News

Cage Against The Machine Silent Christmas Number 1 Campaign

• 29th Oct 2010

The internet campaign to get John Cage's famous “silent” composition 4'33″ to number one this Christmas has leaped from 4,000 to over 44,000 supporters in the last month.

Dubbed “Cage Against The Machine” as a tribute to last year's Rage Against The Machine chart success, the campaign takes the RATM punk-rock intervention a step into the avant-garde with a track that features no discernible music at all.

The campaign's initiator Dave Hilliard says: “After last Christmas lots of Facebook groups sprang up that proposed repeating the success of RATM but just with a different song. I thought it would be funny to take the idea to the logical extreme and get a 'silent' song to number one. I was surprised by how quickly the group got up to 5000 members, and after the Guardian picked up on the story, the campaign really took off.”

Jon Morter, one of the chief architects of the RATM campaign last year, recently came out in support of Cage Against The Machine, saying: “If ANY Xmas No.1 campaign is going to work… it'll be the John Cage 4'33″ one.” Morter is uniquely placed to offer advice on how to negotiate the twists and turns in this exciting stage of the campaign's development.

Another celebrity supporter is Xfm's Eddy Temple-Morris, who comes on board to help raise awareness for the British Tinnitus Association, for whom he is an ambassador and spokesperson. Temple-Morris will be championing the campaign in the press and helping organise the re-recording and release of the track. “I just kept thinking that '4'33″' for people with tinnitus would be a horrid place,” he says. “They couldn't appreciate this piece for its raison d'etre, so we decided to join forces and make this happen”.

Developing the charity aspect has led to the CATM campaign staging a charity week this week, with one new cause unveiled each day. “We felt that the inclusion of charities was the only meaningful way to progress the campaign,” explains Hilliard. “We want people to feel involved in the charity process, to get excited about what we are trying to do. The best thing is that as we plan to donate all profits to charity it answers the question 'why would people pay for 'silence'?' It's only a small amount for the individual to buy the track, but collectively it could make a big difference to the chosen charities.”

There will be a charity poll this Friday on the link website, with the “winning” charity receiving a larger proportion of the site's ad revenue and from MP3 sales. Every charity is a winner though – the remaining funds will be divided up equally.