HUNGER ARTISTS

It was all an accident really...

From 1980 to 1983, Dean and I had a band -- a punk duo called Narthex -- but we've told that whole story in detail (along with a web album) over yonder. So we already had plenty of activity to keep us busy, or at least a reassuring delusion of activity. We weren't in the market for an evil twin. Still, as these things will happen, around late 1981, the Hunger Artists developed as a practice room goof -- our crazed little free improvisation take on a hardcore punk alter ego. We would play as fast and hard as possible, stretching the hardcore style to a cartoon caricature, making up lyrics on the spot -- usually about the inanimate objects there in the cellar. The songs were all very, very short -- stretching another punk characteristic to the extreme -- with the added benefit of preventing the dreaded jam syndrome. For the Hunger Artists, sixty seconds would be the equivalent of an album-side epic.

In January 1982, we were doing a cassette recording session of our latest batch of Narthex tunes. The tape had a bit of space left at the end of side one, so hey, it was a natural to pull out the Hunger Artists for a visit. Our trainee manager, Dave, was also on hand, so we dragged him in on vocals. The results became the first four tracks on "Zargon".

The Hunger Artists went back into the toybox, but we were thinking about them. One sunny afternoon in May, Dave and I sat at my kitchen table and brainstormed a batch of titles for Hunger Artists songs. A list of titles: that was the full extent of the songwriting process. I shuffled the titles into an interesting sequence, and the following Sunday afternoon, we assembled in the cellar for the one and only Hunger Artists recording session. You hear it exactly as it happened -- with a pause button edit every few songs.

A funny thing happened... by the time we got through the "Paint My Brain" suite (all four minutes of it), we were already getting tired of the hardcore mold and cast our improvs out into stranger waters. I loosely directed the pieces with suggestions like, "pretend you're in a kung fu fight" (for "Bruce Lee Is God"). We also threw in some quick take-offs on bands ranging from Teenage Jesus & The Jerks to Romeo Void. It was noisy and fun, and with our directive of brevity, didn't descend into tedious jamming. I think we achieved some pretty interesting musical moments here and there among the wreckage. Not to mention the moments of neo-vaudeville comedy.

What did we do with the Hunger Artists after that? Well, nuthin' much, to be honest. We already had one band going. We gave copies of the tape to friends, and that was it. We never really considered playing live as the Hunger Artists -- we probably wouldn't have been able to decide how to do it live, given its free improv nature. Do you try to play the songs the same way every show? Do you come up with a whole new set of titles for every show? Still, it's a shame we didn't try -- we might have been a legend of noise. I don't know if we were ahead of our time or simply isolated, but we didn't know of anything like it back at the time. The Boredoms were getting started around then maybe, but we didn't hear them until several years later, and their songs were a lot longer as well (coincidentally enough, in his later life on the business side of music, Dave booked one or two US tours for The Boredoms). I've still heard practically nothing quite like it. There have been plenty of grindingly noisy bands, but most of them have a tendency to drone on. John Zorn's Naked City in punk mode came closest, with suitably brief and noisy blasts, but also with a full band and more pre-composition put into it (not to mention superior musicianship). We should have at least compiled a 7-inch single from the tape... we would have easily fit twenty songs onto a side. It could have been a college radio novelty item, a sort of audio joy buzzer. But we didn't, so here's a stinky ol' MP3 instead.

©2004 M.Ace