John Cage & Lejaren Hiller - HPSCHD/ Ben Johnston - String Quartet No. 2 (Nonesuch, 1969)

Poor Ben Johnston. You wouldn't think there'd be much reason to feel sorry for an avant garde composer who'd studied with John Cage, Darius Milhaud, and Harry Partch, held down a musical professorship for over 30 years, and become a respected enough name in just-intonation/microtonality that the Kronos Quartet would have a standing offer to record all of his String Quartets. The second of those quartets appeared on this album released by one of the most respected labels in New Music, and is a substantive, powerful piece, so no worries there. Where exactly did this Georgia-born composer go wrong, then? He was unlucky enough to be on side two of a record whose first side contained HPSCHD.

John Cage and Lejaren Hiller's piece has gained such status over the years that there's an upcoming tribute to/performance of it coming up soon for its 35th anniversary. The piece itself is as heavy as its reputation. While many of Cage's works involving random chance processes have a minimalist quality, HPSCHD is at the other end of the spectrum, about as maximalist as you can get. As you might guess from the title, it's based around the harpsichord, or in this case, a whole passel of harpsichords, which simultaneously play various snatches of pieces by old-school classical composers as well as ones by Cage, along with a series of computer-generated tapes prepared by Cage.

There's an interview with Lou Reed from back when he released his notorious Metal Machine Music album (to which I've always been partial), where he claims that while the untrained ear might just hear a lot of white noise (no pun intended) in MMM, there are in fact many fragments of classic compositions hidden within the dense harmonics, if you listen hard enough. While I have serious doubts about this claim, that's exactly what Cage and Hiller have achieved with HPSCHD, a kind of harbinger of sampling on one hand, and a huge, sonic equivalent of a Pollock painting on the other. Imagine being able to see every star in the universe simultaneously. Then imagine what that might sound like. Dashes of conventional melodies, harmonies, and timbres peek out from either channel (each one contains completely different material), briefly raising their heads above the water even as they're mashed into a huge, polyharmonic sea of sound.

You've also got to love the fact that the original LP came with a fold-out insert that contains Cage's own computer-generated, extremely detailed instructions for how to adust your stereo's tone and speaker controls at each point during the piece to achieve maximum impact. There's something you won't get with the latest Philip Glass CD. As for poor Ben Johnston, his extremely interesting and striking string quartet was doomed from the get-go to play second fiddle (pun partially intended) on a record that would forever be known simply as the one that contains HPSCHD.

PS - A special shoutout to my man Morty for focusing my attention on this album.

Good & Plenty - The World Of Good & Plenty (Senate, 1967)

The duo of Doug Good and Ginny Plenty (you gotta love it) released their sole album on a label I've never heard of, but there was obviously some money behind it, as it was produced, written, and arranged by Wes Farrell and Tony Romeo, famous for their work with the Cowsills, the Partridge Family, and others. Neither Doug nor Ginny is that great of a singer--though interestingly it's he who has the higher voice--so seemingly they were picked to front Farrell and Romeo's project because they looked good in flower-power duds on the front cover. They're good enough to get by, though, and the production and some of the songs are excellent. Like the contemporaneous West Coast male/female duo the Gentle Soul, Good & Plenty are in the slightly baroque soft-pop vein, and a couple of the songs here are as good as almost anything in the genre. You have to sit through the campy faux-vaudeville/music-hall number that for some reason seemed to be a requirement on almost every '60s pop album (how the hell did that trend start anyway?), but the high points are pretty damn high.