“Branca had me shaking . . . I found myself responding in ways that brought me back to my ego. My feelings were disturbed.... I found in myself the willingness to connect the music with evil — with power. I don’t want such a power in my life

"I felt negatively about what seemed to me to be the political implications. I wouldn’t want to live in a society like that, in which someone would be requiring other people to do such an intense thing together … The Branca is an example of sheer determination, of one person to be followed by the others. Even if you couldn’t hear you could see the situation, that is not a shepherd taking care of the sheep, but of a leader insisting that people agree with him, giving them no freedom whatsoever. The only breath of fresh air that comes is when the technology collapses. The amplifier broke, that was the one moment of freedom from the intention.

“I don’t think though that the image of that power and intention and determination would make a society that I would want to continue living in,” 

"“One of the things I dislike most about European music is the presence of climaxes, and what I see in Branca as in Wagner is a sustained climax. It also suggests that what is not it, is not climactic.”

- John Cage on Glenn Branca performance at New Music America festival, Chicago, 1982