In mid 1981 Kim Gordon and Josh Baer (the then director of White Columns) convinced Thurston Moore to organize this nine-day noise music festival to accommodate underemployed experimental performers in the downtown post-punk scene. The festival was held in the White Columns art gallery, which had a capacity of around sixty people.
Each night three to five acts performed, including Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Ut, Dog Eat Dog (Soody Sisco, Martha Fiskin and Linda Pitt), Jeffrey Lohn (post-Theoretical Girls), Y Pants, Mofungo, EQ'D (Leslie Edge, Machiko Ichihara, John Mastracchio and Dan Witz), Built on Guilt (Robert Longo, Jeffrey Glenn, Karol Hogloff and Brian Hudson), Rudolph Grey, Avant Squares (Barbara Barg, Joe Chassler and Mike Sappol), Off Beach (Angela Babbit, Fritz Van Orden, Ian Peru, Joe Dizney, Kurt Hoffman and Michael Brown), solo guitar by Lee Ranaldo, Jules Baptiste's Red Decade, Don King (Don Burg, Donald Lindsay and Marc Cunningham), Robin Crutchfield's Dark Day, Glorious Strangers (Wharton Tiers and Carol Tiers), painter Dan Asher as Economic Animal, IMA (Andy Blinx and Don Hunerberg), NNB, Ad Hoc Rock (Bill Bucher, David Garland, Mark Abbott and Nigel Rollings), Smoking Section (Daniel Diaz, Jeffrey Glenn, Bill Obrecht, Richard Prior, David Rosenberg and Eris Thoren), Chinese Puzzle (David Hofstra, John Mernit and David Rosenbloom), The Problem (Andrea Tienan, Myra Holder, Nancy Heidel and Soos Haglof), Avoidance Behavior (Lee Ranaldo and David Linton), and an early version of Sonic Youth with Anne DeMarinis, Kim Gordon, Richard Smith and Thurston Moore.[2][3][4]
Music from the Noise Festival (aka Noise Fest) was first released on December 15th, 1981 as a 90 minute audio cassette titled Noise Fest on ZG Music; the music label of the legendary ZG magazine organized by Rosetta Brookes.[5] All material was recorded live at White Columns. This included the music of Ut, Lee Ranaldo, Mofungo, Khmer Rouge, The Problem, Smoking Section, Sonic Youth, Jeff Lohn (of the Theoretical Girls), Jules Baptiste's Red Decade, EQ'D, Avant Squares, Don King, Primitives, Ad Hoc Rock, Y Pants, John Rehnberger, Off Beach, Barbotemagus (as it is misspelled on the cover), Economical Animal, Chinese Puzzle, Glorious Strangers, Built On Guilt, Oma Fakir, and Lampshades.[6] The Executive-Producer of the cassette was Joshua Baer. The cassette cover design was created by artist/musician Barbara Ess.
Speed Trials was eventually released as a live album recorded by Mark Roule and became one of the best-selling independent music records of its time.[7]
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