Rick Wakeman Tells the Story of the Mellotron, the Oddball Proto-Synthesizer Pioneered by the Beatles

in Music | June 15th, 2013

800px-MELLOTRON_(panel)

Image Tobias Aker­boom via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Did you know that the Span­ish gui­tar intro to the Bea­t­les’ “Bun­ga­low Bill” was not played by George Har­ri­son, but rather by an odd elec­tron­ic instru­ment called a Mel­lotron, the same strange pro­to-syn­the­siz­er respon­si­ble for the flute intro to “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er”? You’ll learn quite a bit more about the “rash break­ing out all over pop music” that was the Mel­lotron in the audio sto­ry above, nar­rat­ed by Rick Wake­man.

From the afore­men­tioned Bea­t­les’ songs to The Band’s “This Wheel’s on Fire” to pret­ty much every song in 60s pop and 70s pro­gres­sive rock, as well as in 60s revival­ists like Oasis, the Mel­lotron makes an appear­ance. It even shows up on Skynyrd’s “Free­bird” of all things.

Wake­man sketch­es the his­to­ry of the odd­ball instru­ment, from its hum­ble begin­nings in the garage of Cal­i­for­nia inven­tor Har­ry Cham­ber­lin, to its pop­u­lar­iza­tion by sales­man Bill Fransen, who took Chamberlin’s design and made it his own.

Bear in mind, as we enter the world of Mel­lotron­ics, that the instru­men­tal bits you hear through­out Wakeman’s sto­ry were played by some­one, some­time. The sounds made by this key­board-like thing are in fact actu­al parts from live orches­tras and sundry oth­er musi­cal arrange­ments, record­ed onto tape loops and con­fig­ured in an inge­nious way so that they cor­re­spond to a stan­dard key­board and a vari­ety of pre­sets and knob­by-dial­ly-things.

You might even call it an ana­log sam­pler. The more tech­ni­cal­ly-mind­ed among you may wish to read this Sound on Sound arti­cle for specs. For you enthu­si­asts, key­boardist Mike Pin­dar of the Moody Blues—whose “Nights in White Satin” would nev­er have been with­out the Mellotron—demonstrates the instrument’s inner work­ings in the short video above.

Inven­tor Har­ry Cham­ber­lin orig­i­nal­ly designed the Mel­lotron (which he called, of course, the Cham­ber­lin) to re-cre­ate the sound of an orches­tra at home, or in the local lodge or cabaret, pre­sum­ably. This is the use Paul McCart­ney divines in the funky demon­stra­tion of his Mel­lotron above. Sir Paul, in a cabaret set­ting, does a goofy lounge singer act, then plays the “Straw­ber­ry Fields” intro.

Dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­ers and com­put­ers over­took the Mel­lotron, as they did all ana­log elec­tron­ics. But like all things old, it’s new again, in sim­u­lat­ed form, avail­able to iPhone users via the Manetron app (Mel­lotron also makes a phys­i­cal, dig­i­tal ver­sion of their vin­tage instru­ment). The sto­ry and sound of the Mel­lotron recent­ly inspired a full doc­u­men­tary treat­ment in the 2010 film Mel­lodra­ma: The Mel­lotron Movie, now out on DVD, which may be the most com­pelling doc­u­men­tary about a pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic instru­ment ever made (far bet­ter than 2004’s dis­ap­point­ing Moog). As for­mer Beach Boy Bri­an Wil­son says in the film, “the Mel­lotron stays cool.” And indeed, it does.

via Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet the Dr. Who Com­pos­er Who Almost Turned The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” Into Ear­ly Elec­tron­i­ca

The Genius of Bri­an Eno On Dis­play in 80 Minute Q&A: Talks Art, iPad Apps, ABBA, & More

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

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

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Mick Jagger, 15 Years Old, Shows Off His Rock Climbing Shoes on British TV (1959)

in Music, Television | June 14th, 2013

In the 1950s, Mick Jag­ger (then still called “Mike Jag­ger”) was a mid­dle class kid grow­ing up in Dart­ford, Kent, Eng­land. His moth­er, Eva, was a hair­dress­er; his father, Joe, a PE teacher. Togeth­er, they lived in a nice, order­ly home, with more than enough mon­ey to pay the bills. (His neigh­bor, Kei­th Richards, could­n’t say the same.) In 1957, the elder Jag­ger began con­sult­ing on a week­ly TV show called See­ing Sport, which pro­mot­ed the virtues of sports to British chil­dren. Dur­ing the com­ing years, Mick and his broth­er Chris made reg­u­lar appear­ances on the show, show­ing view­ers how to build a tent, or mas­ter var­i­ous canoe­ing skills. In the 1959 clip above, Mick shows off the footwear need­ed for rock climb­ing. Noth­ing too fan­cy. No moun­taineer­ing boots or any­thing like that. Just a pair of “ordi­nary gym shoes … like the kind Mike is wear­ing.”  The episode was shot in a spot called “High Rocks,” near Tun­bridge Wells. This back­ground info comes to us via Philip Nor­man’s 2012 biog­ra­phy of Mick Jag­ger.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page, 13, Plays Gui­tar on BBC Tal­ent Show (1957)

The Bea­t­les as Teens (1957)

The Rolling Stones Sing Jin­gle for Rice Krispies Com­mer­cial (1964)

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Paul McCartney Talks Beatles & Wings with Stephen Colbert, Performs 6 Songs Live

in Comedy, Music | June 13th, 2013

The Col­bert Report opened last night with a seg­ment called “Stephen Col­bert’s Trib­ute to Hav­ing Paul McCart­ney on His Show, Fea­tur­ing Paul McCart­ney, With Spe­cial Guest Stephen Col­bert.” And, for the next 12 min­utes, Paul and Stephen cov­ered a lot of ground. Because McCart­ney has just released mate­r­i­al from Wings — a 1976 con­cert film called Rock­show and a reis­sue of Wings Over Amer­i­ca — the con­ver­sa­tion begins with the Wings era: how Mac­ca start­ed all over again; drove to gigs in a van, with no hotel reser­va­tions booked; even­tu­al­ly record­ed a fine album (Band on the Run) in Nige­ria, amidst a cholera out­break; and began per­form­ing live for the first time in years … which led to inevitable ques­tions about the Bea­t­les: why they stopped per­form­ing live in 1966, and how their song­writ­ing evolved. It all ends with inter­view­er and inter­vie­wee singing a charm­ing duet of Irv­ing Berlin’s 1936 clas­sic “Cheek to Cheek.” Lat­er, McCart­ney treat­ed the Col­bert crowd to six songs. We’ve embed­ded a cou­ple of clips below. You can watch the full 60-minute show here.

Lis­ten to What the Man Said

Birth­day

via Rolling Stone

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The Greatness of Charles Darwin Explained with Rap Music

in Biology, Music | June 13th, 2013

Read Open Cul­ture long enough, and soon­er or lat­er you’ll encounter “geek rap­per” Baba Brinkman, the Cana­di­an MC whose rhyming sub­jects of choice include evo­lu­tion, The Can­ter­bury Tales, and British ver­sus Cana­di­an Eng­lish. Though the hard-read­ing Brinkman has, it seems, staked out the musi­cal genre of “lit hop” for him­self, he’s gained just as much of his dis­tinc­tive brand of rig­or­ous­ly fac­tu­al hip-hop noto­ri­ety by rap­ping for the oth­er of what C.P. Snow defined as the “two cul­tures.” His par­al­lel sci­ence rap­ping career began on a com­mis­sion from Uni­ver­si­ty of War­wick micro­bi­ol­o­gist and Rough Guide to Evo­lu­tion author Mark Pallen. Out of all this came “the first peer-reviewed rap” show, The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion, whose devel­op­ment we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured.

Above, you’ll find the music video for “Artif­i­cal Selec­tion,” one song from The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion. “Arti­fi­cial selec­tion, it starts with a ques­tion,” Brinkman raps. “How did peo­ple ever get cows, chick­ens and pigs / And oth­er ani­mals and plants to act so domes­tic? / We took them from the wild and we bred them, brethren.” He explores the top­ic fur­ther, touch­ing on Charles Dar­win’s The Ori­gin of Species, the inad­ver­tent usage of evo­lu­tion by ear­ly farm­ers and live­stock breed­ers, domes­tic aphids kept by ant colonies, and even the nat­ur­al selec­tion inher­ent in the MC’s devel­op­ment of his per­for­mance tech­niques. On Brinkman’s offi­cial site, the video comes with tags like “Hered­i­ty,” “Lamark­ism,” and “Uni­ty of Com­mon Descent.” How many rap videos could cred­i­bly do the same?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Baba Brinkman: The Rap Guide to Evo­lu­tion

The Can­ter­bury Tales Remixed: Baba Brinkman’s New Album Uses Hip Hop to Bring Chaucer Into the 21st Cen­tu­ry, Yo

What’s Your Eng­lish? British v. Cana­di­an Rap Bat­tle

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Hear A Young Bob Dylan Sing 11 Songs and Tell Tall Tales on a 1962 Radio Show

in Music, Radio | June 12th, 2013

In Feb­ru­ary of 1962, less than a month before the release of his debut album, an obscure young folk singer named Bob Dylan record­ed some songs and an inter­view for a local New York City radio show called Folksinger’s Choice.

The show was broad­cast on WBAI and host­ed by Cyn­thia Good­ing, an estab­lished folk singer 17 years old­er than Dylan. As it hap­pened, both Good­ing and Dylan were native Min­nesotans. Good­ing had first met Dylan in Min­neapo­lis in late 1959, not long after he grad­u­at­ed from high school.

As the inter­view gets rolling, the 20-year-old Dylan wastes lit­tle time before launch­ing into some tall tales about his past. He says he moved to Min­neapo­lis from South Dako­ta, because Min­neapo­lis was “about the only place you did­n’t have to go too far to find the Mis­sis­sip­pi Riv­er.” Before that, he says, he trav­eled with a car­ni­val, “off and on for about six years.” When Good­ing asks whether that might have inter­fered with his school­ing, Dylan does­n’t miss a beat. “Well,” he says, “I skipped a bunch of things, and I did­n’t go to school a bunch of years and I skipped this and that.” He says he wrote a song for the “ele­phant lady” in the car­ni­val and called it “Won’t You Buy A Post­card?” But he quick­ly adds that he for­got how it went.

To fol­low along with the inter­view, click here to open the full tran­script in a new win­dow. And while you won’t hear Dylan’s ode to the ele­phant lady, if you lis­ten to the com­plete one-hour pro­gram you will be treat­ed to 11 songs from his ear­ly reper­toire.  They include sev­er­al that Dylan wrote, along with some old folk and blues songs:
  1. “(I Heard That) Lone­some Whis­tle” (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davis)
  2. “Fix­in’ to Die” (Buk­ka White)
  3. “Smoke­stack Ligh­n­ing” (Howl­in’ Wolf)
  4. “Hard Trav­elin’ ” (Woody Guthrie)
  5. “The Death of Emmett Till”  (Bob Dylan)
  6. “Stand­ing on the High­way” (Bob Dylan)
  7. “Roll on John” (Rufus Crisp)
  8. “Stealin’ ” (tra­di­tion­al)
  9. “It Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad” (tra­di­tion­al)
  10. “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (Big Joe Williams)
  11. “Hard Times in New York Town” (Bob Dylan)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Times They Are a‑Changin’: 1964 Gives a Rare Glimpse of the Ear­ly Bob Dylan

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on the Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

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Listen to Freddie Mercury’s Wondrous Piano and Vocal Tracks for “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975)

in Music | June 12th, 2013

bohemian rhapsodyMaybe you liked hear­ing Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie belt out the vocal track for the 1981 hit, ‘Under Pres­sure.’ Well, here’s anoth­er one for you: Fred­die Mer­cury’s piano and vocal tracks for the Queen clas­sic, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” Although the song was released on the 1975 album A Night at the Opera, Fred­die Mer­cury first began work­ing on the epic song dur­ing the late 1960s, often using his piano at home.

Accord­ing to the 2011 doc­u­men­tary Queen: The Days of Our Lives (watch it here), Mer­cury took ideas for three songs and knit­ted them into one com­plex oper­at­ic bal­lad. It was long enough (almost six min­utes) that it seemed unlike­ly to get any radio play. The music execs begged Mer­cury to sim­pli­fy things, to pare things down, but he did­n’t relent. It was all or noth­ing. And the record­ing process equaled the com­plex­i­ty of the song. Six dif­fer­ent stu­dios were used along the way, with Mer­cury try­ing to help the band record the sprawl­ing song he had mapped out in his mind.

The first video above fea­tures Mer­cury’s piano track that forms the back­bone of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” On it, Mer­cury plays a Bech­stein con­cert grand piano, which oth­er­wise appears in the famous video that pro­mot­ed the song. The sec­ond video above fea­tures the iso­lat­ed vocal parts. Dur­ing the gru­el­ing record­ing ses­sions, Mer­cury, Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor spent 10–12 hours each day work­ing on the vocals. And final­ly, for good mea­sure, we’ve added below a fresh reminder of what a beau­ti­ful thing Queen cre­at­ed almost 40 years ago. Filmed just last week, the clip fea­tures a crowd of 60,000 singing along to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” before the start of a Green Day con­cert in Lon­don. I’ll just leave it with that.

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The National Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Artwork Freely Available Online

in Art, Music, Technology | June 11th, 2013

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No sur­prise that in “Mas­ter­works for One and All,” an arti­cle about how muse­ums have begun to offer free, high-qual­i­ty down­load­able images of works from their col­lec­tions, the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal brings up Wal­ter Ben­jamin. The pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of the philoso­pher behind “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion” may seem more rel­e­vant than ever in these days of not just mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion, but uni­ver­sal, devel­oped-world own­er­ship of the means of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion — and near­ly instan­ta­neous, effort­less mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion at that. Many rights-hold­ers, includ­ing cer­tain muse­ums, have effec­tive­ly decid­ed that if you can’t beat the mechan­i­cal repro­duc­ers, join ’em. “With the Inter­net, it’s so dif­fi­cult to con­trol your copy­right or use of images,” Sie­gal quotes the Rijksmu­se­um’s direc­tor of col­lec­tions as say­ing. “We decid­ed we’d rather peo­ple use a very good high-res­o­lu­tion image of [Ver­meer’s] ‘Milk­maid’ from the Rijksmu­se­um rather than using a very bad repro­duc­tion.” (See our pre­vi­ous post: The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art.)

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Sie­gal goes on to men­tion the efforts of Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, which has so far made super high-res­o­lu­tion images of 25,000 works freely avail­able on NGA Images, a site that describes itself as “designed to facil­i­tate learn­ing, enrich­ment, enjoy­ment, and explo­ration.” You can browse the images by col­lec­tion — French gal­leries, self-por­traits, music — view the most recent addi­tions, or pull up the works of art most fre­quent­ly request­ed by oth­ers. Leonar­do’s por­trait of the Flo­ren­tine aris­to­crat Ginevra de’ Ben­ci, seen up top, has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, as has Claude Mon­et’s The Japan­ese Foot­bridge just above. But does all this bear out Ben­jam­in’s con­cerns about mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion cheap­en­ing the orig­i­nal aura of a work? “I don’t think any­one thinks we’ve cheap­ened the image of the ‘Mona Lisa,’” an NGA spokes­woman said to Sie­gal. “Peo­ple have got­ten past that, and they still want to go to the Lou­vre to see the real thing. It’s a new, 21st-cen­tu­ry way of respect­ing images.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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World Records: New Photo Exhibit Pays Tribute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turntables

in Art, Music | June 11th, 2013

KindofBlue_MilesDavisJust yes­ter­day, The New York Times ran a piece declar­ing that vinyl is back. Once a casu­al­ty of the CD, vinyl records are now sell­ing at a steady clip, and not just to nos­tal­gic sex­a­ge­nar­i­ans. Younger music fans are embrac­ing old-school records, frankly because they deliv­er a bet­ter sound than com­pressed MP3s. When Daft Punk released its lat­est album Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries last month, 19,000 vinyl copies were sold, rep­re­sent­ing about 6% of over­all sales. And that may be a low­ball num­ber.

There is, of course, a nos­tal­gic com­po­nent to the vinyl revival. We fond­ly rem­i­nisce about the days when music had oth­er tan­gi­ble and aes­thet­ic dimen­sions. Remem­ber when you could feel the weight of the records, study the cov­er designs, rev­el in the lin­er notes, then slip the discs onto the turntable and watch them spin? Those mem­o­ries get cap­tured by a new pho­to exhib­it — “World Records” — being held at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Ange­les from June 8 to July 13. It fea­tures the work of Kai Schae­fer, who has pho­tographed over 100 clas­sic albums on an array of turnta­bles. Above, you’ll find a copy of Miles Davis’ jazz clas­sic, Kind of Blue, sit­ting on a Rekokut B‑12GH. Oth­er favorites of ours include Lon­don Call­ing by The Clash on a B&O Beogram 4004, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street on a Dual1010, and VU’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico on a Thorens TD 124II. You can vis­it a larg­er online gallery of pho­tos here.

via Slate and Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

Neil Young Busts a Music Store for Sell­ing a Boot­leg CSNY Album (1971)

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