Influences and Precursors: The 1995 release Then And Now: The Music Of The Great Master Continues by Ali Akbar Khan (the master sarod player) contains a reissue of the 1955 LP which was the first recording of classical Indian music that had an international release and which was a seminal influence on both La Monte Young and Tony Conrad when they first heard it in the late 1950's. Erik Satie wrote Vexations to be repeated 840 times. John Cage organized its first realization in 1963 and John Cale was one of the participating pianists. La Monte Young's association with music of long durations goes back to his 1958 Trio for Strings (no released recordings) and some of his 1960 compositions e.g. Composition 1960 #7: B & F# "to be held for a very long time" available as two 30 second realizations on Historical Recordings 1968-1998.
The Theater of Eternal Music: The members of the Theater of Eternal Music (1962-1966) were at first La Monte Young (saxophone, later on voice only), Marian Zazeela (voice, later lights) & Angus MacLise (hand drums). Terry Jennings (saxophone), Dennis Johnson (voice) and photographer Billy Name (voice & guitar) (All Tomorrow's Parties: Billy Name's Photographs of Andy Warhol's Factory) are also described as early members. Tony Conrad (violin) and John Cale (viola) joined in 1963 and MacLise & Cale left by the end of 1965. Terry Riley (voice) joined up for the last period from early to mid 1966. La Monte Young folded the group up in Summer 1966. It has been occasionally reformed as the ToEM Orchestra & the ToEM Brass Ensemble (the latter with a recording La Monte Young: The Second Dream of the High-Tension Line Stepdown Transformer (from "The Four Dreams of China"))
The only recording of the “classic” Theater of Eternal Music (ToEM) ensemble of John Cale, Tony Conrad, Angus MacLise, La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela to emerge is the August 8, 2000 release of Inside the Dream Syndicate, Vol. 1: Day of Niagara. The formal title of this by La Monte Young's dating/cataloging method is "25 IV 65 c. 8:15-8:45 PM NYC day of niagra". The spelling of "niagra" is from Angus MacLise's calendar. Unfortunately the disc is only 30 minutes long and has very distorted sound. Angus MacLise's drums are barely audible as a dull thump for only the first several minutes and the drone vocals (sort of an "OM" sound) of La Monte Young are only rarely heard (Marian Zazeela maybe not at all) and the sound is dominated by Conrad's and Cale's red-zone strings. Still, it is a rare chance to hear what the ToEM sounded like.
The Post-ToEM Music by members & ex-members Beyond the one ToEM recording we have examples of work from the past members of the Theatre of Eternal Music many of which carry on from the drone and just intonation principles that the ToEM worked on.
Tony Conrad and John Cale refer to the period of the ToEM that they participated in as the "Dream Syndicate", and La Monte Young titles the entire continuum of music created as "The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys". Because of an ongoing dispute between La Monte Young, who stands by his sole authorship of the works and Tony Conrad & John Cale now insisting that it was a collaboration and because the word "syndicate" implies a joint collaboration, La Monte Young does not refer to this as The Dream Syndicate. Various Tony Conrad and John Cale disc titles make reference to it however. It is because of this dispute and its consequent copyright issues that no further publicly available recordings of the ToEM ensemble exist.
The most recent Tony Conrad release is a December 6, 2005 issue of a live concert recording from Feb 18, 1995 of Tony Conrad, Jim O'Rourke and Faust Outside the Dream Syndicate Alive on Table of Elements Records. There is also a April 6, 2004 Amazon listing of the 2002 reissue of the 1972 Tony Conrad and Faust collaboration Outside the Dream Syndicate: 30th Anniversary Edition on The Table of Elements Records. Now a 2 CD set with bonus tracks. I’ll admit that I was a bit disappointed to find that the recordings on Tony Conrad’s November 18, 1997 release Early Minimalism, Vol. 1 are not actually from 1964/65, but rather are works from the late 1980’s to mid 1990’s titled with namessuch as “Early Minimalism June 1965”. “Four Violins 1964” is stated as actually being from that year though, and once you get pastthe idea of the date titles and go with the premise that if the ToEM had continued with a western string based drone of violins, violas & cellos this is what it might have sounded like, you can still get into this.
The Associates: The conceptual anti-artist/violinist Henry Flynt was never a member of the ToEM but he was a friend of La Monte Young who famously wrote the work "X (any integer) for Henry Flynt" which consists of a single sound repeated "x" number of times. There is a performance of "566 for Henry Flynt" by David Tudor on the disc "Experimentelles Theater - Fluxus - Happening - Performance" available from Amazon Germany. Henry Flynt's own works of drone/folk based music are available on the discs Purified by the Fire, Back Porch Hillbilly Blues 1, Back Porch Hillbilly Blues 2, C Tune, and I Don't Wanna.
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