"Arthur Gadney" <a_gadney@hotmail.com> asked:

Hi,

Does anybody know where I can locate a copy of the John Cage documentary "Revenge of the Dead Indians" (1993) by Henning Lohner? It sounds very interesting, and Zorn also appears in it, btw.

And what about Cage CDs where he reads or talks. Is there any CDs released with Cage interviews on, or maybe where he reads some of his many famous anecdotes and small stories? I'd love to hear something like that.

Cheers!

Hi Arthur, I haven't seen a commercial video of Revenge of the Dead Indians. It's been a long time since I saw it at all, but I think it was an actual film version of it. There are several other videos available though, and CDs which include him talking. For films on video there's The Peter Greenaway film called, I think, John Cage, one of a series of four on American composers (the others are Robert Ashley, Philip Glass & Meredith Monk); Facets <http://www.facets.org> used to have this & several other videos of Cage documentaries available, I haven't checked but they probably still do. The archetypal recording of Cage talking, and probably what you're thinking of when you asked about recordings of anecdotes, is Indeterminacy, released by Folkways, which is a studio recording of Cage reciting 90 of his brief anecdotes in 90 minutes while David Tudor is simultaneously creating electronic sounds that sometimes drown out Cage's voice. The rest of the recordings of Cage speaking that are comparatively easily available are, for the most part, less discursive and more abstract. Mode Records has a couple of 2-CD sets: Roaratorio (which includes the hour-long horspiel done for one of the German radio stations, Cage reciting "Writing for the 2nd Time Through Finnegans Wake" which forms the basis for the horspiel, & LaughTears an interview about the process of making Roaratorio from Writing Through) & The Text Pieces 1 (which includes "Series re Morris Graves," "What You Say" & (my favorite of the set) "Art is Either a Complaint or Do Something Else"). The book publication of the Harvard lectures Cage gave (I-VI) includes recordings of one of the talks and a question & answer session (on cassette in the older hardcover edition, on CD in the newer paperback). There's also a historical recording of Cage reciting a long section of Empty Words, which is made up of parts of words from Thoreau's diaries, before an increasingly restless audience in Italy. This was originally released by the Italian label Cramps & has been reissued a couple of times, most of which releases have been cut out. Since you're interested in interviews and anecdotes, this may not be what you have in mind, but it's a remarkable instance of fortitude in the face of some angry audience members. There are also lots of excerpts of Cage talks on various compilations, & several other composers have used recordings of his voice in works of their own, but this should get you started. Bests, Herb -- Herb Levy Mappings: new music in RealAudio P O Box 9369 Forth Wort, TX 76147 USA http://antennaradio.com/mappings/show.htm mappings@antennaradio.com New music auctions: <http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=hrebll>