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

It’s got to be one of my favorite ledes of all time: “The Doors leg­end Jim Mor­ri­son ‘faked his own death’ and is liv­ing as an aging home­less hip­py in New York, accord­ing to a con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist.”

This dead­pan gem from wacky UK tabloid Express might con­vince the cred­u­lous, with its pho­to spread com­par­ing white-beard­ed “Richard”—the aged, sup­pos­ed­ly re-sur­faced Morrison—with those of Mor­ri­son in his last years: beard­ed, bloat­ed, and look­ing ten years old­er.

These are often the images we remem­ber, but the pho­tos in the video mon­tage above (set to some inex­plic­a­bly un-Door-sy music that you might want to mute) show us a more youth­ful, clean-shaven, baby-faced, and much health­i­er lizard king, trav­el­ing through Paris with his girl­friend Pamela Cour­son and their friend Alain Ron­ay, who took the pho­tos on June 28th, 1971. (See a pho­to spread here at Vin­tage Every­day.)

Mor­ri­son was “clear­ly not in a good way,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “when he head­ed off for Paris,” but in these images, he appears ful­ly ready to embark on a new career as a pub­lished poet instead of join­ing the “27 Club,” as he would just days lat­er, when Cour­son awoke to find him dead in the bath­tub of their Paris apart­ment on July 3rd.

Part of the rea­son fans have dogged­ly held on to the the­o­ry Mor­ri­son faked his death has to do with the mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing that discovery–the “nag­ging­ly non-spe­cif­ic ‘heart fail­ure’” ascribed as the cause by French author­i­ties, the lack of an autop­sy, and the “dozens of rumors—many of them unfound­ed” that pro­lif­er­at­ed around the mys­tery.

It turns out that cir­cum­stances of Jim Morrison’s death were sor­did­ly pre­dictable, if we believe one­time Doors pub­li­cist Dan­ny Sug­er­man, who wrote in his 1989 mem­oir Won­der­land Avenue about con­ver­sa­tions with Cour­son, who “stat­ed that Mor­ri­son had died of an acci­den­tal hero­in over­dose, hav­ing snort­ed what he believed to be cocaine,” writes The Vin­tage News.

Her account is sup­port­ed by the con­fes­sion of Alain Ronay—in a 1991 issue of Paris Match, where many of these pho­tos appeared—who wrote that Cour­son nod­ded off instead of get­ting help for Mor­ri­son. Ron­ay also describes in his account (read it in full, trans­lat­ed, here), how he and film­mak­er Agnes Var­da helped mis­lead author­i­ties as to Morrison’s iden­ti­ty, cov­ered up his pri­or drug use, threw the press off track, and guid­ed the inves­ti­ga­tion away from the drugs and Courson’s involve­ment.

Ron­ay seems cred­i­ble enough, but what­ev­er the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing Morrison’s death, it’s clear he had a lot of writ­ing left in him. In his last inter­view with Rolling Stone, he talked about his poet­ry and his admi­ra­tion for Nor­man Mail­er and revealed he’d been work­ing on a screen­play. While in Paris, he made sev­er­al record­ings of his poet­ry with some unnamed musi­cians. Last year, a hand­writ­ten poem found in his Paris apart­ment went up for auc­tion. Its final, omi­nous line read, “Last words, Last words out.”

via The Vin­tage News/Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Lost Paris Tapes” Pre­serves Jim Morrison’s Final Poet­ry Record­ings from 1971

The Doors Play Live in Den­mark & LA in 1968: See Jim Mor­ri­son Near His Charis­mat­ic Peak

A Young, Clean Cut Jim Mor­ri­son Appears in a 1962 Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­mo Film

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