Artists making music: is it a good idea?

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

Warhol and the Velvet Underground
Basquiat produced that great Rammelzee song
Billy Childish and the Buff Medways
Tracey Emin recently compiled a CD for Habitat

― Cardinal Park, Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:15 (twenty years ago)

dubious premise

― shine headlights on me (electricsound), Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:28 (twenty years ago)

John Lennon and the Beatles

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:40 (twenty years ago)

Wasn't Beefheart a sculptor/painter before he became a musical artist?

― The Brainwasher (Twilight), Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:43 (twenty years ago)

marcel duchamp i think had some good stuff although i may be wrong, its been a bit since ive heard any of his pieces.

― jmeister (jmeister), Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:46 (twenty years ago)

word is Basquiat didn't have much to do with Beat Bop, other then the cover. He did play in the band Gray though.

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 4 August 2005 23:57 (twenty years ago)

Any of you heard Rodney Graham's rock albums? Heavily Lou Reed/Syd Barrett influenced. Not great but I like them. The Vancouver scene has quite a tradition of this, actually - Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace were with Graham in early Van punk/new/no-wave band UJ3RK5 - but now Graham is hanging out with young Vancouver rockers and sometimes claims to be abandoning art for music.

More: The anti-rock noise-spaz music of Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley in Destroy All Monsters and other bands. Michael Snow's piano improvisations (especially w/ CCMC). Greg Curnoe and other visual artists formed the Nihilist Spasm Band. Gary Hill makes music of some kind. There are a million other examples, but in general I think the artist --> musician transition pans out much better than the other way around.

― carl w (carl w), Friday, 5 August 2005 01:14 (twenty years ago)

hmm, never heard Michael Snow's music but imagine I'd like it. What's it like?

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Friday, 5 August 2005 01:23 (twenty years ago)

Swing/blues-leaning piano (or, with CCMC, group) improv interrupted by random tone bursts and annoucements, with a discernible John Cage but also free-jazz influence, with a sense of humour. He's done some more composed piano and Disklavier pieces that have a bit more of a 'process' feel. And one very funny album that he pretended was a set of field recordings from remote cultures, called The Last LP (1987), in which the fake-ethnographic field chants etc. turn out on closer listening to be versions of pop songs etc., all done solo by Snow in the studio.

For those who don't know, one of Snow's earliest projects was a movie called New York Eye & Ear Control in 1964, featuring near-static images (landscape, cityscape etc) with a soundtrack of live-recorded free and loft jazz by the likes of Albert Ayler and Don Cherry. He's been a musician as long as he's been any other sort of artist.

― carl w (carl w), Friday, 5 August 2005 02:06 (twenty years ago)

I haven't heard anything of his stuff, and I personally don't really care all that much for his art. but Nam Jun Paik has been pretty involved in music, has at least one record out.

― Tokyo Ghost Stories (Tokyo Ghost Stories), Friday, 5 August 2005 03:03 (twenty years ago)

The Ambassadors "We Love You." Google it, kids.

― maria b (maria b), Friday, 5 August 2005 03:45 (twenty years ago)

i agree w the premise of this thread

i guess its v john cage heavy, tho

― 006 (thoia), Friday, 5 August 2005 03:58 (twenty years ago)

Good Idea:
Brion Gysin - The Pool K III
Yoko Ono - Plastic Ono Band, Fly
Hermann Nitsch - just about anything

― Dr Benway (dr benway), Friday, 5 August 2005 10:22 (twenty years ago)

MOMUS

― Jena (JenaP), Friday, 5 August 2005 10:43 (twenty years ago)

I think there are quite a few musicians who have an Art school background: off the top of my head, Polly Harvey and Allison Goldfrapp...

― Johann (johann), Friday, 5 August 2005 10:44 (twenty years ago)

Martin Creed's Owada. Good idea, because pop music never gets quite as rigorously conceptual and minimalist as that. Cute Formalism!

Red Crayola and Art And Language also spring to mind. But not me, I'm a storyteller who works in art galleries and on records, but always basically as a storyteller.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 5 August 2005 11:13 (twenty years ago)

ron wood!

― j blount (papa la bas), Friday, 5 August 2005 11:18 (twenty years ago)

i think Johann is correct in that one...

soft cell... the majority of the initial tracks that are being just released were from performance pieces that marc did in school.

i think in particular a lot of the electronic pop/early-industrial/new wave and related post punk type bands had at least one art student in their midst...

then you can also get into the more experimental art/music like:
walter marchetti
christina kubisch
carsten nicolai
etc...

― ehbenoit, Friday, 5 August 2005 12:09 (twenty years ago)

He did play in the band Gray though.

With Vincent Gallo, everyone's favorite artist/actor/director.

― mike h. (mike h.), Friday, 5 August 2005 12:31 (twenty years ago)

With Vincent Gallo, everyone's favorite artist/actor/director.

word is Vincent Gallo didn't have much to do with Gray

― PappaWheelie (PappaWheelie), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:27 (twenty years ago)

Mike Kelley inna Destroy All Monsters stylee

― Outsider Enter Port City (sexyDancer), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:29 (twenty years ago)

If no artists made music, the only type of music we'd have is mashups!

*runs, ducks, hides, gives good natured noogies to fellow mashers, larfs at the AHHHRRony*

― donut ferry (donut), Friday, 5 August 2005 15:33 (twenty years ago)

Charlemagne Palestine inna Godbear stylee

― Outsider Enter Port City (sexyDancer), Friday, 5 August 2005 16:25 (twenty years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.