Y Pants were an American all-female

no wave No wave was an avant-garde music genre and visual art scene that emerged in the late 1970s in Downtown New York City. The term was a pun based on the rejection of commercial new wave music. Reacting against punk rock's recycling of rock and r ...

band from

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 w ...

active from 1979 to 1982. The trio, made up of photographer/musician

Barbara Ess Barbara Ess (born Barbara Eileen Schwartz; April 4, 1944 – March 4, 2021) was an American pinhole camera photographer, No Wave musician and ''Just Another Asshole'' editor. She taught photography at Bard College since 1997; who in 2024, along w ...

, visual artist Virginia Piersol (aka Virge Piersol), and filmmaker Gail Vachon, developed a unique sound via their acoustic toy instrumentation of

toy piano The toy piano, also known as the ( in German), is a small piano-like musical instrument. Most modern toy pianos use round metal rods, as opposed to strings in a regular piano, to produce sound. The U.S. Library of Congress recognizes the toy pia ...

ukulele The ukulele ( ; ); also called a uke (informally), is a member of the lute (ancient guitar) family of instruments. The ukulele is of Portuguese origin and was popularized in Hawaii. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and con ...

and a paper-headed

Mickey Mouse Mickey Mouse is an American cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white ...

drum kit A drum kit or drum set (also known as a trap set, or simply drums in popular music and jazz contexts) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and sometimes other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one p ...

, augmented by electric bass guitar,

Casio keyboard Casio electronic musical keyboards were first manufactured in June 1979 and continue to be made by Casio today. Older units in the Casio line, despite being limited, were and still are popular with independent artists like Jack Stauber and Outkast ...

s and various low-tech effects. Y Pants' feminist poetics and toy instrumentation made them a hit in Manhattans's

art gallery An art gallery is a room or a building in which visual art is displayed. In Western cultures from the mid-15th century, a gallery was any long, narrow covered passage along a wall, first used in the sense of a place for art in the 1590s. The long ...

scene, while their No Wave clout brought them to be regulars at

punk rock Punk rock (also known as simply punk) is a rock music genre that emerged in the mid-1970s. Rooted in 1950s rock and roll and 1960s garage rock, punk bands rejected the corporate nature of mainstream 1970s rock music. They typically produced sh ...

venues like

CBGB's CBGB was a New York City music club opened in 1973 by Hilly Kristal in the East Village in Manhattan, New York City. The club was previously a biker bar and before that was a dive bar. The letters ''CBGB'' were for ''Country, Bluegrass, Blue ...

. In 1980,

Glenn Branca Glenn Branca (October 6, 1948 – May 13, 2018) was an American avant-garde music, avant-garde composer, guitarist, and luthier. Known for his use of volume, scordatura, alternative guitar tunings, minimal music, repetition, drone (music), dronin ...

recorded their debut 4-song EP for

99 Records 99 Records was an American independent record label, active from 1980 to 1984. The label was home to musicians in the no wave, post-punk, post-disco, and avant-garde scenes in New York City. History British designer Gina Franklyn sold British fas ...

, followed by an LP two years later.Masters, Marc. ''No Wave''. London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007, p. 203 Lyrically, most of the Y-Pants' material covered the off-kilter aspects of relationships, with explorations into the perils of laundry ("Favorite Sweater"), materialism ("We Have Everything"), patriarchy ("That's The Way Boys Are"), and a reworking of

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known as Bertolt Brecht and Bert Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a p ...

's "Barbara's Song" from '' Threepenny Opera''. Musically they have been compared to their British

post-punk Post-punk (originally called new musick) is a broad genre of music that emerged in late 1977 in the wake of punk rock. Post-punk musicians departed from punk's fundamental elements and raw simplicity, instead adopting a broader, more experiment ...

contemporaries The Raincoats for their overlapping vocal choruses and kitchen-sinkish approach to sound, rhythm and composition. Novelist and critic

Lynne Tillman Lynne Tillman (born January 1, 1947) is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. She is currently Professor/Writer-in-Residence in the Department of English at the University at Albany and teaches at the School of Visual Arts' Art Cri ...

wrote the lyrics for the band's song "Obvious." Y-Pants disbanded shortly after the release of their album, reportedly reuniting each year on the various band members' birthdays. Barbara Ess remained musically active throughout the 1980s, frequently contributing tracks to ''

Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine ''Tellus Audio Cassette Magazine'' was an audio cassette magazine publication on cassette active from 1983 to 1993. Originally intended as a subscription bimonthly, it was launched on the Lower East Side of Manhattan to create an avant-guard med ...

'' and collaborating with Peggy Ahwesh on 2001's ''Radio Guitar'' for the Ecstatic Peace! label.

Discography

* "Little Music EP" (

, 1980) * ''Beat It Down'' LP (

Neutral Records Neutral Records is an independent record label. Glenn Branca ran the label during the No Wave and post-punk scene on the Lower East Side, New York City, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Among their releases were early records by Swans and the ...

, 1982) * "Magnetic Attraction" (song recorded in 1980 and released in 1988 on ''

'' No. 21: "Audio By Visual Artists"') * ''Y Pants'' CD (Periodic Document, 1998, collects all of the above recordings)

References

{{Reflist

External links

Y Pants – "Magnetic Attraction", 1980, Gail Vachon: ukulele; Barbara Ess: bass; Verge Piersol. drums, Vocals: all. (3:11)
on

No wave groups All-female punk bands American art rock groups American post-punk music groups