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IVH: ESG / A South Bronx Story [1]
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Date: 2025-04-03
Tonight’s selections are from ESG’s 1981 and 1983 records, Come Away With ESG and the You’re No Good EP. Minimalist art funk groove from the South Bronx.
When Renee Scroggins formed a band called ESG with her three younger sisters in 1978, the notion of creating a ground-breaking mix of punk, funk and soul that would be sampled countless times by hip-hop artists, be played at cutting-edge danceclubs for decades and inspire everyone from the Clash to the Beastie Boys seemed pretty far-fetched. [...] Scroggins’ family was from the South Bronx, the home of hip-hop and also one of the most poverty-stricken areas in New York City, overrun by gangs and drugs, but also home to some of the most creative do-it-yourself artists in the world during the ‘70s. Some of Scroggins’ older siblings had already gotten in trouble with drugs, and to keep Renee and her younger sisters Valerie, Deborah and Marie out of trouble, their mother bought them instruments. “Playing music was more my mother’s dream than mine initially,” Renee Scroggins says. “At first I didn’t appreciate what she did for us, but as years went on, I realized the key sacrifices she made. She was a cook making a meager salary but she scrimped and saved to get those instruments. She was trying to make sure what happened to my older sister and brothers didn’t turn out that way for the rest of us kids.” — Chicago Tribune
Dance
Ask a music fan with at least a little more than casual knowledge of the late '70s post-punk scene to describe its sound, and they're likely to emphasize how it rewired avant-garde and underground music into a more rhythmic drive. In other words, it's the moment when bands brought funk to punk, whether via Lower Manhattan stars like Talking Heads and James Chance, or bands out of Northern England like Gang of Four and Public Image Ltd. But one under-appreciated group—at least, under-appreciated in proportion to their influence on a number of different music scenes—was a group of sisters out of the South Bronx who flipped the script and played funk like it was punk rock. They called their band ESG, short for Emerald, Sapphire & Gold. Those first two were birthstones. The third was their prize: an RIAA certification. ESG formed in 1978, a year after the Bronx's infamous summer of blackout looting, tenement burning, and Reggie Jackson smack-talking inflamed New York's rep as the city everyone outside its limits loved to hate. The Scroggins sisters—Renee (guitar/lead vocals), Deborah (bass/vocals), Valerie (drums/vocals), and Marie (additional percussion/vocals)—were encouraged by their mother Helen to take up playing musical instruments, accurately sussing out that starting a band might help keep them out of trouble. But with the family budget tapped out from buying the gear, the sisters' lessons had to come from playing along to Don Kirshner's Rock Concert on the TV or American Top 40 on the radio instead of actual instructors. — Reverb
U.F.O
In 1979 their mother entered them into a talent show, where one of the judges, Ed Bahlman, scouted them and became their unofficial manager. Bahlman went on to found 99 Records, home to bands from the burgeoning no wave and leftfield disco scene such as Liquid Liquid, Glenn Branca, Bush Tetras and, of course, ESG themselves. However, it wasn’t until some curious Mancunians came to town that the sisters would record their debut release. In 1980, ESG were booked to support A Certain Ratio at the Hurrah venue on the Upper West Side. Factory Records founder Tony Wilson was there, and during soundcheck, his ears pricked up. “He said, ‘I was really listening to you and I was thinking: how would you like to make a record?’” recalls Scroggins. “We had been playing for about a year, and I had asked Ed repeatedly [about making a record] and he was like, ‘yeah yeah, we'll get there’. Then this guy sees us for the first time and he just asks us.” [...] It was here that the image of extraterrestrials landing in the South Bronx projects was put to record. But only just. “‘UFO’ almost didn't even get recorded,” laughs Scroggins. “We were at the end of the recording session and there was a limited amount of tape left, so Martin was like, ‘do you have a song that's under three minutes?’ The thing that was so funny was that my family hated ‘UFO’ but Martin understood it and he felt the vibe. The rest is history.” — DJ Mag
Moody
This true-blue DIY spirit is at the heart of the ESG story. Scroggins’ mother gave Renee and her younger sister Valerie their first musical instruments for Christmas the year Renee turned 12. “Valerie was 9,” Scroggins recalls of her sister, who alongside Renee and their older sister Marie, formed the original ESG lineup. “There were six of us and my older siblings in the projects got hooked on drugs. Basically, she [Scroggins’ mom] saw that we found something positive we wanted to do. She knew if you’re playing and you’re practicing that keeps you inside not outside.” ESG, which stands for Emerald, Sapphire, and Gold, Valerie and Renee’s birthstones plus a nod to gold records status, first played in the city in 1978. It was “culture shock,” Scroggins remembers. “We go down to punk rock Manhattan with the people with spiked hair and we’re like, ‘Whoa, what the hell!?’ We were like, ‘Are they going to like us or beat us up?!’” She pauses. “They liked us.” They certainly did. ESG played all the most important clubs of the era, from post-punk nerve centers like Hur- rah (where David Bowie filmed his “Fashion” video) to Paradise Garage (aka the “Gay-rage,” a pioneering center of queer dance culture known to some as the anti-Studio 54), and soon linked up with Tony Wilson’s legendary Factory Records in the UK (future home of Joy Division and New Order). “We did the opening night at the Hacienda,” Renee says referring to the label’s notorious Manchester club, memorialized in the film 24 Hour Party People. “People always go, ‘What was it like?!’ And I go, ‘Dusty!’ Because it was so new.” There’s a “Zelig” quality to the ESG story: They borrowed amps from labelmates and legends of the downtown scene the Bush Tetras, played Danceteria around the same time Madonna was getting her start there, graced the Hacienda stage before any other Factory Records stars, and made the beats that sparked a creative fire in the minds of the most important artists in hip-hop history, but they never really got their flowers. There was only ever one Factory Records 7-inch, ESG’s US label (999 Records) imploded just as the band’s career was taking off, and though they’ve been amply sampled, they’ve never been amply compensated— a fact the band wryly referenced on their 1992 self-released EP Sample Credits Don’t Pay Our Bills. ESG has been a part of so much, yet they have always been on their own. “No,” Scroggins says when I ask her if she ever truly felt part of a creative community. “Being young girls from the projects, doing your own thing, making your own sounds…” she says. “I’ve been in the business 45-plus years and there is so much I’ve seen and done. To survive, you gotta be tough. It takes a lot of work and it definitely takes a lot of work to be respected as a woman. I get my respect today but, man, all the stuff I had to go through to get it.” — Vmagazine
Earn It
Let’s hear Dance one more time cause that song is a f’ing jam
WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Jason Momoa, Rachel Zegler (R 3/17/25)
Jimmy Fallon: Elton John, Brandi Carlile, Hailee Steinfeld, Perfume Genius
Stephen Colbert: Noah Wyle, Jenny Slate
Seth Meyers: Bill Burr, Aimee Lou Wood
After Midnight: The winner of Monday night's show, the winner of Tuesday night's show, the winner of Wednesday night's show
Watch What Happens Live: Michelle Williams, John Oliver
LAST WEEK'S POLL: DID YOU PARTAKE IN ALCOHOL OR ANOTHER SUBSTANCE THIS WEEK?
Yes 57%
No 32%
Nice try cop 11%
[END]
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