John Cage - Revision history

Spider of Destiny at 19:38, 4 July 2026

2026-07-04T19:38:21Z

Spider of Destiny at 19:34, 11 June 2026

2026-06-11T19:34:08Z

Spider of Destiny at 18:13, 11 June 2026

2026-06-11T18:13:41Z

Spider of Destiny: /* Zappa and John Cage */

2026-06-10T20:16:42Z

Zappa and John Cage

Spider of Destiny at 19:23, 1 June 2026

2026-06-01T19:23:04Z

Spider of Destiny at 16:50, 23 May 2026

2026-05-23T16:50:12Z

Spider of Destiny at 08:29, 25 April 2026

2026-04-25T08:29:12Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 15:46, 19 October 2021

2021-10-19T15:46:20Z

Jason.Kreitzer at 01:12, 30 July 2021

2021-07-30T01:12:00Z

Spider of Destiny: Clean-up.

2020-11-14T05:19:13Z

Clean-up.

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:38, 4 July 2026
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	[[Category:Favorite Classical Composers\|Cage, John]]		[[Category:Favorite Classical Composers\|Cage, John]]
	[[Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List)\|Cage, John]]		[[Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List)\|Cage, John]]
		+	[[Category:The MOFO Project/Object (The List)\|Cage, John]]

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 [[Category:Influences|Cage, John]]
 [[Category:Classical Composers|Cage, John]]
-[[Category:Favorite Musicians|Cage, John]]
+[[Category:Favorite Classical Composers|Cage, John]]
 [[Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List)|Cage, John]]

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 [[Category:Influences|Cage, John]]
-[[Category:Composers|Cage, John]]
+[[Category:Classical Composers|Cage, John]]
-[[Category:Favorite Artists|Cage, John]]
+[[Category:Favorite Musicians|Cage, John]]
 [[Category:The Real Frank Zappa Book (The List)|Cage, John]]

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 ==Zappa and John Cage==
-Zappa cited Cage among his favorite artists in ''[[Data For Sensitive or Critical-sensitive Position]]'' (1968).
+Zappa cited Cage among his favorite contemporary musicians in ''[[Data For Sensitive or Critical-sensitive Position]]'' (1968).
 Both Zappa and Cage are some of several artists to make a contribution to the album ''[[The Nova Convention]]'' (1979). Zappa was one of several celebrity fans and composers to be interviewed in ''[[The Revenge Of The Dead Indians]]'', a documentary about John Cage. Zappa and Cage were also interviewed in the documentary ''[[Peefeeyatko]]''.

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 ''"[[Karlheinz Stockhausen|Stockhausen]] isn't really an influence. That is, I have some of his records but I don't play them much. Cage is a big influence. We've done a thing with voices, with talking, that is very like one of his pieces, except that of course in our piece the guys are talking about working in an airplane factory, or their cars."'' - Frank Zappa, quoted from a 1968 interview by Sally Kempton in [[Village Voice]], ''[[Zappa and the Mothers: Ugly Can Be Beautiful]]''.
-''"Once upon a time, when I was an impressionable young composer, somebody gave me a John Cage record and I listened to it, and went 'What the fuck is this?' But since I didn't know what the fuck anything was, I thought 'Maybe this is really good.' A short time after that, John Cage came to Claremont College and he was giving one of his ... he does these performances with a throat microphone. He'd put this thing on his throat and drink a quart of carrot juice, or read something to you while he was drinking the carrot juice. In a way, this ties in with my over-all feeling towards colleges. In this instance, there was a college audience watching John Cage drink the carrot juice and do these things, and they were pondering it like it had this large significance. It occurred to me that if he could do that, then certainly, SURELY there were other things equally ridiculous that a person such as myself could do in the music business. And so I decided that I would try, not necessarily to gargle with the carrot juice, but that I'd do other things that come awfully close."''- Frank Zappa, ''[[An Evening With Pierre Boulez And Frank Zappa]], Den Simms, [[T'Mershi Duween]] #9, October 1989.
+''"Once upon a time, when I was an impressionable young composer, somebody gave me a John Cage record and I listened to it, and went 'What the fuck is this?' But since I didn't know what the fuck anything was, I thought 'Maybe this is really good.' A short time after that, John Cage came to Claremont College and he was giving one of his ... he does these performances with a throat microphone. He'd put this thing on his throat and drink a quart of carrot juice, or read something to you while he was drinking the carrot juice. In a way, this ties in with my over-all feeling towards colleges. In this instance, there was a college audience watching John Cage drink the carrot juice and do these things, and they were pondering it like it had this large significance. It occurred to me that if he could do that, then certainly, SURELY there were other things equally ridiculous that a person such as myself could do in the music business. And so I decided that I would try, not necessarily to gargle with the carrot juice, but that I'd do other things that come awfully close."''- Frank Zappa, ''[[An Evening With Pierre Boulez And Frank Zappa]], [[Den Simms]], [[T'Mershi Duween]] #9, October 1989.
 In a 15 April 1991 radio interview with [[Charles Amirkhanian]], ''[[Ode To Gravity - Frank Zappa: World Affairs Commentator]]'', Zappa discussed the possibility of running for U.S. President and having John Cage and Noam Chomsky as cabinet members: ''"The only thing I'm worried about is that since John Cage is macro-biotic, he won't be available for the Cabinet now."''

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 ''"Without Cage much of what takes place in modern music and art "would not be possible."'' Quoted from [[Frank Zappa, 1992-10-01]], interview in the [[Los Angeles Times]], 1 October 1992.
-'''Don Menn''': '''What about some of the experimenters, like John Cage doing silence [a piece called 4'33" in which the performer makes no intentional sounds]?'''
+'''[[Don Menn]]''': '''What about some of the experimenters, like John Cage doing silence [a piece called 4'33" in which the performer makes no intentional sounds]?'''
 '''Zappa''': ''"I think that's an acquired taste. When I first learned of Cage's work, it seemed like the concept of it was far more entertaining than the audio result, but that could have just been a matter of the performances that were available on record at that time. Because even if you're going to be performing – well, silence is a bad example, but somebody with more abstract notations that require a conscious participation of willingness on the part of musicians to do something constructive in the piece. It's not often that you find musicians who like that idea and who will do a good job with it. I'm pretty sure that early recordings of Cage did not have willing accomplices."'' - Quoted from ''[[The Mother Of All Interviews (Part 2)]]'', 1992.

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 Zappa paid homage to Cage on the tribute album ''[[A Chance Operation - The John Cage Tribute]]'' (1993).
-Cage was also mentioned and thanked in the liner notes of ''[[The MOFO Project/Object]]'' (2006) album. <ref>http://donlope.net/fz/notes/The_MOFO_Project_Object.html#Contributors</ref>
+Cage was also mentioned and thanked in the liner notes of ''[[The MOFO Project/Object (Fazedooh)|The MOFO Project/Object]]'' (2006) album. <ref>http://donlope.net/fz/notes/The_MOFO_Project_Object.html#Contributors</ref>
 ==Zappa about John Cage==

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 '''John Milton Cage Jr.''' (September 5, 1912, Los Angeles, California – August 12, 1992, New York City) was an American composer, most famous for his experiments with silence and background noise as musical expressions.
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 ==Zappa about John Cage==
-<blockquote>''"[[Karlheinz Stockhausen|Stockhausen]] isn't really an influence. That is, I have some of his records but I don't play them much. [[John Cage|Cage]] is a big influence. We've done a thing with voices, with talking, that is very like one of his pieces, except that of course in our piece the guys are talking about working in an airplane factory, or their cars."''</blockquote> - Frank Zappa, quoted from a 1968 interview by Sally Kempton in [[Village Voice]], ''[[Zappa and the Mothers: Ugly Can Be Beautiful]]''.
+''"[[Karlheinz Stockhausen|Stockhausen]] isn't really an influence. That is, I have some of his records but I don't play them much. Cage is a big influence. We've done a thing with voices, with talking, that is very like one of his pieces, except that of course in our piece the guys are talking about working in an airplane factory, or their cars."'' - Frank Zappa, quoted from a 1968 interview by Sally Kempton in [[Village Voice]], ''[[Zappa and the Mothers: Ugly Can Be Beautiful]]''.
 ''"The next thing that we're going to try is that I have an offer from the Frankfurt Festival in Germany for 1992, which, in part, is a celebration of John Cage's 80th birthday. Cage is going to be there; Stockhausen is going to be there; and they want me to be there with some of my music. One of the things I proposed to them is that they put the guys in this chamber ensemble called Ensemble Modern on a plane to L.A. for two weeks. I will train them, as I would my band, and build the piece for them."'' - Frank Zappa, quoted from [[Frank Zappa Makes A Jazz Noise]], Interview in Down Beat, conducted by Michael Davis, July 1991.
 ''"Any time you're dealing with the improvisational medium, you have to bow your head to John Cage, because he has to be the master of taking nothing and making something out of it. If you are going to improvise, you're always working in his territory. Which is not to say that the improvisations that we'll be doing will sound like John Cage compositions, but there is always that special element of chance that he's always dealt with."'' - Quoted from ''[[Frankfurt Press Conference 21.7.92]]'', interview in [[T'Mershi Duween]], issue #26, September 1992, by Axel Wünsch and Aad Hoogesteger.
 ''"Without Cage much of what takes place in modern music and art "would not be possible."'' Quoted from [[Frank Zappa, 1992-10-01]], interview in the [[Los Angeles Times]], 1 October 1992.
 '''Don Menn''': '''What about some of the experimenters, like John Cage doing silence [a piece called 4'33" in which the performer makes no intentional sounds]?'''
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 <references/>
 [[Category:Influences|Cage, John]]
 [[Category:Composers|Cage, John]]
 [[Category:Favorite Artists|Cage, John]]