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from 1995-2005. No updates have been made since a special program in 2015.
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Chronicle of the NonPop Revolution


 
The Essay
Show #54
Full Moon and Elgar
David Gunn
Bon radio, and welcome to the Full Moon show. Preparations here in the sesquistudios are well underway to usher in the full strawberry-kiwi moon in just under 30 minutes. Members of the Consortium of Avant Astronomers are manning a kiosk jam-packed with idiosyncratic data analyzers to record the event. Banks of lasermorphs, hypothegraphs, CD-tweezers and astrolabes are already hard at work chronicling all but the wackiest of lunar peculiarities. Five famous cartoonists are rendering the event in ballpoint. A food court -- naturally off limits to us -- has been erected to feed those observers not obsessed with the skyward spectacle. The Moslem hot dog vendor, Nathan's of Islam, has festooned his food cart with life-sized moon craters. Bats, sensing the excitement in the air, are already beginning to swoon. A lone astrologer, his sign dictated by condensation on the fabric of the space-time continuum, awaits input from his crystals. Spread before him in a pattern identical to a winning hand of Whiskers six-draw, their multifarious facets reflect only redundant radio test patterns, hot dog wrappers, and the occasional ping of freshly redolent bat guano. If you, our listening audient, cannot personally attend this important event, we urge you to stay tuned to this channel for the best in radiophonic play-by- play.

Fifty-seven years ago today, the Museum of Non-Objective Art opened in New York City. Before it was renamed the Guggenheim and shunted to the Frank Lloyd Wright souvenir boutique pavilion in which it is now located, M'NOA featured portfolioed artisans and culinary academy drop-outs presenting works of art in the nominative and possessive cases only -- the transcendental School of Pluperfect had yet to be discovered. Walt Whitman first displayed his "Samplers" at MuNon-ObArt, as did his mentor, Clint Eastwood. Alfred Deller and Thomas Hardy, who never actually set foot in the joint, nonetheless sent out hundreds of invitations to a performance of the early Irish settler, O'Banky the Coot who, you'll recall from Episode 39, was the founder of the distasteful school of mimimery. To her credit, Marilyn Monroe -- who is 70 years old today and living a low-key life in the Tennessee suburbs -- never cared for mimes, though she did employ one as an au pair for her father, Brigham Young, who serendipitously also first tasted success at a wine and cheese reception at the Museum of NOA. From such queer roots hath the Guggenheim sprouted modern art, often mistaken, through no fault of its own, for le flambeau oriange.

Well, while full moon preparations continue, let me take this opportunity to wish a happy 256th birthday to the Marquis de Sade, and hope he's recovering from that painful hamstring pull he sustained while setting fire to the ever-squabbling Elgar family. Let me also wish a happy episode #54 to us, Kalvos & Damian, formerly, currently and pluperfectly of the New Music Sesquihour, this portion of which is being brought to you in the non-objectively, which differs substantially from a non-objectionably, which to this day continues to escape us.

And let us now escape into the nether world of ... oh, never mind. Let's just get this full moon on the road. Ready, Kalvos?