Back when the plan for writing a “coffee table book” (the “coffee table” part was not my idea) about Cop Shoot Cop was still a viably going concern, I remember sitting down in the Housing Works Used Book Café over on Crosby Street with former “low-end” bassist Jack Natz (right, next to sampler "Cripple Jim" Coleman) to get his take on the somewhat star-crossed trajectory of the band. Fearing a barrage of monosyllaballic answers from the possibly still-quite-ticked-off Natz (who gamely tried to commandeer the remains of band after everything fell apart), I was relieved and encouraged to find him comparatively chatty about that era, at this late stage of proceedings. While things didn’t play out in the manner he’d have hoped, it struck me that he’d largely made his peace with it and had moved on to other things, as had all his former bandmates.
In any case, during the course of our conversation, he’d mentioned catching the fledgling Cop Shoot Cop when they were still just a trio of vocalist/bassist Tod [A], drummer/percussionist Phil Puleo and sampler-botherer Dave Ouimet, and conceded to loving their overall, ramshackle aesthetic. It all seemed tenuously held together by duct-tape and bubblegum.
I’ve always felt that was an entirely apt description of the music of Cop Shoot Cop – this unlikely amalgam of disparate elements that only fleetingly exuded any feeling of cohesion. A deceptively loose assemblage of clamor that could throw a spoke and completely implode at any second, Cop Shoot Cop’s signature sound – especially on the earlier releases – recalled the whirring, disjointed stutter of a broken machine.
This peculiar approach was more or less completely by design, but every now and again, things did legitimately go wrong. Equipment would break – either from wanton overuse or frustrated malice, feedback would howl, microphone stands would snap, etc.
In advance of the gig featured in the clip below (audio only), New York Times writer Jon Pareles spun it this way...
COP SHOOT COP, the Grand, 76 East 13th Street, Greenwich Village, (212) 777-0600. Cop Shoot Cop uses noise where other bands use melody, hurling imprecations over relentless riffs from bass, synthesizers, drums and metallic percussion. The music growls and crunches, as implacable as it is spartan. 9 P.M. Admission: $10.
Oddly, I was in attendance at this show, but honestly have no recollection of this particular hiccup. Captured in the wake of the release of their 1993 “breakthrough” (well, not really) album, Ask Questions Late, here’s Cop Shoot Cop playing on the comparatively intimate stage of a venue dubbed The Grand. Just as a little sideline, the Grand was the re-invented space on East 13th Street between Fourth Avenue and Broadway formerly occupied by a longtime heavy metal bar, The Cat Club. After its short-lived tenure as The Grand, it became System. After System it became the Key Club. After the Key Club, it became Spa. After Spa, it became Plaid. It was called Plaid when Courtney Love clubbed some gig-goer over the head with a mic stand. Then it closed. Then it was nothing, for a long, time, before the space was gutted and turned into the lobby of a frankly douchebaggy hotel called the Hyatt Union Square.
But none of that had happened yet, obviously, when Cop Shoot Cop plugged in and let rip. As they lurched into “Got No Soul,” the eleventh track on that new album, all seemed to be going smoothly until sampler-minder Jim Coleman prematurely triggered a sonic fragment of the piece, derailing the song’s looming momentum. Like actual professionals, the band sustains the ominous, club-footed groove and course corrects, prompting Tod to deliver an emphatically feral vocal performance that forcibly yanks victory out of the jaws of embarrassing defeat.
Crank it.
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