Angus MacLise

Angus MacLise is most beneficial known as the initial drummer from the Velvet Underground, although he dropped from the lineup before that they had made any information. His short stint within the Velvet Underground, nevertheless, was just one single stop on an extended profession in experimental music and movies that was even more diverse and considerable than most understand. Like a percussionist, MacLise merged the avant-garde and globe music, especially Asian music, and was a substantial collaborator with avant-garde musician La Monte Small and many experimental filmmakers. The type of his efforts has been hard to assess in light from the scarce option of recordings where he participated, a predicament that changed using the release of the compilation of his function, The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, in 1999. By the first ’60s MacLise was around the beatnik (quickly to be the hippie) path, traveling abroad and composing poetry released by Dead Vocabulary Press, which he founded with poet and filmmaker Piero Heliczer. Deceased Vocabulary Press also released MacLise’s mixture calendar/poem, 12 months, which gave titles to every day of the entire year. In the 1st fifty percent of the 1960s, he performed bongos in La Monte Young’s the Theater of Eternal Music ensemble, an organization that combined modern structure with drones and percussive rhythms that acquired commonalities to Indian music. It had been via Youthful that MacLise fulfilled John Cale, who performed viola within the Theater of Eternal Music. It had been via Cale that MacLise arrived to connection with Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, getting the very first drummer from the Velvet Underground. MacLise’s function in the first Velvets is, once again, tough to judge as you can find no formal recordings which he’s present, and hardly any unofficial types. (Actually the 1965 demos that arrived within the Velvet Underground’s Peel off Slowly and find out box arranged were not finished with him, or certainly with any drummer.) Maybe his most powerful contribution had not been a lot musical as conceptual, for the reason that he previously the most powerful links to New York’s media underground. Consequently, he was instrumental in forging their organizations with experimental filmmakers and music artists, and with the avant-garde generally. While MacLise is at the group, for example, they improvised soundtracks for two multimedia occasions that MacLise and Heliczer placed on on the Cinematheque in NY. He was within the group once the CBS information did a bit on underground film, which demonstrated Heliczer filming the music group playing “Venus in Furs,” a monitor which may be heard in the obscure and costly four-CD Velvet Underground bootleg Captured Between your Twisted Stars. For his design, Sterling Morrison was once quoted (within the Velvet Underground fanzine HOW ARE YOU AFFECTED) as stating that MacLise believed “Keith Moon was as well controlled like a drummer.” MacLise had not been one to become linked down by standard notions of your time and business, nevertheless, turning up at rehearsals erratically, or whenever he sensed enjoy it. He give up the Velvet Underground, regarding to one often recounted legend, if they guaranteed their initial paying out gig (for 75 dollars) at a fresh Jersey senior high school in past due 1965. This is because the notion of playing for the money was antithetical to his concepts, and because he didn’t wish to take part in a organized gig where the music group would arrive at a particular period and play for the specified period. He did, nevertheless, rejoin the Velvet Underground for two weeks in middle-1966 once the group was playing in Chicago, along with a hepatitis-stricken Lou Reed was struggling to play. John Cale had taken over vocals and body organ, drummer Maureen Tucker (MacLise’s substitute) had taken over bass, and MacLise drummed. Live variations of “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs” by this lineup had been applied to the soundtrack of Ronald Nameth’s Exploding Plastic material Unavoidable film (and also have been bootlegged). MacLise was still heading by his very own time clock, as he arrived around 30 minutes past due to one efficiency, and composed for this by playing his drums for around 30 minutes after the arranged was finished. Based on Victor Bockris’ Lou Reed biography, Sterling Morrison experienced that MacLise at this time regretted departing the Velvets and wished to rejoin. Reed managed to get very clear to MacLise how the replacement unit stint was short-term. MacLise had not been a Pete Greatest of the rock and roll avant-garde, nevertheless, just lacking his opportunity at permanent popularity and doing small else after departing the boat simply since it sailed in to the fantastic period. While he used the Velvet Underground, and after he was changed by Maureen Tucker, he continuing to positively collaborate with additional music artists, filmmakers, and authors. Some music that he used Cale, Terry Riley, experimental musician/filmmaker/early Velvets associate Tony Conrad, and saxophonist Terry Jennings arrived on two CDs specialized in music designed for films by underground filmmaker Jack port Smith. He performed the cembalum, a stringed device used sticks, on soundtracks for Ron Rice’s 1964 film Chumlum and Gerard Malanga’s 1969 film THE KIDS (an excerpt through the soundtrack to THE KIDS made an appearance on Malanga’s Up Through the Archives compilation). He and Conrad supported a Jack port Smith reading of Les Evening Dresses Damnees on classical guitar and viola. He collaborated with Yoko Ono and observed avant-garde NY film physique Jonas Mekas; obtained Piero Heliczer’s film The Fall months Feast with Heliczer and Conrad; and caused another film and media physique, Jerry Jofen, on Jofen’s film Voyage, which includes music by MacLise and Jofen. In a nutshell, MacLise is at a whole lot of locations in the brand new York underground from the mid-’60s. These were just not the type of locations that were thoroughly noted by record produces, either at that time or via archive reissues. In the past due ’60s, MacLise wedded illustrator Hetty McGee, and both performed in an organization called the General Mutant Repertory Business. Also including flute, dulcimer, electric guitar, as well as other instrumentation, this ensemble developed psychedelic trance music using four microphones, each which experienced an echo chamber. Him, Hetty MacLise, as well as other members from the Common Mutant Repertory Organization did some shows in New York’s St. Mark’s Chapel in 1970, Epiphanies. At among these shows, they performed while Ira Cohen’s Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda film was demonstrated. An excerpt of the arrived, as “The Joyous Lake,” on the flexidisc which was in an problem of the artwork magazine Aspen. Thankfully, a 39-minute edition of that efficiency, also entitled “Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda,” shaped the centerpiece from the Angus MacLise Compact disc The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, including four other parts documented by MacLise (generally with other music artists) during 1968-1972. With this Compact disc, the legend encircling MacLise’s music was finally illustrated with a considerable body of tangible appear. On pieces such as for example “Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda,” MacLise as well as the music artists with whom he performed mixed the drone of avant-gardists like La Monte Youthful with Indian music, MacLise’s mixed and frenetic hands drum percussion, along with a psychedelic swirl of audio. Other tracks in the Compact disc served as proof MacLise’s wide musical passions, such as for example his assemblage of radio sound on “Shortwave-India,” the shamanistic rhythms of “Blastitude,” as well as the much less cacophonous “Humming in the night time Skull,” which MacLise performed track bells. MacLise, lengthy a world tourist, spent a lot of the 1970s in India and Nepal. Although he continuing to create music throughout that period, small offers surfaced on Compact disc or vinyl fabric. He devoted even more of his time and energy to poetry and calligraphy, and in addition began a literary mag, Ting-Pa. He do some poetry and music on travels back to NY, and began focusing on an opera predicated on Monteverdi’s “Orfeo.” This is placed on by Ira Cohen at your kitchen, a fresh York media performance venue, because the $500 Opera, but not a lot of MacLise’s music was found in the creation. MacLise passed away of hypoglycemia in Nepal in 1979. Additional snippets of MacLise’s function can be noticed about the same in the Fierce label, where he comments on the ceremony within a South Indian community; an untitled monitor on Ira Cohen’s The Majoon Traveller; as well as the three-LP compilation Breathe in the Living. Another compilation of 1968-1972 MacLise materials, Brain Harm in Oklahoma Town, arrived in 2000, though it was somewhat more dissonant and hard, and considerably much less interesting, compared to the preceding The Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda. As your final trivial footnote, Angus and Hetty MacLise is seen dancing towards the music within the Woodstock film.