THE GOLDEN PALOMINOS – The Golden Palominos (CEL 6662 / LP-1983)

Label: Celluloid ‎– CEL 6662

Format: Vinyl, LP, Album / Country: France / Released: 1983

Style: Avantgarde, Free Improvisation

Recorded at Radio City Music Hall Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Mixed at RPM Studio/NYC and OAO Studio/Brooklyn

Design [Layout] – Jan Luss

Photography By – Thi-Linh Le

Engineer – Don Hünerberg, Martin Bisi

Engineer [Assistant At RPM] – Mike Krowiak

Mixed By – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell, Martin Bisi

Executive-Producer – Karakos, Roger Trilling

Producer – Anton Fier, Bill Laswell

Producer [Associate] – Arto Lindsay, Martin Bisi

Repetiteur [Vocal Coach] – Peter Blegvad

Matrix / Runout (A-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

Matrix / Runout (B-Side Runout, Etched): Cel 6662 A

side 1:

A1 - Clean Plate   (Fier, Lindsay) .............................................................................. 6:32

A2 - Hot Seat   (Fier, Noyes, Miller) .......................................................................... 5:13

A3 - Under The Cap   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................ 5:32

A4 - Monday Night   (Fier, Lindsay) .......................................................................... 6:29

side 2:

B1 - Cookout   (Fier) ................................................................................................. 4:38

B2 - I.D.   (Fier, Lindsay) ........................................................................................... 6:45

B3 - Two Sided Fist   (Fier, Lindsay, Frith) ................................................................ 7:42

Musicians:

ARTO LINDSAY – vocals, guitar

ANTON FIER – drums, oberheim DMX, percussion

FRED FRITH – guitar, violin

BILL LASWELL – bass guitar

JOHN ZORN – alto saxophone, clarinet, game calls

NICKY SKOPELITIS – guitar on "Monday Night" / "I.D."

THI-LINH LE – vocals on "Monday Nigh''

MARK E. MILLER – vocals on "Hot Seat", turntables on "Hot Seat" / "Monday Night"

DAVID MOSS – percussion on "Clean Plate" / "Under the Cap" / "Two Sided Fist"

MICHAEL BEINHORN – drums and Oberheim DMX on "Hot Seat", piano on "Cookout"

JAMAALADEEN TACUMA – Steinberger bass guitar on "Clean Plate" / "Two Sided Fist"

ROGER TRILLING – tape on "Cookout"

The group first featured drummer Anton Fier, singer-guitarist Arto Lindsay, saxophonist John Zorn, bass guitarist Bill Laswell and violinist/guitarist Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis, percussionist David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others.

Arto Lindsay / Anton Fier

For twenty years, the Golden Palominos have been musical chameleons, continually changing lineups and styles. The only constant has been drummer Anton Fier, whose vision and interests have steered the group through two decades of music making.

The Golden Palominos were formed in the early 1980s, as a joint project, by drummer Anton Fier and noise-guitarist Arto Lindsay. Fier came from Cleveland where he had played with new wave cult band Pere Ubu. In 1978, he left Ohio for New York City. Once there he moved through various bands including a band he formed himself, the Feelies and the Pedestrians. At the end of the 1970s, with Lindsay and John Lurie, he co-founded the Lounge Lizards, a band that played an indescribable combination of noise, rhythm, and jazz. “Actually, when I first started playing with the Lounge Lizards, Arto and I wanted to call the band the Golden Palominos,” Fier told Down Beat’s Bill Milkowski. “We liked the name but Lurie didn’t.” Lindsay, Fier said, was the reason he joined the Lounge Lizards. So when Arto left the band, Fier did too and decided the next step was for the two of them to form a new band together, which they were able to name the Golden Palominos.

The group’s first incarnation was as a super group of the late-1970s New York downtown improv scene. Its participants included luminaries such as saxophonist John Zorn, guitarists Fred Frith and Nicky Skopelitis,and bassists Bill Laswell and Jamaaladeen Tacuma. The music the band made was a marvelous combination of incongruous styles. On the one hand, the music was improvised, free, uncontrolled even. Lindsay, the Palominos de facto frontman, played chunks of noise on his 12-string guitar which he deliberately refused to tune and squawked out truncated, nonsensical lyrics, while Zorn was as likely to accompany the band with bird calls as with his horn. On the other, when the band played it locked into a throbbing, unrelenting funk groove driven by Tacuma and Laswell’s basses and Fier’s unerring backbeat.

The group gave a series of critically well-received concerts in the New York City area in 1982, and in 1983 released a record, simply titled Golden Palominos, on Bill Laswell’s Celluloid label. The New York Times lavished praise on the album. Down Beat called it “a masterpiece…an enormously important and satisfying album” and gave it five stars, the magazine’s highest rating.

If you find it, buy this album!