Browse by Artist: WAS (NOT WAS)

Artist:	WAS (NOT WAS)
Title:	Out Come the Freaks
Label:	ZE RECORDS (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ZE 005CD

2009 repress. First reissue of this 1981 debut album. "Don Was (Donald Fagenson) & David Was (David Weiss) grew up in the musical and cultural thrall of Detroit, raised on the timeless soul of Motown artists as well as on such anarchic rockers as the MC5 and the Stooges. According to legend David and Don became friends when both were ratted on in an 8th grade gym class incident in suburban Detroit. Their debut album was released in June 1981 in the UK, Was (Not Was), was immediately recognized as a wildly unique confabulation of R & B, funk, rock and theater of the absurd. Referred to by one early published account as 'The Beat That Devoured Detroit, the funk-mutation experiment that wrecked the lab and boogied off into the night,' Was (Not Was) brought more than just a whacked-out-yet- utterly danceable sensibility to pop music. It also introduced the listening public to such striking musical voices as frontman Sweet Pea Atkinson, the former Detroit auto worker whose rich vocal qualities recall Otis Redding or Sam Cooke.
        Following release of their first self-titled album in the summer of 1981, the daft Out Come the Freaks reached the disco top 20. The smooth dance sound of 'Tell Me That I'm Dreaming' broke them into the dance top 5 in early 1982. The Was (Not Was) sound could often be mistaken for classic R & B with a dance beat if not for topical and sometimes overtly nutty lyrics. Shattering the imaginary divisions between 'black music' and 'white music', Detroiters David (Weiss; sax, flute, keyboards, vocals) and Don (Fagenson; bass, keyboards, guitar) Was use undated soul and funk as a flexible backdrop for their alternately serious and sarcastic commentary. The historical problem with a lot of dance music has been its rabid dissociation from intellect; more than almost any other group, Was (Not Was) obliterates that gap. The first album's material, while drawing on such familiar sources as Grace Jones and Stevie Wonder, blends in enough humor and cleverness to make virtually every song an original gem, including the disco hits 'Out Come the Freaks' and 'Tell Me That I'm Dreaming' (which includes mutilated found vocals by Ronald Reagan). The remarkable cast of players is a disparate mix of rock and funk.
        In addition to the welcome sounds of Sweet Pea and Sir Harry, the album was stocked with a wickedly confusing assortment of guest stars. It featured Mitch Ryder, Ozzy Osbourne, Doug Fieger of The Knack -- and most remarkably -- rock hating jazz singer Mel Torme. Ozzy was dragged into the studio to record the vocals for 'Shake Your Head' for which the 'brothers' had originally used Madonna as vocalist. But Don was not convinced that anyone outside of New York would ever hear of her... President Nixon was apparently asked to play piano for '(Return To The Valley Of) Out Come The Freaks', but refused. In the USA, for some inexplicable reason the record was issued with side two as side one. Although fans were once again bowled over by the band's irresistible beat and genre-bounding eclecticism, the group proved to be a marketing nightmare -- too rock to be thought of as an urban act, and yet too urban to be thought of as a rock band.
        To be continued..."

Artist:	WAS (NOT WAS)
Title:	(The Woodwork) Squeaks
Label:	ZE RECORDS (FRANCE)
Format:	CD
Price:	$16.00
Catalog #:	ZE 006CD

2009 repress. First release of this compilation of original Was (Not Was) extended 12" mixes and remixes. "It's not hard to understand why Michael Zilkha & Michel Esteban's ZE Records and the whole punk-funk, disco-not-disco thang of the early 80s has been rediscovered by a new generation looking for their own answers to music's eternal mind-body problem. ZE offered a seductive vision of the world where style collided with substance, where deconstruction made a reconciliation with melody and hooks, where groove embraced distortion, where punk's outcast geek was transformed by the fairy godmother of disco into a 'Halston, Gucci... Fiorucci' clad suavecito with a social conscience and a brain...
        If this moment in dance music history can be seen as the revenge of the nerd, the class valedictorians were undoubtedly Was (Not Was). The group was formed in 1980 by two childhood friends (Donald Fagenson and David Weiss) from Detroit who had spent their adolescence locked in each other's basements listening to The MC5, Frank Zappa, John Coltrane and Firesign Theatre. Such listening habits inevitably led to a surfeit of ideas which came tumbling out every which way on their records: reggae skank guitar, Robert Quine-style solos courtesy of The MC5's Wayne Kramer, surreal, sarcastic lyrics via Dylan and Lenny Bruce, James Brown/Nile Rodgers chicken scratch, rudimentary synth riffs, basslines that alternated between Jah Wobble's work with PiL and Terry Lewis' Minneapolis sound, paranoia that seemed to come straight from a 1950s public service announcement. It was all wrapped up in the brittle production values that marked the '80s -- the eggshell sound lending a piquancy to the rueful observations of the façades of the age of Reagan and Thatcher. However, while they probably combined dub, jazz, punk, funk and studio alchemy more elegantly than any other group of the time, Was (Not Was) could also be victims of their own intelligence and refusal to recognize boundaries.
        Left to their own devices, Was (Not Was) were like The Bonzo Dog Band, the Merry Pranksters and Gang of Four on a New Orleans funeral parade led by Parliafunkadelicment. On their extended remixes, though, their music became more streamlined and honed down to a razor smoothness. The remix process and the dancefloor forced Fagenson and Weiss to focus on one idea rather than the 30 they had running around their heads. Their wild eclecticism was restrained as was their tartness. Where most remixes are created simply to get more bodies on to the dancefloor, the mixes collected on (The Woodwork) Squeaks actually shed light on the messages of the songs rather than merely their grooves. Of course, the goal of the best dance music is to get you to think with your entire body and that's exactly what Was (Not Was) succeeded in doing. After all, it's not merely the détourned words of Ronald Reagan that let you know that 'Tell Me That I'm Dreaming' is not your ordinary hands-in-the-air disco stomper; it's the astringent guitar riff, the dub alienation, the comedic voices, the sibilant hi-hat that would soon become the hallmark of house music.
        The early '80s were a time when every musical genre seemed to converge, when a tangent that began in, say, punk would suddenly be picked up a month later by hip-hop, when the currents that would become house and techno were coursing through the wires of dance music. Don Was' partner on the first two remixes here, the Traditional 12" mix of 'Tell Me That I'm Dreaming' and the Predominantly Funk version of 'Out Come the Freaks' was Ken Collier, a legendary Detroit DJ who was a crucial influence on the then-emerging techno scene. Collier's credentials as a house and techno pioneer can be seen all over his mixes here, particularly in the bassline and sparse rhythms of the 'Out Come the Freaks' remix. Collier died of diabetic complications in 1996, and these sterling, groundbreaking mixes stand as a fitting testament to his influence.
        Even without Collier, though, these remixes are often extraordinary. 'Wheel Me Out', produced and mixed by Don Was and longtime partner in crime Jack Tann (who was in Was' early punk bands The Traitors and President Eisenhower), represents everything great about the merging of post-punk and dance music in the early '80s. It was cathartic yet eerie and uncomfortable, cryptically political, full of nuance and intrigue. Another reason that Was (Not Was) and the whole punk-dance schtick resonates now is their sharp, acidic, left-wing cynicism. It's a voice that almost the entirety of today's popular music has silenced. This isn't the bedazzled groove of Timbaland or The Neptunes embracing money, glitz and technology with equal verve. This is dance music as a way of shaking off the heebie jeebies, shedding off the skin of the daytime daze, jolting you out of your nightmares, only for you to realize that you weren't imagining anything. Please, Tell me that I'm dreaming'." --Peter Shapiro, London December 2003

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