last year it was all about rage and a big noisy track from an american punk band to knock simon cowell's bland x-manufacture off the coveted christmas number one spot in the uk charts. and against all odds, against all predictions and to the joy of millions, it succeeded. rage against the machine's killing in the name beat joe mcelderry's the climb by some 50,000 downloads, clocking up an impressive half million of them and becoming the fastest selling digital track of all time, raising a cool hundred grand for homeless charity shelter in the process.
this year, someone's decided to take it all one step further. the idea has a spark of genius about it and if it succeeds will be the greatest triumph of networked conceptuality over commercialism yet. and like all good ideas it's strikingly simple:
make it about silence. the space between the assaults on our senses that pummel us every minute of every hour of every day. make it about the music inside of each of us. and so a motley crew of quite famous and not-so-famous but nevertheless very with-it artists came together in a soho studio in london last week to record john cage's seminal 4'33". today it was released, and in about the first ten hours or so of it being on iTunes it climbed from rank 171 to rank 31, while on the livehits download tracking site it also reached rank 31.
it's still a fairly tall order to make it to the top, but i reckon it's possible. and what a wondrous joy that would be: for the UK chart to be topped by four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. it would be, quite literally, unheard of.
but does it matter? does anyone even care who or what is the christmas number one? perhaps not. there are clearly several hundred thousand other issues, causes, problems, challenges and delights that are signally more important than this. but this is so worth doing: to show the likes of cowell that theirs may be the money but ours is still the imagination, theirs are the means, perhaps, but ours is the power: they have the machine, we have the magic.
and what about matt, the young man who apparently won x-factor this year? i have no idea. i've not been watching the show, i've never clapped eyes on him. my friend charlie tells me he's lovely and extremely attractive to both men and women. so how could i wish him anything but the best. the one thing this certainly isn't about is matt. i congratulate him on his success and wish him many a hit in a wonderful career. it is about machinations though. and throwing a spanner it their works. and what a glorious spanner this would be: 4'33" of silence.
help make it happen at
where you'll find everything you need to know: how to get the track, which charities the money goes to, who's behind it and why. and obviously, please spread the word: it's all got to go through this week!
love & peace
sebastian
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