In college, I was asked by my best friend, Bert Bottorff, to host a radio program after his "Baroque Hour" on WRVU, the campus radio station......I had recently discovered the NONESUCH contemporary music recordings and was eager to acquire avante guarde recordings......costly for a college student......Bert informed me that, as a programmer of music for our college station, I could purchase just about every available recording in the Schwann Catalogue for $2/ea......That did it! My taste for grand, Romantic music......Polenc, Chopin, Rachmaninov, Lizst and Tchaikovsky was supplanted by a fashionable interest in Varese, Stockhausen, Cage and Subotnik.......Students would call during my program, to complain about all the rubbish and noise that I was piping to their dorms late at night......Bert's program, which preceded my hour, was so conservative that it's audiences were startled, angry birds when my more abrasive material followed........Stockhausen was especially despised!......ten years later, I had moved into the "real" world and worked as a dancing, singing artist/waiter at a Hungarian restaurant that offered diverse live music to accompany diners.....The Atlanta Boy's Choir, in the courtyard with pleasantly unchanged voices serenading, as patrons gobbled Veal Paprikash......Cathy Baker and Robert Ray belting out Broadway tunes.....and Judy Beattie, supposedly hired to play muzacky harp music.......Before opening one Saturday evening, I heard some strange music from the bar, where another friend, Timmie Silver bartendered.......Cathy doing improvisational Stockhausen........Sure to be a big hit with diners....yeah, sure!..........The Restaurant, decorated like a Hungarian Gypsy caravan cabin, incidentally, was short lived.......The current restaurant.....a trendy meat and potatoes snore.....subscribes to programmed music....like my dentist's office!
an old tree, fallen,
