CRUMMY OLD WINE DEPT: Hearts of Vleeptron

HEARTS OF SPACE is an American public radio (sorta like BBC) syndicated program that, late every Sunday evening, distorts the electromagnetic fields over North America with all the latest hits of New Age and electronica avant-garde music.

Well, I have certain prejudices and bigotries regarding music -- I am the Mijnheer Friendly J. van Happy of music -- and even this brief explanation of HEARTS OF SPACE may be reflecting my bigotries, and this would not be Fair and Balanced. So, in the spirit of Vleeptron's first and previous motto "ipse dixit, res ipse loquitur," let the HEARTS OF SPACE Home Page explain itself, and its ear-related mission:

FOR OVER 20 YEARS we've collected quiet, space-creating ambient sounds from around the world for our nationally syndicated Hearts of Space radio program. Like the famous "slow food" movement, we celebrate the values of calm, concentration and quality. We bring the timeless world of contemplative and ambient music direct to you.

I listen to this program often. All the way through. When I am taking a bath. And it comes on after the program I wanted to listen to is over. And the radio is a 120-volt AC 60 Hz radio plugged into the wall. And the bathroom outlets are the old-fashioned kind, before the government made everybody upgrade the sockets to Ground Fault Indicator (GFI) sockets, to prevent accidental bathroom electrocution.

But if you know what you are doing, and you are really determined, even someone who is naked in the tub dripping wet can very quickly grab at the plug and yank it out of the socket. To make the noise stop. Make it stop. Please make it stop.

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Date: Sun, 17 Dec 2000 06:43:04 -0500
Reply-To: Elmer Elevator
Sender: "Mailing list devoted to the discussion of Glenn Gould's work and
life."
From: Elmer Elevator
Subject: Eine Kleine Nichtmusik
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

When I was a deejay at Smith College, one night I put on Steve Reich's "Four Organs" (it lasts the whole side of a 33 1/3 LP, what's that, a half-hour?) and said I'd stop it whenever people phoned the station and asked me to.

Three minutes into the piece the phones started lighting up. My show was late at night and WOZQ has a VERY short listening radius, maybe at most 20 miles. (I just turned the turntable motor off and let the noise just slow and stop.)

Anybody who thinks this is music thinks that piece of Cage's where he closes the cover on the keyboard and sits there for 4:33 minutes is music. Varese, on the other hand, is a very different matter. He was one of Frank Zappa's major musical inspirations.

I admire composers who try to take music into the future -- all those we admire and Gould so admired were doing just that in their day -- but Cage and Glass in particular aren't doing that. One hundred profound liner notes later, and I still have no idea what the hell they think they're doing.

I think they're trying to tell us that boredom is art, that there is art and music for organs other than the heart, mind and genitalia. Music for the spleen, perhaps, or the kidneys. Music for the hair and fingernails, for the sweat glands.

Bob Dominic Lesnar wrote: > I don't believe Gould ever commented on these particular composers. I'm sure > he was somewhat aware of them. Remember, he did write disparagingly about > Terry Riley's "In C", and once a friend did suggest, albeit tongue-in-cheek, > that Gould announce his return to the stage and subsequently perform John > Cage's "4:33" (a piece for piano where the pianist sits at the keyboard in > silence for four minutes and thirty-three seconds), an idea that he rejected > flat out. So he was aware of contemporary composers per se, but their > aleatory style would certainly not have held much interest for him. >

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