Word: tubas
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...bandstand may support a ricky-tick piano, a musical saw, or a tuba-but it is the multiple banjos that reign. The crowds, like the proprietors, are mainly collegiate, and they sing along enthusiastically while the banjos plunk out the immemorially cubic rhythms of Hold That Tiger! or Sweet Georgia Brown. The whole wholesome atmosphere is enough to make the massed inhabitants of the beatnik colony at Sausalito slouch toward the sea like lemmings...
Cage's self-styled "anarchistic situation" lasted for 30 minutes and was titled Theatre Piece. The composer himself stood in a corner with his back to the flimsy curtain. On the badminton-court-sized stage were eight performers confronting a weird assortment of props: a grand piano, a tuba, a trombone, a cluster of plastic bags hanging by a thin wire and dripping colored water into a washtub, a swing, a string of balloons, a pair of bridge tables littered with the debris of some nightmarish New Year's Eve-champagne bottle in bucket, movie projector, alarm clock...
...bridge tables popped the champagne bottle, set off the alarm clock, threw streamers and lighted sparklers. "Fifteen!" cried Cage, and Sneakers (Dancer Merce Cunningham) rushed forth petulantly snipping at his hair with scissors while the pianist (David Tudor) polished the piano strings with a buffer and the tuba player (Don Butterfield) stripped to the waist, slipped on a jacket and had a drink...