ATDDTA (6) 179:24 (musical anarchy)

Tue Apr 10 10:55:54 CDT 2007

        179:24  "Singing in so many different tempos and keys..."

         musical anarchy

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Requiems
by Alex Ross
The New Yorker, October 8, 2001.

On May 7, 1915, the Lusitania was sunk by a German 
torpedo, taking with it more than a thousand lives. 
Later that day, in downtown Manhattan, an insurance 
executive and part-time composer named Charles Ives 
was standing on an Elevated-train platform when he 
heard a barrel organ playing "In the Sweet Bye and Bye." 
One by one, those around him began to sing along: first, 
a workman with a shovel, then a Wall Street banker in 
white spats, and finally the entire motley crowd. "They 
didn't seem to be singing in fun," Ives recalled, "but as 
a natural outlet for what their feelings had been going 
through all day long." Ives recorded the experience in 
an orchestral work entitled "From Hanover Square 
North, at the End of a Tragic Day, the Voice of the 
People Again Arose." It was intended to capture "the 
sense of many people living, working, and occasionally 
going through the same deep experience together."

Everyone who was in New York on September 
11th will remember not only the sun-drenched 
terror of the day but also the fullness of human 
contact in the weeks that followed. Often, the 
connection was made through music, and the 
voice of the people again arose in unlikely places. 
A few days after the attack, I went with my 
companion and other friends to a vigil in Union 
Square, on the northern edge of the East Village, 
where American flags used to be as rare as 
neckties. We joined a youngish crowd that seemed 
a little amazed to find itself singing "America the 
Beautiful." Our group was just warming to it when 
our neighbors decided to have a go at 
"The Star-Spangled Banner," creating a snarl of 
Ivesian counterpoint. Some loud Buddhist chanting 
nearby made it difficult for either of the hymns to 
gain momentum. After a while, we all fell silent, 
and a lone trumpet played "Amazing Grace." 
Young modern selves, accustomed to nights alone 
in the home-entertainment watchtower, were s
tepping cautiously into a Frank Capra scene that 
turned out to be comfortably real.

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2004/05/the_noise_is_br.html

WE OWE YOU NOTHING: PUNK 
PLANET, 
THE COLLECTED INTERVIEWS 
Edited by Daniel Sinker 
Akashic Books 
PO Box 1456, New York, NY 10009 
346 pages; paper, $16.95 

Ministry of Truth, The Front, Atrocity 
Exhibition, Insolents, Diatribe, and nine 
other local bands played a show called the 
“Anarchy Picnic” outside on the grass at 
Mission Bay in the summer of 1985. The 
glistening bay water, the splendor of fanned- 
mohawks, spiked dog collars, and painted 
leather jackets—until the cops came to break 
it up. I think it’s fair to say that 99 percent of 
the punkers came to slam dance and party 
and paid no attention to the anarchist litera- 
ture being handed out by the sponsors of the 
picnic. Since it was on the grass, kids were 
doing these crazy leaps into the dog pile. All 
this observed by a pasty-faced, skinny guy, 
all dressed in black, hovering over a table 
full of pamphlets. Anarchists haven’t been 
able to use punk rock to excite kids about 
their manifestos, at least not with the success 
that the Nazi-right had using the oi sound to 
enlist skinheads. Punk fans have never cared 
about ideology. Yet, at the same time, punk 
bands, especially lyricists, have been and 
remain progressive thinkers. 

We Owe You Nothing is an economics 
textbook for punkers. Ian MacKaye started 
out playing in punk bands in 1979. When his 
band Minor Threat got too popular, they quit. 
His next band, Fugazi, became even bigger 
and more influential. And no matter how 
much money they could earn, he says he will 
walk away the minute it’s no longer interest- 
ing to him. Punk rock has been his business 
for over twenty years. He founded Dischord 
records in 1980, which now sells millions of 
albums each year. MacKaye is revered in the 
punk scene for his principles. His integrity is 
legendary. Fugazi still doesn’t charge more 
than $7 for live shows and $12 for CDs, 
which is a lot less than your average major- 
label band. Their business model is DIY. Do 
It Yourself. . . .

http://www.litline.org/ABR/PDF/Volume22/jazz.pdf

Page 179

. . . . different tempos and keys
Cf 'anarchist miracle' in "Lot 49" (chapter 5).

In the early 1970s San Francisco was the site of the 
Black Flag Concerts, where anybody was allowed to 
make any music. People who attended said it was 
disorienting to wander through the crowd listening t
o folk singers, kazoo bands and Celtic harpists all 
belting away. (The Black Flag is a traditional emblem 
of anarchism.)

Also perhaps a reference to Charles Ives, who wrote 
much music containing combatting sections in different 
keys, tempi and melody. The quintessential image of 
Ives' music is that of four marching bands playing 
different tunes arriving at the same village square. 
Ives attended Yale, though graduated in 1898, two 
years prior to the scene beginning on page 156.

Or perhaps just an image of musical anarchy to match 
the political Anarchism.

http://against-the-day.pynchonwiki.com/wiki/index.php?title=ATD_171-198

This is the most important recording of any of 
Charles Ives' music for a long time. This is the 
first full realization of his last and greatest work: 
the most ambitious effort from a great composer 
who over-extended himself and ruined his health 
so badly he couldn't finish it himself. He begged 
others to help him finish it. None did.

Over ten years before we released this CD, having 
been fascinated for years by stories of this mythical 
music, Johnny Reinhard decided to dig. He found 
surprisingly clear clues and directions from the 
great man which convinced him that the symphony's 
final form could be defined. He even received the 
approval of the Ives Society, who are dedicated to 
making sure that his legacy is not compromised, for 
his first performance of his realization of this huge 
work. The first (and so far only) live performance 
was at Lincoln Center June 6 1996.

Ives was an innovator. He doesn't belong in the 
'classical music' rack. He belongs in the 'new music' 
place. Even half a century after he died. This is 
extraordinary sound that transcends labels and 
relates to where we are now. You can hear 
excerpts from his ultimate masterpiece in streaming 
and download forms here.

http://www.stereosociety.com/Ives.html

Like Splinter label-mate Dorine_Muraille, Animal Collective 
are a perfect addition to FatCat’s Splinter Series - their grasp 
of pop hooks and dynamics being counterbalanced by a love 
of noise / friction and musical anarchy; their songs wavering 
on the tightrope between deeply affecting beauty and 
unrestrained chaos.

http://fat-cat.co.uk/fatcat/artistInfo.php?id=53

http://tinyurl.com/2sa75w

Does McClintic Sphere in V. stand for Thelonious Monk?
by
Charles Hollander

Wily coyote that he is in V.(1963), Thomas Pynchon 
adorns McClintic Sphere with a "hand-carved ivory 
saxophone," getting us to think Sphere is somehow 
a stand-in for jazz great Ornette Coleman. There 
was, in the civil-rights era of the '60s, much ado 
about Coleman's "new sound" and his "new" white 
plastic sax. Like Coleman's group, Sphere's group in 
V. features "no piano," plays music vaguely expressive 
of "African nationalism," but (the narrator tells us) 
Sphere is wrongly viewed as a "kind of reincarnation" 
of Bird (Charlie Parker). A minor figure who drifts in 
and out of the narrative of V., Sphere is often led by 
Paola Maijstral's maieutic (O.E.D.; maieutic = Socratic) 
intellectual midwifery, through some laborious dialogue, 
until he delivers what has come to be taken as the novel's 
motto: "Keep cool, but care." (V.; 366) To whom does he 
speak? For whom does he speak? To properly answer 
these questions, we should figure out who he is.

http://www.howardm.net/tsmonk/pynchon.php

Anarchy on the trumpet

Can jazz stop Bush? John Fordham on the return 
of the Liberation Music Orchestra 

Monday August 2, 2004
The Guardian 

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/features/story/0,11710,1274213,00.html