[00:16] Meg: Welcome to Desperately Seeking the 80s. I am Meg

[00:21] Jessica: And I am Jessica. And Meg and I have been friends since 1982. We got through middle school and high school together here in New York City. We where we still live and where

[00:29] Meg: we podcast about New York city in the 80s. I do rich from the headline and

[00:34] Jessica: I do pop culture. This book that we are already in love with by Brooke Wentz is called Transfigured New York Interviews with Experimental artists and musicians, 1980-1990. So it's right in the sweet spot for us. And it's published by Columbia University Press. The book is all of these interviews that you did originally volunteer, but then you were dj.

[01:00] Brooke: The radio hosting was volunteer until I did some work at WNYC and some NPR pieces. But all the interviews are tape from tapes that I found in my basement during COVID And I wanted to preserve them essentially for my daughter and myself, essentially, and put together a compendium. But then a woman who was at the station when I was there, whose publisher suggested I work with an editor because I couldn't read them. And so one thing led to another and we ended up getting published. But they, it really, what is interesting is that they show the artists during that time and most of them are trying to promote their. Their work. A concert coming up, a release coming out. And some are super famous now and certainly don't even need that. But on the other hand, it was an interesting time because not only were they struggling and, and working with many, but a lot of people in the book you find out that a lot of them worked with other people in the book. So it's really this like weaving of culture that happened in New York during that period. Like Bill T. Jones, a lot of all the composers that he worked with are in the book. And yet some artists like Bill Presell are talking about influences of all these people. And then he's worked with some of them. So it's like this mix and melding of people. Field trip, field trip, field trip, field trip.

[02:39] Jessica: Yeah.

[02:39] Brooke: I'm a music supervisor and rights manager of a catalog of international music that we place in the film and TV shows. It's called Seven Seas Music. But my specialty is all about music rights and the business of music.

[03:00] Jessica: So you had a clearly a deep seated love of music. It somehow got you to the business side of things. But you started out and, you know, we'd love to have you tell the story as we've read it in the book, but maybe with some more embellishment about how you made your way to New York City and why you wound up being a kid who is so enamored with. With music.

[03:33] Brooke: So I'm a California girl and I just wanted to date a preppy boy. All I wanted to do when I was 17, so I went to school, started school in Boston, and then I. I was at Boston College, though. And so I didn't really like Boston, though, because it was so conservative. So I really wanted to come to New York, but my plan was to actually go to school for four years in Boston, then come to New York. And I really wanted to be a costume designer. I liked, like, kind of fashion stuff, and I really wanted to come and work in New York City as a fashion person. But costumes were really something I really liked. But I came. I started art history as a major in Boston, and I continued that when I came to New York and continued my college. I moved to New York when I. In the middle of college and I actually did get a internship or what they do is they have at the Metropolitan Museum under Diane Vreeland in the Costume Institute. I actually did restoration work one day a week down there as a volunteer. It was quite amazing, especially knowing that I worked with Diane Vreeland. It was really quite an interesting time.

[04:54] Jessica: That time was. What year did you arrive In New York? 80.

[04:59] Brooke: In this. In the September of 1980. So I worked there from 1980 to 1982 or three, actually. One of the Costume Institute, I believe, I can't remember. It was 80, must have been 81 that I went to the. The gala with a friend of mine from Boston. It was the night that John Lennon died. He went into the men's room and when he came out, he's like, I heard John Lennon got shot. I'm like, let's get the hell out of here. So we left and went down to the Dakota. So. So a lot of memories from that Costume Institute.

[05:31] Jessica: I'm just curious if you have a moment from arriving at the Dakota or even getting there on the subway or whatever. You were a really young person. And this, I'm sure you were aware that this was going to be something that would be remembered.

[05:46] Brooke: It was horrific. We were both in shock. We almost couldn't believe it. And we left. As I said, we left the gala early. I mean, the gala then was nothing like the gala is today. Few famous people, but nothing like it is today. And we just got into a taxi and. And went down there because, yeah, it's not that far. The code is not far from that poultry museum. And I do recall I mean, we were both dressed up. And I do recall I had a pair of gray suede shoes that were like, pumps, high heels. And when we got there, they were giving out candles. And so we held a candle. I remember the candle wax spilled, built on my shoe. And I was like, okay, there goes my shoe. It's ruined, but who cares? And then after that, I went back when I. When we were finished there. I recall going up to the university, and I think I went into the library for some reason, and, like, someone stood up and announced it to all the students there. Like, they got on the table, the wooden tables, and got up and mentioned it. It was pretty devastating for most people. I mean, no one could understand why John Lennon would be shot. Like, it doesn't make any sense. Field trip, field trip, field trip, field trip.

[07:05] Meg: How did you go from costuming over to music?

[07:08] Brooke: Well, I studied art history, and I maintained a radio show, so my interest was really in music. And then I was considering going to grad school for art history, but my love of music kind of took over. And I said, you know what? I really should do that. I. I took one class at fit, I think, on the side. But I was really focused. You know, my academic career was, like, in the art. Like, studying art and, like, paintings and looking at them and, you know, analyzing them and understanding the history of art, you know, in the fashion world at that time was very different than it is now. I think FIT and Parsons were the only two schools doing anything like that. And I also didn't really particularly like the theater world. And that's where a lot of the costuming was happening. And it was just really, just not something that I felt my heart and passion in. I was more drawn to my radio show, really focused on exposing artists and kind of when you have the capability of playing interesting music to millions of people because you're in New York, that, to me, was more gratifying. Exposing this music, kind of educating or explaining this interesting, weird music to listeners. And it was really a public service. I didn't get paid for it. And I was always shocked because I always loved music, even growing up in California. And I was. But we had great radio stations. New York City had terrible radio stations, and they never promoted what was going on in the city. And I'm like, there's Haraz, there's the Mud Club. There's, like, Franklin Furnace. There's Roulette, there's, you know, Lincoln Center. There's Alice Tully Hall. There's, like, all these different places that we're you're surrounded with that are doing amazing things. And no, all the radio station was like country and hard rock. I don't know, it just wasn't new enough. I mean, NYU had their own station, FMU had their own station. They were good. And wcoz, I think the jazz station was doing straight jazz. So I got more fulfillment out of bringing this new music to people. And I felt like I was doing something that people really appreciated and really liked. And when you get affirmation like that, it drives you even more and you just. I don't know. I always wondered how the heck I was ever going to make any money from it, so. Especially riding my bike back at five in the morning, you know, with a stale bagel in my back. God help me. Like, what am I going to do to make a living from this? Field trip, field trip, field trip, field trip.

[09:59] Jessica: There's a nice little anecdote in the book about a teacher who left an album out for you to get a look at and be.

[10:08] Meg: Yeah, I was wondering if you could

[10:09] Jessica: tell us about that and. And what you listened to growing up and as a teenager, what got you really excited about music in the first place. And then the second piece of it is, by the time you arrived in New York in 1980, like, you just listed off all of these incredible clubs. How did you immerse yourself? How did you find that world? No one was talking about it on the radio, so how did you find it? How did you immerse yourself? And how did you make sure that you could be enough in the scene that you could then spread the word?

[10:45] Brooke: That teacher was Ken Fairman. He was an art teacher. And I grew up in San Francisco, a very liberal town, still is. And I went to a terrific all girls school called Hamlin. And it was a very liberal, private all girls school. It was in the 70s. They had a class on Russian history. They had one on African history. Our math teacher taught us, you know, sex education classes. We could ask anything we wanted. Our homeroom's classroom had a turntable in the middle of it that or in the front of it where when we came in, we could play music. And we played music like Janis Joplin, the Beatles. This art teacher had sticky fingers. He would play music while we were in art class. And we were able to play music anything we wanted. Oh, Crosby, Stills Nash was also a big one that we were able to play before classes start. And even our modern dance teacher, we could. It wasn't that we were running around naked, but we had these Naked colored, you know, the leotards, and would dance to, like, Crosby, still Nash, all these kind of crazy hippie things. Because most of our teachers were probably in their 30s and they were just hippies. Even one of them explained to us later on that they did the. The LSD experiments over Berkeley. I mean, you're talking about a really different time. You know, mobile. Mobiles and posters and the Exorcist came out and earth shoes and, you know, all this sort of weird. And I was the type like, oh, let's try it. And my dad was like, let's try it. My dad tried est. I don't know if you know what that is, but like, you know, touchy feely thing. But my dad is such a kind of a punk rocker that he tried to walk out of the room when they, you know, they brought you and they kept you in the room. So I came from a father who was always going against the grain, and my mom, who was a conservative, church going, smarty pants doctor. So the two of them, they kind of let us loose. And, you know, my dad was like, take the bus home. I'm not picking you up. That type of environment. So, you know, we were toing on some pot at age, you know, 14, when the girl who transferred towards school was from New York City and that her parents smoked pot.

[13:04] Jessica: So although bringing pot to San Francisco is like bringing sand to the beach.

[13:11] Brooke: Well, my parents weren't smoking pot, but they were having their high balls, you know, on Friday nights. But being around that and being around different, like the teachers involving us and bringing turntables and being involved in music, and then I got sort of into my own sound system and we had our posters and I would listen to music. And then, as it's written about in the book, I received the bad news that I had scoliosis, curvature of the spine. And so I was taken out of school and I went to go see a doctor, and I came back with a b. A brace on my back that went from my hips to my neck. So the girls that I went to school with at that time, we're all welcoming and warm and fuzzy. But then when you go to high school and you meet a new group of people and you're wearing some contraption like that, you pretty much. It's not like you're ostracized, but it's like being a handicapped person and nobody really wants to invite you out.

[14:07] Meg: We had a girl in our high school class who went through that.

[14:10] Jessica: Oh, Amanda had that?

[14:11] Meg: Yeah. And it. She talked about how it really scarring. It was. Yeah, it. It had a huge impact on her adolescence.

[14:20] Brooke: Yeah, because we're supposed to wear it from the time you. They discover on you, which in my case was age 14. And you have to wear it until you stop growing and girls stop growing between the age of 17 and 18. But, I mean, in. In that case, really what I did is I just got my headphones and sat in my room. I became like an A student and then listen to music all the time. Field trip, field trip, field trip, field trip. I mean, it's interesting because as I get older, like, I realize, wow, I heard panpipes in Paul Simon's music ages ago. And Led Zeppelin's music really brought in some Moroccan and some Middle Eastern things from, like, you know, Stairway to Heaven, which I used to listen to all the time. I loved Led Zeppelin. And so when you're listening to contemporary music, you can see where some of that goes back to also. Then by the time I got to high school, my back brace went, like, halfway, and I kind of had a boyfriend, essentially, or a guy that I hung out with. And we used to go to this punk rock place called Mabuhay Gardens. And it was there during that time that he said, hey, there's this band called the Sex Pistols. We got turned on to Deborah Harry, Elvis Costello, Patty Smith. She was like, she could do no wrong. I was, like, in love with that girl. So when I came to New York, I was very much interested in checking out these places. And when you worked at the radio station, how did I find those venues? You know, the venues would send us flyers of who was coming. I mean, that was the time of mail. So you would get flyers about who's going to be in town and can you promote the show? So not only was there fun and stuff at the radio station, but then just talking to my colleagues, they were like, yeah, what's going on at the Mud Club? I think I went to the Mud Club not too many times because Harz was on the Upper west side, so it was easier for me to get to than going all the way down to, I think, Tribeca. I also had that mentality that, oh, my God, I'm in New York City. I got to take advantage of this. Where can I go?

[16:26] Meg: Okay, so experimental music. So what are the different genres that you mentioned? There's, like, no way.

[16:34] Brooke: There's no way. There's improvisation. There's electronic music. There's minimal music, jazz, like, modern jazz.

[16:46] Meg: People, while they were in the middle of creating this Kind of form in this genre. Were they calling it that or were they describing what they were doing? And then it eventually became known as that.

[16:58] Brooke: Well, it's interesting you say that, because in a lot of cases they did not describe that. But there is a section, I think it's in the philip glass or the steve reich chapter where the question is brought up, how do you feel about the term minimalism? And then they explain that. I even think lamont young's interview also explains that too, because lamont and terry riley are kind of the father figures of minimalism, with Phil and Steve coming in afterwards. But actually you. You read in this that Philip glass had her gone to one of steve reich's concerts. So Steve was actually prior to Phil. I think the chapter about living color talks about the difficulties that they had not being categorized. And so when their record came out, even though they were rock, they had a problem because they were black. And so the people at tower records couldn't figure out where to categorize them. And it's really hard. Like, even lamont young or john cage is a classical composer, but he's really a modernist. He's actually like the father of modern composition as well as lamont, which is why I put them both in the front there. And yet they don't really categorize their music or put it in a. A genre category.

[18:17] Meg: I think we're just talking about tower records because of course there is that visual of all the labels. And yeah, if you don't fit into that section, you know, that's when alternatives started popping up. And then you've got. What's the alternative? Alternative. It's like.

[18:35] Brooke: Ah, no, that's right, that's right. They didn't know where to put a lot of things. Field trip, field trip, field trip, field trip.

[18:47] Meg: One thing is interesting. You talking about how you interviewed all these different people who mention each other in the book. But when they're talking, it does feel like there's a sense of, like, fierce individualism that they need to proclaim. I mean, this is, you know, a very general statement, but there does seem to be overall a sense of like, this is what I'm doing and I need to be very specific about it and say that it's mine. Maybe because they were trying to figure out. Figure it out as they went along. I don't know. But it did seem to be a theme throughout the book.

[19:23] Brooke: Well, I mean, yeah, I think all these artists were trying to substantiate themselves at a time where. Remember, this is prior to Social media prior to cell phone. So the only way to really self promote and to get your people interested in you is through journalism, honestly through writing, through a critic writing about you or radio station talking about you. There's no other way for to hear your music.

[19:52] Jessica: The BlackRock Coalition, really fascinating to me and the idea that like genre music and genres was very helpful because you, you could find what you wanted. But on the business side it was really where are you going to get shelved and who are we going to market you to? So the idea that Living Color and Kelvin Bell, that they were fighting against this I think deserves a little discussion. And it's an issue that just continues even now about black artists breaking in, being seen as rock artists. Right?

[20:33] Brooke: Well actually, I mean that could be almost a whole nother podcast about the insurgents of black rock during that time. Because it really did happen in the 80s. And living colors first record was actually produced even with Mick Jagger was the producer on it in and it was signed to Warner Brothers Records. They still got very little accolades and most the press was around their color as opposed to the music. And so there were a lot of other bands, I and I, Michael Hill Blues B Band, Kelvin Bell, the Jean Paul Barelli's Blue Wave Bandits. Just a variety of different groups, so many and splinters of it. There was also another interesting movement at that time which was called Groove Academy here at Union Square, right across from the coffee shop, which no longer is there, but they used to have DJs that would spin and then you'd have people like Ron Carter come down and play and a lot of jazz musicians. So you had this cross of like jazz and hip hop, a lot of white and it was a very mixed crowd of races and people that would come together. And it was super cool. I mean it was super fun. It was called Giant Step, I think it was. And some of those mixes ended up producing artists that went on to sign to like Island Records or VERB or something like that. So it was really an, an interesting sort of creative time. But the whole black rock thing was it still exists today, that coalition still exists and a lot of those bands still play. But they really had to come out essentially to pave their way and to put their foot down with not only the retailers, but with just the, the, the industry in general because they weren't getting much support because black black artists are supposed to be R and B. So that's where they were putting them. And these guys were not R and B at all. So you know, one aspect too of that book that came up a few times was a lot of the artists at that time in the 80s were going back and forth between Germany and, if you remember, the Wall came down in what, 89, is that right? Yes. A lot of German and European artists were coming to New York at that time because it was the one place that they could actually work and get seen by New York City, which was considered like the Mecca of America. You know, you didn't have so many travelers going all over the world anymore. I mean, I went in 85, I went to Czechoslovakia and Hungary with my parents and East Germany. And I remember having to go send a note to someone and then come back the next day and hope to meet them so that I could get some records in. When I was in Prague to take with me. And in Hungary, I bought a bunch of records, like from Hungarian records and put them in the car. And when we went through Germany, they put that mirror underneath your car to make sure that, you know, nothing was there. You know, it's a different. It was a different time. I mean, the 80s were very much politically a different time too. They had no funding. You know, it was the beginning of private funding. The Brooklyn Academy of Music was starting up the fundraising committee. The development committee there was very smart and brought celebrities in. And in doing so, they recognized, holy shit, we bring celebrities to these things. We can raise money because everybody's going to come because they want to see the celebrity. You know, it's a different type of fundraise than just asking them for money. Yeah. And, and, and actually Reagan was in power, and Reagan was saying, how was pulling back on the arts? My friend Nancy was a programmer at the Public Theater. They were having a lot of difficulty. You had to go into private. And then Philip Morris was starting to pay for everything. And they put their name on it. And then of course, ten years later, but it's like, holy shit, it's a cigarette company. We can't be doing that. Field trip, Field trip. Field trip. Field trip.

[24:45] Meg: This is from the Eric Boghossian interview. This is what he says. It's even more complex than that. But the main thing is now that we've gone through the 60s and the 70s and everybody thinks they know everything, everything that's liberal. I think it's a good time to like, maybe go back and look it over again, because I don't think we ever really know that stuff as well as we think we do. I was just like, all right, thank you, Eric, for saying that in 1982. And it's very timely, I think for us now.

[25:20] Jessica: Yes. You're so far left that now you're right.

[25:22] Meg: And that again, like, it all comes around. He goes through this whole thing about Reagan, you know, he could have said it about Bush, he could have said it about Trump. Situation.

[25:32] Jessica: I love how it's not even the Trump presidency anymore. Situation, situation. In one of these interviews, I think it's John Lurie. He's talking about the clubs that he likes to go to and he mentions Nels. I remember the first time I went to Nels and that I. I felt so cool.

[25:52] Brooke: Oh, my God. It was very difficult to get in that place, if I recall, if you got in, you were pretty cool. Let me tell you.

[26:00] Jessica: Friend was a junior drag queen. I wasn't cool. I was just hanging with the right. The right people, right crowd. Right. Were there any other down? Because we talk about the downtown scene a lot.

[26:12] Brooke: Well, the Light Limelight was a terrific place and Webster hall was the Ritz. That was fun too. I mean, I used to go there all the time. It was a great place. I think I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers there for the first time. And we would go up on the balcony. Actually, I took my daughter there not too long ago and it was very much, very, very much the same. Were some really great places. I mean, Bill Niblock's Place, Experimental Intermediate foundation, and then Roulette was on West Broadway at the time. There was a plethora of places to go and you could just wander the streets and go. End up at a jazz club and then go home. I mean, it was a really lovely, easy to move around and inexpensive time. It's now I might go broke if I did all those things one night.

[27:00] Meg: So here you are. I won't say where you're staying to preserve your privacy, but you are staying in wonderful location. You live in San Francisco, you're in New York to visit. What are you doing tonight? What are you going to do this week?

[27:13] Brooke: Oh, tonight I am. Well, tomorrow night I'm going to go see Twyla Tharp because I haven't seen her for ages and I haven't been to the Joyce Theater for a long time. And tonight there is a talk about no Wave at the National Arts Club. Julia Gorton in a talk and slideshow exploring the fashion and aesthetics of no Wave, the hyper local music scene of the late 70s.

[27:40] Meg: How would you describe no Wave?

[27:42] Brooke: That's a hard one for me because I remember new wave. And so no wave is kind of a New York term, I think. No Wave is sort of like. Supposed to be sort of like Lower east side, sort of kind of low leady. But I think more. Let's see how she describes it. I mean, she says she focuses on subjects such as Deborah Harry, Patti Smith, Tom Verlaine, David Byrne, Lydia Lunch, Iggy Pop, John James Chance, Richard Hell.

[28:10] Meg: Sounds like it's about location.

[28:12] Brooke: Yeah, it could be more about location in downtown. Yeah.

[28:15] Jessica: You are now blurbing someone else's book while we're blurbing yours.

[28:21] Meg: Well, I hope you enjoy New York this week as much as you did when you were fresh off the plane from California.

[28:29] Brooke: I love coming back to the city. There's always so much happening and you always do run into people in this town, no matter where you are. And that's sort of the beauty of this city, New York, is that in la, people scurry from car to car and red carpet to red carpet or their home to behind, you know, the gated facility of where they're working. But here, no, you walk down the street and you're walking with every other person, no matter what size, shape, ethnicity, wealth, bracket. I love it. I love this town.