Miskatonic University Press

Make my Glass the P-Glass

music philip.glass

Jaron Lanier jamming

Last Saturday I saw Jaron Lanier jamming with Rick Sacks at the Arraymusic studio downtown. Rick's a percussionist, and you can see him in action in these videos.

There were only about ten people at the show, including Tim Knight, a cataloguer friend and colleague who has an exciting blog about KF Modified (the Canadian law classification scheme). The studio's small and it was quite informal and improvisational. Lanier and Sacks just made it up as they went, and there were many times when they got into something really interesting. Sacks played all different kinds of percussion; Lanier played piano, a small Chinese harp, and several different kinds of flutes. Another fellow played drums and percussion on a couple of songs, too. Lanier told some good stories. I enjoyed it very much. It's always worth it to see two really talented musicians improvising together.

I saw in Lanier's Wikipedia entry that he's collaborated with, among others, both Philip Glass and George Clinton. Not at the same time. But what if those two did collaborate? What if Glass wrote a based on Clinton's work, the way he turned David Bowie's "Heroes" into Symphony No. 4? I think the lyrics might go something like this: 

We want the funk give up the funk
We want the funk give up the funk
We want the funk give up the funk
We want the we want the
We want the we want the
We want the give up the
Give up the give up the
We want we want we want we want
We want we want we want we want
Give up the give up the funk
Give up the give up the funk
Give up the give up the funk
We want we want we want we want
We want we want we want we want
Give up the give up the funk
Give up the give up the funk
Give up the give up the funk
We want we want we want we want
We want we want we want we want
Give up we want give up we want
We want we want we want we want