Leaving music fans checking the bins since MTV’s 1984 spotlight on “Draggin’ The Bottom,” this double LP presents multi-media artist Julia Heyward’s debut release of T-Venus’ art rock forty years after the buzz started! All in a gatefold jacket featuring art and liner notes from Julia!
"My first visual music output was my video album 360 collaborating with Don Christensen and Jody Harris, who had been in the Contortions and also were in the Raybeats. I would produce the visuals over time often using visiting artist residences at colleges with student crews. Portable video equipment was new to the world at that time and I had bought the first one issued and this got me short term gigs in art schools like Cal Arts. Brian Bailey ran the film cage there and he had a camera that could shoot several thousand frames a second. We exploded miniature worlds and horns of plenty in our homage to America. Though it was the 70's my activism from the 60's was waving its flag in this early work.
By the late 70's I formed T-Venus, a multi-media band, with various groups of musicians. When we started, a few years before MTV, there was little to inform my novel visual ideas. The band was often the cast and crew for the production of the home-made visuals which were mixed live and projected onto the stage. We mixed slides and film with home-made slide faders and multiple film projectors. We also used discarded technology and in the end we had programmed slides, when corporate trade shows switched to video.
Nobody had money in the early days until MTV aired in late 1981 where I found work directing music videos for commercial bands. This became our money stream. The initial band members were Martha Swetzoff and Trude Koby, from the Boston band Bound and Gagged plus poet painter Kevin Teare who lived in my loft building. Next the multi-instrumentalist Pat Irwin and Jim Sclavunos of 8 Eyed Spy joined the band. Pat became the band leader and main writer/arranger. Martha was my assistant director and director of photography. In my loft we built a soundproof music studio and recorded our songs there and at Don Christensen's loft studio. Pat was also in the Raybeats with Don and Jody. We were multi-media pioneers and we were in a hurry to get to the future."
-- Julia Heyward
Also available on LP!
Includes:
Draggin' the Bottom • Smile Don't Touch That Dial • Blast From the Past • I Just Work Here • Gimme Gasm • Intimate Parade • Hour of My Flower • Sing Its Raining • Born Hypnotized • In Pause • You Can Be the Genius If I Can Be the Boss • Bay of Pig- Living In a Low Tide World • Ida Spida • Birdie • Monologue for Keep Moving Buddy • Keep Moving Buddy • Do Daddy Don’t