Another one of this past century’s musical revolutionaries gone. He charted his own path and followed it, discovering new territory filled with riches.

Whether taken out of context or not, that WTC comment was mind-boggling insensitive. At the time, my hackles went up, for sure. But self-made guru idealist egomaniacs are not known for their tact. As artist/activist William Osborne put it: “Again we see an artist-prophet’s transcendentalist view that art must be a revelation, a process of spiritual death, remorse and rebirth, or it is valueless.”

Later on Stockhausen formally apologized and seemed to genuinely regret hurting the friends and families of those lost in the attack. While I acknowledge his statement’s legitimacy, I hope it doesn’t become his lasting legacy. In my opinion that would reduce him and his accomplishments.

Ooo, Tequila, good call. The Architecture of Doom is a shocking film. Commendable for how rationally and carefully its hypothesis is laid out. We’re so reluctant to address the “cult of beauty” aspect of Nazism and acknowledge the Third Reich as being an aesthetic movement in addition to everything else. It’s hard to imagine an entire group of people being convinced they could return the beauty aesthetics of some idealized Greco-Roman past to the world through supreme acts of violence, negation and ugliness. Hard to imagine, but so important to try… just to understand where that conviction comes from and what human beings are capable of.

He always struck me as the type of person you’d either appreciate off the bat or learn to over time. Though on a purely technical level…it’s hard not to love the man. Kinda like a mad hatter of sound…