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RBP contributor Simon Witter reviews a sumptuous new photo-chronicle of Manhattan's New Wave/No Wave avant-garde in the late '70s and '80s. From Talking Heads to John Zorn and Glenn Branca to the Bush Tetras, New York Noise returns us to a pre-sanitised era when the Bowery meant bums and the Big Apple was (in David Byrne's words) "scary and legendary." --Barney Hoskyns, RBP Editorial Director

Perusing the wealth of multi-disciplinary artistic talent beaming out of the 400 black and white images in New York Noise (Soul Jazz Publishing), it's hard to avoid two thoughts. Firstly, that the timeline chosen by the publishers and photographer Paula Court almost entirely mirrors the span of Simon Reynolds' eulogy to post-punk musical creativity in Britain, Rip It Up And Start Again. Together these books span the very different transatlantic scenes of the time (1978-88), reminding us that the '80s were a time of thrilling artistic upheaval and experimentation, so much more vital than the floppy-fringed pop gloss wasteland that decade is often dismissed as.

Second, that the unwritten subtext of this pictorial treasure trove is a lament for all that is lost under the relentless wheels of urban gentrification. The socio-economic makeup of New York has changed dramatically since the era portrayed here, maybe more fundamentally than in any other global capital city. It's not a development unique to New York, of course, but where else is the change as marked as in the various evocative urban villages that make up downtown Manhattan, not to mention the Disneyfication of 42nd Street and Times Square?

These images take us back to a time of poverty, squalor and an explosion of anarchic artistic energy in neighbourhoods now characterised by millionaire designer condo developments, upmarket wholefood emporia and international brand name boutiques. They speak of a time before the fish market was trendy, before the meatpacking district meant $500-a-night hotels and impossible club queues, when the East Village was largely Russian and Hispanic, the Bowery's inhabitants were called "bums" rather than homeless, and thousands of penniless creative migrants could afford to live in rundown spaces in Chelsea and Soho now only available from elite estate agents for eye-watering sums.

I doubt that many New Yorkers would advocate a return to the danger and deprivation of those mean streets, but it is sad to reflect that the richly creative scene recorded here could never happen in today's sanitised Manhattan--it simply couldn't afford to.

Whether or not suffering and poverty are necessary precursors to good art is debatable, but they certainly forged the sense of community in which this scene blossomed. In one of the 20+ short essays that punctuate the pictures, Susan Siedelman notes that the scrappy energy of the art scene was related to the fact that it flourished in grotty places, not multi-million-dollar galleries. David Byrne remembers the city as "a scary and legendary place," where there was "a nice rubbing together between disciplines--borders were definitely fuzzy, which was inspiring."

The recurrence of a handful of venues--the Kitchen, Peppermint Lounge, Save The Robots, Area, Pyramid, Danceteria--reminds us how the Hip-Hop, Punk, No Wave, Free Jazz, Underground Dance and Experimental music scenes collided with the art world over a 10-year period, a vibrant era when everyone in a band was also an artist, every artist was also a film-maker and every film-maker in a band. Local heroes like Talking Heads, Suicide, Defunkt, the Bush Tetras and Funky 4 +1 mixed with the likes of Philip Glass, Glenn Branca, Jim Jarmusch and Keith Haring.

From Laurie Anderson to John Zorn, via Basquiat, Bambaataa and Burroughs to visitors like Godard, Kurosawa and Madonna, celebs too numerous to mention peer out of these pages. But maybe more valuable is the record of the many pivotal people that posterity has been less kind to--the girl groups, graffiti artists, DJs, promoters and performance artists that shaped the scene without ever transcending it.

Part posed portraiture, part live action snaps, this volume is valuable testament to the fertile creative culture that arose from the long shadows of New York's economic decline in the '70s. The varied riches its players produced (and, in many cases, continue to produce) could almost make you nostalgic for those bad old days.

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