Sounds for sore eyes

ArtForum, Feb, 1995 by Jeffrey Slonim

Remember Martin Scorsese's take on the art world in New York Stories: Nick Nolte-as-macho-painter aping neo-Expressionist brushstrokes - Chuck Connelly's canvases were used as props - to the deafening strains of "Whiter Shade of Pale" while Rosanna Arquette shrieks to be heard as the beautiful-but-neglected female-artist love interest. We often picture artists blasting a stereo while they work. Some do, of course - novelist Kathy Acker cranks tunes while she writes - but most of the artists and writers we talked with this month don't seem to pump up the volume with abandon. Still, they are much involved in music. Wolfgang Tillmans snaps pictures in dance clubs; Stephen Prina plays in the band called Red Crayola; Barbara Ess' collective Drum Core put out a bootleg of women musicians; Kathy Acker continues to embrace rock 'n' roll as a rebellion against her parents' entire world.

Though they may not spin vinyl while they work, this group listens to a great deal of fabulous music. Tillmans recommends Hildegard Nef, a vintage German chanteuse. Ess grooves on Moroccan trance music. Critic Tricia Rose recommends Hole's Live Through This. Stephen Prina's professional approach to music has him hankering for old Fassbinder soundtracks. And these days Karen Finley likes a Hungarian rock star named Marta Sebastian. Sadly, after hours on the phone with these artful CD and vintage-vinyl junkies, I was all too ready to hemorrhage cash reserves at a choice used-record dive.

CHRISTIAN MARCLAY (artist): I buy lots of records that I use in my mixes. I like a lot of strange, easy-listening music that people find a little tacky: Ferrante and Teicher's prepared piano, Esquivel, Martin Denny, that type of thing. I also listen to a lot of downtown people I work with, like Elliott Sharp and Bill Frisell, and some string music, like the Soldier String Quartet; also a little jazz - Butch Morris, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Miles Davis. Sometimes I might just listen to classical - Schubert's string quartets.

I don't play much music when I work. When I listen to music, I really listen to it - it's not just background. If I'm tired and I want something to relax to, I won't put on music, I'll turn on the TV.

KATHY ACKER (writer): I can tell you what I don't like, though friends have tried to teach me otherwise: opera. I listen to old jazz stuff - Charles Mingus, Miles Davis - and right now I basically listen to girl rock: 7 Year Bitch, L7. I adore Sonic Youth. For the last month I've been obsessing about P.J. Harvey. The people I've listened to longest in rock are Van Morrison and Tom Waits. I probably know the words to three-quarters of Van Morrison's songs.

I love Motown. Whenever I'm down, that's a flag waving in my inner mind. When I was a kid, there was my parents' world, which I hated, and then there was rock 'n' roll. When I hear rock 'n' roll, I still think of everything that isn't my parents.

I often write to music. Sometimes, lines end up in my books that I don't mean to happen; like a kid, I repeat everything I've heard during the day. At the moment I have to write some songs. I told some friends of mine who have a band that I'd write some stuff for them.

WOLFGANG TILLMANS (artist): I like pop music. I like house - harder house, techno house, electronic dance. I listen to old German songs, what we call Schlager, like Hildegard Nef, who's a chanteuse from the late '50s and '60s. The other thing I come back to are French monastic songs, which are not like Gregorian chants but sound like new mantra singing. New Order and Soft Cell influenced me most in the '80s; "Blue Monday" and "True Faith" were like works of art. And all these anonymous little house techno tracks that never get much attention, I often think how much they function like an artwork.

BARBARA ESS (artist): I'm part of a collective with a couple of other women, called Drum Core, and we put out a zine about women and drumming. We also put out a bootleg of music by women, and I really listened that into the ground. I usually fix on one thing and listen to it over and over again. A long time ago it was Patti Smith's Horses; I actually wore my first copy out. I've gone back to listening to that record.

I listen to a lot of Arabic music. A friend of mine gave me some trance music from Morocco. Then he gave me this tape of Persian love songs. I also got a ton of tapes from a Sufi teacher who's in town now. But the tapes don't really have much information. They say things like Good Songs Iran, #2.

I took up running lately, and I've been listening to Hole and L7 when I run. I always go back to the Pretenders, Sonic Youth, Glenn Branca. I also like this Minneapolis band Hammerhead. I'm always listening to music in the darkroom, but I'm surprised to notice that when I'm trying to develop an idea it's usually in silence.

When I'm alone and feel like listening to music, I don't have standards. I'm not ashamed of listening to Slayer or Sade.

STEPHEN PRINA (artist): Lately I've been listening to Peer Raben's soundtracks for Fassbinder movies, because I'm working on a music project that has something to do with them. I just ran into a CD rerelease of Suicide's Suicide; I had been looking for "Frankie Teardrop" for a long time. Fassbinder used that song in In a Year of 13 Moons. Suicide really set the foundation for a lot of music that has now become assimilated.