With the news that Sony BMG is dropping DRM from its music and as that final, disgraceful era comes to an end, it’s time to fill out my collection.
David Tudor plays John Cage’s 4’33” in Concert
While the end of restrictions on how and where you play the music you purchase digitally is in sight, there’s still a real need to take the last hundred years of so of recorded music and get it into online stores so we can buy it! Some of the most important works of the 20th century still have not gotten the exposure they deserve.
I usually don’t care much for custom ringtones, but I’d buy this one in an instant.
I’m kinda sad that that dream remains a dream. The only recording of this work I could find on Amazon was a 15 minute extended dance remix of 4’33”, and considering that was off an album called “Necessity is the M*f*r of Invention”, it was probably a remix of Frank Zappa’s recording of it on the “A Chance Operation: A John Cage Tribute” album.
You can buy Zappa’s recording of it, by the way, from eMusic, which splits it into fivedifferent movements you must buy separately, which I feel is a little unusual and probably jarring, since the original piece has only three movements.
Amazon does sell the entire tribute album including the full opus in dead plastic form, but finding it digitally as one piece? Not yet. Hopefully soon.
Until then, I guess I’ll just plant these earbuds in my ears and hum it to myself.
Starting… NOW.
I didn’t know Johnny Cage was a musician! I always thought he was just the crotch-punching guy in Mortal Kombat… kidding.
Always wondered what John Cage had done after he decked Arthur Fiedler in that one-on-one grudge match back in ’79.