| Jody Harris | |
| Birth Place: | United States |
| Instrument: | Electric guitar |
| Genre: | Surf rock, rock, no wave |
| Occupation: | Musician, songwriter |
| Years Active: | 1973–1990 |
| Label: | ZE Don't Fall Off the Mountain Press Shanachie Antilles Infidelity Lust/Unlust Celluloid |
| Associated Acts: | The Contortions Raybeats Golden Palominos Robert Quine The Voidoids |
Jody Harris is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and composer who was born in Kansas[1] and became a central figure in the seminal no wave scene in New York City in the 1970s.
Harris was lead guitarist in the Contortions, an influential No Wave band. He was also a key member of a number of bands that emerged from the no wave scene, including the Raybeats and the Golden Palominos.
Harris has also recorded as a solo artist and with guitarist Robert Quine. In 1977, he joined Quine in a band backing rock critic Lester Bangs on Bangs' 7" single, Let It Blurt, produced by John Cale.[2] He was also briefly a member of the Voidoids and played on many recordings by a wide range of artists, including Matthew Sweet, Syd Straw, Kip Hanrahan and John Zorn.
With Quine, he composed all the music on their collaborative album, Escape, as well as co-writing virtually all the Raybeats' material. He also composed all the songs and instrumentals on his one solo album, except for one song co-written with Don Christensen. As part of Anton Fier's supergroup the Golden Palominos, he co-wrote the majority of the songs on the band's acclaimed second album, Visions of Excess.
One esteemed critic described Harris as a "seasoned campaigner from the late-1970s flowering of American postpunk",[3] while another called him "one of the most underrated guitarists" on the New York scene.[4]
Robert Palmer, writing in The New York Times in 1987, praised "the luminous clarity" of Harris's lead guitar work for the Golden Palominos,[3] while the Village Voice's Robert Christgau obliquely criticized what he called a "weakness for the genre exercise".[5] Quine himself, however, declared Harris's work "tragically underrated -- he's so far advanced, way past me and people can't hear it".[6]