Minnesinger5, thanks so much for the personal look at John Cage. A mushroom-hunter you say? Hmmmm, that might explain his attraction to the weird, um - definitely different in musical expression.
I always thought that John Cage is to music what Andy Warhol is to visual art. When I studied music history, he was presented as an advocate of 'The Art of Nothingness' - a rather bleak, pessimistic outlook artists of all genres developed in response to the threat of global nuclear annihilation after WWII. Being a lover of aesthetic 'beauty' in music and art, somehow his musical escapes into 'non-music' always left me cold as a youngster. (Sorry about the wording there - I was thinking of his piece 4'33", which involved setting an alarm clock for 4 minutes and 33 seconds atop the concert piano and then sitting there in relative silence till it went off, while the audience was to appreciate the nature of coughing, shuffling and traffic noises outside as 'music').
Now that I'm old and wise (ahem!) I do appreciate his musical messages a bit more! And I think it's wonderful that Germans feel his work worthy of 'immortalization' - (well, almost immortalization). This isn't the first time North American artists have received greater acknowledgement from across the pond than at home. I've heard that Native American art and culture has been a VERY hot commodity in Europe for quite a while now, for example.
How's the pink Eiffel Tower comin along Bill? I think that's a wonderful choice of hue!