Meltable Snaps It at The Franklin Furnace , NYC

The Franklin Furnace, NYC December 19, 1978

The Franklin Furnace was one of the premier performance spaces in the late 70’s and 80’s. It still exists, but now it concentrates on being a resource for young performers to get break through money to perform in New York. “on a mission to make the world safe for avant-garde art” they say.

The FF introduced us as a trio to the NYC “Downtown Music Scene” as it was called in those days. It was a pretty high profile gig and it even paid a little I think.

The way we remember it happening was – one CMS weekend, Jackie Apple, a FF presenter, visited. Jackie was and I’m sure still is quite beautiful. A vision, really, and sharply intelligent and Lytle was entranced and followed her around like a little puppy dog. To Jackie’s credit, nothing came of it, but she (probably used to it) was kind and liked our trio and the idea of our trio and booked us. We would also like to thank the founding director, Martha Wilson.

It was a storefront on Franklin Street right near the #1 train stop on West Broadway and had a nice big presentation room. I don’t remember much about the concert except the anticipation, David’s best set up, Lytle brought a reel-to-reel tape recorder to play back electronic music in best quality, and George even dressed up a little. (For those days, George dresses very nicely all the time now days).

It was a good concert and very, very important for us.