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Dbass,
In Cage's defense - look at the piece not as music, but as art. Does the artistic idea lay in the performance of the piece, or in the conceptualization of it? No one is going to go to an entire concert of a piece that is 600 years long, but it sort of does challenge your ideas of what can be art and what can't. Similarly, Cage's piece 4'33" may be a total bore, but on first performance, the idea must have been shocking. Think about it - an unsuspecting audience left with nothing but their own thoughts and observations for four and a half minutes... The value of confronting people with their own inability (or ability, of course) to be quiet and consider their own inner thoughts was extraordinary. Of course, it would only work once - and future audience that had heard of the piece would never buy into it like the first ones did. That doesn't make me distrust Cage - it makes me wish that I had been at the premiere of his piece, or at the premiere of the Rite of Spring...
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Cogito ergo spud -- I think, therefore I yam
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