Extended Play  

From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia

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Extended Play: Sounding Off from John Cage to Dr. Funkenstein (Duke University Press, 1994) is a book by John Corbett.

Blurb:

In Extended Play, one of the country's most innovative music writers conducts a wide-ranging tour through the outer limits of contemporary music. Over the course of more than twenty-five portraits, interviews, and essays, John Corbett engages artists from lands as distant as Sweden, Siberia, and Saturn. With a special emphasis on African American and European improvisers, the book explores the famous and the little known, from John Cage and George Clinton to Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra. Employing approaches as diverse as the music he celebrates, Corbett illuminates the sound and theory of funk and rap, blues and jazz, contemporary classical, free improvisation, rock, and reggae.

Using cultural critique and textual theory, Corbett addresses a broad spectrum of issues, such as the status of recorded music in postmodern culture, the politics of self-censorship, experimentation, and alternativism in the music industry, and the use of metaphors of space and madness in the work of African American musicians. He follows these more theoretically oriented essays with a series of extensive profiles and in-depth interviews that offer contrasting and complementary perspectives on some of the world’s most creative musicians and their work. Included here are more than twenty original photographs as well as a meticulously annotated discography. The result is one of the most thoughtful, and most entertaining, investigations of contemporary music available today.

Table of contents

Acknowledgments xi Introduction: Earmeals and Expubedience 1

PART ONE. DANCING IN YOUR HEAD. Theoretical Jam

Brothers from Another Planet: The Space Madness of Lee "Scratch" Perry, Sun Ra, and George Clinton 7

Spate of Flux: On the Unofficial Return of the Fluxus Impetus 25

Free, Single, and Disengaged: Listening Pleasure and the Popular Music Object 32

Siren Song to Banshee Wail: On the Status of the Background Vocalist 56

Bleep This, Motherf* !#er: The Semiotics of Profanity in Popular Music 68

Ex Uno Plura: Milford Graves, Evan Parker, and the Schizoanalysis of Musical Performance 74

Postmodernism-Go, Figure: Smell, Sound, and Subliminal Suggestion 88

PART TW0 • AN EAR TO THE GROUMD • Profiles in Sound

Hal Russell: The Fires That Burn in Hal 109 Ikue Mori/CatherineJauniaux: When the Twain Meet 115 Ed Wilkerson, Jr.: One Bold Soul 120 Lee Perry: Tabula Rasta-The Upsetter Starts from Scratch 126 Franz Koglmann: Meister of Melancholy 135 x I Contents Pinetop Perkins: Boogie + Woogie 139 Barry Guy/LondonJazz Composers Orchestra: LJCO 2 U 141 George Clinton: Every Dog Has His Day 144 Fred Anderson/Von Freeman: On the Radical Lounge Tip 155 Sainkho Namtchylak: Madame Butterfly Knows Only Enough 160 Sun Ra: Eulogy and Light 163

PART THREE • MUSIC LIKE DIRT. Interviews and Outerviews

John Cage: The Conversation Game 181 Steve Beresford: M.O.R. and More 192 Evan Parker: Saxophone Botany 201 Anthony Braxton: From Planet to Planet 209 Alton Abraham: Brother's Keeper 218 Derek Bailey: Free Retirement Plan 228 Peter Brotzmann: Machine Gun Etiquette 247 Han Bennink: Swing Softly and Play with a Big Stick 260 The Ex: Live Free ... Or Try 270 George Clinton: The Hair of the Dog 277 Nicolas Collins: Trombipulation 293 Jon Rose: The Violable Tradition 298 Sun Ra: Gravity and Levity 308 Extending Play: A Guide to Further Listening 319 Index 331

See also

• Extended play