“True Love at the Worlds Fair”, Algebra Suicide

This way: True Love at the Worlds Fair

Lydia Tomkiw (August 6, 1959 – September 4, 2007) was an American poet, singer, and songwriter, best known for her work with the new wave musical group Algebra Suicide, along with her husband Don Hedeker. In the fall of 1982, at a reading at Columbia Squires, Hedeker publicly accompanied Tomkiw's poetry for the first time. It was a rudimentary setup, with Hedeker providing minimally amplified washes of sound on a somewhat glitchy Vox Guitar Organ. This experiment soon coalesced into an actual band. Their name, Algebra Suicide, came from a line in the poem "Recalling the Last Encounter." It was, from the very beginning, envisioned as a vehicle for Tomkiw's poetry; Hedeker's intention was to bring interesting accents and color to the poems themselves. In 1985, Algebra Suicide released their debut album, Big Skin, on the label Cause and Effect. Its format represented the firmly dual nature of Algebra Suicide — a cassette of thirteen songs paired with a chapbook presenting thirteen poems in the same running order. This track from 1982.

[Spotify] True Love at the Worlds Fair