​1981 ESG “ESG” on 99 Records

As a deeply clichéd, angry teenager my friends and I used to skip school a lot and take the train into Manhattan to see shows. There were lots of “Punk Matinees” in those days, underage skate/hangout/squat events with innumerable bands. Straight Edge and Krishna Core were just coming into fashion, at least in that scene, as was No Wave, of which I was a big fan. ESG, of course, stands for “Emerald, Sapphire, Gold” and is basically the four Scroggins sisters with a dude named Tito on congas. I hear a lot about how a certain song or record is “The Most Sampled In History”, which is apparently not something accurately quantifiable, but ESG’s “UFO” always gets a mention. All I can say is that this may very well be the best record of the 1980’s, and close to pure genius. It’s proof that complexity in music does not demand complexity of composition or technical advancement on any given instrument. The voice, bass, drums, and percussion are all minimalist and stripped to the bone, and there is an ENDLESS amount of space in each song, and that is a sort of music in itself. Space. Openness. Room. Just ask John Cage.

​And yet every song is catchy as hell, and seems brilliantly constructed in relation to what each Scroggins DOESN’T play. Also, it sounds like pure 80’s South Bronx, which is a warm and fun nostalgic sound, and most definitely a place and time that will never exist again. I really cannot tell you how much I love this record, let alone the untold number of times it has spun. Every single person I’ve ever handed it to has immediately and deeply fallen in love. There’s a reason this music speaks so easily to so many vastly different people. Hey, if my angry/thrash teenage brothers, who literally hated everything, even the bands they liked, liked ESG, you know it had pure magic to it. Also, that bass sound is TERSE! As simple as a lot of the music is, it would be impossible to copy. By anyone. Ever. Top Action.