Offended
Who are you saying has never heard of "Enter Shikari"?
Do you think we live under stones or something?
A motley crew of musicians backed by a Facebook campaign are plotting to hijack the poor beleaguered Christmas number one with a four-minute recording of silence. Following last year's triumphant, internet-bolstered, telly-talent-compo-orthodoxy-upending ascendance of the gleefully inappropriate and profanity-sprinkled Killing …
My missus is a musician, and is into this kind of thing. On being told about 4:33 originally I asked the question. The point of 4:33 is the context of the performance, and each time it's performed it is utterly different. She then said the magic words: background noise.
The X-factor single won't sell any less, the customers are completely separate. Who knows? the X-factor single may sell even more since the fans might be annoyed at the annoyed-at-X-Factor brigade.
Mind you it's probably going to be the best work from Billy Brag and Pete Doherty ever!
In the absence of incidents like last year Simon's puppet masters think of all of us as one giant apathetic amorphous blob. They still think that last year was a one off so they just need to agitate their puppet a bit more to get back to business as usual.
If stuff like last year's X-factor happens more than once and becomes are recurring feature some of the concepts currently taught in management schools may have to be rethought. The concept of "cheap tripe with marketing always wins", the concept of "consumer will always buy something they can be made to associate with" and a few others.
The mere fact that the "consumer" actually can think and results of marketing campaigns are no longer predictable is enough to cause a "brown pants incident" in some circles.
By graphically demonstrating how small and insignificant his work (and indeed the industry) is.
The music industry projects itself as being a big deal. Most of the stuff pumped out isn't popular. As more and more people become disillusioned with it, you see them targeting younger and younger children whose critical faculties are less well developed. They end up promoting sex to pre-teens, which is quite revolting.
Every christmas, all the previous years' Christmas number ones get played, so getting a Christmas No 1 means regular annual royalty income for ever more. Joe McEldry's cover of Hannah Montanna's Climb probably won't ever get played again on radio, because it only reached No. 2 on the Christmas charts, and No 1 on the New Year chart which doesn't count.
The entire point of 4'33" is that it's impossible to stage a performance of it with real musicians present and achieve absolute silence; all the random environmental and human noises which occur within the time period /become/ that performance. The silence is not the important ingredient - it's the lack of silence!
So the imperfections of each copy of Blank Tape make it a unique limited-edition of 1!
Rage Against the Machine is also owned by SonyBMG, I'm sure they loved the fact that people trying to stop their XFactor single reaching number one were paying them for the alternative as well - a win/win for Sony and Cowell, and the anti-capitalist RATM still made a healthy profit from it.
At least all profits from this one will go to charity, although I prefer Surfin' Bird for number one as it would be funnier for the XFactor song to be beaten by it. Be even better if both outsold the XFactor dross and it only made number 3. Either way, unfortunately the XFactor song will still make it to number one the week after.
But, yes, poor Mike Batt. He only did a minute, as well, which is different from John Cage's and we've been using a minute's silence in war memorial services since long before Cage thought of it. On the other hand, Batt referred to Cage by punning on Cage's name in the credit. And insulted him. Well, so do I insult him. 4-33" is far and away the best thing that Cage ever created. He should not have bothered with anything else.
I would tape it off the radio too but I bet the DJ talks over it.
I wonder if Koka Media ever sued Mr. Batt over his 1 Minute offering, as their musical effects disc KOK2057 titled Pastiche, Carnage, Sabotage 2, released in 1991, has the track "A Minutes Silence", lasting for 1 Minute, listed as track 18 on said disc...
(Needless to say, I acquired a second hand copy of said disc a couple of years ago).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHnL7aS64Y
If we can get a few people to actually listen to their environment for a few minutes, that would actually be worth something.
I don't care that about X-Factor, or charts in general... but
CAGE FTW!
Infinitely more valuable than some intensely annoying novelty tune.
... to sue for copyright infringements and seek massive fines from anyone and anything remaining completely silent for any period of time.
The Syndicate Of Deceased People has initiated an emergency meeting to brainstorm on a solution to the problem.
Meanwhile, sales of metal spoons and pans rocket among alive and panicked population.
The Government, bending over the industry and screwing the electorate in the process as usual, declared any minutes of silence henceforth outlawed, and immediately replaced any instance with minutes of ear-splitting screams as a temporary solution. the will be reviewed after the imminent release of the "ear-splitting screams" album which is expected to reach platinum status within a week due to overwhelming demand by dumb consumers with no tastes whatsoever.
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Well, the John Cage estate *successfully* sued Mike Batt for copyright infringement when he included a track of 1 min silence on one of his albums.
I wonder if the people behind this effort have cleared it with the estate ... or are they going to find all the money they thought would go to charity being seized as royalties.
I read the story and thought it was a nice, silly idea; a bit of cheerful whimsy on a cold Friday. Then I read all the comments and all the conflicting opinions have made me scared and tired. I've been at work for an hour and done nothing except think about the Christmas no. 1 in endless, excruciating, recursive fractal detail. I feel unpleasantly stoned. Worse, I don't know what to think at all now because I've got Surfing Bird and Make Me Smile going round and round my head.
The article was like a delicious plate of oysters infected with a comment thread of norovirus.
I don't care who it's performed by or whether it's an accurate rendition of Cage's meisterverk. All I want is for it reach number one.
I don't want that because " some wonk on Facebook told you to." I want that because it sticks it up that bog-brush-haired smarmy scumshite Cowell and the trite synthetic garbage that fuels his rich-boy life while impoverishing the culture the rest of us live in.
I intend to put my 79p (or whatever) where my hate-filled mouth is even though I obviously don't want a 'recording' of silence.
Christmas? Bah. Humbug.
At least a period of quiet would be better than the dreary funeral like dirges that we are subjected to by every ill informed shop keeper in the country. Its HORRIBLE. Carols and Christmas songs that would be far more suited to 'celebrating' the death of a much loved relative than they are for the supposedly joyful events we are supposedly partying for.
Frankly the older I get the less I appreciate having my ears bombarded by appaling Christmas music - it drives me AWAY from the shops, I hasten around and grab what I can and run away. I suspect I'm not the only one.
I'd love Christmas music to be banned. I enjoy the celebration, but the dirge is horrible.