When looking back at the heydays of New York City's so-called "downtown scene" (for the sake of discussion, let's consider that to be the '80s plus a half decade or so extending back into the '70s and forward into the '90s), it seems surprising that
Curlew aren't mentioned more frequently, but then again, maybe it's not particularly surprising that
Curlew haven't -- thus far -- become as famous as a few others who used venues in the Lower East Side, NoLiTa, and Tribeca as the launching pads for careers of worldwide renown. Although downtown music was always about erasing musical boundaries (among other things),
Curlew might have erased musical boundaries too well; after all, it's never been too difficult to assign
Sonic Youth to the box named "rock" and
Dave Douglas to "jazz" (
John Zorn is one person who blew up the box from the get-go) for marketing purposes -- not that the artists themselves ever asked to be categorized thusly. But what about a band that combined elements of free jazz, avant rock, and interludes of textural improv with saxophonist/leader
George Cartwright's Mississippi-bred R&B/funk sensibility and down-home friendly tunefulness? Where does that fit, exactly? Well, how about right in your ears. Forget
the Lounge Lizards' tongue-in-cheek hipsterism of the time --
Curlew in their early years were the no-compromise real thing.