The downtown New York avant-garde scene of the late 1970s was both incredibly fertile and startlingly expansive; there was groundbreaking music being made in virtually every subgenre of classical, pop, and jazz music, and in retrospect, an unusually high percentage of that music was both conceptually fascinating and aesthetically rewarding. Composer
Peter Gordon
was responsible for more than his share of it, both as leader of the
Love of Life Orchestra
and as sideman to such illustrious artists as
Laurie Anderson
,
the Flying Lizards
, and
David Van Tieghem
(who also served as a member of
LOLO
). This collection brings together eight of
Gordon
's more popular and influential recordings from that era, including
"Beginning of the Heartbreak/Don't Don't"
(immortalized for contemporary hipsters by
LCD Soundsystem
on their
Fabriclive.36
compilation) and
's take on the
Stephen Foster
song
"Beautiful Dreamer,"
a deconstructive collaboration with
Justine & the Victorian Punks
.
approached pop music conventions as a composer: he took disco beats and punchy horn parts and funk bass figures and notated them, creating music that tried to wed the structure and discipline of classical music with the excitement and accessibility of pop music. Inevitably, the results were mixed: at times (notably the rather saccharine
"Roses on the Disco Floor"
and the ultimately silly mangling of
"Beautiful Dreamer"
) the music feels slightly strangled by its structural rigor, but at other times (like the rhythmically wacky
"Iago's Escape"
and the
Material
-flavored
"That Hat"
)
shows how much depth and musicality can be brought to pop music by someone with serious compositional chops. Appearances by
Arto Lindsay
and
David Byrne
add more period interest to the program, and anyone with fond memories of downtown music from this period will find plenty to enjoy here. ~ Rick Anderson