Industrial Symphony No. 1

I've been lurking on this newsgroup for quite a while now and I have
only seen limited mentions of Lynch's "Industrial Symphony No. 1" stage
presentation. I got a VHS tape of it back in the early 1990s when DL
was riding high on the Twin Peaks hype. It's got midgets, logs, red
curtains, topless women slithering around cars, and Julee Cruise
suspended in midair. Any other attempt to describe it would be futile,
but if you like Mulholland Drive you'll probably like this one.
Was it performed at any other locations besides the Brooklyn Academy
Of Music? Is it available on DVD? I'd like to hear from the other
members of this newsgroup on what you thought of it.

GTT

> Was it performed at any other locations besides the Brooklyn Academy
>Of Music? Is it available on DVD? I'd like to hear from the other
>members of this newsgroup on what you thought of it.

Not available on DVD, but it was on a one-sided laserdisc I now wish I'd gotten
instead of the tape.

It was only performed that one night (November 10, 1989) at BAM, three times in
a row -- it was part of a theatre "round robin" to open BAM's "Next Wave"
season: You bought a ticket to see three shows in three theatres in one night,
and then went from one to the other (there were three different orders you
could see the shows in).

The first piece I saw that night was in the BAM Majestic Theatre, and I barely
recall what it was about -- it was a dance theatre piece involving women in
bright dresses and men dressed as cops. I think.

Then, I went across the street to the BAM Opera House and saw IS#1. The opera
house already stunk of stage smoke, and it hung in the air, making the room
feel oppressive to begin with.

The video is a pretty good record of what went on onstage. People have written
that the Cage/Dern opening was added to the video, but no, it was projected on
a stage drop at the start (WILD AT HEART hadn't been released yet in the USA,
so I thought it was a little preview of a scene from that). The opening
section with the flashes and loud noises seemed much longer live, and on the
video, you can't really see the two percussionists playing snare drums at the
left and right proceniums (pretty much the only live music played in the piece
apart from the clarinet later).

It was actually a lot more impressive live, as you can imagine, looking at the
whole landscape the whole time and finding what was going on in corners. The
stagecraft was invisible live, unlike the video, and everything seemed to have
a air of the miraculous (from the rear of the orchestra, you couldn't see any
of the "float" wires, and the final fall of gold dust seemed more beautiful
than anything should have a right to be). As I saw the second performance, the
skinned deer on stilts was REALLY holding on to the water tower during his bit
-- he had fallen during the first performance, and had to be talked into doing
it again -- I didn't know about the accident at the time, of course, but that
was the only section live that seemed overlong and as if something was supposed
to be happening that wasn't (the editing on the video jazzes it up a lot).

After IS#1, I went to my third piece -- a kind of jazz-rock song cycle being
performed by Fernando Saunders, sometimes of Lou Reed's band, in a BAM theatre
that doesn't exist anymore (it's been replaced by their movie theatres) -- but
didn't stay long, as nothing could follow IS#1.

I don't know how it works for someone who didn't see it live, of course, but
for me the video is a fine record of a beautiful evening that conjures up many
magical memories that it probably doesn't inherently contain.

Roundheels (aka Pumaman)
Brooklyn

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