Glenn Branca , The Ascension: Classic or Dud?

uh... dan? just tell me exactly what needs doing!

Branca is "lamer" then Ut? I don't know...I've heard most everything by both of them, despite coming out of the same scene, I really wouldn't compare them. Maybe Nina's work w/ Chatham, but that's more regarding Branca vs. Chatham which is an old debate and not really relevant anyway. Alan Licht talks about this in the forthcoming Lesson No. 1 liners. You can debate who came up with the ideas first, Chatham, Branca, Lohn, someone else alltogether, live performance history will tell you one thing, recorded evidence another, but if you dig into the details, you actually find 3 people with different backgrounds, contexts and ideas who all ended up playing with each other(or each others bands) and all ended up toying with the "extended rock guitar as modern classical" thing in various differeing ways. To be specific, I think Chatham wrote stuff like Guitar Trio first(77?) but it wasn't recorded and released untill the 80s and doesn't really ROCK, it's closer to guitar based minimalism. Some of Jeffrey's songs have a more structurally repetitive extended nature, the breaks and extended repeated grooves, while Branca's Static/Theoretical Girls material was more clangy and dissonant early on. But later Lesson Number 1 was the breakthrough and the Ascension is the statement. At least that's how I see it.

There's a pretty rare tape of the Static, recorded live in a studio I think, but it's pretty raw sounding. Some of it's pretty intense though, and hints and the power. I love the Static single, I like some of the other stuff Branca wrote for the Theoretical Girls, and obviously love what Lohn wrote for the Theoretical Girls, but the more you talk to people who were there, the more you hear about just how amazing they were live, you really get a sense that their influence was pretty huge, regardless of not having many releases and like many other No Wave acts, being left off of No New York. Kim Gordon wrote an interesting article for Artforum in 83 about Glenn. I think it's online somewhere, but I'll try to put it up on the Acute site when that gets going soon.

julio: check out the third. that one would probably even survive downloading, but you could always buy a copy.

dragged out the ninth last night, scored for traditional symphonic ensemble. queasy but majestic, couldn't play it loud enough or finish listening, still very impressive though. his earlier 'world turned upside down' feels like a trial run for the ninth.

hopefully these reissues will encourage branca towards a live retrospective, I'd fly out to new york to see the third in a second.

x-post: yeah thanks Milton.

you have/had some videos that jeffrey gave/loaned to you, right? i remember watching one that was just amazing.
re: distractions, i've sent an email.

My sense is that Branca picked up on Rhys Chatham in a tortured, forbidden, Aerosmith-driven outlaw way. There seems to be a social line in the sand by people who were around back then.

But you should have the Ascension CD, if only for the 2 minute clip of Glenn solo in 1979. It's really cool.

I'm gonna get all versions of Magic Fly and make a mega-mix!

Didn't follow much of the artists' subsequent history. Thought Lesson Number One was pedantic (or anyway drove the point or the nail into the ground), but I heard it through shitty speakers. But then again, hip-hop sounds great on a clock radio, and if... well, it may well be that the live stuff was the best, just as it may be that I'm best in conversation, but doesn't one have a responsibility to adapt to one's medium, rather than to say, "We'll do what we did live"? (Not that this is a comment on these people's records, few of which I've heard.)

No New York is in desperate need of a remix.

But even if hip-hop sounds good coming out of your clock speaker, it'd probably sound better coming out of a jeep.

I know Barbara was teaching photo at Bard for a while, and supposedly also lives in my neighborhood.

The X Benefit was underway when I arrived - Theoretical Girls were already up. Earlier in the evening I'd gone with Kathy Nathanson (Strand, social sciences) to see Lou Reed at the Bottom Line. That was a very distanced experience in every way, like sitting in an exclusive theatre. During the long wait, these two guys behind us were having a loud, boring conversation about hockey, then Lou came on (near the release of Street Hassle, I think) and was singing in a deliberately wanky voice I'd never heard from him, as if he didn't want to sound tough anymore, which might have been an admirable personal choice but wasn't good for his music. Kathy and I tramped over to the East Village after that, to La Mama's, Theoretical Girls were rocking out. I can't add anything to my description, except that I recall their doing the white-shirts-with-rolled-up-sleeves things - maybe that's how they dressed in their day jobs, assuming they worked for Existentialist Gas & Electric, digging underground cables - and they didn't seem to have any go-go dancers or manicurists on their payroll. If I saw DNA that night, I don't remember it. I do remember the Contortions: this was the first I'd heard of them. They moved the beat - I remember that. James seemed like an asshole, saying hostile things with no apparent provocation. The music danced all right, but I didn't get it, sounded like a jumbled noise stew. Really, it wasn't until the third time I saw them that my brain and my body figured out how to hear them and how powerful they were. What I recall from the La Mama night was the motion of the music and that an incensed, crazed guy in leather was heading towards James to do him damage, and Jody stepped in between, brandishing his guitar like an axe, to protect James. (A year later, Jody probably'd have stepped aside and let James get creamed.) Adele threw a cup of water at the leather psycho. Bob told me the next day that everyone in the Contortions should have been shot, including Jody - especially Jody. But eventually we all became fans.

yeah, me too, and i cherish them. more than my branca records sad to say. but i meant a written history. or a history of ze. or maybe there is one. i just haven't seen it.

http://www.blankproductions.com/bios/bblank.htm

the autotonic nervous system, that is. Not the Ascension or Lesson No. 1.

http://www.acuterecords.com/XmagBen.jpg

I think I scanned that thing in like 4 pieces and stitched it together in photoshop.

A recording of the Third Ascension just came out and it is highly recommended, was performed last night for the first time since his death on what would have been his 71st

https://glennbranca1.bandcamp.com/releases

it really rips

it really does. played through this once so far and it was a pretty magical commute

Whoa nice! Just saw this, looking forward to checking it out. Branca an eternal influence for me.

Oh wow, this rocks harder than I expected. A good listen.

If you haven't heard it The Ascension:The Sequel from 2010 is similarly great

Wow, "Cold Thing" is massive.