Gentleman’s Quarterly has an interesting article by Glenn O’Brien on Basquit’s old band Gray (“Gray Matters: Rambling reminiscence of Basquiat and His Orchestra”)

O’Brien went from being a regular around Andy Warhol’s Factory, to a writer on the downtown music scene at the time he knew Basquiat, to now writing on style for GQ. There were many stops in between, including standup, playing in a band, and hosting Manhattan Cable’s TV Party, on which he brought Basquiat when he was only known as the face of the anonymous SAMO graffiti writer. Basquiat became almost a regular on the show.

O’Brien of course knew Gray from the beginning, when they were called Test Pattern, from the Mud Club and around. The story of the band, and how they met is recounted in my Jean-Michel Basquiat: A Biography. O’Brien’s current column is a good read for anyone interested in Basquiat, or what has been called “No Wave” music.

O’Brien writes:

“Gray's approach to music was having heard music, to approach instruments and sound systems the way one would pick up a strange machine and try to intuit its operation and function. Since Basquiat didn't know guitar technique, it seemed like a good idea to play one with a steel file. Michael Holman discovered that you could achieve a very nice effect by pulling masking tape off the skin of a snare drum. Wayne/Justin knew that a cassette recorder was a kind of instrument. And they had a lot of really cheap little Canal Street keyboards…  And then there was the clarinet that Basquiat liked to walk around with, that was as much a scepter and wand as wind instrument.”

The band played on the same downtown circuit as DNA, the Lounge Lizards, etc. but never had a very large audience.

No Wave was a difficult, energetic style combining anger in intellectual experimentation with a back to the drawing board approach to music. It came after the decline of late-1970s Punk Rock, and was an alternative approach to the more pop oriented “New Wave.” But in the early 1980s,  with bands like the Bush Tetras still playing there alternative punk style, bands like Talking Heads having gone big but still interesting, a mix up uptown and downtown sounds in Konk, ESG, etc., the “fake” or “punk” jazz of the Lounge Lizzards sharing bills with the Sun Ra Arkestra, and performance art still in small SoHo venues and borrowing from Punk attitudes, it was still hard to tell trends and categories apart.

As O’Brien says, “Gray has been described as a noise band, industrial, experimental. Those labels, along with punk, new wave, are beside the point.” O’Brien prefers the genre “no wave,” he says, “only because it's based on negation.”

“It's ironic that Gray has been termed a noise band because their usual mode is ultra cool. It's quirky and sometimes pushes the envelope of musical mode, but it's the symmetrical, harmonic core that holds the rough edges together into something that moves with power and grace.”

Most people have only heard snippets of Gray, such as the almost ambient “Drum Mode” on the soundtrack for Downtown 81 (starring Basquiat and written by O’Brien). There are also bits in the recent documentaries Downtown Calling (2009), Blank City (2010) and The Radiant Child (2010). In the article, O’Brien recommends a collection their music Shades of Gray (Plush Safe Records, produced by original band members Michael Holman and Nicholas Taylor) as “the best compilation of Gray yet,” containing “material from way back when and more recent efforts…”

O’Brien mentions that you can get the MP3 version of Shades of Gray on iTunes, or buy it at Other Music, 15 East 4th Street, in New York.

You can preview some snippets from the CD at http://www.rushhour.nl/distribution_detailed.php?item=57408

For related information, see Nick Taylor’s DJ High Priest (djhighpriest.com), or Micheal Holman’s site, www.michaelholman.com.