David Grubbs: Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording
Reading and Conversation with David Grubbs and Julian Weber
John Cage’s disdain for records was legendary. He repeatedly spoke of the ways in which recorded music was antithetical to his work. In this presentation from his book Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording, Grubbs argues that, following Cage, new genres in experimental and avant-garde music in the 1960s (indeterminate music, long-duration minimalism, text scores, happenings, live electronic music, free jazz, and free improvisation) were particularly ill-suited to be represented in the form of a recording. Despite this, present-day listeners are coming to know that era’s experimental music through the recorded artefacts of composers and musicians who largely disavowed recordings.
David Grubbs is Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. At Brooklyn College he also teaches in the MFA programs in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) and Creative Writing. Grubbs has released thirteen solo albums and appeared on more than 150 commercially-released recordings, the most recent of which is Prismrose (Blue Chopsticks, 2016). He is known for his cross-disciplinary collaborations with writers Susan Howe and Rick Moody, visual artists Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, and Stephen Prina, and choreographer Jonah Bokaer. Grubbs was a member of the groups Gastr del Sol, Bastro, and Squirrel Bait, and has performed with the Red Krayola, Will Oldham, Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, and Loren Connors, and many others.
David Grubbs, reading from Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording
and in conversation with Julian Weber (Music editor, Die TAZ)
