The host seems incredulous that Cage could actually consider this music, but generously quotes respected reviewers who feel otherwise (while simultaneously pointing out that the same reviewers still had their doubts). When warned that the audience might laugh out loud at the piece, Cage welcomes the possibility.

There’s an almost surreal coda to the performance: A dispute between two unions apparently prevented the radios from being plugged in before cameras rolled – most likely electricians squabbling with stage hands over whose contract mandates handling of power cords. On the other hand, it could have been the musicians union taking offense to the aesthetics of the piece.

Cage takes it in stride and adjusts the score accordingly. Instead of twiddling knobs, he slaps the radios, and later knocks them to the floor. Would love to have heard a version with the radios plugged in – could have taken the piece in an entirely different direction.

Watching the Cage clip took me back to a long-ago Fred Frith show, in which he played “table-top” guitars with screwdrivers, hammers and handkerchiefs, and kicked the tables for percussion. That concert broadened my perception of music to see things from Cage’s point of view – that any performance of sound is music.

I’d never imagined that the cruise line travel industry would one day be channeling subliminal messages from William S. Burroughs through The Iguana, carefully masked as a ploy to sell us on the joy of ocean cruises. But for the past couple years, a certain vacation cruise line has been running a snippet of Pop’s “Lust for Life” with a strange edit that aims to soften the song into some kind of hip “let’s party on a ship” message.

You may recall that that the line from “Lust for Life” used in the commercial, “Here comes Johnny Yen again…,” continues on to tell us that Johnny has liquor and drugs, and that he’s a sex machine. Those parts were snipped to the editing room floor by the commercial’s editors. What’s worse, the same sound barbers chopped out all of the fun bits about hypnotizing chickens.

Years ago, cruise ads ran with images of grandparents playing shuffleboard. Are the cruise lines of today hoping that aging punks will fill in the gaps, subliminally associating sex, drugs, and rock’n'roll with the superficial bliss of an ocean cruise?

David Bowie’s “Heroes” was once used in a series of Microsoft commercials, strategically fading out the line “We could be heroes…” just before the qualifier: “…just for one day.” I believe Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like an Eagle” suffered a similar circumcised lyrical fate when used in an ad campaign. This sort of strategic edit is nothing new.

If you don’t already know who Johnny Yen is, and what he’s carrying, then it’s a bit oddly out of context to cite Yen as your icon for life lived lustily. It could almost be interpreted as some kind of warning that the boats are populated by Japanese tourists. It’s a weird line to use in a commercial.

Today I stumbled across an Iggy Pop interview in which he reveals the inspiration behind Johnny Yen, and the suggestion that love is like hypnotizing chickens. Big stuff – kind of like getting Don McLean to talk about the meaning of the lyrics to American Pie. While I admire McLean’s idea that “… songwriters should make their statements and move on, maintaining a dignified silence,” I must admit that I’ve always wanted to know more about how love could be “like hypnotizing chickens,” and just who Johnny Yen was.

Iggy spiels that “Lust for Life” is a nod to William S. Burroughs, whose esteemed character Dr. Benway was the source of the chicken analogy, and that Johnny Yen was Burroughs’ “Venusian green boy,” who used the love con as a charade. Finally, he explains that Bowie nicked the main riff for the song from an Armed Forced TV commercial.

So it turns out Johnny Yen’s anthem to lust was hashed out with Bowie on ukulele while watching Armed Forces TV, and that the song merges what was probably a military Morse code signal with Iggy’s observations on love as borrowed from William S. Burroughs.

It all makes perfect sense now. You can add “Lust for Life” to the list of Burroughs references in rock, alongside the Mugwumps and Steely Dan. I’m sure old Uncle Bill is smiling from beyond the grave every time he hears Johnny Yen’s name used to hawk ocean cruises.

With luck, archived versions will continue to be posted at other web sites, and the music will survive virus-like for decades to come. But for now, your best bet is to scour file sharing networks, where the tracks will certainly become a cult classic.

While reading the Salon piece, I started thinking that if it’s parody, it should be clear because of the 2 Live Crew scandal some years back where their parody of “Oh, Pretty Woman” got taken to the Supreme Court as a free speech issue. The band Negativland ran with that court case ruling, covering it in their book Fair Use: The Letter U and the Numeral 2 , which became a de facto primer on copyright and digital culture.

The thrust of the book was that Negativland could have won their case if they could have afforded to take it to court, but that their label, SST, backed away. The book also points out The Supremes conclusion that not only is music parody protected as free speech, but that there was no legal grounding at the time requiring music companies to license sampled work. Nevertheless, business practices had evolved based on paying for sample usage, even if that usage would otherwise have been protected as fair use.

In a perverse twist, what became chapter one of the book was orignally published as a magazine, which pissed off SST enough that they sued Negativland.

Page two of the Salon piece explores the legal angles in more depth, and makes the point that it’s hard to think of Dylan Hears a Who as parody when it lifts the Seuss “lyrics” whole-cloth. Humorous vocal delivery alone does not a parody make. A Dylan parody, sure, but a Dr. Seuss parody? Not buying it. In the end, Dylan Hears a Who is just a set of brilliantly executed cover tracks, published without permission.

But wait — what’s this?

How is that Jesse Jackson can read Green Eggs and Ham on Saturday Night Live and get away with it, while this unheard-of musician with a little traction in the blogosphere cannot? Why is Jackson (or NBC) able to lift Seuss’ words in toto and have it remain on YouTube after all this time, while the little guy can’t get his “parody” in edge-wise? Did SNL obtain permission from the Seuss estate? Maybe. But I doubt it.

And where do we even begin with this cover of the theme lyrics to Gilligan’s Island, sung to the tune of Stairway to Heaven?

Truth be known, I’m not much of a Dylan fan, but a friend does some killer karaoke covers of Dylan as channeled by Elmer Fudd. I’ll try and track down some samples of that, and we’ll see how long they stay online.