There's a facebook campaign the try to get John Cage's 4'33" to number one for xmas and wipe the smug grin off Cowell's face fro a second year running http://www.facebook.com/cageagainstthemachine#!/cageagainstthemachine?v=info
From wiki
On January 16, 2004, at the Barbican Centre in London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the UK's first orchestral performance of this work. The performance was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and one of the main challenges was that the station's emergency backup systems are designed to switch on and play music whenever apparent silence (dead air) lasting longer than a preset duration is detected. They had to be switched off for the sole purpose of this performance.
I'll buy it
Dave
From wiki
4′33″ (pronounced Four minutes, thirty-three seconds or, as the composer himself referred to it, Four, thirty-three[1]) is a three-movement composition[2][3] by American experimental composer John Cage (1912–1992). It was composed in 1952 for any instrument (or combination of instruments), and the score instructs the performer not to play the instrument during the entire duration of the piece throughout the three movements (the first being thirty seconds, the second being two minutes and twenty-three seconds, and the third being one minute and forty seconds). Although commonly perceived as "four minutes thirty-three seconds of silence",[4][5] the piece actually consists of the sounds of the environment that the listeners hear while it is performed.[6] Over the years, 4′33″ became Cage's most famous and most controversial composition.[2]
On January 16, 2004, at the Barbican Centre in London, the BBC Symphony Orchestra gave the UK's first orchestral performance of this work. The performance was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3, and one of the main challenges was that the station's emergency backup systems are designed to switch on and play music whenever apparent silence (dead air) lasting longer than a preset duration is detected. They had to be switched off for the sole purpose of this performance.
I'll buy it
Dave
