by one simple fact, they were from New York.
A Beginners Guide to the Musical History of New York provides an overview of the many highlights from New York’s unprecedented musical history, with songs and sound-bytes, documentary excerpts and news broadcasts illustrating a cultural renaissance that could easily be interpreted as an actual miracle.
Track List
Sound Effect - Flipping Through NY Television Nov 9, 1987
News Break - WABC TV 6pm News March 8, 1978
Documentary Excerpt - Once Upon a Time In New York
Belle Epoque - Miss Broadway
J Walter Negro and the Loose Jointz - Shoot the Pump
Television - Marquee Moon
Documentary Except - CBGB’s/ Ramones/ Patti Smith
Interview Footage - CBGBs Crowd 1977
Sonic Youth - Bull In the Heather
Documentary Excerpt - Studio 54
Kid Creole and the Coconuts - Dario (Studio 54)
Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band - Cherchez La Femme
Odyssey - Native New Yorker (7” Mix)
Grandmaster Flash - Superrappin’ Theme
Michael Viner’s Incredible Bongo Band - Apache (Grandmaster Flash Remix)
Interview - Grandmaster Flash
Spoonie G and the Treacherous Three - The New Rap Language
Radio Commercial - Run DMC Raising Hell Tour
Run DMC - Perfection
Beastie Boys - Dirt Dog (Previously Unreleased)
Funkmaster Flex - Rasta T/ Q Tip Freestyles
Malcolm McLaren - World Famous Supreme Dream Team/ 42nd Street
Sound Effects - Flipping through NY Television Nov 9, 1987
News Break - CBS News 1981 (Walkmans vs Ghetto Blasters)
Radio Commercial - Velvet Underground Record Promo
Velvet Underground - I’ll Be Your Mirror
Patti Smith - Chicklets
Movie Clip - Cruising
John Hiatt - Spy Boy
ESG - About You
Mick Harvey - New York USA
News Break - WCBS New York Early Morning Report
Gil Scott Heron (Jamie XX) - New York Is Killing Me
David Byrne feat. Selena - God’s Child (Blue in the Face Soundtrack)
Roy Ayers - We Live in Brooklyn Baby
MC Lyte - Kickin’ 4 Brooklyn
Busy Bee - Limo Rap (Wildstyle Soundtrack)
News Break - CBS News 1981 (Walkmans vs Ghetto Blasters)
James Brown - Down and Out in New York City
Take 6 - Don't Shoot Me (Do the Right Thing Soundtrack)
Cool Change - In the Streets of the Bronx (A Bronx Tale Soundtrack)
Ella Fitzgerald - Manhattan
The New York Philharmonic - Someone To Watch Over Me (Manhattan Soundtrack)
Film Excerpt - Kids
TV Baby - New York Is Alright (Eric ‘Dunks’ Duncan Remix)
Sound Effects - Flipping through NY Television Nov 9, 1987
New Report - WCBS New Report (Police Protests)
Public Enemy - Fight the Power (Flavor Flav Meets Spike Lee Mix)
