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People who enjoyed reading this: jogn, Roshi, energygiant, zfigz, everamzah, bebnbenb, theflame, reehc, daswesen, bodo, lysdexic, filarion, opticecho, hecanjog, fakeBlooper, bigfatpwner, Mr12000, subset, craque, crabster, mlbot
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A (slow loading) video of John Cage performing on a 1960 game show, using various random things and a piano.
link
From the site:
"At the time, Cage was teaching Experimental Composition at New York City's New School. Eight years beyond 4:33, he was (as our smoking MC informs us) the most controversial figure in the musical world at that time. His first performance on national television was originally scored to include five radios, but a union dispute on the CBS set prevented any of the radios from being plugged in to the wall. Cage gleefully smacks and tosses the radios instead of turning them on and off.
While treating Cage as something of a freak, the show also treats him fairly reverentially, cancelling the regular game show format to allow Cage the chance to perform his entire piece."
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04/30/07
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Roshi
God, I love old game shows where you can see people smoking.
It's just plain awesome.
04/30/07
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Roshi
Also, lol @ mechanical fish
04/30/07
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zfigz
woah, surreal...thanks for sharing papergoose!
Throughly enjoyed this one...
04/30/07
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bebnbenb
this is a brilliant video. the more the laughter from the audience kicks in, the more i felt like i was watching a sketch show though...
04/30/07
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everamzah
i can't stand the audiance laughter. but i guess in hindsight, it adds to the composition. i just feel like their mocking the performance. well - i can't blame them...
04/30/07
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papergoose
laughter usually comes from a place of uncomfortability... they'd never heard music like this, much less music like this taken seriously, and were caught off guard, as their limits (and the limits of society as a whole) were stretched. In that regard, it didn't bother me so much.
04/30/07
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everamzah
good interpretation
edited: Apr 30 2007
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filarion
I don't think there was anything wrong with the laughter from the audience. I'm pretty sure Cage knew that he wouldn't be playing for chin-stroking musique concrete listeners - the performance itself has comedic aspects to begin with - electric-fish-treated-piano? it's a performance that has several layers, opening it up for listeners not usually exposed to Cage.
really good find, thanks for sharing.
04/30/07
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flies
sweet linkage.
as filarion says, the performance definitely has comedic aspects, which I think were completely intentional on Cage's part, and which don't take away from the 'earnest musicality' of it, just adds a layer of 'performance art' to it. I think Cage/whoever made an excellent choice in that piece as it's very engaging to an outsider.
It's interesting that we who want to take the music seriously feel encumbered by the laughter of the audience, while (part of) the intent of the piece is to open up the sounds that we allow to be musical.
Cage would probably yak at us for wanting to divide his sounds from the audience's sounds and tell us just to listen.
04/30/07
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opticecho
I loved it! Thanks for posting ...
04/30/07
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hecanjog
wonderful, thank you for this 
i've read that cage was on another game show before this as an expert on mushrooms (he was an avid mushroom collector most of his life, the kind you eat, not the kind that makes you trip) where he won enough money to keep above water and work on his music for a year or so. it was around the time he wrote the score for a radio drama - called something with the word "hat" in it - anyone know what I'm talking about? I wish I could remember where I read it...
04/30/07
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hecanjog
the city wears a slouch hat! found it: link
totally remembered wrong about the game show thing though, i'm looking for that now, maybe I made it up. turns out he didn't make ends meet then by winning money on a game show: "When Guggenheim found out about the Museum of Modern Art concert she was furious. She refused to pay to have his percussion instruments shipped from Chicago and kicked Cage and his wife out of the house. Other financial support was not forthcoming; he made ends meet by writing to friends and asking for money and by doing research work for his father."
hmmm
04/30/07
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papergoose
it's neat to me because he seems like a nice, gentle man... and then he'll have a couple of frames where it looks like madness poking through the surface.
edited: May 01 2007
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phundamental
This was also recently posted on csound mailing list. Anyone here using it? I think it's very cool how the talk show host handles the whole thing, not sugarcoating anything but at the same time with proper respect, i doubt you'd find anything like that on tv these days.
05/01/07
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Mr12000
very interesting. thanks for sharing. great find.
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