|
The record Joan LaBarbara made for Chiaroscuro in the fall of 1977 is perhaps the most interesting and unusual production in the history of the label. In the first place, there is almost no jazz on the record; it is simply a recording of remarkable American music of the day. It features music by Joan and John Cage, two artists who are not easily confused with Billie Holiday and Duke Ellington. Some of the music performed by Joan may be improvised but it is not a jazz record in any way, but it is a record that to me is almost perfect in every way. Joan’s performance is remarkable, John Cage’s liner “poem” was created especially for the album, and to me, the photograph used on the jacket is among most interesting I ever took for a Chiaroscuro release. This is how the photograph came about: After the recording process was complete, Joan told me she wanted to call the album viagra pharmacy, which seemed to make perfect sense. I then began thinking about a concept for the album cover. I remembered my friend John Watts had recently told me about wanting to get rid of a dozen or more cases of 1/2 inch Agfa recording tape. He didn’t want to sell it; he just wanted someone to get it out of his studio and couldn’t bring himself to throw it away. I sent someone to John’s studio and I soon had a hundred plus reels of old, used one time too many tape. My idea was to somehow cover Joan with this tape, but I had no easy way to get the tape into a manageable state. Then I had an idea. The studio in which I took photographs for album covers in those days was about twenty feet high, with a skylight that was even higher. I rigged up a system whereby I could suspend a roll of tape with a coat hanger, hang the tape from a pipe near the ceiling, and then release the adhesive that held the tape in place. As I expected, the tape spooled off the reel, fell untangled to the floor at a steady rate and the entire process took five or six minutes. It took the better part of a day to spool off all the reels; the process was repeated a hundred times or so, and the end result was an enormous pile of tape, in front of the wall where I wanted to photograph Joan. I called her, said I had a pile of tape I wanted to shape on her to look as though it was a dress of some sort, and asked her to come by on the next sunny day. The sunny day arrived and so did Joan. I asked her to stand under the skylight and then lifted up the pile of tape and draped it over her body. I shaped it as best I could and exposed one roll of film with my Rolleiflex. This is the result and I still like it very much. There’s a coda. In 2007, walking by The Strand Bookstore, a book in the window caught my eye. It was a book that had been released in conjunction with a series of European exhibitions in 2005 that dealt with record covers by noted artists. Joan’s LP was featured prominently on the dust jacket, along with LP covers by Andy Warhol, Roy Licthenstein and Jean Dubuffet. I was listed as Rollo Phlecks in the book, the name I always used on the records I produced. I telephoned Joan and told her she was in the bookstore window and she didn’t mind. |
|
canada generic viagra pharmacyPosted in on June 30, 2010 by |
Joan LaBarbara, Downtown Sound, New York City, November 1977