Pink Section “Pink Section” 1979, 1980/2014. Superior Viaduct Records. A collection of the very short-lived San Francisco-based art-rock/punk/no wavers who named themselves after the San Francisco Chronicle’s pink colored arts and entertainment guide. I bought this album on a whim last week while up in Appleton, WI at Top Spins (an excellent and well-curated record store that I highly recommend checking out). It’s really really weird, and really kinda great. Knowing nothing about the band, I read – and was not surprised to learn after listening to the record – that they were art students and self-taught musicians influenced by Dadaism, a “deranged domesticity and 50′s Americana gone haywire” aesthetic and Yoko Ono – included on this compilation is a cover of her “Midsummer New York”, which is heavily deconstructed and punked up. Other top tracks are “Shopping” and “Jane Blank” which you can view the band playing live here.

With a sound I can really only compare to a mashup of Devo and B-52′s on heavy hallucinogens and speed, Pink Section were composed of Judy Gittelsohn (vocals and synth), Stephen Wymore (bass, guitar, synth and vocals), Carol Detweiler (drums and vocals) and Matt Heckert (vocals, guitar, bass and sax). Gittelsohn and Detweiler went on to form Inflatable Boy Clams after Pink Section broke up. In the comments section on WFMU’s blog about Pink Section in 2008, Heckert chimed in the conversation and stated he’s done some solo musical artwork work since the early 80′s (titled Matt Heckert Mechanical Sound Orchestra, it’s so industrial that it’s just machines.)