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CD
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CRS 103CD
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2002 reissue; originally released in 1974 as number three in the Nova Musicha series. Robert Ashley's minimal masterpiece centered on John Barton Wolgamot's experimental book-length poem "In Sarah, Mencken, Christ and Beethoven There Were Men and Women." It consists of one sentence repeated over and over, and the only changes from sentence to sentence are that different names are inserted -- "In their very truly great manners of Jesus Christ very heroically Geoffrey Chaucer, Rupert Brooke . . ." Ashley's fascinating liner notes to this album offer a very reasonable interpretation of the very bizarre text. And the music? It's wonderful -- Ashley and Paul DeMarinis's electronics bubble in the background, and Wolgamot's words sound beautiful when read by Ashley, who delivers the text in his usual sprechstimme-on-downers style.
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