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Originally Posted by Nick1976
I joined this forum to discuss about music. As a fan of "hair metal" , I like discussing its rise and fall. What do you want from me? Man I miss the 80s/early 90s good times and good memories. I grew up on heavy metal. love hair metal. Nirvana was **** and I held them responsible for the destruction of rock music. God damn there was some good ****ing rock music in the 80s-early 90s. Rock music was butchered in 90s by media and people who were jealous of rock music's popularity. Late 80s/early 90s for me was the best years ever partying and getting ****ed up and getting laid i miss them days.
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In his famous collection of essays titled Silence, Cage wrote about entering such a chamber at Harvard and hearing two sounds, one high and one low. The engineer of duty informed him that the high-pitched sound was that of his nervous system, the low one that of his blood in circulation. It spurred an epiphany for Cage, one that would focus much of his musical attention on ambient and accidental sounds as opposed to willful, compositional ones. "Until I die, there will be sounds," he wrote, "and they will continue after my death. One need not fear about the future of music. Any sounds may occur in any combination and in any continuity."
As one might expect, many listeners found this view unpalatable, despite the fact that the hall itself could be a metaphor for Cage's ideal union of music and nature. There was an uproar. People thought 4'33" was a joke or some kind of avant-garde nose-thumbing. During a post-concert discussion, as Cage biographer David Revill notes, one local artist stood up and suggested, "Good people of Woodstock, let's drive these people out of town."
But, in fact, Cage's little silent composition was no joke and it would have an incalculable, if characteristically quiet, influence on a great deal of music that came after.
The emerging technology of portable recorders permitted the cataloging and manipulation of environmental sounds by musicians. Composer Steve Reich explored the rhythms of the human voice and of trains. The sound of the ocean was as central to The Who's Quadrophenia as Pete Townshend's thrashing guitar. Brian Eno, who credits Cage with inspiring him to become a composer, recorded a series of so-called "ambient" albums, music of a quietude, designed to compliment rather than compete with the sounds of life. Today hip-hop producers use street noise in their musical fabric and DJs use vinyl LP surface noise to communicate nostalgia and authenticity.
In a sense, Cage gave musicians aesthetic permission, spiritual encouragement even, to go beyond the tonalities of standard instrumentation and engage with the infinite possibilities of sound. While he composed prolifically until his death in 1992 at the age of 79, Cage remained more well-known for his ideas than his music, and the enigmatic 4'33" is the ultimate expression of those ideas.
"The most important piece is my silent piece," he affirmed. "I always think of it before I write the next piece." One critic called it "the pivotal composition of this century." Pianist David Tudor called it "one of the most intense listening experiences you can have."
But all this puts a weightiness on 4'33" that seems at odds with its playful sense of simply being allied to the world. As Cage writes at the end of his Silence, "I've spent many pleasant hours in the woods conducting performances of my silent piece, transcriptions — that is, for an audience of myself."' By inviting us to do the same, Cage transformed the art of music, and the art of listening, irrevocably.