Att numera så salongsavantgardistiska The Wire ger sig på en helig ko är sällsynt, men i novembernumret hände det: Philip Brophy skrev en välbehövlig uppgörelse med delar av John Cages teorier:

Cage - or precisely, the presentation of Cage back then - irritated me with its 'a-culturalism' - the way his 'indeterminate' compositional strategies removed the work from any cultural specificity. This irritation acted on two levels: firstly via its locus in the rarefied domain of experimental music practice and its influence on Fluxus's alignment with the art gallery - realms where composer directive and artist statement overrode any socio-cultural framing of their outcomes. Secondly, through the reduction of 'sound' to a quasi-mystical zone where 'sound itself' speaks most eloquently of its substance and existence. From the precious privilege born of the former to the vacuous view endeared by the latter, the appreciation of Cage seemed delineated by its own anechoic chamber which excluded the world and its cultural noise - all while deftly reducing it to an amorphorous voluminous mass. It was as if all sound was to be celebrated - so long as it wasn't labelled, categorised or named.

Brophy beskriver ett framförande av ett av Cages stycken för radioapparater i New York under det tidiga 80-talet, och hur de fragment av disco och hiphop som då och bröt fram ur bruset lät oändligt mycket mer vitala än Cages konceptualism. Samtidigt som han avfärdar mysticismen i Cage-kulten kan han också se att dess laissez-faire-attityd till konstnärliga värden haft en förmåga att vidga perspektiven:

If anything, the shortcomings in applying Cage's ideas to a pluralist cultural domain has conversely allowed med the freedom to declare no fundamental difference between Garry Glitter's "Rock And Roll" and Stockhausens Kontakte. I've since perceived that the abject acoustica of even the most vapid music can sometimes betray an overwhelming depth of 'sound itself' in contrast to the pumped-up self-mythologising that passes for the bulk of so-called radical sound art practice.