Unlike his contemporaries, Boulez never conducted with a baton. No matter the repertoire, he went for the absolute bare essentials, even if it was ludicrously complex music. Basically, he was the conducting equivalent of a bare-knuckle boxer. In an attempt to make the New York Philharmonic more in line with New York's coffeehouse scene and burgeoning hippie culture, Boulez took the chairs away and replaced them with rugs and cushions. The audience could walk around the orchestra as they played Weber, Brahms and Stravinsky. The orchestra, reportedly, weren't too happy about it, but it was a huge success. An absolute torchbearer for serialism and 12-tone music, Boulez went as far as suggesting that anyone who didn't have an intimate knowledge of this difficult style of music was basically a moron: "Any musician who has not experienced the necessity of the 12-tone system is USELESS."