Cage Music

Yesterday morning I had to listen to a professor called Rainor Neugebauer. He was German. Not that that's a problem and I suppose if you're going to be a professor then thats the kind of name you should have. No, the problem was he was spouting forth about a piece of Music by that old rabble rouser and techno kid, John Cage. You see they were performing a piece called, 'As slow as possible,' and one new note was being played every year in a cathedral and the organ was rigged up with sandbags and pulleys. It was supposed to be all ethereal, creating harmony and rapture in these busy times. Now John Cage might have been a good old stick, but I wouldn't have wanted to go to any of the Cage parties, they must have been really jumping affairs. How do you cop off with someone when the music is that slow, or if he's playing his latest hit 4' 33'' of silence you'd all be standing there like a bunch of lemons. Where's the pogoing? No. Not for me. Now I know all the musical Blah Blah Blah about Cage being minimalist and a Pioneer of Chance music but this is just Bobbins. I do chance music and its crap. If we did the same in publishing we would be laughed out of the artistic and creative world. If I published a 'chance' book with a letter on each page, No that's called the alphabet, and had it read out in a disused church in Ruritania, do you think I would get a four minute slot on Radio 4? I think not. Professor, your clothes have been ripped from your body and you stand naked in front of me. You may not be the emperor but you look just as silly.
And as I was listening to the one note opus I found out that on the Wirral, councillors have voted to close down 13 libraries. Cultural vandalism. Sod Mr Cage and his lack of plink plonk and get this story on the airwaves. Write to Andy Burnham who has the bizarre title of Secretary of state for Culture Media and Sport but heads a department that seems to want to rid our country of libraries. He may not be burning books but it is having the same effect. Book Burning Burnham. It has a kind of ring to it doesn't it?