Misplaced Pages

#432567

14-400: As an electric guitarist, Grey has recorded and performed with Mars , with John Giorno in the opera Agamemon (1993), and under his own name. Grey has also as led and recorded with various ad hoc ensembles called The Blue Humans . His music draws on no wave and free jazz . Grey is also a motion picture historian and has written Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992), a biography of Ed Wood ,

28-515: A United States biographer is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Mars (band) Mars were an American, New York City-based no wave experimental noise rock band, formed in 1975 when China Burg (née Constance Burg; a.k.a. Lucy Hamilton) (guitar, vocals) and artist Nancy Arlen (drums) brought Mark Cunningham (bass) and vocalist Sumner Crane together to talk about music. They were joined briefly by guitarist Rudolph Grey of Red Transistor . The band played one live gig under

42-505: The Spanish labels G3G and Spookysound. Cunningham ran both Hyrax Records and Spookysound Records. (To clarify: 78 , 78+ , and Mars LP: The Complete Studio Recordings, NYC 1977–1978 all feature essentially the same half-hour batch of music, but with very slight auditory differences.) After the breakup of Mars, Cunningham was part of the bizarre John Gavanti "no wave opera" project with Crane, Arto Lindsay , and others. He has also worked with

56-466: The author of the libretto and songs, Don Burg, alter ego of China Burg, and myself as well as Ikue Mori from DNA. In the recording sessions we also used Arto Lindsay and his brother Duncan on garbage lid percussion for a samba takeoff. Sumner played guitar and piano, Don bass clarinet and I managed to get in trumpet, trombone, baritone horn and tuba. Ikue played the viola and cello. Neither she nor Lucy had ever touched those instruments before. Sumner called

70-595: The band Don King, and with his current outfit, Convolution. The MARS EP , on Charles Ball’s Lust/Unlust label, was recorded in December 1978 in one live session and was the last time the band played together. The songs included on the EP were: N.N. End , Scorn , Outside Africa , Monopoly and Immediate Stages of the Erotic . Crane died of lymphoma on April 15, 2003. Arlen died on September 17, 2006, following heart surgery . Mars

84-524: The director of notoriously awful cult films. Tim Burton 's film Ed Wood was based on Grey's book. In 2001, Grey rediscovered a copy of Ed Wood's final feature-length film, Necromania , which had been presumed to be lost, in a Los Angeles warehouse. In 2011, Grey produced a one-hour documentary called Dad Made Dirty Movies , about the life and career of 1960s porn film producer Stephen Apostolof, detailing his co-productions with filmmaker Ed Wood . Published works include: This article about

98-564: The name China before changing it to Mars. They played a mixture of angular compositions and freeform noise music jams, featuring surrealist lyrics and non-standard drumming. All the members were said to be completely untrained in music before forming the band. Mars played Live about two dozen times, all in Manhattan . Their first show was at CBGB's in January 1977; their last one was at Max's Kansas City on December 10, 1978. Their recorded debut

112-457: The shots generally but the arrangements were collective improvs. We recorded it in NY at Sear Sound , an all vacuum tube studio later popularized by Sonic Youth . It was released on my own label Hyrax in 1980, and sold over the years almost all the 3000 vinyl copies printed. It's now been reissued as a CD on Atavistic . In the early eighties, some crazy Italian fans made a video of the whole opera which

126-404: The songs of the opera follow him on a series of adventures, many of them involving the pursuit of various females, including a female lion, a young girl, and a grandmother "in the beautiful autumn of life." Cunningham wrote about the project on his personal website: " John Gavanti was, in a sense, a band, as we spent over a year developing and rehearsing the work. It consisted of Sumner Crane,

140-470: The vocals are babbled and the guitars, bass and drums sound like they're weaving in and out of the song while going in several different directions at once, yet the band is oddly compelling in its crazed, cacophonous way." In 1985, China Burg collaborated with Lunch on the album The Drowning of Lucy Hamilton . Due to complaints about Thirlwell's modifications on 78 / 78+ , the full studio recordings of Mars (totaling about 30 minutes) surfaced in 2003 on

154-460: Was featured in 2023 at the Centre Pompidou in a Nicolas Ballet curated no wave exhibition entitled Who You Staring At: Culture visuelle de la scène no wave des années 1970 et 1980 ( Visual culture of the no wave scene in the 1970s and 1980s ). Notes Bibliography John Gavanti John Gavanti is a 1980 no wave opera album by members of the bands Mars and DNA . It

SECTION 10

#1733086316433

168-533: Was reissued by Atavistic Records on CD in 1996 as 78+ . In 1978, Mars appeared on the influential No New York compilation LP produced by Brian Eno , along with DNA , Teenage Jesus and the Jerks , and James Chance and the Contortions , which helped to bring the nascent No Wave genre into the foreground. An All Music reviewer wrote of their contributions: "Mars creates interesting music out of apparent chaos;

182-475: Was the 3-E / 11,000 Volts 7-inch single was recorded and mixed by Jay Dee Daugherty and Brooke Delarco under the direction of Lenny Kaye and later released by Rebel Records/ ZE Records . The group then released a single live EP in 1979 or 1980, though they had broken up in 1978. Both recordings were compiled by Lydia Lunch 's self-run label, Widowspeak Records, in 1986, as 78 ; the songs were slightly remixed and tweaked by Jim Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus). It

196-433: Was written and played by Mark Cunningham (of Mars), Sumner Crane (of Mars), China Burg (of Mars), Ikue Mori (of DNA) and Arto Lindsay (of DNA). All were prominent members of New York City's short-lived No Wave music scene. The opera is a loose retelling of Mozart's 1787 opera Don Giovanni , which in turn is based on the legend of Don Juan . The title character is a libidinous figure endowed with magical powers, and

#432567