When we last saw Light Upon Blight at Best Video, the group were facing the screen and scoring the movie Carnival of Souls in celebration of Halloween. Five months later, we find them performing in front of Naked Lunch — David Cronenberg’s adaptation of the William S. Burroughs novel — about another type of horror, and the effects of randomness and chance.
The night was billed as Light Upon Blight performing music inspired by the works of William S. Burroughs + AVMUS. “I’m a big Burroughs fan, a huge fan of his books,” said Jeff Cedrone of Light Upon Blight. “I’ve been inspired by his randomness and the cut-up method he used. When we were thinking of what to use as a backdrop for the show, this movie was the one I wanted to use, and I liked the idea of our music adding to the randomness.” So the idea was that the movie would play with the sound off — a visual component to the show rather than the band attempting to play along to it as a soundtrack.
For the uninitiated, the movie Naked Lunch is based on a book by Burroughs, one of the more prominent writers of the Beat generation. While the book is not an autobiography, many key parts of the author’s life figure prominently in its narrative, which — not unlike the music that was to be played — is experimental and distinct. The tale follows the drug-fueled descent of a writer into a journey that ends up being a struggle between the largely fantastical and the gritty reality of surviving another day. It isn’t for the faint of heart. The depictions of drug use and sex, and the interactions between the characters and the alien creatures they encounter bring you into the middle of what seems to be a nightmare. It’s also very funny, a gift to those who enjoy any entertainment that challenges the norm and gives another perspective. Burroughs opened his mind and laid it out for all of us to poke at with a stick to see what jumps back at us in response. Not unlike the bugs that populate both the book and the movie, it is fascinating to watch even though we’re kind of unsure as to what it really is — or what it might do to us.
Before Naked Lunch began, AVMUS, a.k.a. John C. Miller, took to the side of the stage with an intricate setup that included mixers, a tape machine, keyboard, drum machine, and guitar. He provided his own film to accompany the music — neither Burroughs related — and in the dimmed lights gave both an auditory and visual tour through his own art. The film began with pages in a book flipping, the typeface words halting and slightly blurred at the edges, as the sound built and layered. The book flipped faster, and suddenly we were viewing ice and snow, a close up of a cat’s face. As more guitar was added in, flames began to rise from a piece of wood, appearing to be climbing up to the ceiling over the stage as a repetitive vocal was added.
When jellyfish appeared and floated in the blue and gold, the sound descended and was played in unison with them, giving a meditative feel to the proceedings. Close-ups of small toys and beads merged with buzzing and chirping sounds, giving the crowd another visual and aural stimulation that made it difficult to turn away from the screen, wondering what we would be offered next. Ballerinas and amusement park rides shifted the mood and movement, as the sounds continued to build and layer on one another. The set concluded with a return to the pages flipping, pausing on phrases. “We’re molecules.” “My heartbeat.” “If nothing else.” It ended with close-ups of the words “screams,” “watch,” and “no.” The audience responded with a hearty yes.
Light Upon Blight came to the stage with Cedrone on guitar and sound pedals, Richard Brown on saxophone, and both Thomas Martin and Peter Riccio on drums, each at their own set in front of the screen. Best Video proprieter Hank Hoffman introduced them through a short riff in Beat poet style, joking that Brown was “dressed like Burroughs.” Brown took to the center of the stage and initiated the proceedings, drawing in the rest of the musicians slowly, setting a bluesy vibe that became more disjointed as it went forth, the others building in with a more straightforward rock ‘n’ roll sound at times, and other times adding their own disjointed sounds and sonic accompaniment. Occasionally the music sounded less random and more in line with what was happening on the screen. Cedrone’s frantic guitar work matched the crawling of a centipede across a bathroom wall. No matter the scene — whether it was one of drug ingestion or drug-induced bug manifestation — the music made it seem more intense. It became increasingly difficult to not hold your breath and anticipate what was next, even though many in the room (including this reporter) were familiar with the film and knew what to expect.
One of the beauties of Light Upon Blight and these types of performances is witnessing their willingness to be inventive and experimental, trusting in each other’s musicality. It takes a certain commitment to be so artistically random, to let that be exposed so publicly and to disrupt the “normal” narrative — something Burroughs and the Beats also did. The continuity lay in the musicians’ knowledge of their instruments and each other. The band somewhat miraculously did this for almost one whole hour, and the crowd responded wildly.
As a huge fan of the Beats, after the show I found myself compelled to use the aforementioned cut-up method, or riff randomly in a stream-of-consciousness type editorial, but I figured that was not the best idea for my readers (or my editor). But performances like Light Upon Blight’s seem to always inspire me to want to write poetry afterward. So I found a few moments to jot down a few words that came to me as a direct result of this show. Shouldn’t good art inspire more art — even if it is sprinkled with bugs, drugs, and otherworldly creatures and sounds?
When the light meets the shadow
Does it greet it with a hug
Or a less obvious form of disorder?
The bugs crawl around our feet.
Their footsteps create another type of beat.
Eventually anything becomes a drug
If you allow it to consume you
But if the light and the shadow
Hold space for one another instead
Can the sound find room
To be heard?
These are the words born
of random insistence.
My drug is persistence.