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.
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!
