David Grubbs Records Make The Landscape

• Peter Coffin
• David Grubbs

A couple of months ago I interviewed former Chicagoan David Grubbs about his excellent book Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording (Duke University Press), a highly readable and illuminating examination of the role sound recordings play in the dissemination of experimental music. In the book he writes about how important recordings have been an educational and aesthetic tool, a medium that brought him into contact not only with work made decades before he was born, but also music that was rarely if ever performed in Louisville, Kentucky, where he grew up.

I don’t.

The style does. I don’tDepart from this date.

https://chicagoreader.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/01_the_plain_where_the_palace_stood.mp3David Grubbs, “The Plain Where the Palace Stood”

Harold Ousley, Tenor Sax (Bethlehem)Bengt Hallberg, All Star Sessions 1953/54 (Dragon)Chick Corea and Stefano Bollani, Orvieto (ECM)Bessie Jones, Put Your Hand on Your Hip (Rounder)Mia Doi Todd, Cosmic Ocean Ship (City Zen)