Christopher, I hold you in high esteem. John Cage though, kind of interesting. Have you seen that movie where he's making bread and talking about his astral alignment-based chance compositions? Or a chance determined art exhibit of his like at the Warhol museum back in the 90s? The film curator there now, recorded the exhibit, something like 39 straight days of chance determined lengths of what amounted to LOTS of barely audible voice reactions to the art and footsteps.

His band which I played with on occasion was much better. They did a tour of Pgh where a passenger let a computer chance determine a city block. It was a moving van, and with a generator in tow, the van would park, the back door would propel upwards, and the musicians would play noise loudly for a chance length of time.

There's also been an article where they pieced two quotes from separate interviews. They went something like this:

Cage- "Yes, I would very much like to meet Harry Partch."

Partch- "I think I may have heard of John Cage. I don't have any interest in his music."

Thanks - the bread making sequence sounds familiar, but I can't place where I saw it. I would sure like to hear the track recorded at the Warhol museum; I'll have to conact the curator you mentioned.

Apart from Cage's unflappable courage, this performance of Water Walk represents an overlooked future in the avant garde, the intersection of Hollywood Foley work and live musique concrete. But someone has to haul all that stuff. Musicians want to schelp as little gear as possible...

http://www.warhol.org/museum_info/contacts.html

actually i knew that greg p. worked there as well, but the other guy isn't listed- he very well may be dj'ing in NY at some underground gay disco.

but Greg and I were much closer, if you want to call it that. We played in a band together for a few years. He's a real neat guy. You could probably email him and say Gary referred you. (eek, am i being to casual open here?) He'd know about the the other guy, or really, just try to set something up with Greg. He's an Encyclopedic collector/maker of Film (mainly) and Music, family man, plays bluegrassy type of music now i think. And I'm 90% sure he has the never to be released as far as I know live recordings of our numerous gigs at the Electric Banana.

Garrett, thanks for the link, I'll track it down!

And thank you for the Wes Montgomery clip!

Just to let you know, I watched that before responding with my first comment. I was eager though to jump in with the reference to Partch since he's probably my favorite composer and you had previously posted about him. I'm listening to the Schoenberg right now. All I know about him is the 12-tone scale, which sounds kind of neat, I've kinda dug the egalitarian whole note of it. Yet aren't the notes as they ascend actually adjusted in frequency to "fit" "proper" octaves. I had heard something about that from a piano tuner. Isn't the overtone concept a more true representation of sound?

There's a group of five or so singers in Seattle that 'ooh' that sort of principal. I sat for a performance last year and it was fairly haunting, and an effort to maintain the fluidity for the singers, but they managed real well with a self-depreciating manner, a delight to witness.

As a side note, I know a Warsaw survivor-- from the Soviet regime. What I gather, is though she gets squirmy boiling when Germany is referred to, while also professing a mild fondness for Russians, it is the Soviet governmental harshness that lies deep in her defiance toward injustices. She wasn't well liked in our office, and I was considered strange, weird, even possibly in love her, because I befriended her. I simply found that her pros weighed more positively for sure against the cons. We laughed at the same absurdity of most things. It's certainly a possibility that she was irked by the Germans for not focusing on the defeat of Communism. Anyway, she's tough as nails and I look forward to visiting her and her husband this summer at their newly aquired property 50 or so miles north of Lake Chelan.

Thank you again for your passion about music. I'm on a few blogs where lengthy viewpoints are offered back and forth, so I sort of apologize for going on like this. When in Rome is the usual policy I try to follow. I believe though that since the other blogs are run by volunteers without sponsors there is a deeper interest and sincerity about the topics they discuss. I'm very familiar jobs. I've enjoyed them. But what it comes down to, is that you're there to collect a paycheck. You and Jen Graves seem to rise above that in unique way.

Thank you for posting these clips!

Here's a link to UBUWEB, that has been entertaining me while I should be working...lots of experimental music/film/text files. Among them is some great John Cage stuff. I may have found this site through Line Out in the past, so maybe this is old news.

SSL, it's never too late to post about UBU, one of my favorite sites on the web!

Garrett, I suspect you're referring to the Seattle Harmonic Voices, who, alas, informed me about their cd release party after my column went to press. See the Monktail Creative Music Concern site for details.