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Re: John Cage recordings



At 03:09 PM 6/2/99 -0400, Dennis wrote:
>
>I hope somebody else will find this as funny as I did.
>
>The past week-end I wandered into the local Barnes and Noble looking for a
>John Cage recording.  "What section?", I asked myself since virtually all
>music MUST BE CLASSIFIED  (check the Music Business Police Handbook under
>"retail sales").  "Pop/Rock?  Folk?, New Age, Classical?"  I found John 
>Cage
>in "Classical."  I laughed out loud.

While I can see the humor in Dennis' situation, in thinking about it, I'm
not sure I would have found any other categories applied to Cage as being
less funny.  After all, if you had to pick, how would you classify Cage?

His earlier material - 30's and 40's - sounds like progressive rock to me.
I especially love his percussion and prepared piano pieces - so far ahead 
of
their time.  From the 50's on, when he began composing through chance
operations, could fall into a couple areas for me.  For the quieter pieces 
a
classification of ambient sounds reasonable while the louder works might go
well with the RIO, Rock In Opposition, crowd.

If you're looking for an interesting starting point for Cage, a few years
ago I produced an album in tribute to Cage called A Chance Operation.  It
was a double disc set that featured such artists as Laurie Anderson, Frank
Zappa, Kronos Quartet, John Cale, Robert Ashley and many more, 22 artists 
in
all.  It got quite a bit of positive press at the time.  You'll find info
about it at <http://www.artist-shop.com/gary>.

Gary

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