Records ruin the landscape : John Cage, the sixties, and sound recording PDF
Preview Records ruin the landscape : John Cage, the sixties, and sound recording
Records Ruin the Landscape DaviD Grubbs recorDs ruin the LanDscape John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording Duke university press • Durham anD LonDon • 2014 © 2014 DUKE UNIVERSITY PRESS ALL RIGHTS RESERVED PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ON ACID- FREE PAPER ♾ DESIGNED BY AMY RUTH BUCHANAN TYPESET IN GARAMOND PREMIER PRO BY TSENG INFORMATION SYSTEMS, INC. EPIGRAPH FROM “THE SYSTEM” BY JOHN ASHBERY, FIRST PUBLISHED IN THREE POEMS. COPYRIGHT © 1972, 1985, 2008 BY JOHN ASHBERY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. USED BY ARRANGEMENT WITH GEORGES BORCHARDT, INC. FOR THE AUTHOR. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING- IN- PUBLICATION DATA GRUBBS, DAVID, 1967– RECORDS RUIN THE LANDSCAPE : JOHN CAGE, THE SIXTIES, AND SOUND RECORDING / DAVID GRUBBS. PAGES CM INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN 978-0-8223-5576-2 (CLOTH : ALK. PAPER) ISBN 978-0-8223-5590-8 (PBK. : ALK. PAPER) 1. CAGE, JOHN—CRITICISM AND INTERPRETATION. 2. IMPROVISATION (MUSIC)—HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 3. AVANT-GARDE (MUSIC)— HISTORY AND CRITICISM. 4. SOUND RECORDINGS. I. TITLE. ML410.C24G78 2014 780.9’04—DC23 2013041395 The rejected chapters have taken over. For a long time it was as though only the most patient scholar or the recording angel himself would ever inter- est himself in them. Now it seems as though that angel had begun to dominate the whole story: he who was supposed only to copy it all down has joined forces with the misshapen, misfit pieces that were never meant to go into it but at best to stay on the sidelines so as to point up how everything else belonged together, and the resulting mountain of data threatens us. —JOHN ASHBERY, “The System” (1972) contents (ix) preface (xxiii) acknowLeDGments (1) Introduction 1 (19) Henry Flynt on the Air 2 (45) Landscape with Cage 3 (67) John Cage, Recording Artist 4 (105) The Antiques Trade Free Improvisation and Record Culture 5 (135) Remove the Records from Texas Online Resources and Impermanent Archives (167) notes (195) seLecteD DiscoGraphy (199) bibLioGraphy (209) inDex Preface What does it mean to come to know a period through its recordings? What does it mean to know a period through the recorded artifacts of composers and musicians who largely disdained recordings? An early impulse to write this book came from observing how listeners’ understandings of experimental and avant- garde music from the 1960s change on the basis of access to sound recordings. Simply put, what circu- lates in recorded form at a given time helps to delineate a historical land- scape of musical activity. But for many practitioners of experimental music from the 1960s, sound recordings register as an odd, counterintuitive ob- ject of study. I encountered this firsthand when discussing the project with a number of musicians, composers, and producers who came of age in the 1960s, most of whom remain of the opinion that audio recordings are at best curiously incomplete representations of their efforts. I was born in the late 1960s, and I often gravitate toward music created in that decade. Fundamental to my interest in music from this period is the challenge of understanding that part of the past that lies just beyond memory’s reach. My fascination with the recent but experientially inacces- sible past found its first and most enduring subject in the popular music of the 1960s. From an early age, I felt that I knew the pop music of this time through an itinerary of its landmark albums and singles, and through arranging these recordings on an increasingly detailed time line. If your passion centers on pop music from the 1960s, it becomes second nature to know by date particular albums or songs or events in the careers of the Beatles or the Rolling Stones or Bob Dylan or James Brown. It begins with the release dates of iconic recordings: Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in the summer of 1967, Blonde on Blonde in the summer of 1966, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag” in the
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