ALAN SUICIDE - REVIEW
Collision Drive
January 12 – March 1. 2002
I still feel the impact of an amazing exhibition that I saw at O.K. Harris
Works of Art in 1974, the year I moved to New York. It was the toughest
and most radical art I had ever seen. Lights, TV sets, coils of wire,
and other discarded electrical equipment were dumped in piles on the floor.
Some of the power cords were spliced together and plugged in. At the entrance
to the gallery the presstype sign read “Alan Suicide” Someone
had taken a sharp object to the “Suicide” part of the sign
and had furiously sliced into it.
Alan Suicide was an inspiration and already a legend for many of the young
artists, writers and musicians who arrived in New York in the mid- 1970s
& remains so.
Suicide, the band, became in the late 70’s, THE pioneering electronic
music duo, the sed of a whole new direction in music, a direct blueprint
& an acknowledged inspiration for the 80’s synth pop of Depeche
Mode / Soft Cell et al & again for the 90’s generation of rave
& techno scenes & their pop cousins Chemical Brothers, The KLF,
Aphex Twin &Primal Scream & now again, beyond into the new century
via a new wave of downtown musicians in A.R.E. Weapons & the like.
Alan and his partner Marty Rev, sculpted sound, a howling vortex of paranoid
Farfisa organ & echoplexed vocals, & a radical extension of the
tough electronic aesthetic of Alan’s sculptural work.
It was probably the most extreme of all the bands pushing the fusion of
art and music into what emerged as Punk Rock. Suicide was in fact the
first band to use the word “punk” to describe their music.
At a time when the 60’s rock gods were at their excessive peak Suicide
were a violent oppostion .
They had no guitars! No drummer!! So outrageous a concept that even the
Punk scene of the time already in revolt against the mories of the time,
wether in Europe or the USA could not take it.
The expressive, interactive naïve extremists that thought itself
“Punk” could not cope with Suicide.
Howls of horror, waves of spit, hails of bottles, cans & garbage from
the audiences of The Ramones, The Clash, Elvis Costello,.
Given the almost non-existent art market of the mid-1970s, Alan Suicide
chose to pursue music more actively than art releasing some 20 records
so far. There was a strong art show of assembled crosses for the opening
of Barbara Gladstone’s first downtown space in 1983, but by then
music was absorbing almost all his energy. In addition to performing with
Suicide, he began a solo career under the name Alan Vega in 1981 on major
label Elecktra Records.
His song Juke Box Baby soared to the top of the charts in 1981-82 and
Alan was no longer just a punk legend but a rock star. Music became his
creative focus and there has been no exhibition of Alan Suicide’s
art for nearly twenty years.
I had not seen Alan since the mid-1970s, but I had never stopped thinking
about the impact of his radical art and the intensity of his music. Last
year, I noticed that Suicide had been booked to play the New Year’s
Eve show at the Knitting Factory. It seemed that there was a big Suicide
revival going on. I asked some of the younger people who worked at our
gallery if they knew about the band Suicide. “Suicide! Of course.
They’re great!” was the response. I determined to track Alan
down to see if he was still making art. It seemed that his time had come
again.
I tracked Alan down through his booking agent and visited him in his home
near Wall Street. Alan was still making art, and had never stopped, even
though he was so absorbed in his music that he hadn’t walked into
an art gallery in years. Alan in fact remembered vividly my visiting him
at Max’s Kansas City in 1974 as a worshipful fan. He was wondering
why, during all those years, I had never called him about an art project.
Alan joked that he always had the problem of being ahead of his time,
but he didn’t imagine that he would actually be thirty years ahead
of his time.
Henry Rollins, who published Cripple Nation, a book of Alan’s poetry
and lyrics, called him “…one of the most powerful artists
going. He has been for years. His unrelenting passion and intensity have
been a source of inspiration.”
Alan Suicide’s Deitch Projects exhibition will feature reconstructions
of some of the radical work from the 1970s as well as a selection of recent
work. It is rare that an exhibition can be simultaneously historic and
forward looking.
Jeffrey Deitch