Watch Bing Crosby’s Final Christmas Special, Featuring a Famous Duet with Bowie, and Bowie Introducing His New Song, “Heroes” (1977)

in Music, Television | December 24th, 2021

Bing Cros­by died in Octo­ber of 1977, but that did­n’t stop him from appear­ing in liv­ing rooms all over Amer­i­ca for Christ­mas. He’d already com­plet­ed the shoot for his final CBS tele­vi­sion spe­cial Bing Cros­by’s Mer­rie Olde Christ­mas, along with such col­lab­o­ra­tors as Ron Moody, Stan­ley Bax­ter, the Trin­i­ty Boys Choir, Twig­gy, and a young fel­low by the name of David Bowie. Of course, Bowie had long since achieved his own dream of fame, at least to the younger gen­er­a­tion; it was view­ers who’d grown up lis­ten­ing to Cros­by who need­ed an intro­duc­tion. And they received a mem­o­rable one indeed, in the form of the Bowie-Cros­by duet “Peace on Earth/Little Drum­mer Boy,” pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

This year you can watch Bing Cros­by’s Mer­rie Olde Christ­mas in its hour­long entire­ty, which includes per­for­mances of “Have Your­self a Mer­ry Lit­tle Christ­mas” and “Side by Side by Side” (from the late Stephen Sond­heim’s Com­pa­ny), a (per­haps embell­ished) musi­cal delin­eation of the extend­ed Cros­by fam­i­ly, and a ses­sion of lit­er­ary rem­i­nis­cence with none oth­er than Charles Dick­ens.

The set­up for all this is that Cros­by, his wife, and chil­dren have all been brought to Eng­land by the invi­ta­tion of the pre­vi­ous­ly unknown Sir Per­ci­val Cros­by, who desires to extend a hand to his “poor Amer­i­can rela­tions” — and who hap­pens to live next door to Bowie, that most Eng­lish of all 1970s rock stars.

The search for Sir Cros­by pro­ceeds mer­ri­ly, at one point prompt­ing his famous rel­a­tive to chat with Twig­gy about the nature of love and lone­li­ness, emo­tions “just as painful and just as beau­ti­ful as they ever were. Whether you’re a nov­el­ist, poet, or even a song­writer, it’s all in the way you sing.” These reflec­tions lead into a stark music video for the title track of Bowie’s “ ‘Heroes’ ”, which had come out just weeks before (coin­ci­den­tal­ly, on the very day of Cros­by’s death). Though a some­what incon­gru­ous addi­tion to such an old-fash­ioned pro­duc­tion, it does vivid­ly reflect a cer­tain chang­ing of the transat­lantic pop-cul­tur­al guard.

In their scene togeth­er, Cros­by and Bowie do exude an unde­ni­able mutu­al respect, the younger man admit­ting even to have tried his hand at the old­er man’s sig­na­ture hol­i­day song, “White Christ­mas.” Hav­ing set off the 1940s Christ­mas-music boom by record­ing it 35 years before, Cros­by sings it one last time him­self to close out this spe­cial. Before doing so, he describes the Christ­mas sea­son as “a time to look back with grat­i­tude at being able to come this far, and a time to look ahead with hope and opti­mism.” Like all the ele­ments of Bing Cros­by’s Mer­rie Olde Christ­mas not involv­ing David Bowie, these words were noth­ing new even then, but some­how they still man­age to stoke our Christ­mas spir­it all these decades lat­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy/Peace on Earth” (1977)

David Bowie Sends a Christ­mas Greet­ing in the Voice of Elvis Pres­ley

John­ny Cash’s Christ­mas Spe­cials, Fea­tur­ing June Carter, Steve Mar­tin, Andy Kauf­man & More (1976–79)

Revis­it Kate Bush’s Pecu­liar Christ­mas Spe­cial, Fea­tur­ing Peter Gabriel (1979)

Why “White Christ­mas,” “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Oth­er Clas­sic Christ­mas Songs Come from the 1940s

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why “White Christmas,” “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Let It Snow,” and Other Classic Christmas Songs Come from the 1940s

in History, Music | December 23rd, 2021

Cast your mind back, if you will, to Christ­mas­time eighty years ago, and imag­ine which hol­i­day songs would have been in the air — or rather, which ones would­n’t have been. You cer­tain­ly would­n’t have heard the likes of “Jin­gle Bell Rock” or “Rockin’ Around the Christ­mas Tree,” rock-and-roll itself not yet hav­ing emerged in the form we know today. Even the thor­ough­ly un-rock­ing “Sil­ver Bells” would­n’t be record­ed until 1951, for the now-for­got­ten Bob Hope film The Lemon Drop Kid. What of chil­dren’s favorites like “Here Comes San­ta Claus,” “Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Rein­deer,” and “Frosty the Snow­man”? None were pop­u­lar until Gene Autry laid them down in 1947, 1949, and 1950, respec­tive­ly.

Even “The Christ­mas Song,” whose most beloved ver­sion was record­ed by Nat King Cole, was­n’t writ­ten until 1945 (as was  “Let It Snow”). The year before that brought “Have Your­self a Mer­ry Lit­tle Christ­mas”; the year before that, “San­ta Claus Is Comin’ to Town” and “I’ll Be Home for Christ­mas.” That was record­ed first and most defin­i­tive­ly by Bing Cros­by, the singer most close­ly iden­ti­fied with the 1940s Christ­mas-music boom. That boom began, as the Ched­dar Explains video at the top of the post tells it, with Cros­by’s Christ­mas Day 1941 ren­di­tion of “White Christ­mas,” just weeks after the attack on Pearl Har­bor.

“It’s no coin­ci­dence that the boom in Christ­mas tunes came dur­ing World War II, when tens of thou­sands of Amer­i­can sol­diers were abroad defend­ing their coun­try, no doubt long­ing for the sim­ple warmth of home,” writes The Atlantic’s Eric Har­vey. “Irv­ing Berlin invest­ed ‘White Christ­mas’ with the sort of metero­log­i­cal long­ing that comes from liv­ing in South­ern Cal­i­for­nia, but troops picked up on the sen­ti­ment, mak­ing the song a clas­sic in this regard.” This also hap­pened to be the zenith of the gold­en age of radio (a com­pi­la­tion of whose Christ­mas broad­casts we fea­tured last year here on Open Cul­ture). “By the 1940s, radios were a default pres­ence in most Amer­i­can homes. And by the late 1940s tele­vi­sion was grow­ing out of radio, and through the 1950s the pair set hol­i­day liv­ing rooms around the coun­try aglow with musi­cal per­for­mances.”

That most pop­u­lar Christ­mas songs still come from the 1940s and 50s (a Spo­ti­fy playlist of which you can find here) has giv­en rise to the­o­ries of a Baby-Boomer con­spir­a­cy to pre­serve their own child­hoods at all costs to the cul­ture. But then, as Christo­pher Ingra­ham writes in The Wash­ing­ton Post, “the post­war era real­ly was an excep­tion­al time in Amer­i­can his­to­ry: jobs were plen­ti­ful, the econ­o­my was boom­ing, and Amer­i­ca’s influ­ence on the world stage was at its peak.” Thus “what we now think of as the hol­i­day aes­thet­ic isn’t just about a par­tic­u­lar time of the year — it’s also very much about a par­tic­u­lar time of Amer­i­can his­to­ry.” This aligns with the per­cep­tion that Christ­mas has turned from a reli­gious hol­i­day into an Amer­i­can one. But take it from me, an Amer­i­can liv­ing in Korea: even on the oth­er side of the world, you can’t escape its songs.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Music Sound Like Christ­mas Music? Hear the Sin­gle Most Christ­massy Chord of All Explained

Stream 48 Hours of Vin­tage Christ­mas Radio Broad­casts Fea­tur­ing Orson Welles, Bob Hope, Frank Sina­tra, Jim­my Stew­art, Ida Lupino & More (1930–1959)

David Bowie & Bing Cros­by Sing “The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy” (1977)

Stream 22 Hours of Funky, Rock­ing & Swing­ing Christ­mas Albums: From James Brown and John­ny Cash to Christo­pher Lee & The Ven­tures

The Sto­ry of The Pogues’ “Fairy­tale of New York,” the Boozy Bal­lad That Has Become One of the Most Beloved Christ­mas Songs of All Time

Stream a Playlist of 79 Punk Rock Christ­mas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Reli­gion & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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How the Beatles Experimented with Indian Music & Pioneered a New Rock and Roll Sound

in Music | December 21st, 2021

If the Bea­t­les’ exper­i­ments with Indi­an clas­si­cal music helped bridge their tran­si­tion from tour­ing pop stars to avant-garde stu­dio wiz­ards, it can seem less obvi­ous how seri­ous­ly they took Indi­an clas­si­cal music itself, though the band intro­duced mil­lions of West­ern­ers to Ravi Shankar and oth­er Indi­an musi­cians (some of whom did not get cred­it on albums like Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band and were only dis­cov­ered decades lat­er). Because of the Bea­t­les, the sitar is indeli­bly asso­ci­at­ed in the West with psy­che­delia, and Indi­an clas­si­cal forms and instru­ments have entered the pop music ver­nac­u­lar to stay. But none of that’s to say the band set out to accom­plish these goals in their first dal­liance with East­ern sounds.

That intro­duc­tion came in the most unse­ri­ous of ways dur­ing the mak­ing of 1965’s slap­stick Help!: a chase scene in a Lon­don Indi­an restau­rant. The Bea­t­les would come to regret mak­ing the movie alto­geth­er, and nev­er quite under­stood it while they were mak­ing it. (“It was wrong for us,” Paul McCart­ney lat­er reflect­ed. “We were guest stars in our own movie.”)

Its sto­ry fea­tured a sin­is­ter, stereo­typ­i­cal “East­ern sect,” as Lennon put it, and the restau­rant scene, he said, was “the first time that we were aware of any­thing Indi­an.”

Lennon lat­er called the movie “bull­shit” but reflect­ed on its musi­cal impor­tance: “All of the Indi­an involve­ment,” he said in a 1972 inter­view, “came out of the film Help!” As George Har­ri­son recalled, the restau­rant scene was life-chang­ing:

I remem­ber pick­ing up the sitar and try­ing to hold it and think­ing, ‘This is a fun­ny sound.’ It was an inci­den­tal thing, but some­where down the line I began to hear Ravi Shankar’s name. The third time I heard it, I thought, ‘This is an odd coin­ci­dence.’ And then I talked with David Cros­by of The Byrds and he men­tioned the name. I went and bought a Ravi record; I put it on and it hit a cer­tain spot in me that I can’t explain, but it seemed very famil­iar to me. The only way I could describe it was: my intel­lect didn’t know what was going on and yet this oth­er part of me iden­ti­fied with it. It just called on me … a few months elapsed and then I met this guy from the Asian Music Cir­cle organ­i­sa­tion who said, ‘Oh, Ravi Shankar’s gonna come to my house for din­ner. Do you want to come too?’

Har­ri­son fol­lowed up the vis­it with sev­er­al weeks of study under Shankar (see them play­ing togeth­er in Rishikesh, India, below) and the Asian Music Cir­cle in Lon­don. He began apply­ing what he learned from Shankar to Bea­t­les songs. “With­in You With­out You,” from Sgt. Pep­per’s, for exam­ple, was based on a Shankar com­po­si­tion.

The first offi­cial Bea­t­les release to fea­ture Indi­an instru­men­ta­tion involved none of the band’s mem­bers. It was, rather, a med­ley of “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Can’t Buy Me Love,” and “I Should Have Known Bet­ter,” played on sitar, tablas, flute, and fin­ger cym­bals for the restau­rant scene and released on the North Amer­i­can record­ing of Help! In that same year, how­ev­er, the band used Indi­an sounds them­selves for the first time on Rub­ber Soul when the sitar appeared on the record­ing of “Nor­we­gian Wood.” The track “need­ed some­thing,” Har­ri­son said. “We would usu­al­ly start look­ing through the cup­board to see if we could come up with some­thing, a new sound, and I picked the sitar up — it was just lying around; I hadn’t real­ly fig­ured out what to do with it. It was quite spon­ta­neous: I found the notes that played the lick. It fit­ted and it worked.” The song has been her­ald­ed as the first appear­ance of “raga rock.” Not long after­ward, Har­ri­son com­posed “Love You To” for Revolver in 1966, a song that not only incor­po­rat­ed the hyp­not­ic drone of the sitar but also inte­grat­ed clas­si­cal Indi­an musi­cal the­o­ry into its com­po­si­tion.

In the video at the top, pianist and teacher David Ben­nett demon­strates how the Bea­t­les did not sim­ply pick up the sitar as a nov­el­ty instru­ment; they found ways to com­bine West­ern rock idioms with a tra­di­tion­al East­ern musi­cal vocab­u­lary. “Love You To” makes “exten­sive use of Indi­an instru­men­ta­tion like sitar, table and tam­bu­ra,” says Ben­nett, “but the song’s treat­ment of har­mo­ny, melody, and struc­ture was also heav­i­ly influ­enced by the Indi­an style rather than being based on a chord pro­gres­sion like most West­ern pop music.” We learn how the song uses a drone note — a root note of C — through­out, “typ­i­cal of Indi­an clas­si­cal music,” and we learn the def­i­n­i­tion of terms like “raga” and “alap”: a short intro­duc­to­ry sec­tion — such as that which opens “Love You To” — “usu­al­ly in free time, where the key cen­ter and raga are estab­lished.”

How seri­ous­ly did the Bea­t­les take Indi­an clas­si­cal music? That depends on which Bea­t­le you mean. In Har­rison’s hands, at least, an explo­ration of the musi­cal tra­di­tions of the sub­con­ti­nent pro­duced a unique body of psy­che­del­ic rock wide­ly imi­tat­ed but nev­er par­al­leled — one that did not use exot­ic instru­men­ta­tion sim­ply as orna­ment but rather as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn and change and adapt to new forms. Find out in Ben­net­t’s video how each of the Bea­t­les’ “raga rock” songs from the mid-six­ties incor­po­rat­ed Indi­an clas­si­cal music in var­i­ous ways, and lis­ten to a playlist of those songs here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

How George Mar­tin Defined the Sound of the Bea­t­les: From String Quar­tets to Back­wards Gui­tar Solos

Hear Bri­an Eno Sing The Bea­t­les’ “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” as Part of The Best Live Album of the Glam/Prog Era (1976)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Hear Brian Eno Sing The Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows” as Part of The Best Live Album of the Glam/Prog Era (1976)

in Music | December 18th, 2021

After leav­ing Roxy Music and its tour-record-tour-record cycle, Bri­an Eno became a stu­dio record­ing artist, cre­at­ing mul­ti­lay­ered mas­ter­works of pro­gres­sive pop, pro­to-punk, and ambi­ent envi­ron­ments, often on the same album. As a fan, how­ev­er, you had zero chance of see­ing Eno play any of this live. That is, except for one brief moment in 1976 that just hap­pens to be one of the best live albums of the glam/prog era: 801 Live. It’s pure light­ning in a bot­tle, and for a taster may we direct your ears to the open­ing num­ber, a groov­ing, funky, spacey cov­er of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” (writ­ten as T.N.K. on the track list).

Here’s the thing, this wasn’t even Eno’s band. This was instead the band of fel­low Roxy Music mem­ber Phil Man­zan­era, who formed an ad-hoc super­group of friends to play three gigs in Eng­land. With Roxy Music tem­porar­i­ly on hia­tus, Man­zan­era brought in Bill Mac­Cormick, from his oth­er side group Qui­et Sun, on bass; Fran­cis Monkman from Curved Air on key­boards; pop­u­lar ses­sion drum­mer Simon Philips; and gui­tarist Lloyd Wat­son, who Eno fans will know from his whacked-out slide on “Some of them Are Old” from his first album. Eno pro­vides the major­i­ty of every­thing else, list­ed in the cred­its as “key­boards, syn­the­siz­ers, gui­tar, vocals and tapes.”

It’s the vocals that are key, though, and his warm tones are per­fect for this re-arranged Bea­t­les clas­sic. They also ele­vate the album through­out from “decent live gig” to essen­tial lis­ten­ing. His ver­sion of Qui­et Sun’s angu­lar “Rong­wrong” is smooth and wist­ful, turn­ing a jokey tune into…well, into an Eno song.

The band only rehearsed three weeks before the three-city tour start­ed, begin­ning in Nor­folk, then play­ing the Read­ing Fes­ti­val, and final­ly end­ing in Lon­don at Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall, where the show was record­ed. For a set-list con­sist­ing of Eno songs, Man­zan­era songs, space jams, two 1960s cov­ers (the oth­er being the Kinks’ “You Real­ly Got Me”) and played by a band that hadn’t real­ly met a month before, it’s a rock-sol­id album. It also sounds fan­tas­tic, almost like a “live in the stu­dio” record­ing save for the applause in-between num­bers.

Eno has rarely played live since then, and when he has it’s been his ambi­ent music, most recent­ly at a one-night-only con­cert with his broth­er at the Acrop­o­lis in Greece. But to hear the vel­vety glam-god rock­ing out? It’s just 801 Live, my friends, and that’s all you real­ly need.

via @MrCompletely

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Launch­es His Own Radio Sta­tion with Hun­dreds of Unre­leased Tracks: Hear Two Pro­grams

Hear Bri­an Eno’s Rarely-Heard Cov­er of the John­ny Cash Clas­sic, “Ring of Fire”

Bri­an Eno Lists the Ben­e­fits of Singing: A Long Life, Increased Intel­li­gence, and a Sound Civ­i­liza­tion

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

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George Harrison “My Sweet Lord” Gets an Official Music Video, Featuring Ringo Starr, Al Yankovic, Patton Oswalt & Many Others

in Music | December 16th, 2021

To help cel­e­brate the 50th anniver­sary of George Har­rison’s clas­sic solo album, All Things Must Pass, the clas­sic track, “My Sweet Lord,” has now received an offi­cial music video. And it fea­tures a num­ber of cameo appearances–from oth­er for­mer Bea­t­les (Ringo Starr), to fam­i­ly mem­bers (Olivia Har­ri­son and Dhani Har­ri­son), to oth­er guests (Mark Hamill, Fred Armisen, Al Yankovic, Rosan­na Arquette). Enjoy.

Fea­tur­ing In Order of Appear­ance:

Mark Hamill
Fred Armisen
Vanes­sa Bay­er
Moshe Kash­er
Natasha Leg­gero
Jeff Lynne
Reg­gie Watts
Dar­ren Criss
Pat­ton Oswalt
Al Yankovic
David Gborie
Sam Richard­son
Atsuko Okat­su­ka
Rosan­na Arquette
Bran­don Wardell
Ringo Starr
Joe Walsh
Jon Hamm
Brett Met­ter
Anders Holm
Dhani Har­ri­son
Rupert Friend
Angus Samp­son
Tai­ka Wait­i­ti
Eric Ware­heim
Tim Hei­deck­er
Kate Micuc­ci
Riki Lind­home
Alyssa Stono­ha
Mitra Jouhari
Sandy Honig
Olivia Har­ri­son
Aimee Mullins
Court­ney Pau­roso
Natal­ie Palamides
Shep­ard Fairey
Clau­dia O’Do­her­ty
Tom Scharpling
Paul Scheer
Sarah Bak­er

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent 

George Har­ri­son Wrote His Last Let­ter to Austin Pow­ers Cre­ator Mike Myers, Ask­ing for a Mini Me Doll (2001)

George Har­ri­son Explains Why Every­one Should Play the Ukulele

Watch George Harrison’s Final Inter­view and Per­for­mance (1997)

 

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The True Meaning of Queen’s Rock Epic “Bohemian Rhapsody”

in Music | December 16th, 2021

We’ve all giv­en at least a lit­tle thought to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” I myself hap­pen to have giv­en it more than a lit­tle, since I and all my class­mates had to learn the song and sing it togeth­er back in sev­enth-grade music class. But I haven’t giv­en it as much thought as music Youtu­ber Poly­phon­ic, whose exe­ge­sis “The True Mean­ing of Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” appears above. “The apex of the 1970s rock exper­i­ment,” Queen’s six-minute rock epic “some­how man­ages to take the trans­for­ma­tive struc­ture of pro­gres­sive rock and shove it into a form that could be a radio rock sta­ple and sell out are­nas world­wide.” It also deliv­ers “an oper­at­ic break­down, a leg­endary gui­tar solo, and icon­ic lyrics that per­fect­ly walk the line between ground­ed and cryp­tic.”

Like all the best lyrics — and espe­cial­ly all the best lyrics of elab­o­rate­ly pro­duced 1970s rock — the words to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” invite all man­ner of read­ings. Poly­phon­ic opts to take the con­cept of read­ing more lit­er­al­ly, visu­al­ly ren­der­ing his inter­pre­ta­tion of the song through a set of tarot cards.

With­in this tra­di­tion­al frame­work, he makes the thor­ough­ly mod­ern choice of ground­ing these often fan­tas­ti­cal- or even bizarre-sound­ing lyrics in the sex­u­al iden­ti­ty of Queen’s lead singer. Born in Zanz­ibar to a con­ser­v­a­tive Indi­an fam­i­ly, the boy who would become Fred­die Mer­cury would have had more than one rea­son to feel out of place in the world. Do we have here an artis­tic sub­li­ma­tion of his per­son­al iso­la­tion, alien­ation, and self-rein­ven­tion?

When it was released in 1975, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” met with a crit­i­cal recep­tion here and there impressed, but on the whole indif­fer­ent or per­plexed. Per­haps the song was sim­ply too much, not just musi­cal­ly but cul­tur­al­ly: it draws in a seem­ing­ly hap­haz­ard man­ner from the realms of cow­boys, of opera, of Chris­tian­i­ty, and of much else besides. But to Poly­phon­ic, all these ele­ments reflect the cen­tral theme of Mer­cury’s sur­vival in and ulti­mate defi­ance of a hos­tile world. “In the end,” his char­ac­ter real­izes, “peo­ple’s minds are not going to change, and his own iden­ti­ty isn’t going to change, so there’s no use hang­ing on in fear. Armed with this knowl­edge, Fred­die Mer­cury com­pletes his mag­nif­i­cent trans­for­ma­tion and ascends to rock god­hood.” Such an inter­pre­ta­tion was far from my own mind in mid­dle school, admit­ted­ly, but there were no doubt oth­er stu­dents who could feel the pow­er­ful inspi­ra­tion this son­ic spec­ta­cle con­tin­ues to offer.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Mak­ing of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody”: Take a Deep Dive Into the Icon­ic Song with Queen’s 2002 Mini Doc­u­men­tary

The Joy of Expe­ri­enc­ing Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” for the Very First Time: Watch Three Reac­tion Videos

Hear How Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Would Sound If Sung by John­ny Cash, David Bowie, Janis Joplin, Frank Sina­tra & 38 Oth­er Artists

65,000 Fans Break Into a Sin­ga­long of Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” at a Green Day Con­cert in London’s Hyde Park

1910 Fair­ground Organ Plays Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” and It Works Like a Charm

Watch Queen’s “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” Act­ed Out Lit­er­al­ly as a Short Crime Film

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Before Bauhaus: How Goth Became Goth

in Music | December 15th, 2021

“You look so goth today” one might say to a friend wear­ing too much eye­lin­er or black nail pol­ish or leather pants. But goth is so much more than just a look, the mak­er of the above video claims, walk­ing view­ers through a brief his­to­ry of the blues, rock, punk, post-punk, and new roman­tic waves made to the sound and style of what came to be called goth rock (though none of these artists described them­selves that way). The video essay claims goth has been hijacked by ersatz pre­tenders like Mar­i­lyn Man­son and My Chem­i­cal Romance, who might look the part but bear lit­tle resem­blance son­i­cal­ly or cul­tur­al­ly to fore­bears like The Doors, The Cure, The Birth­day Par­ty, or (this video’s stop­ping point) goth rock dar­lings Bauhaus.

Maybe the dis­tinc­tions seem like triv­ial sub­cul­tur­al squab­bling, but the essay rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion about the ori­gin of the word “goth” as a sub­cul­tur­al­ly descrip­tive term. It’s easy to see how some­one might mis­take oughties emo rock­ers for 80s goths; it’s per­haps more of a stretch to see how 70s and 80s goth rock car­ried forth the cre­ative spir­it of a medieval archi­tec­tur­al style or a 19th-cen­tu­ry lit­er­ary genre. Super­fi­cial­ly, we might say the oper­a­tive link is “dark and scary,” but if that’s all it takes to be “goth,” then we’re back to goth as cos­tume rather than a set of artis­tic tenets. Exam­in­ing the Goth­ic a bit more close­ly may give us clues to the dis­tinc­tive­ness of Goth.

Author Nick Groom iden­ti­fies a his­tor­i­cal ten­sion with­in the Goth­ic. First used in the 16th cen­tu­ry to describe the ornate pan-Euro­pean style that arose back in the 12th cen­tu­ry, the term was pejo­ra­tive, imply­ing that the glo­ries of Rome had been replaced by the bar­barism of the Ger­man Goths (despite the fact that Goth­ic style orig­i­nat­ed in France). The Goth­ic was revived in the 18th and 19th cen­turies — at first almost sin­gle-hand­ed­ly by Horace Wal­pole, who wrote the first Goth­ic nov­el and turned his home, Straw­ber­ry Hill, into a Goth­ic theme park of sorts. By this point, says Groom above, the Goth­ic had tak­en on dual con­no­ta­tions in Eng­lish usage — pos­i­tive­ly, the Goth­ic was a rebel­lious spir­it: The Magna Car­ta was Goth. Mar­tin Luther was Goth.

On the oth­er hand, the Goth­ic referred to the occult, to Medieval Catholic rites and super­sti­tions, to ancient ruins, mon­sters, and gar­goyles. This is the Goth­ic with which we’re famil­iar, but it comes to us — via Wal­pole, Bram Stok­er, Edgar Allan Poe, etc. — as kitsch. “Goth­ic fic­tion began as a sophis­ti­cat­ed joke,” John Mul­lan observes of Walpole’s weird nov­el, The Cas­tle of Otran­to. For all its invest­ment in the dark­er regions of human expe­ri­ence, the Goth­ic, and there­by the Goth, has always had a cer­tain sense of humor about itself, cre­at­ing cav­ernous sounds that evoke cathe­dral acoustics, per­formed with an iron­ic the­atri­cal­i­ty that dra­ma­tizes lit­er­ary, Roman­tic excess­es — qual­i­ties, it must be said, few bands before or since embod­ied quite so suc­cinct­ly as goth rock dar­lings Bauhaus.

Relat­ed Con­tent:  

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Goth

“A Brief His­to­ry of Goths”: From the Goths, to Goth­ic Lit­er­a­ture, to Goth Music

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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How George Martin Defined the Sound of the Beatles: From String Quartets to Backwards Guitar Solos

in Music | December 15th, 2021

Peter Jack­son’s new doc­u­men­tary series Get Back allows its view­ers to spend about eight hours watch­ing the Bea­t­les at work in the stu­dio. In that time, a fair few non-Bea­t­les linger in the frame as well: from Yoko Ono to key­boardist Bil­ly Pre­ston to a cou­ple of grumpy young police­man try­ing to shut down the cli­mac­tic rooftop con­cert. If you’ve seen Get Back, you’ll also have noticed one fel­low some­what taller, old­er, and more taste­ful­ly dressed than every­one else, who, though often in the stu­dio, seems not to have had much to do. This, as every Bea­t­les afi­ciona­do knows, is George Mar­tin: the EMI record pro­duc­er who, sev­en years ear­li­er, had been tasked with help­ing the not-yet-Fab Four start prop­er­ly record­ing their songs.

From then on Mar­tin kept work­ing close­ly with John, Paul, George, and Ringo, and that, as Poly­phon­ic argues in the video above, grants him right­ful claim to the cov­et­ed title of “Fifth Bea­t­le.” Mar­tin, he explains, “was the pro­duc­er, com­pos­er, and arranger for most of the Bea­t­les’ career, and his con­tri­bu­tions are direct­ly respon­si­ble for some of the band’s most icon­ic songs.” Take “Yes­ter­day,” a sim­ple gui­tar-based num­ber enriched, at Mar­t­in’s sug­ges­tion, by a string quar­tet. Though Paul ini­tial­ly balked at this no doubt square-sound­ing addi­tion, he was per­suad­ed by the results. For the first time but not the last, the con­trast between the musi­cal back­grounds of band and pro­duc­er — the for­mer being obsessed with Amer­i­can rock-and-roll and the lat­ter hav­ing come out of the BBC’s clas­si­cal-music depart­ment — paid off.

The fol­low­ing year, Mar­tin con­tributed an even more pow­er­ful (and Psy­cho-inspired) string arrange­ment to “Eleanor Rig­by” as well as “all kinds of stu­dio exper­i­men­ta­tion,” includ­ing the run-in-reverse gui­tar solo on “I’m Only Sleep­ing” and the hyp­not­ic tape loops on “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows.”  Despite not belong­ing to a gen­er­a­tion espe­cial­ly invest­ed in the psy­che­del­ic expe­ri­ence, he made pos­si­ble the mind-blow­ing son­ic tex­tures of songs like “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er” and “I Am the Wal­rus.” The unusu­al vari­ety of sound in the lat­ter owes a great deal to Mar­t­in’s tech­ni­cal know-how and will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment: “If I said ‘I want the radio on it,’ George would make it so that I could mix it in, and the radio would be com­ing through the machines,” John remem­bers in the 1975 inter­view clip below.

John acknowl­edges that Mar­tin did­n’t just real­ize the Bea­t­les’ uncon­ven­tion­al musi­cal ideas, but con­tributed his own more tra­di­tion­al but no less effec­tive ones: “He’d also come up with things like: ‘Well, have you heard an oboe?’ ” Because “he taught us a lot, and I’m sure we taught him a lot,” not much in the Bea­t­les’ record cat­a­log is ascrib­able sim­ply to him or them. By the time of Get Back, the Bea­t­les had decid­ed to return to their live-per­form­ing roots by record­ing an album with­out stu­dio over­dubs, and much few­er orches­tras and back­ward tape loops. Those ses­sions put Mar­tin in the back­ground, but there­after he “returned tri­umphant­ly” on Abbey Road. From the orches­tra­tion on “Here Comes the Sun” to the “ethe­re­al harp­si­chord riff” on “Because” to “some of the great­est moments ever record­ed” on the side-two med­ley, that album stands as per­haps the most com­pelling tes­ta­ment to the achieve­ments of the Fab Five. 

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Unique, Orig­i­nal Com­po­si­tions of George Mar­tin, Beloved Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er (RIP)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Break­ing Down the Bea­t­les’ Get Back Doc­u­men­tary: Stream Episode #111 of the Pret­ty Much Pop Pod­cast

The Beach Boys’ Bri­an Wil­son & Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er George Mar­tin Break Down “God Only Knows,” the “Great­est Song Ever Writ­ten”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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