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Perverse Medium Specificity: Tony Conrad in the 1990S, 1960S, and Now / Branden W

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Perverse Medium Specificity: Tony Conrad in the 1990S, 1960S, and Now / Branden W Perverse Medium Specificity: Tony Conrad in the 1990s, 1960s, and Now / Branden W. Joseph and David Grubbs Branden W. Joseph: I want to begin the dis- Jim was playing with him. It was at the Knitting cussion with how we met Tony and also how Factory on Leonard Street, I think, 1995. we met through Tony, because that was the case. I think it’s interesting to do so, in part, DG: It was a Table of the Elements bill, and it because it’s hard to remember how mysterious was part of a short tour that Gastr del Sol did a figure he was in the 1990s. At the time, there with Tony. was barely anything more than his comments in Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga’s book BWJ: I remember going to see the show just Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story, Alan so I could name-check that I’d seen Tony Licht’s essay on the Theatre of Eternal Music Conrad, because if you’re working on some- in the fanzine Forced Exposure, and, for a thing people always want to know if you’ve researcher like myself, material from 1960s film had personal contact. “Oh, did you see Lou books and magazines like Film Culture . but Reed? Did you see John Cale? Did you see that was about it. How did you first meet him? Tony Conrad?” Often, I don’t care to see people forty years after their heyday. Sometimes, I David Grubbs: In 1994, I was playing in a group do. Sometimes, I don’t. And I had no idea what called Gastr del Sol with Jim O’Rourke. It was to expect, actually. I didn’t catch the Outside a duo of the two of us plus, basically, whoever the Dream Syndicate reissue right away. I just was along for a particular concert or recording. didn’t know what to expect. He could have Jim, in May of 1994, played a show at a festival been playing piano. He could have been sing- in Frankfurt where Tony performed one of the ing. I had no idea. “Early Minimalism” pieces. In fact, a record- ing of that is on the box set Early Minimalism: DG: [laughs] Volume One [1997]. Jim came back absolutely beside himself, frantic with excitement about BWJ: He came out and performed backlit Tony Conrad. I knew of Tony through the behind the translucent curtain, and the room Theatre of Eternal Music and had first come just, I remember, solidified as though it were across his name in high school reading the under water, but with sound. I was completely Bockris and Malanga Velvet Underground blown away. The people I was there with book. I think, at that point, I had probably heard who ran Adult Crash records were also blown the Table of the Elements reissue of Outside away. I remember seeing them across the the Dream Syndicate [1973, fig. 22], which room just looking wide-eyed. At that time, I came out in 1993 and was slowly gathering was already working on the nexus or connec- force in the circles that Jim and I moved in. tion between visual artists and John Cage, It seemed like the blink of an eye, but it the Velvet Underground, and so on, and I just was three months later, and Gastr del Sol was decided I’ve got to talk to this guy because playing a show in Chicago at the Hot House. there was nothing really out there. I think one Suddenly there was Tony in the dressing room interview in a hard-to-find magazine, EST, had in his gray fedora. He had come to town to come out, and maybe something in French record Slapping Pythagoras [1995]. After reis- that I’d tracked down, and I was like, “I’ve got suing his one commercially available album, to meet this guy.”1 I wrote a letter to Buffalo, Outside the Dream Syndicate with Faust, where he was teaching, introducing myself and Table of the Elements was committed to Tony suggesting that I was going to call during a making new music. He came to Chicago with certain week to make contact. I called him up, a plan of Jim producing the new record and got ahold of him, and went up to Buffalo to do Steve Albini engineering it. Over the course the long interview that eventually became, in of maybe two weeks, we recorded Slapping a way, the backbone of my book Beyond the Pythagoras at Albini’s studio, which didn’t Dream Syndicate.2 It was an interview that I have a name at the time; it was just his house did over the course of three days, which for a on North Francisco Avenue. We could get into long time Table of the Elements was thinking talking about the recording of the album, but, might be the booklet for an Early Minimalism: to summarize, Jim was extraordinarily excited Volume Two, which is why it sat on a shelf for from having seen one of the early “Early a long time. Not all of it, but a lot of Tony’s Minimalism” performances. It seemed that it voice in Beyond the Dream Syndicate comes was a life-changing experience for him, and from those three days. Partly because there before I knew it, Jim and I were working with wasn’t that much out at the time, Tony really Tony on this new recording. narrated his whole development from before Harvard all the way through to the present. BWJ: It’s interesting, because I missed Tony’s Getting back to how we met, though, I think I performance in New York with Faust, but proba- first met you in person . Fig. 21. The Theatre of Eternal Music (also known as the Dream Syndicate) performing at the New York Film-makers’ Cinematheque, December 12, 1965 (from left: Conrad, bly saw the next concert he did here, which was La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela, and John Cale). Photo: Fred W. McDarrah. 44 45 the “Early Minimalism” performance where DG: At Under Acme. BWJ: Yeah, above Under Acme. of the people who passed through a lot of extension, the inaccessibility of that historical areas. There’s also an issue of historical tem- period were allegorized in his performances DG: Yes. [laughter] porality. Tony was absolutely central to New at various shitty rock clubs across the United York in 1965, 1966. Then he goes away to teach States. [laughs] BWJ: In the restaurant part on the ground floor, at Antioch and Buffalo. Subsequently, he has before Tony’s performance in the basement this other moment in the 1990s that, in a sense, BWJ: Yet, at the same time, although it was space. You and Tony were performing sepa- never stopped. It just kept building from that allegorized as being unrecoverable, my experi- rately, but on the same bill, switching, I think, point on. Why do you think that might be? ence of that first concert of his I saw was, “This headliners over two nights. is exactly what people described.” DG: I think the momentum for the extended DG: Right, yep. My first experience of Tony’s moment that perhaps begins around 1993 or DG: Well, Tony’s claim was that it was actually music, apart from recordings, was not seeing 1994 with his return to musical performance much better, because in the initial moment him live but, rather, Tony coaching the six is really kick-started through people encoun- of the Theatre of Eternal Music, they were guitarists who play on Slapping Pythagoras. It tering the live performances of the “Early frequently so high that what he was delivering was in Albini’s basement—the first rehearsal Minimalism” pieces, which made people think in the early and mid-1990s was much more of and beginning of the recording for Slapping about the history of musical minimalism. Also, powerful. He experienced it as being much Pythagoras. He passed out six 8 1/2" × 11" with that extraordinary staging that Tony more powerful. Fig. 22. Cover of Outside the Dream Syndicate (Superior Xeroxed sheets of very simple rhythmic nota- created: performing behind a scrim, backlit Viaduct LP SV048), 2016 (originally released 1973). tion. He asked who had the noisiest amplifier. with those enormous shadows of himself and BWJ: Perhaps, but maybe it was just as pow- I think it was Kevin Drumm, and Tony turned the other performers. Suddenly we were in the erful in the 1960s for the context of the ’60s, it all the way up, thus amplifying the 60-cycle realm of cinema and performance, and even with the descriptions I’ve read of it sounding hum, and tuned the first instrument to it and the pre-history of cinema. We were seeing the like amplified buzz saws or jet engines. The where I first saw a lot of his films took place in then tuned up the other five guitars using the “cinema of attractions” live on stage with the recollections of the few people I’ve encountered clubs or alternative gallery spaces in Chicago 60-cycle hum as a reference tone. All the while, twenty-five-foot silhouette of Tony dancing on who did see the early Theatre of Eternal Music and were more like adjuncts to the music he was lecturing us on just intonation. It was the scrim. concerts was that it was incredibly powerful and performance. It was exactly the same crowd really the most eccentric little schoolroom in almost painful, actually, in its amplification.
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