With his spiky, greying mullet, Bob Dylan shades and hotel room drink in a plastic cup, Glenn Branca cuts a mean, iconic hipster figure, a pure punk aesthete who for 30 years has been taking music -- call it rock, call it classical, call it Post-Minimalist, call it Maximalist -- to places the most shreddingest of experimental shredders fear to tread. In an infamous spat in the ‘80s, even John Cage turned a deaf ear to Branca’s wall of dissonance.
Branca is in town for a performance of his
The audience present for the 8:30 p.m. Bad Plus set last evening leaned more toward curious observers than diehard fans. It was difficult to suspect the sort of crowd that would take interest in the piano, bass, and drum trio, and even harder to guess what aspect of the group appealed to whom. Some seemed to favor the band's groove-heavy material, nodding their heads when Reid Anderson's limber upright-bass figures coalesced with Dave King's propulsive beats in a way that has drawn comparisons t
