Jim (who's willing to talk more about the merits of Glass if any is interested)Well ... let's move on to his Mentor, the founder of this sort of ear-oriented thing.
John Cage (or his estate) Owes Me $14
When I was about fifteen I started reading "The Saturday Review," which a nice gentleman used to give me in the park when we would have our little chats about Marx and Engels. I was in a very big hurry to become urbane and sophisticated, and to this rube, this magazine seemed to be the express ticket.
One week the music reviewer wrote about a hot new platter, John Cage's "Variations IV." Essentially what he said -- decoding the subtext from the stuff which was entirely unintelligible -- was that If I wanted be urbane and sophisticated, I should go out and buy this record Now.
The Finest record store in DC, Dupont Records, grudgingly agreed to take my life's savings -- $14 -- in cash up front and order this fine piece of vinyl for me from, I guess, CRI, an outfit the store did not do an enormous volume of business with. Finally, three weeks later, the Wonderful Postcard arrived and I leaped on the L-4 southbound bus.
Two hours later I had the thing home and locked the door and slapped it on the Webcor.
Here is what came out the Webcor. He'd hidden about six microphones in various places at the opening of an art gallery exhibit, and now he was mixing all the little snatches of conversation he'd recorded, and also mixing in an AM radio being tuned up and down and pausing on commercials and random commercial programming.
It was 31 minutes of that. No, I think the flip side was another 28 minutes of that.
Of course I would have been too humiliated to go down to Dupont Records and demand my money back.
It's probably still here somewhere, because the only record I could ever bring myself to throw out was a gift of The Mormon Tabernacle Choir Singing Christmas Carols, we snuck up on the public library one night and thrust it through the night deposit slot. "We're sorry we can't give this record a good home," we wrote. "We know you will give it a loving home."
Wait! Here's the Cage record! Right next to Charles Dodge's "The Earth's Magnetic Field"!
At maybe three parties or dinners I've met people who claimed to know and be friends of John Cage. While he still lived, I immediately told them: "He owes me fourteen dollars. I was a kid. He just took that money from me ... and gave me ... " And here I just tremble with the accumulated rage of nearly four decades.
One nervous lady said she'd pass the message along to John. But I don't think she did.
I liked one tune by or written for and a la mode du Cage. On like his 70th birthday, about 200 pleasure boats, Chriscraft kinds of things, in the Chicago marina, all used their airhorns to play this piece. NPR broadcast it. It was weird.
But anyway ... the dude, this really mean, sneaky snake-oil magic beans magic elixir saleman, or his estate, owes me $14.
Bob
Happy Christmas and Happy Hannukah and Ramadan Kareem and Happy Solstice and Happy Kwanza! I'm listening to GG's Schumann and Brahms!
Do any of your local TV stations play the Christmas Day
Yule Log show for city apartment-dwellers? A roaring fireplace on your
TV screen.