Program #87, January 17 2002: Unthemed / year in review / look back in anger / it's full of stars / in memoriam / and so forth.

About this time last year, I did an unthemed program centered around the "best albums of 2000" concept. Even though I'm philosophically uncomfortable with making "best of" lists (did I really listen to everything, even if I could afford to, so as to speak with authority? and if I did, how would I avoid just ratifying my preexisting tastes? and do I really want to put on the tastemaker hat any more than necessary?), I talked myself into the idea for various reasons, and it didn't turn out badly; I played good stuff and put on a decent program. Afterward, though, I realized the program had been much more about the geography of the inside of my head, my listening habits, and my touchstones for getting Prisms rolling during 2000, than it was about any kind of definitive "best of". So, I thought, fine: I won't make that mistake again.

2001 was, however, a pretty... breathtaking year. 9/11 played hell with the American psyche in ways that are globally obvious. The obligatory ...Space Odyssey nostalgia brought it home to everyone not only that we are finally post-millennial -- which brings with it a certain kind of psychic refractoriness all by itself -- but also that the 21st century ain't very close to what They promised it was gonna look like. Many musical figures died, most notably (from my POV) Iannis Xenakis; despite the fact that, realistically speaking, he was already lost to us for health reasons significantly before 2001, his final departure is an incalculable loss. For me personally, the year was jam-packed with logistical and emotional turbulence, and we won't pick up that tar baby here. Finally, a hell of a lot of good albums came out, many of them without a good chance to crack the playlist by year's end.

Soooo.... I thought I'd put together some kind of valedictory wrap-up of 2001, and this was it. The first hour was mostly devoted to tracks from albums that came out (or were re-released) in 2001 that I hadn't gotten to yet -- some because they'll be featured a little later on (e.g., the Nono will soon pop up in the 20th-century Theatre Pieces series), others because I just hadn't yet come up with a good context for using them (e.g., the Willers -- which claims it's a 2000 release, but I think the American release was in 2001 -- that's when I found it, anyway!), others because I committed a colossal act of Duh and just never got around to using them (e.g., the Shimada, the DAE). I wouldn't call that hour a "best of" list, but it was a "some of the best of that I haven't played yet". To start off the hour, though, I played a couple of tracks that made any further commentary about the ...Space Odyssey business, as well as my personal life, more or less unnecessary: the first, a substitute opening piece, and the second, a piece of plunderphonics based on highly processed samples from the 2001 theme, both pretty much summed up the year for me.

In the second hour, I began with Sonic Youth's New York City Ghosts and Flowers, a great song on a somewhat uneven album that has now taken on an incredibly eerie set of associations. The other piece of the hour was Xenakis' La Légende d'Eer, which just happened to be re-released on September 11th; it is partially concerned with the titular figure's (from the conclusion of Plato's Republic) return from the dead after a sojourn in the underworld. This hour's cluster of associations spoke for itself far more eloquently than I ever could.

The third hour was sort of a cross between the first two. During its first half, I played a track from what I thus far consider to be the most important album of 2001: José Maceda's first American release Gongs and Bamboos, which highlights this Philippine composer's amazing synthesis of Asian musical elements with approaches gleaned from Varèse, Xenakis, and the Parisian musique concrète school. His work segued very naturally into Ives' Fourth Symphony, which closes a very particular loop from September: During the last part of that month, the Featured Composer series program on Ives that I'd already scheduled took on a very new dimension, as it opened a channel for celebrating the best things about America during a time of crisis, without descending into some of the kinds of symbolically shallow, easy and unthinking patriotism we've seen since then. But I didn't have time to make it all the way up to the Fourth that night, and even then I was already thinking that perhaps coming back to it at the end of the year might be a good, optimistic way to put 2001 to bed. I kept liking the idea, so I did it.

And that was the end of 2001. Here's hoping 2002 is a better year for everyone.