38 Major Pop Songs Played with the Exact Same Four Chords: Watch a Captivating Medley Performed by the Axis of Awesome

in Comedy, Music | January 3rd, 2020

When we call music a universal language, it’s usually understood to be a metaphor. In its purest theoretical form, music may be more like math—a truly universal language—but in its manifestations in the real world, it resembles more the great diversity of tongues around the globe. Each regional, national, and global music has its grammar of scales, rhythms, and chords, each its syntax of melodies and harmonies, though these share some important commonalities.

The syntax of pop music, like its blues predecessor, consists of standard chord progressions, easily swapped from song to song: repeatable units that form a range of available emotional expression. Want to see that range on full display, in a bravado performance by an Australian comedy rock band? Look no further: just above, the Axis of Awesome perform their live rendition of “4 Chord Song,” a stunning medley of pop hits from Journey to Missy Higgins that all use the same four-chord sequence.

With the exception of an original composition, “Birdplane,” the ensemble’s selection of 38 songs includes some of the biggest hits of the past few decades. The tonal breadth is surprising, as we leap from “Don’t Stop Believing” to “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” to “With or Without You” to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl” and Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” Imagine Natalie Imbruglia, Green Day, and Toto trading licks, or Pink, the Beatles, and A‑Ha. Maybe these artists have more in common, linguistically speaking, than we thought. Or, as one of the Axis of Awesome bandmember asks, mock-incredulously, “You can take those four chords, repeat them, and pop out every pop song ever?”

Well, maybe not every pop song. One could choose other progressions and make similar compilations. These particular four chords have something of a melancholy sound, and tend to come up music with an undercurrent of sadness (yes, even “Barbie Girl”). One can quibble with some of the particulars here. “Don’t Stop Believing,” for example, throws a different chord into the second phrase of its progression. But the ubiquity of this melody in pop is quite revealing, and amusing in this musical mashup. See the Axis of Awesome in a polished video version of “4 Chord Song,” above, and consider all the other ways pop music recycles and reuses the same elements over and over to convey its range of feelings.

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Meaning of Music in the Human Experience: Listen to One of His Final Interviews (1966)

Alan Lomax’s Massive Music Archive Is Online: Features 17,000 Historic Blues & Folk Recordings

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Watch A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Video Newly Remastered in 4K .… and Learn About the Band’s Struggle to Make the Classic Song

in Music | January 2nd, 2020

Though the ‘80s didn’t invent music videos, they did become an essential form of cultural currency, as high profile directors, big budgets, and a channel that played them non-stop pushed them into our collective consciousness. But it’s only recently that those original videos–most shot on film, not video by the way–have been getting the remaster treatment that Hollywood blockbusters and art house classics receive. Last month, we saw the film grain and romantic lighting in Wham’s “Last Christmas” video remastered in 4K. And now another inescapably ‘80s earworm gets the treatment: “Take on Me” by Norway’s finest, A‑ha.

For those who haven’t seen the video, it’s a fairytale of a down-on-her luck girl who falls in love with the hero (A‑ha’s lead singer Morten Harket) in a comic book, then falls into the comic book where both become pencil drawings. Under attack from wrench-wielding bad guys, she escapes back into the real world and in a love-conquers-all miracle, Morten makes it into the real world and into the arms of his love. All in three minutes and change.

A‑ha might have been seen as a one-hit wonder band by some, but the loving doc on the making of the song and video demonstrates there’s no such thing as an overnight success. The band struggled for years to make it, and “Take On Me” wasn’t even their first choice for a song–the band called it “Juicy Fruit” because its relentless cheerful pop sounded to the band like an American chewing gum ad.

And they struggled to get the song right–an early version was released three times but failed to catch on. They even recorded a version and filmed a bland music video for it. For some groups, this failure might have been it, but you have to admire A‑ha. They were hungry and they knew, just knew, that the song should be a hit.

As the doc shows, several music industry execs thought so too. The band pleaded and got themselves a new producer: Alan Tarney. He went back to the group’s original demo and brought back what their first producer had taken out, but layered on synth after synth as well. From original demo to the hit single, it had taken four years.

For the video, Warner Bros. exec Jeff Ayeroff wanted something comic book based, and co-worker John Beug knew what might work. He had seen a student animation called “Commuter” by Candace Reckinger and Mike Patterson, and the two were hired to recreate their rotoscoped technique for the video, taking months and months of hand-drawn hard work to complete.

The resulting video, directed by Steve Barron is a classic. It’s been parodied on Family Guy and as a Children In Need charity special. And it still works as a mini narrative: each verse adds an element to the story, the frenetic piano instrumental bridge brings in the element of danger, and the final chorus brings it all together with a tear and an embrace. (The influence of Ken Russell’s Altered States is not mentioned in the doc, but it’s an obvious touchstone.)

The young woman co-starring in the video is Bunty Bailey, who appeared in several other ‘80s videos (like this one for Billy Idol). For a lump in the throat moment reunion, keep watching through to the end, where old friends get reunited.

A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Performed by North Korean Kids with Accordions

19-Year-Old Russian Guitarist Plays an Ingenious Cover of Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean”

The Trick That Made Animation Realistic: Watch a Short History of Rotoscoping

Ted Mills is a freelance writer on the arts who currently hosts the artist interview-based FunkZone Podcast and is the producer of KCRW’s Curious Coast. You can also follow him on Twitter at @tedmills, read his other arts writing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by Ted Mills | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Music, Books & Films Liberated into the Public Domain in 2020: Rhapsody in Blue, The Magic Mountain, Sherlock, Jr., and More

in Books, Film, Music | January 2nd, 2020

“I heard it as a sort of musical kaleidoscope of America, of our vast melting pot, of our unduplicated national pep, of our blues, our metropolitan madness.” So said Porgy and Bess composer George Gershwin of Rhapsody in Blue, the orchestral piece he wrote back in 1924 and which has remained in the American canon ever since. It will surely become even more widely heard from this year on, since 1924 plus 95 — the term of a copyright under current United States law — equals 2020. Given that Rhapsody in Blue’s entrance into the public domain means that creators can now freely do what they like with it, the piece will also, no doubt, undergo all manner of creative rearrangement and repurposing in order to reflect the America of the 2020s.

Copyright terms didn’t always last nearly a century. Before the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act they lasted only 75 years, and for the additional two decades of waiting for works to enter the public domain we usually blame Disney. That entertainment giant did indeed do much of the lobbying for copyright extension, seeking to retain its rights to Mickey Mouse’s 1928 debut Steamboat Willie.

But as Duke Law’s Center for the Study of the Public Domain reports in a post on the works newly in public domain this year, “the Gershwin Family Trust also pushed for the extension, so that George and Ira Gershwin’s works from the 1920s and 1930s would remain under copyright.” But now several been liberated from it: not just Rhapsody in Blue, but also standards (with lyrics penned by Gershwin’s brother Ira) like “Fascinating Rhythm” and “Oh, Lady Be Good!”

2020’s is a promising Public Domain Day indeed for fans of the Great American Songbook, what with the work of other composers like Irving Berlin (specifically the popular tune “Lazy,” well known from Marilyn Monroe’s performance in There’s No Business Like Show Business.) But the list of literary works that have just gone public-domain is even more impressive, boasting internationally acclaimed books like Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, E.M. Forster’s A Passage to India, Edith Wharton’s novella collection Old New York, and the pillar of modern dystopian literature that is Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (in English translation by Gregory Zilboorg). In many works of 1924, we can see the roots of the art we make and enjoy in 2020.

That holds especially true in the realm of film, which this year contributes to the public domain pictures from two masters of silent comedy: Harold Lloyd’s Girl Shy and Hot Water, and Buster Keaton’s The Navigator and Sherlock, Jr. That last film has the honor of being preserved by the United States Library of Congress for its cultural significance, as well as of having been named by the American Film Institute one of the funniest motion pictures in American history. You can learn more about all that entered the public domain this year (and what might, but for changes in the law, have entered it) at the Center for the Study of the Public Domain and the Public Domain review. But even more important than what enters the increasingly kaleidoscopic melting pot of the public domain, of course, is what we do with it. Future George Gershwins, Thomas Manns, and Buster Keatons, take note.

via Hyperallergic

Ella Fitzgerald Sings ‘Summertime’ by George Gershwin, Berlin 1968

The General, “Perhaps the Greatest Film Ever Made,” and 20 Other Buster Keaton Classics Free Online

Safety Last, the 1923 Movie Featuring the Most Iconic Scene from Silent Film Era, Just Went Into the Public Domain

Rare 1940 Audio: Thomas Mann Explains the Nazis’ Ulterior Motive for Spreading Anti-Semitism

Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, 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.

by Colin Marshall | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The History of the Fisheye Photo Album Cover

in Art, Music, Photography | December 31st, 2019

Like gothic script in heavy metal, the fisheye album cover photo seems like a naturally occurring feature of certain psychedelic strains of music. But it has a history, as does the fisheye photograph itself. The Vox video above begins in 1906 with Johns Hopkins scientist and inventor Robert Wood, a somewhat eccentric professor of optical physics who wanted to duplicate the way fish see the world: “the circular picture,” he wrote, “would contain everything within an angle of 180 degrees in every direction, i.e. a complete hemisphere.”

Rather than putting them to underwater use, later scientists employed Wood’s ideas in astronomical observation. Their next stop was the professional photography market: the first mass-produced fisheye lens, made by Nikon, cost $27,000 in 1957. From academic journals to the pages of Life magazine: mass media brought fisheye photography into popular culture. An affordable, consumer-grade lens in 1962 brought it within the reach of the masses. For the way it compresses angles, the fisheye lens “was, and always has been, a handy tool to capture tight quarters, as well as huge spaces.”

The fisheye lens suited the Beatles phenomenon perfectly, compressing backstage hallways and stadium-sized crowds into the same hypnotically circular dimensions. “Perhaps its greatest strength was making rock stars appear larger than life.”

The fisheye photo “reflected the trippiness of the psychedelic era.” Although one of the earliest uses on an album cover was Sam Rivers’ Fuschia Swing Song, it soon adorned the Byrds Mr. Tambourine Man and—of course—the cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced. The iconic band photo of the Experience, taken by graphic designer Karl Ferris, inspired hundreds of psychedelic imitators.

Ferris thought of the fisheye photo with reference, again, not to the ocean but the stars: Hendrix’s music, he said, was “so far out that it seemed to come from outer space.” In order to introduce the band to audiences who hadn’t heard of them yet, he conceived of them as a “group traveling through space in a Biosphere on their way to bring their otherworldly space music to earth.” Inseparable from space travel after NASA’s many fisheye photos of the Apollo missions, the fisheye album cover contains entire worlds in a single droplet, and promises to transport us to the outer reaches of sound.

The Impossibly Cool Album Covers of Blue Note Records: Meet the Creative Team Behind These Iconic Designs

People Pose in Uncanny Alignment with Iconic Album Covers: Discover The Sleeveface Project

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Meaning of Music in the Human Experience: Listen to One of His Final Interviews (1966)

in Music | December 30th, 2019

A few years ago, the animated series Blank on Blank released a video with five minutes from one of John Coltrane’s last interviews in 1966, eight months before his death from liver cancer at age 40. In the excerpts, Coltrane tells interviewer Frank Kofsky, a Pacifica Reporter, about his intuitive approach to practicing, his switch to soprano sax, and his desire to “be a force for real good.” As juicy as these tidbits are for Coltrane fans, the full interview, above, is even better—an hour-long encounter with the jazz saint, who opens up to Kofsky in his relaxed, yet guarded way.

Coltrane chooses his words carefully. His refusal to elaborate is often its own subtle form of expression. During their opening banter, Kofsky asks him about seeing Malcolm X speak just before the latter’s death. Coltrane calls Malcolm “impressive” and leaves it at that. Kofsky then asks his first pointed question: “Some musicians have said that there’s a relationship between some of Malcom’s ideas and music, especially the new music. You think there’s anything in there?”

Kofsky had his own reasons for pushing this line. Just a few years later, he published Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music in 1971. The book was reprinted with the more specific, less threatening, title John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution of the 1960s. Both versions prominently feature Coltrane on the cover. “Dedicated to both John Coltrane and Malcolm X,” notes Soul Jazz Records, the book “places the revolutionary ‘new thing’ music and ideas of Coltrane, Albert Ayler and others in a wider context of 60’s radicalism, African American politics and history.”

An historian and academic who published several books on jazz, Kofsky isn’t subtle about his agenda, but Coltrane is unwilling to be pushed into a political corner, as fans have pointed out in discussions of this interview. He wants to embrace everything. “I think that music, being an expression of the human heart, or the human being itself,” he says, “does express just what is happening. It expresses the whole thing.” He consistently refuses to get drawn into a discussion of racial politics with Kofsky.

When they finally move on to talking about performance, the unflappable Coltrane stops demurring and opens up. We hear him describe his experience of being on stage at one concert as “too busy” to know what was happening in the audience, but the right audience can also be, he says, a participating member of the group. When Kofsky again pushes Coltrane on the relationship between his music and black nationalism, Coltrane coolly replies, “I have consciously made an attempt to change what I’ve found. In other words, I’ve tried to say, ‘this could be better, in my opinion, so I will try to do this to make it better.”

Coltrane’s knack for cutting to the heart of his purpose—to add to the world with his playing, without a need to control what happens afterwards—comes through in the entire hour-long interview. His reticence to engage with Kofsky’s analysis might have something to do with who was asking the questions, but in any case, there’s no doubt that Coltrane was integral to the fierce, uncompromising Black Arts poetry of the 1970s, and many other politically informed movements. He was influential, however, not as the representative of an ideology, but as the inventor—or the vessel, he might say—of an entirely new form of creative expression.

John Coltrane Performs A Love Supreme and Other Classics in Antibes (July 1965)

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 7 ) |

Itzhak Perlman Appears on Sesame Street and Poignantly Shows Kids How to Play the Violin and Push Through Life’s Limits (1981)

in Education, Health, K-12, Life, Music, Television | December 30th, 2019

I always champion anything that will improve the lives of people with disabilities and put it on the front burner. — Itzhak Perlman

At its best, the Internet expands our horizons, introducing us to new interests and perspectives, forging connections and creating empathy.

The educational children’s series Sesame Street was doing all that decades earlier.

Witness this brief clip from 1981, starring violin virtuoso Itzhak Perlman and a six-year-old student from the Manhattan School of Music.

For many child—and perhaps adult—viewers, this excerpt presented their first significant encounter with classical musical and/or disability.

The little girl scampers up the steps to the stage as Perlman, who relies on crutches and a motorized scooter to get around, follows behind, heaving a sigh of relief as he lowers himself into his seat.

Already the point has been made that what is easy to the point of unconsciousness for some presents a challenge for others.

Then each takes a turn on their violin.

Perlman’s skills are, of course, unparalleled, and the young girl’s seem pretty exceptional, too, particularly to those of us who never managed to get the hang of an instrument. (She began lessons at 3, and told the Suzuki Association of the Americas that her Sesame Street appearance with Perlman was the “highlight of [her] professional career.”)

In the nearly 40 years since this episode first aired, public awareness of disability and accessibility has become more nuanced, a development Perlman discussed in a 2014 interview with the Wall Street Journal, below.

Having resented the way early features about him invariably showcased his disability, he found that he missed the opportunity to advocate for others when mentions dropped off.

Transparency coupled with celebrity provides him with a mighty platform. Here he is speaking in the East Room of the White House in 2015, on the day that President Obama honored him with the Medal of Freedom:

And his collaborations with Sesame Street have continued throughout the decades, including performances of “You Can Clean Almost Anything” (to the tune of Bach’s Partita for Solo Violin), “Put Down the Duckie,” Pagliacci’s Vesti la giubba (backing up Placido Flamingo), and Beethoven’s Minuet in G, below.

Read more of Perlman’s thoughts on disability, and enroll in his Master Class here.

Philip Glass Composes Music for a Sesame Street Animation (1979)

See Stevie Wonder Play “Superstition” and Banter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Ayun Halliday is an author, illustrator, theater maker and Chief Primatologist of the East Village Inky zine. Join her in NYC on Monday, January 6 when her monthly book-based variety show, Necromancers of the Public Domaincelebrates Cape-Coddities by Roger Livingston Scaife (1920). Follow her @AyunHalliday.

by Ayun Halliday | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear Every Sample on the Beastie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Boutique–and Discover Where They Came From

in Music | December 26th, 2019

How would the Beastie Boys follow their debut, Licensed to Ill, wondered critics when the album rose to number one after its 1986 release. The cross-over appeal of their hip hop/frat rock solidified a fan base whose devotion often mirrored their parents’ revulsion. Like many of their later imitators, the Beastie Boys could have played overgrown delinquents till their fans aged out of the act.

Few critics expected more from them. “Rolling Stone entitled their review ‘Three Idiots Create a Masterpiece’ and gave more credit to producer Rick Rubin,” writes Colleen Murphy at Classic Album Sundays. Three years later, they far surpassed expectations with their experimental second album, 1989’s Paul’s Boutique, though it took a little while for the fans to catch up.

It’s a record so dense with allusions both musical and lyrical, so original in its verbal interplay and comic storytelling, that the Beastie Boys were suddenly hailed as serious artists. As Murphy puts it:

Paul’s Boutique gave the Beastie Boys the critical acclaim they desperately desired. Rolling Stone maneuvered a U‑turn and brazenly called it, “the Pet Sounds / The Dark Side of the Moon of hip hop.” But more importantly, it also earned the group respect with their peers and idols. Miles Davis claimed he never got tired of listening to it, and Public Enemy’s Chuck D even said, ‘The dirty secret among the Black hip hop community at the time of the release was that Paul’s Boutique had the best beats.”

They spat absurdly hilarious rhymes by the dozen in mock epic narratives brimming with rhythmic and melodic complexity, thanks to the high-concept production by the Dust Brothers. The two producers pieced the album’s soundscape together from an estimated 150-odd samples, a method that “would be prohibitively expensive if not impossible” today, notes Kottke. In the video above, you can hear every sample on the album, “from the soundtrack to Car Wash to the Sugarhill Gang to the Eagles to the Ramones to the Beatles.”

For legal and creative reasons, nothing has ever sounded quite like Paul’s Boutique (except, perhaps, De La Soul’s Three-Feet High and Rising, a similarly groundbreaking, sample-heavy album released the same year). Thirty years after it came out, “it’s still not out of the ordinary to discover something you never heard before across this 15-track odyssey into a thrift story rack full of weird vinyl,” Billboard points out in a list of 10 deep cuts sampled on the record.

Like every classic album, Paul’s Boutique repays endless re-listens, both for its surreal lyrical playfulness and library of musical references. Hearing the breadth of samples that built the album drives home how much those two features are interwoven. Head over to Kottke for more Paul’s Boutique goodies, including a remix with source tracks and audio commentary and a Spotify playlist of all the sampled songs.

via Laughing Squid/Kottke

Look How Young They Are!: The Beastie Boys Performing Live Their Very First Hit, “Cooky Puss” (1983)

‘Beastie Boys on Being Stupid’: An Animated Interview From 1985

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Revisiting Band Aid’s Cringe-Inducing 1984 Single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

in Music | December 25th, 2019

We all know, don’t we, that the 1984 charity hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” qualifies as possibly the worst Christmas song ever recorded? Does that go too far? The song’s writer, Bob Geldof, went even further, once saying, “I am responsible for two of the worst songs in history. One is ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ and the other one is ‘We Are the World.’”

There’s no objective measure for such a thing, but I’m not inclined to disagree, with due respect for the millions Geldof, co-organizer and co-producer Midge Ure, and British celebrity supergroup Band Aid raised to feed victims of famine in Ethiopia in the mid-80s. Revisiting the lyrics now, I’m shocked to find they’re even more ridiculous and cringe-inducing than I remembered.

We can quickly dispense with the absurdity of the title. As an exasperated Spotify employee helpfully pointed out recently in a series of annotations, “the people of Ethiopia probably did know it was Christmas—it’s one of the oldest Christian nations in the world” with a majority Christian population.

The song’s aid recipients are referred to as “the other ones” who live in “a world of dread and fear.” Listeners are enjoined to “thank God it’s them instead of you.” And two years after Toto’s “Africa,” Band Aid manages to deliver the clumsiest, most ill-informed stanza perhaps ever written about the continent:

And there won’t be snow in Africa
This Christmas time
The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
Do they know it’s Christmas time at all?

Troublingly, the song “peddles myths about the cause of the famine,” writes Greg Evans at The Independent, “suggesting it was down to a drought, rather than the corrupt government misusing international aid.”

But it’s Christmas, as you probably know, so let’s not be too hard on “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” The artists who participated, including George Michael, Bono, Boy George, Sting, and many others had a significant impact on the entertainment industry’s role in international aid, for good and ill. The song was re-recorded three times, in 1989, 2004, and 2014, and it has become, believe it or not, “the second bestselling single in Britain’s history,” Laura June points out at The Outline.

Evans notes that “a reported £200m was raised via sales of the single which went towards the relief fund and it later went on to inspire the iconic Live Aid concert in July 1985, which raised a further £150m.” (Some of that money, it was later discovered, inadvertently made it into the hands of Ethiopia’s corrupt government.) Other benefit events, like Farm Aid in the U.S., would follow Geldof and Urge’s lead, and the model proved to be an enduring way for artists to support causes they cared about.

See the unbearably earnest original video at the top of the post and, just above, a thirty-minute making of film with a who’s who of mid-1980s British pop royalty learning to sing “let them know it’s Christmas time again” together.

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

Hear Paul McCartney’s Experimental Christmas Mixtape: A Rare & Forgotten Recording from 1965

Relive 16 Hours of Historic Live Aid Performances with These Big YouTube Playlists: Queen, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young & Much More

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

by Josh Jones | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 28 ) |

38 Major Pop Songs Played with the Exact Same Four Chords: Watch a Captivating Medley Performed by the Axis of Awesome

Watch A‑ha’s “Take On Me” Video Newly Remastered in 4K .… and Learn About the Band’s Struggle to Make the Classic Song

The Music, Books & Films Liberated into the Public Domain in 2020: Rhapsody in Blue, The Magic Mountain, Sherlock, Jr., and More

The History of the Fisheye Photo Album Cover

John Coltrane Talks About the Sacred Meaning of Music in the Human Experience: Listen to One of His Final Interviews (1966)

Itzhak Perlman Appears on Sesame Street and Poignantly Shows Kids How to Play the Violin and Push Through Life’s Limits (1981)

Hear Every Sample on the Beastie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Boutique–and Discover Where They Came From

Revisiting Band Aid’s Cringe-Inducing 1984 Single, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”

Essentials

Support Us

Free Courses

Free Movies

Free Language Lessons

Free eBooks

Free Audio Books

Free Textbooks

K-12 Resources

Free Art & Images

Free Music

Writing Tips

Archive

Personal Finance

Categories

Great Lectures

About Us

Great Recordings

Book Lists By

Syllabi

Favorite Movies

Archives

Search