Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Space Negros - Go to Russia...





This is a weird one... Starting with the name and ending with the music.... I mean "Space Negros"...? and the music sounds like twisted TV theme show music from a bad dream or nightmare. Even their take on the Beatles is a little unsettling. ART rock, or no wave, or post punk or whatever it is you wanna call just call it odd. Someone called it an exploration of exotic music and rock. I guess that works too...

All i could come up with in my 2 second search of the webs is that Erik Lindgren seems to be the main cat in this odd mess and he runs the label this was put out on, Arf! Arf! records.

Erik Lindgren (15 December 1954) is an American composer and keyboards player. He runs Arf! Arf! Records, and has led (or been a member of) several ensembles such as The Moving Parts, The Space Negros, The Rising Storm, and Birdsongs of the Mesozoic.

Lindgren was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in December 1954.[1] He attended Northfield Mount Hermon School from 1969–1972, and received his BA in Music from Tufts University in 1976 where he worked with T. J. Anderson. In 1974–75 he spent his junior year abroad in London studying composition at the Guildhall School of Music with Alfred Nieman and piano with Birgette Wild. Lindgren received an MA in music composition and piano performance from the University of Iowa in 1977 where he studied with Donald Jenni, Richard Hervig and Peter Lewis.

As a contemporary classical composer, Lindgren has a catalog of over five dozen works, ranging from solo piano pieces to chamber music to orchestral works. He also owns Foot Foot Music BMI which publishes all of his original compositions. In 1978, Lindgren established Sounds Interesting Productions, a commercial recording studio and music production company based in Cambridge, MA.[1] In 1998, he relocated his facility to Middleborough, MA. National and regional credits include original scores for ABC, NBC CBS and PBS, Eastpak, Boston Globe, Basketball Hall Of Fame, Jordan Marsh, Polaroid, Prentice Hall and the Christmas Tree Shops. Lindgren also markets The Well-Tempered Music Library that consists of seven CDs of stock commercial music that he composed and produced.
Lindgren was a founding member of the new music ensemble Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic that Billboard Magazine described as “a mesmerizing venture into the space age jungle.” The quartet has toured extensively throughout the United States and Canada and held residencies at Dartmouth College, Emory University, Duke, UNCA and the Massachusetts College of Art. Birdsongs’ has recorded for the Rykodisc, Cuneiform and Ace of Hearts labels and released an album in 2005. Recently the group collaborated with Duplex Planet editor/National Public Radio correspondent David Greenberger on 1001 Real Apes.
The composer celebrated his 50th Birthday performing live, original works, at The Longy School of Music, Pickman Hall, Cambridge, MA (June 4, 2005).

For over twenty years, Lindgren has run the Arf! Arf! record label which has released five-dozen archival CDs documenting ’60s Garage/Psychedelic Rock and “Incredibly Strange Music.” Arf! Arf! issued four CD retrospectives by his ’80s experimental studio group The Space Negros. Lindgren has also produced over one hundred records for such diverse artists as Willie Loco Alexander, the Rising Storm, The Turbines, The Cynics, Magic Mose & his Royal Rockers, featuring 'Blind Sam,' Ed “Moose” Savage And His Litany Of Complaints, and harmonica virtuoso Richard Hunter.


The Space Negros - Back In The USSR
The Space Negros - Go To Hell

2 comments:

splash said...

Groovy...

Moving Parts and Birdsongs are
Groovy so I'll bet this is in the same VEIN.

Mighty fine

prunalogsusan said...

crazy neat! i like the b side a way lot