Tuesday, December 22, 2015

John Cage Gets with Garry Moore and Plays a Water Pitcher (video)

We had Frank Zappa playing a bicycle so here's one with a young John Cage playing just about anything else.  Cage is not always taken seriously and notable for us here is the recording must be from the late fifties but Garry Moore seems genuinely respectful of an unusual art form.  Cat wasn't so convinced when we talked of it but I'm not so sure such radical musicians could get a spot on modern television since it's been so marginalized by pop music and torch singers.




We don't want to write a PhD thesis on John Cage because it's much better if you obtain that for yourself if you really have an interest in understanding his genius.  Hopefully you have seen that in the video, it's performance art but there is still amusement in it and Cage sees that as well.

Life is much a John Cage panorama for me and I told Cat of my friend in the army back in a barracks with two-man units.  As soon as my friend came back to it, he would switch on the television.  He didn't care what was playing, he only wanted some company.  For me it's different because I prefer to listen to the silence unless there is some music I want to hear and / or I want to play it myself.

Meanwhile, the fan kicks on in the other room every so often, animal noises will come even inside the house, and always there are trains in the distance.  It's not just the blues of the night train's steam horn in the distance but the sound of the wheels when they brake with the squealing they make.  All these things have stories of their own and together make a bigger one.

(Ed:  I'm going to puke if you call it a symphony!)

Um, got a better word for it, chum?

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