broken music (when a record's like the large glass)...

well, it's been a relatively bad week for mail arriving intact - and packing a record for shipping has definitely become a lost art. yesterday, the third package of damaged records arrived, and it was a doozie. as you can see in the above photos, the record was bopped around so much that chunks of it's recorded material cracked and fell off, revealing some nice matisse cut-out looking areas of its aluminum core. this was especially sad, because the disc was a home recoring of a tune called frieght train blues.

thinking about how duchamp dealt with the cracks in the large glass, i couldn't resist trying to listen to the disc. as the record spun, bits of plastic came spinning off the turntable, the needle lifting every bit of surface that was cracked...it was some seriously broken music...

i recorded the event... you can click here to listen

before mr. warhol...

beautiful recent find, an RPPC of a painter playing music. several incredible things about this photo - certainly the mirror reflecting his profile on the desk, as well as all the small paintings of seemingly the same image of two women in profile with a few reversed. this guy was clearly a pre-curser to the serial portrait works of warhol...

"visual artists as musical "dilettantes" are not particularly sought after in the music business. nevertheless, they serve a purpose as trail blazers. unlike the musicians in the classical and light music establishment, they show no reservations and when experimenting are not particularly concerned about correct musical chronology, a problem which composers constantly have breathing down their necks. artists are practicians and researchers, like nanook the eskimo, who in robert flaherty's film of the same name, bites into a record out of curiosity in order to gain physical access to the laws of mechanical noise".

michael glasmeier, broken music,1989

before low-fi and free jazz...

"of course i had no experience whatever with the tape-recorder. it was only later that i became aware of the imperfections of my recordings, made directly on my amateur's machine, in comparison with those made by professionals. but, paradoxical as it may seem, i am not convinced of the superiority of the latter, in the same way that i often prefer poorly-crafted amateur's photographs to those of specialists. later, when i was in contact with technicians, i felt that all their precautions and installations counterbalanced certain advantages with a deplorable inhibitory effect and also that the recordings thus obtained, however much clearer they may be to the ear, however much freer from flaws and minor mishaps, do not speak louder to the spirit as a result. i believe that in all areas art has everything to gain by simplifying the techniques it is obliged to use... such an incredible number of extremely diverse effects can be obtained from the first instrument to come to hand alone that one wonders if it is really worth searching for others. where practical experience and good methodical knowledge of how to play the instruments used is concerned, i am evidently seriously lacking and the benefits of acquiring this knowledge are clear to me. it may be however, that in doing this there is also a risk of losing an advantage: that afforded by the improvised use of an instrument whose proper handling is not known, with the unexpected discoveries that this can bring about. having said all this, the records collected here are not presented in the spirit works with any pretentions of their own, but rather as the first experimentations of someone venturing into an area about which he knows practically nothing and it is in this spirit that i ask musicians to accept them."

jean dubuffet, musical experiences, 1961