A good friend of mine, Sarth, plays keys and various electronic gizmos with Lou Reed in his Metal Machine Trio, and they did a performance last night honoring Kenneth Anger, the filmmaker. Shout out to him for dragging me along at the last minute… It was a charity event for the Anthology Film Archives, and other performers were Sonic Youth, The Virgins, and everybody’s downtown buddy Moby on the 1 and 2s. 

Sonic Youth kicked ass and since I’d never seen them live before I never realized how freakishly tall Thurston Moore is. At one point his guitar punked out on him and he hit the floor unplugging his pedals, trying to find the source of the problem and I thought it was rad cause I’ve been there so many times. Sucks that he had the problem but I love to see a live performance along with all the variables that make it interesting and real. 

Sarth and Lou blew the place up with some loud-as-fuck guitar feedback and noise generated from Ableton Live and a Kyma to a black and white film of a guy doing martial arts. I’ve looked for the film on youtube but no luck.

The event was cool, sort of the quintessential NY “scene” thing where everyone is trying not to be gauche and get too drunk in front of the famous people. Julian Schnabel got on the mic at one point and berated some roustabouts in the cheap seats for being too loud. Fuck him.

Tony