This weeks MP3 comes by way of the very forthcoming Andrew Beaujon (Eggs).

An unnamed someone sent Andrew a CD of recordings done for Northwestern University's WNUR:

"Most of it's not that interesting, but there are a couple cool things on it, one of which is a jam that eventually become "Evanston, Ill." (named for where WNUR is). Also it's got the rock version of "Maureen's Beans" like the one we did for one of the Peel Sessions."

Maureen's Beans would later appear on Teenbeat 96 Exploder (Teenbeat 96).

Note: the above link to Best Buy allows fot 30 second samples of most songs off the album, including all three versions of "Side Division" (all silent tracks one minute in duration).

John Cage is probably the best known for the silent track for his piece 4'33" which was first performed by pianist David Tudor at Woodstock, New York, August 29, 1952. (Here's a link to a video of Cage performing the piece in 1976)

"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something o see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. For certain engineering purposes, it is desirable to have as silent a situation as possible. Such a room is called an anechoic chamber, its six walls made of special material, a room without echoes. I entered one at Harvard University several years ago and heard two sounds, one high and one low. When I described them to the engineer in charge, he informed me that the high one was my nervous system in operation, the low one my blood in circulation. Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music." - John Cage "Experimental Music," 1957.

In 2002, composer Mike Batt (best known for his work with The Wombles) introduced a piece called "A One Minute Silence" on Classical Graffiti by The Planets, as a means of dividing the twelve initial tracks from four remixes. He credited the track to Batt/Cage. He later said that Cage "was someone named Clint Cage that I registered as a pseudonym." He was later informed that the track was an infringement on John Cage's piece and ordered to pay royalties. In protest he released "A One Minute Silence" as a single and registered hundreds of other silent compositions in varying lengths of up to ten minutes. (Full story here.)

But what of Andrew Beaujon and Eggs, who in 1993 introduced the idea of a silent track to relieve "any discomfort" that album length (and quite possibly music types) may cause. The fact that it is the exact same length as the Mike Batt piece (unlike Sonic Youth's "(silence)" from 1998's The Whitey Album which is 1:03) leads me to conclude that Mike Batt could very well have lifted the idea from here.

Download Eggs "Side Division" (version one) and judge for yourself.

Mike Batt settled the case, paying out a six-figure amount to the John Cage Trust. I think Eggs may have a stronger case.

On a related note, As the Apple Turns ran a story on silent MP3s on Feb 05 2004 that is quite interesting.