Cage’s 4’33 & the UK Pop Charts

Check out Greg Sandow’s blog on this. Opening paras below. Full story here.

“Support is building like a tidal wave,” says the Daily Telegraph in Britain, about a wonderful, unlikely, but conceivably successful project — to push a recording of John Cage’s 4’33” (his famous silent piece) to the top of the British pop chart.

This is a protest action, a way of resisting what many in the UK feel is manipulation of the pop charts by Simon Cowell. Read all about it here, in a BBC News story. Last year, to keep Cowell from getting his hand-picked song to No. 1, a group of pop music people started a movement — which succeeded! — to get a song by Rage Against the Machine to the top instead. Building on that success, they now want to put John Cage on top.

Which is just a wonderful idea. And, according to the Daily Telegraph, the British online betting site Ladbroke’s puts the odds against the plan succeeding at only 5 to 1.

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