YMMV / John Cage

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• Archive Panic: A version of his piece "As Slow As Possible" is taking 600 years to play.
• Common Knowledge: 4'33" is often described as "four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence". While the performer doesn't touch their instrument for the duration of the performance, there is still sound involved: the background noise generated by the crowd and everything else nearby is considered part of the performance. It'd be more accurate to describe it as "four minutes and thirty-three seconds of the sounds of the crowd at a concert hall waiting for the pianist to start playing".
• Fridge Brilliance: Although Sampling as we know it wasn't around at the time Cage composed 4'33", anyone could say they "sampled" it, and no one would be able to tell. And given that anything one hears during a performance of 4'33" is considered part of the piece, the work could be considered to consist of nothing but "sampling."
• Funny Moments: Renditions of 4'33" often lend themselves to this, with audiences often wondering when the actual work starts, random bouts of laughter, cellphones going off because their users didn't silence them, among other things...and technically, they're all part of the performance.
• Signature Song: 4'33", for certain definitions of "song".
• Tear Jerker: One recording of 4'33" is genuinely moving: the 1993 Cage tribute CD A Chance Operation contains a performance of the work recorded by Frank Zappa at his home studio. Since Zappa was ill at the time from the prostate cancer that would kill him a few months later, what you hear is the sound of Zappa himself trying to keep quiet (and not always succeeding; at one point his foot lightly bonks against the leg of the piano.)

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