ESG - MOODY, Factory Records 1981

Emerald Sapphire and Gold, better known as ESG, are four sisters from South Bronx, Deborah, Marie, Renee, and Valerie Scroggins. They began with the support of their mother who bought them instruments to keep busy and out of trouble while still in their teens. The group began to enter talent contests and after impressing 99 Records owner Ed Bahlman at one particular New York contest that they did not win, he invited to take them under his wing as a manager and producer. The history of 99 Records is quite influential and is now well documented, having had a working relationship with labels in the UK like Factory and Rough Trade, and spearheading a new wave in US post-punk groups that became known as No Wave. The history of ESG places them at the root of several musical histories - house, hip hop, post punk, and even no wave, a unique position that few other bands can claim. Starting out with a repertoire of only four original songs in 1979, Bahlman began booking ESG at punk and dance clubs around the city, where the group’s minimal, heavily rhythmic, and unpolished sound fit right into the New York scene. After opening for A Certain Ratio, label owner Tony Wilson asked them to record something for his Factory Records, which resulted in their first single “You’re No Good”, a three-song 7” produced by Martin Hannet. The songs “You’re No Good,” “UFO,” and “Moody” (an all time garage house classic), remain the group’s best-known, most-sampled material and are among the best to have come from New York’s no wave scene, a scene that ESG had little business being part of. ESG wasn’t self-consciously arty and they didn’t come from a punk background; they simply wrote and played their music without conceptualization. None of this matched with the no wave bands, but the sound the group made certainly did.