An Evening of Sound and Light in Tribute to La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela
When La Monte Young organised the first ever series of concerts in a New York loft (which just happened to belong to Yoko Ono) the concert announcements were headlined “The purpose of this concert is not entertainment”. I thought that this was an appropriate way to present the concert that I put together to benefit La Monte and his partner Marian Zazeela.
I’ve known La Monte and Marian for a few years now. I first met them when I took part in the exhibition “Pop Goes Art – Andy Warhol and The Velvet Underground” that some friends of mine organised in Germany in 1992. I took the opportunity to start recording an interview with La Monte that is still ongoing and so far I have about five hours on tape. We kept in touch and I always try to go over to Europe to see any concerts they do. I’ve also visited them at their home in New York City. They have a sound and light installation called “Dream House” on the floor above their loft. When Pulp toured America with Blur in 1994 I took Jarvis and Steve down to the “Dream House” straight after the concert and they really liked it.
I know I bore everyone silly by going on about La Monte’s music – which I realise just isn’t to everyone’s taste – but I believe he’s a very important artist. He was the first to compose a piece of music that solely consisted of held tones and long rests (paving the way for the Minimalist movement – Riley, Reich, Glass etc.) and his early conceptual works paved the way for happenings and the Fluxus art movement. He led the Theatre of Eternal Music in the early 1960’s, pioneering the use of extreme noise levels and introducing the lightshow to live music in the form of Marian Zazeela’s light works. John Cale played in this group before forming the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed, and La Monte’s avant garde influence is what made the Velvets stand head and shoulders above the rest, and is a key factor in their ongoing influence. La Monte’s most highly developed work, “The Well-Tuned Piano”, has been called “one of the great monuments of modern culture”.
Whilst La Monte and Marian’s refusal to compromise in any way is definitely one of the things that made their art what it is, it has also meant that it’s very difficult to hear the music (it took me four years from hearing the name to hearing the music), hardly anyone can afford to present their concerts, it makes it difficult for people to work with them and now they find themselves severely in debt. And in September I heard from my friends Carsten and Jutta Brandt in Hamburg that Marian was very ill and had spent about forty days practically paralysed in bed, suffering from lack of energy, numbness in her limbs and incredible back pain. As Marian conducts all of their administration and fund raising activities this meant that their financial situation was becoming impossible. I had the idea of a fund-raising event and asked Alex Poots of the Barbican Centre if he would help. I didn’t think for one minute that Pulp would play at the concert and it took me a few days to get up the courage to ask the others, and I was very shocked when they agreed. A few days later and the Barbican offered us free use of the hall and the English Chamber Orchestra on 31st October – only six week.
Just about everyone I asked to play were very keen to take part. First to agree was Jason Pierce of Spiritualized. The concert was in the two weeks rest the group has in the middle of their world tour so he decided to do something different to the usual band concerts. Jason changed his mind nearly every day and 4 or 5 days. Before the show, he had these great plans for a live radio link with Xfm – they would broadcast, some music into the hall, the musicians would play along live and send the sound back to radio creating a delayed loop. He said it was “in the spirit of La Monte’s uncompromising attitude”, and it was indeed a technical nightmare, and then Xfm dropped out of the project. So in the end Jason appeared with his saxaphone and keyboard players plus a brass section, drummer, bassist, the Monaco String Quartet and the ECO. He’s only met six of the musicians before that day and the music they created was fantastic – versions of ‘Broken Heart” and “No God Only Religion” from his last album and one new piece. Jason is planning to release a CD of their set. (There’s also a chance of the whole concert being released).
Gavin Bryars agreed to start the evening with his great work “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet”, and he asked me to sit in with his ensemble. I got worried when I sat down to learn the score but it all turned out well in the end. The English Chamber Orchestra performed “Crossing the Border” by the English post-minimalist composer Steve Martland. That piece was originally released on the Factory Classics label and Factory impresario Tony Wilson arrived at the last minute to be the evening’s compere. Tony also auctioned some t-shirts and posters that had been donated by Kraftwerk (they said they would love to perform but needed at least a year’s notice!). Nick Cave and violinist Warren Ellis were the last addition to the programme but turned out to be one of the night’s highlights when Nick sang and played solo piano songs.
As a group, Pulp were quite nervous about playing live again – it had been a long time since we last did a concert (and Russell had left in the meantime), so we just weren’t very sure of ourselves, we decided to play all new songs and do it in a manner we thought befitted the event and the venue. Anthony Genn helped out with some guitar chords, Gavin Bryars played piano on “This is Hardcore” and the ECO joined us on “Hardcore” and “Love Scenes” (“Seductive Barry”). I started our concert with three drones on e-bow guitars – kind of an acknowledgement of La Monte’s “Composition 1960 #7” – and we ended the evening with “Help The Aged”.
Mark Webber
Review taken from here