Doug wrote:
> My god, that's silly.
Even sillier is poking fun at Cardew's Maoism in the year 2010.
Yes, Cardew wrote some unenlightening things in his dogmatic Maoist phase. Who cares? He is still the most important English composer of the 20th century, and AMM was the most important group to come out of the entire English Free Jazz/Free Improvisation milieu.
They are hugely influential in retrospect. The entire Berlin scene of improvisers today is suffused with the influence of Cardew and AMM. David Toop noted in his book Strange Weather that it took a whole generation that grew up with digital music to be able to claim AMM as an influence. It was digital music of the pre-digital era!
And besides, whatever the excesses of 1970s Maoism those guys succumbed to back then, I respect the fact that they retained the core of their politics rather than sell out to the apolitical cynicism of the current era. I don't agree with Tilbury's personalistic boycott of the United States, but at least he's capable of taking a stand: http://freejazz.org/?q=node/442