Category Archives: Popular music

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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by | October 1, 2012 · 1:00 am

Dylan and devotion

 

Small talk at the wall, a Yahoo! Group honoring Bob Dylan, has established a weekly hoot night—a chat room where Dylan’s songs are performed by its members.

These hoot nights can be read into a foreground of medieval representational devotion, due to the structure that consists of canonical texts with which the audience can identify itself. The hoot nights become an example of the transformation of medieval rituals into art.

This according to “Music practices around Bob Dylan, medieval rituals, and modernity” by Nils Holger Petersen, an essay included in The cultural heritage of medieval rituals: Genre and ritual (Transfiguration: Nordisk tidsskrift for kunst og kristendom V/1–2 [2003] pp. 321–330). Below, “Weird Al” Yankovic demonstrates his devotion to Dylan.

Related article: The Caffè Lena Collection

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by | August 15, 2012 · 1:00 am

Jimi Hendrix’s asteroid prophecy

A timely prophecy remains hidden in the words of Jimi Hendrix—a connection between history and religions, linking the future with the past—that predicts the existence of an asteroid on course to impact the earth.

Hendrix was an authentic Afro-American Cherokee seer, the World Shaman who glimpsed a trajectory of extraterrestrial events already in place during his lifetime. The dominators have silenced the seers throughout the ages and retarded history by impeding humanity’s advance towards anti-asteroid technology.

In 1993 Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who acquired rights to a large collection of Hendrix memorabilia for the Experience Music Project in Seattle, loaned the Hendrix family a sum of money to finance a lawsuit against a Hendrix production company in Hollywood, thus facilitating the coverup of Hendrix’s asteroid prophecy.

This according to Rock prophecy: Sex and Jimi Hendrix in world religions—The original asteroid prediction and Microsoft connection by Michael Fairchild (Rochester: First Century, 1999). Below, Hendrix’s If 6 was 9—a song closely connected with the prophecy.

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by | August 4, 2012 · 1:00 am

Quaderni del Centro Studi Canzone Napoletana

Libreria Musicale Italiana (LIM) launched the series Quaderni del Centro Studi Canzone Napoletana in 2011 with La canzone napoletana: Le musiche e i loro contesti. Edited by Enrico Careri and Anita Pesce, the book comprises papers presented at the eponymous conference held from 4 through 5 June 2010 at the Casa Murolo-Palazzo Maddaloni, Naples.

Below, Enrico Caruso, who brought canzone napoletana to the world’s attention, sings the genre’s most famous song, Giovanni Capurro and Eduardo di Capua’s O sole mio.

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by | June 25, 2012 · 1:00 am

Retalhos da música afro-luso-brasileira

In 2012 Editorial Estampa inaugurated its series Retalhos da música afro-luso-brasileira  with Quejas, Tchufe e Lobo: Reis crioulos do samba, fado e morna dos anos 30 by Alveno Figueiredo e Silva.

The book is a tribute to the memory of Fernando Quejas, Pedro Alcântara de Freitas Silva Ramos (Tchufe), and Antoninho Lobo, popular singers who combined influences from Cape Verdean, Brazilian, and Portuguese cultures.

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by | June 20, 2012 · 1:00 am

A Springsteen resource

 

Library of hope and dreams: A comprehensive annotated bibliography of scholarship about Bruce Springsteen is a free online annotated bibliography of scholarship published in English about The Boss.

A continuously updated resource, as of 7 June 2012 the bibliography had 250 entries including books, book chapters, journal articles, conference papers, and web publications. All items are described in full bibliographic detail, abstracted, and indexed by subject keywords and by song and album when appropriate.

Library of Hope and Dreams was created by Denise D. Green at Staley Library, Milikin University.

BONUS: Read about this resource in Hungarian here.

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by | June 6, 2012 · 1:00 am

Music in political ads

Music plays a vital yet rarely noticed role in political ads, as explored by Jason Lee Oakes in “Obama’s One chance: Winning over hearts and ears” (IASPM-US 16 May 2012). Applying musicological analysis to several campaign advertisements—including President Obama’s controversial ad focused on the killing of Osama Bin Laden under his command—Oakes considers how musical techniques are used to provoke emotional responses to political issues, or to create issues where none formerly existed.

Below, the advertisement in question. Above, the first U.S. presidential campaign song, which circulated as a broadsheet during the successful 1824 campaign of Andrew Jackson (click to enlarge).

Related article: 9/11 music

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by | May 3, 2012 · 1:00 am

Korla Pandit’s universals

 

The son of an Indian Brahman and a French singer, Korla Pandit (born John Roland Redd, 1921–98) performed on Hammond organ and piano on Los Angeles television three times a week from 1949 to 1951. In every program he wore a suit and tie and a bejewelled turban, and he never spoke.

While he fulfilled, perpetrated, and even helped to form stereotypes of the mystical, exotic, Indian Other, Pandit interpreted and manipulated these notions to assert his ideas and beliefs about the essential union of East and West and the universality of spiritual experience.

This according to “Korla Pandit: Music, exoticism, and mysticism” by Timothy D. Taylor, an essay included in Widening the horizon: Exoticism in post-war popular music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999). Below, a 1951 performance of one of his trademark pieces, the traditional Greek song Μισιρλού (Misirlou).

BONUS: A classic surf-rock performance of the same piece by Dick Dale & the Del-Tones:

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