Beatles Songs Re-Imagined as Vintage Book Covers and Magazine Pages: “Drive My Car,” “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” & More

in Books, Design, Music | July 17th, 2019

What makes the Bea­t­les the best-known rock band in his­to­ry? None can deny that they com­posed songs of unsur­passed catch­i­ness, a qual­i­ty demon­strat­ed as soon as those songs hit the air­waves. But the past 55 or so years have shown us that they also pos­sess an endur­ing pow­er to inspire: how many begin­ning musi­cians, fired up by their enjoy­ment of the Bea­t­les, play their first notes each day? The trib­utes to the music of the Bea­t­les keep com­ing in non-musi­cal forms as well: take, for exam­ple, these Bea­t­les songs turned into vin­tage book cov­ers and mag­a­zine pages by screen­writer and self-described “graph­ic-arts prankster” Todd Alcott.

“ ‘Dri­ve My Car’ re-imag­ines the clas­sic 1965 Bea­t­les song as a clas­sic 1965 adver­tise­ment for an actu­al car,” Alcott writes of the work at the top of the post, “mash­ing up the image from an ad for a 1966 Chevro­let Cor­vair with the lyrics from the song.”

Below that, “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” makes of that num­ber a mass-mar­ket book cov­er “in the style of Erich von Daniken’s clas­sic 1970s alien-vis­i­ta­tion book Char­i­ots of the Gods?” Below, Alcot­t’s inter­pre­ta­tion of “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” per­fect­ly re-cre­ates the look (and, with that vis­i­ble cov­er wear, the feel) of a heady 1960s sci­ence-fic­tion nov­el.

Tomor­row Nev­er Knows does sound like a plau­si­ble piece of spec­u­la­tive fic­tion from that era, but Alcott has made use of much more than these songs’ titles. Even casu­al Bea­t­les fans will notice how much of their lyri­cal con­tent he man­ages to work into his designs, for which the 1967 Nation­al Enquir­er cov­er pas­tiche he put togeth­er for the 1967 sin­gle “A Day in the Life” (“com­plete with pho­tos of Tory Browne, the Guin­ness heir about whom the song was writ­ten”) offered an espe­cial­ly rich oppor­tu­ni­ty. Just when the Bea­t­les broke up in real life, the era of the new-age self-help book began, and after see­ing what Alcott did with “Hel­lo Good­bye” using the dis­tinc­tive visu­al brand­ing of that pub­lish­ing trend, you’ll won­der why no one cashed in on such a com­bi­na­tion at the time.

You can see all of Alcot­t’s Bea­t­les book cov­er and mag­a­zine page designs, and buy prints of them in var­i­ous sizes, over at Etsy. Oth­er selec­tions include “Rocky Rac­coon” as an 1880s dime nov­el (pub­lish­ers of which includ­ed a firm named Bea­dles) and “Rev­o­lu­tion” as a Sovi­et his­to­ry book. Open Cul­ture read­ers will know Alcott from his pre­vi­ous for­ays into retro music-to-book graph­ic design, which took the songs of David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Radio­head and oth­ers and re-imag­ined them as sci-fi nov­els, pulp-fic­tion mag­a­zines, and oth­er arti­facts of print cul­ture from times past. In the case of the Bea­t­les, Alcot­t’s for­mi­da­ble skill at evok­ing a high­ly spe­cif­ic era of recent his­to­ry with an image under­scores, by con­trast, the time­less­ness of the songs that inspired them.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

How The Bea­t­les’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band Changed Album Cov­er Design For­ev­er

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Pulp Cov­ers for Clas­sic Detec­tive Nov­els by Dashiell Ham­mett, Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie & Ray­mond Chan­dler

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Piano Played with 16 Increasing Levels of Complexity: From Easy to Very Complex

in Creativity, Music | July 16th, 2019

Remem­ber the feel­ing of accom­plish­ment as a child, pick­ing out a sim­ple tune after your first piano les­son?

Then the day you begin to play with both hands? So grown up.

Even­tu­al­ly you start using more than two fin­gers.

And then comes the par­ty where a proud par­ent, pos­si­bly with a drink or two in him, com­mands you to play for the guests, who indulge your efforts with applause and the sug­ges­tion that per­haps their child, a con­tem­po­rary of yours, take a turn at the key­board.

Mozart.

Beethoven.

Max­i­mum humil­i­a­tion.

How soon can you bail on those damn piano lessons?

I flashed on that uni­ver­sal expe­ri­ence whilst lis­ten­ing to pianist and com­pos­er Nahre Sol demon­strate the “end­less pos­si­bil­i­ties” of piano com­po­si­tion and inter­pre­ta­tion by sub­ject­ing “Hap­py Birth­day” to six­teen lev­els of increas­ing com­plex­i­ty.

‘Round about lev­el five is where our respec­tive tal­ents began to part ways.

After a lot of prac­tice and false starts, I can some­times man­age a sim­ple arpeg­gio.

That’s greasy kid stuff to Nahre, whose YouTube chan­nel abounds with expert advice on how to sound like var­i­ous clas­si­cal com­posers and robust inves­ti­ga­tions of gen­res—fla­men­co, rag­time, Bossa nova, the Blues…

Now I know what made the vis­i­tors’ kid so much more advanced than me—broken octaves, glis­san­dos, great mus­cu­lar spans, a con­fi­dent com­mand of har­monies and rhythm…

Sol blows that per­for­mance out of the water, with seem­ing­ly very lit­tle effort, breezi­ly explain­ing what she’s doing each time she takes things up a notch, cul­mi­nat­ing in lev­el 16, which encom­pass­es all pre­vi­ous steps.

As home­less­ricegum observes in the com­ment sec­tion of the video, “Lev­el 17: you will now need your third hand.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­cept of Musi­cal Har­mo­ny Explained in Five Lev­els of Dif­fi­cul­ty, Start­ing with a Child & End­ing with Her­bie Han­cock

Learn How to Read Sheet Music: A Quick, Fun, Tongue-in-Cheek Intro­duc­tion

A Vin­tage Grand Piano Gets Reengi­neered to Play 20 Dif­fer­ent Instru­ments with a Push of Its Keys

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 9 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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The New David Bowie Barbie Doll Released to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of “Space Oddity”

in Music, Random | July 12th, 2019

This week Open Cul­ture com­mem­o­rat­ed the 50th anniver­sary of the release of David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” by explor­ing the song’s rela­tion­ship to the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing and Stan­ley Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mat­tel, they han­dled things a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly, releas­ing a new David Bowie Bar­bie Doll. Here’s their spiel:

  • In the defin­i­tive cel­e­bra­tion of two pop cul­ture icons, Bar­bie hon­ors the ulti­mate pop chameleon, Eng­lish singer, song­writer and actor, David Bowie.
  • This col­lectible Bar­bie doll wears the metal­lic Zig­gy Star­dust ‘space suit’ with red and blue stripes, flared shoul­ders and Bowie’s sig­na­ture cher­ry-red plat­form boots.
  • Spe­cial details include bold make­up — fea­tur­ing the famed astral sphere fore­head icon — and a hair­style inspired by Bowie’s fiery-red locks.
  • Spe­cial­ly designed pack­ag­ing makes Bar­bie David Bowie the ulti­mate collector’s item for Bowie and Bar­bie fans alike.
  • Hon­or David Bowie’s extra­or­di­nary tal­ent and unde­ni­able influ­ence with Bar­bie David Bowie doll.

You can pur­chase it online.

Relat­ed Con­tent

David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” and the Apol­lo 11 Moon Land­ing Turn 50 This Month: Cel­e­brate Two Giant Leaps That Took Place 9 Days Apart

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Hear Demo Record­ings of David Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust,” “Space Odd­i­ty” & “Changes”

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Arnold Schoenberg, Avant-Garde Composer, Creates a System of Symbols for Notating Tennis Matches

in Music, Sports | July 10th, 2019

This time each sum­mer, as the con­clu­sion of this year’s fort­night-long cham­pi­onship at Wim­ble­don approach­es, even the most pri­vate of the ten­nis enthu­si­asts in all of our cir­cles make them­selves known. Love of that par­tic­u­lar game runs down all walks of life, but seems to exist in par­tic­u­lar­ly high con­cen­tra­tions among cul­tur­al cre­ators: not just writ­ers like Mar­tin Amis, Geoff Dyer, and David Fos­ter Wal­lace, all of whose bod­ies of work con­tain elo­quent thoughts on ten­nis, but com­posers of music as well.

Take Arnold Schoen­berg, who well into his old age con­tin­ued not just to cre­ate the inno­v­a­tive music for which we remem­ber him, but to spend time on the court as well. Though born in Vien­na, Schoen­berg even­tu­al­ly land­ed in the right place to enjoy ten­nis on the reg­u­lar: south­ern Cal­i­for­nia, to which he fled in 1933 after being informed of how inhos­pitable his home­land would soon become to per­sons of Jew­ish her­itage. Few famous com­posers of that time had less in com­mon than Schoen­berg and George Gersh­win, but their shared enjoy­ment of ten­nis made them into fast part­ners.

Accord­ing to Howard Pol­lack­’s life of Gersh­win, fel­low com­pos­er Albert Sendrey left a “reveal­ing account” of one of the week­ly match­es between “the thir­ty-eight-year-old Gersh­win and the six­ty-two-year-old Schoen­berg, con­trast­ing the alter­nate­ly ‘ner­vous’ and ‘non­cha­lant,’ ‘relent­less’ and ‘chival­rous’ Gersh­win, ‘play­ing to an audi­ence,’ with the ‘over­ly eager’ and ‘chop­py’ Schoen­berg who ‘has learned to shut his mind against pub­lic opin­ion.’ ” Any par­al­lels between play­ing style and musi­cal sen­si­bil­i­ty are, of course, entire­ly coin­ci­den­tal.

The cere­bral nature of Schoen­berg’s com­po­si­tions may not sug­gest a tem­pera­ment suit­ed for phys­i­cal activ­i­ty of any kind, but even in Aus­tria Schoen­berg had been a keen sports­man. And as a fair few ten­nis-lov­ing writ­ers have explained, the game does pos­sess an intel­lec­tu­al side, and one made more eas­i­ly ana­lyz­able, at least in the­o­ry, by a sys­tem of Schoen­berg’s inven­tion. “Toward the end of his life, Schoen­berg — always fas­ci­nat­ed by rules, analy­sis, and inven­tion — would come up with a form of nota­tion to tran­scribe the ten­nis match­es of his ath­lete son Ronald,” writes Mark Berry in Arnold Schoen­berg. You can see this sys­tem laid out on the sheet above, recent­ly post­ed on Twit­ter by Hen­ry Gough-Coop­er.

The marks look vague­ly sim­i­lar to those of cer­tain dance nota­tion sys­tems, a nat­ur­al enough resem­blance con­sid­er­ing the kind of foot­work ten­nis demands. But ide­al­ly, Schoen­berg’s nota­tion would also have ren­dered a game of ten­nis as com­pre­hen­si­ble as one of chess — anoth­er pur­suit to which Schoen­berg applied his mind. He came up with “an expand­ed four-play­er, ten-square ver­sion of the tra­di­tion­al game,” writes Berry, “involv­ing super­pow­ers and less­er pow­ers all com­pelled to forge alliances, with new pieces such as air­planes, tanks, sub­marines, and so forth.” Schoen­berg’s “coali­tion chess,” as he called it, seems to have caught on no more than his ten­nis nota­tion sys­tem did. But then, the man who pio­neered the twelve-tone tech­nique nev­er did go in for mass accep­tance.

via and Hen­ry Gough-Coop­er on Twit­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Arnold Schoen­berg Cre­ates a Hand-Drawn, Paper-Cut “Wheel Chart” to Visu­al­ize His 12-Tone Tech­nique

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

John Coltrane Draws a Pic­ture Illus­trat­ing the Math­e­mat­ics of Music

Nota­tions: John Cage Pub­lish­es a Book of Graph­ic Musi­cal Scores, Fea­tur­ing Visu­al­iza­tions of Works by Leonard Bern­stein, Igor Stravin­sky, The Bea­t­les & More (1969)

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” and the Apollo 11 Moon Landing Turn 50 This Month: Celebrate Two Giant Leaps That Took Place 9 Days Apart

in History, Music | July 10th, 2019

One might call the explo­sion of “space rock” in the late 60s anoth­er kind of escapism, a turn from the heav­i­ness on plan­et Earth when the Age of Aquar­ius start­ed to get seri­ous­ly dark. Assas­si­na­tions, riots, ille­gal wars, blunt state repres­sion, coun­ter­cul­ture frag­men­ta­tion, vio­lence every­where, it seemed. Hal­lu­cino­gens played their part in guid­ing the music’s direc­tion, but who could blame bands and fans of bands like the Grate­ful Dead, Pink Floyd, Hawk­wind, or Hen­drix for turn­ing their gaze sky­wards and con­tem­plat­ing the stars?

One might also make the case that so-called “space rock”—psych-rock that direct­ly or indi­rect­ly ref­er­enced out­er space, space trav­el, and sci-fi themes, while sound­ing itself like the music of the spheres on acid—in fact, turned square­ly toward the most tech­no­log­i­cal­ly-advanced, ambi­tious proxy bat­tle of the entire Cold War. The very earth­ly space race made a fit­ting sub­ject for rock opera—a per­fect stage set for imag­i­na­tive songs about alien­ation, iso­la­tion, and tech­no­log­i­cal inhu­man­i­ty.

All of these themes come togeth­er in a celes­tial har­mo­ny in David Bowie’s 1969 sin­gle, “Space Odd­i­ty,” released on July 11th 1969 and inspired by Stan­ley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, both cul­tur­al arti­facts that antic­i­pat­ed the dra­ma of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing. The excite­ment Kubrick’s film and Bowie’s song helped gen­er­ate is odd, how­ev­er, con­sid­er­ing that both nar­ra­tives end with their pro­tag­o­nists lost in out­er space for­ev­er.

This didn’t stop the BBC from using “Space Odd­i­ty” to sound­track their Apol­lo cov­er­age, “despite its chill­ing con­clu­sion,” writes Jason Heller, author of Strange Stars: David Bowie, Pop Music, and the Decade Sci-Fi Explod­ed. The song’s sce­nario “couldn’t have been fur­ther from the typ­i­cal cheer­lead­ing of the astro­nauts that was being con­duct­ed by the media. No one was more sur­prised than Bowie,” who com­ment­ed:

I’m sure they real­ly weren’t lis­ten­ing to the lyrics at all. It wasn’t a pleas­ant thing to jux­ta­pose against a moon land­ing…. Obvi­ous­ly, some BBC offi­cial said, ‘Oh, right then, that space song, Major Tom, blah blah blah, that’ll be great.’ ‘Um, but he gets strand­ed in space, sir.’ Nobody had the heart to tell the pro­duc­er that.

“Of course,” says Bowie, ”I was over­joyed that they did” run with the song. It had been his label’s intent to gar­ner this kind of expo­sure when they rushed the record’s release to “cap­i­tal­ize on the Apol­lo craze.” “Space Odd­i­ty” made it to num­ber five on the UK charts. But if Bowie was mak­ing any com­ment on the moon mis­sion, at first it seems he did so only indi­rect­ly, inspired more by cin­e­ma than cur­rent events. He found 2001 “amaz­ing,” he com­ment­ed, adding, “I was out of my gourd any­way, I was very stoned when I went to see it, sev­er­al times, and it was real­ly a rev­e­la­tion to me.”

The song, he says, came out of that enhanced view­ing expe­ri­ence. Heller writes of sev­er­al more of Bowie’s lit­er­ary sci-fi influ­ences, but not of a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in the Apol­lo pro­gram. Yet Bowie, who record­ed the first “Space Odd­i­ty” demo in Jan­u­ary of 1969, did say he want­ed the song “to be the first anthem of the Moon.” The lyrics also “came from a feel­ing of sad­ness,” he said, about the space pro­gram’s direc­tion. “It has been dehu­man­ized,” he said. “Space Odd­i­ty” rep­re­sent­ed a delib­er­ate “anti­dote to space fever,” which is maybe why the song did­n’t catch on in the U.S. until the ‘70s.

This was not a song about plant­i­ng a flag of con­quest. Jour­nal­ist Chris O’Leary remem­bers Bowie mak­ing even more point­ed com­men­tary, con­sid­er­ing “the fate of Major Tom to be the tech­no­crat­ic Amer­i­can mind com­ing face-to-face with the unknown and blank­ing out.” The song her­ald­ed not only a piv­otal sci­en­tif­ic achieve­ment but a cul­tur­al break: “It was prob­a­bly not hyper­bole to assert that the Age of Aquar­ius end­ed when man walked on the Moon,” writes soci­ol­o­gist Philip Ennis. Or as Camille Paglia inter­pret­ed events in Bowie’s song, “we sense that the ‘60s coun­ter­cul­ture has trans­mut­ed into a hope­less­ness about polit­i­cal reform.”

This may seem like a lot of inter­pre­ta­tion to lay on what Bowie him­self called a “song-farce,” but when we’re talk­ing about Bowie’s song­writ­ing, even throw­away lines seem filled with por­tent. And when it comes to that supreme­ly ambiva­lent cou­plet “Plan­et Earth is blue / And there’s noth­ing I can do,” we find our­selves legit­i­mate­ly ask­ing along with Heller, is this “anthem or requiem? Cel­e­bra­tion or decon­struc­tion?” It has been all these things—the “defin­ing song of the Space Age,” sung by astro­nauts them­selves while float­ing in the tin can of the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion, and soon to be broad­cast at the Kennedy Cen­ter in a new video cel­e­brat­ing the 50th anniver­sary of the Apol­lo 11 moon land­ing.

The video at the NASA event on July 20th will com­mem­o­rate the event with “footage of David Bowie per­form­ing Space Odd­i­ty at his 50th birth­day con­cert at Madi­son Square Gar­den in 1997.” At the top of the post, see a lat­er video for the song (the first film Bowie made, in 1969, would not emerge until 1984); fur­ther up, see an excel­lent live per­for­mance as Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars; and just above, see a young, fresh, bell-bot­tomed, pre-glam Bowie play “Space Odd­i­ty” live on TV in 1969.

As we remem­ber the 50th anniver­sary of the moon land­ing this month, we also cel­e­brate the release of “Space Odd­i­ty” just nine days ear­li­er, the song that first launched Bowie’s career as a space­far­ing rock star. He couldn’t have pre­dict­ed the suc­cess of the Apol­lo 11 mis­sion, but now it seems we can­not prop­er­ly remem­ber it with­out also reflect­ing on his pre­scient pop critique—an attempt, he said, “to relate sci­ence and emo­tion.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Astro­naut Chris Had­field Sings David Bowie’s “Space Odd­i­ty” On Board the Inter­na­tion­al Space Sta­tion

How “Space Odd­i­ty” Launched David Bowie to Star­dom: Watch the Orig­i­nal Music Video From 1969

NASA Dig­i­tizes 20,000 Hours of Audio from the His­toric Apol­lo 11 Mis­sion: Stream Them Free Online

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

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Lennon or McCartney? Scientists Use Artificial Intelligence to Figure Out Who Wrote Iconic Beatles Songs

in Music | July 10th, 2019

Do you ago­nize over the fact that you don’t know for cer­tain who wrote what per­cent­age of your favorite Bea­t­les songs? Do you need to know if a line or phrase is Lennon or McCartney’s before you can enjoy “A Hard Day’s Night,” “In My Life,” and oth­er time­less tunes? Have you lost sleep over the dis­put­ed author­ship of “Do You Want to Know a Secret”?

I hope not. As Lennon/McCartney them­selves wrote, in the end, the songs we love are equal to the love we give the songs…. or some­thing like that. How much we can say with cer­tain­ty who penned which lyric or melody or played which riff or rhythm part doesn’t add to our emo­tion­al expe­ri­ence. But that knowl­edge does add more to our appre­ci­a­tion than fod­der for forum wars or law­suits.

Pulling these icon­ic songs into their con­stituent parts helps con­firm our under­stand­ing of how those parts con­tributed dif­fer­ent­ly to mak­ing the whole evolve; how Lennon’s direct­ness and sim­plic­i­ty com­ple­ment­ed and con­trast­ed with McCartney’s use of “more non-stan­dard musi­cal motifs” and a high­er degree of com­plex­i­ty. Or, at least, that’s what an AI found when it ana­lyzed hun­dreds of Bea­t­les hits in an effort to “build a ‘musi­cal fin­ger­print’ for each song­writer,” reports Alex Matthews-King at the Inde­pen­dent.

After putting the machine learn­ing algo­rithm through an ini­tial train­ing phase of “lis­ten­ing” to a com­plete works, researchers at Har­vard “asked” the pro­gram to assess “icon­ic songs, or musi­cal frag­ments, record­ed between 1962 and 1966, where debate rages over who was the major influ­ence.” Much of that debate has been fueled by the song­writ­ers them­selves, whose mem­o­ries in inter­views con­flict, but who are gen­er­al­ly thought to have writ­ten most songs indi­vid­u­al­ly under their joint song­writ­ing part­ner­ship.

The sci­en­tists from Har­vard and Dal­housie Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da were able to gauge with some­where around 76 per­cent accu­ra­cy whether songs or parts of songs were writ­ten by Lennon or McCart­ney. (Spoil­er alert: The AI “was able to iden­ti­fy some, includ­ing ‘Ask Me Why’, ‘Do You Want to Know a Secret’ and the bridge to ‘A Hard Day’s Night’, as belong­ing to John Lennon with up to 90 per cent cer­tain­ty,” writes The Dai­ly Mail.) Senior lec­tur­er in sta­tis­tics at Har­vard and paper author Mark Glick­man explains the larg­er pur­pose of the project to the Finan­cial Times: “Our work is essen­tial­ly a blue­print for those want­i­ng to fol­low changes in music over time. Using our machine learn­ing mod­el, you could poten­tial­ly home in on all the dif­fer­ent influ­ences of a giv­en musi­cian.”

If you’re using their work to win argu­ments, be pre­pared to explain how the study obtained its results and why they are any more reli­able than decades of detec­tive work and expert lis­ten­ing by humans. As a non-sta­tis­tics per­son, I’ll leave that expla­na­tion to more qual­i­fied indi­vid­u­als. I’m sat­is­fied: whether McCart­ney wrote all of the music for “In My Life” or just the bridge, as Lennon claimed, won’t change the way it moves me one bit.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Vir­tu­al Tour of Every Place Ref­er­enced in The Bea­t­les’ Lyrics: In 12 Min­utes, Trav­el 25,000 Miles Across Eng­land, France, Rus­sia, India & the US

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

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

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Deconstructing Stevie Wonder’s Ode to Jazz and His Hero Duke Ellington: A Great Breakdown of “Sir Duke”

in Music | July 8th, 2019

I nev­er real­ly liked the­o­ry class­es very much. To be hon­est, I was nev­er that good at them. I’ve def­i­nite­ly learned more from using my ears rather than my brain.  

- Musi­cian Jacob Col­lier

I too, find music the­o­ry con­found­ing, but unlike musi­cal poly­math Col­lier, I don’t have much of an ear to fall back on.

Which is pos­si­bly why I learned so much from his appear­ance on Vox’s Ear­worm, above. He lent me his ears.

Ten min­utes in, I think I maybe, sort-of under­stand what chro­mati­cism is.

Rather than pull exam­ples from a num­ber of sources, Col­lier con­cen­trates on his “musi­cal crush” Ste­vie Won­der’s chart top­ping 1976 trib­ute to jazz leg­end Duke Elling­ton, “Sir Duke.” As Col­lier told Time Out Israel’s Jen­nifer Green­berg:

I believe that when you lis­ten to music, it gives you this periph­ery of great stuff in your ears and then when you sit down to make music of your own, those are your teach­ers, those are your guid­ing forces. It’s bet­ter to have Ste­vie Won­der as a ref­er­ence point than say “this text­book that I read in class” …Ste­vie is my num­ber one. As a kid, he rep­re­sent­ed every­thing that I real­ly loved about music: he had all the chops, he had all the chords, he had all the funky stuff, all the groove, but then had that voice and behind the voice, he had this soul and feel­ings, and he also had this sense of humor mixed with this human­i­ty.

Col­lier has the innate know-how to break down those grooves, from the big band feel of the open­ing drums to the Motown sound back­beat of the verse.

Aid­ed by series pro­duc­er Estelle Caswell and some graph­ics that visu­al­ize such fun­da­men­tal­ly aur­al con­cepts as har­mo­ny and the pen­ta­ton­ic scale, Col­lier artic­u­lates in pure­ly musi­cal terms what makes this endur­ing hit so catchy.

Cer­tain­ly, the exu­ber­ant shout cho­rus doesn’t hurt.

Col­lier has delved into Wonder’s cat­a­logue before, leap­ing on the oppor­tu­ni­ty to har­mo­nize with him­self.

That’s him above, at age 17, per­form­ing an a cap­pel­la “Isn’t She Love­ly,” his melod­i­ca stand­ing in for Won­der’s icon­ic har­mon­i­ca solo.

And Wonder’s “Don’t You Wor­ry ‘Bout A Thing,” below, pre­sent­ed his great­est chal­lenge as an arranger, due to such quirks as “unex­pect­ed sus­pen­sion chords” and the dia­ton­ic descend­ing melody. Hold on to your hats at the 2:26 mark when the screen splits into over a dozen sec­tions, in an attempt to con­tain all the tal­ent on dis­play.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Con­cept of Musi­cal Har­mo­ny Explained in Five Lev­els of Dif­fi­cul­ty, Start­ing with a Child & End­ing with Her­bie Han­cock

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

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Visu­al­iza­tion of the Bass Line for the Motown Clas­sic, “Ain’t No Moun­tain High Enough”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Her hus­band was grat­i­fied to see Jacob Col­lier shares his affin­i­ty for Crocs. No shame. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Remembering the “Father of Bossa Nova” João Gilberto (RIP) with Four Classic Live Performances: “The Girl From Ipanema,” “Corcovado” & More

in Music | July 8th, 2019

If you first heard the work of great Brazil­ian gui­tarist and singer João Gilber­to in a lit­tle tune called “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” you’re in the com­pa­ny of mil­lions, whose intro­duc­tion to Gilber­to and the sounds of bossa nova jazz came from that song, record­ed with sax­o­phon­ist Stan Getz. When the L.A. Times’ Ran­dall Roberts com­pares their col­lab­o­ra­tive album Getz/Gilberto to the arrival of the Bea­t­les in the U.S., this may sound like an exag­ger­a­tion. But bossa nova, like rock and roll, was already huge­ly pop­u­lar, and sound of this record was a qui­et rev­o­lu­tion.

Gilber­to, who died this past Sat­ur­day at age 88, was “one of the most influ­en­tial musi­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” He and “his peer and col­lab­o­ra­tor Anto­nio Car­los Jobim helped cre­ate and pop­u­lar­ize bossa nova, a toned-down and roman­ti­cized take on Brazil­ian sam­ba music.” Jobim may have writ­ten “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” but Gilber­to first turned Amer­i­cans on to its charms, and to what Allmusic’s John Dougan calls “the sig­na­ture pop music of Brazil.”

Called O Mito, “the leg­end,” in his home coun­try, Gilberto’s influ­ence is incal­cu­la­ble and has “res­onat­ed in the work of artists includ­ing Cae­tano Veloso, Sade, Gal Cos­ta, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Stere­o­lab, Seu Jorge  and pret­ty much every Brazil­ian song­writer since 1960,” writes Roberts. His coun­try­man Veloso has said, “I owe João Gilber­to every­thing I am today. Even if I were some­thing else and not a musi­cian, I would say that I owe him every­thing.”

Many peo­ple have said sim­i­lar things over the years about John Lennon or George Har­ri­son, but an unas­sum­ing acoustic croon­er singing in Por­tuguese? Could he real­ly have that kind of cul­tur­al sway world­wide? It may be hard to see it now, but “bossa nova inte­grat­ed itself into the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion in much the same way rock ‘n’ roll did.” Yet instead of rebelling, it dressed up; rather than “upping the tem­po, atti­tude and ener­gy,” it “soothed and seduced.”

Bossa nova pro­vid­ed a coun­ter­point to the raw ener­gy of Amer­i­can and British rock, but not in the com­fort­ing, nos­tal­gic way of soft, soporif­ic music like that of Lawrence Welk. Rather—partly through its influ­ence on jazz musi­cians like Getz, Dizzy Gille­spie, and Char­lie Byrd—bossa nova became its own kind of hip pop­u­lar idiom, cool instead of hot, but still sexy and new. Elvis even tried to cash in on the music’s grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in 1963 with his “rol­lick­ing ‘Bossa Nova Baby’” from the movie Fun in Aca­pul­co.

The shoes didn’t quite fit. Bossa nova was sub­dued and sub­tle, a sound cre­at­ed for small spaces and small moves. It’s said that Gilberto’s qui­et style of play­ing “devel­oped in 1955 when he sequestered him­self inside of a bath­room at his sister’s house so as not to dis­turb her fam­i­ly,” writes Felix Con­tr­eras at NPR, “and to take advan­tage of the acoustics pro­vid­ed by the bath­room tiles.” This inti­mate ori­gin sto­ry aside, his was also a style that demar­cat­ed class lines in pop music.

Pop­u­lar among a slight­ly old­er set of lis­ten­ers, in Brazil bossa nova first attract­ed “a new mon­eyed class eager to move away from the more tra­di­tion­al sam­ba sound of explo­sive drums and group singing.” In its influ­ence on Amer­i­can jazz, bossa nova also telegraphed lux­u­ry, with its deeply relaxed atmos­phere and lush, unhur­ried tex­tures. It is the sound of sea­side resort hotels and upscale night­clubs, of yacht par­ties, art gal­leries, and pent­house apart­ments. “The Girl from Ipane­ma” sounds like the singing six­ties worlds of James Bond and Hugh Hefn­er, not Haight Ash­bury.

Nonethe­less, the song is an absolute clas­sic for good rea­son, with Gilberto’s then-wife Astrud “on a sul­try vocal” in Eng­lish, repeat­ing his under­stat­ed Por­tuguese, and a “now-icon­ic tenor sax solo” by Getz. “It was a world­wide hit and won the 1965 Gram­my for record of the year. Getz/Gilberto won album of the year and would go on to become one of the high­est-sell­ing jazz albums of all time.” For a time, bossa nova was every­where, then it gave way to the hard­er-edged Trop­i­calia move­ment of younger musi­cians like Veloso and Gilber­to Gil, and its vocab­u­lary became absorbed into so many dif­fer­ent kinds of music that we are hard­ly aware of its pres­ence any­more.

If “The Girl from Ipane­ma” was the first, and maybe, the last, you heard of João Gilber­to, you owe it to your­self to learn more of his work. And, if you’re already a life­long fan, you’ll appre­ci­ate all the more these live per­for­mances from Gilberto’s career. At the top, see him per­form “The Girl From Ipane­ma” with the song’s com­pos­er and his old col­lab­o­ra­tor Jobim; fur­ther up, Gilber­to plays “Desa­fi­na­do” and “Car­in­hoso” live in con­cert,” and, just above, see him play “Cor­co­v­a­do.”

Gilber­to was cut out of his biggest glob­al hit for the 1964 TV per­for­mance above. Pro­duc­ers opt­ed to make Astrud the face and voice of “The Girl from Ipane­ma.” But the mil­lions who bought the record heard his mes­mer­iz­ing vocal and gui­tar work, and then kept hear­ing their influ­ence on records released for decades after­ward around the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Girl from Ipane­ma” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Cov­ered by Sina­tra, Krall, Methe­ny & Oth­ers

The Strange His­to­ry of Smooth Jazz: The Music We All Know and Love … to Hate

The Exis­ten­tial Adven­tures of Icon­o­clas­tic Brazil­ian Musi­cian Tim Maia: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film

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

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