is the darling of Avant-garde composers. Apparently his work outsells anyone else in that field. Who the hell the others are, I have no idea, for I have no desire to listen to so-called Avant-garde “music” again as long as I live. The other night I attempted to watch a documentary about said Cage, and it was pretty much unwatchable. I’ve heard of the guy, but not really “heard” any of his “music”. As a musician, I am going to categorically say that what John Cage does is not, nor will it ever be “music” in my opinion. Music is pleasant to the senses, and if it’s not, at least it has some reason to exist, unlike Cage’s gobbledygook. All this show proved to me is that certain groups of “intellectuals” whatever their poison, will accept all manner of garbage if they think it’s somehow new or innovative, regardless of what it actually is. John Cage made a career out of hating music. His music isn’t music at all. It’s anti-music. I’d go so far as to say it’s unlistenable malarkey, but a whole lot of people will line up to hear a concert based on some imbecile going to the Home Depot to buy a bunch of screws and shoving them in in between the piano strings. This isn’t music. To me it’s akin to malevolence disguised as performance tempered by mental illness.
For fuck’s sake, this doesn’t make it sound good at all.
John Cage’s compositions are like a laundry list of idiot things to make noise with. For example “get a duck whistle and blow it into water in a bathtub for 30 seconds, but no more…” Really? Nobody fucking cares. There was some footage of a concert that some German guy was giving, performing one of Cage’s works. The audience looked like they were in hell. One guy looked like he was asleep. Oh look, we’re all so cultured, hip and groovy. People pay money for this? The substance of this is essentially some crazy guy has figured out how to torment people by using the establishment against itself. That people took John Cage seriously, gives you an idea of how depraved the arts can become when somebody pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes, (in this case, ears). Cage created a monster that was unstoppable because people did take him seriously. After a while he started to believe his own publicity. In the latter part of this documentary (I skipped through most of it) Cage is sitting with a film editor fussing over the cuts in some film that he was making. “We cut it three times and then we repeat that again”, he was telling this hapless fool who was tasked with the job of putting this nonsense together.
Cage…laughing all the way to the Left Banke
The editor looked like he wanted to slit his wrists. Watching it, I felt like the dude who was behind me in line at the Tractor Supply store last weekend. It was making my head hurt. Cage’s work is performance art, and it’s about as deep, meaningful and important as most performance art. IOW not at all. It’s lame, pointless and involves imbecilic half baked ideas. Put it another way. If you enjoy the sound of leaf blowers in the morning, you’ll probably love John Cage. Oh no, I’ll probably get cancelled by all the serious composers now.
It’s Friday, and it’s a nice evening. The long weekend is here. I finally got a call from Sir Randy. He said he was going to call me, but he forgot. We had a good chat, but then he said he was tired, and was going to drink some Oat Milk and go to sleep. It was about 6. 30 pm. He’s a strange dude sometimes. Happy Friday.
The worst song eva? Not any more.