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Downtown 81
''Downtown 81'' is a 2000 American film shot in 1980–1981. The film was directed by Edo Bertoglio and written and produced by Glenn O'Brien and Patrick Montgomery, with post-production in 1999-2000 by Glenn O'Brien and Maripol. It is a rare real-life snapshot of an ultra-hip subculture of post-punk era Manhattan. Starring renowned artist Jean-Michel Basquiat and featuring such East Village artists as James Chance, Amos Poe, Walter Steding, Tav Falco and Elliott Murphy, the film is a bizarre elliptical urban fairy tale. In 1999, Michael Zilkha, founder of ZE Records (the label of several of the film's artists), became the film's executive producer. Synopsis The film opens with Jean (Basquiat) in hospital with an undisclosed ailment. After checking out, he happens upon an enigmatic woman, Beatrice (Anna Schroeder), who drives around in a convertible. He arrives at his apartment only to discover that his landlord, played by former Yardbirds manager Giorgio Gomelsky ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edo Bertoglio
Edo Bertoglio (born 1951 in Lugano) is a Swiss photographer, film director and screenwriter. He is the director of '' Downtown 81'' and '' Face Addict''. Life and work Edo Bertoglio received his degree in film directing and editing from the Conservatoire Libre du Cinema Francais in Paris in 1975. In 1976, he moved to New York City, where he worked as a photographer for ''Italian Vogue'', Andy Warhol's ''Interview'' and other magazines. He became involved in the downtown art and music scenes of the late 70s and early 80s which led to his participation in the New York/New Wave exhibition at the MoMA PS1 gallery in Long Island City in 1981. During this time, Bertoglio took photos of Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, David Bowie, Grace Jones and Madonna among others. One of his most iconic photographs shows the then-unknown Jean-Michel Basquiat wearing an American football helmet with his characteristic crown symbol and the name "AARON" emblazoned on the front. Berto ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elliott Murphy
Elliott James Murphy (born March 16, 1949) is an American rock singer-songwriter, novelist, record producer, and journalist. Biography Elliott Murphy was born in Rockville Centre, New York, grew up in Garden City, Long Island and began playing the guitar at age twelve. His band The Rapscallions won the 1966 New York State Battle of the Bands. In 1971 he travelled to Europe and appeared in the Federico Fellini film Roma Returning to New York, in 1973 he secured a record contract with Polydor Records after being noticed by rock critic Paul Nelson. In 1988, he returned to college studies he had given up in the 1960s, and completed his bachelor's degree at Empire State College. His debut album '' Aquashow'' (1973) was critically acclaimed and favorably reviewed in ''Rolling Stone'', Newsweek and ''The New Yorker''. Follow up albums included ''Lost Generation'' (1975) produced by Doors Producer Paul A. Rothchild, '' Night Lights'' (1976) and '' Just a Story from America'' (19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Interview (magazine)
''Interview'' is an American magazine founded by pop artist Andy Warhol and journalist John Wilcock in 1969. The magazine, nicknamed "The Crystal Ball of Pop," features interviews of and by celebrities. Background In 1965, pop artist Andy Warhol announced his retirement from painting to focus on filmmaking. After he survived an assassination attempt in 1968, he began to concentrate on building a business enterprise. When Warhol tried to obtain press permits for the New York Film Festival, he was denied. Therefore, having a formal method for obtaining press passes was one of the reasons he founded ''inter/VIEW: A Monthly Film Journal'' with British journalist John Wilcock in 1969. The magazine, which was headquartered at Warhol's Factory, started as a film review before shifting its emphasis to pop culture. "I felt there was a need for an easygoing, conversational magazine,' said Warhol. "Every other paper is full of bad news, but we publish only good." ''Interview'' was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Debbie Harry
Deborah Ann Harry (born Angela Trimble, July 1, 1945) is an American singer, songwriter and actress, best known as the lead vocalist of the band Blondie (band), Blondie. Four of her songs with the band reached on the US charts between 1979 and 1981. Born in Miami, Florida, Harry was adopted as an infant and raised in Hawthorne, New Jersey. After college she worked various jobs—as a dancer, a Playboy Bunny, and a secretary (including at the BBC in New York)—before her breakthrough in the music industry. She co-formed Blondie in 1974 in New York City. The band released its Blondie (album), eponymous debut studio album in 1976 and released three more studio albums between then and 1979, including ''Parallel Lines'', which spawned six singles, including "Heart of Glass (song), Heart of Glass". Their fifth studio album, ''Autoamerican'' (1980), produced hits including a cover of "The Tide Is High", and "Rapture (Blondie song), Rapture", which is considered the first rap song to ch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James White And The Blacks
James Chance, also known as James White (born James Siegfried, April 20, 1953 – June 18, 2024), was an American saxophonist, keyboard player, and singer. A key figure in no wave, Chance played a combination of improvisational jazz-like music and punk in the New York music scene from the late 1970s on, in such bands as Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, James Chance and the Contortions, James White and the Blacks (as he appeared in the film '' Downtown 81''), The Flaming Demonics, James Chance & the Sardonic Symphonics, James Chance and Terminal City, and James Chance and Les Contortions. Background James Siegfried was born in Milwaukee in 1953, growing up there and in the suburb of Brookfield, Wisconsin. Siegfried attended Michigan State University, then the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music in Milwaukee. There, he joined a band named Death, which performed covers of the Stooges and the Velvet Underground before moving toward original songs. Career At the end of 1975, Siegfri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kid Creole And The Coconuts
Kid Creole and the Coconuts is an American musical group created by August Darnell with Coati Mundi (musician), Andy Hernandez and Adriana Kaegi. Its music incorporates a variety of styles and influences, in particular a mix of disco and Latin American Music, Latin American, Caribbean Music, Caribbean, and Cab Calloway, Calloway styles conceptually inspired by the big band era. The Coconuts are a trio of female backing vocalists/dancers, founded and originally choreographed and costumed by Kaegi. Career Thomas August Darnell Browder was born in The Bronx, New York City on August 12, 1950. His mother was from South Carolina with Caribbean and Italian parents and his father from Savannah, Georgia. As an adult, Browder began going by his two middle names as August Darnell. Growing up in the Bronx, Darnell was exposed early on to all kinds of music. Darnell began his musical career in a band named The In-Laws with his brother, Stony Browder, in 1965. The band disbanded so Darnell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fab Five Freddy
Fred Brathwaite (born August 31, 1959), more popularly known as Fab 5 Freddy, is an American visual artist, filmmaker, and hip hop pioneer. He is considered one of the architects of the street art movement. Freddy emerged in New York's downtown underground creative scene in the late 1970s as a graffiti artist. He was the bridge between the burgeoning uptown rap scene and the downtown No Wave art scene. He gained wider recognition in 1981 when Debbie Harry rapped "Fab 5 Freddy told me everybody's fly" on the Blondie song "Rapture". In the late 1980s, Freddy became the first host of the groundbreaking hip-hop music video show '' Yo! MTV Raps''. Career In the late 1970s, Freddy became a member of the Brooklyn-based graffiti group the Fabulous 5, known for painting the entire side of New York City Subway cars. Along with other Fabulous 5 member Lee Quiñones, under his direction they began to shift from street graffiti to transition into the art world and in 1979 they both exhibi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lee Quiñones
George Lee Quiñones (born 1960) is a Puerto Rican artist and actor. Quiñones rose to prominence by creating massive New York City subway car graffiti that carried his moniker "LEE". His style is rooted in popular culture and often with political messages. Life and career Quiñones was born at Ponce, Puerto Rico, and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Also started drawing at the age of five, and started doing subway graffiti in 1974. By 1976, Lee was creating huge murals of graffiti art across the subway system. As a subway graffiti artist, Lee almost exclusively painted whole cars, all together about 125 cars. He was the major contributor to one of the first-ever whole-trains, along with DOC, MONO and SLAVE, the core members of The Fabulous Five crew, which also included DIRTY SLUG. It was the first ever whole-train to run in traffic. In November 1976, ten subway cars were painted with a range of colorful murals and set a new benchmark for the scale of graffiti works. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
McDermott & McGough
McDermott & McGough consists of American visual artists David McDermott (born 1952) and Peter McGough (born 1958). McDermott & McGough emerged from the downtown New York scene of the 1980s. They are known for their work in painting, photography, sculpture and film. McDermott & McGough: An Experience of Amusing Chemistry], Irish Museum of Modern Art. Life and career David McDermott was born in 1952 in . He studied at from 1970 to 1974. Peter McGough was born in 1958 in |
DNA (American Band)
DNA was an American no wave band formed in 1977 by guitarist Arto Lindsay and keyboardist Robin Crutchfield, and later joined by drummer Ikue Mori and bassist Tim Wright. They were associated with the late 1970s New York City no wave scene, and were featured on the 1978 compilation '' No New York''. History DNA originally consisted of Lindsay, Crutchfield, Gordon Stevenson and Mirielle Cervenka, and took their name from a song by another no wave band, Mars. Stevenson went on to play bass for Teenage Jesus and the Jerks; Cervenka was the younger sister of Exene Cervenka of X. Terry Ork, head of Ork Records, booked the band at Max's Kansas City for its first show. Cervenka and Stevenson left after hearing this. Lindsay and Crutchfield hastily recruited Ikue Mori—who at the time had little command of English and no musical experience—to be DNA's drummer. This lineup of DNA played occasionally at Tier 3, CBGB and Max's Kansas City and recorded one 7" single. Within t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arto Lindsay
Arthur Morgan "Arto" Lindsay (born May 28, 1953) is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He was a member of the pioneering 1970s no wave group DNA, which featured on the 1978 compilation '' No New York''. In the 1980s, he formed the group Ambitious Lovers. He also performed with the Golden Palominos and the Lounge Lizards. He has a distinctive soft voice and an often noisy, self-taught guitar style consisting almost entirely of unconventional extended techniques, described by Brian Olewnick as "studiedly naïve ... sounding like the bastard child of Derek Bailey". Music Although Lindsay was born in the United States, he grew up in Brazil. In the late 1970s, he helped form the no wave band DNA with Ikue Mori and Robin Crutchfield, although Tim Wright of Pere Ubu soon replaced Crutchfield. In 1978, DNA was featured on the four-band sampler '' No New York'' (produced by Brian Eno). In the early 1980s, Lindsay performed on early al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
