The Washington Squares

The Washington Squares
The Washington Squares. Left to right: Tom Goodkind, Lauren Agnelli, Billy Ficca, Bruce Paskow. Photographed at Cambridge Folk Festival, Cambridge, England, by Dudley Snodgrass, Esq.
Background information
Origin	Greenwich Village, NY, U.S.
Genres	Folk Pop Alternative rock
Years active	1983–1991
Labels	Gold Castle Records Polygram
Associated acts	The TriBattery Pops, Nervus Rex, The Invaders, U.S. Ape, Lauren Agnelli, Tom Goodkind, Television, Tom Carvel, others.
Website	[1]

The Washington Squares were a 1980s neo-beatnik folk revival music group. Modeled after early 1960s groups like The Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul and Mary, the group was named after New York City's Washington Square Park, emblematic of Greenwich Village. The group, consisting of Bruce Jay Paskow, Tom Goodkind, and Lauren Agnelli, came up with their name over free drinks provided by Agnelli, who was a waitress at a Mickey Ruskin's Chinese Chance off Washington Square Park where Goodkind and Paskow were regulars.

Paskow, Goodkind, and Agnelli dressed, played, and sang in a style evocative of the idealistic, left-leaning folk revival groups of the Kennedy era, but added a layer of post-punk Reagan-era irony. Paskow had previously played in the punk band The Invaders; Agnelli had been in the Nervus Rex and a writer for the Village Voice; Goodkind, the band's leader, had knocked around in U.S. Ape and was best known as creator and manager of large alternative music venues in Manhattan such as Irving Plaza, the Peppermint Lounge, and Roseland.

The revivalist concept preceded any real familiarity with this genre of music: to put together their repertoire, the band bought a bunch of records, picked the brains of veteran folksingers, and pooled their money to send Goodkind to Washington, D.C. to do research on folk songs at the Library of Congress.