It is no longer accurate to call Elvis Costello a rock star. Rather, he is a professional omnivore—a master, for better and worse, of eclecticism.
Costello presents himself as much as a fan as a participant, and his participation is relentless. He has evolved into one of the most spirited accomplices in tribute gigs, variety evenings, and extracurricular combinations.
This according to “Brilliant mistakes: Elvis Costello’s boundless career” by Nick Paumgarten (The New Yorker LXXXVI/35 [8 November 2010] pp. 48–59.
The singer, composer, and bandleader Bobby Byrd’s life and career were closely intertwined with those of James Brown.
Growing up together in Toccoa, Georgia, Byrd gave Brown his first break by inviting him to join the Famous Flames—the vocal group founded by Byrd—after his family took a young Brown into their home following a prison term served for robbery.
After Brown seized the frontman spot, and after he briefly dismissed the Flames altogether, Byrd went on to play an integral role in Brown’s career both on stage and off for the next ten years, providing vocal counterpoint and musical leadership while also serving as an intermediary between the singers, musicians, and dancers employed by Brown.
Known for his catch phrase “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing”, Byrd was widely loved and respected. Although he carved out a modest solo career, if he had been associated with the writers, producers, and musicians at a label like Atlantic or Stax, today he would be remembered alongside the likes of Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, and Solomon Burke. His bond with Brown was perhaps both blessing and curse, but their shared background, struggles, and successes made the bond nearly inevitable.
This according to “Don’t worry ‘bout a thing: Bobby Byrd (1934–2007)” by Alan Leeds (Wax poetics 26 [December/January 2007/2008] pp. 36–39.
US patent 7942311, granted 17 May 2011 to George Eapen of Frisco, Texas, describes a method for identifying sequenced flavor notes in a food product and developing a musical passage that represents or artistically relates to the tasting experience of the flavor notes. The passage is played and listened to concurrently with tasting the food product, thus producing a combined sensory experience.
The document includes data from a panel testing of a salsa verde flavored corn chip, which identified the flavor notes cilantro, tomatillo, lime, and an unspecified “spice flavor”. The inventor explains how these flavor notes can generate musical passages.
Eapen assigned rights to the patent to the corn chip giant Frito-Lay, presumably for its use in their marketing of corn chips.
Founded in 2014, blindedbythelight.com is an online museum displaying more than 300 pieces of Bruce Springsteen memorabilia. Admission is $9.99, which allows a month of access to the site, the ability to download a font that replicates Mr. Springsteen’s handwriting style, the use of a ticket and memorabilia exchange, and entry to a monthly raffle. Mr. Springsteen has no formal involvement with the site.
Above, the museum’s reproduction of The Boss’s 8th-grade report card (click to enlarge; note that F stands for Fair). Below, Springsteen performs Blinded by the light.
Prince’s moves to elicit female desire in the song When doves cry can be traced according to three codes found in the lyrics: the “normal” code of male sexuality common in rock music, an unusually explicit “Oedipal” code, and an “uncanny” code.
The uncanny code constitutes a counter-code to the usual male-oriented sexuality of rock music and represents an attempt to elicit a non-stereotypical female sexuality—female desire outside of the male sexual economy.
This according to “Purple passion: Images of female desire in When doves cry” by Nancy J. Holland (Cultural critique X [fall 1988] pp. 89–98).
When doves cry is 30 years old this year, as is the film that showcased it,Purple rain. Click here for the official music video; the lyrics are here.
During the military dictatorship in Brazil, which reached a high pitch of political and social repression between 1965 and 1980, the songs of Chico Buarque became vehicles for a strong, albeit veiled, political activism.
Endowed with a phenomenal lyric gift and an ability to penetrate the psyche of the most diverse human beings, Buarque was also skilled in the use of metaphor, the double entendre, the between-the-lines song text. As a consequence, he was able to say a great deal in his songs, without seemingly spelling out anything.
The military censors kept a close eye on him, leading him to complain that, out of every three songs that he wrote, two would be censored. It is all the more surprising, then, that the censors allowed the release of the song Apesar de você (In spite of you, 1970), a very obvious diatribe against the military regime and, more specifically, against the then president Emílio Garrastazu Médici.
Buarque was interrogated several times and asked to explain who was the “you” to which the song consistently refers. According to one of the versions of the interview, he said that the “you” was a very authoritative and bossy wife, and the song was the rant of her unhappy husband. Needless to say, the censors did not buy the explanation, but there was nothing specific in the text of the song that they could point to as a direct attack on the government.
The song is emblematic of Buarque’s remarkable resiliency while navigating the political minefield of the time. Many of his songs from that period testify to this same ability. His highly nuanced, subtle, poetically charged song texts can indeed be read in many different ways, and could easily be construed as the depiction of a domestic, rather than a political, drama. Throughout the duration of the military regime he offered Brazilian society a vehicle in which its entire voice could reverberate, shielded from military scrutiny by the poetic beauty of the texts.
The text of Apesar de você is reproduced in Chico Buarque: Tantas palavras—Todas as letras (São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2006).
Today is Chico Buarque’s 70th birthday! Below, Maria Bethânia performs Apesar de você; a free English rendition of the song’s text appears under the video.
Apesar de você (In spite of you)
Tomorrow will be another day…
Today, you’re the one who calls the shots.
Whatever you say, it’s been spoken
And there’s no arguing.
Today, my people walk around
Talking sideways and looking toward the ground.
You who invented this situation
By inventing all darkness,
You who invented sin
Forgot to invent forgiveness.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day.
I ask you, where will you hide
From the great euphoria when it comes?
How will you forbid it
When the rooster insists on crowing?
New water will be flowing
And our people will be loving one another, nonstop.
When that moment arrives
I’m going to charge you
For all this suffering of mine,
And with interest to boot, I swear.
All this repressed love,
All these contained screams,
All this samba in the dark.
You who invented sadness,
Now do us the favor of “disinventing” it.
You’re going to pay double
For every tear that I’ve shed
In this anguish of mine.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
I can hardly wait to see
The garden in full bloom,
The one you didn’t want to see blooming.
You’re going to be tormented,
Seeing the day break
Without asking your permission
And I’m going to have my big laugh at you
Because that day is bound to come
Sooner than you think.
In spite of you
Tomorrow will be another day
You will be forced to see the morning reborn
And pouring out poetry.
How will you explain it to yourself
Seeing that the sky has suddenly cleared,
And there’s no more punishment?
How are you going to stifle the chorus of our voices
Singing right in front of you,
In spite of you?
In spite of you
Tomorrow is going to be another day
And you’re going to be out of luck.
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Zehn kleine Jägermeister by the punk band Die Toten Hosen, which led the German charts in 1996, is a children’s counting song musically and textually referring to the British-derived Zehn kleine Negerlein and the U.S. Ten little Indians, in which the original set of ten members disappears one at a time through mishaps that are either their own fault or purely accidental.
The ten glasses of Jägermeister, a popular German liqueur, disappear in the obvious and banal fashion; ultimately, the song evokes a meeting between death and the picture of an infantile typical German whose behavior is driven purely by greed, and seems to sound the possibility that the German people could vanish altogether.
This according to “Doitsu no hittokyoku o yomu: Zehn kleine Jägermeister no baai” by Okamura Saburō (Goken fōramu VII [October 1997] pp. 1–23). Below, Die Toten Hosen brings it.
ABBA’s music has often been denigrated as bland, mass market pop. However, viewed from the point of view of reception, the ABBA phenomenon is a highly complex text that offers contemporary music consumers diverse, even perverse, pleasures.
This according to “Music and camp: Popular music performance in Priscilla and Muriel’s wedding” by Catherine Lumby, an essay included in Screen scores: Studies in contemporary Australian film music (North Ryde: Australian Film, Television, and Radio School, 1999, pp. 78–88).
Popular music underwent a profound transformation during the period between 1954 and 1969; this change can be understood through the prism of the extraordinary planetary position of February 1962, which some call the Age of Aquarius.
The seven inner planets formed a stellium (multiple conjunction of planets) in Aquarius at the time of a total solar eclipse. Opposite the stellium was Uranus, approaching its half-cycle with Jupiter on 14 March 1962 (above left; click to enlarge).
A chart for the Woodstock Festival (above right) has the Jupiter–Uranus connection writ large, with airy ideals in Libra. Its Sun–Neptune square is both idealistic and druggy.
In the 1960s many rock bands were funny some of the time; only a few made humor about as much of the act as music was.
In the U.S., only two such bands did so with consistent brilliance: the Mothers of Invention and the Fugs. The international, and kinder and gentler, branch of that triangle of major rock comics was represented by England’s Bonzo Dog Band.
The Bonzos had only one big hit in the U.K. with I’m the urban spaceman, and some Beatles-glamor-by-association due to a cameo appearance in the Magical mystery tour film. In the U.S. they remained a cult band.
Sometimes compared to the Mothers of Invention, particularly in their zany stage shows and their facility for parodying multiple pop genres, the Bonzos lacked the savage cynicism that powered Frank Zappa’s brand of wit. As compensation, they offered a more whimsical, surreal take on the absurd that was in some ways more sonically versatile, encompassing not just rock but also prewar music hall, jazz, and spoken word.
This according to “The Bonzo Dog Band” by Richie Unterberger, an essay included in Urban spacemen and wayfaring strangers: Overlooked innovators and eccentric visionaries of ’60s rock (San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000, pp. 109–121).
Below, the Bonzos perform Death cab for cutie, the song that the American alt-rock band took for its name; the performance starts around 0:50.
The main entrance to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts’s exhibition Lou Reed: Caught between the twisted stars opens up on Lincoln Plaza, directly adjacent to the The Metropolitan Opera house. On a sunny day, the Met’s … Continue reading →
Seven strings/Сім струн (dedicated to Uncle Michael)* For thee, O Ukraine, O our mother unfortunate, bound, The first string I touch is for thee. The string will vibrate with a quiet yet deep solemn sound, The song from my heart … Continue reading →
Introduction: Dr. Philip Ewell, Associate Professor of Music at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, posted a series of daily tweets during Black History Month (February 2021) providing information on some under-researched Black … Continue reading →
For it [the Walkman] permits the possibility…of imposing your soundscape on the surrounding aural environment and thereby domesticating the external world: for a moment, it can all be brought under the STOP/START, FAST FOWARD, PAUSE and REWIND buttons. –Iain Chambers, “The … Continue reading →
