Gray (band)

On April 29, 1979, Michael Holman hosted the Canal Zone Party at Canal and Greenwich Street. The party was planned to showcase the graffiti of the Fabulous Five graffiti crew to the downtown scene. Jean-Michel Basquiat, then working under the pseudonym SAMO, showed up to the event to participate as a graffiti artist. He revealed his identity and asked Holman if he wanted to form a band.[3]

The band went by the names Test Pattern, Bad Fools, and Channel 9 before Basquiat named the band Gray after Gray's Anatomy, a book his mother gave hims as a child.[4][1] Gray originally consisted of Basquiat, Holman, a friend of Basquiat's named Shannon Dawson (who would later go on to create Konk), and Wayne Clifford (also known as Justin Thyme).[2] Dawson played trumpet, Clifford played a keyboard, Holman drums and Basquiat played clarinet, guitar, and the Wasp synthesizer. Holman recalled, "We played this angry, blaring, loud, confrontational music. Sometimes it was kind of mellow too, but it was very minimal."[2] Dawson's trumpet wasn't fitting in with the sounds they wanted to create, so he was replaced by Nick Taylor, who played guitar. Eventually Clifford introduced the band to his friend Vincent Gallo, and he joined them.[5][6] Gray performed at nightclubs such as Max's Kansas City, CBGB, Hurrah and the Mudd Club.[7]

They described their music as "ignorant," which was defined as "carelessly done or casually created work of art or sound or music that should not have worked but [actually] worked brilliantly."[2] Basquiat stated he was "inspired by John Cage at the time – music that isn’t really music. We were trying to be incomplete, abrasive, oddly beautiful."[6]

In June 1980, Basquiat participated in The Times Square Show and his career as a painter began to take off. In February 1981, he participated in the New York/New Wave exhibit at New York's MoMA PS1, and then in May 1981, he had his first solo show in Modena, Italy.[8] After Gray performed at the Mudd Club in the summer of 1981, Basquiat left the band to focus on being an artist.[1] After his departure, the band went their separate ways. Holman got into film, Taylor got into DJing, Clifford got into painting, and Gallo ventured into acting.

The original Gray lineup never released a record, but their song "Drum Mode" appeared on the soundtrack of Edo Bertoglio's film Downtown 81, which was set in the downtown scene and starred Basquiat.[9]

Gray reunited in 1988 to perform at Basquiat's memorial service. They came together again for the 1996 film Basquiat, directed by Julian Schnabel.[10] In the 1990s, Holman and Taylor created sonic music performances at clubs such as Club USA, Sybarite, Nuyorican Poets Cafe and The Ritz, where they opened for Todd Rundgren. Gray release their debut album, Shades Of... in 2011 on Plush Safe Records.[11] Reviewing the 27-track album for GQ, writer Glenn O'Brien described it as "the soundtrack of a better world."[12] A remastered version of the album with additional remixes was released on Ubiquity Records in 2019. It features the work of producers such as: Todd Rundgren, Hank Shocklee, Deantoni Parks, Mike Tewz, and King Britt. Since re-launching Gray in 2011, Holman and Taylor have performed live for select appearances at art institutions, including the New Museum (2011), the Corcoran Gallery of Art (2012) the Parrish Art Museum (2012), and with Questlove at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (2012). They were scheduled to perform at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2020.[13]