Once upon a time in San Francisco there was a wonderful series of live public conversations hosted by Charles Amirkhanian of KPFA radio. He spoke with well known musicians and composers of the avant-garde. The series was called Speaking of Music and I attended many of them.
The venue for these talks was The Exploratorium, a cavernous hands-on museum that had a smallish theater within it. This is where I would see Morton Subotnick, the luminary pioneer of electronic music composition, and a couple of years later John Cage ... nuff said. There was a larger venue right next to the museum for higher profile guests, at least higher in the general public’s mind, called The Palace of Fine Arts. This is where I would see Frank Zappa, as well as Brian Eno and others.
No matter which space was used, Mr. Amirkhanian succeeded in keeping the talk informal and quite intimate, providing ample time to include audience questions during the proceedings. At the John Cage talk I actually got to address Mr. Cage with my question, which came to me rather spontaneously. I have to admit that I did not know a lot about John Cage other than what had been written in the music press, which was plenty, but I had not read any of his books which are considered a blueprint for avant-garde musicians. So my question seems a little naive, looking back on it, but apparently it was the right question at the right time and place since Mr. Cage expounded on his answer at length. The question was simply, “How did you come to compose 4:33?” This of course is the famous “silent” piece, where the performer sits at the piano without touching the keys for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. I did not know that this piece was also THE major turning point in Mr. Cages career. Thanks to the miracle of the Internet Archive, you can hear the entire conversation. I ask my question at the 37:15 point of part 1.
In this same small theater, about 2 years earlier, I would have my encounter with Morton Subotnick. This time I would not be asking my question from the audience. This encounter would be more personal. And I would need the help of Frank Zappa.
May 20, 1984 found me at the Palace of Fine Arts for the Speaking of Music event featuring Frank Zappa. To be honest, I’m not sure why I was there. I’ve never been a huge fan of Zappa. I know this is heresy in the avant-rock circles that I call my friends, most of whom look up to Zappa on the same pedestal as Miles Davis. I was always more interested in Zappa the person. He had interesting and provocative things to say in the media. Those same things never translated for me in his music. Some of this attitude of mine may have come from my initial exposure to Zappa. I grew up in Arizona listening to a lot of prog and later fusion, so you’d think Zappa’s music would have gotten onto my radar early on, since he was producing it not that far away in Los Angeles. I can’t remember hearing any of it. By the time I went to college in Tucson in 1975, I was familiar with the name Zappa, and I started hearing stories that he was banned for life from playing at my University because of some destruction that occurred at his 1973 concert at the recently completed McKale Center, built for the U of A basketball team which was the dominant team sport on campus at the time. By 1973 Zappa already had a reputation for totally destroying large venues made famous in the Deep Purple song “Smoke on the Water”. The song documents the burning of the Montreux Casino during a Zappa show in Switzerland in 1971 when a fan launched a flare gun into the ceiling setting it on fire, which “burned the place to the ground.” The McKale Center didn’t burn down, but the stories I heard said there was a fire. However, in an internet search today I can only come up with this:
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Jesse Colin Young, and Focus were the scheduled entertainment for Spring Fling. They were the first acts to play at the McKale Center on April 8, 1973. The audience was rowdy, openly used drugs, drank beer and littered the new floor with cigarette butts which put the future of concerts held at McKale in jeopardy. When asked about his experience at the McKale Center, Zappa said “Not too bad compared to the other barns we have worked in.”
Maybe the rumors I heard at the time in 1975 were exaggerated, and it looks like not only Zappa got banned, but ALL concerts got banned, because you don’t mess with the new floor of the University’s major cash cow, the basketball team. I do know with certainty that I never saw a concert there in my entire four years on campus.
Which brings me back to, why was I sitting in the audience to hear Zappa talk in 1984? A quick look at my record collection has some clues. It looks like the very first Zappa record I ever bought was his London Symphony Orchestra album. Weird, huh? As I said before, I was always more interested in him as a person. He was an ideas guy with interesting things to say. He was being taken seriously by the creme-de-la-creme of the classical music avant-garde, including Pierre Boulez, the French composer, conductor and founder of IRCAM (a center for the study of new music). Zappa wanted nothing more in life than to be a great composer. To achieve that goal, apparently you need a symphony orchestra. They aren’t cheap. Zappa funded that LSO album himself thanks to money made from the hit song “Valley Girl” (thank you Moon Unit). His next classical album would be commissioned and conducted by Pierre Boulez. Zappa appeared to have reached the composers mountain top, but publicly he would complain that these recordings suffered from being under rehearsed -- a claim that I was about to hear again in his talk that I was now interested enough to attend.
As with the John Cage talk, Zappa spent much of the time describing his latest work which included a theatrical performance with giant puppets. One of these puppets appeared on stage if I recall correctly, but it may have just been slide projections. As the talk went on there were the usual questions from the audience. At some point he began to tell the story of a recent performance of one of his demanding classical avant-garde pieces that was commissioned by the California EAR Unit to be performed at the prestigious Monday Night Concert series at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This piece was to be a transcription of his song “While You Were Out”, which originally appeared on the album Shut Up and Play Your Guitar (which are my favorite Zappa albums by far). The time available for rehearsal proved to be not enough for the venerable EAR Unit, so Zappa, having been working heavily with the new Synclavier synthesizer of late, suggested that he could simply use the synth to record the piece for playback at the concert. All the EAR Unit needed to do was attach a few wires to their instruments so that they appeared to be “synthesized” and learn to finger sync the piece. That’s right, finger sync. Not a note would be played by the ensemble. All involved went happily along with this ruse and pulled it off without a hitch. The audience, which included the press, donors, and yes Morton Subotnick, all loved the piece so much that no one said anything to make anyone the wiser. When it soon came to light what had happened it was of course a big scandal that Zappa simply reveled in. As he put it, what he might have accomplished was to “Prove to the world that nobody really knows what the fuck is going on at a contemporary music concert?” (Quote from The Real Frank Zappa Book)
Zappa speaking with Charles Amirkhanian Photo: David L. Windt
About 6 months after seeing the Zappa talk at the big theater, I found myself back in the small theater to hear Morton Subotnick. No mystery to me why I’m here this time. I’m a huge fan of this pioneer of electronic music. His early breakthrough recordings Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967) and The Wild Bull (Nonesuch, 1968) are some of the first electronic music records that I would hear and buy, although much to my chagrin I can no longer find my copy of Silver Apples. (Back to the used bins I must go). In 1969 he was a founding member of the music department at CalArts, where the above mentioned EAR Unit would form in 1981.
I don’t remember anything about the actual talk, probably because I was preoccupied at the time with getting to the bottom of this Frank Zappa story, and I thought this would be a good opportunity to do so. After all, Morton was there to witness the finger-syncing. Thankfully, I was smart enough to understand that this might be a sensitive topic, so I did not try to ask this question during the audience participation as I had with John Cage. Had I done so, knowing what I know now, I may have been asked to remove myself from the theater. No matter, I was quite certain I would get a chance to talk to Mr. Subotnick in person after the event. These were very informal affairs with lots of mingling. I should also mention that in those days I had (and still have) a Sony Walkman Pro recorder that I often carried with me, and I had it with me here. Now, I could be wrong about the timing of this. It could have been before the talk, during intermission (if there was one), or after. But at some point I found myself in the lobby walking back to the theater, perhaps from a restroom break, and here comes Morton walking in my direction. I catch his eye and begin a conversation which he seems happy to oblige. Knowing I have little time I quickly bring up the Zappa story, and as I’m doing so I can see his demeanor slowly changing from happy to not-so-happy. By the time I’m finished asking him about it he looks downright pissed. His gaze slowly moves down to my tape recorder. He gives me one last look that could kill and methodically turns around and leaves me without saying a word. At that point I remember thinking “maybe the tape recorder wasn’t a good idea.” I had just lost my chance to get a first hand account of this story from someone other than Zappa. Too soon maybe? Even today the only accounts of this finger-syncing event that I can find on the internet are from Frank Zappa.
Screen shot from Subotnick 2017 documentary trailer
Since I HAD recorded the encounter, I was sure I could find it in my cassette collection. Like my record collection, I’ve kept all my cassettes and have stored them well and even reorganized them not too long ago. So, this one shouldn’t be hard to find. Alas it has vanished into the ether along with my copy of Silver Apples and all those unmatched socks. So I unfortunately can’t play for you that stony silence I heard from Morton Subotnick, and I’m sure John Cage would tell you: nothing speaks louder than silence.
Wonderful! The EAR Unit stunt was classic Zappa madness!
Rumor has it, MS reputation for being testy preceeds him.