If controlled drug use was a compositional factor, then remember what we
are being told now is that the dead c are _now_ improvisers. Their early
stuff may have resembled tailored compositions, and you might be able to
make a case for their later "improvisation" as composition+variables a
la Stockhausen's strict instructions to his player in "The Seven Days"
stuff (conveniently re-visited in the same Wire issue, providing a
healthy contrast between S'.s experiments (control freak that he is),
with the smell and general presence of the Dead C on stage, which I
don't think the Wire quite conveyed). Sure the dead look like they're in
a stupor, but you can hear it as go-with-the-flow-stuff -- any ape can
improvise the way they do, to revisit and old angle on modern art --
it's not that I don't like modern art, more that I prefer the good
stuff, the interesting, challenging, you know, the simply sketches that
have _something_ in it -- it's almost magical and usually very well
executed.
Which comes down to again, another old red herring, virtuosity. These
guys cannot think the sounds they wish to create beyond the obvious
limits of both the rock instruments (for instance the guaranteed
harmonics when guitar strings resonate back to the amps -- this stuff
comes with the machinery) and their own ability to do anything
interesting with the instruments. It is obvious watching them that they
are thinking, but it's like watching a new born foal trying to walk --
they have little real control over what they unleash -- A Cage type
thing to do perhaps, but not very interesting -- Cage was aprox. 1000
times more unpredictable.
To see them on stage, you don't get the feeling they're delicately
crafting anything a la what Hamish had to say about their early music.
Now they're "improvisers" -- they'll have a hard time re-defining that
term, and if they turned up at most "improv" sessions in NY doing what
they call "improvisation" they'd be too loud and might even get beaten
up. That arrogance might have something to do with simply being out of
control.

George Gosset
Christchurch
New Zealand

de...@usa.net wrote:
>
> >   It is The Dead C.s own attempts to align themselves with these various
> > continuums of noise making be they jazz-based or from wherever else they
> > mean that I find truly offensive and disrespectful and pretentious. The
> > use of pitch and other controllable variables (which includes the
> > compositions of Cage) distinguishes the loose "drugs and concentration"
> > music of the Dead C very distinctly from these greater forms of noise.
>
> how do you know that they don't treat their own drug-intake as a
> controllable variable?