When we think of silence, we think of med­i­ta­tive stretch­es of calm: hikes through desert­ed for­est paths, an ear­ly morn­ing sun­set before the world awakes, a stay­ca­tion at home with a good book. But we know oth­er silences: awk­ward silences, omi­nous silences, and—in the case of John Cage’s infa­mous con­cep­tu­al piece 4’33”—a mys­ti­fy­ing silence that asks us to lis­ten, not to noth­ing, but to every­thing. Instead of focus­ing our aur­al atten­tion, Cage’s for­mal­ized exer­cise in lis­ten­ing dis­pers­es it, to the ner­vous coughs and squeak­ing shoes of a rest­less audi­ence, the cease­less ebb and flow of traf­fic and breath­ing, the ambi­ent white noise of heat­ing and AC…

and the sus­pend­ed black noise of death met­al….

We’re used to see­ing 4’33” “per­formed” as a clas­si­cal exer­cise, with a dig­ni­fied pianist seat­ed at the bench, osten­ta­tious­ly turn­ing the pages of Cage’s “score.” But there’s no rea­son at all the exercise—or hoax, some insist—can’t work in any genre, includ­ing met­al. NPR’s All Songs TV brings us the video above, in which “64 years after its debut per­for­mance by pianist David Tudor,” death met­al band Dead Ter­ri­to­ry lines behind their instru­ments, tunes up, and takes on Cage: “There’s a set­up, earplugs go in, a brief gui­tar chug, a drum-stick count-off and… silence.”

As in every per­for­mance of 4’33”, we’re drawn not only to what we hear, in this case the sounds in what­ev­er room we watch the video, but also to what we see. And watch­ing these five met­al­heads, who are so used to deliv­er­ing a con­tin­u­ous assault, nod their heads solemn­ly in silence for over four min­utes adds yet anoth­er inter­pre­tive lay­er to Cage’s exper­i­ment, ask­ing us to con­sid­er the per­for­ma­tive avant-garde as a domain fit not only for rar­i­fied clas­si­cal and art house audi­ences but for every­one and any­one.

Also, despite their seri­ous­ness, NPR reminds us that Dead Territory’s take is “anoth­er in a long line of 4′33″ per­for­mances that under­stand Cage had a sense of humor while expand­ing our musi­cal uni­verse.” Cage hap­pi­ly gave his exper­i­ments to the world to adapt and impro­vise as it sees fit, and—as we see in his own per­for­mance of 4’33” in Har­vard Square—he was hap­py to make his own changes to silence as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms His Avant-Garde Piano Piece 4’33” … in 1’22” (Har­vard Square, 1973)

See the Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

Stream a Free 65-Hour Playlist of John Cage Music and Dis­cov­er the Full Scope of His Avant-Garde Com­po­si­tions

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In 1958, Link Wray released his bluesy instru­men­tal “Rum­ble,” known for its pio­neer­ing use of reverb and dis­tor­tion. The grit­ty, seduc­tive tune became a huge hit with the kids, but grown-ups found the sound threat­en­ing, rem­i­nis­cent of scary gang scenes in West Side Sto­ry and grow­ing fears over “Juve­nile Delinquency”—a nation­al anx­i­ety marked by the 1955 release of Black­board Jun­gle and its intro­duc­tion of Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock.”

Just three years lat­er, “Rum­ble” made mid­dle class cit­i­zens so ner­vous that the song has the dis­tinc­tion of being the only instru­men­tal ever banned from radio play in the U.S. And yet, that hon­or is some­what mis­lead­ing. It’s true many radio sta­tions refused to play the song, or any rock and roll records at all, but it did receive enough exposure—from peo­ple like Amer­i­can Band­stand’s Dick Clark, no less—to remain in the top 40 for ten weeks in 1958.

Fast-for­ward thir­ty years from Black­board Jun­gle pan­ic, and we find the coun­try in the midst of anoth­er nation­al freak­out about the kids and their music, this one spear­head­ed by the Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC), formed by Tip­per Gore and three oth­er so-called “Wash­ing­ton Wives” who sought to place warn­ing labels on “explic­it” pop­u­lar albums and oth­er­wise impose moral­is­tic guide­lines on music and movies. Con­gres­sion­al hear­ings in 1985 saw the odd trio of Twist­ed Sister’s Dee Snider, mild-man­nered folk star John Den­ver, and vir­tu­oso prog-weirdo Frank Zap­pa tes­ti­fy­ing before the Sen­ate against cen­sor­ship. The fierce­ly lib­er­tar­i­an Zappa’s oppo­si­tion to the PMRC became some­thing of a cru­sade, and the fol­low­ing year he appeared on Cross­fire to argue his case.

PMRC back­lash from musi­cians every­where began to clut­ter the pop cul­tur­al land­scape. Glenn Danzig released his anti-PMRC anthem, “Moth­er”; Ice‑T’s The Iceberg/Freedom of Speech vicious­ly attacked Gore and her orga­ni­za­tion; NOFX released their E.P. The P.M.R.C. Can Suck on This… just a small sam­pling of dozens of anti-PMRC songs/albums/messages after those infa­mous hear­ings. But we can cred­it Zap­pa with found­ing the musi­cal sub­gen­era in his 1985 Frank Zap­pa Meets the Moth­ers of Pre­ven­tion, which includ­ed “Porn Wars,” above, a mashup of dis­tort­ed sam­ples from the hear­ings.

All of these records received the req­ui­site “Good House­keep­ing Seal of Dis­ap­proval,” the now-famil­iar stark black-and-white parental warn­ing label (top). Zappa’s album cov­er pre-empt­ed the inevitable stick­er­ing with a bright yel­low and red box read­ing “Warn­ing Guar­an­tee,” full of tongue-in-cheek small print like  “GUARANTEED NOT TO CAUSE ETERNAL TORMENT IN THE PLACE WHERE THE GUY WITH THE HORNS AND POINTED STICK CONDUCTS HIS BUSINESS.” All this inces­sant needling of the PMRC must have real­ly got to them, fans fig­ured, when Zappa’s 1986 record Jazz from Hell began appear­ing, it’s said, in record stores with a parental advi­so­ry label—on an album with­out lyrics of any kind.

But did Zappa’s Gram­my-award-win­ning instru­men­tal record (above) real­ly get the explic­it con­tent label? And was such label­ing retal­i­a­tion from the PMRC, as some believed? These claims have cir­cu­lat­ed for years on mes­sage boards, in books like Peter Blecha’s Taboo Tunes: A His­to­ry of Banned Bands & Cen­sored Songs, and on Wikipedia. And the answer is both yes, and no. Jazz from Hell did not get the famil­iar “Parental Advi­so­ry: Explic­it Lyrics” label, nor was it specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed by Gore’s orga­ni­za­tion.

The album was, how­ev­er, stick­ered in 1990—notes Dave Thompson’s The Music Lover’s Guide to Record Col­lect­ing—by “the Pacif­ic North­west chain of Fred Mey­er depart­ment stores,” who gave it “the retailer’s own ‘Explic­it Lyrics’ warn­ing, despite the fact that the album was whol­ly instru­men­tal.” This is like­ly due to the word “hell” and the title of the song “G‑Spot Tor­na­do.” So it may be fair to say that Zap­pa’s Jazz from Hell is the only ful­ly instru­men­tal album to receive an “Explic­it Lyrics” warn­ing, inspired by, if not direct­ly ordered by, the PMRC. Like the radio cen­sor­ship of Link Wray’s “Rum­ble,” this region­al seal of dis­ap­proval did not in the least pre­vent the record from receiv­ing due recog­ni­tion. But it makes for a curi­ous his­tor­i­cal exam­ple of the absurd lengths peo­ple have gone to in their fear of mod­ern pop music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Frank Zappa’s Exper­i­men­tal Adver­tise­ments For Luden’s Cough Drops, Rem­ing­ton Razors & Port­land Gen­er­al Elec­tric

Hear the Musi­cal Evo­lu­tion of Frank Zap­pa in 401 Songs

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In music, as in film, we have reached a point where every ele­ment of every com­po­si­tion can be ful­ly pro­duced and auto­mat­ed by com­put­ers. This is a break­through that allows pro­duc­ers with lit­tle or no musi­cal train­ing the abil­i­ty to rapid­ly turn out hits. It also allows tal­ent­ed musi­cians with­out access to expen­sive equip­ment to record their music with lit­tle more than their lap­tops. But the ease of dig­i­tal record­ing tech­nol­o­gy has encour­aged pro­duc­ers, musi­cians, and engi­neers at all lev­els to smooth out every rough edge and cor­rect every mis­take, even in record­ings of real humans play­ing old-fash­ioned ana­logue instru­ments. After all, if you could make the drum­mer play in per­fect time every mea­sure, the singer hit every note on key, or the gui­tarist play every note per­fect­ly, why wouldn’t you?

One answer comes in a suc­cinct quo­ta­tion from Bri­an Eno’s Oblique Strate­gies, which Ted Mills ref­er­enced in a recent post here on Miles Davis: “Hon­or Your Mis­takes as a Hid­den Inten­tion.” (The advice is sim­i­lar to that Davis gave to Her­bie Han­cock, “There are no mis­takes, just chances to impro­vise.”) In the short clip at the top, Eno elab­o­rates in the con­text of dig­i­tal pro­duc­tion, say­ing “the temp­ta­tion of the tech­nol­o­gy is to smooth every­thing out.”

But the net effect of cor­rect­ing every per­ceived mis­take is to “homog­e­nize the whole song,” he says, “till every bar sounds the same… until there’s no evi­dence of human life at all in there.” There is a rea­son, after all, that even pure­ly dig­i­tal, “in the box” sequencers and drum machines have func­tions to “human­ize” their beats—to make them cor­re­spond more to the loose­ness and occa­sion­al hes­i­tan­cy of real human play­ers.

This does not mean that there is no such thing as singing or play­ing well or badly—it means there is no such thing as per­fec­tion. Or rather, that per­fec­tion is not a wor­thy goal in music. The real hooks, the moments that we most con­nect with and return to again and again, are often hap­py acci­dents. Mills points to a whole Red­dit thread devot­ed to mis­takes left in record­ings that became part of the song. And when it comes to play­ing per­fect­ly in time or in tune, I think of what an atroc­i­ty would have result­ed from run­ning all of The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street through a dig­i­tal audio work­sta­tion to sand down the sharp edges and “fix” the mis­takes. All of its sham­bling, mum­bling, drunk­en bar­room charm would be com­plete­ly lost. That goes also for the entire record­ed out­put of The Band, or most of Dylan’s albums (such as my per­son­al favorite, John Wes­ley Hard­ing).

To take a some­what more mod­ern exam­ple, lis­ten to “Sire­na” from Aus­tralian instru­men­tal trio Dirty Three, above. This is a band that sounds for­ev­er on the verge of col­lapse, and it’s absolute­ly beau­ti­ful to hear (or see, if you get the chance to expe­ri­ence them live). This record­ing, from their album Ocean Songs, was made in 1998, before most pro­duc­tion went ful­ly dig­i­tal, and there are very few records that sound like it any­more. Even dance music has the poten­tial to be much more raw and organ­ic, instead of hav­ing singers’ voic­es run through so much pitch cor­rec­tion soft­ware that they sound like machines. (wit­ness the obscure dis­co hit “Miss Broad­way,” for exam­ple, or LCD Soundsys­tem’s career.)

There is a lot more to say about the way the albums rep­re­sent­ed above were record­ed, but the over­all point is that just as too much CGI has often ruined the excite­ment of cin­e­ma (we’re look­ing at you, George Lucas) —or as the dig­i­tal “loud­ness wars” sapped much record­ed music of its dynam­ic peaks and valleys—overzealous use of soft­ware to cor­rect imper­fec­tions can ruin the human appeal of music, and ren­der it ster­ile and dis­pos­able like so many cheap, plas­tic mass-pro­duced toys. As with all of our use of advanced tech­nol­o­gy, ques­tions about what we can do should always be fol­lowed by ques­tions about what we’re real­ly gain­ing, or los­ing, in the process.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Bri­an Eno Cre­ates a List of His 13 Favorite Records: From Gospel to Afrobeat, Shoegaze to Bul­gar­i­an Folk

Bri­an Eno on Why Do We Make Art & What’s It Good For?: Down­load His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness