The Nurse With Wound List: Article in "LA Weekly"

Not the sort of thing one expects to come across in a mag like LA Weekly, but there you go. It's a decent article that covers the origins of the list and its impact, and actually gets some new quotes from Stephen Stapleton. And, more expectedly, the ubiquitous Henry Rollins.

The Story Behind the Planet's Most Influential Road Map of "Weird Music" »

 

to skip several steps, here is the list, made a bit more readable (to say the least!) with recommended works by each artist

NWWList.Org: Recommendations »

 

Yikes they omitted some of the most influential pioneers . . .

 

This comes to the surface every few years. It's an interesting list - some very obscure stuff, especially considering how old the list is. It would be interesting to see someone do a modern version of this.

 

Digging deeper into the NWW list has been something I've been meaning to do for ages now. I know most of the Krautrock on the list but less of the avant stuff.

 

The list was a smart marketing move by Stephen Stapleton. Create automatic cultural kudos by associating your own name with the best and most obscure. It seemed to play havoc with record prices for things featured on the list. Another side effect was that it became an annoying rule-book for people to follow – a bit like those books 1001 Albums to Hear Before You Die. I sometimes think the list is the most significant thing NWW did.

 

Yeah but don't forget that this list was compiled in the early 80s. And there were not a lot of sources for writing about a lot of these people back then. It was years before the internet and probably came about through slogging through obscurities in record stores (that usually were reasonably priced back then IIRC). Don't know when it was updated though.

It kind of operated like that list that was included in Freak Out the first Mother of Invention record.

 

According to the list's Wikipedia entry, it was updated in 1980 after its original release in 1979.

Anyway, it's impressive how well they managed to cover the waterfront in terms of experimental and obscure music, given that they were but a couple of skint young music geeks at the time.

 

Even more reason to include the early pioneers . . I've found the early stuff is often the most interesting . . . this list gets trotted out every few years by some trying-to-be-hip publication much to the delight of NWW, and, as someone suggested above, it's probably the most interesting thing they ever did!

 

Indeed it would. Particularly as the bar has been raised a lot higher for something to be genuinely bizarre and novel. Some of Einsturzende Neubauten's output would qualify. Any other suggestions?

 

I agree with this but my point was that recordings and information about what these early pioneers were doing wasn't necessarily easy to come by (not in libraries, record stores, very few in magazine articles); so in those days you got what you wanted by trial and error (at least I did). And, yes, the early stuff is frequently the most interesting.

 

Interestingly enough my mind went immediately to bands like Coil, Cyclobe, Biosphere and others that rely heavily on electronic music. I believe the NWW list, largely because of when it was composed, had a lot of musical experimenters more in the Moondog/Harry Partch mode of 'Modern Composition'. It doesn't seem like there are as many artists doing that sort of thing these days, at least that I am readily aware of. Some of Zorn's stuff I reckon.

 

Merzbow, for sure. Just a little too new to have made the original list, but still a major figure in experimentalism/noise.

Glitchy electronica act Oval would be a contender, as would broadly similar composer/turntablist Philip Jeck.

I'd throw in some of the more experimental/innovative rock bands as well, to update the list's inclusion of bands like Agitation Free and Pere Ubu. Like post-1988 My Bloody Valentine, for their warped reinvention of guitar-based rock. NYC groups like Sonic Youth and Swans as well.

 

I'm not sure we would see much really new.

 

Thanks for posting that NWW list website. Very nice. I remember having a very blurry xerox copy of the list at one point. Oh how times have changed. I can see I am going to be investigating some of these again...

 

Spent the week investigating various selections from the NWW list site. I remember now why I have tended to lose steam in investigating these bands - there is a lot of long form 'psychedlic' jamming in this list and, as a card-carrying member of a jam band myself, I must say that this kind of music is much more fun to play than it is to listen to.

It was interesting to listen to early Whitehouse recordings and hear how much they sounded like Throbbing Gristle. Still pretty primitive but they had not yet developed that rather brutal misanthropy that turns me off about a lot of Whitehouse music.

Also listened to Father Yod/Ya Ho Wha. Oh for the days when any old guy with a big beard and a ranch could convince a cult of followers to do his bidding. The cover of the second album, 'I'm Going to Take You Home' shows the good Father getting ready to do the Tantric nasty with one of his nubile, naked young disciples. Pretty hilarious until you actually listen to the record and hear him try to sing. You'd have to be a real true believer to be able to put up with that for any length of time. At least now I know what the inspiration was for AMT's Father Moo record.

La Monte Young's 'Drift Study' was just one long, unrelentingly irritating drone. I can only assume that there is much more to La Monte than that, but frankly, I'd rather hear Merzbow's 'Pulse Demon' at full blast than listen to that again...

My favorite of this first batch was Xhol Caravan. 'Electrip' consisted of long, saxophone-led Bop-ish jams that sort of reminded me of early Mothers, but the standout is 'Motherf***ers Gmbh & Co.' which starts with two and half minutes of someone spinning through a radio dial, goes through various other jams and random sound experiments and ends with a 13 minute freakout that uses Love Potion #9 as it's starting point. This one was right up my alley.

 

I have never taken any notice of it myself but looking at it again today, of those names that I do know, I see a selection of good artists on it, but quite lot of uninteresting or just worthwhile stuff. Agree about the psychedelic stuff (e.g. Brast Burn), which is in the domain of Julian Cope.

When it comes to La Monte Young, you picked on the one track that is just not worth listening to at home, if at all. It is three generated sine-waves and was used in the Dream House environment which I think is where and how it was meant to be heard. I'm not clear why he even released it, but the flip-side of the LP it comes from is superb.

I see the list as a means of name-checking members of the diverse experimental music world at that time, and also as an act of public support for them, but no guarantee of excellence.

 

Can anyone spot the allegedly invented names?

 

Oh sure - I have a very open mind - it's just fun to listen to this stuff - comforting to know at least that there are a LOT of people out there who love to get weird and record themselves doing it.

Thanks for the La Monte Young info.

 

Swans would almost certainly be on an updated version of this list.

 

At the time of the list, no one had heard of those names (most of them), so today I think an equivalent list would not include Swans, SY, Oval or Merzbow. They are too well known. Very few bands are underground today, if an underground could be said to even exist.

 

I found a few Xhol Caravan to listen to after reading your description. Seem interesting.

 

Nurse with Wound list - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia »

 

I am pretty sure some of the names from the original list would disappear on an updated version. A few decades more of new "challenging" music, constant stream of archival releases and much better availability of past obscurities/rarities could easily deprive some of those titles of their former cult status.

Quite a few Kraurock bands (e.g. Gomorrha or Twenty Sixty Six & Then) are in reality hardly experimental or "weird", various "2nd generation" bands (e.g. Supersister or Moving Gelatine Plates heavily indebted to Soft Machine) could get axed to make room for more groundbreaking stuff, some most puzzling omissions (e.g. Anthony Braxton or Ganelin Trio) might be fixed.

However, given its creation time it is a truly impressive effort, which frankly speaking I was even not aware of. It must have surely influenced some later lists of the similar kind I used when navigating for the first time outer music spaces.

 

How does that answer the question