“The media and reality: It's hard to attend both."

 
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Tony Conrad Collection no. 13)

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Tony Conrad
Bryant Park Moratorium Rally (1969) 
2003/2005

Tony Conrad's Audio ArtKive/
Table of the Elements
[Bismuth] TOE-MP-83/TOE-CD-83
Free mp3/compact disc, matte varnish, matte enclosure, watermarked typing paper

An October afternoon in 1969. Midtown Manhattan. A rally in Bryant Park against the Vietnam War. Down 42nd Street towards Times Square, Tony Conrad is adjusting microphones in his 5th floor loft, one directed at the TV set—where it will pick up live local news coverage—the other pointing out the window, where the echo of speeches and crowd noise mingles with the oceanic rush of crosstown traffic. As the event is about to begin, he rolls tape. Thirty-four years later, we hear what he heard. And the juncture, for so many reasons, could not be more critical. As the Bush Administration pursues a risky military agenda in the Middle East—one with unsettling long-term implications both at home and abroad—we see a nation not divided, as in the Vietnam Era, but strangely complacent. Our media-saturated reality functions like a drug, instantly televised warfare a new entertainment, and organized public dissent a novelty at home and a roaring chorus everywhere else. Conrad's recording of the Oct. 15 Vietnam Moratorium Rally is an eerie flashback that offers urgent new insights into our own lives and times, post-9/11 and full on into a new millennium.

"This was one event that I didn't have to leave the house to attend," says Conrad, whose recording coincidentally chronicles not only the rally—an archival moment—but doubles as a kind of sonic residue of a New York City that doesn't quite exist anymore, a place as swept away by the tilt of time and the circumstance of history as the twin towers. The Times Square area, now a Disneyfied circus of commerce suitable for morning show wallpaper, once was something far scarier and more radically chaotic. And it was from this perch that Conrad spent the afternoon. He remembers: "The street was awash with humanity, but no one lived there. It was like being in a desert in some ways. The number of voters were very small. There were people of every stripe and pandering to every kind of base and debased desire. There was a huge crossover, because millions of people came to work there every day, but it was also skin deep. People lived at the edge of the gutter."

The perfect place to make your life as an artist, amid the democratic bustle. That ruckus is key to this recording, which indulges the composer's interest in issues of documentation, the nature of public spectacles, and the deep biological impulses that govern the individual's response in the face of a mass. "What quickens your pulse in the wake of thousands and thousands of people?" he asks, while holding up this construct to a dual one. "That phenomenon of somehow the abstract voice of the media that comes down to us, can shape individual reality."

With that in mind, listen to how the two channels of this tape define the gap between media (the instantaneous leap of audio from a microphone in the park, transformed into a signal, and broadcast through his television's speaker) and reality (the delayed and muffled arrival of the same information at his window). It was funny, Conrad notes: "Because being there is later than TV. This brings up the phenomenological notion of the present, whether we live in it or after it. So you have this situation of TV vs. live, or TV vs. the street, all these issues of presence. The tape invokes that time really accurately and thoroughly. It's a big chunk, and that makes things so much more different than a sound byte."

The rally, part of that date's full slate of public demonstrations against the war, proves to be at once poignant and a bit comical. Powerful oratory from the Rev. William Sloan Coffin (who cites the gospel according to Pogo: "We have met the enemy, and he is us.") shares time with quips from Rod McEuen. A stageful of Broadway stars enjoy cameos ("Dick Benjamin!"), while Dick Cavett and Woody Allen chime in with quick comments. Leading anti-war politicos—such as Eugene McCarthy and Shirley Chisholm—take the microphone. It's a remarkable day in the life of a city.

"People really owe it to themselves to go to these things," Conrad says. "Because these occasions are such important markers of the events of our time. The moratorium rally put the media and the people side-by-side, and presents a very important idea that comes into the picture in today's protests as well. The media and reality: It's hard to attend both."


Steve Dollar
New York City
August, 2003

OWN THE ARCHIVE

From 1993, US recording label Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

~~o0o~~

"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

"The music made and cultivated by such artists as Tony Conrad, Captain Beefheart, John Fahey, Cecil Taylor, Rhys Chatham, Charlie Feathers, Dock Boggs, Jim O’Rourke, Faust, Derek Bailey, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth, Keiji Haino, Arnold Dreyblatt, Charley Patton, Harry Smith, and scores more, is at once among the most radical and deeply rooted of the 20th century, transcending time and place through the agency of the vibrating string, the resonance of the drone, the terrifying beauty of electric amplification, the hypnotic power of repetition, and the revelatory genius of cranky individualism. 

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—Steve Dollar

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism [are] beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, [the label] produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions – not ossified museum objects.”

—Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©1992–2024 Table of the Elements ®2024 Table of the Elements Archive. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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