Features
NO ZU: US/Mexico Photo Diary Pt 2
Contributions by Nic Oogjes
Original page credit: Mess+Noise
After doing Mexico and California, NO ZU head to New York. NIC OOGJES recaps the lows and highs, from chronic back pain to team-ups with Maria Minerva, James Chance and members of Liquid Liquid.
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New York! Some things would fall apart in New York and some things would be among the best experiences of our lives. The ‘red-eye’ flight from LA via Atlanta to New York had something to do with our unravelling, as did the dramatic climate difference! My ‘Muscle Beach’ singlet was not going to get a showing in NYC. Two weeks of mirage-brain intensity may also have played a role … just maybe. Sickness set in, maybe scurvy, maybe common colds; we’ll never know.
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Our first night in NYC was one of the most surreal of the tour. We met and rehearsed with Sal Principato of downtown, no-wave legendary group Liquid Liquid. I am trying to keep this tour diary succinct so I will not gush on, but I can tell you that hearing Liquid Liquid for the first time over 10 years ago was a formative experience that led to me creating NO ZU. Sal is an energetic, generous and fun-loving man. He quickly and very naturally became part of the ever-expanding ZU Family and a good friend. The rehearsal was great and, like that crazy Monterrey festival show, I’m glad I took some photos. He would go on to play percussion (and sing his post-LL band Fist of Facts’ song ‘Wah-Wah’ with us) at our next three shows in New York.
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Our first show in NYC was at a new venue, Trans Pecos. At a pre-show dinner Andrew ordered a soup (for one) that came served with a ladle. America, if a soup needs to be served with a ladle, isn’t it a little big?
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Maria Minerva played before us. She presented a performance of relentless beats and a plethora of seemingly opposing forces; a calmly manic prescience, melodic and tuneful shouting/screams and an aggressive/vulnerable persona. She’s captivating and it was really great to play with her. Later she joined us to sing during our last track, ‘Fa Foma Fi’.
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It was a small crowd getting down to our set, but the vibe was right and we felt right at home. The drums and percussion reverberated endlessly in the cement box of a space. There was an abrasive attack to the sound and feeling of our first show with Sal. It was all beaming smiles and fast heart-rates and then a chronic, sciatic back problem of mine flared up worse than it ever has during a show and I could barely stand. Having to lay down, samba-whistle-in-mouth, after each song, Daphne was left to explain my strange behaviour.
The rest of the ZUs spent the next half-week exploring the city and I spent a few days wondering if I would have to cancel the rest tour, barely able to move and holed up in our Bushwick den.
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Somewhere between encounters with an acupuncturist, some scented candles, panpipes, too much kale, several NBA games, Wholefoods, some Vangelis music and Central Park, I became mysteriously and unexplainably healed. Must have been Vangelis.
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The band and I were now ready to go into Adrian T’s school’s studio from 1am-8am to record a spontaneous groove live with Sal P. Given the ridiculous time of night/day (and all of those panpipes and chia pods), it’s understandable that the result was a rather zonked, cosmic-journey type of opiate groove.
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The sun was up, but as we waited for a maxi-cab it was minus 11 degrees Celsius.
Let’s get back to Bushwick, and back to Hood Luv in particular.
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One of the final mirage-brain moments came the next night at our show at Baby’s All Right – when James Chance (a.k.a. James White or, to the tax department, James Siegfried) walked in to the bandroom/walkway … with his longtime partner Judy Taylor (with whom I had a good boogie later). James and I had been emailing back and forth for a couple of months and I wasn’t sure if the show would work out. It did and it’s too much for the brain to handle. His all-singing, James Brown-shuffling, sax-shronking DJ/karaoke set was like some kind of dream conceptual-art performance. But you don’t need to use your brain to get it – you just need to move your body, and we did so without hesitation.
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We played very late – too late. A last-minute team-up with Siberia Records to put the show on had helped to bring people early, but to play at 2:30am on a school night was a stretch. We played fine. I’m just really glad that I had the chance to see James play and contort himself with that free-sax.
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Our second-last show and the final one with Sal was another last-minute situation. It was a show secured at The Cake Shop just days before by Sal when another venue cancelled on us … for the second time. A Facebook status from the booker of the original venue on the same night was an interesting choice. I’m so happy it all worked out, because that last show with Sal on the Lower East Side felt like it was his place and his people, and it was special.
The simplistic PA setup struggled with our seven-piece, but that didn’t matter in that cavernous, narrow basement space. A combination of the previous night’s not-so-great show, the fact the five-week tour was close to ending and that it was Sal’s final night with us appeared to bring with it an urgent/sentimental bent. Also, when you have a crowd that lovingly/charmingly/New York-ally gives you the finger when you take their photo (see final photo below) and you’re sharing the bill with a band who that you love and connect with (Hidden Fees – see photo just below), everybody relaxes into the performance and the groove gets deeper. Deep, deep in a Manhattan basement and it was good.
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We played Fist of Fact’s ‘Wah-Wah’ the best we had that night and Sal later enthusiastically encouraged me to have ZU continue to play it in our set – a mirage-brain big finale.
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One last show remained for the tour. My camera battery had finally died and so, unfortunately, I can’t show pictures from my camera from it. It didn’t occur to me that I would be presenting the pictures like this, so finding a battery the next day wasn’t a priority. In fact, the whole next day was dedicated to finding (expensive) medical treatment for Daphne (vocals) who, over the last few days had developed a flu to the extent that she was by now suffering from pneumonia-like symptoms! Hers wasn’t just a common cold, it seems.
We had to embrace the constantly-mutating/evolving (maybe devolving) nature of NO ZU and play that night without her. A macho, muscle-funk ZU set (with me singing Daphne’s parts) it would be. We were closing the launch of Shorts (part-expat group with our Adrian T on guitar and frontman Michael Caterer, formerly of Love Connection) debut 7” at a loft party in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Only a party where somebody actually lives can bring with it such a relaxed yet debaucherous atmosphere, and it felt like such a comfortable and real ending for the tour – amongst friends and friends of friends. Sweat poured and the set was a wild meltdown of heat-beat – so fun and amongst a great moving sea of friendly bodies.
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