[lbo-talk] Cultural Consumption

[wrobert at uci.edu]

I know about some decent material around improvisation.  Ben Watson has a
decent biography of Derek Bailey, that manages to overcome Watson's
slightly tedious polemical style.  Bailey's own book on Improvisation
provides a broad cultural context of the various ways improvisation works
in music, although it emphasizes practice.  Cardew has some really
provocative philosophical essays on the idea of improv before he became a
Maoist, but the book is really dreadful.  It's not even particularly good
Maoism.  The Cardew is online on a free avant-garde art site, which I
can't think of its name for the life of me.  I've read the Prevost book,
and if you can get your hands on it, its really worth it.  It's a real mix
of Marxism, conversations on the nature of community, post-structuralism
by other means, odd bits of orientalism, etc.  One of the best books I've
read in a long time.  Other than that, there is obviously Adorno.  By the
way, if anyone knows about a decent bio of AACM/Art Ensemble of Chicago,
that info would be greatly appreciated.

                           robert wood


> As far as music goes, I want the book by Tilbury's AMM
> collaborator Eddie Prevost, _No Sound is Innocent_ but
> my local bookseller says it is out of print.  Anybody
> on this list know of some good critical sociology of
> music?
>