KATY SIEGEL: Let’s begin with your move to New York from Chicago. What year did you come here?JEFF KOONS: I originally hitchhiked here at the end of ’76, but I didn’t officially move to New York until January ’77. In Chicago I went to the School of the Art Institute, and I enjoyed it because I was studying with people whose work and passion I really respected, like Ed Paschke and Jim Nutt. But I lost interest in my own work, which had been in kind of a personal iconography, and I realized that different things were happening in New York different communities, the New Wave music scene. And that’s
Is there a link between the Ramones and the Ronettes? The Stooges and the New York Dolls and the Shangri-Las? There’s no denying that a rich vein of musical similarities and mutual fandom existed between these two camps. Louis Jordan takes us on a time trip through the evidence as we pay homage to the great “girl groups” of the 1950s and 1960s and their positive influence on those who came in their wake. As Louis observes, “the influence of girl group gave early punk records a sense of playfulness, romanticism and melody that’s kept them sounding fresh decades after they were new and shocking.”