Search - Jack Smith, Tony Conrad, Mario Montez :: Silent Shadows On Cinemaroc Island: 56 Ludlow Street 1962-1964, Volume II

A filmmaking visionary actually worthy of the label, Jack Smith was also one of performance art's founding fathers. That smaller minds than his considered the two disciplines distinct and separate troubled him not a whit, as he offhandedly alloyed both into extreme, exotic live events the likes of which had never been seen. When Smith succumbed to AIDS in 1989, the job of archiving the scores of tapes in his estate apparently fell to onetime collaborator and roommate Tony Conrad. This CD, the second in a series of highlights from those recordings, includes hilarious edits of early-'60s performances at Smith's legendary New York theater-studio. But there are also tape and sound experiments, a chunk of the soundtrack to his watershed film Flaming Creatures, and a reading of "Pfeffernuss Flavored Aspirin," an indicative piece of Smith absurdiana reprinted in Wait for Me at the Bottom of the Pool: The Writings of Jack Smith. Although a few liner notes could have enlightened less familiar listeners, the balance of Conrad's curation here is wide-ranging, thoughtful, and wildly funny. A fine tribute to Smith. --Steve Lafreniere