Jeff & Jane Hudson -

Jeff & Jane Hudson are an American husband/wife minimal wave duo from Boston that cut two 1979 singles as The Rentals on self-press Rent/Rental. Under their own names, they issued two 1981 shortplayers on Manhattan small-press Infidelity. One further single and the 1983 album Flesh appeared on eponymous-press J & J Records.

Members: Jane Hudson (bass, vocals, keyboards), Jeff Hudson (guitar, vocals)

Background

Jeff & Jane Hudson formed in 1980 in Manhattan when husband-and-wife Rentals members Jeff Hudson and Jane Hudson regrouped as a synthesizer-based duo after the dissolution of the Boston trio.

Jane was born in New York City to concert pianist Leonard Shure and actress Barbara Edwards, a Yale School of Drama graduate active in regional theatre. She studied piano as a child and earned a 1962 B.A. in English and art history from the University of Pennsylvania. By the late 1960s, Jane taught English at Lexington High School and wrote poetry.

Jeff played bongos and trumpet in his youth. He attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston from 1968–73 and focused on large color-field painting and video art. The pair met as neighbors in an artists’ loft building on Atlantic Avenue opposite South Station and began a collaboration in performance art. In 1974, they established a video-art course at the Museum School and joined the faculty as a teaching team.

In 1977, Jeff won a traveling fellowship that took the couple to Europe. They visited documenta in Kassel and encountered the Sex Pistols and British punk in London. The Hudsons formed the Rentals in fall 1977 with Museum School student Pseudo Carol on drums; Jane borrowed a bass and Jeff bought an inexpensive guitar. The Rentals played Boston clubs including the Rat and opened for The Clash on Feb. 16, 1979, at Harvard Square Theatre.

The trio moved to New York in 1979 and signed a record deal in a dressing room after a Max’s Kansas City performance. WBCN program director Oedipus produced “Gertrude Stein” (b/w “Low Rent”) and “I Got a Crush on You” (b/w “New York”) for Rent/Rental Records. The Hudsons briefly performed in New York as the Manhattan Project after the Rentals dissolved in 1980, then shifted toward synthesizers and rhythm machines under their own names.

They opened for Suicide in Manhattan and signed to Charles Ball’s Lust/Unlust Music. The Hudsons released “No Clubs” b/w “Dream” through the Infidelity imprint in late 1980 and the six-track World Trade EP through the same imprint the next year. They returned to Boston in 1982 and recorded Flesh that fall on four-track tape with a Roland TR-808, Juno-60, Pro-One, guitars, and a Shure microphone for J+J Records.

Discography: