The Raybeats
Guitar Beat

It was hard to imagine at the time of the release of "No New York" (1978) that, amidst that swamp of sick sounds, true talents could be hiding. Instead, some survivors of those sessions surprised everyone by inventing, later on, daring yet well-assorted crosses between their skewed language and revivals of American tradition.

The Raybeats (with two former Contortions inside - and it would have been three if George Scott III hadn't died of heroin), for example, successfully dove into a certain kind of instrumental light music (surf, cocktail music, and the like) that was popular 20 years earlier, grafting a bit of that poison practiced in their original band. Poison, yes, but with moderation and in tune with the times: when in '81 "Guitar Beat" came out, the New York climate had changed considerably, and the bohemian intellectualism of which the mother compilation was the bleak backdrop was now supplanted by a certain widespread desire for fun. You can tell from the cover: enough with the cadaverous faces of the negative encyclopedia and make way for 4 smiling young men, captured on the beach mimicking the groups of the "Sun fun and surf" period. In the control room, then, in place of the ascetic Brian Eno, none other than Martin Rushent, a pure hedonist and reinventor of the Human League of "Dare!" , a disc that sold 5 million copies.

The work (divided by the authors, for laughs, into a "Apathetic, stained, and ruinous" side and another "Courageous, clean, and respectful") is anything but stupid and commercial. It is true that the virtuoso Jody Harris handles his little guitar with unprecedented grace and sly reverb akin to the Shadows but without giving up slipping in some wicked chords here and there. It is also undeniable that the themes are all singable and respectful of the tone, but Pat Irwin (a multi-instrumentalist formerly with Lydia Lunch), when he blows them into the saxophone, does so with a zeal reminiscent of the most debauched R&B bands. The rhythmic pulse remains unmistakably hysterical as the Contortions with Danny Amis on bass literally cloning the woody sound and amphetamine riffs of the late G. Scott, while Don Christensen maintains, with evolved technique, the dry and sharp drumming of the golden days.

In short, these mixed sounds flow beautifully ("Piranha Salad" above all: a perfect crossover between Contortions and B 52-s') and without the musty odor of certain cyclostyle revivals that will plague the overseas air for some of the '80s. Intelligent, ironic, and utterly forgotten, the Raybeats leave behind with "Guitar Beat" another small fragment, not epochal but precious, proving that "No Wave" deserves its place in the history of rock.