A new three track EP by my good friends Three Trapped Tigers is now available to download through Bandcamp. Pay a quid, pay a tenner - the more you pay, the more you support new music. And now is a good time to latch on to these guys ... a certain Mr Eno has seen their worth and may be involved in their second album this year ...
Here's the Bandcamp link to all of the currently available Three Trapped Tigers goodies.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Saturday, 25 January 2014
Thursday, 12 July 2012
It's still pop in any language
I'm a great collector of music on the fringes of the industry. On the one hand, I love the 'have a go' amateurs like Florence Foster Jenkins, Mrs Miller, William Hung, Alan Gillet, Anna-Lisa Ingemanson and others who made records despite their singular lack of talent. On the other, I love ill-considered novelty songs; I'm not talking about those deliberately recorded for comic effect, but rather those songs that time has made cheesy and awful like Reggie Bosanquet's 'Dance with me' or Patrick MacNee and Honor Blackman's 'Kinky Boots'. And somewhere in the middle, there's a place in my heart for foreign language versions of well-known songs originally recorded in English.
Many professional artists do record in non-English languages of course. The Beatles, Dusty Springfield and ABBA all recorded some of their songs in French, German and, naturally in ABBA's case, Swedish. But it doesn't happen so much any more as English has become the lingua franca of business and the music industry. Just look at Eurovision. I think that's a shame. There's a charm in hearing a familiar song sung in an unfamiliar tongue. It adds a freshness to them that is quite delightful.
I thought I might share some of my collection with you, starting with Thailand's brilliantly named Sakarin Boonpit with his version of 'All shook up' or 'Kotmorn Yoop Yap':
If you enjoyed that, you'll probably enjoy this Hindi version of ABBA's 'Dancing Queen' ('Mitha Maze Dar') by the wonderful Salma and Sabina Agha:
And to end with, how about the Bulgarian version of 'I will survive' (Ya Budu Zhit') by popular combo Strelki?
More soon?
Many professional artists do record in non-English languages of course. The Beatles, Dusty Springfield and ABBA all recorded some of their songs in French, German and, naturally in ABBA's case, Swedish. But it doesn't happen so much any more as English has become the lingua franca of business and the music industry. Just look at Eurovision. I think that's a shame. There's a charm in hearing a familiar song sung in an unfamiliar tongue. It adds a freshness to them that is quite delightful.
I thought I might share some of my collection with you, starting with Thailand's brilliantly named Sakarin Boonpit with his version of 'All shook up' or 'Kotmorn Yoop Yap':
If you enjoyed that, you'll probably enjoy this Hindi version of ABBA's 'Dancing Queen' ('Mitha Maze Dar') by the wonderful Salma and Sabina Agha:
And to end with, how about the Bulgarian version of 'I will survive' (Ya Budu Zhit') by popular combo Strelki?
More soon?
Friday, 18 May 2012
The Colganology Podcast - Episode 6 - It's Mrs Miller Time
This week's slightly longer (14 mins) podcast is all about the inimitable Mrs Miller. Brace your ears.
Transcript:
Hello. Today I’m going to talk about the owner of this extraordinary voice (clip):
Elva Ruby Connes Miller - known to the record-buying public simply as Mrs Miller - was born on the 5th of October 1907 in Joplin, Missouri. When she was 27, she married a professional investor called John Richardson Miller who was 30 years older than she was. And, around this time - and funded by her wealthy husband - she began making vanity records for her own amusement. At least one called ‘Songs for children’ was pressed as a 45 single and featured four tracks with Mrs Miller’s vocals accompanied by organist Laurie Metcalfe.
Now, it just so happened that Capitol Records was experimenting with new recording techniques at the Los Angeles studios where she was recording with keyboard player Fred Bock. They decided to use her as their guinea pig and Mrs Miller consequently provided vocals for a host of popular classics, much to the amusement of Bock and the men from Capitol. Mrs Miller's curious operatic warbling vibrato and strange whistling technique (she would fill her mouth with ice beforehand to get a better sound) made every song … unique.
Bock passed the recordings onto A & R man Lex de Avezedo and she was soon signed to Capitol Records. Her first LP on that label, ironically titled Mrs Miller's Greatest Hits, appeared in 1966 when she was 59 years old. It was made up entirely of pop songs, and sold more than 250,000 copies in its first three weeks. It even spawned a hit single; her version of Petula Clarke’s Downtown. Here it is in all of its delicious glory (clip).
An article in Time magazine described the single like this: 'While Elva may not replace Elvis, her rocking-chair rock features a kind of slippin' and slidin' rhythm that is uniquely her own. Her tempos, to put it charitably, are free form; she has an uncanny knack for landing squarely between the beat, producing a new ricochet effect that, if nothing else, defies imitation. Beyond that, her billowy soprano embraces a song with a vibrato that won't quit ... ' Though Irving Wallace and David Wallechinsky, writing in The People's Almanac, were less kind. They compared her voice to ‘the sound of 'roaches scurrying across a trash can lid.'
Shortly after her second album Will Success Spoil Mrs Miller? was released in 1967 she was invited to appear in a feature film called The Cool Ones, starring Roddy McDowell.
Her third album The Country Soul of Mrs. Miller followed a year later and was, as the name suggests, focused on country and western songs like ‘There goes my everything’ and ‘A little bitty tear’. She was a huge hit with the public and appeared on the Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan shows, and duetted with Jimmy Durante on his live Hollywood Palace show.
She was even flown out to Vietnam to sing for the troops and appeared on stage with Bob Hope. But then, all of a sudden, the vogue for out of time and often out of tune elderly lady singers passed and she was dropped by Capitol. But, undeterred, she signed to the smaller Amaret label and, in 1968, she released her final album, Mrs Miller Does Her Thing. The cover saw her dressed in a psychedelic kaftan and holding a plate of hash browns – presumably containing hash. The album featured several trippy songs associated with drug culture, including the theme song she provided for the drug exploitation movie ‘Mary Jane’ which featured pop star Fabian and a very young Terri Garr. Mrs Miller was apparently completely unaware of the drug symbolism until the album was already in stores.
But her professional career was over and by 1973, barring a few singles that she put out on her own Vibrato Records and Mrs Miller labels, she had officially retired. She died in 1997, at the age of 90.
I love Mrs Miller. She had a passion for singing and didn’t give a brace of hoots what other people thought. She lived to sing and, if nature hadn’t equipped her with the voice of an angel, it had at least given her balls of steel. The liner notes on her LP ‘Mrs Miller does her thing’ have this to say:
‘Mrs. Miller is an experience that should happen to everyone once. We don't mean just seeing or hearing Mrs. Miller. We mean being a Mrs. Miller, and having that elusive, magic chance we all dream about. The chance to do your own thing, whatever it may be. Mrs. Miller's thing is singing. Singing her heart out. And it's all she's ever wanted to do. Go back a few years. Singing was still her thing, but there was no one to listen. Success in the music world was limited to a chosen few. Beautiful people who looked just right or sounded just right and always seemed as though they'd just come from a refreshing dip in a vat of plastic.
Things are different now. In the mid sixties, a chain reaction of mind-blowing and time-changing young musicians began to explode all over the world. They were open, honest and real. And their communication with their audiences was both instantaneous and permanent. Suddenly, the lamination process was over. Music was no longer a spectator sport. It was a game the whole family could play.
Five years ago, Mrs. Miller's success couldn't have happened, and it's a compliment to our times that it can now. That she can get up on a stage or stand in front of a recording studio microphone and let it all hang out without being afraid or uptight about what she has to offer. What she has to offer is herself, and she offers same on this album. In her own inimitable style, she socks a selection of songs to you. Songs that are somtimes funny, sometimes hip, and sometimes both. In other words, she does her own thing. Don't you wish everybody would?’
There’s an interesting parallel here with what’s happening in music today. The big music companies are dropping what they call ‘unprofitable’ artists – even though they may sell thousands of records. But the advent of affordable digital technology and the abundance of social media means that artists can now make the records they want to, free of company control, and sell direct to the customer. And websites like Pledgemusic and Bandcamp even generate income through crowd-funding.
So that’s why I love Mrs Miller. She’s the embodiment of everything I hold to be true; that if you have a passion for something - follow that passion and to hell with what anyone else thinks. If it doesn’t hurt anyone – do what you want. We only get to live once and we’re dead a long, long time. So, if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve just heard, just pop Mrs Miller into a search engine or Youtube and you’ll find a wealth of her work. She also has a fansite at mrsmillersworld.com. And, while her vinyl albums are hard to find these days, you can get a compilation of her first three albums on CD. Buy it and smile. I know I did.
Transcript:
Hello. Today I’m going to talk about the owner of this extraordinary voice (clip):
Elva Ruby Connes Miller - known to the record-buying public simply as Mrs Miller - was born on the 5th of October 1907 in Joplin, Missouri. When she was 27, she married a professional investor called John Richardson Miller who was 30 years older than she was. And, around this time - and funded by her wealthy husband - she began making vanity records for her own amusement. At least one called ‘Songs for children’ was pressed as a 45 single and featured four tracks with Mrs Miller’s vocals accompanied by organist Laurie Metcalfe.
Now, it just so happened that Capitol Records was experimenting with new recording techniques at the Los Angeles studios where she was recording with keyboard player Fred Bock. They decided to use her as their guinea pig and Mrs Miller consequently provided vocals for a host of popular classics, much to the amusement of Bock and the men from Capitol. Mrs Miller's curious operatic warbling vibrato and strange whistling technique (she would fill her mouth with ice beforehand to get a better sound) made every song … unique.
Bock passed the recordings onto A & R man Lex de Avezedo and she was soon signed to Capitol Records. Her first LP on that label, ironically titled Mrs Miller's Greatest Hits, appeared in 1966 when she was 59 years old. It was made up entirely of pop songs, and sold more than 250,000 copies in its first three weeks. It even spawned a hit single; her version of Petula Clarke’s Downtown. Here it is in all of its delicious glory (clip).
An article in Time magazine described the single like this: 'While Elva may not replace Elvis, her rocking-chair rock features a kind of slippin' and slidin' rhythm that is uniquely her own. Her tempos, to put it charitably, are free form; she has an uncanny knack for landing squarely between the beat, producing a new ricochet effect that, if nothing else, defies imitation. Beyond that, her billowy soprano embraces a song with a vibrato that won't quit ... ' Though Irving Wallace and David Wallechinsky, writing in The People's Almanac, were less kind. They compared her voice to ‘the sound of 'roaches scurrying across a trash can lid.'
Shortly after her second album Will Success Spoil Mrs Miller? was released in 1967 she was invited to appear in a feature film called The Cool Ones, starring Roddy McDowell.
Her third album The Country Soul of Mrs. Miller followed a year later and was, as the name suggests, focused on country and western songs like ‘There goes my everything’ and ‘A little bitty tear’. She was a huge hit with the public and appeared on the Johnny Carson and Ed Sullivan shows, and duetted with Jimmy Durante on his live Hollywood Palace show.
She was even flown out to Vietnam to sing for the troops and appeared on stage with Bob Hope. But then, all of a sudden, the vogue for out of time and often out of tune elderly lady singers passed and she was dropped by Capitol. But, undeterred, she signed to the smaller Amaret label and, in 1968, she released her final album, Mrs Miller Does Her Thing. The cover saw her dressed in a psychedelic kaftan and holding a plate of hash browns – presumably containing hash. The album featured several trippy songs associated with drug culture, including the theme song she provided for the drug exploitation movie ‘Mary Jane’ which featured pop star Fabian and a very young Terri Garr. Mrs Miller was apparently completely unaware of the drug symbolism until the album was already in stores.
But her professional career was over and by 1973, barring a few singles that she put out on her own Vibrato Records and Mrs Miller labels, she had officially retired. She died in 1997, at the age of 90.
I love Mrs Miller. She had a passion for singing and didn’t give a brace of hoots what other people thought. She lived to sing and, if nature hadn’t equipped her with the voice of an angel, it had at least given her balls of steel. The liner notes on her LP ‘Mrs Miller does her thing’ have this to say:
‘Mrs. Miller is an experience that should happen to everyone once. We don't mean just seeing or hearing Mrs. Miller. We mean being a Mrs. Miller, and having that elusive, magic chance we all dream about. The chance to do your own thing, whatever it may be. Mrs. Miller's thing is singing. Singing her heart out. And it's all she's ever wanted to do. Go back a few years. Singing was still her thing, but there was no one to listen. Success in the music world was limited to a chosen few. Beautiful people who looked just right or sounded just right and always seemed as though they'd just come from a refreshing dip in a vat of plastic.
Things are different now. In the mid sixties, a chain reaction of mind-blowing and time-changing young musicians began to explode all over the world. They were open, honest and real. And their communication with their audiences was both instantaneous and permanent. Suddenly, the lamination process was over. Music was no longer a spectator sport. It was a game the whole family could play.
Five years ago, Mrs. Miller's success couldn't have happened, and it's a compliment to our times that it can now. That she can get up on a stage or stand in front of a recording studio microphone and let it all hang out without being afraid or uptight about what she has to offer. What she has to offer is herself, and she offers same on this album. In her own inimitable style, she socks a selection of songs to you. Songs that are somtimes funny, sometimes hip, and sometimes both. In other words, she does her own thing. Don't you wish everybody would?’
There’s an interesting parallel here with what’s happening in music today. The big music companies are dropping what they call ‘unprofitable’ artists – even though they may sell thousands of records. But the advent of affordable digital technology and the abundance of social media means that artists can now make the records they want to, free of company control, and sell direct to the customer. And websites like Pledgemusic and Bandcamp even generate income through crowd-funding.
So that’s why I love Mrs Miller. She’s the embodiment of everything I hold to be true; that if you have a passion for something - follow that passion and to hell with what anyone else thinks. If it doesn’t hurt anyone – do what you want. We only get to live once and we’re dead a long, long time. So, if you’ve enjoyed what you’ve just heard, just pop Mrs Miller into a search engine or Youtube and you’ll find a wealth of her work. She also has a fansite at mrsmillersworld.com. And, while her vinyl albums are hard to find these days, you can get a compilation of her first three albums on CD. Buy it and smile. I know I did.
Wednesday, 21 March 2012
Pluck me!
I love good design. I love ingenuity and ever-so-slightly-mad inventiveness. And I love technology that looks beautiful. So I love this alarm clock by Jamie McMahon.
Isn't it glorious? I could cope being woken by this. And it's tunable! Here's a short movie to give you some idea:
Isn't it glorious? I could cope being woken by this. And it's tunable! Here's a short movie to give you some idea:
Friday, 9 March 2012
Thursday, 8 March 2012
Legalbattlewonbycompanywithlotsofcashaliciousprobably
Here's an extraordinary thing I learned today. When Disney released Mary Poppins in 1964, they were taken to court by two songwriters for copyright infringement. Patricia Smith and Don Fenton had written a song over 10 years previously that was recorded in 1949 by Alan Holmes and His New Tones (you can hear it by clicking here or on the image below) and, in 1951, by The Arabian Knights. Their song was called Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus and, unsurprisingly perhaps, the authors suggested that Disney's Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - written by the Sherman brothers - was ever-so-slightly similar.
Incredibly, Disney won the case.
Disney successfully defended itself by claiming that Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus was a 'common slang word'. Sure enough, a chunk of the word appeared in the 1942 movie The Undying Monster (directed by John Brahm, screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Michael Jacoby), when the character Rob Curtis (played by James Ellison) says of character Christy, 'She has an overactive supercalifragilis.' He goes on to define the word as 'female intuition.' But a 'common slang word?'
To further complicate matters, in a 2007 interview with the LAist online magazine, co-writer Richard Sherman states that it was ' ... a word we sort of concocted from our childhood when we used to make up double talk words. In the screenplay version of Mary Poppins we wanted her to give the children a gift they could bring back with them from inside the chalk drawing when they came out into the real world. If it was a tangible thing like a seashell or pine cone it would disappear. So we said, Remember when we used to make up the big double talk words, we could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids and that's where it started. Obnoxious is an ugly word so we said atrocious word, that's very British. We started with atrocious and then you can sound smart and be precocious, we had precocious and atrocious and we wanted something super colossal and that's corny, so we took super and did double talk to get califragilistic which means nothing, it just came out that way. That's in a nut shell what we did over two weeks. All together you get Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.'
Incidentally, the roots of the word have been defined by Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English as: super- 'above', cali- 'beauty', fragilistic- 'delicate', expiali- 'to atone', and docious- 'capable of being educated', with the whole word roughly meaning 'Atoning for the ability to be taught through delicate beauty.' According to the film, it means 'something to say when you have nothing to say'.
All of which leaves us with the question ... who really invented the word? I am legally compelled to say that we'll probably never know the full story.
All of this is scant comfort for the original writers of course. Interestingly, 'Patricia Smith' was the rather dull pen name of 'Glorious' Gloria Parker, a composer and performer who can play (she's still around and touring) many instruments including the 'Glass Harp', an arrangement of musical glasses, which you play by rubbing a wet finger around the rims. She obviously felt aggrieved enough to write a book in 2006 called Corruption Reigns in our Courtrooms and to record an LP of the same name. The lyrics all deal with how much she hates the American court system and you can hear four of the tracks on her website here (be warned that if you go to the home page you'll get loud music played on glasses to assault you when you visit). It made me jump. Gloria appeared performing on her musical glasses in the Woody Allen film Broadway Danny Rose.
Whoever the actual author is, the one thing we can thank them for here in the UK is probably the most amazing pun headline of any tabloid newspaper ever. In a huge upset during the 2000 Scottish Premier Football league season, underdogs Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat league champions Celtic, causing The Sun newspaper to write the headline:
Super Caley go ballistic Celtic are atrocious.
Inspired.
Incredibly, Disney won the case.
Disney successfully defended itself by claiming that Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus was a 'common slang word'. Sure enough, a chunk of the word appeared in the 1942 movie The Undying Monster (directed by John Brahm, screenplay by Lillie Hayward and Michael Jacoby), when the character Rob Curtis (played by James Ellison) says of character Christy, 'She has an overactive supercalifragilis.' He goes on to define the word as 'female intuition.' But a 'common slang word?'
To further complicate matters, in a 2007 interview with the LAist online magazine, co-writer Richard Sherman states that it was ' ... a word we sort of concocted from our childhood when we used to make up double talk words. In the screenplay version of Mary Poppins we wanted her to give the children a gift they could bring back with them from inside the chalk drawing when they came out into the real world. If it was a tangible thing like a seashell or pine cone it would disappear. So we said, Remember when we used to make up the big double talk words, we could make a big obnoxious word up for the kids and that's where it started. Obnoxious is an ugly word so we said atrocious word, that's very British. We started with atrocious and then you can sound smart and be precocious, we had precocious and atrocious and we wanted something super colossal and that's corny, so we took super and did double talk to get califragilistic which means nothing, it just came out that way. That's in a nut shell what we did over two weeks. All together you get Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.'
Incidentally, the roots of the word have been defined by Richard Lederer in his book Crazy English as: super- 'above', cali- 'beauty', fragilistic- 'delicate', expiali- 'to atone', and docious- 'capable of being educated', with the whole word roughly meaning 'Atoning for the ability to be taught through delicate beauty.' According to the film, it means 'something to say when you have nothing to say'.
All of which leaves us with the question ... who really invented the word? I am legally compelled to say that we'll probably never know the full story.
All of this is scant comfort for the original writers of course. Interestingly, 'Patricia Smith' was the rather dull pen name of 'Glorious' Gloria Parker, a composer and performer who can play (she's still around and touring) many instruments including the 'Glass Harp', an arrangement of musical glasses, which you play by rubbing a wet finger around the rims. She obviously felt aggrieved enough to write a book in 2006 called Corruption Reigns in our Courtrooms and to record an LP of the same name. The lyrics all deal with how much she hates the American court system and you can hear four of the tracks on her website here (be warned that if you go to the home page you'll get loud music played on glasses to assault you when you visit). It made me jump. Gloria appeared performing on her musical glasses in the Woody Allen film Broadway Danny Rose.
Whoever the actual author is, the one thing we can thank them for here in the UK is probably the most amazing pun headline of any tabloid newspaper ever. In a huge upset during the 2000 Scottish Premier Football league season, underdogs Inverness Caledonian Thistle beat league champions Celtic, causing The Sun newspaper to write the headline:
Super Caley go ballistic Celtic are atrocious.
Inspired.
Saturday, 18 February 2012
Sunday, 12 February 2012
Family records
There's a musical streak that runs through the Colgan tribe. My late grandafathers were both male voice choristers and my father was an excellent guitarist and drummer who played in skiffle bands in the 1950s, including Wally Whyton's band. As a child I was one of the UK's top competition choir boys (it's true!) and I also play guitar, drums and few other instruments. I played in a band all through my teens. That's me on the left with the mandolin in this publicity photo from 1979.
I only do the occasional live performance these days but I have been writing songs for more than 30 years. You can hear a few rough recordings here (with my good friend and co-writer Huw Williams on keyboards and bass). Also, in my generation, my brother Si plays guitar and sings better than me but, sadly, I have no video to show you.
But I'm delighted to report that the next generation of Colgans has picked up the gauntlet. My daughter Kerys has a wonderful singing voice and my son Liam was guitarist in a metal band called This Dying Hour during his teens. The band were signed to a label and I was very proud seeing their first four track EP in record shops in London. Sadly, the lads all went their separate ways but Liam is still writing songs and there is talk of a new band coming together. Meanwhile, here's the title track from their EP:
And now his younger cousin (my nephew) Jacob has picked up the axe and started performing:
My grandchildren both love to sing so maybe it'll carry on still further? I hope so. It doesn't matter whether any of us ever got famous or made money from it; like art, music is all about self-expression and the sheer joy of participation.
I only do the occasional live performance these days but I have been writing songs for more than 30 years. You can hear a few rough recordings here (with my good friend and co-writer Huw Williams on keyboards and bass). Also, in my generation, my brother Si plays guitar and sings better than me but, sadly, I have no video to show you.
But I'm delighted to report that the next generation of Colgans has picked up the gauntlet. My daughter Kerys has a wonderful singing voice and my son Liam was guitarist in a metal band called This Dying Hour during his teens. The band were signed to a label and I was very proud seeing their first four track EP in record shops in London. Sadly, the lads all went their separate ways but Liam is still writing songs and there is talk of a new band coming together. Meanwhile, here's the title track from their EP:
And now his younger cousin (my nephew) Jacob has picked up the axe and started performing:
My grandchildren both love to sing so maybe it'll carry on still further? I hope so. It doesn't matter whether any of us ever got famous or made money from it; like art, music is all about self-expression and the sheer joy of participation.
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
It's all too bloody easy these days ... is that a good thing?
You've undoubtedly seen the big black screen of nothingness on Wikipedia's homepage today.
I completely respect and support their stand. But I also hope that losing Wikipedia for the day is enough of a shock to the system to encourage people to look further afield when doing research. It's a subject that I've blogged about on more than one occasion (see here or here or here for example). Wikipedia is a wonderful tool but the very nature of its open-source, democratic platform means that it can be updated by anyone, not just by subject matter experts. Therefore, as I've found time and time again, the facts aren't always factual. I should point out, before I go any further, that I'm not singling out Wikipedia for a thrashing. I think Wikipedia is a wonderful thing and there are many many other websites that are more inaccurate. However, Wikipedia is the largest such website on the net and the one that most people visit at first choice.
Just this week I've discovered that two oft-repeated stories are untrue. The first is that Chevrolet made a huge mistake in calling one of their models the Nova because 'no va' means 'won't go' in Spanish. The other story is that Toyota lost millions in sales because their MR2 model, when pronounced in French, is very similar to the word 'merdeux' meaning 'shitty'. The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova did very well in Spanish speaking countries and even exceeded sales predictions in Venezuela. Why would people break 'nova' into 'no va'? By that thinking, we wouldn't buy anything in the UK that includes the word 'notable', especially dining room furniture. And as for the MR2, Toyota anticipated this issue (unsurprisingly) and badged the MR2 as the MR in France and Belgium. Both stories are untrue, yet I've found both on hundreds of websites, including supposedly 'expert' sites on marketing and branding. I was even told by a lady advertiser on Twitter that the Chevrolet example was used on her degree course at university. Ten to 15 minutes of proper research would have shown that both stories are bunkum.
Wikipedia and its ilk are brilliant starting points for any investigation. However, they should never be the finishing point. Any research should always end as close to the original source of a fact as is possible. Wikipedia etc. should be used like a compass putting you on the right track. You should then find your own way to the correct destination.
Wikipedia makes research easy. And easy can so often slide into lazy. I was pondering upon this yesterday and it set me to thinking about other ways in which technology is making us lazier by making life easier. It's a trend that slightly worries me. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe I'm just a bit of an old dinosaur. But let me explain ...
There was a time, not so very long ago, when I knew all of my friends' telephone numbers and addresses. Of course, there were fewer phones back then and people didn't change numbers quite so often. However, we now rely on our phones to remember them for us and many people don't even know their own phone number. I have a curious sense of disquiet about this. I'm not a control freak by any means and I am happily reliant on technology; I trust my car and my television to do what they are supposed to do without me understanding how they work and I rely on my computer to store my writing because I simply can't remember a whole book word perfect. But as we become more and more dependent upon the technology, I wonder if we're losing something important. Just as cars have made us flabbier, is technology robbing us of mental exercise? There are many who would say that this is already happening, that society is 'dumbing down'. Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that more information is available than ever before, people seem to know less. I experienced this first hand over Christmas when playing board games with a group of friends and family. A question came up that involved naming the planets of the solar system. All the people my age (40s-50s) could do so. And most could list them in order of proximity to the Sun as well. Most of the people under 30 could name the planets although some struggled. Only one knew the correct order. And these are all bright people. Now, I realise that having a mental map of our solar system isn't going to have much of an impact on everyday life. There's no shame in not knowing it. But it is indicative of a greater malaise, crystallised clearly when one of the group, a 26 year old said, 'Why do I need to know that? I can just look it up.' By that logic, there's surely no point in learning anything except the stuff we need to get through the day. It means that knowledge no longer has value unless it has a practical application. But if that were the case, how then would we advance? How would we develop new ideas and new science? It's people asking questions about things beyond their every day experience that gave us flight, electricity, electronics, antibiotics. In this new world where 'we don't need to know stuff', were do innovation and expertise fit?
I then found myself thinking about other things that make life 'easy'. And not just the gadgets and gizmos that blend our food, record our TV shows and print our documents. What about the technology that, even now, is starting to have an impact on the arts?
There was a time when a musician learned his/her craft. They learned an instrument and trained their voice. They went out on the road and gigged. They interacted with audiences. They wrote from the heart. Some of those songs have survived six decades of radio airplay. But now, technology is allowing anyone to make music. This isn't a bad thing, it really isn't. It's wonderful. But there's money in popular music and the fecking accountants and money men are now starting to use that technology to force music into generic formats with which to fill the airwaves. They want easy, lazy pop.
There's a recent TV series made by Channel 4 called What makes a Masterpiece? hosted by the channel's culture editor, Matt Cain. In the second episode of the series, he visits a number of tech companies where software is regularly used to analyse what makes a song popular. It then advises the appropriate tweaks to make a recording more profitable. Not better or more beautiful. Just profitable. Cain - who has no musical background or experience at all - uses the software and industry know-how to write a song for the show. The result sounds like much of the music being pumped out of the larger music companies; homogenous and instantly forgettable but good to dance to. It ticks all the boxes. People like it, people buy it. Then they forget it. It's throwaway art, fast-food music, ear candy to be enjoyed in the moment and that's it. Technology has made it easy to write a hit song and it's hugely lucrative.
Well, call me old fashioned but I want music made by musicians, not computer programmers and accountants.
What this new model of music doesn't do is reward the artists. A session singer is brought in for a fixed fee, sings on a song that sells thousands of copies and we often don't know who they are. The current Top 40 features songs with vocals by Sia, Sian Evans, Sirah, Etta Bond, Karen O ... can you picture any of them? Even you youngsters? There are any number of talented young singers queueing up to sing on a hit single and hopefully get a break in the industry. Very few do. Meanwhile, because money is slowly becoming the primary factor in deciding what singles get released, artists who don't fit the demographic are being slowly pushed onto the sidelines.
No amount of algorithms could have predicted that K T Tunstall would be so popular. It was a chance event, a cancellation by a booked artist, that gave K T her chance to appear on Later ... with Jools Holland. And it was her electrifying live performance of a song called Black horse and the Cherry Tree that had people downloading her album in their thousands. the song is nothing like anything else that was in the charts at the time.
Oh, and lest you think this is just me turning into my dad, I will counter it by pointing out that I buy more new music than old. Just recently I've bought new LPs by St Vincent, Three Trapped Tigers, Bjork, Gotye, Battles, Emmy the Great, Jim Moray ... many of whom have had to release their work through crowd-funding sites. Imaginative, well-written and lyrical as their work is, the money hungry big labels won't touch them with a bargepole.
For every great song there are a hundred others in which the quirkiness factor, the originality, the humanity, the soul of the music has been surgically removed solely for the sake of a quick profit. And in these ghastly, money-obsessed times, the investors will always flock in the direction of guaranteed sales. That's bad news because, as has been frequently pointed out, many unique performers like Kate Bush and Pink Floyd would probably not get signed today and, if they did, they'd be consigned to the indie fringe as being too un-commercial. Meanwhile, if a singer-songwriter can't actually make a living from their music then they're simply going to stop making it.
I find the same process going on in publishing. I am hugely saddened by the sheer number of bland, pointless celebrity-based books that dominate the shelves in those bookstores we have left. Just like music, publishers are plumping for the easy dead certs rather than embracing innovative new talent, new and different voices. While Pippa Middleton is offered £400,000 to write a book on posh party planning, Ian Rankin is asking for tax concessions for writers. As reported in The Guardian, Kate Pool of the Society of Authors has confirmed that new writers could expect an average advance of £10,000 around 20 years ago: 'Now they're lucky to get between £1,000 and £3,000' she says. Research by the society shows that 75% of writers earn less than £20,000 a year and 46% less than £5,000. Celebs and their agents demand huge advances and that shrinks the pot for other writers. An author cannot live on that kind of money. And it takes time to research and write a book. I can see many simply giving up. Imagine if people like J K Rowling or Steig Larssen were writing now. Their advances wouldn't have given them the freedom to write the books they are now famous for. And who is going to write the books that become the TV series and films? How many more re-makes and prquels can you stand? Those new authors who do persevere and who are getting no joy from traditional publishers are publishing themselves in the form of e-books. That means trying to make money from a book with no advertising budget, no PR, no promotion. What are the chances of earning a living like that? It's surely not good for the industry either. It certainly must be putting the fear of god into the world of the literary agent.
Then there's art itself. I blogged recently about my disappointment with the Olympics Committee for choosing the same old bunch of highly commercial celeb artists to create the Olympics and Paralympic posters, rather than encouraging and promoting new talent. Guaranteed sales you see. It's the easy option. Maximum profit. That's all that matters.
My brother told me an interesting story the other day. He's a photographer who's gone back to university as a 40-something mature student to do a degree in photography. Almost everyone else on the course is in their late teens or early twenties. In their world, digital photography and Photoshop have always existed. So when their tutor made them use film cameras, they panicked. Suddenly, they had only 12 or 24 shots on their rolls of film to lay with. Suddenly they had to really think about composition and light and focus as there would be no Photoshop to correct it. Their normal approach was to take 50 shots, select the best one (usually obtained by sheer fluke) and then tweak it with software. To a man and women, they all agreed that making photography harder had made them all better photographers.
The universe is a complex and mysterious place. The aim of science is to make sense of it all. Yes, all art can ultimately be reduced to pure mathematical formulae. But is that what we want? Do we want art tailored for maximum profitability and success? Or do we want passion, talent and originality?
I'll stop here. I don't want to look any more curmudgeonly than I already do. That's not my intention at all. I'm just concerned that by making everything too easy, we're losing something that makes us human. It's good to strive. It's character building to fail. It's so rewarding to feel the glow that comes with achievement and discovery. You don't get that passion when the machines do all the work for you.
I have this awful dystopian vision of a future where no one knows anything any more because something is doing all of the remembering for them. It's a world where people's dumb answers on quiz shows get ever dumber. It's a world where the only important aim is the acquisition of wealth; a place where music is designed by software to please the largest demographic of people; a world where the only books published by the larger publishing houses are aimed at the mass market; a world where art is designed to match the interior of people's houses rather than driven by the passions of the artists.
It's a world where the most creative people can no longer earn a living from what they do; where unprofitable 'non-formula' singer-songwriters can't get recording contracts or afford to work as musicians; a world where the most amazing new literature only exists in small vanity imprints that earn their writers a pittance. In short, it's a world where the rich get richer, where innovation is shunned as noncommercial and where originality is another word for 'unsaleable'. That's not the world I want.
I want quirky and inefficient. I want artistry and Bohemian eccentricity. I want experts and smartarses. I'd rather know things than not know things. I want to 'walk the walk' in learning a skill or craft. I want to put in the hours to earn the right to call myself a writer, a musician, an artist. I don't want software to be making artistic decisions for me. I don't want to be so reliant on technology that I no longer bother to learn anything.
I will choose passion over efficiency any day. It's the difference between having a lover and having a hooker. Which, in the end, is the most rewarding and satisfying?
I completely respect and support their stand. But I also hope that losing Wikipedia for the day is enough of a shock to the system to encourage people to look further afield when doing research. It's a subject that I've blogged about on more than one occasion (see here or here or here for example). Wikipedia is a wonderful tool but the very nature of its open-source, democratic platform means that it can be updated by anyone, not just by subject matter experts. Therefore, as I've found time and time again, the facts aren't always factual. I should point out, before I go any further, that I'm not singling out Wikipedia for a thrashing. I think Wikipedia is a wonderful thing and there are many many other websites that are more inaccurate. However, Wikipedia is the largest such website on the net and the one that most people visit at first choice.
Just this week I've discovered that two oft-repeated stories are untrue. The first is that Chevrolet made a huge mistake in calling one of their models the Nova because 'no va' means 'won't go' in Spanish. The other story is that Toyota lost millions in sales because their MR2 model, when pronounced in French, is very similar to the word 'merdeux' meaning 'shitty'. The truth is that the Chevrolet Nova did very well in Spanish speaking countries and even exceeded sales predictions in Venezuela. Why would people break 'nova' into 'no va'? By that thinking, we wouldn't buy anything in the UK that includes the word 'notable', especially dining room furniture. And as for the MR2, Toyota anticipated this issue (unsurprisingly) and badged the MR2 as the MR in France and Belgium. Both stories are untrue, yet I've found both on hundreds of websites, including supposedly 'expert' sites on marketing and branding. I was even told by a lady advertiser on Twitter that the Chevrolet example was used on her degree course at university. Ten to 15 minutes of proper research would have shown that both stories are bunkum.
Wikipedia and its ilk are brilliant starting points for any investigation. However, they should never be the finishing point. Any research should always end as close to the original source of a fact as is possible. Wikipedia etc. should be used like a compass putting you on the right track. You should then find your own way to the correct destination.
Wikipedia makes research easy. And easy can so often slide into lazy. I was pondering upon this yesterday and it set me to thinking about other ways in which technology is making us lazier by making life easier. It's a trend that slightly worries me. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe I'm just a bit of an old dinosaur. But let me explain ...
There was a time, not so very long ago, when I knew all of my friends' telephone numbers and addresses. Of course, there were fewer phones back then and people didn't change numbers quite so often. However, we now rely on our phones to remember them for us and many people don't even know their own phone number. I have a curious sense of disquiet about this. I'm not a control freak by any means and I am happily reliant on technology; I trust my car and my television to do what they are supposed to do without me understanding how they work and I rely on my computer to store my writing because I simply can't remember a whole book word perfect. But as we become more and more dependent upon the technology, I wonder if we're losing something important. Just as cars have made us flabbier, is technology robbing us of mental exercise? There are many who would say that this is already happening, that society is 'dumbing down'. Despite (or maybe because of) the fact that more information is available than ever before, people seem to know less. I experienced this first hand over Christmas when playing board games with a group of friends and family. A question came up that involved naming the planets of the solar system. All the people my age (40s-50s) could do so. And most could list them in order of proximity to the Sun as well. Most of the people under 30 could name the planets although some struggled. Only one knew the correct order. And these are all bright people. Now, I realise that having a mental map of our solar system isn't going to have much of an impact on everyday life. There's no shame in not knowing it. But it is indicative of a greater malaise, crystallised clearly when one of the group, a 26 year old said, 'Why do I need to know that? I can just look it up.' By that logic, there's surely no point in learning anything except the stuff we need to get through the day. It means that knowledge no longer has value unless it has a practical application. But if that were the case, how then would we advance? How would we develop new ideas and new science? It's people asking questions about things beyond their every day experience that gave us flight, electricity, electronics, antibiotics. In this new world where 'we don't need to know stuff', were do innovation and expertise fit?
I then found myself thinking about other things that make life 'easy'. And not just the gadgets and gizmos that blend our food, record our TV shows and print our documents. What about the technology that, even now, is starting to have an impact on the arts?
There was a time when a musician learned his/her craft. They learned an instrument and trained their voice. They went out on the road and gigged. They interacted with audiences. They wrote from the heart. Some of those songs have survived six decades of radio airplay. But now, technology is allowing anyone to make music. This isn't a bad thing, it really isn't. It's wonderful. But there's money in popular music and the fecking accountants and money men are now starting to use that technology to force music into generic formats with which to fill the airwaves. They want easy, lazy pop.
There's a recent TV series made by Channel 4 called What makes a Masterpiece? hosted by the channel's culture editor, Matt Cain. In the second episode of the series, he visits a number of tech companies where software is regularly used to analyse what makes a song popular. It then advises the appropriate tweaks to make a recording more profitable. Not better or more beautiful. Just profitable. Cain - who has no musical background or experience at all - uses the software and industry know-how to write a song for the show. The result sounds like much of the music being pumped out of the larger music companies; homogenous and instantly forgettable but good to dance to. It ticks all the boxes. People like it, people buy it. Then they forget it. It's throwaway art, fast-food music, ear candy to be enjoyed in the moment and that's it. Technology has made it easy to write a hit song and it's hugely lucrative.
Well, call me old fashioned but I want music made by musicians, not computer programmers and accountants.
What this new model of music doesn't do is reward the artists. A session singer is brought in for a fixed fee, sings on a song that sells thousands of copies and we often don't know who they are. The current Top 40 features songs with vocals by Sia, Sian Evans, Sirah, Etta Bond, Karen O ... can you picture any of them? Even you youngsters? There are any number of talented young singers queueing up to sing on a hit single and hopefully get a break in the industry. Very few do. Meanwhile, because money is slowly becoming the primary factor in deciding what singles get released, artists who don't fit the demographic are being slowly pushed onto the sidelines.
No amount of algorithms could have predicted that K T Tunstall would be so popular. It was a chance event, a cancellation by a booked artist, that gave K T her chance to appear on Later ... with Jools Holland. And it was her electrifying live performance of a song called Black horse and the Cherry Tree that had people downloading her album in their thousands. the song is nothing like anything else that was in the charts at the time.
Oh, and lest you think this is just me turning into my dad, I will counter it by pointing out that I buy more new music than old. Just recently I've bought new LPs by St Vincent, Three Trapped Tigers, Bjork, Gotye, Battles, Emmy the Great, Jim Moray ... many of whom have had to release their work through crowd-funding sites. Imaginative, well-written and lyrical as their work is, the money hungry big labels won't touch them with a bargepole.
For every great song there are a hundred others in which the quirkiness factor, the originality, the humanity, the soul of the music has been surgically removed solely for the sake of a quick profit. And in these ghastly, money-obsessed times, the investors will always flock in the direction of guaranteed sales. That's bad news because, as has been frequently pointed out, many unique performers like Kate Bush and Pink Floyd would probably not get signed today and, if they did, they'd be consigned to the indie fringe as being too un-commercial. Meanwhile, if a singer-songwriter can't actually make a living from their music then they're simply going to stop making it.
I find the same process going on in publishing. I am hugely saddened by the sheer number of bland, pointless celebrity-based books that dominate the shelves in those bookstores we have left. Just like music, publishers are plumping for the easy dead certs rather than embracing innovative new talent, new and different voices. While Pippa Middleton is offered £400,000 to write a book on posh party planning, Ian Rankin is asking for tax concessions for writers. As reported in The Guardian, Kate Pool of the Society of Authors has confirmed that new writers could expect an average advance of £10,000 around 20 years ago: 'Now they're lucky to get between £1,000 and £3,000' she says. Research by the society shows that 75% of writers earn less than £20,000 a year and 46% less than £5,000. Celebs and their agents demand huge advances and that shrinks the pot for other writers. An author cannot live on that kind of money. And it takes time to research and write a book. I can see many simply giving up. Imagine if people like J K Rowling or Steig Larssen were writing now. Their advances wouldn't have given them the freedom to write the books they are now famous for. And who is going to write the books that become the TV series and films? How many more re-makes and prquels can you stand? Those new authors who do persevere and who are getting no joy from traditional publishers are publishing themselves in the form of e-books. That means trying to make money from a book with no advertising budget, no PR, no promotion. What are the chances of earning a living like that? It's surely not good for the industry either. It certainly must be putting the fear of god into the world of the literary agent.
Then there's art itself. I blogged recently about my disappointment with the Olympics Committee for choosing the same old bunch of highly commercial celeb artists to create the Olympics and Paralympic posters, rather than encouraging and promoting new talent. Guaranteed sales you see. It's the easy option. Maximum profit. That's all that matters.
My brother told me an interesting story the other day. He's a photographer who's gone back to university as a 40-something mature student to do a degree in photography. Almost everyone else on the course is in their late teens or early twenties. In their world, digital photography and Photoshop have always existed. So when their tutor made them use film cameras, they panicked. Suddenly, they had only 12 or 24 shots on their rolls of film to lay with. Suddenly they had to really think about composition and light and focus as there would be no Photoshop to correct it. Their normal approach was to take 50 shots, select the best one (usually obtained by sheer fluke) and then tweak it with software. To a man and women, they all agreed that making photography harder had made them all better photographers.
The universe is a complex and mysterious place. The aim of science is to make sense of it all. Yes, all art can ultimately be reduced to pure mathematical formulae. But is that what we want? Do we want art tailored for maximum profitability and success? Or do we want passion, talent and originality?
I'll stop here. I don't want to look any more curmudgeonly than I already do. That's not my intention at all. I'm just concerned that by making everything too easy, we're losing something that makes us human. It's good to strive. It's character building to fail. It's so rewarding to feel the glow that comes with achievement and discovery. You don't get that passion when the machines do all the work for you.
I have this awful dystopian vision of a future where no one knows anything any more because something is doing all of the remembering for them. It's a world where people's dumb answers on quiz shows get ever dumber. It's a world where the only important aim is the acquisition of wealth; a place where music is designed by software to please the largest demographic of people; a world where the only books published by the larger publishing houses are aimed at the mass market; a world where art is designed to match the interior of people's houses rather than driven by the passions of the artists.
It's a world where the most creative people can no longer earn a living from what they do; where unprofitable 'non-formula' singer-songwriters can't get recording contracts or afford to work as musicians; a world where the most amazing new literature only exists in small vanity imprints that earn their writers a pittance. In short, it's a world where the rich get richer, where innovation is shunned as noncommercial and where originality is another word for 'unsaleable'. That's not the world I want.
I want quirky and inefficient. I want artistry and Bohemian eccentricity. I want experts and smartarses. I'd rather know things than not know things. I want to 'walk the walk' in learning a skill or craft. I want to put in the hours to earn the right to call myself a writer, a musician, an artist. I don't want software to be making artistic decisions for me. I don't want to be so reliant on technology that I no longer bother to learn anything.
I will choose passion over efficiency any day. It's the difference between having a lover and having a hooker. Which, in the end, is the most rewarding and satisfying?
Friday, 6 January 2012
Songs you didn't know you didn't know 5
Some TV themes today.
You probably all know that the theme to Monty Python is actually called The Liberty Bell, a march by John Philip Sousa. I bet you also know that the music used for Formula 1 on TV is The Chain by Fleetwood Mac and that the BBC's Top Gear theme is Jessica by the Allman Brothers Band. You might be aware that the Ski Sunday theme is called Pop goes Bach by Sam Fonteyn and that the tune used for BBC cricket coverage is Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MGs. And you may recognise the theme to the Snooker coverage as Drag Racer by the Doug Wood Band and the theme to sports show Superstars as Heavy Action by Johnny Pearson. The opening titles for Wimbledon are Light and Tuneful by Keith Prowse and the closing music is Sporting Occasion by Arnold Steck.
But did you know these?
The Mastermind theme is actually called Approaching Menace and was written by Neil Richardson.
The theme to The Old Grey Whistle Test was called Stone Fox Chase, written by Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey and was made famous by their band Area Code 615.
The theme to the US series Taxi was a very laid back slab of electric piano jazz by Bob James called Angela:
And one of the most iconic British TV themes of all time isn't called Black Beauty but is actually Galloping Home, written by Denis King and performed by the London String Chorale. Ever heard the whole thing? Well, here it is.
Of course, many themes are written especially for the shows they open. The theme to Coronation Street was written especially for the show by Eric Spear and the mournful cornet solo was played by Ronnie Hunt who was paid £6 for his troubles. He found the experience frustrating as Spear insisted on many takes before obtaining the sound that he wanted by playing very close to the microphone.
Compare that to the story of David Dundas (of Blue Jeans fame) who wrote the original four note theme for Channel 4. Called Fourscore, the theme was used between 1982 to 1992 and Dundas got a royalty of £3.50 every time. That added up to around £1000 per week and so, over the 10 years, he earned over half a million pounds from it. Each of those four notes earned him a staggering £130,000! At the time, it was the shortest music composition ever copyrighted.
You probably all know that the theme to Monty Python is actually called The Liberty Bell, a march by John Philip Sousa. I bet you also know that the music used for Formula 1 on TV is The Chain by Fleetwood Mac and that the BBC's Top Gear theme is Jessica by the Allman Brothers Band. You might be aware that the Ski Sunday theme is called Pop goes Bach by Sam Fonteyn and that the tune used for BBC cricket coverage is Soul Limbo by Booker T and the MGs. And you may recognise the theme to the Snooker coverage as Drag Racer by the Doug Wood Band and the theme to sports show Superstars as Heavy Action by Johnny Pearson. The opening titles for Wimbledon are Light and Tuneful by Keith Prowse and the closing music is Sporting Occasion by Arnold Steck.
But did you know these?
The Mastermind theme is actually called Approaching Menace and was written by Neil Richardson.
The theme to The Old Grey Whistle Test was called Stone Fox Chase, written by Charlie McCoy and Kenny Buttrey and was made famous by their band Area Code 615.
The theme to the US series Taxi was a very laid back slab of electric piano jazz by Bob James called Angela:
And one of the most iconic British TV themes of all time isn't called Black Beauty but is actually Galloping Home, written by Denis King and performed by the London String Chorale. Ever heard the whole thing? Well, here it is.
Of course, many themes are written especially for the shows they open. The theme to Coronation Street was written especially for the show by Eric Spear and the mournful cornet solo was played by Ronnie Hunt who was paid £6 for his troubles. He found the experience frustrating as Spear insisted on many takes before obtaining the sound that he wanted by playing very close to the microphone.
Compare that to the story of David Dundas (of Blue Jeans fame) who wrote the original four note theme for Channel 4. Called Fourscore, the theme was used between 1982 to 1992 and Dundas got a royalty of £3.50 every time. That added up to around £1000 per week and so, over the 10 years, he earned over half a million pounds from it. Each of those four notes earned him a staggering £130,000! At the time, it was the shortest music composition ever copyrighted.
Songs you didn't know you didn't know 4
Here's the final one for now. There are other topics to be blogged!
Huw Williams has reminded me of this great piece of music used on The Two Ronnies TV show as the intro to the Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone mini-series.
It was called The Detectives and was written by Alan Tew. He also wrote incidental music for the Van der Valk, The Hanged Man and The Sweeney TV series too. There's also a slow version of The Detectives that was sometimes used for poignant moments in the Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone stories:
And the TV show Vision On continues to throw up great tunes. I was reminded by Alan Partridge(?!) that the show used John Williams' version of Cavatina and also this great little tune by Al Hirt called Java:
He was a big lad, our Al, and his nicknames included 'Jumbo' and 'The Round Mound of Sound'. Ouch. You might also remember Elephant Dance by Harry Pitch:
Last but not least, Persephone has reminded me of this classic - The Elizabethan Serenade by Ronald Binge. When he wrote it in 1951 it was simply called 'Andante cantabile' but he re-titled it and dedicated it to the young Queen Elizabeth in 1952. It was used as the theme for the BBC radio show Music Tapestry and on the Forces Network.
Binge also wrote Sailing By - the theme for the BBC Shipping Forecast:
More another day!
Huw Williams has reminded me of this great piece of music used on The Two Ronnies TV show as the intro to the Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone mini-series.
It was called The Detectives and was written by Alan Tew. He also wrote incidental music for the Van der Valk, The Hanged Man and The Sweeney TV series too. There's also a slow version of The Detectives that was sometimes used for poignant moments in the Charlie Farley and Piggy Malone stories:
And the TV show Vision On continues to throw up great tunes. I was reminded by Alan Partridge(?!) that the show used John Williams' version of Cavatina and also this great little tune by Al Hirt called Java:
He was a big lad, our Al, and his nicknames included 'Jumbo' and 'The Round Mound of Sound'. Ouch. You might also remember Elephant Dance by Harry Pitch:
Last but not least, Persephone has reminded me of this classic - The Elizabethan Serenade by Ronald Binge. When he wrote it in 1951 it was simply called 'Andante cantabile' but he re-titled it and dedicated it to the young Queen Elizabeth in 1952. It was used as the theme for the BBC radio show Music Tapestry and on the Forces Network.
Binge also wrote Sailing By - the theme for the BBC Shipping Forecast:
More another day!
Thursday, 5 January 2012
Songs you didn't know you didn't know 3
Another selection gleaned from Twitter, bloggers, emails and my own strange memory banks. There have been some great suggestions including many famous TV themes. However, this is not so much about nostalgia as it is about identifying those pieces we all know but don't necessarily know what they're called or who wrote them.
Guy Chapman reminded me that Herb Alpert - featured in the previous post - was the 'A' in A&M Records, which he founded with Jerry Moss. Suddenly the trumpet on the company logo makes perfect sense. Guy also reminded me of the music used for the Humphrey the Tortoise segments on Vision On. It was by Pierre Arvay and was called The Happy Ocarina. Happy? Really?
The theme music to Vision On was Accroche-Toi, Caroline by Claude Vasori (AKA Caravelli).
Another song used in the show was Goofy by Cliff Johns:
Tom Biggs asked me to give Eric Coates a mention. And so I should. Coates was one of the big names in British Light Orchestral Music and wrote such hits as The London Suite, The Dambusters March and By the Sleepy Lagoon - the theme to long-running radio show Desert Island Discs. This one is Calling All Workers! the theme used for the BBC Radio Show Music while you work.
And here's Robert Farnon's Jumping Bean, used as the theme for the TV series Top of the Form. It may also have inspired the theme to Hancock's Half Hour, which was written by Farnon's great friend Wally Stott, who was also musical director on The Goon Show. Stott later underwent a sex-change and became Angela Morley, who had an equally successful career. She wrote, for example, nearly all of the music for the 1978 film Watership Down.
Lastly, who remembers Noseybonk? He was the creepy guy in the white mask and dildo nose who turned up now and again in the TV show Jigsaw. This was his theme. It's called A Hippo called Hubert and was written by Joe Griffiths. Griffiths also wrote the music to kid's TV favourites Chorlton and the Wheelies and Jamie and the Magic Torch.
Keep 'em coming!
Guy Chapman reminded me that Herb Alpert - featured in the previous post - was the 'A' in A&M Records, which he founded with Jerry Moss. Suddenly the trumpet on the company logo makes perfect sense. Guy also reminded me of the music used for the Humphrey the Tortoise segments on Vision On. It was by Pierre Arvay and was called The Happy Ocarina. Happy? Really?
The theme music to Vision On was Accroche-Toi, Caroline by Claude Vasori (AKA Caravelli).
Another song used in the show was Goofy by Cliff Johns:
Tom Biggs asked me to give Eric Coates a mention. And so I should. Coates was one of the big names in British Light Orchestral Music and wrote such hits as The London Suite, The Dambusters March and By the Sleepy Lagoon - the theme to long-running radio show Desert Island Discs. This one is Calling All Workers! the theme used for the BBC Radio Show Music while you work.
And here's Robert Farnon's Jumping Bean, used as the theme for the TV series Top of the Form. It may also have inspired the theme to Hancock's Half Hour, which was written by Farnon's great friend Wally Stott, who was also musical director on The Goon Show. Stott later underwent a sex-change and became Angela Morley, who had an equally successful career. She wrote, for example, nearly all of the music for the 1978 film Watership Down.
Lastly, who remembers Noseybonk? He was the creepy guy in the white mask and dildo nose who turned up now and again in the TV show Jigsaw. This was his theme. It's called A Hippo called Hubert and was written by Joe Griffiths. Griffiths also wrote the music to kid's TV favourites Chorlton and the Wheelies and Jamie and the Magic Torch.
Keep 'em coming!
Songs you didn't know you didn't know 2
Alex Andreou reminded me of this little gem this morning, Herb Alpert's 1966 hit Spanish Flea:
So many good tunes by that man. Impressively, he's still touring and has a second career as an abstract artist.
Then I remembered this one:
The fantastic Henry Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk written in 1961 for the film Hatari. How many of his tunes could we list here? Casino Royale, The Pink Panther, Moon River ...
Then there's this splendid piece that gets dusted off quite often.
It's called In Party Mood by Jack Strachey and was the theme to the BBC radio show Housewives' Choice. Strachey also co-wrote the hit songs These Foolish Things and A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.
And lastly:
A Walk in the Black Forest by Horst Jankowski. Originally called Eine Schwarzwaldfahrt, this tune reached Number 3 in the UK charts in 1965. Ah, what easy listening times they were.
And talking of easy listening, if you have a few spare minutes, do read my blog on the extraordinary story of bandleader James Last here.
So many good tunes by that man. Impressively, he's still touring and has a second career as an abstract artist.
Then I remembered this one:
The fantastic Henry Mancini's Baby Elephant Walk written in 1961 for the film Hatari. How many of his tunes could we list here? Casino Royale, The Pink Panther, Moon River ...
Then there's this splendid piece that gets dusted off quite often.
It's called In Party Mood by Jack Strachey and was the theme to the BBC radio show Housewives' Choice. Strachey also co-wrote the hit songs These Foolish Things and A Nightingale sang in Berkeley Square.
And lastly:
A Walk in the Black Forest by Horst Jankowski. Originally called Eine Schwarzwaldfahrt, this tune reached Number 3 in the UK charts in 1965. Ah, what easy listening times they were.
And talking of easy listening, if you have a few spare minutes, do read my blog on the extraordinary story of bandleader James Last here.
Saturday, 10 December 2011
Ink and Decibels
I spent most of today working with award-winning photographer Mark Page (top photo with Becky Beatz). Although he's best known for his erotic work, Mark has spent several years documenting the lifestyle and fashions of the Alternative Community in much the same way that another local photographer, Gavin Watson, caught this part of Buckinghamshire during the punk, new wave and two-tone years (See here - the lad in the stripey trousers is now my brother-in-law. Really.).
I can't show you any of the portrait shots yet but I will share some photos I took during the day. Here's Release The Bats in action:
And some shots of Spit Like This:
Some of my favourite shots were candid ones like this of ex-Wutars and now frontman of the The Wizards Of West Wycombe, Alex Kew (far left) and his extraordinary moustache:
Burlesque Queen Khandie Khisses and Gary from Release The Bats:
And my favourite shot of the day, also featuring Gary:
A fun day where I heard some great music and met some amazing people. It's nice to get out from behind the laptop or the easel once in a while. As you can see:
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