I wound up at the Kitchen sort of by mistake. It was a Tuesday – February 23rd, 2016 to be precise. It had been a year since the worst week of my life, and sitting at my desk after a long day of designing women\u2019s underwear, I longed for a little culture that evening, a little date with myself. So I scrolled through concert listings on Oh My Rockness, hoping for a name to leap out at me. February is not the most happening time for live music in the city, and my backup plan involved a movie and\/or overpriced meal for one. But the backup plan wasn\u2019t necessary; as I scanned through the concert listings, a name did leap out at me, and though I wasn\u2019t positive why I recognized that name, I bought a ticket without hesitation.<\/span><\/p>\n

That name was Glenn Branca, and in the days since his death last week, headlines, tweets, and obituaries can all agree on one thing: if you weren\u2019t familiar with Branca\u2019s music, there\u2019s no way you have escaped the music he\u2019s influenced. His brash guitar symphonies were loved by the likes of David Bowie, and imitated by Sonic Youth. He was a pioneer of the No Wave movement alongside John Zorn and James Chance, and he pushed the boundaries of music, noise, and everything in between. His first two solo records, 1980\u2019s <\/span>Lesson No. 1 <\/span><\/i>and <\/span>The Ascension <\/span><\/i>from the following year demolished and restructured the contemporary approach to the electric guitar, rock\u2019n\u2019roll, and classical composition. Branca\u2019s work was loud, dangerous, and so cutting edge that it moved legendary avant garde composer John Cage to feel \u201cdisturbed\u201d by it. <\/span><\/p>\n

Branca was the man that conducted serrated, unnerving orchestras with 100 electric guitars, slapped punk rock into something more upright and threatening with his early band Theoretical Girls, and released early music by Swans and Sonic Youth on his record label, Neutral. His legacy coincides with the explosive art movement in \u201870s and \u201880s New York, but unlike many of his contemporaries, Branca never lost a scrap of relevance<\/span>\u2014<\/span>in fact, his mystique and ability to stun an audience only seemed to intensify with age. It must have been some peripheral knowledge of all these accomplishments that congealed in my gut when I saw Branca\u2019s name on the concert listings for the evening. Perhaps it was the faint memory of an interview with him I\u2019d read in a copy of <\/span>The Believer<\/span><\/i>\u2019s 2014 music issue. Either way, I am glad I trusted my gut.<\/span><\/p>\n