These days, Bob Blank spends his time in his Connecticut studio, producing profitable music for ads and ringtones for the likes of Susan Boyle. But backtrack to the 1975-'85 era — that is, to the golden age of the NYC sound, between the rise of Television and that Madonna — and you'd find him lording over mythic studio Blank Tapes in Chelsea.
There, you might run into John Cale, James Chance, Sun Ra, the icy divas of Ze Records, Arthur Russell, and a funky wrecking crew of session people led by August Darnell, who'd later reinvent himself as Kid Creole. Strut Records and DJ History have compiled here a solid collection of tracks produced with the Bob Blank touch, including such unusual stunners as Walter Gibbons's mix of Gladys Knight's "It's a Better Than Good Time," the Bumblebee Unlimited's "I Got a Big Bee" (think the Chipmunks on poppers hanging out at a downtown disco loft), and the Jon's Dub version of Lola's "Wax the Van," one of Arthur Russell's masterpieces tweaked by Blank into a Latin percussion monster.
DJ alert: find the vinyl of The Blank Generation and you'll save yourself a lot of money and a lot of room in your Soul Jazz bag.
