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All Music Guide:
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. Cornog's seventh album under the East River Pipe moniker, We Live in Rented Rooms, arrived in 2011.
Wikipedia:
East River Pipe is the name under which Fred Cornog (aka FM Cornog) records. Cornog was born in Norfolk, Virginia, and raised in Summit, New Jersey. After high school, Cornog worked a series of menial jobs before succumbing to alcoholism, depression, drug abuse and eventual homelessness, ending up in the Hoboken train station. During this time he met Astoria, Queens-resident Barbara Powers, and with Powers' support and label (Hell Gate), Cornog released some home-recorded cassettes and 7" singles under the name East River Pipe. Cornog named his one-man band East River Pipe after observing a sewage pipe spewing out raw waste into the East River. These initial 7" singles attracted the attention of UK-based Sarah Records who released his records from 1993 to 1996, making Cornog one of the few American artists ever signed to the legendary British label. Stateside, Cornog released his first LP, Shining Hours In A Can, on the Chicago-based micro-indie Ajax Records in 1994. A year later, he found a more permanent home on Merge Records, the Chapel Hill-based indie run by Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. Also in 1995, Cornog contributed the song "Miracleland" to the AIDS benefit album Red Hot + Bothered produced by the Red Hot Organization. Merge released Poor Fricky (1995), Mel (1996), The Gasoline Age (1999), Shining Hours In A Can (2002;reissue), Garbageheads On Endless Stun (2003), What Are You On? (2006), and We Live In Rented Rooms (2011). Artists who have covered East River Pipe songs include David Byrne, Lambchop, The Mountain Goats, Okkervil River, Hazeldine, For Against, The Wisdom of Harry, Hurricane Bells, and others. The New York Times has described East River Pipe's music as "gentle, smart and unspeakably sad." Rolling Stone called Cornog "one of our generation's great eccentric songwriters."
