Over the years, Laswell became one of the most prominent and innovative bassists in the city, playing with jazz and avant-garde legends such as John Zorn, Fred Frith and Buckethead and releasing dozens of albums. It was a bargain, though-at least from a creative standpoint. You would come out of the subway station, and there are 20 kids with baseball bats, and you have to give them your money, and there's no way around it," Laswell tells Newsweek. Broken thermometers left behind when a company exited a neighboring factory were scattered all around the courtyard of the building that housed the studio, on the corner of 3 rd Avenue and 3 rd Street, and another neighboring building housed a coffee roasting factory that two or three times a day emitted a huge black cloud that descended onto the courtyard and came in through the windows. At the time, drugs were sold openly on Union Street and street fights were common among The Crazy Homicides and The Sunset Skins and other gangs. After all, it was just another day in Gowanus. (Even back in the day, that wasn't a place one would want to end up.)īisi and Laswell obliged. They drew out knives and told Bisi and Laswell that if they didn't give them money, they would be thrown into the Gowanus canal. They tried to keep walking, but the members of a gang that called itself The Crazy Homicides had other plans. "Yeah, OK," Bisi replied, figuring the best strategy would be to act normal. After overhearing what Laswell and Bisi were discussing, one of them said loudly: "Oh! Artists!"Īnother said: "Hi! We're Brooklyn muggers." They wore forage caps and leather jackets and looked menacing. Suddenly, a group of men came up behind them. One day in the early 1980s, Martin Bisi and Bill Laswell, both musicians and producers, were walking in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood and talking about music they had been recording at the studio they'd established in a half-vacant, mid-19th-century building a few blocks away.
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