Category Archives: Popular music

by | March 11, 2013 · 1:00 am

Lawrence Welk’s chiffon paradise

 

Lawrence Welk’s hour-long world as presented on The Lawrence Welk show—with its smiling singers, brightly colored sets, color-coordinated male and female outfits, and flawless band performances—were stress-free and wholly detached from the outside world.

His was a sealed-off, accident-free utopia soundtracked by an endless supply of what the maestro called “champagne music”. Once a week, Welk presented viewers with one of the most otherworldly—and most underappreciated—psychedelic chiffon musical paradises ever seen on television.

This according to “The maestro from another planet: In praise of Lawrence Welk’s otherwordly chiffon paradise” by Ken Parille (The believer XII/6 [July-August 2009; online only]).

Today is Welk’s 110th birthday! Below, the maestro celebrates on the dance floor.

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by | February 25, 2013 · 1:00 am

George Harrison’s diagnosis

 

Today we honor both George Harrison’s birthday and National Cancer Awareness Month.

In 1997 Harrison was diagnosed with throat cancer; it did not appear to be a large tumor, and it seemed harmless. Chemotherapy and radiation showed effective results.

But in 2000, while he was working on a reissue of All things must pass, he underwent treatment for another cancerous growth in the lung, which had migrated from his primary lesion of the throat. Later he was found to have an inoperable brain tumor as well.

Harrison underwent a new type of cancer treatment in a Swiss clinic, but he finally succumbed to his disease on November 29, 2001. If the original cancer had been screened and diagnosed in time, we might be celebrating his 70th birthday today.

This according to “George Harrison” by Anirudha Agnihotry, an article posted on the blog Oral cancer awareness drive (Oral Cancer Organization, 2013). Many thanks to Dr. Agnihotry for guest-writing this post!

Above, Harrison in 1974 (public domain); below, with a few friends.

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by | February 23, 2013 · 1:00 am

“Something wild” and identity shifts

 

Jonathan Demme included excerpts from over 40 recorded songs in the soundtrack for his film Something wild. As a late–20th-century update of screwball comedies, traits common to the genre—shifts in characters’ identities, the breaking down of social barriers—are supported and commented on musically.

This according to “Something new: Music as re-vision in Jonathan Demme’s Something wild” by Jeff Evans (Popular music and society XIX/3 [fall 1995] pp. 1-17). Above and below, The Feelies shift the identity of  David Bowie’s Fame in Demme’s film.

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by | February 15, 2013 · 1:00 am

Music and delinquency

frankie-lymon-im-not-a-juvenile-delinquent

A four-year longitudinal study (n = 309) explored whether early adolescents’ preferences for nonmainstream types of popular music indicate concurrent and later minor delinquency.

The results showed that early fans of types of rock (e.g., rock, heavy metal, gothic, punk), African American music (rhythm and blues, hip-hop), and electronic dance music (trance, techno, hardhouse) showed elevated minor delinquency concurrently and longitudinally. Preferring conventional pop or highbrow music (classical music, jazz), in contrast, was not related to or was negatively related to minor delinquency.

Early music preferences emerged as more powerful indicators of later delinquency than early delinquency, indicating that music choice is a strong marker of later problem behavior.

This according to “Early adolescent music preferences and minor delinquency” by Tom F.M. ter Bogt, Loes Keijsers, and Wim H.J. Meeus (Pediatrics CXXXII/2, pp. e382–e389). Many thanks to the Improbable Research blog for bringing this article to our attention!

Below, Jerry Lee Lewis introduces an earlier study.

BONUS: The Frankie Lymon classic pictured above.

Related article: Sexual attraction by genre

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by | January 30, 2013 · 1:00 am

Negativland and U2

U2_Negativland

Negativland is a group of sound artists who mix fragments and samples of sounds from the mass media to produce a parodic critique of contemporary culture.

The group’s 1991 single U2 combined samples from and a vocalized parody of the band U2’s I still haven’t found what I’m looking for with studio outtakes of Casey Kasem verbally abusing his staff on the American Top 40 radio program. Soon after the single was released it was pulled from stores and Negativland was sued by Island Records, Warner-Chappell Music (U2’s label and music publishing company, respectively) and by their own label, SST.

Over time a community arose that provided a loose distribution system for the recording, along with a medium for producing and disseminating an oppositional discourse to the dominant legal and economic system that had stopped its legitimate release.

This according to “Negativland, out-law judgments, and the politics of cyberspace” by John Sloop and Andrew Herman, an essay included in Mapping the beat: Popular music and contemporary theory (Malden: Blackwell, 1998).

Below, the recording in question. Warning: Negativland is not shy about using profanity.

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by | January 7, 2013 · 1:00 am

Cardinal O’Connell and crooning

W.C.O'Connell

In an address delivered on 10  January 1932 William Cardinal O’Connell described crooners as “whiners and bleaters defiling the air.”

“No true American would practice this base art,” he continued. “I like to use my radio, when weary. But I cannot turn the dials without getting these whiners, crying vapid words to impossible tunes.”

“If you will listen closely when you are unfortunate enough to get one of these you will discern the basest appeal to sex emotions in the young. They are not true love songs—they profane the name. They are ribald and revolting to true men.”

This according to “Cardinal denounces crooners as whiners defiling the air” (New York times 11 January 1932, p. 21), which is reprinted in Music, sound, and technology in America: A documentary history of early phonograph, cinema, and radio (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012) pp. 319–20.

Below, Rudy Valée defiles the air in Florenz Ziegfeld’s Glorifying the American girl).

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by | December 28, 2012 · 1:00 am

Dead studies

Dead Studies

Launched in 2011 by the Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California Santa Cruz Library, Dead studies builds on momentum that has been growing among Grateful Dead researchers for some 15 years.

The annual Southwest/Texas Popular Culture and American Culture Association Conferences have seen the rise of a group that has come to be known as the Grateful Dead Scholars Caucus; one of them, the historian and archivist Nicholas Meriwether, founded an irregularly published journal called Dead letters to disseminate their work.

Now, thanks to two anonymous donors and a dedicated Editorial Board, the Grateful Dead Archive has become the publisher of a continuation of Meriwether’s work, retaining him as Editor. The new journal aims to be “the definitive organ of Grateful Dead scholarship, as well as an important community resource.”

Below, the band in 1969.

Related article: Dead fiction

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by | December 14, 2012 · 1:00 am

The Beatles and polylinearity

please please

In an experiment, three groups of music students transcribed the first 64 seconds of The Beatles’ Please please me.

Analysis of these transcriptions yielded a ninefold typology of polylinear listeners: holistic melodists, holistic formalists, impressionists, melodic conventionalists, semiprofessional generalists, nonmelodic semiprofessional generalists, nonprofessional melodic generalists, semiprofessional rhythmicians, and holistic graphicians.

This according to “Dynamics of polylinearity in popular music: Perception and apperception of 64 seconds of Please please me (1963)” by Tomi Mäkelä, an article published in Beatlestudies. III: Proceedings of the Beatles 2000 Conference (Jyväskylä: Jyväskylän Yliopisto, 2001, pp. 129–38).

Below, the boys get polylinear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Related article: The Beatles and “Please please me” November 1962

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by | December 5, 2012 · 1:00 am

Louie Louie and the FBI

 

Written by the Louisiana-born Richard Berry, Louie Louie was inspired by his hearing a Latino-Californian band performing a song with the soon-to-be iconic rhythm. Berry married the rhythm to an R&B-calypso fusion and composed lyrics from the perspective of a lonely Jamaican sailor.

Scoring a regional hit in 1957 with the original recording, the song was picked up—and amped up—by bands in the thriving garlouie louieage rock scene of the Pacific Northwest. Newly recorded versions included one by the Washington-based band The Kingsmen (1963), which rose to number two on the national charts.

The oddity of the left-field hit was exceeded only by the oddity of the nation’s response to it. Recording in only one take, the Kingsmen transformed Louie Louie from a laid-back calypso into a raucous frat anthem with a monomaniacal emphasis on the ten-note riff and a slurred, indecipherable vocal performance.

A two-year investigation by the FBI centered on the alleged obscenity of the lyrics but ultimately determined the song “unintelligible at any speed” in a 250-page report. Louie Louie made its way from being just another one-off novelty hit to a source of cultural anxiety, sexual fantasy, inspiration for hundreds of cover versions, and touchstone for both punk rockers and nostalgic baby boomers.

This according to “Louie Louie: The history and mythology of the world’s most famous rock’n’roll song” by Dave Marsh (New York: Hyperion, 1993). Below, a live performance from 1965.

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by | October 31, 2012 · 1:00 am

Frank Zappa and Uncle Meat

The 1969 double album Uncle Meat by Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention is a collage of rock, jazz, modernist art music, parodies of 1950s pop songs, and documentary-style spoken passages; two recurring themes and their variations unite it as a single musical statement.

Other unifying factors include the collage approach itself, which is echoed in Cal Schenkel’s cover and booklet art, the alienation aroused by the shocking elements in the musical and spoken episodes and in Schenkel’s art, and the anachronistic contrast provided by the pop song parodies.

Throughout his career Zappa successfully positioned himself as an outsider to both the rock and art music worlds, thus managing to maintain a unique place in both; Uncle Meat stands as his strongest single statement in this regard.

This according to “The Mothers of Invention and Uncle Meat: Alienation, anachronism and a double variation” by James Grier (Acta musicologica LXXIII/1 [2001] pp. 77–95). Above, Schenkel’s front cover art (worthy of today’s Halloween posting!); below, the Uncle Meat theme.

Related article: Zappa and classical music

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