Program #33, December 21 2000: Unthemed.

Another allegedly unthemed program that, like program #31, was really more themed than not. I realized during late November that today is Frank Zappa's 60th birthday, rather too late to publicize a specifically all-Zappa program. Nevertheless, the idea wouldn't let go, and I ended up putting together a semi-review of Zappa's "serious" music that also touched on his popular material, influences by other composers (I apologize for the long break in which I read Zappa's article about Varèse, but you have to admit, it's a great little article), and pieces by other composers in memoriam of Zappa. The limited degree to which I picked up on the role of political stances in Zappa's work gave me an excuse to play something I'd been wanting to put into the mix for a while -- Andriessen's De Staat, which underscores a particular view of music-in-society starting from Plato's discussions of these matters in The Republic -- and then, just for the hell of it, I threw in a few minutes worth of The Conet Project's shortwave numbers stations recordings as a teaser for the first program of 2001.