on the third day of C***mas
by richibi
“Les musiciens“ (1952)
Nicolas de Staël
___________
on the third day of C***mas, I needed to
ready myself for the onslaught, I was
hosting, yikes, for someone from out
of town
I thought I’d had it all figured out, but
obstacles occurred, of course, to my,
nearly cowed, consternation
I needed help
I’d anticipated more violin concertos
to get me going, but, among my
several bookmarks, King Crimson
came up, a group I’d admired
tremendously in my formative years,
the 70s, when freedom of expression
prevailed, in all of its innocent
expectations
they are tremendous, if you like that
sort of thing, entirely progressive
rock
you’ll think me eccentric if I relate
them to Classical considerations, not
only are they rigorous about tempo,
tonality, and repetition, essential
Classical components, but reach
further into even tribal configurations,
their minimalism – later formalized by,
incidentally, Beethoven – of infinitely
repeated rhythms, like thumping,
intoxicating, essentially, thrusts,
heartbeats meeting heartbeats, very,
in other words, primitive, primeval
add to that, later, their superimposed
atonal riffs – Jimi Hendrix meets the
jungle – a direct reference to
Schoenberg‘s breakdown of the
orthodoxy of the musical scale, and
cadence, and reiteration, you’re left
with a history of our culture’s sonic
aspirations in a single incandescent
concert, despite a couple of egregious
commercial interruptions in the
download, a 21st-Century, it seems,
corporate roadblock
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