W-2 Demo Tape 1980 cassette
After the supremely damaged mid-’70s New York proto-punk/no-wave-anticipating band JACK RUBY splintered, vocalist Robin Hall started W-2 with Russell Berke (pre-CERTAIN GENERAL) in 1979. The project lasted for less than a full year and only circulated a four-song demo for purposes of landing shows, thought to be lost to the sands of time until turning up recently in the archives of Danceteria manager Jim Fouratt and now collected here (with one additional rehearsal recording) as part of W-2’s first-ever legit release. At times hitting closer to the menacing, messy precariousness of Jim Shepard’s early work with VERTICAL SLIT than the overly art-conscious downtown sound of early ’80s NYC no wave (“Toxic Love” and “Sprezzatura” especially), the collapsing mutant funk beats of “Dancing on the Head of a Pin” and “Soho What” have some definite parallels to the likes of COME ON, if COME ON had been scuzzy punk degenerates instead of geeky clean-cut nerds. What’s not to love? The B-side of the tape is given over to a seventeen-minute interview with Robin Hall that digs into some interesting background history—there’s an anecdote about hooking up with Berke because Hall was searching for a guitar player in the style of Pat Place of the CONTORTIONS/BUSH TETRAS or Andy Gill of GANG OF FOUR, then recruiting a non-musician video editor for the band because she wanted to play bass, and it all makes total sense after hearing the demented disco of the A-side.