Bag People / Bag People (Vinyl LP)

Description

Vinyl LP / Collection of early 80s material for the first time on vinyl

Comes with printed inner sleeve

Early 80s-US

Format: Vinyl LP

#Ref: DC939

Release date: 2025

Release notes

Bag People were Chicagoans who outgrew their home in the maelstrom of the early 80s NYC post-punk/ no-wave scene. They weren’t around long, but their compulsive noise-rock sound, unearthed from tapes lost for 40 years, looms large and stands tall next to the efforts of better-known contemporaries like Sonic Youth and Swans. A righteous puke of art-punk from a time of incredible brokenness in the world – in other words, savage sounds for today!

“The fragmented shards from the history of punk rock are still being sourced! Thanks to the rediscovery of a long-lost cache of cassette tapes, Bag People can now be counted, the sounds of their feral stink sitting perfectly in the grime-streaked canon of NYC’s early-’80s post-punk/no-wave era. Their lore commences in Chicago’s western suburbs. In 1977, Carolyn Master and Diane Wlezien were juniors at Proviso West High and rock ‘n rollers, with a particular taste for English rock — The Who, The Stones, The Kinks, Bowie, T. Rex — they were wild for it. They put an ad out for a guitarist, Gaylene Goudreauanswered, and they clicked right away — but after a year or so trying to make it in LA as the Runaways-like girl group Lois Lain, they were back in Chicago, disillusioned. Gaylene joined DA!, when, opening for DNA at Tut’s one night, her life was changed. She got back with Carolyn and Diane and they started over again, this time as Bag People. Algis Kizys saw them one night in early ’82 at Chicago’s infamous Space Place, then beat out some kid named Albini in a tryout for the bass spot. Pete Elwyn, working for the weekend at Poppin’ Fresh Pies while drumming. Their line-up set, they played on the Chicago scene for a while, with bands like The Cadavers and The Functionally Illiterate. In late 1982, they decamped to Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy neighborhood. Deep within NYC’s atomized urban interior, with deserted and destroyed shit everywhere, dudes selling drugs on every corner, it was a zone of lawlessness and neglect. The amorphous horror of this scene echoes distortedly through these recordings, an onslaught converging Carolyn and Gaylene’s scabrous guitar interplay, Algis and Pete’s free-roaming rhythm and Diane’s nihilistic gutter-siren vocal projections. A few songs were recorded at Hi Five Studio in the Gramercy Park neighborhood. They taped more at the practice space, and a set at CB’s but, constantly fucked up on booze and the drugs being hawked around the Lower East Side, the chaos of the times was wearing them thin. By the end of ’83, it was apparent that things were falling apart. Pete literally disappeared after Christmas, taking a large part of their recordings with him. They got other drummers, but in July of 1984, they dissolved. It would be nearly forty years before their lost recordings were heard again. After Carolyn finally found Pete (on social media, no less!), Algis drove up to Massachusetts to get them so they could be heard at last.”

Tracklisting