April 29th, 1979, Jean Michel Basquiat and Michael Holman met for the first time at “The Canal Zone” party, and decided to start a band together.
Gradually, they invited various Downtown artists to join the group, first Shannon Dawson, then Wayne Clifford, then Nick Taylor and eventually Vincent Gallo. In 1981, Basquiat named his industrial sound band, Gray. Jean named the band after Gray’s Anatomy, an important reference source for his later paintings and the perfect name to capture the haunting, machine-like, ambient music the band wrote and performed. In the Whitney Museum’s catalogue for Basquiat’s 1991 Retrospective, Robert Farris Thompson, professor of Anthropology at Yale University, wrote this about Gray,“They worked the Mudd Club, CBGB’s, and Hurrah’s in New York, where Blondie and the Talking Heads were at that time emerging. They performed, in other words, at the epicenter of New Wave. Here they contended for space and recognition with a style that, in Basquiat’s own words, was “incomplete, abrasive, and oddly beautiful.”
In an Interview Magazine review(Jan.,1981) Glenn O’Brien wrote, ”Gray became an industrial sound effects band. They played on scaffolds. Lately, they’ve really developed their own groove… It’s sort of an easy listening bebop industrial sound effects lounge ensemble…”
Update: Spring 2003… Gray is featured in an article in Russell Simmon’s new magazine, “One World” in a story about Jean Michel Basquiat… Spring 2002… Gray is featured on Gomma Records’ “Anti-NY” compilation CD…Summer…2001…Gray is featured in the new film, Downtown 81, with four songs on the soundtrack.
Gray, in it’s hayday, performed all over the city at venues such as: The Mudd Club, Tier 3, Hurrahs, The Rock Lounge, CBGB’s and A-Space…
The making of the MiraMax feature production “Basquiat” (a biographic tour de force about Jean-Michel Basquiat’s mercurial life and career by director/painter Julian Schnabel premiering Aug. 9th, 1996 at the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City), brought Gray’s original members back together as they reenacted one of their legendary gigs at the Mudd Club with Tony Award winning actor Jeffrey Wright playing Jean Michel Basquiat.
Besides reuniting for the camera, original Gray members, Nicholas Taylor and Michael Holman, played various other roles in the making of “Basquiat”.
Holman wrote the script with Julian Schnabel and contributed 2nd unit footage; Taylor composed and produced the song ”Suicide Hotline Mode” for the “Basquiat” soundtrack.
While reenacting their Mudd Club performance, the members of Gray realized that today’s pop/ambient music sounds a lot like what Gray was doing in the past. So, inspired by their own historic sound, the band decided to return to the studio to create and record new music. Today’s Gray sound has evolved from “industrial bebop” to “electronica” with poetic vocals and groovey beats.
Gray has already earned music soundtrack credits including; MiraMax’s “Basquiat;” “Downtown 81;” the BBC documentary “Shooting Star,” from the British television series; ”Without Walls” (presented at the Serpentine Gallery, London, March 1996); and a Basquiat documentary segment on CBS’s “Sunday Morning, With Charles Kuralt.”
“When we first came out,” says Gray member Nicholas Taylor, “…we were over most people’s heads. But I think the times have finally caught up [to us].
Now our sound is very palatable, pop, while still maintaining our poetic edge.”
Источник: lastfm.ru
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