Closing the Door
I want to apologize to those who have enjoyed my WCBN radio program the last 28 months. This week I decided to hang it up. There was a scheduling conflict and I decided that rather than deal with the aggravation of getting the problem fixed that I was better off just letting it go for right now. Thanks for listening!
Spalding Gray Missing
Unsettling news about Spalding Gray - Saturday night he told his wife he was going to visit a friend. He left behind his wallet and ID. He has not been seen since.
I've always greatly enjoyed Gray's monologues and books. "Sex and Death to Age 14" is a minor classic in the field of literary wit, something we don't have enough of these days. I find it altogether a more satisfying work than "Swimming to Cambodia", which is by far the better-known work. But in recent years it is said that clinical depression has taken the upper hand in Gray's life. My prayers are with him and his family, and I do hope for his safe return - perhaps he'll even have something funny and enlightening to say about it afterward, if that is to be.
What I've Been Listening To Department
1. Bob Graettinger "City of Glass" on Capitol and on Channel Classics (different contents on these discs, the former with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and the latter with the Ebony Band of Holland.
This is loud, ultra-modern, mega-dissonant blow your brains out of your ears big band music. I'd gladly recommend it to anyone, though it's certainly not for everyone. It is the perfect music for the expression of the confusion and complexity of city life, and exposes the inner workings of an intense and strikingly original creative mind.
2. Carl Phillip Emmanuel Bach: "Keyboard Music". There is a lot of it around by various performers; none that I've heard is bad. The Fantasias are most interesting - this is music on an emotional roller-coaster, up and down, up and down. It is interesting that the most successful son of Johann Sebastian Bach was also the most neurotic and insecure of the brood, to judge from his music. A really fine example, unique to the web, may be enjoyed at:
http://www.wagner.edu/faculty/users/dschulen/h348.html
Go ahead and click on the full file, it's not very long. This is played on a beautiful sounding reproduction of a 1740s Silbermann keyboard of the kind Bach himself preferred. Don't concentrate on the virtuostic technique of the player or look for familiar territory, just follow the sweep of the emotion. You'll figure out why CPE is so different from his dad, true; but you'll also hear a distinctive expression of emotion that I feel is both pioneering in style and of great depth and beauty.
This is the appropriate music for me right now. We're moving the office across town, and everything at work is turned upside down, being packed into boxes. At home I have some new pieces of used furniture that I'm trying to integrate, while also trying to take down Christmas decorations and assimilate the 100 cans of films I recently bought at an estate sale. These all sit in neat stacks in the living room, are exceptionally heavy, and have nowhere to go. We are having a hard time getting used to the new minister at our church, and that has led to some stress in our social and family life. I am also scrambling to get my Association of Recorded Sound Collections talks (there are two) ready by the first of March. This is in addition to cataloguing all of that Homer Rodeheaver stuff and not dropping the ball on cataloguing my own (I'm up to Work No. 130 or so with no end in sight.) So much change, so many projects, such bad weather, and neither room, nor time, to relax and reflect.
Uncle Dave Lewis
uncledavelewis@hotmail.com