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East River Pipe Biography
Under the pen name, East River Pipe, F.M. Cornog has recorded six extraordinary albums, all recorded and mixed entirely on a cheap multi-track mini-studio, with a bare minimum of outboard gear. These biting, ruminative micro-masterpieces have won Cornog much critical praise, but never fame and fortune. He has painted his America as a neon-lit wasteland filled with deluded losers, cheats, junkies, ultra-capitalist businessmen, freeway-roaming dreamers and the tragically fated.
East River Pipe’s seventh album, We Live in Rented Rooms, continues Cornog’s journey into America’s darklands. The fatalistic clock-puncher in the opener “Backroom Deals” can only repeat to himself in mantra-like numbness, “...I better get used to it, I better get used to it.” The “Conman” is haunted by a past he will never escape. The “Summer Boy” yearns for a girl who has long since moved on, or, perhaps, never was. The would-be filmmaker of “Tommy Made a Movie” locks his creations inside his mind for no one to see, preferring to watch internet porn instead.
East River Pipe’s music has been described by the New York Times as “gentle, smart, and unspeakably sad.” Rolling Stone characterized him as “one of our generation’s great eccentric songwriters.” Sometimes harrowing, occasionally scathing, and often heartbreakingly beautiful, his songs have been covered by artists as diverse as David Byrne, Lambchop, the Mountain Goats, and Okkervil River.
East River Pipe’s seventh album, We Live in Rented Rooms, continues Cornog’s journey into America’s darklands. The fatalistic clock-puncher in the opener “Backroom Deals” can only repeat to himself in mantra-like numbness, “...I better get used to it, I better get used to it.” The “Conman” is haunted by a past he will never escape. The “Summer Boy” yearns for a girl who has long since moved on, or, perhaps, never was. The would-be filmmaker of “Tommy Made a Movie” locks his creations inside his mind for no one to see, preferring to watch internet porn instead.
East River Pipe’s music has been described by the New York Times as “gentle, smart, and unspeakably sad.” Rolling Stone characterized him as “one of our generation’s great eccentric songwriters.” Sometimes harrowing, occasionally scathing, and often heartbreakingly beautiful, his songs have been covered by artists as diverse as David Byrne, Lambchop, the Mountain Goats, and Okkervil River.
East River Pipe All Music Guide Biography
East River Pipe is the guise of singer/songwriter F.M. Cornog, who began recording his melancholy one-man pop on a Tascam 388 mini-studio in his apartment in Astoria, NY. Born in Suffolk, VA, and raised in Summit, NJ, Cornog followed a difficult childhood with a series of jobs in a carpet warehouse, a greenhouse, and a light bulb factory. After a longstanding bout with alcoholism and an emotional breakdown cost him his job and left him homeless, Cornog hit rock bottom; while sleeping in a Hoboken train station, he met Barbara Powers, who eventually became not only his girlfriend but also set up the aspiring musician with recording equipment and his own label, Hell Gate.
Fatalistically dubbing the project East River Pipe after imagining a connection between his music and the raw sewage dumped into a local river basin, Cornog began issuing home-recorded cassettes like 1990's Point of Memory and the following year's I Used to Be Kid Colgate before he and Powers raised enough capital to press several hundred copies of a single, Helmet On. After the record won Single of the Week honors in Melody Maker, East River Pipe was signed to the legendary British independent label Sarah Records, which collected much of Cornog's previously recorded material on 1994's Shining Hours in a Can.
After signing to the American indie Merge, East River Pipe returned in 1995 with Poor Fricky; Mel followed in 1996, trailed three years later by The Gasoline Age. Four years after Cornog's return to New Jersey (and the subsequent release of The Gasoline Age), East River Pipe released Garbageheads on Endless Stun in 2003, and 2005 saw the release of What Are You On? -- still on Merge. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
Fatalistically dubbing the project East River Pipe after imagining a connection between his music and the raw sewage dumped into a local river basin, Cornog began issuing home-recorded cassettes like 1990's Point of Memory and the following year's I Used to Be Kid Colgate before he and Powers raised enough capital to press several hundred copies of a single, Helmet On. After the record won Single of the Week honors in Melody Maker, East River Pipe was signed to the legendary British independent label Sarah Records, which collected much of Cornog's previously recorded material on 1994's Shining Hours in a Can.
After signing to the American indie Merge, East River Pipe returned in 1995 with Poor Fricky; Mel followed in 1996, trailed three years later by The Gasoline Age. Four years after Cornog's return to New Jersey (and the subsequent release of The Gasoline Age), East River Pipe released Garbageheads on Endless Stun in 2003, and 2005 saw the release of What Are You On? -- still on Merge. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
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