Dear Newly initiated, curious and partially informed: I met John Cage a number of times. While it is true that he remauins one of the top authoritites on matters mycological (mushrooms etc.) It is NOT true that he was weird or "King of the Weird" That sobriquet belongs to a lad who once fronted a little band called "The Jackson 5" Who knows what the little pervert is doing , now.   No, Mr. Cage endured study with the absolute strictest of contrapuctalists, Arnold Schoenberg, then went on to the Brussels Exposition in 1958 from which springboard , the late century's late greatness bounced.   Not since the day of Cage, Sessions, Parch,Cunningham etc. has there been an Avante Garde this side of the busy ocean. Possible leeway in that ststement for the likes of Kronos, M.Monk or Laurie Anderson. If you want weird, look up "L's G-A (Gas Mask" (then tell me where to get another copy. A theatre cabaret-sounding "Brecht" is far out. Almost everybody else is trampling eachother to disprove any link to a thinking persons' music (thus, nonweird). Weird is a bad, bad musical term. It implies taste, which any musician worth his own appogiaturra does well to avoid. Try the term: origional, or real when describing our old mushroom-hunting, pomposity-pinching Saint John. Yours in cacophony, minnesinger5