Added: 5 years ago
From: sonichris
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  • I enjoy the way this looks more than how it sounds. Overall, it's pretty fucking awesome.

  • Pete Townshend on a bad, bad day.......

  • esse tal de glenn branca acha q toca guitarra, mas se eu raspar um gillette na guitarra vai fazer o mesmo som kkkkkkk

  • kkkkk tah vendo oq acontece quando bebe e vai tocar? 

  • kkkkkkkk se observarem direito ele num tem cordenaçao nenhuma na mao direita hushaushaushausha

  • ele tah tocando guitarra ou tah destruindo ela?

  • he just asshole

  • glenn branca

  • And that, kids, is how you play the guitar.

  • im not gonna try and say anything pretentious, this sounds pretty bad, but just watching the guy makes it seem like something that he puts a lot of effort into and its actually pretty cool

  • People can criticize the performance (even though it's exactly what it's supposed to be), but anyone who has no qualms with dismissing this guy's entire body of work based on a 2 minute spur of the moment improv and absolutely no knowledge of anything else he's done is clearly an idiot.

  • And ten years later to the day, I was born.

  • Look, you can criticize this all that you want but don't say "I can do this". Because, even though it lacks melody, composition, hell even music, it's not that easy to make avant-garde guitars sound good. Especially not in this case, this is definitely the most violent and wildest improvisation I have ever seen.

    And I have tried. My god, have I tried. I couldn't do it even half as good as Branca does it.

  • life is beautiful

  • Anybody's has tabs?

  • The is very different from what Hendrix did so the comparison isn't really there. I play a lot of noise myself and I couldn't get the same sounds out of my guitar as effectively and simply as Branca does here, regardless of how loudly or violently I played.

  • So many feelings at the same time.

  • garbage

  • why would someone dislike this? that guy is fucking pouring his heart out through those strings

  • ahhhh the neighbors!!!!

    

  • ammazza lammerda...

  • I fuckin love this. Although Branca's compositions aren't my favorite I love the explosion of sound in his solo.

  • how is he doing this?

  • air horn at 0:34

  • Art is only art if it has something to express. THis is just poopoo. But loving noise as I do, interesting poopoo. Like examining a recent shit and thinking "hmmm I don't remember eating that! lets take another look!"

  • it's ok, only that Hendrix did it before him ! ! !

  • Comment removed

  • I love how everyone just got trolled

  • I've always wanted to do something like this (with any instrument, guitar preferable). Now I know when I do I wasn't the first.

  • tabs plz...;)

  • This shit is like Jazz or splatter paint. You make it up as you feel. Rock n Roll...

  • FUK THIS IT ISNT MUSIC.

  • @Crouchosarus This is Noise, not music, beyond the music: a sonic expression as music but different

  • @carcinofagus According to John Cage noise is music.

  • @Crouchosarus YOUR A FUKIN FOOL

  • @Crouchosarus it's better

  • violent guitar love making

  • WOW!

  • 1978 this rock for the time

    the born of NOISE

    thx father glenn

  • whether you like this or not, you can't deny that Glenn is a fucking bad ass.

  • guitar lessons

  • i can. true story ^________^

  • Kawabata Makoto said :

    "Music, for me, is neither something that I create, nor a form of self-expression. All kinds of sounds exist everywhere around us, and my performances solely consist of picking up these sounds, like a radio tuner, and playing them so that people can hear them."

  • Comment removed

  • @AnaloguePostcard Man, this is not the only way to be expressive and emotive with sound. All music conveys feeling -- not just this stuff. But, with banging on a guitar, how do you express sad emotion, or angry emotion? How do you tell the difference, if it all sounds the same? You can't.

  • if you think punk is noise....... nowave is punk... "noisified"

    70s/80s punk has very little to do with MTV pop-punk, musically

  • This is a joke, anybody can do this.

  • You clearly fail to grasp the entire gist of no wave. It's not a question about being able to play the songs. The songs are kinda a non-entitty for these bands. Expression and experimentation are what they went for. Remember, this scene (especially Glenn, DNA, and Rhys Chatham) is the inspiration for Sonic Youth and the Flying Luttenbachers.

  • Actually, many people DO do this - every day, in their living rooms. But only a select few can get hipsters to pay money to see it live. It takes connections and a head for business. That's basically what the pop music scene boils down to nowadays, whether you're Glenn Branca or Lady Gag Gag. (and this is pop music, not art music - for that see Bang on a Can). Same now as in 1978.

  • I...fail to see how this pop music, aside from the fact that no wave is a subgenre of punk. Now if we were talking about modern art punk, like say the Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Black Dice I can see as pop, since they have more respect for traditional pop structures, but this is....certainly not paying any respect to pop structure

  • obviously you are unaware of his work outside of this video

  • do it. I am excited to see you do this.

  • The high E string was a little flat... that kinda killed it for me.

  • haha never seen so many thumbs up for a comment. perfectly done. brilliant.

  • I got to hand it to the guy. I have never heard a guitar sound like that before.

  • That's just because you've never seen someone who didn't mind it sounding like that. If you run a guitar through, say, a digital effects processor, increasing the gain and volume using the pedal as much as possible, and then run it through an amp with built-in distortion, it'll just feed back no matter what you do, which is what he's doing.

  • It's funny how so many ain't got a CLUE about this gorgeous, angry and thunderous performance! It's amazing as well!

  • I understand that Glenn does a great cover of Anne Murray's CAN I HAVE THIS DANCE, too!

  • The horror and the energy is fucking brilliant.

  • this is amazing. haha i love the people who commented saying anyone can do this. They're so right about everything and everyone should be like them.

  • if you don't like it then don't say anything, no one wants to hear your fucking opinion anyway. go listen to your nickelback.

  • Well, I don´t think it HAS to be boring to be good art. I love this!

  • This man is an unrated genius. the albums

    Lesson #1 and The Ascension are masterpieces.

  • It is a guitar performance by Glenn Branca.

  • Trust me, they really can´t. I´ve heard a lot of idiotic guitar players, and no matter how wild I try to get them, they sound really, really lame. But I guess, anyone who has more or less the human anatomy, like him, and a consciousness, theoretically, should be able to do that, does that make it any less cool?

  • File this with Einsturzende Neubauten as music that is conceptually cool but not entirely listenable. The audience seems to dig it, though, and it has to say something about our society that a person could unleash like this, and that a noise like a thousand fighter planes crashing into each other could be considered musical. On the other hand it's just as primal as smashing stuff. Branca is defining the edge of what could be considered musical expression, like John Cage with distortion.

  • I'm guessing you're talking about Einsturzende Neubauten's early stuff. Their newer/later stuff isn't hard to listen to at all.

  • True enough. The 1980's material sounds like it could bring a building down.

  • John Cage wasn't a big fan of Branca, he found his music to be "oppressive"

  • ya.... lou reed was the shit. .. metal mahine mucisck all da ways homey.

  • Anti Solos are all about improvisation.

    This was probably the first anti solo ever (although the Who had a song called 'Out In The Street' which had a semi-anti solo)

    It just comes to the guitarist. You don't compose it, it happens

  • This is the best video on Youtube...

  • you guys should keep in mind this was early in his evolution. the album which contains this video is brilliantly composed. i just see this for what it is, a performance art piece. it's a barely contained explosion of energy that is ebbing and flowing, manifested through his guitar. i don't think he actually meant for this piece to be seen as a composition.

  • like criswhicharewings i love expirmental but what the hell? i mean come on, i have listened to other works of glenn branca and its impressive but this is just stupid. look at a guy like derek bailey. he has so much control on his instrument and he purely improvising like this guy. but it has so more control then this. i mean all he is do is jumping around and hitting a guitar. the passion is beautiful and great but you cant just have passion. you need some skill not just hitting random areas

  • Passion.

  • I don't mind the avant-garde, but what bothers me about this is that there's no thought to what he's doing. He's not thinking about here his hands are on the fretboard, or the way he's hitting the strings. It's just emotion--and don't get me wrong--emotion plays a huge part in music, but I think there has to be some sort of cerebral intent.

    That's my own observation, not saying it's the truth. I'm up for any discussion on the matter.

  • I agree.

  • I would say that it's not «just» emotion, but a qualified and particular emotion and energy, mediated by culture (he's holding and «playing» an eletric guitar, and performing in front of an audience; perhaps «demolishing» the established).

  • Well in that case it's more about the act its self and not about the music.

  • I understand your point, but you can surely see that this is just pure expression....we know that Glenn Branca can compose and play guitar amazingly well, so what's the problem with him having a burst of... aggression, I suppose, and playing the guitar in this way?

    And how do you know he's not thinking about where to put his hands....I'm sure he must have willed them to move somehow.

  • Well i'm not saying he doesn't know he's moving his hands, and doesn't know HOW he's moving him, but when playing notes/chords on a guitar, obviously it takes intent to decide where on the fretboard you're putting your hands to play which notes. But like you said, it's pure expression and I don't think, until later on in the video, that there's any thought to which notes/chords he's playing at all.

  • exactly

  • i must say i do enjoy the debates and discussion this kind of avant-garde music raises; they are very very interesting sometimes... and that is highly valuable i think...

  • THI IS THE TEACHER OF..the original!mr.moore was one of his students.great performance THANX!

  • this is beautiful

  • noise at it's finest

    angry and screaming

  • nice movie, have to listen to some branca now (I've borrow a friends some records but still didn't listen to it) thx 4 sharing, make me think about Otomo Yoshide dont you ?

  • uhahahah.

    rofl

  • Man Glenn Branca was a genius. Those who don't get it, look up Lesson #1.....at the total opposite end of the spectrum of this song.

  • Just because you don't understand it, doesn't mean it's not real music.

  • If you can understand this please tell us what this is all about

  • about noise improv, maybe the most direct, raw improvisation style. It's like Yamatsuka Eye screaming, it's noise, it's direct. It often seams hard to get at the beggining, but this kind of style is really great, what music could be more honnest than this one ? Harry Partch said "The creative man shows himself naked, the more creative he is, the more naked he appears", here branca is nude on stage ;)

  • I understand you're point but what he does here is not himself becouse he doesn't intend anything it just comes out the way it does. (Cage whould be happy:) ) My concept is that the musician should be in controll of what he's doing and that really makes a diffrence I like Coltrane and he seem to really play what he want to play not just what comes out of his horns, Coltrane even in 1965-67 is pretty much recogniseable while this solo could have been played by anyone, ofcourse I could be wrong

  • I know what u mean,it's about putting some hasard in lusic. But know that branca controls more than u'd think,not perfectly but hes got an idea it's spontaneous the results isnt fully controled but that's what he wants. If I hit a keyboard, i'll get notes, dont know which ones exactly but I Know I'll get a higher or lower (depending on where i hit) noisy piano sounds. On a guitar you play notes that are laid on the neck, on a sax I dunno, is it like singing, you get the sounds that u want ?

  • and when you hit as you said random notes on a piano does that express you? i have no problem with this but there are two thing that make me think this is the first one if this music expresses anything at all

    and the second is, is it hard to understand what is here to understand? he would've got the same result hitting bricks with a hammer and nobody would've payed any attention to him

  • But...... you didnt make it, he did. 30 years ago. This was true punk. We listen to artistic music. Art is resistance. You listen to easy music apparently.

  • You just think anything that sounds "unique" is "artistic". And the reason nobody did that before Glenn was because nobody in their right mind would ever believe that people would enjoy the ear raping sounds of strumming random shit on a guitar with heavy distortion and feedback. Seriously, it doesn't take ANY talent to play that at all. Just grab a guitar, put distortion on high, get close to your amp for feedback and speed strum anything in random successions and timings.

  • You're right about everything you said in your last post. You do understand my concept of what art is. Unique is not the word I would use though. Think abrasive to the contemporary mainstream and experimental.

  • That's not just any guitar, that's a Telecaster!

  • this is sweet.

  • whether you think it takes talent or not, this evokes a certain emotion. you may not like it, but it displays a general concept, a feeling that is unique compared to most music.

  • ppl r scared of the unknown. if something doesn't look or sound like what we've heard our whole lives we brush it off as stupid or bad...take a chance in life ppl u might actually learn something and expand yr mind

  • This was surely cutting edge at the time, but now I'd be happy to put money on there being a lot more creative scope in samplers, software and computers...

    It's all inspirational stuff none-the-less :o)

    Arguably Being as difficult to play noise like that as to play clean chords and melodies ;op

  • how is it moronic? i dont enjoy today's "rap" music. earlier rap was acceptable but now its just stupid. prime example: lil wayne

  • why am i marked down for speaking my opinion? everybody in my school listens to rap and i hate it because it dosent take any talent. i dont see a problem here...

  • the problem is you refuse to acknowledge that it takes talent. i can't make a rap track worth listening to, i'll tell you that. the majority of them are skilled performers.

    it's fine to not like it. it's fine to say why you don't like it. but to assume that just because you don't enjoy it means that they are talentless hacks is foolish.

  • i understand that it could be for someone like me to rap and have it sound good, but the rappers dont really do any more then that. they(most of them) have producers to make tracks for them and they just rap to it... i guess im just angry. lol

  • Listen to Aesop Rock's track Daylight or Alias' Watching Water, AntiRapActivist.

    You have a real narrow view if you're mentioning lil wayne.

  • oh dont get me wrong, i respect aesop rock and older rap like that. i just used lil wayne because all he sings about is sex and clubs and stuff like that.... imean how long does it take to write stuff like that.

  • That's stupid as fuck to say, To say that you hate rap because you don't like lil wayne is like saying you don't like rock because of the Jonas Brothers.

  • im not saying i hate rap im saying that it has gotten stupid over time, and its starting to get annoying because everyone in my school likes gay music

  • There is still a lot of intelligent hip hop around today and people with shit taste is something you'll have to get used to, but don't worry, when people finish school they usually get much better taste. Also your name sort of suggests that you do hate rap.

  • i would hope so... lol

    i made this account about two years ago and have learned alot, if i could change my user name i would.

  • Sexual orientation has nothing to do with taste in music, or anything else!! =/ And Rap isn´t just one artist!....music is about researching, and there´s always good artists in all genres (in my opinion) ;)

  • But I´m not an hip hop fan myself, and definitly think tha today´s hip hop is totaly screwed... old school is better..the late 80s and 90s..

  • lil wayne is talented. quiet

  • why doesnt my tele sound like that?

  • What you have to do is film it with a camera really close to the audio source so that it clips horribly, then upload it to youtube so that it gets compressed to hell. Hope this helps.

    Oh by the way, your name is moronic.

  • that has nothing to do with it Sean...he detunes his guitar...the sounds he gets live are AMAZING

  • I wasn't bashing the guitarist, I'm bashing youtube's terrible sound quality and the terrible sound quality of the video in general.

  • look when it was recorded.. you honestly think you can get clear pristine recording sounds in 1978?

  • Yes, you can. Listen to any Steely Dan album.

    More importantly though, it's the youtube compression that destroys the sound quality.

  • Why? Maybe coz you know how to play the guitar

  • Amazing. God bless you Glenn Branca

  • anyone got tab for this?

  • HAHAHAHA good one

  • There are more feelings in it than in any Eric Clapton solo.

  • Goes without saying. But a lot of those classic rock guys are pretty good. Also those modern rock guys. And Fred Frith.

  • What an idiot !!

  • Dad? is that you?

  • funking thrash

  • This goes against a lot of what I believe about music.

    But it's damn awesome.

  • f*cking trash

  • Tele abuse...  but awesome.

    anyone have a transcription of this? (just kidding...)

  • seriously, he just had the best hair in new york at the time. that's why he wasn't on the no new york compilation. that's why they didn't use the word "wave". look at arto, look at eno. what "wave"? glenn, you shot yourself in the hair.

  • I feel it in my head

    And I'd rather have shards of glass in my ass

  • wow, i just got done reading about his early no wave performances. they really where intense.

  • Is this a Django cover?

  • Funniest guitar video comment... ever.

  • Live free, thrash hard!

  • Buenísimo este tema de Branca...Genial!!!

    Si os gusta la música experimental y el avant garde, acabo de ver en youtube un vídeo que se sale de bueno es de la banda Josh&Latex - FROG RAIN !!!!!!!

  • Badass!

  • you see i can dig this just because i dont need for anyone to have a reason to do anything. its what punk was supposed to sound like. it doesnt matter if you call it art or just plain noise, the fact is, that we cant handle neither. but we sure as hell can feel it

  • kudos

  • so basically your just angry because you've been playing guitar for years, and glenn branca has surpassed you in fame and noteriety? so your solution is to get in youtube and pathetically comment on how childish his playing is. genn branca is not completely ignorant when it comes to music. he writes his own pieces... so he knows music theory...

  • To Bach, the music you enjoy would have been talentless noise. While this video is hardly musical persay, it is music. It's performance art. You shouldn't judge solely on your reception (though that's an integral part of review) but also based on how well the artist communicated his or her message.

  • goombahkips,

    You just made the most brilliant response to my comment. Thank you for your insightfulness. I learned from you. I would respectfully disagree with your comment about Bach thinking the music I enjoy as "talentless noise." I love Bach's music and believe he would sit and respect what I do, especially on acoustic guitar. I honor him and am not worthy to be in the same room with the master, Bach. Mr. Branca does not stir my soul; he annoys me. That's the difference, I believe.

  • Agreed, Goombah. Even the earliest Rock'n'Roll would make Bach throw up.

  • It is up to you what this is. Hendrix's takes more dexterity to perform then say Branca but ultimately music is NOT about dexterity is it? its about timbres and rhythms. its theory 101. to some (myself) this is good music as was Hendrix. But Branca was trying to display something not just in his music but in his body language too. and we all know rock music is also about body language. this was an art piece and was performed in an art gallery. artsy fartsy? absolutely. worthless? absolutely not.

  • I can see why the work of Branca or other's who deal with noise as a medium might be frustrating or challenging to most people. In much a similar way rock music and psychedelia were threatening to much of American culture. Yet to others it was revolutionary, mindopening, and changed the way they lived. To me listening to this kind of noise is a zen experience, almost like standing in the calm of a storm. I'm not asking you to approve of noise, just realize that it can be meaningful and smart.

  • Way to show off your ignorance. He also organized a guitar orchestra.

  • don't be so fucking precious. you'd have been one of the people acting all indignant at Hendrix's antics when he first appeared. anyway the production of sound via an instrument is easy (relatively) - the difficult part is the conception and the courage to put your vision out there. witness the grass roots dominance of cover bands rather than original musicians. you may not like Branca but he's out there and he's trying things which influence more conventional artists.

  • i like eggs and potatoes

  • i wish i could do this. like a fuckin whirlwind man.

  • he's so conservative LOL

  • Oh hell yeah, do it Glenn!

  • wow ! :)

  • branca is a better performer

  • maybe frustration over the inevitable existance of people like you?

  • HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

    the best answer

  • There is only one emotion: gay. And it isn't worthy of musical expression.

  • Esto es la mera neta!!!

  • So far away we wait for the day,

    For the lights all so wasted and gone;

    We feel the pain of a lifetime lost in a thousand days-

    Through the fire and the flames we carry on!

  • this fucking rocks.

  • This is beautiful. Music is what ever you want it to be. What ever allows you to express your emotions. Our modern idea of what a song is made of is fairly new. A song can be what ever you want it to be. Whether you like noises that relate in consonant patterns that bring peace or noises that are dissonant by nature and bring upheaval and disturbances to your existence. There is a time and place for everything to fit into.

  • and she's buying the stairway to heaven