John Cage's Second Century

The day on which John Cage would have turned 100 years old was last week.  In certain circles it was a big deal.  (Here's a list of events.)

I am offering two recordings of the music of John Cage.  Both were performed in Los Angeles in the early 1980s on concerts produced by the Independent Composers Association.  I no longer remember exactly why I saved these cassette recordings.  Subconciously, I guess, I knew that I would need material for my blog one day, once my hair turned gray.

Both concerts were apparently reviewed by the L.A. Times although I don't have access to either article nor to concert programs.  I do remember that the reviewer remarked how Atlas Eclipticalis felt like the 'classical' work on a program of modern music.  Imaginary Landscape was part of a tape music concert which also included pieces by Scott Fraser, Luc Ferrari and Jonathan Harvey.

listen to John Cage Atlas Eclipticalis with Winter Music - 1756 seconds - November 16, 1982 - The House, Santa Monica, California - The Independent Composers Assn. Ensemble, Delores Stevens, pianist, Stephen Mitchell, conductor

listen to John Cage Imaginary Landscape #4 with Radio Music - 497 seconds - May 21, 1983 - Stella-Polaris Gallery, Los Angeles, California - The Independent Composers Assn. Radio Ensemble

(Read about: why I have this flyer and how I know the other composers on the tape concert.  At some point I made a copy of the Atlas Eclipticalis tape at half speed.  I much preferred listening to it that way.)

---

As someone whose musical thinking was greatly influenced by Cage's work and ideas, I would be remiss to let this occasion pass without comment. On the other hand, these days I'm really more interested in observing how Cage is being remembered by the classical music establishment than I am in the man or his music.

I see Cage as the ultimate 20th century iconoclastic artist, someone who smashed the sacred ideas of the music world. In their place he brilliantly offered indeterminacy, new performance techniques, electronics, wildly inventive compositional systems and a sense of calm, unflappable, detached theatricality.  He leavened this mixture with a galaxy of personal anecdotes, ideas from Zen teachings, mycology and the force of his own personality.

Indeed, I believe that the man himself sets Cage apart from the other composers of his time.  He injected himself uniquely into his music by performing, lecturing or just being charming.   In his second hundred years how essential will his persona be to the continued acceptance of his music?  Eventually everyone who directly knew and revered Cage will be gone.  Time will tell us if his music alone will continue to inspire new listeners.  Or maybe his writings and ideas will motivate future generations to become fans.  

In the coming decades the ears of the audience will, no doubt, continue to blend the music of the entire post-World War II avant-garde into a more homogenous musical experience.  Although there will be plenty of academic types to make plenty of fine distinctions, it will be harder and harder for more casual listeners to choose sides in those ancient artistic conflicts.  Total control via serialism or total randomness using chance operations?  As it turned out, the aesthetics were much the same either way.

The centennial celebrations are heavy with the idea that Cage was a strong artistic wind that will blow through the ages.  I suppose it is possible that Cage, by the year 2112, could land a spot in the pantheon of the greatest dead white male composers.  Even so "Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner and Cage" would be quite a stretch.  I wouldn't be surprised if he comes to be regarded as the essential 20th century serial composer, eclipsing all those famous Europeans and academic Americans of the last fifty years.

Cage made a big deal out of studying with Schoenberg - and spent much of his later career trying to curry the approval of his long-dead teacher.  Here's an excerpt from a fascinating L.A. Times article by Mark Swed about Cage's early life in Los Angeles:

Still the young composer continued to, as he put it, worship Schoenberg like a god. He took away from Schoenberg the idea that a composer always needed some kind of system. And Cage always came up with one.

Schoenberg would likely have said that music needs more than a system of rules.  I'm pretty sure he would have insisted that music also requires meaning and expression.

Recently, in a BBC interview with Norman Lebrecht, John Adams talked about John Cage (This is from the 9/3/12 podcast, starting about 15'48")

Actually there was a four or five year period when I was not that cognizant of minimalism.  I was a real acolyte of John Cage. . . . I knew all my John Cage very well and I was very deeply imbued in John's orthodoxy.  I do think that Cage is a very orthodox composer.  That surprises people because they think of him as an iconoclast but he actually is a strangely intolerant composer in a certain way, when it comes to anything which doesn't fit into his very precise world.  That means most of western music whether it's Miles Davis or Beethoven.  Eventually I just had to throw that out.  Because I had fun doing John Cage and you could talk about it forever but my background and my musical breeding had brought me up to love great music.  Also I keep going back to this experience about music is essentially the art of feeling and Cage had no place in that.  

(Here's a fun anecdote about Cage's intolerance.)

We can argue later about what Cage is and what Cage is not.  After that we can take a swing at what is great music and what is not.  Or we can just agree to disagree.

Right now the question I am more interested in is 'How will perceptions of Cage change over time?'  The best way to find out is to simply wait and see.  It's more fun to guess.

I expect that the great iconoclast will gradually be transformed by his remaining acolytes into a great icon.  He will be revered, Zen-like, in concerts and concert halls.  Cage, I'm sure, would have liked nothing better.  I also expect that the manner in which his music is performed will become increasingly conventional and prescribed.  That's sad, but it is the way of what we call classical music.

Personally, the harder it becomes to experience the music of John Cage on a street corner, the more we will lose what I think is the real value of his work and life.

As John Cage has said, music is all around us if only we had ears. There would be no need for concert halls if man could only learn to enjoy the sounds which envelop him, for example at Seventh and Broadway at four p.m. on a rainy day.

(That quote comes from the spoken introduction to the 1970 Everest recording of Variations IV by John Cage.)

(Seventh and Broadway: 1 2 3 4 5 6)

Random Tags: saintdom. . . opposition. . . podgy. . . laburnum. . . exclamation. . . gargoyle

Vexations in Los Angeles

(Listen to a live recording of Vexations while you read.)

Vexation n.

1. The act of annoying, irritating, or vexing.
2. The quality or condition of being vexed; annoyance.
3. A source of irritation or annoyance.

Vexations

a noted musical work by Erik Satie.

I think Erik Satie's Vexations is one piece of music with a perfect title.  A title should give you some insight into the music itself.   And in the case of Vexations, if the music itself were not annoying, irritating or vexing enough (and it is aplenty), the composer compounded the annoyance with his instruction:

"In order to play the theme 840 times in succession, it would be advisable to prepare oneself beforehand, and in the deepest silence, by serious immobilities"

If you spend even a short while thinking about and listening to Vexations you'll end up scratching your head.  That is a good thing.

John Cage, whose 100 birth anniversary is being celebrated far and wide at the moment, reveled in music which made listeners think.  It was Cage who brought Vexations to the attention of the music world.  In 1963 he organized the first complete performance in New York City.

This piece is now so associated with Cage himself that complete Vexations performances (which take upwards of 18 hours) are presented in Cage's memory.  I know of two coming soon in California, one on the Berkeley Arts Festival and the other on the Jacaranda Series in Santa Monica.  Check them out.

---

This Mixed Meters post will feature two decades-old complete local performances of Satie's Vexations.  I was lucky enough to be a performer in both of them.

The first was on radio station KPFK on September 6, 1981 - all 840 repetitions were performed and broadcast live.  For 19 hours there were no station identifications.

The other was performed at a West Hollywood art gallery and was organized by the composer Randy Hostetler as part of his Living Room concert series.  It happened on August 1, 1992.

We'll go in reverse chronological order:

---

Composer Randy Hostetler lived from 1963 to 1996.  His short life and his music are honored and recounted at livingroommusic.org.   His piece "8" for piano and eight ball (in the side pocket) is a good introduction to the spirit Randy brought to his work.  Randy's close friend Art Jarvinen wrote 8 revealing stories about Randy.

One of Randy's projects was a concert series entitled The Living Room Series.  On one of these he produced Vexations. Here's the silk-screened concert poster:

Click on the poster for an enlargement.  Here's the text:

THE LIVING ROOM SERIES PRESENTS

SATIE

VEXATIONS

vexations by erik satie

1 august 1992, asher-faure gallery, 612 n. almont drive, west hollywood

beginning at 7 am and running continuously for close to 24 hours

for more information: 310 271-3665

scheduled pianists: gaylord mowrey, michael fink, jim fox, christopher hobbs,

david hatt, lorna eder, randolph hostetler, david ocker, chas smith, sandra brown,

david peck, francesca talenti, michael webster, brian howrey, wendy prober,

joe metzler, dan lawrence, sarah simons, daniel mettler, alan zychek

designed and printed by i.c. and a.b. at the rollins printing office of the school of art, yale university

(If you click on the address you'll be taken to the Google Street View.  Next click on the double arrow pointing toward the building and you can look around inside the now renamed gallery.)

Here are some memories of that event.

Alan Zychek:

I remember Vexations, that was a wonderful day over in WEHO. There was the vexation room with the piano and rugs. Outside the room there was food, drink and good times.  I think there was someone asleep under the piano when my turn came. I remember trying to discern stylistic nuances when the next player took over, but finding none. It was as if the piece neutered any personality a pianist would normally strive for.

I also remember Randy's LR concerts.  He placed mirophones throughout the entire space, inside and out -  and the back room is where you could listen to a mix of random conversations in real time.  Good luck and thank's for dislodging some wonderful memories. 

Jim Fox:

One thing I remember about the '92 Vexations performance was its lovely mix of the sacred and the profane. In the gallery itself, where the music--ever different, yet ever the same--slowly and quietly spun forth from the assembled musicians, I recall that the mood was sacredly hushed. The tempo shifted from player to player, sometimes slightly, sometimes dramatically. Interpretations of a pass through the single page of notes drifted, sometimes as willed, sometimes as fatigue dictated. Well-schooled fingers milked its chords for all they could find and less-schooled ones went about the task in a workmanly fashion, and sometimes a note or two disappeared beneath the keyboard. 

Listeners were strewn about the floor or draped over chairs or even sitting on the edges of chairs, as if waiting for one of the players to keel over. They generally gazed into space or stared intently, chins cradled in hands, at a performer. (Many seemed lost in near-sleep or reverie.) Some performers and some listeners were there for the duration (or some reasonable facsimile of it), some seemed to merely pop in for a few moments. 

But just outside the gallery doors--on a concrete patio as I recall--was a wonderful, long-winded, nearly off-the-rails (or perhaps that was just me) party, a spontaneous and at times slightly raucous celebration among new and old friends, blessed by a broad sense of camaraderie, and fueled by the consumption of much volatile liquid. And that day's odd blend of the sacred and profane seemed altogether Satie-esque in a good and simply simpatico way. 

---

The 1981 KPFK performance of Vexations was organized by the station's music director Carl Stone and assistant Lois V. Vierk.  The event was scheduled as a special event for Labor Day weekend.  The station would often suspend regular programs on holidays in favor of unusual programming.

Here's a page from the KPFK September 1981 Folio, their program guide.  Even then Vexations was associated with John Cage's birthday.  At the time he was turning 69.   A 12-hour broadcast of Cage's Empty Words is announced for later in the month.  In that folio you can read a 3-page interview of Cage by Roger Reynolds.

Carl sent me the thank-you announcement from the October 1981 Folio.  (That month also announced the resignation of both Carl and Lois from their positions at the station.)

The performance of Vexations by Erik Satie was one of the larger and more fun undertakings of the Music Department. Carl Stone and Lois Vierk co-ordinated the schedule of the 18 pianists who played in half-hour shifts. They were: Gloria Cheng, Paul Reale, Bob Fernandez, Gaylord Mowry, Mike McCandless, Lorna Little, Zita Carno, Reymond Berney, Heidi Lesemann, Del ores Stevens, Alan Oettinger, Felix De Cola, Richard Grayson, Milus Scruggs, Lucky Mosko, Ani Schwartz, David Ocker, and Leonid Hambro.

Audrey Tawa stayed from 6 am to 1 am the next day with the task of keeping an accurate tally of the 840 repetitions demanded by the composer. Ahna Armour prepared a grande bouffe for all the participants, and Kathy Harada stayed to make sure things went smoothly. Special thanks to David Ocker for staying at the piano for an extra hour to finish up.

By the end of the 19 hours, the station had received a total of 89 phone calls to comment on the broadcast: 67 favorable and 22 not. Below is a sample of some of the telegrams and letters the station received in the days that followed.

You can read the sample of telegrams and letters here (search for "Vexations".)  Note the "special thanks" to me for playing the clean up position.  I tell the full story of that below.

Here are a couple personal recollections.

Heidi Lesemann:

Carl had set it up so that we paired with another pianist for 2 hours, each of us taking half hour shifts, as Carl said. My partner was Dee Stevens. The music was easy, about 12 bars, but I was very nervous coming into the studio. I had been listening to it for a couple of hours beforehand. When the half hour was close, the relief pianist sat with the first pianist and slid into place in the keys as the first pianist slid off the bench. Seamless. I remember feeling like I was part of an historic event! Honored to be part of it.

Lois Vierk:

I remember organizing the event with Carl. It actually wasn't too hard to get together because the musicians were so gracious with their time and energy. And Audrey Tawa was, as always, a terrific person to work with.

Audrey Tawa was the person charged with tracking the number of repetitions.  She had a mechanical counter, a little chrome job with a plunger.  Each push on that increased the count by one.  She pushed it for each phrase.  One repetition - out of the 840 - consists of four phrases.  Therefore the magic number which needed to be reached on the counter was 3360.  

Before I went to the studio that day I made a home air check of the broadcast.  I recorded off the air onto a 10 1/2 inch reel-to-reel half track tape deck running at 3 3/4 inches per second, the slowest possible speed.  I recorded in mono in one direction.  Later in the day I flipped the tape over and recorded the other side of the tape.  I put the tape in a box.  It remained untouched for nearly 31 years.

A few weeks ago I found the tape and digitized it.  I have the same tape machine which still works!  I improved the sound as best I could and combined both sides into one file.  The total length is 6 hours, 24 minutes and 45 seconds.  I've uploaded this recording and you can listen to it.

Listen to Erik Satie Vexations - 1981 KPFK live broadcast

Yes, the sound quality sucks.  There is wow and flutter.  I think the piece transcends the poor sound quality.  Unlike other recordings you might find online, which likely have only a few repetitions, this has several hundred - about one third of the entire piece.

I do not know who the specific players are.  I'm pretty sure none of them are me.  If you listen carefully you can hear the style change as the players change.  Some are very precise and repetitive.  One in particular has problems.  Another seems to be trying to play each repetition slightly differently.  The tempos change, at one point quite abruptly.  Hesitations.  Mistakes.  If you listen long enough these little variations will no longer matter.  At that point I suppose you will have achieved Serious Immobility.

---

Here's the story of my extra hour ...

In 1981, like now, I kept a strange schedule of sleeping and waking.  Since I was staying up all night I chose a time slot in the Vexations schedule when I would be wide awake - i.e. the middle of the night for everyone else.  That's why I was one of the last pianists.  I think I was alternating with Lee Hambro.

It's impossible to know ahead of time precisely how long a complete performance of Vexations will last.  Carl and Lois had arranged for enough performers to cover 18 hours, thinking that would be sufficient.  But as that evening wore on, as Audrey kept clicking her counter, it became clear that 840 repetitions would take more time.

By then most everyone had gone home.  The people who had been there all day were exhausted.  On the other hand, I was wide awake.  It was still "morning" for me.  That's why, after I had done the two half hours for which I had signed up, I found myself back in the studio playing the rest of the piece.  How long would that take?

Studio A, a room with a very high ceiling, was dark except for a reading lamp on the music.  The piano was positioned so the player could not see into the control room.   It was a very isolated experience to sit there alone, nothing at all like performing in front of a live audience, even a small one.  The music contributed to the isolation.  It is quiet.  I repeats.  It meanders.  It repeats.  It repeats.  Vexation, indeed.

After a while I noticed that the sound of the piano was changing.  Strange.  I was shocked because pianos don't do that and KPFK had an excellent instrument.  As I kept playing over and over and over - hoping that someone would open the door to tell me that this was the last repetition - but no one did - I became increasingly certain that the sound was indeed slowly morphing.

As I listened more and more carefully to each repetition it became indisputable.  I could hear beats in the sound.  Beating is an indication of mistuning.   The piano was going out of tune!  Yes, it was. The effect became intense and I became quite anxious because of it.  Strings on a piano do not simply begin to slip, except what I was hearing could only be explained by exactly that.

Finally ... finally the door opened and I was told to stop.  After a suitable short silence Carl would have announced the long delayed station identification "KPFK Los Angeles" and then gone on to explain what had just happened.  I stood up, stretched and left the studio.  Someone introduced the overnight program ...

Once I was certain that the microphones were off, I returned to the piano to test the tuning.  I played some octaves and open fifths - intervals which are not found anywhere in Vexations and which easily reveal how well in-tune an instrument is.  To my astonishment, the piano remained in perfect tune.  My jaw dropped because the out-of-tune sound had been completely in my head.  Vexations had warped my hearing, an unmistakable hallucinogenic effect.  Vexations had drugged my brain.

That's the only time anything remotely resembling that kind of effect has ever happened to me.

---

Gaylord Mowrey, who performed in both of these Vexations performances, sent me some of his thoughts.  He wraps things up nicely, mentions performances of which I was unaware and reminds us of an important work inspired by Vexations.

David, I appreciate that you brought up the Satie Vexations events in this forum. It has always been a pleasure to be a "Vexadigitator" (Randy's term) in all these events.  

You probably are aware that during the 24 years I was involved with the California State Summer School for the Arts, the last 15 of which were at CalArts, I organized 14 consecutive yearly presentations of Vexations with students and faculty and friends, always a strangely moving and transformative experience for many. 

The piece is so controversial and challenging, so quirky and vexing, that almost everyone who give themselves to it for any length of time must come to terms with its aesthetic, somehow. And the original material is so rich that it grabbed Art Jarvinen to create the massive variations - some of his deepest work.

Gaylord is referring to Art Jarvinen's piece Serious Immobilities, 840 distinct variations on Vexations, which will someday will be the subject of another Mixed Meters post.

UPDATE:  Arthur Javinen's massive work, Serious Immobilities, was eventually described in two Mixed Meters posts.  Read the first one first.

---

I'd like to thank all those who contributed their memories of Vexations in Los Angeles for this post:

• Zona Hostetler
• Eric Hostetler
• Carl Stone
• Lois Vierk
• Heidi Lesemann
• Alan Zychek
• Jim "Mr. Memory" Fox
• Gloria Cheng

A recent Microfest program in Los Angeles featured Vexations performed on specially re-tuned keyboards.  You can hear samples here.

Another remembrance of the Living Room Series performance of Vexations.


840 Tags: Vexations. . . Erik Satie. . . KPFK. . . Randy Hostetler

How technology can improve concert enjoyment

Last weekend I attended the same concert three times.  Usually once is enough, of course, for even the most rabid fan of classical music.  But I was there professionally.  When you devote a month or six months or even more months to one piece of music, sitting alone in a cave in the same chair in front of the same computer screen fending off constant attacks by large soft felines, it can be very interesting/revealing/educational to hear that piece finally performed live by real musicians in front of a real audience.  And of course, I might even enjoy that music - which, in this case, I did, pretty much.

But occasionally attention wanes.  I mean, there really is a limit to how many times any one human needs to hear Beethoven's Leonore Overture Number Two on any given weekend.

And so, in those moments when I was not "simply transfixed" by the performance in front of me, I found myself consciously attending to the musical contributions of that real audience.  As much as we might wish that audiences don't make noise, they do.  They cough.  Audiences cough because people cough.  Audiences are just people.  Coughing is a trait of human physiology, apparently, and asking a couple thousand people to sit quietly in an auditorium for twenty minutes or thirty minutes or even more minutes and not make any sound at all is simply an unreasonable request.

I like to think that the coughing is part of the music.  Of course it's random coughing.  It wasn't composed by anyone, no one used a random number generator or threw the I Ching to decide when each cough would happen.  I think random noises are music, if only in a very antiquated sixties avant-garde sort of fashion.  And I think that you should think that as well, but I know that there is very little chance that you do.  You're probably glad that tonality has returned to music over the last few decades.  Frankly, tonality in music is an even more antiquated concept that randomness.  (More useful as well.)

Let's assume that most people would prefer their fellow audience members do not cough at all.  To that end I discovered a sort of high-tech solution to the problem - much better than the cough suppressant candies which orchestras used to pass out to their audiences.  Maybe they still do.

Apparently hunters use this little device, a cough silencer, to not frighten the geese.

Here is the marketing copy for Cabela's Cough Silencer:

Disassembles for quick cleaning
Nonglare matte-black or camouflage finish
Fits easily into a pocket or pack 

Don’t let a cough scare game away. The Cough Silencer has a unique baffle system that quiets even the loudest coughs with no back pressure, and best of all, virtually no sound. Disassembles for quick cleaning. Nonglare matte-black or camouflage finish. Lightweight, durable and incredibly compact, it fits easily into a pocket or pack. Includes convenient lanyard.

And they're cheap.  This one was marked down from $19.99 to 88 cents (but they're sold out).  Concert attendees could buy their own and use them during performances.  Better yet, orchestras could buy thousands of them and have the ushers hand them out free along with the program booklet.  Better yet, they could be permanently installed on each seat in the concert hall, decorated by the celebrity architect so that they blend with the decor.  The cleaning crew would have to disinfect them after each event, maybe adding a little paper cap printed with the words "Guaranteed Germ Free" over the mouthpiece.  Like that strip of paper they put over the toilet seat in hotel rooms.

If all this seems like too much effort and expense, you might try my idea of redefining coughing as part of the music.  But remember, that only works if you think about it.

---

The concerts which I attended last weekend were graced by several freakishly musically appropriate cell phone eruptions.  They fit in perfectly.  Unlike coughing, those should have been avoided completely.

---

You could listen to my piano piece Oil and Water Mix, which is actually about the conflict of tonal music versus random music.

Cough Tags: Cabela's Cough Silencer. . . concert audiences. . . classical music. . . random music. . . tonal music

Mr. Composerhead Tells A Cage Story (OR TWO)

A whole month went by during which Mr. Composerhead's overworked amanuensis (that's me) didn't post his writings over on his blog, Mister Composer Head.

But I have just remedied that situation and you are highly encourage to read

Mr. Composerhead Tells A Cage Story (OR TWO)

Before he tells his Cage story (or two) Earle Brown's teaching method and pianists Aloys and Alfons Kontarsky are mentioned. Then a number of more or less complementary words are discussed. These words are:

• nice
• bad
• tough
• tits
• harmless
• interesting

The last, of course, is the well-known all-purpose any-meaning complement that composers find ever so tiresome. Mr. Composerhead wisely suggests some ways that "interesting" might find a second life.


Finally, after a highly amusing mention about his own spatial orientation to things he has trouble comprehending, Mr. Composerhead tells two John Cage stories.

In my opinion the first one is somewhat strange.

And so is the second.

You can decide for yourself - here again is the complete post at Mr. Composerhead's blog:

Mr. Composerhead Tells A Cage Story (OR TWO)

Anger Tags: ComposerHead. . . John Cage. . . Earle Brown. . . Aloys Kontarsky. . . Alfons Kontarsky. . . words

Mr. Composer Head: Don't Fix It If It Id Not Broken!

(Mr. Composer Head has graciously and anonymously provided another guest post while I consume the other things on my plate. I thank him for all his efforts. Click here to see a list of Mr. Composer Head's previous Mixed Meters appearances.

I'd like to point out that Mr. C.H. provides no images, a hallowed M.M. tradition, hence I scrounge those myself as best I can. There are no pictures of Composer Head's actual composer head. Instead I've substituted the well known Mr. Potato Head - whose head, I'm sure, is equally big and brainy. /David)


Mr. ComposerHead Saze…

Don't Fix It If It Id Not Broken!

Okay, so most of my music is released on my own label, recorded at home, and the CDs are burned one-at-a-time as needed – which is not frequently. That makes it possible for me to make my music available.

Okay, so I stick labels on the CDs to make them look nice and finished and if you pay attention you'll notice that it's a LABEL, not printed on the CD. Of course then you'll look at the back of the CD and see that it's a ONE-OFF, not pressed from a glass master at a big factory. That might seem cheap. IT IS!!!! That's why I do it.


One astute consumer, noticing these details, wrote to complain, thinking I was dealing bootlegs, and asked if the artist was getting any royalties from the sale. He also felt a little cheated because it wasn't a "real" CD, and it was also kind of short.

I refunded $5 of his $15 purchase price, via PayPal, and explained why I make my CDs this way, and that, yes, the artist gets royalties. I get ALL of them.

He wrote back about the five bucks saying "I guess you didn't really have to do that".

He was right – I didn't. But I digress…


Anyway, as someone doing things as described above, I have always been thankful for CD Stomper, a simple and efficient way to make a nice label and stick it on your CD very quickly and easily. I have even recommended it to students, friends, and colleagues. A Great Product for us DYIers.

Then they fucked it up. And don't "they" always?!


The other day I ran out of labels and needed to burn a few CDs. So I went out and got a Big Honkin' Box O' Refills, and what did I find?

Instead of the super-mindlessly-simple peel 'em off-and-stick 'em ons that I have grown to love and depend on, they now have TABS – not just one, but two, one on each side, plus a dubble donut hole in the center. So, you have to gently pull the tab so as not to rip the label, and while lifting the label GENTLY put your finger in the sweet spot to pull away the unwanted donuts, and once you manage to get the *^$%#*ing label on the disk, you have to GENTLY try to remove the tabs without ripping the edge of the label – which I can do about one out of three times.

So, now I get to spend about three times longer than I used to putting a label on one CD [thank God there's not much demand for my work!], and the end result is no better than it used to be with the old labels about one third of the time, and worse the other two thirds.


My point (besides bitching that the world is not made to my specs)?

Some things cannot be improved. So don't try to do that to them. Heinz ketchup. Coke. These things are either perfect, or beyond repair.

But I think there are people who have jobs - probably well-paid, with benefits – and their job is to find ways to "improve" whatever product.

Those people should go kill themselves before they do more damage.


I suggest that some things are as good as they can be [that's not the same thing as "perfect". I heard Morton Feldman say, in a lecture, "My pieces are perfect". I thought that was about the most fucked-up thing such a good composer could possibly say. But I digress…]

Anyway,

This brought to mind what Frank Zappa did with some of his best recordings, early works that I consider true classics, as good as music gets. He "improved" them, by having the drum parts re-recorded, many years after the albums were history.


My teeth hurt whenever I hear Chad [Wackerman] playing drums on Cruisin' With Ruben And the Jets. (Sorry Chad. I know he made you do it.)

Frank said, regarding We're Only In It For the Money, "Some of those snare drum parts were me playing with brushes on a telephone book".

Know what Frank? That's the album we bought, and that's the album we love.

I guess my point is that some things can't be improved. Brings to mind Cage's essay "How to Improve the World – You'll Only Make Matters Worse".


I often wonder about composers who need to revise after a premiere, like that's part of the creative process.

I think you're supposed to get it right the first time. Or learn from the experience, and write something else.

Mr. C/H


Rant Tags: ComposerHead. . . Mr. Potato Head. . . CD Stomper. . . Coca Cola. . . Heinz Ketchup. . . Frank Zappa. . . Chad Wackerman. . . Morton Feldman. . . John Cage

Picture Sources:
The C.D. Stomper
The Morty Pictures
Frank Zappa with Milk and Cookies
The Coke Bottle Building Picture
The Girl With Her Giant Bottle of Ketchup.

Camille and the Cardiacs

Here's an NPR story about popular music in France. I turned the car on midway through the clip of singer Camille. She is described as "part Bjørk and part her own dangerous imagination." Bjork? Nah. "Dangerous Imagination" Okay, I'm in.

I suggest you listen to the radio story before reading on. Can you guess which bit of the Camille excerpt caused me to decide immediately to buy that album?

Based on less than a seconds worth of sound I eventually purchased the album called Le Fil. Read about Camille here. Here's Camille's website where you can hear a couple cuts from Le Fil by watching videos.


Musically I find Le Fil completely involving, even intriguing. Plenty of vocal textures, vocal noises, vocal drones, overtone singing. There's hardly any instrumental backup. It's a very open, widely spacious, expansively empty album. Any one would like this (except minimalists and serialists.)

After several listenings I was surprised to discover many pages of lyrics in the booklet. I've always said I like pop music more if I can't understand the words. But French is a special case, filled as it is with non-human sounds to which my brain fails to assign linguistic meaning. And so I process the sounds not as language but as music. That's a good thing.

My second victim today is On Land and in the Sea by the Cardiacs. I can't understand the words on this album either even though they're all in English. This is because the lyrics are all shouted rapid-fire over annoyingly loud rock and roll.

The Cardiacs are an English punk rock band. Just look at their picture. They look like a punk band, don't you think?


These two albums are as different as two albums can be. Well, one is French the other is English. One is a up and coming mega-pop star on a major label, the other is a decades-old under-ground independent-label noise band.

I ran across this video of "Tarred and Feathered" by the Cardiacs on You Tube months ago. I was smitten by the obvious weirdness and the crazy rhythm. Imagine that instead of going over to the dark side of 12-tonality late in life, Stravinsky had written punk rock music instead. Might have sounded something like this.

I searched for a Cardiacs album - the clerk at Canterbury's, the good Pasadena record store, asked me "Where do you find these things?"

Independently of this, I received an email from a gentleman in England named Ben Singleton. He wanted to ask me questions about my least favorite Frank Zappa album Thingfish. I noticed that on Ben's MySpace Page he had listed the Cardiacs among his favorite music.

After I answered Ben's question he offered to send me a copy of a Cardiacs album. After a short while On Land and in the Sea arrived as Ben's thank you gift. He's a nice guy. I hated the album. I even threatened to use it to drive Leslie out of my office when I wanted her to stop using my computer.

So what did I do after listening to this awful album a few times. I went to the Cardiacs website, of course, and ordered their greatest hits album. Maybe I did that to fulfill John Cage's commandment:

"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all."

Or maybe I'm just a masochist.

Here are more Cardiacs videos to confuse you more. Enjoy them.
The Consultant's Flower Garden
R.E.S.
R.E.S.
A Little Man and a House


Here's some other recent Mixed Meters CD purchases:
Marc Blitzstein "The Cradle Will Rock" If you don't know this political musical I suggest you watch Tim Robbin's movie Cradle Will Rock as an introduction. MarcBlitzstein.com

Electric Gypsyland - I'm a sucker for these remix albums of East European brass bands like Tarif de Haidouks. I'm a sucker for Tango remixes too (like the Gotan Project) There's now an Electric Gypsyland 2 too.

The Puppini Sisters (their over-designed home page is here) - Betcha Bottom Dollar. Leslie requested this album. The close-harmony female trio formed, apparently, in response to the Mixed-Meters approved soundtrack to the animated movie Triplets of Belleville Hopefully in the future there will be other, more interesting, versions of I Will Survive done in the style of the Andrews Sisters.

Trance Fusion - a guitar solo only album by Frank Zappa that puts the Shut Up series to shame. (The uber-over-designed Zappa.com Trance Fusion page is here.)

Two discs of music by Rued Langgaard (1893-1952) - my brief investigation into reasons why composers are forgotten. Here's a Rued Langgaard website. I decided I needed to hear some of this Danish composers works when I read that the fourth phase of his creative career was entitled "Obstinacy and absurdity" Okay, I'm in.

Speaking of Danish composers. Here's a trenchant quote from a recent post by Roboflutist, a real working musician:

"Our audience wouldn't like the Nielsen. So which Mozart will you be playing?"

Okay, I'm way off topic now. Leave a comment if you think you discern a common thread among all this. Or if you really want to know which tiny little bit of the Camille album started it all.


Album Tags: Camille. . . Cardiacs. . . Ben Singleton. . . Marc Blitzstein. . . Cradle Will Rock. . . Electric Gypsyland. . . Gotan Project. . . Trance Fusion. . . Frank Zappa. . . Puppini Sisters. . . Triplets of Belleville. . . Rued Langgaard. . . Roboflutist. . . John Cage

Garry Moore and John Cage

These days a musician who wants to sell albums goes on television. And that happened in 1960 too, I guess. Thanks to WFMU's Beware of the Blog you can watch a video of John Cage performing live on national television game show called I've Got a Secret hosted by Garry Moore.

The performance has everything - an incredulous host, a union dispute, a change of plans, no panelists, an amused audience and a performance of Water Walk, with a last moment change to the radio parts. Nine minutes, twenty-two seconds. Enjoy this little avant-garde side show.






Click here for a list of previous Mixed Meters mentions of "John Cage"

I've Got a Secret Tags: John Cage. . . I've Got A Secret. . . Garry Moore. . . video. . . television. . . game show. . . Water Walk

Los Angeles - New Music Backwater

I confess that my previous post wandered aimlessly. Eventually I touched on the history of new music in Los Angeles during my years. I also discussed who controls what music gets performed here (as if it matters). This post by Daniel Wolf and this post by Roger Bourland (to which I added a comment) tell the whole story better than I can.

Daniel appended this comment here at Mixed Meters:

Someone, someday, has to do the definitive Southern California new music history, with all the details, because that's where the music lives.

A few months ago I had a conversation with Carl Stone and Richard Amromin, both leading lights in the Independent Composers Association back then, on the subject of such a history. We were all for it - as long as someone else did the work.

Since then I've been reminded that a lot of equally invisible things were going on new-musically besides those I was aware of. There's a lot of material to be uncovered.

Such a book would be tremendously satisfying to the egos of anyone who gets mentioned. Here's the drill, the first time you open the book you turn immediately to the back index and check the number of mentions of your own name. I do this with Zappa books. You would too.

The big problem with such a book is that it would have no hook for snaring a readership. No earth-shakingly famous new music composer came out of the scene. No influential style evolved here. (Nor could it ever, but that's another rant.)

Even the Monday Evening Concerts (which had at least one book written about it) had the hook of Schoenberg and Stravinsky. To my knowledge Arnie and Igor were never labeled as "California Composers." All they did was live here. If the MEC ever had a hey-day it was because of them. Plenty of California musicians have shaken up the world, for example John Cage and Charles Mingus whose music shook me up personally. Would they have had such successful careers had they remained L.A. residents?


So I wonder, does new music really "live" in Los Angeles - or does it just manage to survive? Our vast metropolis never seemed conducive to a small, intense, creative forward-looking musical scene. It doesn't seem so now. I fear it never will.

SoCal is a nice place to live if you like dim sum or soba noodles or Korean seafood pancakes or tacos al carbon. We have lots of sun and lots of green plants. You'd like that. We also have lots of isolation from places where new music seems to actually matter to people. This is a huge boon to us. We can keep tabs via the Internet on all you other guys as you do important stuff.


Alex Ross, in his blog, today mentioned Princeton as a place where new music IS REALLY happening. He linked to a music theorist whose "groundbreaking theoretical explorations" have discovered voice leading. That's pretty funny. Voice leading was the single most important issue in my earliest studies of harmony. Could we take up a collection and send some hymnals to Princeton?

Ross has written a "big article" on Esa-Pekka Salonen in the current New Yorker. That's the magazine with the good cartoons. I'll try to get a copy. The last "big article" I remember reading in a New Yorker (a very long time ago) was about Nicolas Slonimsky, another "California composer".

Here's my ancient post about the Princeton Laptop Orchestra. - including links to my 30 second spot "The Laptop in Live Performance?" and to my failed graduate piece for clarinet and electronics "Voluntary Solitude."

Here's my ancient post about Nicolas (and Frank and Edgard).

Backwater Tags: Daniel Wolf. . . Roger Bourland. . . Los Angeles. . . new music. . . Monday Evening Concerts. . . Alex Ross. . . Esa-Pekka Salonen. . . Princeton Laptop Orchestra. . . Nicholas Slonimsky. . . Independent Composers Association

P.S. The pictures will be more interesting if you click on them so some of the words are readable.

Varese, Zappa & Slonimsky

Earlier this year I received an email from Matthias Kassel of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. He had a few questions about the music of Frank Zappa that I happened to be able to answer.

The Paul Sacher Foundation is mounting an exhibit honoring composer Edgard Varese. Part of the exhibition demonstrates the effect Varese and his music had on later composers. One such composer who was strongly influenced by Edgard Varese is Frank Zappa.

Included in the exhibit is the first page of full orchestra score from Frank's piece Mo 'n Herb's Vacation. Many years ago I autographed that and many other works by Frank Zappa. ("Autographed" means I copied it very neatly in ink.)

In exchange for my simple responses, Matthias offered to send me a copy of the exhibition catalog when it was published. I expected something modest. I forgot all about it.

Several weeks ago a mystery package arrived. Inside was an elegant, heavy, 500-page tome dedicated to the many aspects of the life and work of Edgard Varese. It's an Art Book fit for a coffee table. I can't remember ever seeing anything as impressive or complete dedicated to any other composer.

Click on the picture of the cat with the book on the coffee table for a close up view.

Matthias' fascinating essay is called "Frank Zappa and the Idol of His Youth." It discusses how Frank, a teenager in San Diego in the 1950s, tried to contact Varese. And continues with all the efforts Frank made to promote Varese's music throughout his career. Starting with the famous teen-age birthday-present long-distance phone call in 1956 and continuing though the Zappa-supervised recordings of Varese's music by Ensemble Modern just before Frank's death.

My favorite bit: Frank sent Varese a long letter of introduction which included this story: Frank wrote a school essay about Varese but had been flunked by the teacher who assumed Frank was making everything up. Read what Frank Zappa wrote in 1971 about his youthful pursuit of Varese. Of course Varese wasn't the only influence on Frank. Click here to see two pictures and read one sentence which comprise the most concise desription of Frank Zappa's musical heritage that I've ever seen.

Another famous musician linked to both Varese and Zappa was Nicolas Slonimsky. Slonimsky lived in Los Angeles in his later years and I had the privelege of meeting him a number of times. Nicolas had conducted the world premier of Varese's piece Ionisation. Here is a short recording of Nicolas Slonimsky talking about his relationship with Frank Zappa.

I was present when Nicolas, then in his 90s, visited Frank's studio UMRK. We showed him the Synclavier - and I remember Nicolas' childlike fascination playing on a re-tuned keyboard. He played one interval, but a different interval came out. Then he'd play the interval he heard, but of course he heard yet another interval instead. Each time he did this he became more and more excited.

Probably my most educational experience in graduate school was reading the entire "Music Since 1900", edited by Slonimsky. It's a massive chronicle of modern music from the beginning of the 20th century. (Yeah, I know the 20th century really began in 1901.) Slonimsky listed so many completely unknown pieces by so many totally forgotten composers that I gained valuable perspective about my own, or anyone's, long-term prospects as a composer.

After meeting him, Nicolas asked me to recopy a piece of his that was written in large notes on a Mobius strip. In performance he wore the music as a sash, moving it around his stout frame twice so that he could perform both sides. His previous copy had worn out.

I would accept no payment for the job. When I delivered it to his apartment I got to spend some time talking with him. He gave me a copy of his book The Road to Music - which he inscribed to me. His mind seemed to go blank briefly, then he "awoke" and wrote this short poem.

"For David Ocker
a "heavy" talker
whose mind's so plastic
it is fantastic!"
Nicolas Slonimsky
Los Angeles,
November 8, 1982

More information about Edgard Varèse

Here is a not-quite-complete radio documentary Edgard Varese' Sonic Liberation featuring interviews with Louise Varese and with people who worked with him. And, of course, with Frank.

And here's an animated video on YouTube entitled "Varese/Xenakis/Le Corbusier - poeme electronique (1958)"

Picture credits: Varese listening to tape recordings (October 1959), Photograph Paul Sacher Foundation Basel (Edgard Varese collection) Photo by Roy Hyrkin

Read about Varese here or here

Good Slonimsky links at Other Minds - including a video of Nicolas with his Mobius strip and John Cage. (not the greatest video) His picture came from here.

I was going to put a zillion Frank Zappa links here, including where I got his picture, - then I lost all my changes that day. If you need help finding Zappa info on the web, write for suggestions, 'kay? I read the blog Kill Ugly Radio to keep up with news of the Zappasphere.

Over 10 years ago I was interviewed online about my work for Frank. Click here for that. The essay I wrote for Frank's album Francesco Zappa is here.

Quotes On Death and Music

"The present day composers refuse to die."
Edgar Varese (1883-1965) and Carlos Salzedo (1885-1961) From the manifesto of The International Composer's Guild, 1921

"The modern composer refuses to die." Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

"The first requirement for a composer is to be dead." Arthur Honegger (1892-1955)



Blogger spellcheck suggested replacing "Slonimsky" with "cloning".


Other "scintillating" Mixed Meters posts which mention the word "Zappa"

Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Death Penalty Richard Emmet's Website (he worked for Frank also) Pandora Radio has no Bachs The Laptop in Live Performance Karnak

NOTICE: The accented letters in Varèse, Möbius and other words, when posted on Blogspot, seem to dissolve into gibberish on about half of all computers. So, in this post I've replaced as many of them as possible with unaccented letters. Only those people who have inherited the foolish consistency gene will fail to forgive this transgression.


California
Artifacts
Stories

In which David's Ranting is Imaginary

I listened to the first part of a (low energy, almost intimate) conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman, recorded in 1967 at WBAI in New York. (Please imagine my rant about changes in non-commercial radio.)
I discovered this program via Nonpop.
Also available at Ubuweb

Near the end of part one Cage reflects that Arnold Schoenberg seemed more interested in teaching than in composing. And I thought "Yep, that's the problem with modern music today in a nutshell." (Please imagine my rant about how music should be listened to, not thought about.) (Also imagine my "do as I say, not as I do" rant.)

Here's an article about music in the early fifties - about the time I was an infant. The article is technical and ends with a comparison of recordings of Cage's Music of Changes, if you care. But I found it a fascinating overview of the mass of new musical ideas - and the interactions between composers. (I wonder if I'd enjoy reading letters between John Cage & Pierre Boulez.)

I enthusiastically studied this music in college and grad school. Today I wouldn't cross the street to hear it. But I'm in awe of the vast outpouring of radical invention.

These things must have been regarded by "sane, rational 1950's music lovers" as lunatic ravings and pure noise. What would I have thought had I been an adult back then? More importantly what lunatic rantings and ravings of today am I overlooking? (Imagine my rant about where the new ideas in new music have disappeared to.)

Here are previous posts in Mixed-Meters regarding John Cage:
4'33" performed by an orchestra
ICA plays Atlas Eclipticalis
ASLAP
"John Cage" radio at Pandora

The picture above is Bob Denver (you know, "Gilligan") - watch a video of him "singing" in the beach. (Yep. IN the beach.) (actually his performance is more like sprechstimme.) (You're right, it has nothing to do with John Cage)

Bob's beach-movie video is from WFMU Beware the Blog. Other good recent videos there include Monkey Chant and someone playing slide guitar with a spoon held in his teeth. You can find 'em if you look.

If you want to hear some 1950's music I actually enjoy listening to these days, try WFMU's show - Fools Paradise. Go figure.

(P.S. - still busy with work. Five-day Forecast: less than one new post per week.)

Music Video

In which Pandora has no Bachs

Pandora is a website that creates online radio stations according to your input. You suggest an artist or a song and starting from there Pandora's software picks a continuous stream of similar music. It decides what is "similar" by referring to data from the Music Genome Project

While I'm naturally suspicious of any effort to co-opt scientific buzzwords as artistic buzzwords, the MGP is a considerable undertaking. Apparently a panel of experts (possibly Wagnerian genomes or unemployed music school graduates) have been listening to a huge number of pieces and rating them for many different musical qualities. For example two pieces that both have "electronica roots, tonal harmonies, melodic part writing, a simple high-hat part, a slow moving bass line and trippy soundscapes" would be assumed to fit together well. (You must suspend your disbelief on that one, I think.)

You can rate each piece the program selects for you in two ways "like it" or "not". If you like it, those particular strands of musical DNA will be given greater preference; if you don't like it the piece disappears from that station for good. Give thumbs down on the same artist or band twice and they disappear forever. It becomes a dead end in intelligently designed musical evolution.

My first attempts at using Pandora struck squarely on its fundamental exceptions - neither world nor classical music is included.

The first thing I typed in was "Karnak" (see my post about Karnak here). Pandora never heard of Karnak. Never having heard of Karnak, I suppose, is better than what happened on Last.fm - a site with another music-suggestion scheme. Last.fm couldn't differentiate between the Brazilian Karnak and an Italian death-metal band called Karnak. (Their album is called Melodies of Sperm Composed.) That was the last time I tried last.fm.

Then I gave Pandora the word "Bach" The only thing it could find was some very non-baroque music called "B.A.C.H." by Dierdre - two songs later I was listening to Bjork.

I typed in "John Cage" and the first song was by Esquivel, the master of 50's Space Age Bachelor Pad Music. That is a combination that merits further research.

I was more successful with "Big Bad Voodoo Daddy" - and with a few thumbs up and down I had a steady stream of classic swing.

Even more successful were the seed words "Frank Zappa". After I explained that I did NOT want to listen to Peter Frampton, Chicago or the Grateful Dead, Pandora started giving me tracks by bands I'd never heard of and many of those were very interesting. Based only on single tracks I actually purchased three albums. My reaction to those groups, More Dogs, Combustible Edison and the Lonesome Organist, will have to wait for a future posting.

I made successful stations starting with the Gotan Project (electronica meets tango, highly recommended) and Henry Flynt (imagine a country fiddler playing Violin Phase). If you go to Pandora you can click on "share", type in my email address (docker1 at ix dot netcom dot com) and actually access my stations. It'll be much more fun for you, however, to start your own.

Music Reviews