Mick,

You would hear the racket coming from the bus radio, and that is exactly the point as I understand it.

The piece is not about the silence, but about all the extraneous noises that occur in the concert hall with a few hundred people in it and the musicians doing nothing.

Psychologically humans start to crack up if they are confronted by absolute silence. There is always some background noise.

4'33" was, I am lead to believe, an attempt to get people to actually listen to what was going on around them. Many of us carry preconceived notions about what we are actually hearing, or expect to hear, as our brains attempt to create order from the auditory signals our ears receive.

Considering the sound sewage our ears are bombarded with everyday, any attempt to take stock, and if necessary scream "enough"! is probably a good thing.   I once toured with a muso who carried a small pair of wire cutters in his pocket. He habitually cut seven or eight inches from the cable of any speaker delivering Muzak. I just wish I had the nerve. It needs more of us taking this sort of direct action in my humble.

If 4'33" gets just one or two people to seriously consider what we are ACTUALLY hearing in our daily lives, consciously or unconsciously, then maybe it ain't so ridiculous as it first seems.

It also shows what preconceived notions we have about what we should hear in concert halls....or anywhere else, including buses and supermarkets, for that matter.

Hopefully Mick, 4'33" would motivate you to tell the bus driver to shut the F****g radio up as you, and probably a number of other people on the bus, find it offensive.

Why the hell should we accept hight levels of unpleasant background noise as 'the norm'?

Just a thought!

SM