Joe Carducci on the Sleepers

  Joe Carducci is best known as the author of Rock and the Pop Narcotic, perhaps THE manifesto of Rock as an artistic form. He is also a former co-owner of the legendary SST Records, and wrote lyrics for the song "Jesus & Tequila" by the Minutemen. Joe will drop by WFMU once again (listen to his two-part History of LA Punk here and here ) on Wednesday, October 10th at 6am, this time to play live and studio recordings by The Sleepers and other related San Francisco bands. The Sleepers 1981 album "Painless Nights", described by Jon Savage as "…the deepest drive into the late 70’s unconscious that you can find outside Joy Division", will be reissued by Superior Viaduct in November with liner notes by Carducci (reprinted below by permission). Joe will also be reading from his new book, Life Against Dementia - Essays, Reviews, Interviews 1975-2011. Locals can also catch him at Book Thug Nation in Williamsburg on Friday, October 12
 

The Sleepers – Against the Day
Joe Carducci

Michael Belfer and Tim Mooney started the band and got Paul Draper and Ricky Williams together in 1977. They were recording their first record in January 1978. There was a strange lull that year when it came to bands putting out their debut 7” records. There had already been a glut of bad 45s after Patti Smith, Pere Ubu, Television, and others got signed to major labels off of theirs. The earliest independent record distributors like Jem and Bomp! didn’t really differentiate the junk from what mattered; thus the glut reached the shops and made them leery of taking new records by unknowns. In late 1977 I started working at a record shop in Portland and we began turning it into a new kind of distributor that didn’t worry about German pressings of “Dark Side of the Moon” or French Bowie singles or UK major label punk, and would make a judgment on the records before we asked shops to buy them unheard C.O.D. (read entire liner notes here

Comments

[pamella najera]

The earliest independent record distributors like Jem and Bomp.

[web design]

nice.joe

[LJP]

I wouldn't give an f what this anti-gay bigot Carducci does musically nor give a goddamn about his constricting idea of what music should be. I'll bet it typically sounds like bad 70s rock.

[Abercrombie]

Da stili classici ma sobria che si basano su colori neutri e disegni di veramente stili occhio popping e innovativi che caratterizzano gli ultimi look per pezzi di tempo, si è sicuri di trovare proprio quello che serve per tutte le vostre occasioni importanti.

[aram silver]

please have a show with just the sleepers. that would be awesome.thank you. aram

[lacoste pas cher]

Nice blog. Keep blogging. Please visit mine when you have the time.

[Eddie Barney]

More Sleepers, please!