David Grubbs
Banana Cabbage, Potato Letttuce, Onion Orange


Table of the Elements, 1996: For those with grit, it was a ride in the whirlwind. Behind was the Atlanta Manganese festival, a trailhead at which Tony Conrad initiated the greenhorns, an unknown Jim O’Rourke was introduced to Sonic Youth, and where Keiji Haino, Faust, and Dead C’s Michael Morley were first coaxed to tread American soil. Ahead was the Chicago Yttrium festival, a defiant, post-genre crossroads of 20th-century aural resolve. In between, Tony Conrad recorded, toured, and recorded again with Gastr del Sol; the label introduced O’Rourke to John Fahey, then Fahey to Loren Connors, and then reintroduced Fahey to the world—a flash in which all dizzying currents converged.

Serenely in the eye stood David Grubbs—observer, participant, and facilitator — and from that stance emerged his solo debut, Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange (awarded “Best Title of 1997” by The Wire). The original tagline waggishly declared, “…in which a solo record = record of solos and less is not MOR.” True. At no hour does Grubbs traffic in noodly, middle-of-the-road equivocation. These are deliberate and thoughtful excursions, charted with mindful, patient authority and executed in a spirit of comradely challenge.

While comparisons to Morton Feldman were tolerable on release, present-day ears will discern a wry and roiling phraseology that flows from Squirrel Bait through a subsequent and vast creative output. Many of those works appear on Grubbs’s Blue Chopsticks label and its patron Drag City, which has also preserved several of his TotE recordings with Gastr del Sol. But it's Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, and Onion Orange that christens the launch of Table of the Elements Archive, informing the nucleus of an inspiringly tempestuous past and an explosive, radiant future. 

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“If you wanted to, you could describe him as highly postmodern. Either way, he is one of the most adventurous, uncompromising and thoughtful figures on the experimental side of American composition.”
—The Quietus

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Gastr del Sol

“Though their music began with two carefully intertwined acoustic guitars, it stretched to encompass orchestral fantasias, electronic abstraction and collage sensibilities imported from the avant-garde. Grubbs’s image-rich writing felt poetic and detached. In an era of plangent indie rock, they were the studied, intricate eccentrics.”
— Grayson Haver Currin, New York Times

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David Grubbs
Banana Cabbage, Potato Lettuce, Onion Orange
1996/2025
Table of the Elements Archive
[Zinc] 30
EOE-030
Phono 12” LP, 180g vinyl, booklet

 
 
 

 

A Conduit for History Exploding in the Present Moment

TABLE OF THE ELEMENTS is a curatorial network and interdisciplinary platform, live-event presenter, and fine-arts publisher of print, audio, and film, lauded by Pitchfork Media as “a national treasure.” Since its origin as a record label in 1993, TotE has been dedicated to preserving, promoting, and promulgating works by international creators of experimental audio, electroacoustics, free-improvised performance, sonic sculpture, microtonality, and modern composition. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of sound and vision.  Each project demonstrates how a publishing concern might romp wild, unbridled from the carousel of convention.

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"The supremacy of Table of the Elements as an unwavering outpost of ultra-experimental strains can be attributed to its concomitant adherence to valiance. Most of the Table of the Elements catalog has no broad commercial appeal, and many of its projects are risky ventures, even with respect to the experimental marketplace. Yet, this philosophy of risk works because everybody associated with the label feels like they're doing important work releasing important records, and they're willing to go for broke to make it happen.”

—Pitchfork

“The hallmarks of this New Archivism are beautiful and innovative packaging, elaborate and idiosyncratic liner notes, rare and obscure recordings ... Working with graphic designers such as the Grammy-winning Susan Archie, Jeff Hunt produced a collection that combines varied textures, lavish finishes, and period details with art from the era of the original source recordings. Their treatment of Robert Longo’s late 1970s photographs for Rhys Chatham’s releases could, for instance, measure up to what’s on view at most contemporary art centers. In addition to its archival endeavor, TotE also releases the new work of its avant-garde heroes and their devotees. TotE’s active support of the work of sonic pioneers ensures that theirs are living traditions — not ossified museum objects.”

—Thomas Peake, Art Papers

Tony Conrad: Completely In the Present
A Film by Tyler Hubby

"Hubby's film captures Conrad in all his facets ... broadly as a man determined to make 'abstract art funny, happy, energetic, joyful.' Conrad lived long enough to see his early recordings, barely or never released, get the reissue and the attention they deserve. ... [Completely In the Present] is a sharp, sweet, eloquent documentary about the merriest, most artistically expansive minimalist on record. His work and his life asserted the importance of listening for the sounds nobody else has heard."

—Chicago Tribune

“Joyous, exhilarating, and transformative, Tyler Hubby’s documentary is essential viewing for anyone involved in the history of music and visual art.”

—Artforum

"Conrad was 100 percent badass. Without Tyler Hubby’s documentary and Table of the Elements ... one of the great stories of American music and art might have gone underappreciated.”

—Henry Rollins

All contents ©1992–2025 Table of the Elements ®2025 Table of the Elements Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Related media from the Table of the Elements Archive published courtesy the estate of Tony Conrad.

Since 1993, Table of the Elements has staked its claim on a massive enterprise. It intends nothing less than to rewrite the history of American music in the second half of the 20th century -- and beyond. The label’s 150-plus releases are a vital contemporary chronicle, a survey of meaningful eruptions across a broad horizon of improvised, experimental, minimal and outsider sounds.

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