The Golden Palominos
Encyclopedia
The Golden Palominos was an American
musical group headed by drummer
and composer
Anton Fier
, first formed in 1981. Aside from Fier, the Palominos membership was wildly elastic, with only bassist Bill Laswell
and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis
appearing on every album.
While the Palominos' records usually featured a core set of musicians and a certain emotional continuity throughout the bulk of an album, various guest appearances resulted in stylistic changes from track to track.
ist Arto Lindsay
, saxophonist John Zorn
, bass guitar
ist Bill Laswell
and violin
ist/guitarist Fred Frith
. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records
in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma
, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis
, percussionist David Moss
, turntablist
M.E. Miller and others. The album has some of the first recorded turntable
scratching
outside of rap music, courtesy of Laswell and M.E. Miller. M.E. Miller also used vocal splitting technique to create harmony on the song he sings.
They were heavily influenced by so-called no wave
music (Arto Lindsay had played in the seminal no-wave band DNA
), but their music also contained elements of funk and of the improvisational jazz
stylings that would become Zorn's trademark. This line-up lasted only for the first record, although all of the core members apart from Zorn would guest on subsequent Palominos recordings.
, would sound vastly different. Of the band members that were on the first album, only Fier, Laswell and Arto Lindsay remained.
Visions of Excess also marked the debut of singer Syd Straw
, whose songwriting and vocals were featured prominently, as well as on the group's next album. Michael Stipe
, John Lydon
and Jack Bruce
took turns on lead vocals, while Richard Thompson and Jody Harris
were featured on lead guitar.
Blast of Silence was released the following year, continuing in much the same vein as Visions of Excess and with appearances by many of the same personnel. It included covers of two songs written by Little Feat
's Lowell George, both sung by Syd Straw. The record also featured prominent guest appearances by Matthew Sweet
, Don Dixon, Peter Holsapple
and T-Bone Burnett
.
A Dead Horse (1989) carried on in the sound of its predecessors slightly, but some of the songs crossed into a darker, more ambient and ethereal sound that would dominate the Palomino records of the 1990s. Syd Straw had moved on and was no longer in the band, with most of the vocals now handled by Amanda Kramer, formerly of the dance music
group Information Society
. Fier would later guest on Straw's first solo record, Surprise.
's Bob Mould
(who would go on to form the band Sugar the following year), Richard Thompson, and Michael Stipe, who would provide (along with a forceful solo by Thompson) one of the band's finer moments, the opening track "Alive And Living Now". Nicky Skopelitis
would also became more of a cornerstone of the band, contributing to the bulk of Drunk With Passions songs along with Fier and Kramer. In 1992, Fier would release his first solo record, Dreamspeed, which is partially a reworking of the Palomino's next album, This Is How It Feels.
This Is How It Feels, released on Restless Records
in 1993, continued the ambient sound of Drunk With Passion, but also incorporated elements of club and trance music. It also marked the introduction of new lead vocalist Lori Carson
, who co-wrote nine of the CD's tracks with Anton Fier. Bill Laswell also returned to contribute on this record, and his production work on this and on the following record, Pure, would heavily influence Laswell's own remix work of the late 90's, as seen on the CDs Emerald Ather and City Of Light. The album also contains the first cover song since Blast of Silence, an ethereal, drum-machine-laced re-interpretation of Jackson Browne
's "These Days
". To further highlight the album's dance elements, an EP of remixes of songs from This Is How It Feels , entitled Prison Of The Rhythm, was released shortly after the CD's release.
Pure, released a year later, is seen by many as the band's most focused work, owing much to the strong contributions once again of Carson, Laswell, and Skopelitis. Tracks such as "No Skin" and "Pure" continue in the dance/ambient style of the previous album. The CD would also stir a minor controversy over the bare female breast on its cover, with some stores carrying a version of the CD with a booklet and the cover replaced by simple, text-based artwork. Another remix EP (No Thought, No Breath, No Eyes, No Heart) accompanied Pures release.
Pure would also be the last Palominos record for Lori Carson. However, interestingly, the song "Little Suicides", from Pure showed the same sparse sound, production, and strong yet quiet vocals (albeit less electronic) that would influence Carson's solo work. Anton Fier would produce Carson's 1995 solo record, Where It Goes.
1994 also saw the release of what was essentially Fier's second solo recording, Absence of Time (released under the moniker Blind Light), which used outtakes from Pure for much of its framework.
sound, with the line-up consisting only of Fier, multi-instrumentalist
Knox Chandler
(who before joining the Palominos, was also in a band with Lori Carson), Nicky Skopelitis, and poet Nicole Blackman
. Blackman's dark and deliberate lyrics (tellingly, Blackman had also recently worked with the industrial German band KMFDM
) made Dead Inside a challenging record; its sound and tone stand out as decidedly unlike any of the others. The album's opener is the brutal spoken-word track, "Victim".
In 1997, The Palominos released another EP, named Dead Outside, composed of five remixes of tracks from Dead Inside. However, this EP was released as free MP3
s on the Internet, made available for a limited time through Nicole Blackman's website and also through a fan-created band website (since decommissioned).
"Dead Outside" consisted of these five remixes, which were available for download for one month only, as per Fier's instructions:
'Victim: The Last Thing' by Sean Beavan (whose credits include 8MM/Nine Inch Nails/Marilyn Manson) with John Van Eaton (a frequent Blackman collaborator who has worked with NIN for 10 years)
'Ride: Pragmatic Spasmatic' by Raymond Watts (of KMFDM/Pig)
"Belfast: Empty As Wire" by Scanner (another Blackman collaborator)
"Ride" by Mark Walk (of Ruby)
"Victim: Interference" by John Van Eaton
label in late 2003.)
ally acclaimed solo careers, with Carson a frequent contributor to television shows and movies. A compilation of some of Carson's contributed songs, called Stolen Beauty, was released by Rykodisc
in 2003, and a new Carson solo record, The Finest Thing, was then released in 2004.
The Golden Palominos reunited for two shows in New York City in 2010; A May 7 show at Le Poisson Rouge; and a May 11 show at The Living Room. Both shows were an unqualified success and have led to considerable speculation and likelihood of additional show dates through the fall of 2010 and beyond.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
musical group headed by drummer
Drummer
A drummer is a musician who is capable of playing drums, which includes but is not limited to a drum kit and accessory based hardware which includes an assortment of pedals and standing support mechanisms, marching percussion and/or any musical instrument that is struck within the context of a...
and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
Anton Fier
Anton Fier
Anton Fier, , is an American drummer, composer and bandleader. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio.Fier was an early member of The Lounge Lizards and The Feelies. He was in The Lodge , worked with Pere Ubu, was briefly in the Voidoids and founded The Golden Palominos...
, first formed in 1981. Aside from Fier, the Palominos membership was wildly elastic, with only bassist Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....
and guitarist Nicky Skopelitis
Nicky Skopelitis
Nicky Skopelitis is an American guitarist and composer from Greek heritage. He is best known as a guitarist, but also performs on banjo, oud, lute, keyboards and other instruments....
appearing on every album.
While the Palominos' records usually featured a core set of musicians and a certain emotional continuity throughout the bulk of an album, various guest appearances resulted in stylistic changes from track to track.
Initial lineup
The group first featured Fier, singer-guitarGuitar
The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
ist Arto Lindsay
Arto Lindsay
Arthur Morgan Lindsay is an American guitarist, singer, record producer and experimental composer. He is a 1974 graduate of Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida....
, saxophonist John Zorn
John Zorn
John Zorn is an American avant-garde composer, arranger, record producer, saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist. Zorn is a prolific artist: he has hundreds of album credits as performer, composer, or producer...
, bass guitar
Bass guitar
The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
ist Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell
Bill Laswell is an American bassist, producer and record label owner....
and violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
ist/guitarist Fred Frith
Fred Frith
Fred Frith is an English multi-instrumentalist, composer and improvisor.Probably best known for his guitar work, Frith first came to attention as one of the founding members of the English avant-rock group Henry Cow. Frith was also a member of Art Bears, Massacre and Skeleton Crew...
. Their self-titled debut album was released on New York's Celluloid Records
Celluloid Records
Celluloid Records, a French/American record label, founded by Jean Georgakarakos operated from 1976 to 1989 in New York, and produced a series of eclectic and ground-breaking releases, particularly in the early to late 1980s, largely under the auspices of de facto in-house producer Bill...
in 1983, and featured guest appearances by bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma
Jamaaladeen Tacuma
-External links:*...
, guitarist Nicky Skopelitis
Nicky Skopelitis
Nicky Skopelitis is an American guitarist and composer from Greek heritage. He is best known as a guitarist, but also performs on banjo, oud, lute, keyboards and other instruments....
, percussionist David Moss
David Moss (musician)
David Moss is an American composer, percussionist and self-taught vocalist, founder of the David Moss Dense Band; co-founder and artistic director of the Institute for Living Voice, Antwerp...
, turntablist
Turntablism
Turntablism is the art of manipulating sounds and creating music using phonograph turntables and a DJ mixer.The word 'turntablist' was coined in 1995 by DJ Babu to describe the difference between a DJ who just plays records, and one who performs by touching and moving the records, stylus and mixer...
M.E. Miller and others. The album has some of the first recorded turntable
Phonograph
The phonograph record player, or gramophone is a device introduced in 1877 that has had continued common use for reproducing sound recordings, although when first developed, the phonograph was used to both record and reproduce sounds...
scratching
Scratching
Scratching is a DJ or turntablist technique used to produce distinctive sounds by moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable while optionally manipulating the crossfader on a DJ mixer. While scratching is most commonly associated with hip hop music, since the late 1980s, it has been used...
outside of rap music, courtesy of Laswell and M.E. Miller. M.E. Miller also used vocal splitting technique to create harmony on the song he sings.
They were heavily influenced by so-called no wave
No Wave
No Wave was a short-lived but influential underground music, film, performance art, video, and contemporary art scene that had its beginnings during the mid-1970s in New York City. The term No Wave is in part satirical word play rejecting the commercial elements of the then-popular New Wave genre...
music (Arto Lindsay had played in the seminal no-wave band DNA
DNA (band)
DNA was a No Wave band formed in 1978 by guitarist Arto Lindsay and keyboardist Robin Crutchfield. Rather than playing their instruments in a traditional manner, they instead focused on making unique and unusual sounds...
), but their music also contained elements of funk and of the improvisational jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
stylings that would become Zorn's trademark. This line-up lasted only for the first record, although all of the core members apart from Zorn would guest on subsequent Palominos recordings.
1985–1989
The Palominos' next album, 1985's Visions of ExcessVisions of Excess
Visions of Excess is the second album by the Golden Palominos, which were composed of a largely different line-up than appeared on their first album...
, would sound vastly different. Of the band members that were on the first album, only Fier, Laswell and Arto Lindsay remained.
Visions of Excess also marked the debut of singer Syd Straw
Syd Straw
Syd Straw is an American rock singer and songwriter. The daughter of actor Jack Straw , she began her career singing backup for Pat Benatar, then took her distinct voice to the indie/alternative scene and joined the Golden Palominos...
, whose songwriting and vocals were featured prominently, as well as on the group's next album. Michael Stipe
Michael Stipe
John Michael Stipe is an American singer and lyricist. He was the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band R.E.M.Stipe is noted and occasionally parodied for the "mumbling" style of his early career as well as his social and political activism. He was in charge of R.E.M.'s visual image; often...
, John Lydon
John Lydon
John Joseph Lydon , also known by the former stage name Johnny Rotten, is a singer-songwriter and television presenter, best known as the lead singer of punk rock band the Sex Pistols from 1975 until 1978, and again for various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s...
and Jack Bruce
Jack Bruce
John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles...
took turns on lead vocals, while Richard Thompson and Jody Harris
Jody Harris
Jody Harris is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer who was born in Kansas and became a central figure in the seminal No Wave scene in New York City in the 1970s.-Career history:...
were featured on lead guitar.
Blast of Silence was released the following year, continuing in much the same vein as Visions of Excess and with appearances by many of the same personnel. It included covers of two songs written by Little Feat
Little Feat
Little Feat is an American rock band formed by singer-songwriter, lead vocalist and guitarist Lowell George and keyboardist Bill Payne in 1969 in Los Angeles....
's Lowell George, both sung by Syd Straw. The record also featured prominent guest appearances by Matthew Sweet
Matthew Sweet
Sidney Matthew Sweet is an American alternative rock/power pop musician. He was part of the burgeoning Athens, Georgia music scene in the early and mid-1980s before gaining commercial success during the early 1990s...
, Don Dixon, Peter Holsapple
Peter Holsapple
Peter Holsapple formed, along with Chris Stamey, the singing, songwriting, and guitar-playing core of the dB's, a jangle-pop band from Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He became the band's principal songwriter and singer after Stamey's departure. The dB's were at the forefront of the guitar bands...
and T-Bone Burnett
T-Bone Burnett
Joseph Henry Burnett , widely known as T-Bone Burnett, is an American musician, songwriter, and soundtrack and record producer.He was a guitarist in Bob Dylan's band on the Rolling Thunder Revue...
.
A Dead Horse (1989) carried on in the sound of its predecessors slightly, but some of the songs crossed into a darker, more ambient and ethereal sound that would dominate the Palomino records of the 1990s. Syd Straw had moved on and was no longer in the band, with most of the vocals now handled by Amanda Kramer, formerly of the dance music
Dance music
Dance music is music composed specifically to facilitate or accompany dancing. It can be either a whole musical piece or part of a larger musical arrangement...
group Information Society
Information society
The aim of the information society is to gain competitive advantage internationally through using IT in a creative and productive way. An information society is a society in which the creation, distribution, diffusion, use, integration and manipulation of information is a significant economic,...
. Fier would later guest on Straw's first solo record, Surprise.
1990–1995
Drunk With Passion marked the first album not on Celluloid Records, taking cues from some of the darker sounds heard on A Dead Horse and using more processed and electronic sounds, giving some of its songs an ethereal feel. This album is arguably more influenced by its guest appearances than are any of the previous albums. Guests included Hüsker DüHüsker Dü
Hüsker Dü was an American rock band formed in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1979. The band's continual members were guitarist Bob Mould, bassist Greg Norton, and drummer Grant Hart....
's Bob Mould
Bob Mould
Robert Arthur "Bob" Mould is an American musician, principally known for his work as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for alternative rock bands Hüsker Dü in the 1980s and Sugar in the 1990s.-Early life:...
(who would go on to form the band Sugar the following year), Richard Thompson, and Michael Stipe, who would provide (along with a forceful solo by Thompson) one of the band's finer moments, the opening track "Alive And Living Now". Nicky Skopelitis
Nicky Skopelitis
Nicky Skopelitis is an American guitarist and composer from Greek heritage. He is best known as a guitarist, but also performs on banjo, oud, lute, keyboards and other instruments....
would also became more of a cornerstone of the band, contributing to the bulk of Drunk With Passions songs along with Fier and Kramer. In 1992, Fier would release his first solo record, Dreamspeed, which is partially a reworking of the Palomino's next album, This Is How It Feels.
This Is How It Feels, released on Restless Records
Restless Records
Restless Records was started in El Segundo, California in 1981 by Enigma Records and primarly released alternative, metal and punk records. Restless also licensed and released records from Bar/None Records, Metal Blade Records and Mute Records...
in 1993, continued the ambient sound of Drunk With Passion, but also incorporated elements of club and trance music. It also marked the introduction of new lead vocalist Lori Carson
Lori Carson
Lori Carson is a singer/songwriter. She has released several solo albums, appeared on many soundtracks, and collaborated with artists such as The Golden Palominos. She performed lead vocals on the song "In the Middle of the Night" on French producer Hector Zazou's album Strong Currents...
, who co-wrote nine of the CD's tracks with Anton Fier. Bill Laswell also returned to contribute on this record, and his production work on this and on the following record, Pure, would heavily influence Laswell's own remix work of the late 90's, as seen on the CDs Emerald Ather and City Of Light. The album also contains the first cover song since Blast of Silence, an ethereal, drum-machine-laced re-interpretation of Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne
Jackson Browne is an American singer-songwriter and musician who has sold over 17 million albums in the United States alone....
's "These Days
These Days (Jackson Browne song)
"These Days" is a song written by Jackson Browne and principally recorded by Nico, Gregg Allman, and Browne himself in three distinctly different musical styles...
". To further highlight the album's dance elements, an EP of remixes of songs from This Is How It Feels , entitled Prison Of The Rhythm, was released shortly after the CD's release.
Pure, released a year later, is seen by many as the band's most focused work, owing much to the strong contributions once again of Carson, Laswell, and Skopelitis. Tracks such as "No Skin" and "Pure" continue in the dance/ambient style of the previous album. The CD would also stir a minor controversy over the bare female breast on its cover, with some stores carrying a version of the CD with a booklet and the cover replaced by simple, text-based artwork. Another remix EP (No Thought, No Breath, No Eyes, No Heart) accompanied Pures release.
Pure would also be the last Palominos record for Lori Carson. However, interestingly, the song "Little Suicides", from Pure showed the same sparse sound, production, and strong yet quiet vocals (albeit less electronic) that would influence Carson's solo work. Anton Fier would produce Carson's 1995 solo record, Where It Goes.
1994 also saw the release of what was essentially Fier's second solo recording, Absence of Time (released under the moniker Blind Light), which used outtakes from Pure for much of its framework.
1995–2000
Dead Inside (1996) was another stylistic turnaround for the Palominos, and their last proper album. This record had a deathly, industrialIndustrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
sound, with the line-up consisting only of Fier, multi-instrumentalist
Multi-instrumentalist
A multi-instrumentalist is a musician who plays a number of different instruments.The Bachelor of Music degree usually requires a second instrument to be learned , but people who double on another instrument are not usually seen as multi-instrumentalists.-Classical music:Music written for Symphony...
Knox Chandler
Knox Chandler
Knox Chandler is mostly known as a session guitarist and cellist, he has worked with such acts as Depeche Mode , Lori Carson, The Golden Palominos, The Psychedelic Furs, Ultra Vivid Scene, The Creatures and R.E.M....
(who before joining the Palominos, was also in a band with Lori Carson), Nicky Skopelitis, and poet Nicole Blackman
Nicole Blackman
Nicole Blackman is a New York City-born performance artist, poet, author, and vocalist.-Literary career:Blackman is involved in the North American goth, spoken word and transgressive literature scenes....
. Blackman's dark and deliberate lyrics (tellingly, Blackman had also recently worked with the industrial German band KMFDM
KMFDM
KMFDM is an industrial band led by German multi-instrumentalist Sascha Konietzko, who founded the group in 1984 as a performance art project...
) made Dead Inside a challenging record; its sound and tone stand out as decidedly unlike any of the others. The album's opener is the brutal spoken-word track, "Victim".
In 1997, The Palominos released another EP, named Dead Outside, composed of five remixes of tracks from Dead Inside. However, this EP was released as free MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
s on the Internet, made available for a limited time through Nicole Blackman's website and also through a fan-created band website (since decommissioned).
"Dead Outside" consisted of these five remixes, which were available for download for one month only, as per Fier's instructions:
'Victim: The Last Thing' by Sean Beavan (whose credits include 8MM/Nine Inch Nails/Marilyn Manson) with John Van Eaton (a frequent Blackman collaborator who has worked with NIN for 10 years)
'Ride: Pragmatic Spasmatic' by Raymond Watts (of KMFDM/Pig)
"Belfast: Empty As Wire" by Scanner (another Blackman collaborator)
"Ride" by Mark Walk (of Ruby)
"Victim: Interference" by John Van Eaton
Review of collection works
Much of the Golden Palominos' work has become increasingly hard to find, and compilations do not provide a complete overview of their work. A few best-of compilations are available: two A History collections on Celluloid both released in 1992; a German collection released in 1997; and 2002's collection Run Pony Run. However, none include any material from Drunk With Passion onward. The later albums on Restless are growing harder to find on CD, with the earliest CDs on Celluloid and Drunk With Passion being nearly non-existent. (Dreamspeed is also extremely rare in its original release and is a prized possession of Fier aficionados. However, Fier would re-release it and his other solo record, Absence of Time, on John Zorn's TzadikTzadik Records
Tzadik Records is a record label based in New York City specialising in avant-garde and experimental music. The label was established by the eclectic composer and saxophonist John Zorn in 1995; Zorn is the executive producer of all Tzadik releases...
label in late 2003.)
Post-Palominos careers
Both Syd Straw and Lori Carson have gone on to moderately successful and criticCritic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
ally acclaimed solo careers, with Carson a frequent contributor to television shows and movies. A compilation of some of Carson's contributed songs, called Stolen Beauty, was released by Rykodisc
Rykodisc
Rykodisc Records is an American record label. It is owned by Warner Music Group, operates as a unit of WMG's Independent Label Group and is distributed through Alternative Distribution Alliance.-Company history:...
in 2003, and a new Carson solo record, The Finest Thing, was then released in 2004.
The Golden Palominos reunited for two shows in New York City in 2010; A May 7 show at Le Poisson Rouge; and a May 11 show at The Living Room. Both shows were an unqualified success and have led to considerable speculation and likelihood of additional show dates through the fall of 2010 and beyond.
Discography
| Title | Release Date | Label |
|---|---|---|
| The Golden Palominos | 1983 | Celluloid |
| Visions of Excess Visions of Excess Visions of Excess is the second album by the Golden Palominos, which were composed of a largely different line-up than appeared on their first album... |
1985 | Celluloid |
| Blast Of Silence | 1986 | Celluloid |
| A Dead Horse | 1989 | Celluloid |
| Drunk With Passion | 1991 | Nation |
| This Is How It Feels | 1993 | Restless |
| Prison Of The Rhythm (EP) | 1993 | Restless |
| Pure | 1994 | Restless |
| No Thought, No Breath, No Eyes, No Heart (EP) | 1994 | Restless |
| Dead Inside | 1996 | Restless |
| Dead Outside (EP) | 1997 | Restless |