Disband

Disband

Disband

New York City, USA: Primary Information, 2009

31 minute Audio CD

Edition of 1000

Disband were an all-female a cappella group who performed as part of the No Wave scene in New York city, in the late seventies and early eighties. Disband was founded by Martha Wilson and the group featured artists Ilona Granet, Donna Henes, Ingrid Sischy, and Diane Torr as core members. Barbara Ess (later of Y-Pants, and the founder of Art-Rite magazine), Daile Kaplan, April Gornick, and Barbara Kruger also performed with the group. 

The band played at the Tribeca punk club Tier 3 (which - in it’s single year of existence - also hosted DNA, Rhys Chatham, Bush Tetras, Glenn Branca, Madness, Liquid Liquid, The Slits, ESG, Lydia Lunch, The Raincoats, Lounge Lizards, Delta 5, Young Marble Giants, A Certain Ratio and Bauhaus) as well as art venues like PS1, The Kitchen, Hallwalls, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and Franklin Furnace (which was also founded by Martha Wilson). 

Disband borrowed elements of performance art and even stand-up comedy, performing without instruments, typically to the laughter of the small groups gathered to watch them. “We did play some instruments,” corrects Wilson in the Martha Wilson Sourcebook: 40 Years of Reconsidering Performance, Feminism, Alternative Spaces, “we played plastic bags, newspapers, hammer, Col. Sanders chicken buckets, bed sheets, hotel bells”.

A tour of Italy with Laurie Anderson, Paul McCarthy, Chris Burden and other artists brought them to Florence and Rome, and the group also played Ithaca, Toronto, Chicago, La Jolla, Philadelphia, and Seoul.

However, in their four-year existence they did not release an LP, or even a 7” single. 

In keeping with their mandate to make out-of-print (and never in-print) materials available at affordable prices, Primary Information released this CD of long-lost recordings in 2009 (a year after the group reunited to perform at PS1). 

The disk features 21 recordings culled from the band’s live performances between 1979-1982:

1 The End

2 Hudson Street

3 Black Lung

4 Fashions

5 Rebel

6 The Redneck Song

7 Missiles And Pistols

8 I'm On The Winning Side

9 The Girl's Bill Of Rights

10 Dow

11 Bartolucci

12 Look At My Dick

13 Sad

14 Missiles And Pistols (Alternative Version)

15 Every Day Same Old Way

16 Perry Como

17 Five More Years

18 A Model's Revengeful Acquisition

19 The Snatch Song

20 Never Been Anywhere

21 Hey Baby

The CD is available for the paltry price of $5.00, from the publisher, here.