Super-8/HD/color/sound
55 minutes
2009

Directed by Ericka Beckman

In 1979 a group of friends and artists met regularly at Paul McMahon and Nancy Chunn’s loft on Grand Street to listen to “A Band” rehearsals. At the end of the evening a “battle of the bands” would break out. Word got around and there were always surprise guests. VPRO Television from Rotterdam asked me to organize a filming of the ‘NYC art bands’ for their New York “No Wave” program. Paul McMahon and Nancy Chunn organized an evening of filming in their Grand Street Loft, in the heat of August. Months after I shot it, VPRO returned all the materials to me – tapes and super-8 film rolls, which stayed in a box in my closet all these years.

Douglas Eklund, assistant curator in the Department of Photographs at the MET, asked to see the footage for a show he was curating “Pictures Generation” that opened in the Spring of 2009. I cut the footage and sound together into a 50 minute compilation, keeping it a pure documentary- no voice-overs, no cuts, just a two-camera shoot covering all the music. Word got out. Lee Renaldo asked me to prepare it for the Sonic Youth show “Sensational Fix”, touring Europe 2008-2010. Dan Graham saw the rough cut and was thrilled with it. Barbara London included the full version in her “Music Side 2” exhibit at MoMA in 2009. Soul Jazz Records, LTD is releasing it commercially in 2010.

DVD available from Soul Jazz Records