Origin New York City, New York, United States Members Taro Suzuki, Frank Schroder, Stephan Wischerth, Steven Harvey | ||
Youth in Asia (YIA) was an American no wave conceptual art noise music band from New York City in the late 1970s.
Contents
Youth in Asia members
Augmenting YIA
History
Taro Suzuki and Frank Schroder were and are practicing visual artists. Steven Harvey was an artist and now runs an art space. Both Stephan Wischerth and Steven Harvey have tracks on the Just Another Asshole compilation anthology. Thus the post-punk band members were very much interested in visual and conceptual art and thus they didn’t have much musical training. But they were more interested in making conceptual noise music with a beat than traditional new wave music. For example, Taro Suzuki played the piano with his forehead in the band.
The group’s first appearance was at 66 East 4th Street in the summer of 1978 along with The Contortions, Theoretical Girls, DNA and others.
Harvey, Suzuki and Schroder played in Glenn Branca’s first instrumental for six guitars. Schroder and Wischerth continued to play with Branca, Wischerth being his regular drummer for several years.
The last performance of YIA was Taro Suzuki’s Shock Opera performed with a video installation at Danceteria.
Youth in Asia was booked once at Tier 3 after they broke up, with two original band members Taro Suzuki and Frank Schroder performing with visual artists Richard Prince (on guitar), Dike Blair (on radio guitar) and Nancy Arlen the sculptor and drummer (from Mars)