The Golden Palominos (1983)

So the Americans have finally elected themselves a Prez who seems to be a decent person. And his words make sense, too. No offense, but the other candidates were just talking in tongues for me, like a bunch of spaced out religious freaks, all gibberish. May things get better now for the U.S. and the world, at least a little bit. - - - But hey, there's still some strange folks living in Mr.Obama's new home. Better get 'em out fast before the expensive furniture is ruined completely and they screw off all the golden water faucets. Get 'em out of there ASAP, dear Americans, and while you're at it, you might give the head of the clan a little taste of the old tar and feather treatment. May that crook vanish into the night, never to be be seen again. Anyway - here's a suitable soundtrack for Mr. Bush's eviction...

1 Clean Plate
2 Hot Seat
3 Under The Cap
4 Monday Night
5 Cookout
6 I.D.
7 Two Sided Fist

Anton Fier - drums, percussion, DMX
Arto Lindsay - guitar, vocals
Bill Laswell - prepared fretless bass, 4-, 6-, and 8-string basses, shortwave, Steinberger bass, slide bass, piano strings, turntables
John Zorn - alto sax, clarinets, games calls
Fred Frith - guitar, violin
Jamaaladeen Tacuma - Steinberger bass
David Moss - non-rhythmic percussion, Harry Bertoia sound sculptures
M.E. Miller - vocals, turntables
Michael Beinhorn - treatments, DMX, bass drum, piano
Nicky Skopelitis - guitar
Thi-Linh Le - vocals
Roger Trilling - records

The Golden Palominos were a joint project of Anton Fier and Arto Lindsay. In 1978, Fier came from Cleveland (where he had played with new wave band Pere Ubu) to New York City. There he moved through various bands like The Feelies and The Pedestrians. With Arto Lindsay (from the seminal No-Wave band DNA) and John Lurie, he co-founded the Lounge Lizards. Fier: "Actually, when we first started playing with the Lounge Lizards, Arto and I wanted to call the band The Golden Palominos. 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 in 1981, Fier did too, and they decided to form a new band, which they named The Golden Palominos.

Arto in the bathroom

The group's first incarnation seems like a super group of the late Seventies New York downtown improv scene. It included Fier, Arto Lindsay, John Zorn, Bill Laswell and Fred Frith. Their self-titled debut album, presented here, featured guests appearances by Jamaaladeen Tacuma, Nicky Skopelitis, David Moss, turntablist M.E. Miller and others. The album is notable for having some of the first recorded turntable scratching outside of rap music by Laswell and M.E. Miller. Equally remarkable is David Moss playing a selection of Harry Bertoia sound sculptures on "Under The Cap" (you'll find "Unfolding" by Bertoia in our archives - here).

The music on this record is a marvelous combination of incongruous styles. Many parts are improvised and free. Lindsay, the de facto frontman, extorts shards of noise from his 12-string guitar (which he deliberately refused to tune) and squawks out nonsense lyrics, while Zorn obviously has a lot of fun with his collection of bird and game calls. Then again, there are clear structures, sometimes delicate arrangements, and the whole affair is held tight together by Fier's exact, hard driving beats and Tacuma's and Laswell's pounding funk basses with their fiendishly low tones.

"Down Beat" called their debut "a masterpiece...an enormously important and satisfying album" and gave it five stars, the magazine's highest rating.

(1)