Silence is the true friend that never betrays

Cage entered the chamber expecting to hear silence, but as he wrote later, he “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.” Cage had gone to a place where he expected there to be no sound, yet sound was nevertheless discernible. He stated “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 said that, and right he were. You see, there simply can not ever be true silence, and at a festival there’s always going to be a large majority of people that are having a chat, using the band playing as the soundtrack (which is fine, I do it sometimes, you do it sometimes). But at Latitude Festival last weekend, I witnessed the closest to it a gig crowd has ever been, during what turned out to be an incredible hour.

See, there’s this band called The Radioheads who have been storming up the charts in recent years with their hits The Gloaming (Softly Open our Mouths in the Cold) and Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box, and despite their lead singer Thom Yorke releasing a solo album entitled The Eraser in 2006, he, as a proper solo artist, had never performed live. Until last weekend that is, where, at noon on a Sunday, he drew the biggest crowd of the festival, despite the earliness of the slot (with Thom quipping “Shhh… There’s people sleeping” when he walked on).

Whilst the set was fantastic (5 Radiohead tracks, 5 off The Eraser and 2 Unreleased), with Thom jumping from guitar to synth to bass to piano to loop pedal, the most striking thing for me and most was the aforementioned silence that the crowd were persistent with for the whole hour. Obviously they/we went mental at the end of each song, but while he was wistfully picking away, everyone just gawped in respectful silence. This might sound very trivial and if you haven’t been to festivals you may not be aware of the normal rules, but for my 15th festival it was incredible to just see so many people appreciate one of the greatest songwriters in popular music in peaceful awe.

So, if you’re watching a solo artist show some respect and let the people down the front who actually appreciate the music enjoy it without constant chatter. It is them that suffer most from festival crowds and their lackadaisical approach to music they aren’t familiar with.

Greg

PS, I am aware the John Cage quote probably wasn’t necessary but I am trying to educate you…