The name Rick Moody will be familiar to anyone who keeps current with American writing. He’s the recipient of several awards and fellowships, including the Pushcart Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship and the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir, and his lauded 1994 novel The Ice Storm was filmed by director Ang Lee. Moody is hanging around the MAGNET shop this week mostly because of his side job as one-quarter of the Wingdale Community Singers, a remarkable collection of writers, musicians and artists of varying stripes. Once pegged as an “urban folk” group that wrote old-timey songs about modern topics such as cross-dressers and funky Brooklyn culture, the Wingdales just released their second album, Spirit Duplicator, on the Scarlet Shame label. In addition to his writing and recording projects, Moody is guest editing magnetmagazine.com this week. Read our Q&A with him.
Moody: Ze Records is back somewhat, doing some of what they did during my college years, or least resting on their laurels, and this sampler of their quirky set of interests supervenes on the hard-to-get No New York, which was anyway a less democratic helping of similar tendencies. The no-wave period bloomed quickly and disappeared here in my hometown, and though it seemed to leave no real mark, a lot of what came later (Sonic Youth, most notably) would have been impossible without it. Some of this music (Teenage Jesus And The Jerks) was not inviting for me back in the day, but now it sounds energetic and uncompromising and, god forbid, kind of fun. Video after the jump.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtQ5ygEP1MI
