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There is a song -- a song that reached the Billboard charts in 1979 -- that does not exist.
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John Cage - 4'33"
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The name of this show is This Exists. So this is probably breaking our own rules, but there is a song -- a song that reached the Billboard charts in 1979 -- that does not exist.
We're not talking about John Cage's 4'33", unquestionably the most famous silent piece of music.
4'33" is three movements ostensibly of silence -- lasting four minutes and thirty three seconds, this most famous of Cage's works is intended to challenge the very concept of music by making accidental environmental sounds its focal point. But it has sheet music. It exists.
Ready 'N' Steady does not exist. There is no score. There are no funny RU-vid videos about it or TED Talks debating its merits as cultural commentary. But in 1979, it debuted at 106 on Billboard "Bubbling Under" chart.
Credited to the band DA and the label Rascal Records, Ready 'N' Steady wasn't just a one week clerical error. It spent three weeks just outside of the Hot 100, peaking at 102 before disappearing.
Music historian Joel Whitburn has spent years trying to figure out who DA was, who Rascal Records was -- going so far as the visit an old address credited to the label, and finding only an empty office.
Here's where the astonishing conclusion would go if there was one. But literally no one knows how this happened. Was the song a fake? Is it just lost to time? Ready 'N' Steady might be our mysterious piece of non-existent music, but it's not entirely alone. Tell me if this sounds like Mick Jagger. Singing about nookie.
The Masked Marauders were a joke, the wholly non-existent basis for a phony review that Greil Marcus wrote for Rolling Stone. Supposedly a supergroup consisting of Jagger, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and John Lennon, the joke took on a life of its own when readers started calling record stores looking for the album. So Marcus recorded one, Warner Brothers released it, and sold 100 000 copies.
"Grunge speak" was as real as the Masked Marauders -- in a 1992 New York Times article about grunge and the success of Sub Pop Records, someone who worked at the label invented a whole secret grunge language, like "cob knobbler" and "swinging on the flippity-flop." The Times printed it.
More recently, an art student uploaded a fake Vampire Weekend cover and legit music outlets like Complex and FACT all reported it like it was the real thing. I'm still waiting for Lemon Sounds. Because they also uploaded this teaser.
So those things don't exist. I guess this show is a lie.
Do you think Ready 'N' Steady exists? Have you ever thought something was real that wasn't? Let us know in the comments, and subscribe for new episodes of This Exists every week. Now please enjoy my performance of John Cage's 4'33" in its entirety.
19 фев 2014
