Theoretical Girls

History

"I came [to New York City] to do theater. And I was in the process of actually setting up a whole theater situation with a friend of mine named Jeff Lohn. He had a loft in SoHo. We were painting the place black and, at one point I just couldn't help myself and I decided I just wanted to start a fucking band. It got to the point where basically we kinda decided that we can, we're on a stage in front of an audience we can basically use. This band is our theater group so to speak. That - that was Theoretical Girls."

Theoretical Girls was formed after Branca and Lohn's previous group the Static and performed its first show at the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. Artist Jeff Wall came up with the band's name during a discussion of women making conceptual art. The Theoretical Girls were among the most enigmatic of the late 1970s no wave bands of the New York underground rock scene, famous not so much for their music, since they released only one single during their brief existence, but because the group launched the careers of two of New York's best known experimental music figures, composer Glenn Branca and producer Wharton Tiers. The latter played drums, the former guitar in the quartet, which also featured keyboardist Margaret De Wys and vocalist/guitarist Jeffrey Lohn, a classically trained composer who, like Branca and so many others in the no wave scene, wasn't interested in working with popular musical forms until inspired to do so by the explosion of punk rock. The group's sound shared aesthetics with the other no wave bands working in Manhattan at the time, such as The Contortions and DNA.

Always confrontational and often funny in an aggressive way, the band's sound consistently displayed the influence of American minimalist composers, ranging from sparse, clattering rhythm pieces that sound like immediate forebears of early 1980s Sonic Youth, to abrasive slabs of art-punk noise music.

Two recordings subsequent to the dissolution of the band have emerged in recent years, helping to preserve the band's legacy. The first, which came out on Atavistic in 1997, consists of all the Glenn Branca-penned songs, including "You Got Me", the flipside from the group's only single. The A-side, "U.S. Millie," appears on a newer collection of Theoretical Girls songs all written by Lohn. That compendium owes its existence to Acute Records proprietor Daniel Selzer, who spent several years collaborating with Lohn to compile the songs, working from poorly recorded old rehearsal tapes and live reels.

Currently

Jeffrey Lohn resides in the East Village neighborhood of New York City and keeps to a private life.

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