Merce Cunningham died a few days ago, and if I hadn’t felt then as though I were dying myself, I would have noted the event here.

I just spent 20 minutes crawling all over the internet for information about the Cunningham show I saw in, I think, 2003, but I can’t find it, so I’m relying on memory. In any event, it was at UCLA Live, with Cunningham and assorted UCLA students performing against music by Eric Satie. I love Satie’s music, and was interested in Cunningham because I was just beginning to grasp the allure of dance, and there was a third great name associated with all this that I now can’t recall. (And can’t find.) Was it John Adams? William S. Burroughs? Robert Wilson? I can’t remember. In any event, I remember that the dance seemed to consist largely of standing or sitting, understandable for the then-84 Cunningham, but perhaps less so for the 20ish collaborators.

Cunningham was the house guest of someone I knew, so a small party of us went back to the house.  The hosts had spared no expense in putting on a suitable event for their honored guest. I remember at one point the host looked over and saw Cunningham sitting alone on the couch and gasped, “Why isn’t anyone talking to Merce?!?!?!” I had already been over talking to Merce, sitting alone beside him for 20 minutes during which I discovered two things: that I had nothing much to say, and neither apparently did he. Perhaps everyone else had had the same experience. Maybe it’s difficult to strike up a conversation with a minimalist.

I wish that I had met him a year or two later. Because in 2004, for a variety of reasons, I had what I’ve since called “The Year of Dance.” My background is theatre, and mostly the literary end. By that point in my life I was feeling a little burned out on theatre, but was saved by some students with an interest in dance. Over the course of that year, I worked with a dance choreographer on a play I was directing, wound up going to two hip-hop conventions, got involved with a dance-film festival, joined the advisory board of a fledgling dance company, attended the American Choreography Awards, fell in with a multi-Tony-winning dance legend, went to amazing launch events at places like the Music Box and the Key Club, and cheered up Toni Basil over drinks when she was feeling forgotten and unrecognized because I remembered both her music and all her choreography with Devo and Talking Heads and David Bowie, and so much more. The dance people and the dance shows and the dance parties were great, great fun. I came out of that year with a deep appreciation and gratitude for an artform I’d known little about. And a deep respect for dancers, who are a talented, disciplined, driven breed.

I wish it had been after that year that I’d had 20 minutes alone with Merce Cunningham. Because then I’m sure I would have had something to talk about.

I thought we had finally reached the peak of the Michael Jackson hagiography when Motown founder Berry Gordy called Michael Jackson “the greatest entertainer who ever lived.”

But that was too soon. Because later Al Sharpton claimed that Barack Obama (somehow) got elected because of Michael Jackson. Which threw the Jackson legacy into an even greater hyperbolic orbit.

But that was nothing compared to this:  I then heard a man interviewed on the radio who said, “Some day people will look back and wish they could have known what it was like to be alive at the same time as Michael Jackson.” Kind of like… Jesus. Or the Buddha.

This shouldn’t need saying, but here goes:  Michael Jackson was a talented singer, and songwriter, and dancer. That’s it; no more. He was also someone with an unnatural interest in children and a freakish desire for more and more radical plastic surgery designed to erase any trace of his facial heritage. And both elements — the career success, the personal carnival — form the Janus-like face of his celebrity.

Our culture’s current fascination with him is similar to the morbid interest many of us held for Howard Hughes in the 1970’s. After Hughes’ death, I remember reading every article I could find for more information about the reclusive behavior, the unclipped fingernails and toenails, the carefully stored and labeled rows of mason jars of urine. For a big Halloween party of that period, I went as Howard Hughes, taking care to paint broken hypodermic needles onto my arms and to carry a box of Kleenex around so I could dust every surface.

Whatever Michael Jackson’s musical triumphs, he looms large in our collective subconscious because we cannot stop wondering just what is wrong with someone with that much talent and money.

Today while I was playing that Phosphene River CD in my car, my six-year-old son chimed in from the back seat, “Dad, this is the terriblest song I ever heard.”

When I ordered the new Unknown Instructors CD, the nice folks at Smog Veil were good enough to send me three other bonus CDs as well. And now I find that I’m falling in love with this one, Phosphene River, which features spoken word artist Dan McGuire slinging Morphine-like words and sounds over a variety of talented and mostly heavy bands.

Here’s the one I cannot get out of my head. I love this. Brace yourself.

390 Degrees of Simulated Stereo was the first Pere Ubu album I bought — and I bought it on vinyl. I remember slapping that onto the turntable in the house that I shared with my then-girlfriend (now wife) shared in Ocean City and getting absolutely blown away by the sonic roar that came from the speakers. I have that album on CD now too, but the impact isn’t the same. So I do understand the allure of vinyl, and some of the possible causes for its apparent rise from the grave, as documented in this piece from the LA Times. But let’s take a moment to remember why some of us were so glad to get to cassette tapes (and then CDs, and then digital files):

1. Just try playing a vinyl record in your car. Hit one bump and it’s all over.
2. I have several Pere Ubu albums on my iPhone, always by my side. Now imagine my stapling the vinyl versions onto my belt and walking around with them. Wouldn’t work so well.
3. With digital downloads, you don’t run the risk of accidentally having to see the cover of Frampton Comes Alive again. Now imagine flipping through your records and seeing it there.
4. My digital download of David Byrne & Brian Eno’s last album will never get mold on it. Which I can’t say for my old Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band album.
5. I don’t need boxes to store all the downloads.
6. I don’t have to get up to flip a download to side two.
7. Finally (although I could go on in this vein), I’ve never played had digital download develop a heart-rending big frickin’ scratch all the way across it after just one play. Which is precisely what seemed to happen with every brand-new LP circa 1979.

No, I was glad to see cassette tapes arrive, and even gladder for CD’s. To me, this vinyl craze is yet another reminder that the past wasn’t that golden, and some of us are glad to have left it behind.

Frank Zappa is dead, but judging from some news coverage this week his legacy is doing nicely.

That’s despite (or because of?) his widow’s propensity for suing people who play his music live without authorization. (So, Zappa Plays Zappa, featuring son Dweezil, is sanctioned. Others? Not so much.) Problem is, the law does not seem to be on her side.

This controversy and more is covered in an NPR piece from yesterday. Here’s the link, where you can read the transcript or, better yet — listen to the story complete with Zappa music.  You have no idea my thrill at hearing sections of “Lumpy Gravy” and “We’re Only in it For the Money” coming from the radio in my car and not a CD. Dropped as it was on me in such a surprising way, I was struck again my Zappa’s inventive genius. As Rolling Stone’s David Fricke is quoted in this piece, “It’s almost as if Frank Zappa was writing avant-garde classical music in Top 40 segments.” I think that’s about right. Forty years later, it’s still astonishing.

The other bit of Zappa news is this: Forget Nostradamus, who couldn’t predict his way back to wherever he left his car. It’s Frank Zappa who laid out the fundamentals and business model for filesharing and iTunes — back in 1989. And now he’s getting some credit for it.

In honor of the mistreated guy at A.I.G., today’s music video is “March of Greed” by Pere Ubu, animated by the Brothers Quay.

(And why does the band Pere Ubu sing about “Pere Ubu”? Because the band is named after the character, and this video is taken from “Bring Me The Head Of Ubu Roi,” an adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s “Ubu Roi.” Which had better come to L.A., or I warn you, someone will pay the price.)

By the way, if you like the song — and who wouldn’t? — you can download it free here.

Brian Eno and David Byrne on their multi-decade collaboration, and why, for Eno, Frank Zappa provides an example of precisely what not to do in music.