As you know, there was an Internet campaign to make John Cage's 4'33" the Christmas number one, partly to annoy people who like
X-Munter and partly because it would just be funny to have four and a half minutes of awkward silence on Christmas Day
Top of the Pops. I downloaded the entire single to play my part in this important struggle, although being in Ireland I was essentially backing Ralph Nader in the Christmas number one battle here between some shitey
X-Factor song and 'Horse Outside'* by the Rubber Bandits.
Some of the mixes on this display an astonishing lack of understanding of the basic concept. I mean, it is meant to be a silent piece of music, bar the ambient noise of where it is performed or recorded, so there should not be loads and loads of extraneous noise. Of the ones that kind of get it, the 'Herve Tidies His Studio Mix' is interesting, but he may have been tidying his studio a bit more noisily than normal. The 'Alex Metric Enters The Batcave Mix' is similarly ambient, but with both of these there is the slight suspicion that all the ambient sounds are being made by the people who did the sound effects for
Hot Fuzz. 'Fake Blood's Needle Drop Mix' is maybe truest to the basic idea – it sounds like a DJ playing nothing bar the sound of a needle sliding around a blank groove, with occasional very quiet snippets of background sound. So Fake Blood wins.
image sourceAn
inuit panda production
* Foreign readers who have not encountered this are recommended to investigate the
video on YouTube. Even if you do not find if funny or like the music you will probably find it intriguingly bizarre.
A cat has survived a thirty mile journey trapped under the bonnet of a car. The little fellow has been named Scotty by the Derbyshire RSPCA and is believed to have climbed into the engine compartment when the car was parked. He has suffered some burns to his paws but is otherwise fine. 
And I saw this animated film too, largely because it is set in Havana and features a lot of Cuban music. It tells the story of a problematic romance over a long number of years between the two titular characters, who are both involved in the Cuban jazz scene. The whole thing is very louche, with a lot of playing away from home and paying and being paid for going on. The animation is great, with the Havana locations being lovingly rendered. 
I saw this exciting film a while ago. It tells the story of popular all-girl band The Runaways and how they formed, overcome initial adversity, and then disintegrate as cocaine starts exacerbating existing problems. So plot-wise the story is rather like that of all band biopics, but it is still well done. Kim Fowley (their manager) is endearingly creepy, the young women playing Cherie Curry and Joan Jett deliver great performances, and the music is all reasonable entertaining. But I felt a bit sorry for Lita Ford – this film was plainly not based on her memoirs.
As you know, there was an Internet campaign to make John Cage's 4'33" the Christmas number one, partly to annoy people who like X-Munter and partly because it would just be funny to have four and a half minutes of awkward silence on Christmas Day Top of the Pops. I downloaded the entire single to play my part in this important struggle, although being in Ireland I was essentially backing Ralph Nader in the Christmas number one battle here between some shitey X-Factor song and 'Horse Outside'* by the Rubber Bandits. 
