(Harry Abrams)

www.hnabooks.com

Unlike recent books (I've reviewed) such as New York Noise: Art and Music from the New York Underground 1978-88 and No Wave, guitarist/Youth Moore and drummer/scribe Coley's version of this sordid SoHo loft city squalor and the atonal squeals emanating from it feels lived in; ratty; black and gray. At the risk of repeating myself, I'll repeat myself - "because I've slapped James Chance and/or his alter alter ego James White; made William S. Burroughs laugh; hit on Lydia Lunch; and remember Tribeca's Artist Space, Peppermint Lounge Mudd Club and everyplace/thing else crumbling-ly Manhattan before gentrification, these are for me."

Only more so. Because Moore and Coley let the musicians and artists tell their own surprisingly cheery stories of discovery and discovering (squarely around Eno and his non-production of the seminal No New York compilation) and the love amongst the ruins that was Anya Philips - the great heroine of this hard frantic noise - and her relationship with No Wave principle James White/Chance. Perhaps after some of Lunch's own books and the text of No Wave you wanted to know more. But maybe that's Moore and Coley's point - that there were these artists (DNA's Robin Crutchfield, Arto Lindsay, Glenn Branca, Lydia Lunch) in this moment and they made what was truly outsider music meant for solely that moment. And the best laid notions can be found in the photos - unshaven art students too snide to out product in their hair, too broke to buy anything but thrift store dinner jackets.

Brilliant music. Good book. A.D. AMOROSI