Bill Fay: Bill Fay and Time of the Last Persecution (Eclectic Discs)
by David ShirleyMusic
Peace be in your breath and in your sighing.
Peace be in your jack and in your blade.
And peace be in your Sunday picnic
And your old school friends who’ve passed away.
But tell it like it is.
The Fall: Fall Heads Roll
by Donald BreckenridgeMusic
Mark E. Smith—a well-read dockworker and the self-professed psychic son of a plumber—had his brain lit up by the seemingly endless possibilities of punk’s first wave and, more important, its American roots in the late-'60s sonic garage assaults of The Stooges and the demonic blues howls of Captain Beefheart.
Charles Ives’s Universe Symphony, Finally
by Richard KostelanetzMusic
The premiere of Johnny Reinhard’s realization of Charles Ives’s Universe Symphony, at Alice Tully Hall on June 6, 1996, is still justly remembered as counting among the great concerts of the 1990’s. It included dozens of “downtown” performers, including flautist Andrew Bolotowsky, percussionist Slip La Plante, violinist Tom Chiu, and pianist Joshua Pierce, most of them working out of an appreciation of Reinhard’s effort to produce Ives’s final, purportedly unfinished piece.
