Friday 25 February 2022

E - 'the assault of the nancy kerrigan'

here horsemouth retitles the piece in the style of john fahey (as if it were a historical event, made into a piece of program music for parlour guitar).

'program music is a type of instrumental art music that attempts to render an extra-musical narrative musically. the narrative itself might be offered to the audience through the piece's title, or in the form of program notes, inviting imaginative correlations with the music.' says wikipedia. 

the opposite to this would be absolute music where the formal properties of the music and its development provide the interest. 

an example of program music would be the battle of prague , op.23 (by františek kocžwara) widely derided as the worst piece of music ever. of course giving any piece of music a title encourages people to think about it in a particular way. fahey uses this trick often in his titling. what is going on with the death of the clayton peacock for example?

last night horsemouth watched I, Tonya a film about figure skater (and alleged conspirator to knobble her rival nancy kerrigan) tonya harding. tonya was white trash from portland, oregon. (jesus what a terrible life)

fahey moved to live in salem oregon in 1981 (the state capital - this is my link). he said there would always be money there because there would always be jobs for the bureaucrats. 

oregon (as a state) already has an interesting history 'in december 1844, oregon passed its black exclusion law, which prohibited african americans from entering the territory.'

fahey collaborated often with portland oregon (the largest city) guitarist terry robb. robb was record producer (and sometime accompanist) on eight of fahey's albums between 1982 and 1994 and fahey played on some of his records too and provided the cover for at least one. after 94 fahey's career starts to revive 

here it is a bright sunny morning. horsemouth is contemplating a walk. he hasn't checked the news yet (because he knows it is going to be depressing).

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