I'd say Madame Meowser probably has something on the late Mr Cage. The composer Schoenberg once said of his one-time pupil: "John Cage is not a composer at all - but an inventor, of genius" - which comment as someone commented to me, is truly the kiss of death. I actually once met Cage and his "prepared piano" in Sydney in 1976, as an awe-struck teenager. Even in that enthusiastic state of mind, I had to admit to myself that his "music" was, to use an Australian expression, "boring as batshit".

Thanks for the NPR links. I do sometimes listen to NPR but had missed that program. Listened to most of the clips in the series, and found most of them to mainly curiosities. For instance, this one in which a guy gets some nice bell like sounds from striking abandoned missiles. Well, hopefully the decommissioning was successful, otherwise we'd have heard some explosive sounds too .. my point being that the interest quality lies in learning about the sources of these sounds, rather than in the sound quality itself.

The big exception is this really lovely pile driver in New Orleans, which apparently got people dancing to it in the streets.

Thanks also for the kind comment about my "talent", but I think that spacey-audio stuff I did a few years ago, while it got some good feedback from some pros, isn't really as good as I thought it was at the time. And, my inspiration in that area seems to have dried up, at least for now.