Ron Anderson, Anthony Coleman and Gary Lucas to perform at the 1st anniversary celebration of the avant garde music magazine The Squid’s Ear

January 29, 2004
8:00 pm
Issue Project Room
619 East 6th Street
New York, NY 10009

The Squid’s Ear music magazine celebrates its first anniversary on January 29 with special performances by three of the musicians who have written articles for it during its inaugural year. Veteran guitarist Gary Lucas, a former member of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band, pioneering downtown pianist Anthony Coleman and postpunk guitarist (now oudist) Ron Anderson will present solo sets at East Village gallery Issue Project Room to mark the birthday of the online publication.

Guitarist, composer, arranger and manipulator Ron Anderson plays “anything that can make a sound, including the recording studio. He has 42 recordings to his credit, including recent CDs with his group PAK and Jason Willett. Ron was a co-founder of the notorious noise rock group RAT AT RAT R in Philadelphia 1980, and in 1990 founded the bad-boy new music group The Molecules in Oakland, CA. He has also worked extensively with Tatsuya Yoshida and The Ruins, the French band Ulan Bator, and performed at the 2003 Victoriaville festival (in Quebec) with his group The Infusion. He has performed and recorded with James Chance, Marc Ribot, Elliott Sharp, the Sun City Girls, Shelley Hirsch, The Poool, Otomo Yoshihide, Seiichi Yamamoto, John Zorn, Donald Miller, Daniel Carter, Terrie Ex and many others.

Gary Lucas got his reputation as a guitarist's guitarist during the five years he spent playing with his childhood hero, the avant-garde rock visionary Captain Beefheart. A graduate of Yale University, Lucas used to cut classes to sneak off to hear his hero play, and eventually recorded two albums ("Doc at the Radar Station" and "Ice Cream for Crow") with Beefheart and the Magic Band in the early 80's. In 1988, Lucas began a solo career with a show at the Knitting Factory, and was soon dubbed "guitarist of 1000 ideas" by the New York Times. Lucas’s talent and adaptability has led to his working with Leonard Bernstein, Lou Reed, Jeff Buckley, Nick Cave, John Cale, DJ Spooky, Captain Beefheart, John Zorn, Patti Smith, Future Sound of London, Joan Osborne, Matthew Sweet, Iggy Pop, Bryan Ferry, Sophie B. Hawkins, the Mekons, Allen Ginsberg, Dr. John, Graham Parker, Bob Weir, and many others. In addition, he is part of a reunion of The Magic Band (without the participation of Captain Beefheart) which debuted live in the UK last April, where Gary plus some of the original classic Beefheart Magic Band members triumphed before 4,000 cheering fans at London’s Shepard’s Bush Empire and at the UK All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival. He was just cited by the editors of DownBeat Magazine as one of their “66 Hot 6-Stringers” alongside the likes of B.B. King, John McLaughlin, Leo Kottke, Pat Metheny, Richard Thompson and others.

Keyboardist and composer Anthony Coleman has been an invaluable asset in the downtown scene for over 20 years. His encyclopedic knowledge and his proficiency as a player has allowed him to contribute to numerous experiments in different genres, from leading the bands Self-Haters Orchestra and Sephardic Tinge, to work with John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Dave Douglas, David Krakauer, Marc Ribot and others. His duo with Jazz Passengers saxophonist Roy Nathanson led to unique and charming recordings for Knitting Factory Works and Tzadik. Coleman has received commissions for his compositions from various ensembles including Bang On a Can, Concert Artists Guild, and The Crosstown Ensemble. His compositions can also be heard on harpist Carol Emanuel's Koch release, Tops of Trees, and Guy Klucevsek's accordian extravaganza, Manhattan Cascade, among others.

The Squid's Ear www.squidsear.com was founded in 2003 to provide intelligent and insightful coverage of New York's thriving experimental and avant-garde music scene and to create links with other avant-garde music communities around the world. The magazine is an outgrowth of Squidco, a website initially developed in 1995 to spread information about unusual music and arts to the online music community. Squidco also operates an online music store at www.squidco.com.

The Squid's Ear models itself after print magazines in that it has cover stories and features presented on a roughly quarterly basis. It distinguishes itself by updating weekly with reviews, live listings, comics and news. To date five issues of The Squid's Ear have been published, with articles about New York sound galleries, the Victoriaville Festival, Peter Kowald, psychogeography, Encyclopedia of Jazz, British guitarist and composer Fred Frith, the Amplify 2003 festival, The Vision Festival, and an exclusive issue covering John Zorn's 50th birthday celebration at Tonic. We also have featured exclusive article written by such distinguished artists and bands as Butch Morris, Marc Ribot, Eugene Chadbourne, Jon Rose, Ikue Mori, Anthony Coleman, Ron Anderson, Gary Lucas and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum.

Among the musician-written columns that regularly appear in The Squid’s Ear is the Bottom Shelf feature, in which artists are asked to share the “guilty pleasures” from their record collections. Anderson, Coleman and Lucas all wrote Bottom Shelf features during the first year of the magazine’s publication. The essays can be seen on the magazine’s website www.squidsear.com or by going to the following links:

Ron Anderson: click here

Anthony Coleman: click here

Gary Lucas: click here

Issue Project Room provides an open and versatile space where both established and emerging artists can conduct, exhibit and perform new and site-specific work according to their respective visions. Through an evolving collaboration with curators, artists and educators, the Project Room fosters a wide-range of artistic projects that challenge and expand conventional practices in art. The Project Room fulfills its mission through a series of diverse programs, events, exhibitions, performances, talks and concerts. It is a filling zone for creativity where possibilities manifest openness for change, new perceptions and experiences. The programs presented are designed to invoke innovation and promote first time showings, rare artist appearances, one-off events and eclectic happenings.