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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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