Liquid Liquid

Liquid Idiot

The band began at Rutgers in New Jersey in 1979 as Liquid Idiot, still searching for a sound, before moving to Manhattan. Liquid Idiot made a 7" in Richard McGuire's living room in New Brunswick and played Tier 3, the Mudd Club and CBGB, with a horn-heavy offshoot called Idiot Orchestra. Their flyers asked audiences to bring instruments. Dennis Young joined after turning up at one of their gigs with a marimba.

McGuire later recalled renaming the group Liquid Liquid, a name he heard as slippery and groovy. They left a cassette of five live tracks at the 99 Records shop, and its owner Ed Bahlman asked to see them play. Until then they had played only loft parties, including Arleen Schloss's Wednesdays At A's on Broome Street, and a single CBGB show. Glenn Branca put in a good word.

99 Records

Bahlman produced and paid for all of their records, and also managed ESG, with whom they shared bills, as they did with Konk. The debut Liquid Liquid EP came out in 1981, three of its five tracks recorded live at Hurrah's. The historian Tim Lawrence hears Bo Diddley, Curtis Mayfield, Fela Kuti, dub and DNA in it. Successive Reflexes followed later that year. A 7" of Bellhead and Push was re-recorded, mixed and mastered in a single day in November 1981, and the band destroyed most of the copies.

They played Irving Plaza, Tompkins Square Park and the Peppermint Lounge, traveled to Berkeley, San Francisco and Basel, and in 1982 appeared at Rick Rubin's Uptown Meets Downtown night with Treacherous Three.

Optimo and White Lines

In late 1982 they recorded Optimo at Radio City Studio, a former radio studio on the top floor of Radio City Music Hall. The EP came out in 1983 and sold 30,000 copies. Cavern became a surprise hit on WBLS for six weeks that fall, and the title track Optimo became a favorite of DJs such as Larry Levan and Frankie Knuckles.

That year Sugar Hill released White Lines (Don't Don't Do It), with its house band replaying Cavern and Melle Mel rapping over it. 99 sued Sugar Hill and won, but Sugar Hill declared bankruptcy and the legal costs helped close 99 in late 1985. Young remembered playing the Roxy and the Paradise Garage and opening for Chaka Khan, and called it a temporary glory. McGuire left, and the remaining trio made one more record, Dig We Must, before the band stopped.

Rediscovery

When Duran Duran covered White Lines in 1995, McGuire hired a lawyer, and the band came away with a third of the song's publishing. Mo' Wax and Grand Royal gathered the three EPs on one compilation in 1997, and Principato said that was when they realized the music was not going away.

After rehearsing at Hartley's house in rural New Jersey, they played a comeback show at a New York factory in March 2003, with the Optimo DJs and the DFA team in the crowd, then went on to Detroit, Glasgow, London, Paris, Montreux and Berlin. Domino issued the anthology Slip In And Out Of Phenomenon in 2008. In 2010 they played Cavern with The Roots on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, and in 2011 they opened for LCD Soundsystem at Terminal 5 and at its Madison Square Garden farewell. Superior Viaduct reissued the EPs on vinyl in 2015, and DFA released a 12" in 2024.

Legacy

LCD Soundsystem's Pat Mahoney said the band started almost as a homage to Liquid Liquid, and DFA's Jonathan Galkin credited them with a muse few others had. Carl Craig heard Optimo in Detroit in 1988 and later sampled them as Paperclip People, and two Glasgow DJs named their club after the song. Tim Sommer of the Observer placed them alongside the Ramones and the Velvet Underground, arguing that their refusal to funk made them almost impossible to imitate. Pitchfork gave Optimo a perfect score in 2017.

McGuire became an illustrator, cartoonist and filmmaker, with regular work in The New Yorker and the band's sleeves to his name. Young recorded ambient cassettes as Dennis Andrew, since reissued by several labels, and Principato works as a DJ and remixer.

They are our heroes.

Pat Mahoney of LCD Soundsystem, 2013