Suicide
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Interview by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 1 June 1985
DUE TO an allergy to cats, Martin Rev is forced to huddle next to an open window in manager/producer/believer Marty Thau's feline thronged apartment. ...
Audio interviews
Interview by John Tobler, Rock's Backpages audio, June 1978
The pioneering electro duo discuss the significance of their name; their respective musical backgrounds; how they've changed since 1972; set lengths: long vs short; their desire to make video discs; their need for a beat, and using drum machines rather drummers; re-recording 'Rocket USA'; people starting to like them, and their bafflement at getting applause.
File format: mp3; file size: 15.1mb, interview length: 15' 42" sound quality: ****
Interview by Andy Gill, Rock's Backpages audio, 22 January 1998
After a brief chat about touring with the Clash, Alan Vega and Martin Rev go back to how they first joined forces; Martin's jazz roots; their electronic predecessors the Silver Apples; being "punk" before Punk; their relationship with New York City's music scene and not being druggies; the name Suicide; their music as confrontational; their use of electronic instruments; their lyrical concerns; their second album, produced by the Cars' Ric Ocasek; their innate futurism; DIY and the future of recording and distribution.
File format: mp3; file size: 43mb, interview length: 38' 29" sound quality: ****
Interview by David Stubbs, Rock's Backpages audio, March 1998
Messrs. Rev and Vega discuss their legendary status and regular rediscovery; look back at their formation and NYC context; discuss their technology and methods, and contemplate their place in the greater scheme of things.
File format: mp3; file size: 76.2mb, interview length: 1h 23' 15" sound quality: **
List of articles in the library
In New York City, Rock has Created Things that Reach from Obscenity to Musical Vomit
Report by Roy Hollingworth, Melody Maker, 21 October 1972
New York Report by Roy Hollingworth ...
Interview by Lisa Jane Persky, New York Rocker, May 1976
Suicide Note: "The thought of suicide is a great consolation; with the help of it, one has got through many a bad night."– F. Nietzsche ...
Various Artists: Live At CBGB's/Max's Kansas City 1976
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 27 November 1976
YOU KNOW what these albums remind me of: The This Is Mersey Beat collections that Oriole put out after the first wave of Liverpool bands had gotten ...
Suicide: Suicide (Red Star RS1, import)
Review by Richard Williams, Melody Maker, 21 January 1978
Suicide is a solution ...
Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, 4 February 1978
SUICIDE? PERHAPS; rather life at one remove, through a one-way mirror. Or wilful withdrawal from the sea of impossibility... ...
New Albums: Best at the Theft — Suicide Outclasses Blondie
Review by Howard Wuelfing, Unicorn Times, March 1978
AMONG OUTSIDERS, the paramount issues of the punk/new wave movement revolve around stuff like clothing styles, politics, and the effect of massive success on a ...
Interview by Colin Irwin, Melody Maker, 11 March 1978
Colin Irwin reports on New York's latest cult success: a weird duo called Suicide ...
Interview by Paul Rambali, New Musical Express, 17 June 1978
Form a band instead and drive others to it. PAUL RAMBALI Checks Out The Odd Couple From The Big Apple ...
Suicide: The Third International Science Fiction Festival, Metz, France
Live Review by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 17 June 1978
METZ: SOURCES inform it to be located some 20 miles east of Paris, France. Or two hours of sky from Luton, England, as it proved ...
Interview by Giovanni Dadomo, Sounds, 24 June 1978
NEW YORK/NEW WAVE NO INTRODUCTION ('COS OUR AUTHOR DIDN'T WRITE ONE) ...
The Clash, Suicide: Music Machine, London
Live Review by Ian Birch, Melody Maker, 29 July 1978
NO TWO ways about it. All I can do is echo and re-emphasise Chris Brazier's sentiments in MM of two issues ago: the Clash are ...
Profile and Interview by John Tobler, ZigZag, August 1978
IT IS TO BE hoped that some of you lemmings may have taken a little time out from adoration of the Clash on their current ...
The Clash, Suicide: The Music Machine, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, New Musical Express, 5 August 1978
TIME HAS come today. Third of four Music Machine gigs and surprise! the ritual bottling of Suicide appears to have been omitted for ...
The Concise NME Guide To Electronic Music & Synthesised Sound
Guide by Andy Gill, New Musical Express, 5 January 1980
"Progress in the physical and mechanical sciences determines a progress in art." — Carlos Chavez, 1957 ...
Suicide: Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev (Ze)
Review by Kris Needs, ZigZag, April 1980
TEN YEARS ago in a dingy New York loft two blokes were whipping up formidable walls of sheer, pulverising sound using just a set of ...
Interview by John Tobler, ZigZag, May 1980
NEW YORK'S a lonely town when you've never been there before, and you really don't know too many people (although being there is a problem ...
Profile by Roy Trakin, New York Rocker, May 1980
EVERY NOW and then, we critics drop our objectivity – believe it or not – become emotionally involved with a band. For slightly over a ...
ZE Night: Hurrah, New York City
Profile by Roy Trakin, New York Rocker, June 1980
THE RICH ARE different from you and me, my friends. While we content ourselves with free promos and an occasional "plus-one" at a local bistro, ...
Suicide: Suicide As A Way Of Life
Interview by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, 5 July 1980
"I THINK," breathes the camp dwarf in the sweatshirt and stubble, "that people should only write songs about economics and sex, because that's all everybody's ...
Suicide: Hot Footing Through Edge City
Interview by Toby Goldstein, Creem, April 1981
THE ATMOSPHERE at most performances of Suicide is not unlike that which I imagine permeates a power plant in the midst of a nuclear accident. ...
Sleeve notes by Lester Bangs, ROIR Records, September 1981
OVER THE LAST few years there've been a whole lot of catch phrases bandied about to describe what folks kept insisting was "new" music unlike anything ...
Suicide: Punk Rockers Who Don't Self-Destruct
Interview by Michael Goldberg, San Francisco Chronicle, 15 November 1981
A group "dripping blood and spit" ...
Review by Chris Bohn, New Musical Express, 2 January 1982
Tart, amoral, stupid, crass, vulgar… and nearly very famous ...
Interview by Richard Grabel, New Musical Express, 13 March 1982
Still controversial, still reviled — and still unsuccessful, Alan Vega discusses life after Suicide, politics and rock. ...
Traditional Discs: Is It R.I.P. FOR R.P.M.?
Report and Interview by Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times, 15 May 1982
IS THE phonograph record on its deathbed? Neil Cooper, who runs a record company that doesn't sell records, thinks so. "Within five years, vinyl will ...
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 10 September 1983
A VEGA PERSPECTIVE ON GHOST RIDERS, KUNG-FU COWBOYS, AYLER WAILERS AND LIFE AFTER SUICIDE. ...
Suicide: Martin Rev interviewed
Interview by Blake Gumprecht, Alternative America, Winter 1983
ALAN VEGA (vocals) and Martin Rev (instrument) formed Suicide in 1972 in New York City. After years of gaining infamy while gigging the Max's Kansas ...
Suicide, Angel Corpus Christi: Irving Plaza, New York NY
Live Review by David A. Keeps, New Musical Express, 25 August 1984
BACK FROM THE DEAD ...
Alan Vega: Journey Through America 1985 — Part One
Interview by Edwin Pouncey, Sounds, 23 November 1985
During the '70s ALAN VEGA switched New York on to a different wavelength. Ten years on, and he's seemingly blown a fuse with a 'commercial' ...
Live Review by Abby Weissman, East Coast Rocker, 10 September 1986
THE JURY IS still out on the music of the '70s, but the smoke is starting to clear. It's easier to see who was truly ...
Suicide: Camden Palace, London
Live Review by Barney Hoskyns, New Musical Express, 8 November 1986
A LITTLE hipper than they were when Clash fans bottled them a decade ago, the cult New York duo Suicide have reformed for some select ...
Retrospective and Interview by Jeremy Gluck, unpublished, 1988
NOTE: Another unpublished piece for Bucketful of Brains from the prolific pen of Mr Jeremy Gluck, this time on Suicide's Alan Vega, written in 1988 ...
Live Review by Ralph Traitor, Sounds, 17 September 1988
SUICIDE, ALAN Vega more than Marty Rev, have drawn some flak for looking/being old. Vega, his black, tightly-curled pompadour resembling a cheap hooker's wig, lets ...
Live Review by Jane Solanas, New Musical Express, 17 September 1988
THE THING about this alarming trend of 'rock comebacks' is that the term can mean anything from the return of a bankrupt geriatric to the ...
Live Review by Chris Roberts, Melody Maker, 17 September 1988
DEAD ON THEIR FEAT ...
Suicide: The Leadmill, Sheffield
Live Review by Paul Lester, Melody Maker, 24 December 1988
SUICIDE'S dispassionate sheet ice of sound is a freezed-up fusillade, a remorseless puncturing of steel-hard cymbals by a psychotic, pneumatic drill. Entirely emptied of the ...
Suicide: A Matter Of Life And Death
Interview by Ralph Traitor, Sounds, 21 January 1989
Its midweek, midday, underneath Times Square, aboard a filthy express subway train. ...
Interview by Simon Reynolds, The Observer, 19 February 1989
"NEW YORK IS getting dull," says Suicide's Alan Vega. "The downtown New York of the Seventies has gone. But there's still something here, an electricity, ...
Suicide: Ground Zero, Cambridge, MA
Review by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 18 June 1990
Suicide's Minimalistic Songs Have A Sexy, Dangerous Sound ...
Report and Interview by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 17 July 1992
SINGER ALAN VEGA has been explaining how the moniker of his progressive synth-rock duo, Suicide, was never intended to have a negative or personal connotation. ...
Live Review by Jim Sullivan, The Boston Globe, 20 July 1992
Suicide casts a deep, dark spell ...
A Tribe Called Quest: Subterania, London
Live Review by Sean O'Hagan, The Guardian, 3 December 1994
IN MANY ways. A Tribe Called Quest are one of hip-hop's best-kept secrets. Their debut album, People's Instinctive Travels... remains one of the defining moments ...
Suicide: Teardrop Explodes Again
Interview by Craig McLean, The Face, January 1996
On the late Seventies Alan Vega and Suicide invented an anti-rock electronica that paved the way for Depeche Mode and Soft Cell. Now it's a ...
Interview by Edwin Pouncey, The Wire, March 1998
Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...
Suicide: Garage, Highbury, London
Live Review by Nick Hasted, The Independent, 9 March 1998
LEAVING THE house shrieking with manic glee at the sound of a band being booed off stage 20 years ago for 23 minutes straight, walking ...
Live Review by Stephen Dalton, New Musical Express, 21 March 1998
The OD couple ...
Profile by Toby Manning, Jockey Slut, April 1998
Hoping to find out how to tie a noose or jump of a bridge? Sorry, this is about influential New York electronic punks. ...
Review and Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, April 1998
2-CD set coupling the electro-duo’s 1977 debut with the infamous 23 Minutes Over Brussels flexi-disc and an unreleased 1978 live set from CBGBs. ...
Interview by David Stubbs, Uncut, May 1998
Before the Chemical Brothers, before Ministry, before even Soft Cell, there was SUICIDE, the original electro-duo. DAVID STUBBS meets the synth-terrorists whose noise still provokes ...
Invisible Jukebox: Spiritualized
Interview by Mike Barnes, The Wire, July 1998
Every month we play a musician a series of records which they're asked to identify and comment on — with no prior knowledge of what ...
Various Artists: Dawn Of Electronica
Review by Stephen Dalton, Uncut, July 2000
Founding fathers of technopop come together in electro land ...
Interview by Chris Campion, Dazed & Confused, July 2002
IT'S TAKEN 30 years for Alan Vega to make the transition from surly street punk and art world agitator to New York institution. Better known ...
Suicide: Trash, London/David Bowie: Hammersmith Apollo, London
Live Review by Simon Price, Independent on Sunday, October 2002
ALAN VEGA WEARS a beret, like Saddam Hussein, Frank Spencer, and the French. He wears sunglasses on a rope, like Dame Edna. He wears leather ...
Retrospective and Interview by Kris Needs, MOJO, November 2007
JULY 26, 1978: The Clash are on the third out of four nights at Camden's Music Machine during their chaotically-successful On Parole tour. Suicide, here ...
Suicide: Live 1977 - 1978 Box Set
Review by Luke Turner, The Quietus, 6 August 2008
IT'S RARE to find live albums from canonical acts that dont come swathed in mythology or creaking under the weight of their own self importance. ...
Suicide: How the Godfathers of Punk Kept The Faith
Interview by Paul Lester, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, 10 October 2008
New Yorkers Alan Vega and Marty Rev were punks before punk was invented, known in the '70s for their violent gigs and raging synth rock. ...
Interview by Jeremy Gluck, Bucketfull of Brains, March 2009
"I've always believed there is a fine line between abstract and pure accessibility and that is what I've always looked for ... an artist who ...
Requiem For A Scream: Suicide's 'Punk Mass'
Live Review by John Calvert, The Quietus, 16 July 2015
IN HIS PRE-SHOW ADDRESS, frothy punk minotaur Henry Rollins is telling a story, which of course he's pretty good at. A formidable, not to mention ...
A King Has Passed: Alan Vega Remembered
Retrospective by Tim Cooper, The Quietus, 18 July 2016
BY THE SUMMER of 1978, punk rock had lost the power to shock. The revolution that had shot an amphetamine rush into a moribund music ...
Obituary by Adam Sweeting, The Guardian, 18 July 2016
Co-founder and frontman of the confrontational electronic band Suicide ...
see also Alan Vega
see also Martin Rev
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