I recall improvisational drummer and composer Michael Evans telling me a story of someone who had the opportunity to meet Cage and give him a record, and John Cage just smiled and said, "You know I have nothing to play this on?"
David GrubbsRecords have always been the most extraordinary form of time travel for me, and that's why it matters to know when something was circulated, and if it had an audience of five or 50,000.
David GrubbsI don't write poetry for the page because my inclination in that area is satisfied by songwriting. "Ornamental Hermit" was a comparatively effortless song to write, which is rare for me.
David GrubbsThe instrumental pieces are compositions, certainly, although that's not the language that I instinctively use. They're not scored, and arrangements are often arrived at collaboratively. I always choose to play with people whose input I desire.
David GrubbsThe word "archive" seems so reassuring, but I'm not sure about these things that are now being called archives. Is anything lost by the fact that the word has come to mean so many more things.
David GrubbsI found myself thinking about the distance between the 60s and today through certain moments. Like the Henry Flynt interview with Ubuweb founder Kenny Goldsmith, where he talks about how he was scarred by how proud John Cage was to be ignorant of popular music. Goldsmith says, "Nobody thinks twice nowadays about listening to everything!" Something that had seemed so uniquely, radically syncretistic in Flynt's day seems much more commonplace now.
David Grubbs