[silence] Brophy & Cage

[Zac Bond]

I've had the opportunity for Brophy's criticism to simmer in my brain 
for a couple of weeks now.  It seems he is primarily upset that hardly 
any critics talk about Cage in the context of music that was happening 
contemporaneously, notably in the realm of pop music.

I can say that I listened primarily to regular pop music before ever 
listening to Cage, and I have to say that Cage has affected my 
perception of it.  The Beatles' "Revolution 9" and Lou Reed's "Metal 
Machine Music" to take two examples are far less interesting once I 
heard "HPSCHD," "Cartridge Music," "Williams Mix" and "Fontana Mix."

As far as hip-hop is concerned, is it much more than the repurposing of 
existing music, whether in the form of scratched records, loops, or 
samples?  Nothing new there.  Imaginary Landscape #1 used turntables 
nearly 70 years ago, while #5 explicitly recast the music on various 
records chosen by the performer.

I would also say that certain of Cage's works which demand that the 
performer be unfamiliar with his or her instrument bring to mind a lot 
of punk bands ;-)  Industrial bands have used noise and found 
instruments (Einsturzende Neubautn's early albums, for example) but 
that's nothing really exciting in the context of music history, either.

Beyond that, I think no one talks about Cage in the context of popular 
music because there isn't a whole lot to talk about.  I listen mostly to 
pop music.  I don't look to it for anything particularly inventive, 
except in the narrow context of other pop music.  Even then, it feels 
like most current rock bands are just rehashing trends from ten or 
twenty years ago.

-Zac

Rod Stasick wrote:
 >
> I'm VERY behind on emails,
> so forgive me if a scan or link has been posted already,
> but I posted a scan of this one page article for those
> of you who have yet to read it:
> 
> http://stasick.org/brophy.jpg