With two soundless tracks likely to storm the charts in the coming weeks, radio silence may be a feature of Christmas 2010, with BRIAN BOYD
YOU WAIT AGES for a silent song to come along and then two arrive at the same time. Between now and Christmas two “songs” that contain no sound whatsoever could be unlikely chart-toppers. Whether they will be played by radio stations is another matter. But the news will come as sweet relief to those whose eardrums are being battered daily by the usual loud hip hop and R & B songs that feature in the charts.
To mark Remembrance Sunday in the UK on November 7th a number of people, including the prime minister, David Cameron, the Radiohead singer Thom Yorke and the actor Bob Hoskins, will feature in the charity single Two Minute Silence. The track is just that: two minutes of silence. The accompanying video shows Cameron, Yorke and Hoskins simply staring at the camera.
The idea behind the song is to give people a chance to reflect on the human cost of war.
As the track goes on sale on iTunes on November 7th it is likely to be the following week’s number one in the UK. All proceeds go to the Royal British Legion, which helps military veterans.
Given the number of Irish people who fought in the British armed forces during the world wars and who are still fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the track will probably sell strongly in this country as well.
When people buy the track on iTunes (the Irish price is €1.29) they will receive the audio track and the accompanying video. A 10-second preview of the video is available on YouTube if you search for “2 Minute Silence”.
The track is based on the famous composition 4'33", by the avant-garde musician John Cage. Composed in 1952 and consisting of four minutes and 33 seconds of silence, the piece has been performed numerous times over the years.
It might well be this year’s Christmas number-one single in Ireland and the UK as a Facebook campaign is urging people to buy the track in the week before Christmas, so that it beats the song released by this year’s X Factor winner. A similar Facebook campaign last year resulted in the metal band Rage Against the Machine outselling the X Factor winner Joe McElderry in the Irish and British charts.
The Facebook page, called John Cage's 4'33"for Christmas Number One 2010 but more popularly known as Cage Against the Machine, already has more than 40,00 followers.
If, as seems likely, Cage’s piece is to be the Christmas number one in Ireland and the UK, it poses a technical problem for radio stations that play the track. When the BBC Symphony Orchestra played the piece during a concert in 2004, the performance was carried live on BBC Radio 3. Engineers had to stop the radio station’s computers from automatically playing emergency-standby music when their software detected the silence – the dreaded “dead air” – of the performance.
There is, however, nothing truly silent about either Cage's 4'33" or the Royal British Legion's Two Minute Silence. Cage was always at pains to point out that 4'33"was not four minutes and 33 seconds of silence; he said the experience consists of listening to the background noise in the room around you as the piece is "played".
Cage, who died in 1992, regarded the track as his most important work. For him it was a meditation on what sounds qualify as music.
It was the subject of a bizarre court case in 2002 when Mike Batt, the songwriter responsible for the Wombles and Katie Melua's The Closest Thing to Crazy, was sued for copyright infringement by the Cage estate. Batt had released a song called A One Minute Silence, which he credited to Batt/Cage. The album it appeared on was a big seller and the Cage estate argued that it was entitled to receive royalties. In an out-of-court settlement Batt paid a six-figure sum, though he remained defiant, saying: "I have been able to say in one minute what Cage could only say in four minutes and 33 seconds."
See britishlegion.org.uk and facebook.com/ cageagainstthemachine
