a cover of Cage

From "Do They Know It's Christmas" to "4'33"?

I love this. A group of British artists have gotten together to record a "cover" of John Cage's silent "4'33"! Here is a brief report on this from Pitchfork, which thanks to Willa Granger for pointing it out to me.

In the UK, the race to become the number one song in the country at Christmas is a big deal. Last year, a Facebook campaign succeeded in making Rage Against the Machine's years-old track "Killing in the Name" the Christmas number one, upsetting X Factor winner Joe McElderry. This year, an indie-leaning all-star group of artists is attempting the same thing, with a "cover" of John Cage's experimental piece "4'33"", which famously consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence.

The group of artists getting together to record the new version of "4'33"" are using the name Cage Against the Machine, naturally. Their number includes Pete Doherty, Billy Bragg, producer Paul Epworth, and members of the Big Pink, the Kooks, UNKLE, Orbital, Coldcut, and many others. (More artists may join up.) They'll all gather at London's Dean Street Studios on December 6 to record the track, and director Dick Carruthers will film it. Wall of Sound will release it-- along with "pocket remixes" by Hot Chip, Herve, Adam F, and Mr. Scruff -- on December 13. (It's tough to imagine how a remix of silence will sound, but it's happening.) And even though this version hasn't been recorded yet, there's already a Facebook campaign to get it to number one.

Proceeds from the single will go to five charities, including the British Tinnitus Association. Britain has a long tradition of "We Are the World"-esque all-star charity singles topping the charts; check Pitchfork contributor Tom Ewing's long-running Popular blog, which reviews every British number one ever, for evidence. But if this particular track succeeds in hitting the top spot, it'll be a massive coup for quixotic conceptual stunts. A college professor once told me that "4'33"" ended music forever, so maybe this release will end all-star charity singles forever?

Times music critic

Nate Chinen, now a music critic for the New York Times, was a Writers House regular as a student and for the year or two afterward. Nate visited us again this past spring and here's a video of Anthony DeCurtis introducing him.

when Elvis became Che

Phil Ochs, from the liner notes of The Broadside Tapes:

When they show the destruction of society on color TV, I want to be able to look out over Los Angeles and make sure they get it right.

Leaving America is like losing twenty pounds and finding a new girlfriend.

A protest song is a song that's so specific that you cannot mistake it for bullshit.

And if there's any home for America, it lies in a revolution, and if there's any hope for a revolution in America, it lies in getting Elvis Presley to become Che Guevara.

The final story, the final chapter of western man, I believe, lies in Los Angeles.

jazz and lunch

New York Times jazz critic - and once a Writers House-affiliated student here - comes back to 3805 Locust on March 25. Listen to this for more.

Thiefth

Susan Howe's "Thorow" and "Melville's Marginalia" performed by Howe along with music and sounds composed by David Grubb. As of tonight, these recordings are available on PennSound. Click here.

set Howe to music

David Grubbs & Susan Howe |
Souls of the Labadie Tract | CD

Susan reads. David plays. Further sounds from this duo set on stretching your mind to its limit. Studying poetry has never been so rewarding. The Drag City is one source for this recording. Now Wire (subtitled "Adventures in Modern Music") is making the work available in streaming audio here.

Kate McGarrigle has died

Kate McGarrigle has died. Here is a YouTube video recording of the McCarrigle Sisters performing "Heart Like a Wheel." Thanks to Irwyn Applebaum, who sent me the link, I've just now watched Kate's performance of a new song, "Proserpina," at the recent family Christmas concert. "Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to mama." I'm very moved by this performance, as remarkable a goodbye as could be imagined. Come home to mama.

love of my life

Zach Djanikian performed one of his own songs, "Love of My Life," on our Live at the Writers House radio program, aired on XPN. The first voice you hear in the recording is that of Michaela Majoun, the show's host (and XPN's morning show host for many years).

creative spirit

Jimmy DePreist (Penn undergrad, class of 1958) receives the first "Creative Spirit Award" to be given annually at Penn.

stairs stave

Social good derived from people choosing to take the stairs rather than the escalator? Yes. So, make stair-walking the making of music, and see what happens. (Thanks to Peter Holstein for the tip.)

inescapable rhythms

The chamber group pictured here a decade ago decided to name itself "The Eighth Blackbird," having rejected several other poetic references such as "Red Wheelbarrow." There are thirteen blackbirds, of course. So why the eighth? Is it the music's unavoidable, inexorable meter? Is it the focused circular knowing of the musician in the midst of his or her playing? Well, anyway:

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

It's good to know that in the mid-90s someone at Oberlin College was apparently teaching Wallace Stevens.

Aw, but enough lucidity. For my part, I want to listen to the music of a group named "First Blackbird," making sounds based on this:

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

And on some days, "Tenth Blackbird" would do very aptly:

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

Steve Earle

Steve Earle - yes, the great Steve Earle - stopped in at the Writers House two nights ago. He met with a group of about 50 people in the living room during a reception and then went into the Arts Cafe where Mingo Reynolds introduced and Anthony DeCurtis moderated a conversation - during which Earle played three of his songs and talked about them and lots else. We've caught the whole wonderful event as a downloadable mp3 audio and as a streaming video. And here are photos of the evening taken by John Carroll. The program is funded by a generous grant from Mitch and Margot Blutt. Previous singer-songwriters have been Rosanne Cash and Suzanne Vega. If you have ideas for next year, send 'em along.

funk talk

Naomi Beckwith considers funk a language. Listen to her 2005 talk, with lots of musical samples. (Don't be put off by the beginning of the recording; the music is too loud at first.) For more about Naomi and the program, click here.

dystopian music

In 1999, several Kelly Writers House regulars (among them Andrew Zitcer and Kristen Gallagher--both of whom are still involved with us in one way or another), created a second radio program out of the Writers House. The first, of course, was and still is "Live at the Writers House," which continues to this day to air monthly on WXPN 88.5 FM. This second show--meant as an experimental alternative--was called "Dystopia." At least several of its shows aired on XPN 88.5, and maybe they all did (Andrew and Kristen can tell me otherwise). Recently we found recordings of all seven Dystopia shows and, with the help of Andrew Zitcer, put them back together. And just today Mark Lindsay did the work of uploading them and linking them to a new KWH Dystopia page: HERE.

old man look at my life

My son Ben and I saw Neil Young here in Philly at the Spectrum last Friday night. Wilco, warming up, was terrific. Jeff Tweedy astounds, is downright experimental with lightning-fast register and genre shifts. But Young: he was really young. "Heart of Gold," "Old Man," etc., but also some raw new political (economic) anthems, such songs seeming to us rusty even though weeks or even days since written and scored. My former student and former Writers House regular and staffer Nate Chinen reviews Young in concert at Madison Square Garden in today's New York Times, page 1 of the Arts section.

More about Nate: here's a link to Nate-only entries in the NYT Arts blog.

man in black on man in black

I've been keeping up with news of Steve Earle and lately, on Earle's main site, learned that the newest bio-documentary on Johnny Cash includes an interview with Earle about Cash. I'm DVR'ing the bio on Biography (cable) and will catch Earle talking influences--Earle who has been far more overtly political than Johnny C ever was but otherwise derives a great deal from this gone elder.

I also recommend this YouTube video clip - a contemporary montage of Cash's dark view.

husk and bark left on the notes

I've unearthed Robert Shelton's September 29, 1961 NYT review of Bob Dylan at Gerde's Folk City. "Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a beatnik, Mr. Dylan has a cherubic look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck Finn black corduroy cap." "Mr. Dylan is both comedian and tragedian." "...a scarcely understandable growl or sob..." "All the husk and bark are left on the notes." Here's the whole review.

this is the end

Who is it that put Arthur Rimbaud and Jim Morrison together in a book? It will probably surprise you to know that its author took his academic degrees in the early 1930s. He was Wallace Fowlie, a serious popularizer of surrealism. For much more about Fowlie, take a look at my 1960 blog.

By the way, as many people know, The Doors took their name from an Aldous Huxley book called The Doors of Perception and that Huxley had taken his title from a line in William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell": "If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite."

podcast of vibe guy

Rock journalist Alan Light visited the Writers House in September 2007 and gave a talk about his book The Skills to Pay the Bills, The Story of the Beastie Boys. Light is former editor in chief of Vibe, Spin, and Tracks magazines, and a former senior writer for Rolling Stone. He is also the editor of Tupac Shakur and The Vibe History of Hip Hop.

I just completed a Kelly Writers House podcast which features a 20-minute excerpt from Light's talk. Here's a link to the podcast mp3. And here's a summary of the event, and other links, from the Writers House web calendar.

walking around New York in a red aura

Pepi Ginsberg, the 24-year-old Brooklyn (via Philadelphia) singer-songwriter, has a new video out - a song, "On the Waterline," that's on her new album, Red. Albert Birney directed the video and it's a fine one: Pepi's evocative warbly voice, ruminative and Dylanesque through phrasal repetitions, is matched by what the Stereogum note-writer calls the "vintage, analog-drenched feel" of the video. Her lyrics are poems for sure. Bias disclosure: Pepi (aka Jessy) was a student of mine many times over, and a close affiliate of the Writers House, and one of my favorite people in the world.