The late musician
Arthur Russell was a man with a very complex and complicated musical legacy that was sadly overlooked during his lifetime. It took more than a decade after his death in New York City in 1992 for his legacy to be recognized by the mainstream media in the forms of (say) Andy Battaglia
Slate article
"Disco's lost superstar", Sasha Frere-Jones'
"Let's go swimming" at
The New Yorker, and Ben Ratliff's
"The Many Faces, and Grooves, of Arthur Russell " in
The New York Times. Ratliff's summary of his life satisfies me the most.
Arthur Russell, a cellist and composer, was three years into his many-sided New York life the night he first went to a disco. He was a Buddhist, an Iowa corn-belt kid, a classical musician, an avant-gardist and a pop singer-songwriter with a soft tenor croon. He was also a gay man in his mid-20's. And at the Gallery (at Mercer and Houston Street -- today an expensive corner of SoHo but back in 1977 a deserted industrial ghost town), all those disparate parts of his identity started to come together. He was in the right place at the right moment, and what he heard there changed his life.
He later told the writer David Toop, in the only print interview he ever gave, that he had been frustrated by the narrow-mindedness of the progressive new music scene. He had presented some new work at the Kitchen, but because the compositions involved a drum set, he said, the crowd dismissed them as ''a sign of some new unsophistication.'' That night at the Gallery, Nicky Siano, the pioneering disco D.J., was working the turntables, and the drums and drones and chants, the connected grooves of great length must have seemed a sign of some new ultrasophistication from an inviting foreign place.
To the end of his short life -- he died in 1992, of complications from AIDS, at the age of 40 -- his endeavors could seem completely incoherent. Musicians from one of his worlds were unlikely to know much about the others. But a new stream of CD reissues, brought about by the current fascination with the early-80's dance and rock scenes, offers the chance to do what few but his closest friends have yet been able to: figure out who Russell was, all at once. They also offer a lesson in the limitations of genre -- divisions like ''rock,'' ''pop,'' ''soul'' and ''classical,'' which were imposed by the old model of the physical record store but which a digital sea of recorded music may rearrange to fit the way people actually respond to music.
He has a
vast discography of tracks and albums, almost all experimental in one way or another--some disco, some cello-based, some combining the two, many indescribable. Happily for casual listeners like me, much of this material is online in the form of fan videos. I can say. His most enjoyable song, for me, is his very accessible "A Little Lost."
I'm a little lost
Without you
That could be an understatement
Now I hope I have paid the cost
To let a day go on by and not
Call on you
'Cause I'm so busy, so busy
Thinking about kissing you
Now I want to do that
Without entertaining another thought
Out on the ocean surf
I'll have to pull myself together
Now it's harder I'm not on my turf
Just me and me and those big old waves
Rolling in
'Cause I'm so busy, so busy
Thinking about kissing you
Now I want to do that
Without entertaining another thought
It's the combination of the sweeping violins with his tremulous voice enunciating these wonderful lyrics that does it for me.
A movie about Russell's life came out this year,
Wild Combination. I saw it in the video store; I'll have to rent it.
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