RE: (TV) Re: Zappa, WSB and Lou Reed (was: Foxhole)

["Dever, Paul (ELS)" <P.Dever@elsevier.com>]

Oblique notations that probably 
ignore your argument, but I can't 
resist.


> -----Original Message-----
>
> A lot of composers have re-using thematic material in 
> different works, but after a point this becomes 
> self-plagiarism, doesn't it?   

Or, to paraphrase from 'Songs for Drella', maybe 
"it's only work".

It's definitely some kind of research . . . how 
many haystacks/cathedrals did Monet paint before 
he had the thirty he kept? Same question applies 
to Warhol, but in a context where repetition becomes 
explicitly integral to meaning, rather than 
remaining implicit . . .

> In any case, 
> traditionally the new works are written with the mateial in 
> mind and not 
> dubbed together after the fact on the mixing board.

Thank god for the electronic reproduction and the way it 
suits collage, eh?  Taken together, collage and montage 
are the single most important artistic techniques/conceits 
of the modern age. (Hyperbole, perhaps, but I'll hang with it). 

> it 
> relies upon 
> chance and therefore is the stuff of conceptual art, explored 
> by people 
> like Brian Eno, and turned into an academic careers by hucksters like 
> John Cage.

Ah, my favorite hucksters . . . 

> I'm still trying to figure out what WSB 
> was good at besides self-promotion.  In the case of John Cage, it's
> obvious: flattering the vanity of academics.

I'd say Cage's academic reception kicked in so late
that he'd already turned to rot. Still and all, mycology
suited him well. 

What's WSB good at?  Well, dub (aka cut-ups, aka collage) 
reverberates throught the universe and brings what isn't yet 
out into the light.  That's why President Lee Scratch 
Abraham Perry gets to knock the devil out of the sky. 
He's the one who can slay the IMF. He'll deprogram your 
bank cards and your credit cards, and you won't like that! 

> Of course, once somebody becomes a big enough celebrity

I'd bet that for all the celebrity the work of Eno/WSB/Cage 
has garnered, all three would (have) die(d) experimenting 
in obscurity, if that'd been their fate.  That is, celebrity 
was coincidental, notthe driving force. Burroughs was doing 
his routines for 20-30 years before he got noticed, and it was 
20-30 years after that before anyone did a double-take. 

> Take Lou Reed,  for example.  

Well, ok, Lou's a different case . . . 
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