Knitting Factory

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stage of the Knitting Factory in 2008

The Knitting Factory is a New York City club that became the center of an alternative and avant-garde jazz and rock music scene in the East Village district of Manhattan in the late 1980s and early 1990s . The club was founded in 1987 by Michael Dorf (* 1963 in Milwaukee ) and Louis Spitzer on the first floor of a former warehouse for Avon products and moved to Tribeca in 1994 and to Brooklyn in 2009 .

In the 1990s, Dorf also founded a superordinate company (initially KnitMedia , now called Knitting Factory Entertainment (KFE) ), which organized jazz festivals and, in addition to the Knitting Factory , a concert agency, other live music clubs and the music label Knitting Factory Records (formerly Knitting Factory Works ), including several sub-labels (including Shimmy Disc, Instinct Records and Evolver ).

History of the club

History and foundation (1985–1987)

Michael Dorf had taken over the management of the band Swamp Thing from Madison , Wisconsin , as a student in 1985 . It was an old friend's band, the guitarist Bob Appel. In the absence of a record deal, Dorf and Appel founded their own record label called Flaming Pie Records , on which several other bands were also released. To support the commercially unsuccessful label and to keep himself afloat, Dorf, who moved to New York in mid-1986, decided to found the Knitting Factory . After months of renovating the first floor of a somewhat shabby, former warehouse, Dorf opened the club with his business partner Louis Spitzer in February 1987 with a concert by the band Swamp Thing . At that time the club rooms with an area of ​​approx. 185 m² were also the village's apartment and office for Flaming Pie Records . The plan to also use the club as a gallery and café during the day had little success, especially to the disappointment of Spitzer, who was very interested in art. Bob Appel soon joined them, increasingly taking on Spitzer's evening tasks at the mixer and in the club's small kitchen. In August 1987, Appel officially became the new business partner of Dorf; From then on, Spitzer devoted himself to his own art projects. Soon after, Dorf moved his apartment and office to the floor above the club, where a band cloakroom was also set up.

Center of avant-garde jazz (1987–1993)

Within a few months it established itself as a nightly venue for rock, jazz, funk , folk and improvised music, alternating with performance art , stand-up comedy as well as dance, film, theater and poetry performances. In particular, the club developed into a center of the New York avant-garde jazz scene, which at that time found little opportunity to perform. The first jazz musicians to play there in 1987 were the trio of Wayne Horvitz , soon afterwards Elliott Sharp , Roy Nathanson and John Zorn , who also premiered his project Naked City there in 1989 . The five nights of these shows took place for the first time on the ground floor of the building after the rooms of the Peruvian restaurant located there had also been taken over. The attempt to run a restaurant there was canceled after a few months. Instead, the kitchen was converted into another function room and the former restaurant was connected to the original club by stairs, so that it now had three floors.

Soon they started recording concerts on a 4-track recorder . These were initially given to 30 radio stations for a few dollars. The first series of "Live at the Knitting Factory" included u. a. Concerts by John Zorn, Bill Frisell , Fred Frith , Arto Lindsay , Steve Coleman , Ikue Mori and Alva Rogers (singer of the Band of Susans ). While Flaming Pie Records was still unsuccessful, this series of concert recordings became extremely successful; the number of syndicated channels rose to approx. 200 within two years , making the Knitting Factory known nationwide with their broadcasts . By Hal Willner , a contact for was A & M Records label, which wanted to expand at this time its catalog to more experimental music. In October 1988 an agreement was reached and a four-year contract was signed that allowed the club to be expanded to include a digital recording studio on the upper floor. As a result, between May 1989 and June 1990, four compilation albums with live music from the Knitting Factory were released by A&M . Since the label had meanwhile been taken over by Polygram and there was obviously little interest in continuing the commercially insignificant series of releases, Dorf and Appel decided to buy the rights to the live recordings in order to later market them independently.

To attract more attention, the Knitting Factory held its first own jazz festival in 1988 called What Is Jazz? , others followed in the next few years. The financial gain was small, but newspaper and television reports made the Factory more popular , also in Europe and Japan. In response to a request from the Netherlands, a “Knitting Factory Festival” was held in Groningen in March 1990 , with around 30 musicians from the New York club performing. In 1989, George Wein was also convinced to include the Knitting Factory and its “new” jazz artists in the program of the well-known JVC Jazz Festival . In 1989 the club presented five nights under the motto "The Knitting Factory Goes Uptown" in the Alice Tully Hall of the Lincoln Center , a. a. with John Zorn, Charlie Haden , Cassandra Wilson and Cecil Taylor . After the festival, Wein ended this cooperation, but in the following years signed some of the artists from the Knitting Factory for the JVC festival.

Lou Reed , Don Byron , Bob Mold , Vernon Reid and Alex Chilton also performed in the Knitting Factory during these years , as well as bands such as Sonic Youth , They Might Be Giants , Firehose , The Gories , The Lounge Lizards , Violent Femmes and Yo La Tengo , The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and Soul Coughing , whose frontman Mike Doughty served as the club's bouncer for several years; in addition, authors such as Phillip Lopate, Eric Bogosian and Mary Gaitskill regularly performed readings. Established jazz musicians such as Anthony Braxton , Don Cherry , Dewey Redman , James Blood Ulmer , David Murray , Geri Allen and Oliver Lake were ultimately drawn to the emerging new jazz scene.

After the success with the Dutch festival, Dorf and Appel decided to organize a six-week European tour (including to Sweden, Spain and Germany, including East Berlin ) that same year . You traveled with two buses and two shows (each with 3 bands, including Sonny Sharrock , Myra Melford and the Jazz Passengers ) to different cities. While poor organization and a lack of income sometimes led to chaos, the European media reported mostly positive. After learning from these experiences, the first tour along the US west coast in the spring of 1991 was much more successful. The CD Knitting Factory Goes to the Northwest , produced for promotional purposes in the run-up to the tour, was also the first release by the club's new record label Knitting Factory Works . Shortly afterwards, with the financial support of the Japanese major label Tokuma , further CDs were produced, among others. a. Live albums by Defunkt and Jazz Passengers and studio albums by Chunk and Samm Bennett. The first artist who was hired for the new label, however, was the modern creative saxophonist Thomas Chapin , who subsequently recorded several records for the label. The free jazz saxophonist Charles Gayle finally achieved his breakthrough on this label with his album Repent from 1992. Despite these successes, this period was still characterized by numerous financial bottlenecks, especially since Dorf took high business risks and often received incomprehension. Bob Appel left the company in early 1992 to work as an independent music producer.

Expansion of the label and festival business (1994-2001)

From February 1987 to April 1994, the club was located at 47 East Houston Street in Manhattan's East Village . From 1994 to July 2009 the club was then located in Tribeca at 74 Leonard Street between Church Street and Broadway , where there was more space and a modern building. In addition to three event rooms with different capacities - the "Mainspace" hall for larger concerts with space for 400 spectators, the "Tab Bar" and the "Afterknit" lounge ("The Old Office" was added in 1998) - they also set up a professional recording studio and office space there. In addition, the club was equipped with video technology and in the mid-1990s pioneering work was carried out in the field of live audio streaming on the Internet.

Although Dorf and some representatives of avant-garde jazz such as John Zorn and John Lurie repeatedly encountered business and artistic problems and the club was boycotted by some artists in the meantime, the factory was still an important part of New Yorkers in the nineties Jazz scene, with numerous indie rock bands performing there. Dorf also founded KnitMedia , the parent company of the club , under whose roof the label and festival business was significantly expanded. So they continued to organize the What Is Jazz? -Festival, which in 1996 had already grown to a period of fourteen days and a program with over 150 participating bands. In addition to the Factory , numerous other event locations were integrated (with some free admission), such as B. Harlem , Battery and Central Park , the World Trade Center and the TriBeCa Hall . The more traditionally oriented JVC Jazz Festival was thus increasingly competing. With increasing size and approach to the mainstream , one relied on the support of more financially strong sponsors for the engagement of well-known artists. After Heineken was won as a supporter in the mid-1990s , the festival was briefly called the Texaco New York Jazz Festival in 1998 , before becoming the Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival in 1999 and 2000 , which was subsequently discontinued. The programming was not limited to avant-garde and classical jazz, but also presented artists from other genres such as noise rock , classical music , blues , Latin American music , big band , klezmer and electronica . With the program of the year 2000 Michael Dorf finally left the niche of the somewhat remote music that he had tapped into in 1987. Within eleven days he presented over 200 artists and bands, including world-famous musicians such as Ornette Coleman , Max Roach & Cecil Taylor , Chick Corea , Los Lobos , Dr. John , the Art Ensemble of Chicago , the Dave Douglas Sextet , Al Green , the Ben Folds Five with Pharoah Sanders , Elvis Costello , Robert Cray , the Neville Brothers and again John Zorn. This festival, which was partially webcast , was also brought to Washington , Philadelphia and Boston, shortened to four days .

In the mid-1990s, the Knitting Factory Works label and its sub- labels developed into an important business pillar. At the beginning of 1997 they had already released over 100 albums and compilations, including live and studio recordings by up-and-coming and well-known jazz musicians. On the sub-label Knit Classic were u. a. older albums by Dizzy Gillespie and Rashied Ali were re-released, while the Jewish Alternative Movement (JAM) presented bands and artists of modern, Jewish-influenced music, such as B. Hasidic New Wave and Uri Caine's albums . In 1998 they also took over Mark Kramer's ailing indie label Shimmy Disc . At the same time, the sound and was mastering studio of Knit significantly expanded, especially thanks to the various equipment that is dissolved by Kramer Noise New Jersey could take -Tonstudio. Kramer, who u. a. He was the live guitarist for Ween , Half Japanese and Butthole Surfers , as well as producer of Urge Overkill's "Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon," who would continue to work as producer and A&R manager for Shimmy Disc , but left Knit shortly afterwards after a legal dispute with Michael Dorf.

Kathleen Edwards at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood on March 23, 2005

At that time, in addition to old friends such as Sonic Youth, John Zorn and Bill Frisell, Richie Havens , Marc Ribot , Philip Glass , Medeski, Martin & Wood , the Indigo Girls and the Pixies also performed in the club.

In November 1999 the first music club branch was opened in Hollywood , others were planned for a time in London, Paris and Berlin, but were never realized. However, the Hollywood project drove KnitMedia to the verge of bankruptcy as construction costs skyrocketed. After a phase of consolidation, the company was set back again by massive sales losses in the wake of September 11, 2001 .

Upheaval (2002 to today)

In 2002 KnitMedia merged with the record label Instinct Records , which u. a. had released Moby's first albums . With the catalog of this company and its sub- labels Evolver and Shadow Records , KnitMedia now had a complete catalog of over 800 titles. After Dorf had to sell 70% of its shares in the KnitMedia company to various business partners in several stages in the second half of the 1990s in order to obtain fresh capital for its business expansion and to avert bankruptcy, he lost control of the von company founded by him. Jared Hoffman, the founder of Instinct Records , took over the management of KnitMedia , replacing Michael Dorf as CEO , who also sold his remaining company shares in 2007, but as a New York concert organizer (for Joni Mitchell , Bruce Springsteen , REM , Bob Dylan ua) and continued to work in the music business as the operator of a new club.

Over the course of the 2000s, the club had to adapt to changes in the New York club and concert scene. While the Knit continued to lose importance in the field of avant-garde jazz and thus its profile, also due to the departure of Dorf, they continued to move in certain niches of the local club scene, for example with concerts in the field of hardcore punk , noise - Rock or alternative hip-hop , but had to contend with rising rents and increasing competition. Competition with other clubs and concert agencies such as The Bowery Presents (which operates the Bowery Ballroom ) and Live Nation led to a lower utilization of the club, although attempts were made to improve the profile of the club, with bands such as Akron / Family , Deerhoof , Dirty Projectors and Deer tick to sharpen. With the last move in September 2009 to Williamsburg , Brooklyn, 361 Metropolitan Avenue, the Knit finally shrunk and left Manhattan for the first time. The new club now only has 300 seats and continues to host concerts with bands and artists outside the mainstream , such as Glassjaw , Hawthorne Heights , The Radio Dept. , Wanda Jackson , This Will Destroy You , The Dears , The Lawrence Arms, and Gene Ween .

However, it expanded outside of New York. In 2006 they took a share in the concert agency Bravo Entertainment , which they took over completely in the following year and which has a much more commercial orientation with artists such as Elton John , Lyle Lovett , James Taylor and LeAnn Rimes , but in this way helps the clubs in Keeping New York and Los Angeles afloat. With a similar intention, the parent company KFE founded two clubs with larger capacities ( Knitting Factory Concert Houses ) in Spokane , Washington and Boise , Idaho (1500 and 1000 seats respectively) in 2008 , where indie bands like Ratatat have since performed, but with Puddle of Mudd and Ted Nugent are also artists who would be absolutely atypical for the New York branch.

There was still media interest in the concerts of the New York Club. In 2007 the company entered into an exclusive contract for broadcasting concerts with the radio station XMU. Previously, the cable channel BET Jazz broadcasted the music program Live from the Knittery Factory for several years .

Web links

Commons : Knitting Factory  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b bk.knittingfactory.com
  2. michaeldorf.com ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.michaeldorf.com
  3. books.google.de
  4. Phoebe Hoban: knit wits - All that downtown jazz . In: New York Magazine , July 31, 1989, pp. 46-49
  5. michaeldorf.com ( Memento of the original from June 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.michaeldorf.com
  6. a b jazzthetik.de ( Memento of the original from March 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.jazzthetik.de
  7. books.google.de
  8. books.google.de
  9. Texaco Jazz Festival Turns New York Into 'Jazz Island' ( Memento of the original from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , PR Newswire, June 1, 1998 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.prnewswire.com
  10. archive.is ( Memento from July 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  11. books.google.de
  12. ^ Paul Verna: The Knit Expands Studio Role - NY Venue Aquires Mark Kramer's Gear, Services . In: Billboard , Jan. 10, 1998
  13. Pop & Jazz . In: Berliner Zeitung , July 14, 1999
  14. books.google.de
  15. Steven Graybow: Jazz Notes . In: Billboard , July 20, 2002, p. 33
  16. books.google.de
  17. nytimes.com