"The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason." -- John Cage
"If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all." --John Cage.
"Although Schoenberg never complimented Cage on his compositions during these two years, in a later interview he said that none of his American pupils were interesting, except Cage: "Of course he's not a composer, but he's an inventor—of genius."
cage used that schoenberg quote all his life. it really tickled him. this clip really sums up his approach. i found it deeply meaningful. we were fortunate to have him & merce on our planet doing their work during our lifetimes.
PORTER WAGONER b AUG 12 1927 along w/faron young's bc powder commericals, porter wagoner was a huge joke during my early years. his show came on saturday afternoons & was always good for an unintended laugh. this was no-holds-barred hillbilly music. it sure wasn't the beatles or even the association. it was just so awful you had to laugh & that's w/o dragging early dolly parton into the discussion. i was wrong about most of this. by the time i was listening to hank williams in high school, i think porter was off the air & drifting off the radar. i didn't cover any of his songs once i started including country music in my repertory. he kept his gig at the grand ol' opry. in fact, for a long time, wagoner was the embodiment of the establishment in nashville. the haven hamilton character in robert altman's nashville was known to be a composite figure of roy acuff, hank snow, & wagoner. many of the mainstream nashville stalwarts from the 50s & 60s got buried in dismissive neglect as the millenium approached. i'm glad that wagoner lived long enough to see his legacy given its just due. his last album had some good stuff on it, including this harrowing johnny cash cover about breakdowns & failure.
BUCK OWENS b AUGUST 12 1929 buck owens is another story. buck was as far from a nashville regular as willie or waylon but never got the respect for several reasons. first & foremost was his gig on hee-haw. he figured it out & bailed after a while but the damage was done. second, the "bakersville" sound" that he invented was pretty damned country. it incorporated the "high lonesome" vocal harmonies of bluegrass(a la bill monroe & the stanley brothers)w/electric instruments(a twin telecaster attack!)& driving beats. he was in direct contrast to where porter wagoner & the "nashville sound," all slick strings & echo chambers, was in the 60s.
buck wrote a number of great songs & i still play a few of them. who the hell knew he was so cool that the beatles would cover him("act naturally")?
thanks to dwight yoakam, buck lived to see his legacy celebrated too. he's stopped performing live when his fantastic singing partner & co-telecaster master, don rich, was killed in a motorcycle accident. yoakam's admiration & celebration of his mentor brought him back to the stage.
I burned my life, that I may find A passion wholly of the mind, Thought divorced from eye and bone Ecstasy come to breath alone. I broke my life, to seek relief From the flawed light of love and grief.
With mounting beat the utter fire Charred existence and desire. It died low, ceased its sudden thresh. I had found unmysterious flesh-- Not the mind's avid substance--still Passionate beyond the will.
america has seen better days historically than august 11th. over & above the sheer facts of the events, we're still very much engaged in the attitudes & actions that caused the original mistakes way back when. god bless america, we sure as hell hope.
When California Highway Patrol Officer Lee Minikus pulled over Los Angeles transplant Marquette Frye on Wednesday, August 11, 1965, it began as an ordinary traffic stop. Another motorist had pointed out Frye’s erratic driving, and Minikus confirmed that the young African-American man had been drinking. A crowd had gathered to watch the proceedings, additional officers had been called in, and Frye’s mood had progressively soured as he realized that his attempts to talk himself out of arrest were becoming increasingly futile. Ronald Frye, who had been in the car with his older brother, attempted to talk the police out of towing the vehicle. Further reinforcements arrived to handle an increasingly involved assemblage, and one officer mistook Marquette’s frantic behavior and Ronald’s heated negotiations for attacks on the police. The incident quickly became violent as Officer Wayne Wilson dispatched both brothers with force. Word spread through the crowd to the nearby home of the boys’ mother, and Rena Frye arrived just in time to witness the first blows. All three members of the family were taken away for resisting arrest, but the issue of the now dangerous crowd remained. Bystanders shouted out about the abuse of blacks at the hands of white cops. One observer, Gabriel Pope, threw a glass bottle and struck the rear fender of Sergeant Richard Rankin’s patrol car (Conot, 1-29). The shattering of the glass marked the official beginning of the Watts Riot.
1972---The last U.S. ground troops are withdrawn from Vietnam.
1988 – Al-Qaeda is formed. Journalist Peter Bergen argues that two documents seized from the Sarajevo office of the Benevolence International Foundation show that the organization was established in August 1988
"The questions are often asked, "Why was traditional old-time music so important in the rural South?" And since it is so rare anymore, "Why did they give up the tradition so quickly?" Neither question can really be answered satisfactorily, but there are some certainties."
that's from mike seeger's music of the southern appalachian mountains.the news of his passing has come from many sources but the single theme has been a life devoted to music, music that stretches back into the days of greil marcus' "old weird america" to our current time. someone on the no depression site notes that the new lost city ramblers were jerry garcia's beatles & that w/o them, the dead wouldn't have moved into its major phase of true innovation that working class dead & american beauty is.
there are guys like allan lomax & harry smith & mike seeger who operated on the margins of music but did more for it than can be reckoned at this point in the game. they were never stars & never really wanted to be. they loved music, especially american folk music. there is just no telling where we'd be w/o their contributions. a poorer nation, that's for sure.
