Tuxedomoon: No Tears for the Creatures of the Night
Richard Metzger is the current Boing Boing guest blogger
While the Sex Pistols were regurgitating old Who and Chuck Berry riffs in London, and the Ramones were dumbing down the Beach Boys' sound in New York City, something truly weird was going on in San Francisco. Formed in 1977 by multi-instrumentalists, Blaine L. Reininger and Steven Brown (and later joined by Peter Principle and puppeteer/weirdo, Winston Tong) Tuxedomoon are a group that, like their singular Ralph Records label-mates, The Residents, fall into exactly one category, the category of Tuxedomoon. With a sonic aesthetic difficult to describe (electronic, erudite, evil, with lots of strings and a sleazy sax, if that helps) but once called the sound of "ectoplasmic formation" (any better?), Tuxedomoon never fit into the San Francisco punk scene, they were viewed as "too European." Not surprisingly, the band decamped to Rotterdam, then Brussels in the early 1980s where they were more warmly received. Since then, Tuxedomoon have rarely played in America --just five concerts-- and I can count myself as lucky enough to have attended one of them.
Tuxedomoon celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2007 with a box set, "77-o-7" consisting of a new album (Vapour Trails), a CD of the new album played live, a rarities disc and a nearly three-hour long DVD of their multi-media film works and performance documentation. A friend gave me this box set not that long ago and it absolutely floored me. I played it for weeks on end and the video material was a joy for a longtime fan to behold. There's also been a definitive 450-page book book written on the group titled "Music For Vagabonds: The Tuxedomoon Chronicles" by Isabelle Corbisier, that looks really great. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.
Official Tuxedomoon website
Tuxedomoon on MySpace
"No Tears" video
Tuxedomoon on Glenn O'Brien's TV Party (note Debbie Harry cameo)
"Jinx" music video directed by Graeme Whifler
"Special Treatment for the Family Man" (about Harvey Milk's killer, Dan White)
"59 to 1" music video
"Desire" (with Jean-Michel Basquiat on spray-paint) from "Downtown '81"
"Jinx" live, 1979
"Nervous Guy" on TV Party
"Found Films" trailer
"Victims of the Dance" (a loft jam)
"The Stranger" (with Winston Tong)
Totally Wired: Simon Reynold's extensive email interview with Tuxedomoon's Steven Brown
Thanks Frank Alongi from Ryko!
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Ralph Records ruled.
Fortunately, Fred Frith seems to have been absorbed by the whole John Zorn gang...
Tuxedomoon! Richard, please don't leave boingboing!
The No Tears EP re-release with remixes (well, covers) from the likes of Adult is pretty damned good. A few of the treatments on it are naff, and the original tracks are still the best. But highly recommend checking it out, it's a great way to introduce yourself to an awesome group if you are not already familiar.
I saw Tuxedomoon in LA several years ago, maybe a year or two after International Deejay Gigolos released the remix singles, and it was like nothing I had anticipated (a little more psychedelic than the early recordings), but I really enjoyed it. If you're looking for more overlooked synth tunes/too-weird-for-punk stuff, check out Mark Lane. He's an LA guy who also moved to Europe in the early-80s, where he found the audience that didn't really exist back home.
If Tuxedomoon is as interesting as all that then why the need to run down the Sex Pistols and the Ramones?
Yeah, easy on the Sex Pistols, Ramones bashing.
I would also mention Sparks as another in this category. Lovely.
One of the most astounding days of my life was when I found out that my college friend's mild-mannered dad was/(is?) a key member of the Residents.
Is it wrong that my first thoughts while reading this were relating to THE Tuxedo Moon from Sailor Moon?
Yes, because that's the extent of what the Ramones and Sex Pistols did - regurgitate The Who and Chuck Berry and dumb down the Beach Boys. I can't believe I've wasted so much time listening to the stupid Ramones when I could have been listening to Tuxedomoon. Because unique ALWAYS means better, no?
I wasn't aware that music could sound dumber than the Beach Boys.
I've got a copy of Tuxedomoon's music for Bejart's Ninotchka, and I like it.
On vinyl, natch.
IIRC , I've got the "Scream with a view" and "Half-mute" LPs (EPs?) on the closet shelf too.
Happy to see I was not alone in finding their stuff of interest.
But it's certain that this stuff is not for all tastes, nothing of real interest ever is IMO.
These guys must have really dug Gary Newman and probably David Bowie too.
god this thread.
the beach boys were geniuses and so were the ramones but the sex pistols are some 7th grade shit.
and how can you write about tuxedo moon without even mentioning no wave or suicide? criminal
Did somebody mention Suicide?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCRTCqgAkfg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IflPcGzvPzk
Vega's Saturn Strip is the great unknown R'n'R album, IMHO. Better on vinyl, than the utube clip linked above.
Damn! This one's even better! Sorry I can't sub it for the above Vega link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Ux-wer8O8&NR=1
Hey but not all of the great unknown Rock and Roll of the early eighties is a-melodic, or electro-dronish.
Pour une example, Cherie, voila:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9knT28z6o0
Sorry but I could not forbear: the early eighties was actually pretty various, when it came to rock.
I'll stop posting links now, though. Enjoy!
This really takes me back... I haven't seen Tuxedomoon playing live, but I attended a Greek theater play called Agamemnon-The Ghost Sonata, a retelling of the Aeschylus play, where the opening act consisted of Mr. Reininger playing violin and singing, along with a piano player, while we the audience wandered around a hall which was made up to be a nightclub of sorts. They played selections from The Ghost Sonata, I think... For the record, the play was directed by Michael Marmarinos, and I loved it so much I went to see it twice. It gives me goosebumps, just to remember it now... very powerful and moving play.
Well well I may just start to cry...my long lost American cousins! The Ugly Americans! And weirdly relevant to what I've linked to just previously:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dyPXCF7VPxw&feature=related
I surely don't see the need to slag the Sex Pistols and the Ramones just to up the brand of Tuxedomoon, however good they are. Must there be only One? If so, what do they win?
Cheap shots, dude.
The synth sound is very reminiscent of The Screamers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGCDqotsQDY&feature=related
I wonder if there was any cross pollination with the Talking Heads, because it sounds like they were contemporary and the lead vocals sound a lot like Byrne's to me.
Apparently the Talking Heads opened for the Ramones in 75. I wouldn't have been walking yet - still, no excuse for not going to THAT concert.
i recently dug out the "No Tears" ep from the back of one of my vinyl boxes while moving. i was obsessed with that song at around age 15 after hearing it on Maximum Rock and Roll (proof that someone in S.F. thought they were punk enough). those were dark times indeed. played out far north of hollywood and orange county. along with Chrome, Tuxedo Moon were royalty in a completely ignored California musical genre (see Nervous Gender and even Fade to Black) a kind of proto-goth, post-prog, art damaged pseudo-new wave, pre-industrial weirdness. with Reagan in the White House it seemed like there really was No Future. it's amazing to me that a new band link Blank Dogs can so obviously (and most wonderfully) mimic this sound and that of Chrome with no one in the music press drawing the comparison. bravo mr. Metzger. first Nighty Night and now this bastion of my youth of ill-fame. i recently met a fellow survivor of early california ( and for me very rural) punk while on a beach in mexico. gosh, remember when subculture was a frontier town? there was no internet for instantaneous gratification. you had to work hard to find out about things and really cherish them when you did. i was 20 before i actually heard Can and much older when i heard Neu! for the first time. both bands that i had read about for years in music magazines. i loved 7 Seconds and the Misfits et. al. but Monster Movie was an absolute holy grail to me when i finally found a copy. not to mention Trout Mask Replica or In Search of Space. and remember pen pals? anytime you met another kid with a tiny ear ring or even mildly bleached hair it was like discovering your real family after years of searching.
Fan Sanfrisco was right! this band IS way too classy for Merka.
I lovelovelove Tuxedo Moon. I chanced upon the No Tears remix album when it came out, and was lucky enough to find Half Mute at a used record store not long after. The use of strings on that album is absolutely phenomenal!
If you really want to trip out, make a Tuxedomoon radio station on Pandora. I'm listening to some track right now that seems to have invented industrial and jungle on the same song. Wha? Then every other song or so you get some Talking Heads, or crazy shit like FadGadget. I'm in heaven. (And I thought my Buffalo Springfield station was the bomb.) :)
"While the Sex Pistols were regurgitating old Who and Chuck Berry riffs in London, and the Ramones were dumbing down the Beach Boys' sound in New York City...
It's more complex than that. The Pistols were nowhere near as unabashedly romantic or lyrically cerebral as The Who. The Pistols were anarchists; their music bulldozed. The Ramones were sardonic. There was obvious homage to various influences, but lyrically and melodically, they played it tongue-in-cheek, and were nothing like The Beach Boys.
@15 : Which Beach Boy do you think is the biggest genius? I'm voting for John Stamos. The video for 'Kokomo' is so brilliant that I go blind for days after watching it.
"Tuxedomoon never fit into the San Francisco punk scene, they were viewed as 'too European.' Not surprisingly, the band decamped to Rotterdam, then Brussels in the early 1980s where they were more warmly received."
Broad generalizations are always somewhat unsatisfactory, but nevertheless I just have to call you on this one.
As someone who attended my fair share of shows in the punk scene in SF, I never perceived Tuxedomoon as not fitting in. Rather, what you had was a rapidly evolving scene with all sorts of sub-genres overlapping, coming to the fore, and stepping back.
I'm not sure there was ever exactly a pure punk moment, but if there was, the speedy succession of ska, new wave, industrial, and power pop into the scene soon mixed things up, often at the same show.
Did Pere Ubu fit into the punk scene? Or the Talking Heads (in their earliest incarnation) or MX-80 Sound? How about the Dils in their country phase? Was Devo punk? Silvertone?
Subjectively, at the time, Tuxedomoon seemed as much a part of the scene as Flipper or Target Video, but the scene evolved and devolved, as did individual bands. At some point, Tuxedomoon opted to try the European option. Good for them.
But I'm not so sure that this was because they didn't "fit into" the SF punk scene, in the sense that audiences rejected them. Venues were dying, the "scene" was imploding, and 'punk' was hardening into a permanent subculture typified by Maximum Rock 'n' Roll and Gilman St.
Time to seek new horizons. Kudos to Tuxedomoon for doing so, but don't think that those of us in SF who enjoyed their music somehow evicted them.
Blaine's solo album Night Air is real good. Iloooove TM's song Dark Companion. Yep, TM, Cabaret Voltaire, Suicide, Dome....those were the days!
While the Sex Pistols were regurgitating old Who and Chuck Berry riffs in London, and the Ramones were dumbing down the Beach Boys' sound in New York City
If your real objective is to perpetuate the obscurity of your favorite band by alienating potential listeners with simplistic, insulting and inaccurate descriptions of bands that they've actually heard of, then that right there is spot-on.
Ok, Boingboing has just redeemed itself for all the posts they make me read about nerdcore rap and mashups.
jaykinney's post pretty much nails it. Artists played a notable role in San Francisco's punk scene of the late '70s and early '80s. The Mutants, the Units, the Readymades, among others, either incorporated elements of visual art into their peformances or included art students as band members. My initial exposure to performance art and my recollection from that era is that Tuxedo Moon was well-regarded. Punk in San Francisco was impressively catholic at that point in time. (Later splintering, as jaykinney noted.) My impression was that Tuxedo Moon usually headlined when they played local clubs.
Jees. Don't you people know that a little bombast is the cornerstone of rock music criticism? Kill yr idols ferchrissakes.
Moving on - yay to all the cool oddballs mentioned on this thread. I mean, the Screamers, Chrome, Pere Ubu, Sparks, Suicide, Beefhart, Hawkwind, Cab Voltaire....
Did anyone mention Nervous Gender? They were another punk band that pushed synths and music into bizarre and wonderful directions.
Tuxedomoon has gone through some distinct phases. Early electro and no wave on their first two EPs (No Tears and Scream With A View) and first LP (Half-Mute). Then they transformed into a gloomy psychedelic new wave band (Desire, Divine, Suite en Sous Soul and the Short Stories EP). Blaine Reininger left them to make occasionally brilliant synth-pop. Then Steven Brown turned the remaining band into an even more peculiar hybrid of mainstream synth-pop and retro lounge act, a hybrid at least a decade too early (Holy Wars, Ship of Fools EP, and You). Seeing them live during this period was a memorable pleasure.
They occasionally took breaks to make convincing Erik Satie styled classical music (Ghost Sonata and others).
Steven Brown has done some very nice work in Mexico of late.
This is a far-ranging band, yes they could be their own genre. If you want to rock out to some classic punk rock, this is NOT your band.
Graeme Whifler! Genius upsetter of my development.
Hi, Isabelle Corbisier, author of the book "Music For Vagabonds: the Tuxedomoon Chronicles", writing. I do largely agree with Jaykinney's comment above: Tuxedomoon were not evicted by their SF audience but, indeed, the venues were dying after the (conservative) turn initiated by Milk/Moscone's assassinations and, also, Tuxedomoon felt like they had reached their local plateau and had to seek new horizons. Continental Europe was a choice among other possible choices (NYC, UK), which came as the product of a combination of several circumstances.
There was, however, some amount of ostracization of Tuxedomoon in California but it wasn't practiced by the audiences but more by the people who set up the trends and were particularly keen on promoting their own version of "punk purity". Still today these people largely ignore Tuxedomoon when telling their "tale of the times"...