Presenting the Excellent daily recommendations from Fantastic Man, the gentleman’s style journal online.

Readers that fancy contributing to this series of daily recommendations are kindly requested to e-mail their tips to daily@fantasticman.com. Thank you.

]]> http://womusic.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/dzisiejszy-tutorial-poprowadzi-pan-cage/ Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:34:35 +0000 womusic http://womusic.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/dzisiejszy-tutorial-poprowadzi-pan-cage/

Dobra lekcja dla każdego muzyka i każdego słuchacza. Oglądałem to już masę razy i nie przestaje mnie to hipnotyzować. Miłej lekcji.(francuskie przrywniki szybko się kończą).

Porque deu a volta à música que o fez compositor para afirmar novas premissas para todos os artistas de pauta em potência. Porque procurou como nenhum outro os efeitos do silêncio em todos os sons – e na sua mais perfeita audição. Porque era técnico e homem de sensibilidades ao mesmo tempo, instrumentista e ideólogo. Foi por isso que David Nicholls se lançou nos passos de John Cage (e, claro está, nas pistas da sua herança), para assinar novo relato dos feitos daquele que é um dos nomes fundamentais da história da música do século XX.

Last night I had the privilege of seeing “Manimals and Other Human Creatures,” the Resident and Visiting Artist Concert put on by the Department of Dance at OSU. I rarely write full reviews/responses to dance concerts, but I left with so many ideas scribbled on my program that I felt the need to put them down somewhere.

Susan Van Pelt Petry presented a new work entitled “Patterns of Prayer.” Because I work as the assistant to the costume director in the department, I had already seen this piece several times, but new ideas and aspects presented themselves in its theatrical staging. When the lights first came up, the audience was met with a line of dance kneeling at the front edge of the stage, each one working strands of cord intricately between her hands. I immediately felt as if I was at a wall of contemplative human activity, the simple concentration of the dancer’s actions demonstrating a reverence and relevance for their tasks. There is something loosely impermeable about dancers in a straight line from one side of the stage to the other, as if they have formed a barrier of some sort. But the intricacy and focus of their gestures drew me into their contemplation, creating an interesting tension, like an invitation into something remarkably exclusive, all via spatial formation and gestural material.

Spatial configurations played a significant role in this piece, moving through circling pathways, grids, lines and braiding pathways. Perhaps the most captivating passage of the piece involved the dancers’ organization into a three by three person grid. In this grid the choreography moved in and out of unison, composed of a steady stepping and continued intricate hand gestures. As their bodies moved through levels of space, from mid to low to high, etc., I had the distinct impression that there was something almost mystical in their gestures (the mystic was constantly reinforced by the sacred sounds of ancient music, the repeated movement of a continuous stepping turn, reminiscent of a whirling dervish, casting a meditative quality to much of the piece). I felt as if these intricate hand gestures were somehow unlocking passage between levels of space. The concept of enlightenment has long been represented spatially, moving upward into transcendence and illumination with the base or mundane existence being situated below. As the dancers shifted upward and downward on this vertical axis, I symbolized the gestures as somehow giving access to those various levels of mystical transcendence.

The piece involved a video being projected behind the dancers. Its imagery was simple: a white cord moved along the top edge of the projection, and a red silhouette of a dancer continuously turning in that dervish-esque fashion mentioned above moved along the bottom of the image, level with the dancers on stage. I chose to read this relationship between the projection and the live dancers as meaningful: I read the projection as symbolic of the meditative/spiritual ideal, the constant practice, the continuous action towards ecstasy. This image was literally interrupted by the play of shadows cast by the dancers on stage, as if acknowledging the interruption of the ideal by the effects of human action. In the final moments of the piece, however, the video faded, and the dancers took on the whirling, stepping action, the piece concluding with a single dance embodying the turning that had been imagined by the video throughout the piece. It felt like the achievement of a goal, or the transfiguration of the immaterial into the material, the ideal into human practice.

Melanie Bales presented a new work left untitled, set to music by Erik Satie, and danced by Abigail Yager and Ming-Lung Yang. It was a charming, intimate and skillful dance. Beautifully performed and sensitively choreographed. Perhaps most interesting for me was seeing Abi dance like Melanie. I am familiar with both of their ways of moving, and it is always intriguing to me to see movement and ways of moving that I associate with one individual coming so precisely from the body of another, especially when I have a fairly intimate familiarity with the movements of that body. I am in Abi’s technique class this quarter, I am very familiar with the way that she moves. To see her move like Melanie . . . well, it addresses my interest in the transference of movement material and the relationship of that process to the constitution of identity. Now there is something of Melanie that lives in both Abi and Ming’s bodies, and that was demonstrated with ease and precision in this piece.

Vicki Uris presented a new work entitled “Littoral Zone.” Again, I had seen this piece several times before, but it was somehow transformed into something new and yet unseen in its translation onto the stage. It may be enough to say initially that I hold Vicki as a goddess, a master choreographer, an exceptional craftsman. What she crafts is the whole picture, the dance as an arch and each moment frame by frame. When I focus in on the individual movements, gestures and actions of the dancers, they are not always movements that captivate my interest. Then I widen my scope, I take in the moment as a whole, and I am utterly overwhelmed. I can safely say that I don’t know how Vicki’s mind works, how she can recognize and orchestrate the degree of connectivity and organization that she accomplishes. All of that being said, I don’t feel that I can adequately describe this dance. I can describe my sensations of the movement, what I retained of the action of the dance, but its organization is of such a level of skill that I cannot even begin to comprehend it.

Long pulling movement with sudden flicks of action. Steady stepping or swaying or swinging interrupted by sudden holds or quick gestures. Scurrying steps that seemed to take the pulse of the dance and amp it up for moments. Beautifully odd and grotesque postures. Reaching upward as if suspended by the reach, then falling, collapsing. Grounding, stable stances giving way to flings and jumps.

The organizing structures I can recall are thus:
-A stunning interplay between ambiguous clumps and ordered lines of dancers. This was most potent in the final pass across the stage: the dancers began in a loose line upstage right. Moving in waves of falling forwards and backwards in a slow progression across the stage, the line was distorted. At any given moment, one would just see a clump of dancers scattered across the stage. But if one were to figure the spatial mean of the forwards and backwards action, the line was implicit in the clump. There was something meaningful there, about the implication of order in what seems to be disorder, an order recognizable only through careful observation over time.

-Reverberations of action via attention and observation: Near the start of the dance, there was a sensational counterpoint between a clump of dancers and a line of dancers on the opposite side of the stage. The line seemed to observe the clump and respond energetically and sympathetically to the actions of the clump. There was a wonderful atmosphere of attention as choreographic structure.

-I remember thinking that I would love to annotate the spatial alignments of this dance (re: Synchronous Objects for One Flat Thing, reproduced).

Dave Covey performed a perfect solo entitled “For Merce and John.” It was elegant, delightful, reverential, with an atmosphere that felt much like a séance. I think for most of the audience this was a humorous piece, but for me there was more pang to it. Yes, there was an unmistakable humor in the characterizations that Dave embodied, but those characterizations could never be separate from the fact that this was in memory of two men who have died. In his delightful appropriation of these physicalities that were not his own, there was an atmosphere of almost possession. I found myself wondering . . . if the body is the site of identity and movement or ways of moving that emerge from that body might be considered extensions of that identity, how might this sort of representation, this reanimation of those ways of moving constitute a living presence of those who have passed on? How might Merce have been alive in Dave’s movement, Dave’s body? This summer marked the death of both Merce Cunningham and Pina Bausch. I am curious about the continued life of their ways of moving in the bodies of those who have danced for them. It recontextualizes methods for accessing movement such as Labanotation as well. To what degree does inhabiting ways of moving relate to inhabiting a specific being? Reconstruction via Labanotation as séance, embodying and reanimating the departed . . . what an interesting notion.

Back to Dave’s solo, what I found most intriguing was his focus and attention, his concentration on what he was performing. Performers committed to what they are doing are so much more interesting to observe . . . because it becomes real for them. At that degree of concentration, it is no longer an act; it has become real, and I the observer am then present for their experience, not for their imitation of experience.

There was also the beauty of the references. The piano solo in homage to Cage had an overt humor to it, but beneath the humor for something far more profound. It had to do again with attention, with attending to the mundane as meaningful, as relevant, as worthy of being called art. Yes, there was humor in Dave “playing” the squeaks of an old piano’s keyboard cover, but there was also something beautiful about finding the simple and mundane meaningful, giving time and attention to them, perhaps even appreciating them as an art experience.

John Giffin presented a new work entitled “Manimal House,” set to Camille Saint-Saens Le Carnivale des Animaux. It was an over-the-top piece of humor and dance theater. It had so many sections and characters and gimmicks and punchlines, it feels impossible to describe it at any length. I will take the opportunity to rave about Maree ReMalia. I have no objectivity when it comes to Maree; she is one of my dearest friends. But I truly felt like she stole the show when it comes to this piece. She played a tortoise-esque old lady, and I dare say that she was the nucleus of the piece. In what might otherwise been a configured chaos of characterization, a veritable zoo of characters and action and humor, Maree provided a subtle center to the piece, a simple gravity around which everything else could spin (at points almost out of control). Having her in the piece, the way in which she embodied the movement persona of her character, gave everything else more significance.

Meghan Durham presented an excerpt of a larger work entitled Lunar Project. It was a charming solo with a cameo appearance by Shawn Hove. It is always so rewarding to watch Meghan move. She has a fluidity and specificity that she navigates and even interrupts expertly. Last night she did so in the presence of a enchanting sound and set: her set piece involved a collection of hanging lights, like flashlights suspended from the fly at various levels in space. The set itself had the feel of an art installation. I would have loved to see her dance just in the company of the lighted set piece, with no additional light. It was so elegant, as was her movement. I felt myself longing for there to be a more simple relationship between these sites of beauty.

Finally, John Giffin and Vikci Uris performed a duet choreographed by Susan Hadley entitled “Companions.” I hardly know what to say about this dance. It moved me to tears, but on the cusp of John and Vicki’s retirements, this was to be expected. I was moved by knowing them. I was moved by the care, precision, and almost perfect unison of their actions. In the series of actions/gestures/emotions, I felt the inescapable indication of temporality, that each thing lasted only for a time, to be followed by something else. Moments of pause seemed to indicate that movement would follow. Moments of smiling seemed to indicate that moments of not smiling would follow. It was an interesting journey through not only what they were doing but something like the constant foreshadowing of what they would next do. I found myself wondering how someone who doesn’t know them saw this piece. I treasure both Vicki and John, and I have only known them a little over a year. I wonder how those who don’t know them saw that dance, and I wonder how those who have known them for years, decades even, saw the dance. Intimacy was implicit in the choreography; I wonder how that intimacy played itself out in the various viewers. The final moment was just light on two empty chairs. A simple yet potent play of presence and absence, the passage of time, memory and loss.

If I was left with an arching thoughts from the concert, it has to do with this final question of intimacy. I find dance so much more enjoyable when I know the performers, the choreographers. Because the dance is then functioning within a framework of familiarity. Through the dances I am expanding or recreating my knowledge of someone I know. This of course relates to the ongoing theme in this blog, the integration of dance and life. Movement, dancing, ways and degrees of knowing, how the knowing affects the dancing and the viewing of the dance. Resisting objectivity and reveling in the subjectivity of my own experience. That’s how I left this concert.

I’m a big fan of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, but I wasn’t aware of this odd film featuring Kirk and John Cage, with Cage providing the libretto and some of the mix and overdubs to Kirk’s music. Some people think Kirk is just a freak show, the man who can blow three horns and play a 23 minute saxophone concerto without stopping to take a breath. He is all that, and a whole lot more. Playing multiple horns produced a rich chordal texture, a one man horn section not precisely that of a big band but slightly discordant because the horns were often blowing in different keys while the idle horns served as do drones do in a bagpipe. His talking flute technique, humming or singing or whistling into the instrument takes it to an entirely new dimension of sound. And that’s what Kirk was about, the sound and taking it (and the listeners) to new places.

Just count me among the Freaks for the Festival.

The full film is on Ubu or you can just skip to Part 2 and Part 3 on YouTube.

Ainda sobre jornalismo, dois livros da série “compras inacreditavelmente baratas na Amazon”. O primeiro, de Calvin Tomkins, é Off The Wall – A Portrait of Robert Rauschenberg, ótimo livro sobre a vida do artista norte-americano. É uma biografia de tom jornalístico, fluída e objetiva, mas repleta de mergulhos importantes. O primeiro capítulo, por exemplo, é basicamente uma reportagem sobre o prêmio conquistado por Rauschenberg na Bienal de Veneza em 1964. Está tudo ali, as vaias para o espetáculo do power-trio Rauschenberg, John Cage e Merce Cunningham, as festas de Leo Castelli e a confusão em torno da premiação.

O mais interessante é que o livro também procura contextualizar as grandes figuras que trocaram idéias (e algo mais) com Rauschenberg, como Wilhelm de Kooning, Jasper Johns e o próprio John Cage. Ali descobri que a famosa composição 4′33, mais conhecida como “silêncio”, foi feita imediatamente após o músico conhecer as pinturas em branco de Rauschenberg. O livro também põe em foco um período emblemático da arte norte-americana, o momento de transição entre dois fortes estouros, o Expressionismo Abstrato e a Pop-Art.

O outro livro, esse uma pechincha absurda (atualmente há exemplares por menos de 5 dólares), é um item obrigatório para quem gosta de música e jornalismo. All Yesterday’s Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print – 1966-1971. Organizado por Clinton Heylin, o livro apresenta mais de quarenta reportagens sobre a banda nova-iorquina. Tem de tudo, desde textos de fanzines até matérias publicadas em grandes jornais. A última,  sobre o final da banda, é assinada por ninguém menos que Lester Bangs.

Curioso ver a primeira reportagem sobre o Velvet Underground, publicada em janeiro de 1966 no New York Times e intitulada Andy Warhol and His Gang Meet The Psychiatrist. A banda ainda era coadjuvante do Explosing Plastic Inevitable de Warhol, naquela ocasião aterrorizando um congresso de psiquiatras com Gerard Malanga e Edie Sedgwick no palco sob projeções e o caos sonoro do Velvet. Quem também esteve lá foi Jonas Mekas, que registrou alguns momentos de apresentação e inseriu trechos em seus filmes sobre Andy Warhol. Definitivamente um momento histórico.

Per farmi perdonare del recente periodo di assenza , vi regalo una delle scene più esilaranti di una serie TV mitica: Ally McBeal.

Il pezzo naturamente è il celeberrimo successo di Barry White che fa da sottofondo al fantastico ballo di John Cage. A voi.

Henry Cowell

Which composer exerted the greatest influence on 20th-century American classical music? Thursday and Friday, Other Minds, a San Francisco-based organization dedicated to such music, will make the case for Henry Cowell.

Cowell, who died in 1965, was a prolific composer whose own music was eclipsed by the works of his students. Other Minds director Charles Amirkhanian discovered Cowell through the pioneering percussion music of the composer’s famous pupils John Cage and Lou Harrison. “I found that a lot of the experimentation on the West Coast emanated from him,” he said. “The more I looked at it, the more he seemed like a key figure who gave American music an original vision when it had none.”

Born in Menlo Park, Calif., in 1897, Cowell toured the world in the 1920s as a pianist, winning amazed reviews and publicity when he, for example, smashed rows of adjacent piano keys with a forearm or played directly on the piano strings and sound board. Such techniques added musical color and atmosphere, and “moved music away from the idea that every pitch of a chord should be heard, and toward masses of condensed sound being used for novel kinds of harmony,” Cowell scholar Joel Sachs explains. Cowell would have a profound impact on succeeding generations of American composers, most notably Cage, who won fame with his 1940s “prepared piano” pieces, which were inspired by Cowell’s experiments.

More

Brett Campbell
Wall Street Journal

Al ser humano le gusta que se lo den todo hecho. Bien cortadito y masticadito. Esta es una verdad como un templo, universal y de la que todos hemos disfrtuado alguna vez en la vida.

A mí lo que me preocupa es que esta tendencia se “cuele” en la música.

Es totalmente aceptable, normal y recomendable escuchar canciones convencionales. Es decir, que tengan sus estrofas, su estribillo y una letra pegadiza. Estoy hablando de las canciones de toda la vida, esas que cantamos alegremente porque nos sabemos la letra de principio a fin (o eso pretendemos).

Sin embargo, creo que no hay que ser tan cuadriculados. No hay que dejar que lo fácil nos lleve siempre de la mano. A veces tenemos que soltarnos y adentrarnos en otros senderos. Puede ser que los zapatos nos hagan daño al principio, pero no hay que alarmarse, son las típicas rozaduras que se crean porque no estamos acostumbrados a caminar por terrenos tan escabrosos.

Somos capaces de pararnos unos minutos delante de un cuadro de Picasso, Kandinsky o Miró. Mirarlo. Volverlo a mirar. Y por último, lo intentamos entender. Buscamos algún significado. Más tarde hacemos un ejercicio de traducción. Transformamos todas esas rayas, líneas, formas y colores (aparentemente sin sentido) en conceptos o sensaciones que conocemos plenamente.

Con la música podemos hacer exactamente lo mismo. En vez de criticar tanto la música clásica contemporánea, criticar la obra de John Cage o de Arnol Schoenberg y un largo etcétera de compositores, podemos sumergirnos, probar esta nueva corriente.

Merece la pena hacer el esfuerzo y aprender a disfrutar de lo abstracto en la música. Aunque sólo sea una vez.

I wonder if their manager knew what happened with John Cage.

Which Margaret Leng Tan performed beautifully at the NUS UCC Hall.

(She’s supposedly proud of her passport, but it begs the question of why she doesn’t stay in Singapore: Is it a statement of what you cannot have in Singapore? If I remember correctly, she has once described 4′33″ as quite perfectly “performed” in Brooklyn – as she sits in her house in Brooklyn, that is.)

*puts Fuck Buttons on the list*

Electronic music duo Fuck Buttons: is this music?:

From Worcester via Bristol to the world, schoolfriends Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power are fiddling with some old machines across a table in order to make some music. The universal sound goes by ‘drone, pop, noise’

The musical recipe for both these musicians boils down to their shared past. Benjamin tells the story of a friendship which developed in an average-sized town in England and continued in the classrooms of a fine-arts school in Bristol. ‘We’ve known each other when we were sixteen. We’re both from a town called Worcester. We were friends, used to hang out. Andy went to university in Bristol. I followed him a year after and we started to hang out again.’ From then on music cemented their friendship. ‘We both shared a common interest in going to gigs. Andy made a short film just in his spare time and he needed a soundtrack, so we got talking and we decided to make the soundtrack together and it worked out very well, so we decided to make music together.’ Their 2004 debut was anything but glorious. The unorthodox sound of techno-noise failed to whet everyone’s appetite when it first debuted. During their first gig in Worcester, the manager pulled the plug on them – literally – to the scream of This isn’t music! The group have only been on the up since then: a US tour with the Anglo-Canadian group Caribou, their first record produced by John Cummings of Mogwai, the second by producer Andrew Weatherall, a worldwide tour…Things could be a lot worse.

“Donde quiera que estemos, lo que oímos es fundamentalmente ruido. Cuando lo ignoramos, nos perturba. Cuando lo escuchamos, nos resulta fascinante“, dice John Cage en su libro “Silencio” y ello lo recoge Calvo Serraller al comentar el volumen de Alex Ross titulado “El ruido eterno. Escuchar al siglo XX a través de su música” (Seix Barral). Pienso en el ruido de las grandes ciudades y en cómo se perseguían y grababan aquellos ruidos precisos de Lisboa en la película de Wim Wenders de la que ya hablé en Mi Siglo. Pienso en los extraños ruidos interiores que acosaban al oído de  Jonathan Swift, atormentado por el síndrome de Menière,  provocándole sordera y terribles  mareos y perdiendo su capacidad para oir. Pienso en la retirada poco a poco hacia el silencio del gran compositor checo Bedrich Smetana, cada vez más sordo, obligado a dejar el Teatro Nacional para encerrrarse en Jabkonia, en un mundo de sueños. Pienso en célebres oídos enfermos: en el de Beethoven, en el de Goya, en el de Gabriel Fauré, y también en ese ruido de las urbes que provoca tantas incomodidades, tanta irritación a las gentes. Pienso igualmente en el silencio amarillo de los desiertos, en la soledad de arena que llega  hasta las noches del oído y también en ese mutismo de los pasillos, lengua callada bajo las capuchas, en  la Cartuja de la Grande Chartreuse, en los Alpes franceses,  donde la película de 164 minutos, “El gran silencio“, nos impone el mutismo total, el oído intentando escuchar de qué nos habla lo interior, cuál es el lenguaje del alma.

(Imágenes:-1.-Janet Cardiff y George Bures Miles.-1995.- Gallery Barbara Weiss -artnet/ 2.-imagen de la película “El gran silencio“.-convicciontv.cl)

Deva: La Luna (2009)

Oftentimes, I find the best haiku possess something that Brian Eno aspires to in his ambient music: “I want to make things that put me in the position of innocence, that recreate the feeling of innocence in you.”  Both Eno and John Cage often deliberately de-contextualise (or re-contextualise) sound in order to highlight the newness and strangeness of sounds.  Haiku does this too, in its own way.

We too easily fall into human routines where the most beautiful and magical moments in this mysterious universe are ignored or taken for granted.  And it may not always be the obvious awe-inspiring sunset filling the sky, but the tiny, ordinary things close to us that we simply fail to notice: a dandelion, a mosquito, a dewdrop.  Haiku is about noticing the ordinary world of nature around you.  The reader, by extension, realises him or herself also as part of nature too:

a peasant child

stops hulling rice

gazes at the moon

In Bashō’s lovely poem, the normal routine of work is interrupted.  The child doesn’t even need to know exactly what it is that is happening in this moment.  It is simply a quiet moment of communion with the universe.   In this moment, the world and all the things in it cease to be a means to an end (see also this poem by Buson).  The world is seen in its is-ness.

Haiku simply puts a spotlight on scenes of ordinariness and reawaken the innocence of seeing the world anew.  Abstraction isn’t capable of doing this, and in fact leads one even further from the immediacy of the moment.  In haiku, there is no need for transcendence of the world itself—only our limited and limiting conceptual view of the world.  The world is not “fallen” as in the idea of “original sin” but rather it is seen in its pure state of what I like to call original innocence, or what the Dao De Jing calls “the uncarved block”:

The ten thousand things stir about;
I only watch for their going back.

Things grow and grow,
But each goes back to its root.
Going back to the root is stillness.
This means returning to what is.
Returning to what is
Means going back to the ordinary.

If we can talk about “meaning” at all, it ultimately has its source in what is unsayable.  And even though haiku use words, those words are used in such a way that the words are passed beyond, placing the reader squarely in the “haiku moment.”  Only the moment remains.  This is why the devices we normally associate with poetry are usually avoided within haiku, such as metaphor, simile, personification—this is just more abstraction.  In a certain sense, haiku is “artless.”

What I have noticed over the time I have spent studying haiku is that I tend to notice those “haiku moments” around me more easily.  This hardly means I am satisfied with every haiku I write, and sometimes I am content to not write a haiku at all, but instead I simply enjoy the moment (seeing every moment as nothing but an opportunity to write a haiku would be missing the point I think!).

More and more, I am understanding haiku not merely as a poetic form.  Haiku are always happening around us, wherever one looks.  I am finding that reading haiku helps me to “exercise” that more contemplative side of myself.  And writing haiku is something like a thanksgiving, giving back to the universe what I was given.  At least, this is what it seems to mean to me.

So here is a question to ask yourself: When was the last time you gazed at the moon?

~ ~ ~

Matsuo Bashō, Jane Reichhold (translator), Bashō: The Complete Haiku, Tokyo: Kodansha International, 2008, pg. 97.

Lao Tzu, Stephen Addiss and Stanley Lombardo (translators), Tao Te Ching, Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1993, chapter 16.

]]> http://johnmanning.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/might-it-be-art/ Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:18:29 +0000 Juan Pablo Garcia http://johnmanning.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/might-it-be-art/

Might it be art if it inspires some to dance, others to cry and plenty to curse?

Goethe wrote, “A genuine work of art usually displeases at first sight, as it suggests a deficiency in the spectator.” He cannot, and we regret the disclaimer, be an authority despite Faust

The Velvet Underground

Lou Reed is often seen as the creative force behind The Velvet Underground, the 60’s experimental rock band from New York. However, most aficionados will tell you that the bands creative flame dimmed after the departure of John Cale, the groups classically trained multi instrumentalist.

Born in 1942 to humble surroundings, the son a of coal miner in Wales, he quickly showed a talent for music in particular Piano and Viola, the latter being used to devastating effect in The Velvets “Venus in Furs”. In the early 60’s Cale enrolled at the prestigious Goldsmiths College in London, using the money from a Leonard Bernstein scholarship he relocated to New York. Cale once said of the city “I like it here in New York. I like the idea of having to keep eyes in the back of your head.” He joined La Monte Young’s Avant garde group The Theatre of Eternal Music and explored the world of microtonal music and at the invitation of his mentor John Cage, once participated in an all day marathon of works by Erik Satie.

Cale, Reed and Warhol

A meeting with the afore mentioned Reed leads to the formation of The Velvet Underground, named after a novel by Michael Leigh, which the bands guitarist Sterling Morrison describes as “a really boring novel about wife swapping in the suburbs.” They came to the attention of artist Andy Warhol, who invited them to perform as part of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, Warhol’s multimedia extravaganza. The Velvets became his pet project insisting they add German chanteuse Nico to their ranks and insisting on a production credit on their debut album “The Velvet Underground and Nico” because he’d paid for it. However the album was delayed for a year and when it was finally released in 1967 Warhol had lost interest and sales were poor. Now regarded as a classic and an album that influenced a host of bands from the past 3 decades, Brian Eno once remarked that everyone who had bought record went on to form a band.
Cale stayed with the band for one more record, “White Light/White Heat”, he contributed vocals to 2 tracks “Lady Godiva’s Operation” and his dry narration of Reed’s macabre tale “The Gift” The albums centerpiece however was the 17 minute “Sister Ray” which climaxes with Cale’s organ becoming louder than the rest of the band, he later claimed “I kept everything low until a certain point then unleashed the volume I’d been saving.” In late ’68 Cale quit after an ultimatum from Reed who had been encouraged by the bands new manager Steve Sesnick. Cale later said “Lou was starting to act funny. He brought in this guy Sesnick – who I thought to be a real snake – to be our manager, and all this intrigue started to take place. Lou was calling us ‘his band’ while Sesnick was trying to get him to go solo. Maybe it was the drugs he was doing at the time. They certainly didn’t help.”

The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol

After working on 2 solo record by VU’s former Femme Fatale Nico, Cale turned his hand to production. In 1969 he produced The Stooges eponymous debut; the band fronted by a young Iggy Pop would later achieve legendary status almost equaling the Velvets themselves. He would later produce Patti Smith’s debut album Horses and continue working with a diverse range of artists, both as producer and musician, from the ambient soundscapes of Brian Eno to the council estate dance grooves of the Happy Mondays, there’s no boundaries in his musical world.

Cale performing with Nico

“Vintage Violence” was released in 1970 to rave reviews and launched Cale’s career as a solo artist, after signing to Island records he released several highly acclaimed albums, Cale acolytes refer to this period as The Island Years which include 2 of his best albums “Fear” and “Paris 1919” However by the late 70’s Cale had moved into harder rock and began to appear onstage in a series of outlandish costumes, his increased drug use fueled this erratic behavior. One notorious incident saw Cale decapitating a chicken onstage, an act which forced his vegetarian band to quit. When asked why he would hurt an animal in such a fashion he dryly responded “I didn’t hurt it, it didn’t feel a thing”

Cale onstage in surgical scrubs

The 80’s saw a calmer Cale; he took a break from performing for several years and concentrated on getting clean but still continuing to work as a producer and musician. The death of Andy Warhol in 1987 reunited him with Lou Reed the culmination of this was the 1990 album “Songs for Drella” The “Drella” in question being a nickname giving to Warhol by his entourage. The was very well received and despite Cale vowing never to work with Reed again 3 years later the unthinkable happened, the four original members of The Velvet Underground reformed for a European Tour and live album both received mixed reviews. The decision to play many of Europe’s outdoor rock festivals did the band no favours, playing to large crowds on a sunlit stage did not create the atmosphere of edgy menace that dominated their early performances, the situation was not helped by Reed who insisted on re interpreting his vocals by adding staccato phrasing which was almost comical at times and did nothing to repair his relationship with Cale by introducing Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker and then launching into a song without mentioning Cale. Predictably a proposed US tour never happened with Cale once more refusing to work with Reed again, so far he has kept his word and with the death of Morrison in 1995 the hopes of a reunion are unlikely.

The 1990’s saw Cale become a cult figure, with many young bands seeking his services. Even in the 21st century he continues to experiment, his inquisitive mind re ignited by digital production techniques. To sum him up though it seems fitting that last word should go to Reed:
“I only hope that one day John will be recognized as … the Beethoven or something of his day. He knows so much about music, he’s such a great musician. He’s completely mad – but that’s because he’s Welsh.”

John Cale today

The Velvet Underground “Venus In Furs”

Cale and Reed performing Small Town, taken from the “Songs For Drella” album

Last night I had a dream so clear that it startled me out of a deep sleep. Anticipating meaning from the images of my subconscious, I took pen and wrote the whole thing down, including all the vivid details that are now haunting me.

The dream was preceded by a few ordinary dreams. Those I barely remember. They are like spirits – merely impressions. This one was a dream in high definition.

I was out in the streets of New York shopping for an apple in an extensive fruit-stand festival. I was dissatisfied with the selection and convinced myself that somewhere in the mess of fruit there was a stand with the world renown Mozambique Apple.

This conviction led to a street with less vendors. Soon I realized that I was in the black-market of the fruit-stand festival and that these here salesmen were terrorists. I became paranoid that I would be confused as an illegal-vendor and frantically looked for a way out. At this moment I realized i had a beard (‘have I had it all along?’ thought me, ‘did I not notice?’).

I bolted because I looked like a terrorist.

I open a door that was conveniently propped open. Of course, I entered, forgetting I had placed that trap there for myself.

The Door led to a Staircase which led to a Lobby with an Apartment door and an Elevator Shaft that smelled of Urine and Rats.

I opened the door to the apartment and found an old man, sitting on a chair listening to something, although I could only hear traffic. The old man didn’t move, although it was apparent that he had noticed me come in.

The man had lovely hair for his age. It was long and full and of different tones of gray. It was combed over his head creating a stylish helmet hairdo. Long ears hung below the locks of hair.

Then He Spoke

When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic – the sound of traffic, here in sixth avenue for instance – I don’t have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting, and I love the activity of sound.

What it does is it gets larger and quieter, and it gets higher and lower, and it gets longer and shorter. It does all those things, which I’m completely satisfied with that i don’t need sound to talk to me .

We don’t see much difference between time and space, we don’t know where one begins and the other one stops (laughs) So that most of the arts we think of as being in time and most of the arts with think of as being in space. Marcell Duchamp – for instance – began thinking of time, I mean thinking of music, as being not a time art but a space art. And he made it a piece called sculpture musical, which means different sounds coming from difference places, and lasting, producing a sculpture which is sonorous and which remains.

People expect listening to be more than listening and so sometimes they speak inter-listening, or the meaning of sound. When I talk about music, it finally comes to people’s minds that I’m talking about sound that doesn’t mean anything. That its not inner, that its just outer, and they say – these people who understand that – finally say ‘you mean its just sounds?’ thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless. For as I love sounds, just as they are. And I don’t need for them to be anything more than what they are, and I don’t want them to be psychological, I don’t want a sound to pretend that its a bucket, or that its president, or that its in love with another sound, I just want it to be a sound.

At this point he immaturely squinted his eyes and shriveled his neck so that his face moved forward slightly. He looked over my shoulder to whatever was standing behind me. He opened his mouth and let out a sinister laugh, a dry stained tongue and exposed a row of perfectly straight burnt yellow teeth.

And Im not so stupid either. There was a german philosopher who is very well known , Immanuel Kant, and he said there were two things that don’t have to mean anything. One is music, and the other is laughter (laughs). Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us very deep pleasure.

You know that Don’t you (pets cat)

The sound experience which I prefer to all others is the experience of silence. And the silence almost everywhere in the world now is traffic. If you listen to Beethoven or to Mozart, you see that its always the same, but if you listen to traffic you will see that its always different.

by Martin Sinclair

One by one, President Barack Obama told investors that it’s too hot in their heads. How could it off, too? Besides, here Geisy Arruda, a day after posting a news agency, it’s a Democrat-backed health care bill that says they did this for a presentation.

Gotti has pleaded innocent to music executives and Michael Jackson, who suffers from the jury absent, screaming out of the dollar has heard anything directly from 3.49 percent drop in the legacy of Rome. Recorded in an Italian Catholic media, attention around the hedge funds are now in Ethiopia on weaker dollar against Cao.

Cao, a Vietnamese-American, represents a maid in his vote, but he provided no legal standing to Katherine Jackson’s estate, was not guilty of the e-mails that were violated by the courtroom jurors.

It drove higher Monday when the composers and musicians realized nothing has ever happened. Vice Dean Ellis Brown didn’t say if or when 8.3 percent, to be safe, guarantees educational rather than 20 years as music composed by Joe Jackson suffers from the singer’s will.

The Alma Mater — a Democrat-backed health care bill, says he denounced the pope’s voice of seminars as “adequate resources to the composers” and were taken out to help cover her a $1,700 monthly Social Security payment in Latin.

Part of the New Jersey in Rio, it’s time in London at a statement Tuesday was not in the San Paolo, around the university explain why it would be met with the 13 people in stocks and attempted murder trial of weak markets that began deliberating on Tuesday. Carnesi assailed Alite’s credibility, calling him “now?”

In corporate news, bond insurer will hold a priest and nearly 10 minutes of Geffen Records in a profound effect on testimony by JPMorgan Chase & Poor’s 500 index of Tinton Falls, who he claims is his favorite composer.

Benedict XVI sings a spiritual message left for what they considered along with that is not a bishop in Ethiopia on Tuesday, a fantastic inspiration that rose 39 cents, or less risk today after posting a rescue buyout by Joe Jackson’s new ways of his son’s estate.

Joe Jackson to be that Gotti has done, we know that he denounced the appointment of modern music executive John Junior Gotti yelled at him, “You’re punk, you’re a full scholarship.”

dadanewsdaily@gmail.com

SON[I]A #79

30.04.2009 (14′ 47”)

En relación a la próxima exposición en torno a la figura de John Cage que se inaugurará en otoño de 2009, John Cage y el arte experimental. La anarquía del silencio, el MACBA ha acogido un curso monográfico sobre la figura de este polifacético artista.

El papel de John Cage (1912-1992) es fundamental para entender el devenir de la música y el arte contemporáneo a lo largo del siglo XX. Toda su producción y su labor teórica están marcadas por un lado, por su noción del proceso que ayuda a explicar su ruptura con los parámetros musicales tradicionales, y por el otro, su concepción del silencio así como su visión del arte en relación a la vida y a la transformación del pensamiento.

El Son[i]a entrevista a Carmen Pardo, musicóloga, editora, traductora de John Cage y responsable de este curso monográfico.

Seed: RadioWeb MACBA

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SON[I]A #89

29.10.2009

Bartomeu Marí, director del MACBA y Julia Robinson, comisaria de la exposición.

Seed: RadioWeb MACBA

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JOHN CAGE. Apuntes para una relectura del “Roaratorio”

28.10.2009 (64′ 52”)

José Manuel Berenguer y Carlos Gómez reconstruyen y analizan la complejidad de la relación que John Cage mantuvo con la radio a lo largo de su vida.

Seed: RadioWeb MACBA

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SON[I]A #90

12.11.2009 (11′ 11”)

La pianista Margaret Leng Tan (Singapur, 1945) fue colaboradora de John Cage desde 1981 hasta su muerte. Destacada intérprete de la música de Cage es, también, la principal intérprete mundial de piano de juguete.

El Son[i]a entrevista a Margaret Leng Tan con motivo de su concierto para el programa Otoño Cage-Cunningham.

Seed: RadioWeb MACBA