Crossovered and Painless
New York Rocker in 1981: White, Black, Puerto Rican, everybody just a-freakin'
New York Rocker, one of the great — at least up there with Creem and the Village Voice music section and OP — music periodicals of the early ’80s, must have switched from folded newsprint to bound 11″x15″ not-quite-glossy-but-still-more-magaziney sometime circa late 1981 or early 1982, because I’ve still got a few intact issues conforming to latter specifications, and they all came out in the latter year: Human Switchboard cover April ’82, Black Flag/Bad Brains May ’82, “Downtown Uproar” (including early writeups of Sonic Youth and Frank Kogan‘s band Red Dark Sweet!) June ’82, August Darnell July/August ’82, X September ’82, Elvis Costello October ’82. It’s possible I briefly had a subscription, since I doubt those were available at my Army PX in Germany (or even in Columbia, Missouri.)
I’d definitely started reading it by a year earlier, though, since the issue that may have inspired me the most — which I don’t have anymore, folded newspapers being more difficult to preserve plus I think I may have cut a lot of it up — was the June 1981 one with Prince on the cover, between Dirty Mind and Controversy. The centerpiece of that issue revolved around the concept of racial crossover. And the centerpiece of the centerpiece, as depicted in these clips which I very much appreciate Cindy Stern scanning for me, had one or more editors or writers conducting blindfold tests of current music with Black and white teens — the former a four-man DJ crew, the latter a co-ed trio of new wave fans. Their answers, which you can read below, are still pretty revealing. Somebody should’ve made it a regular feature.
I love that Harvey calls Remain in Light deep cut “Cross-eyed and Painless” “the oldest kind of music,” though I still don’t know what he means by that — “oldest” as in Africa, maybe? Or just psychedelic funk? Admitting the Bush Tetras single (which I have a soft spot for regardless and wish I would have hung onto the 45) has “an awkward beat that people can’t really dance to” is also something that not many of New York hipsters or rock critics would have deigned to admit at the time. Backhanded semi-approval of the Clash’s attempt at a rap song by John (“The bass kept it alive. You couldn’t understand the words”) and Damien (“They’re trying — desperately!”) also make me stand up and cheer. And that Coati Mundi track is indeed “really bugged out”!
The white kids’ responses are more….let’s say problematic: especially the racist slur they say some fellow Caucasians apply to rap music in the Lakeside review (which song none of them like even though only its chorus raps, though oddly they seem somewhat more tolerant of the 100% hip-hop Funky Four Plus One) and Andy’s ignorant claim that what the Black kids call Eno and Byrne’s “sound effects record” is “the first black music I’ve heard that isn’t about sex and money since Jimi Hendrix.” (Had he never even encountered, say, Stevie Wonder??) Also interesting that they’re still dismissing Prince, at least his rhythm, as disco, which they clearly don’t distinguish from funk. So the Black kids clearly sound smarter and funnier, even if everybody likes ESG.
Eliminated for Reasons of Space, 3 August 2023