Nice #4, the Zine You Could Play on Your Turntable

Several weeks back, while preparing for my contribution to WFMU's week-long celebration of the 7" known as Singles Going Steady, I rifled through the comps & splits 7" drawer and found the most frustratingly unknowable pair of records. They were clear flexis, seemingly torn from a magazine, bearing the word "Nice", the attribution "BarDor Productions", and a number (5, 6, 9 and 10), and that was it.  These records were anonymous, and possibly orphaned.  With such a near-complete lack of info, I had no choice but to listen.

I dropped the needle on one side... and heard some twisted gamelan-like orchestra recorded through 20 years of gauze; flipped and dropped it again... a disaffected woman's retelling of "Little Red Riding Hood" as though it had all just happened to her, on the Lower East Side; switched to the other disc and it's like The Inflatable Boy Clams hitched a flying saucer ride.  Everything I heard I absolutely loved.  All the voices sounded familiar but alien; all the music seemed trapped in time, though not in the dated sense.  I asked everyone in the WFMU office what it was - no one knew. 

Googling "Bardor Productions" yielded 2 hits, one of which blew the case wide open: a link to a single Irwin Chusid playlist.  I got on the horn to my ol' pal pronto, and within minutes the mystery was both solved and deepened.  Within a week, the record was mine - a gift.  Nice!  Keep reading, and it's yours.

Unbelievably, incredibly, kismetally, the Bar in "BarDor" was revealed to be none other than the host of an amazing 1990s vintage 'FMU show, Bart Plantenga.  I fondly remember Bart's show "Wreck This Mess" as the soundtrack to my flower-delivery days, stuck in the van.  2 hours and 40 minutes of unhinged freeform mixes, followed by a 20 minute set list to end the show.  He's still at it, at Radio Patapoe in Amsterdam.  Here are his playlists.  Some of you are probably also familiar with Bart's book "Yodel-Ay-Ee-Oooo: The Secret History of Yodelling Around The World".  The Dor in "BarDor" was Bart's pal Theo Dorian.

Bart has graciously assented to my posting this glorious artifact from his past (Nice #4 was published on the LES in 1981), and offered up some helpful info in the process.  Here are the mp3s, arranged according to the "page" of the 'zine they originally appeared on.  More info from Bart appears below all the musical meat.  (Alas, nothing from front cover model Lizzy Mercier Descloux)

Page 5
The Party's Over "Lament (Barbie Come Home)"
VVT "The Drive"

Page 6
Peggy's Draperies "Don't Ask Me, 1976"
Potential Propaganda "New Wave Thing To Do"
Sartre's Pupils "Fusion Polka"

Page 9
Beth Lapides "Sharp Objects"
Alex Igloo "A Screaming Comes Across The Sky"

Page 10
Harry Schneider, The Singing Plumber "A Love Song For Sona"
Moana Haggard "Prelude and Fugue" -- Denise Turner: cello
Ruggero Maggi with the Easter Island Singers "Me Maorio Tu Collu"
C. Mehrl Bennett "She Had a Towel In Her Nose"

Page 13
Standing Offer "Nothing"
Dislokate Klammer "Rubber Toad"
Lou Horvath "Dreamy b.w. with a Steady Beat"

Page 14
The Organic Eggcream "I Don't Need"
Scarlatina Lust "Awful Good"
Michael Hafftka "Kitchen Song"

Page 17
John M. Bennett "Lip Lip Lip"
Lon Reeder "Boleroesque"
John M. Bennett "Her Bag"
Dona Ann McAdams "They're Juggling Our Genes"
John M. Bennett "I Was"
Ruby And The Roof Vandells "Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby (Oh Wow)"

Page 18
David Jackson and James Browne "Stormy Monday"
S.T.O.P. "They Say"
Bart Plantenga "Entertainment"

Bart Plantenga reports:

Bardor Productions was mainly a project that erupted spontaneously from the needs and minds of Bart Plantenga and Theo Dorian and, in the beginning, poet Su Byron, along with a cute and cuddly cadre of
assistants-friends-lovers, in our HQ-cum-oversized-broom-closet at Bleecker and McDougal... Among this cadre were some who worked in copy-shops and were able to clandestinely slip our zine into gratis production, drastically cutting production costs. We sold our zines at various indie bookstores including Sohozat, Eastside Books, St. Marks, Gotham Bookmart and Printed Matter; also in Amsterdam, London, Paris, San Francisco and Albany. Nice #4 was also sold in some record stores like 99 Records in NYC.

Nice #4 The seminal, legendary zine, the only art-lit zine that could be played on your turntable. Yes the one Warhol went gaga over, the one Art forum rhapsodized in prose seldom read in those pages. This magazine contains the aural utterances of a wide swath of illegitimate artists who worked on the margins of responsibility and respectability. This history of this magazine has not been fully documented. It ignored all
economic factors, denied all limitations, refused to be not nice.

Follow this link for much more on other issues of Nice (#4 was the only audio issue), and for more publications from BarDor.

Thanks so much to Bart Plantenga and Irwin Chusid for their enthusiasm and assistance in getting this article published!  That was very nice of them.

Comments

[angela]

I remember #4.
Teen arrives in NYC circa 1980. Luckily lives 2 blocks south of 99 Records. Girl meets downtown everything. Fun ensues. There's a reason that that 80's E.V. gallery was called FUN. And speaking of very early 80's ( and fun), see a new print of WILD STYLE directed by Charlie Ahearn at Film Forum for one week 10pm show only each day. Beginning today... I saw Fab 5 Freddy with Rock Steady Crew (some even pre-teen) at the KITCHEN. ...Sorry people, it was really a good time. And very cheap rents. "And everybody was in a band" or fucking someone who was an artist or in a band- or whatever.
Yeah the cover of #4- that record was everywhere. And let us not forget a great magazine (in multiple formats) JUST ANOTHER ASSHOLE edited by Barbara Ess and Glenn Branca. I still have a copy of Just Another Asshole magazine in a vinyl edition- with 30 sec. cuts by numerous artists in different mediums.
Thanks for the memories and good night.

[mike]

Awesome -- this is exactly the kind of thing I love to find here. Thanks Scott, Irwin, and Bart!

[SJ]

Great post, S.W.!! I've been kind of obsessed with this since you played "New Wave Thing to Do" a few weeks ago. Thanks!

[Marie]

Great article Scott! Thanks. And Nice sounds so Nice. TG for pack rats and WFMU that these things still survive. I moved to New York in '87 for graduate school. I was completely unaware of the EV's history and environment (except from a guidebook to New York I had bought and my experiences there one weekend in May when I was scoping it out when I was naturally drawn there by cool-looking events posted on lampposts and ended up going to the Pyramid and being let in for free by one of the bands because I was (stupidly) complaining about the price of admission). I ended up moving to the east village from the west village in '88. It was so much fun (bands, galleries, happenings of all sorts, artists, everyone was an artist or student, or an artist wanna be), and I kind of just assumed that it had always been like that and always would be (never had seen gentrification firsthand). So, I was surprised to hear of and see its increasing gentrification after I had moved away in '91. I feel really lucky to have been able to be there and appreciate it at that time.

[Hell's Donut House]

Good grief, someone else in the world actually has a copy of this? I was beginning to think I was the only one. Never did see another issue, in anyone's collection, ever.

[endwar]

I have a National Geographic guide to birdsongs that was similarly bound as a magazine with paper pages alternating with flexidiscs. Also cool, but not as cool as this.

[Roger]

Wait - that's Irwin on the cover, right?

[Tammy]

Oh wow.
This is so incredible to remember. I used to have this. It was a treasured item. I remember the time period too. Gracie Mansion and the fun house in the Bronx
I love New Wave Thing To Do, Scott. So ominous sounding.
Thank you for this.

[gen ken]

I have this record book too. Mine is played to death. You had to turn back the pages to play the flexis (plural of flexi?)

Nice!

[Steven]

Irwin hadn't had one of his best days at the day of that photo!