Perry

Perry Brandston has been a light and sound professional since 1977. The venues he has worked at include The Kitchen, Carnegie Hall, The Beacon Theater, The Manhattan Theater Club, Hurrah, Club Quick, Match Restaurant, and Save the Robots. He has also worked with a large variety of performers, including Charles Aznavour, James Brown, Johnny Hartman, Holly Woodlawn, and Benny Goodman, as well as composers such as Glen Branca and Marc Shaiman, and the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat. All that was a very long time ago. Now Perry lives at the other end of 12th Street from Robert Christgau and still doesn’t know what emo is.So much for the glib. My history/qualifications: I started going to CBGB, and Max's in 1976. By early '78 I had become sort of an apprentice to one of the original sound crew from the Fillmore East. At this time he was still running his sound contracting business out of 105 2nd Ave. I wound up working all the best rooms in NY doing one offs and industrials. Taking that system from hall to hall demonstrated that the room is the single most important component of the sound system, and has the most influence on the sound. (Next in influence over the sound comes the operator.) I had the opportunity to work with marquee talent. That’s jargon. Around the same time some friends and I started a party which came to be called 'Stinky's'. My own first system was for built for that party. That party eventually settled down at the club Tier 3, a block or two from The Mudd. Over the years I worked in Off-Off Broadway and Off Broadway theater; I toured with bands, Including The Glenn Branca Ensemble; I installed systems in restaurants, clubs and record stores, including Match, Save the Robots and The Bar Room on West 14th Street. Concurrent with my arrival at the Bar Room I became a DJ, at the party which started out as Electric Lounge Machine and became The Departure Lounge. This lasted 'til about '95. With the closing of Filter-14 in that same space on 14th Street, my career in sound came to a close.