Meredyth Sparks, “Roxy” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
Former Tower Records Building
14 East Fourth St. at Broadway
Through February 13, Wednesday – Sunday 12 noon – 7:00 pm
Admission: free
www.nolongerempty.com
www.flickr.com/slideshow
In 1983, Tower Records took over the ground floor of the Silk Building on Broadway, selling music and hosting live performances for more than twenty years. It was one of the East Village’s places to see and be seen, a gathering spot for lovers of all kinds of music, with a heavy emphasis on indies and imports But the digital age ultimately forced the chain into bankruptcy, and the space has remained vacant since 2006. The storefront has now been taken over by No Longer Empty, an arts organization that puts together exhibitions in empty locations around New York City. Paying tribute to the legacy of Tower Records, “Never Can Say Goodbye” features music-related multimedia installations by more than a dozen artists, set up very similarly to the old store, even including bins with fake LPs that visitors can look through. Meredyth Sparks turns up the glam quotient with “Roxy” and “Space Oddity.” Paul Villinksi adds wings to melted and twisted LPs he actually purchased at Tower. Invader re-creates such album covers as the Clash’s LONDON CALLING using Rubik’s Cube pieces. Ryan Brennan blasts hip-hop from a bunch of boom boxes arranged where the store’s in-house magazine, Pulse , used to be distributed. Joe Diebes’s “Scherzo” video will get your motor running. And Ted Riederer invents a new label, “Never Records,” with contributions from a host of musicians and a wicked-cool bong people are encouraged to smoke from. But longtime East Village singer-songwriter Paul Clements, a fixture Wednesday nights at the Bitter End from 1979 through 2004, puts it all into perspective with “The Song That Will Never Be Heard.” Clements explained to twi-ny at the opening that he wrote and recorded a song by himself, then destroyed everything but one CD copy, which he encased in a nearly indestructible Lucite box, asking future owners of the piece to respect the tune’s privacy. Thus, the only person who will ever “hear” the song is Clements himself when he played it that one time; ultimately, it will fade into memory, much like Tower Records itself and many of the artists who were unable to ever get their albums sold there.
Paul Clements, “The Song That Will Never Be Heard” (photo by twi-ny/mdr)
In addition to the free art exhibit, there will be several concerts (suggested donation $10) held in the space, including Dirty Mirrors on January 21, V Count Macula on January 22, Il Collettivo on January 24 and February 7, Nehedar and Jon Taub on January 31, Disco Monkeys and Oxygen Ensemble on February 4, and Steve Conte & the Crazy Truth on February 12. And on January 26 at 7:00, NLE will hold a panel discussion in the space, “Discs to Downloads: New Directions in the Music Industry,” with attorney Elliot Groffman, manager Kevin Patrick, editor David Weiss, artist Ted Riederer, and executive David Goodman, moderated by Brad LeBeau.