4'33

Dear James,

Here's some stuff I watched on youtube when I was supposed to be working. John Cage is a man I've always confused with John Cale. Even when writing his name just now, I accidentally wrote John Cale. I long for them to be one and the same man, as this would mean John Cale was a musical god whose genius stretched over five decades taking in everything from avant-garde nonsense to great, viola-driven pop. A bit like Cliff Richard, only without the avant-garde nonsense and the viola-driven pop.

Up above is some fella doing his 4'33. Click here and you can see some other fella playing his Suite for Toy Piano, a suite so complex it has parts that can't actually be played on a toy piano. Alternatively, or concurrently, click here for a man playing Cage's Dream on an unfeasibly large set of xylophones. Read more about John Cage here. And for a further appreciation of my Cale/Cage confusion, click here for Cocaine by JJ Cale. I don't know what Stanley Unwin's doing at the start of the video, but then Stanley Unwin is a bit of a law unto himself. I often get him mixed up with LS Lowry.