The Battle Forever!

Was deeply affected by this video when I first saw it a couple of months ago and only realised what it meant this morning . . .

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sqHz7cUw4Ls

Glenn Branca, the supreme guitar abstractor, shifting abstract destruction and letting the machine by which he is so consumed personally overtake him.

Every idea about the amplified guitar and its part in the subversion of culture--rock'n'roll guitar to sixties guitar to punk guitar--is given over in this brief performance as the machine itself doubles back and attacks a single human being. This is Branca's own personal battle, he wants to search the machine, to see who comes out on top after hand-to-hand combat. A single soul performing in a New York loft or the physical embodiment of the history of the best and most impassioned music since World War II. Branca was up for the fight: had given himself up to years deep education for years before facing his foe.

But he never stood a chance.

The weight of the six-string phallus eventually overcomes his taunts and attacks by snarling back at him, ripping and tearing at the hands and fingers he uses as (his only) weapons and eventually throwing him off-stage in a tired, worn heap.

The ferocity of the battle does not leave Branca scarred enough to give up, however. In the years that pass he will pit himself against more and more of these chiming, ringing, droning, coarse and heavy machines. And for the rest of us, we must resign ourselves to the fact that the amplified guitar is as wild and unpredictable as always and is still--after all this time--yet to unleash its fullest and most absolute fury.