Arthur Russell: Wild Combination -- movie, pizza, prizes, and the lost history of downtown music, 1973-92

Join me (FFiR Bryan Waterman) on Tuesday, 10/6 @ 7:30 pm in the Broome Room for pizza and a movie.

We'll be watching Matt Wolf's Wild Combination, a film about the prolific and largely unrecognized downtown recording artist Arthur Russell, who had a long history in several NYC music scenes, from avant-garde performance at the Kitchen, where he was a music director in the early 70s, to underground "mutant disco" dance music, to the ghostly World of Echo recordings he made in the 1980s. He even had a short stint as cellist w/ Talking Heads. Russell died of AIDS in 1992.

In recent years his music has been rediscovered by younger artists (Jens Lekman, Grizzly Bear) and he's finally getting his due. Wolf's biographical documentary, a loving look at the artist and the scenes he was a part of, is part of that revival. Here's the trailer:


To get a sense of the range of Russell's talent, I'll give you a few tracks from different aspects of his career:





I'll be giving away some prizes at the viewing, too, including copies of the recent Arthur Russell compilation Love Is Overtaking Me.

For more on the man and his music, check out the conference dedicated to his life and legacy this Friday and Saturday on campus and at various performance venues downtown and in Brooklyn.