Good Job, Brain! - 69: The Sound of Music

Episode Date: July 10, 2013

The hills are alive with SO MANY FACTS ABOUT MUSIC: the oldest instrument of the history of mankind, notable moments in recording history, the first talking doll recordings (creepy!), music scandals o...n TV quiz, the actual lowdown on hidden secret messages and the whole backward-song craze that swept the nation. Where exactly "is the place in France where the naked ladies dance"?, and just why singing the Happy Birthday song might get you in legal trouble. ALSO: Fictional workplace quiz, Chicago World's Fair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, daring, dapper, darling, dames, and darts. Welcome to Good Job Brain, your weekly quiz show and offbeat trivia podcast. This is episode 69, and of course, I am your humble host, Karen, and we are your Voltron of vocal voracious volunteers. Ooh, I'm Colin. I'm Dana. I'm Chris.
Starting point is 00:00:36 Did you say dark? Yeah, what's a dark? Oh, as in Fader. Mall. Yeah. Sidious. Got it. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:00:42 Our garden variety, darts. You know, a darts. Yeah. And without further ado, let's jump into our general trivia segment. Pop Quiz Hot Shot. And here, I have a random trivial pursuit card, and you guys have your buzzers. Let's jump into... answering some questions.
Starting point is 00:01:01 All right. Blue Wedge for geography. What two Ivy League universities are located in New York State? Chris. Cornell? Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Right. Brown?
Starting point is 00:01:18 No. Rhode Island. What is the other Ivy League? Is it from NYU? Oh, it's Columbia, Columbia, Columbia. New York City. All right, Pink Wedge for a pop culture. Oh, boy.
Starting point is 00:01:31 On the cover of Nirvana's album, Nevermind, what is the underwater baby reaching for? Everybody. A dollar bill. A dollar bill. On a fish hook, right? Yeah. A donut.
Starting point is 00:01:44 Oh, wait, I'm sorry. That's weird out. That's weird out. Yes. All right. Yellow Wedge. Who was the target of a CIA assassination plot that included a booby-trapped seashell and contaminated cigar? Colin?
Starting point is 00:02:00 I believe that was Fidel Castro. Yes. That sounds crazy. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't know about the booby-trap seashell. I haven't heard of the seashell. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:08 I think I've heard of the exploding or poison or whatever cigar. All right. Purple Wedge. What short-lived magazine was co-founded by Dave Eggers? Oh, wait. Short-lived. He doesn't he do McSweenies? But that's still around.
Starting point is 00:02:26 Not McSweeney's. That is still around. Was he part of a spy? I've never heard of this. What is it? Might. Might? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:02:32 M-I-G-H-T. Hmm. Who knew? Okay. All right, green wedge for science. What sign language-speaking gorilla famously befriended and cared for a kitten in the 80s? Dana. Coco.
Starting point is 00:02:47 Coco. So cute. It was just her birthday the other day. Oh, really? Yeah. Coco. All right. Last question, orange wedge.
Starting point is 00:02:55 What is the primary ingredient in tofu? Oh, everybody. Soy beans. Soy beans. Soybeans. Soybeans. All right. Okay.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Good job, Brains. What a... Weird card. Weird, weird card. To food and nirvana to gorillas. Yeah. My favorite. It's kind of 90s-ish.
Starting point is 00:03:13 It was an exploding cigar. It was a poison, right? Contaminated cigar. I had heard exploding in the past, but contaminated makes more sense. Get smart. It seems like a get-smart. It does. Yeah, you're right.
Starting point is 00:03:24 Very get-smart, right. So we decided that this week, we're going to dedicate the whole episode to music. Everything from old instruments to current pop music to secrets to other facts and hopefully you guys will enjoy. Let's go on a journey back way before even the 1970s, back to maybe the beginning of human history. There's a cave in Germany. It's called Whole Fells, which means hollow rock, which means cave. I thought it was like, the whole I fell in.
Starting point is 00:04:07 Okay, that would be funny. But this cave in recent years has been a literal treasure trove for archaeologists. In 2008, you may have actually seen this. A few years back, it was a statue called the Venus of Whole Fells. And it was basically a statue of a very, it was a very small, handheld, figural art of a busty woman with all of her various lady parts very clearly
Starting point is 00:04:33 defined. Your reaction is very small and busty. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And hell. Radio carbon dating put it at about anywhere between 35 to 40,000 years old. And people are saying this is basically
Starting point is 00:04:49 like, this is right now the earliest known piece of figural art ever. A mere stone's throw, I mean, just like a couple of like feet away from this more recently in the same cave in Germany they found the oldest known musical instrument a flute oh sounds like a happening club in there a lot happening in this cave music music and figural artwork one of the hypotheses that's out there is that humans traveled along the danube river east to west from Asia into Europe and that that's how humans got
Starting point is 00:05:27 be Europe. Very debated hypothesis, but this cave is located along that path. Oh, got it. So it's said that the findings in this cave, the extremely old early human artifacts, kind of support that hypothesis. So this is what the BBC said about the flute. It was made from a vultures wing bone, a griffin vultures wing bone, 20 centimeters long with five finger holes and V-shaped notches on the end, which they assume the player would blow into. And the team that found it said this to the BBC at the time. Music could have contributed to the maintenance of larger social networks and thereby perhaps have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion
Starting point is 00:06:11 of modern humans relative to a culturally more conservative Neanderthal population. So music, people, humans, all getting together and playing music with each other, might have fostered more bonds. And so being able to play vulture bone flutes might have been what caused humans to get up one over Neanderthals and cause Neanderthals to go extinct. Take that, Neanderthals. Wouldn't you think that the first musical instrument would be more like percussion base?
Starting point is 00:06:43 Well, they probably, I mean, if you want to get super technical about it, the first musical instrument would have been like the human voice, probably. Well, yeah. And then rocks being banged together. But this is the first like... Intentional. Yeah, like item that was created, you know, just to make music. Or they survived this long.
Starting point is 00:07:00 That's true. Right, yeah, because you could probably just beat on rocks with sticks. They might even put hides across, like, a hollowed out log or something, but it's all organic material. That's true. Deteriates. That's true. That's a good point. Well, let's go from music made among rocks to rock music.
Starting point is 00:07:18 Oh. It's not. Yeah, I need a laugh track sometimes. So we're all fans of the Beatles. we've talked about them before, I think, many times on the show and in a hub quiz. If you can study one band. Yes.
Starting point is 00:07:31 If you have to study one band for Pub Quiz, right. Quintessential Pub Quiddles. No the Beatles. All the little secrets, the names, all that stuff. So one of my favorite Beatles songs is Rain. You guys know the song, Rain? Nope. It was a single.
Starting point is 00:07:45 It was an advanced single off of Revolver. So it came out in 1966, and it was a non-album single, meaning it only existed as a single, but it was from the same sessions as Revolver. And, you know, this was a period in time when the Beatles were feeling particularly experimental with a lot of their music. And John Lennon, in particular, out of the Beatles, was really interested in just new, funky ways of recording. And one of the claims to fame for Rain, the song, is that it is considered generally one of the first rock songs to use backmasking. And do you guys know what backmasking is?
Starting point is 00:08:19 Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. playing it backwards?
Starting point is 00:08:21 Yeah, more or less. But, yeah, it's essentially recording something and then adding it on to a track backward. So that when you play the track, it's... Like the Missy Elliott song. Exactly. That's a very well-known example is the Missy Elliott song. During the sessions for Revolver and Rain in particular, they had been playing around with backward instrumentation.
Starting point is 00:08:42 So John Lennon, the story goes, by his own telling. It was at the end of a day. He was listening to some of the recording sessions, and he put the loop from rain in and either accidentally or maybe semi-on-purpose played it backwards and it was just really enthralled with the way it sounded. He's like, this is just great, it's funky, it's something new. So let me just play a little snippet of the song here for you. So this is
Starting point is 00:09:02 the last few seconds of rain. Interesting. It sounds like they're singing in English. Doesn't sound backwards. Right. It just sounds weird, but it doesn't sound like... No, I've gone ahead and reversed it, by which I mean, played it forward. Do you guys like to hear that? Yeah.
Starting point is 00:09:28 All right. I've heard of this trick before, but I didn't know that it was the first thing. It was the song. People, you know, certainly avant-garde artists had sort of experimented with music and things, but this is sort of the first pop rock song, right. So flash forward a couple years. And if you're a Beatles fan or a trivia fan, you may be aware of the Paul is Dead conspiracy theory, which was an idea that got in the heads of some fans that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident
Starting point is 00:10:09 and was replaced by a fake Paul and a posture Paul. And more specifically, the theory was that the Beatles were dropping hints about this in their songs. And album artwork and, yeah, everywhere. Right, right, right. The fact that Paul is not wearing shoes walking across the street on the cover of Abbey Road. Right, or that he's the only one turned away from you on Sergeant Pepper's and all that kind of stuff. Right. And one of the really strong pieces of evidence that people latched on to is that off of Revolution 9, you can hear backmasking versions of turn me on dead man, turn me on dead man, which is supposed to be John Lennon's, you know, sort of admission to the listeners that Paul is dead.
Starting point is 00:10:47 and you can go find this sample and I think it's a great example of if you want to hear it you can hear it right and the Beatles of course Paul was not dead they denied this so this was sort of one of the first examples though of people starting to look for sort of nefarious messaging
Starting point is 00:11:04 in records satanic messages satanic messaging so that's what I would like to talk to you guys about oh yay the I don't know if yay satanic message that isn't even the right word but the mania that hysteria.
Starting point is 00:11:18 Hysteria, thank you. The hysteria over hidden satanic messages that swept America in the late 70s and early 80s. This is, you know, moving into the late 70s now, this was when people started really getting interested in subliminal advertising, okay? You know, in particular, there's a guy
Starting point is 00:11:34 named Brian Key, and he's the guy you've probably seen who was convinced that the word sex appeared in ads everywhere. You know, his idea is that if you put the word sex hidden in an ad for soda or crackers, that people will form a subliminal association and they'll want to buy that brand.
Starting point is 00:11:50 No one legitimately really believes this who's actually studied it. They've not been able to show any connection between subliminal messaging, whether it is or isn't there. But it is a good example of you see what you want to see. In the 70s, there were a lot of conservative Christian groups and conservative parents groups
Starting point is 00:12:05 that were starting to get concerned of hidden evil messages in rock music. And in particular, there was a DJ named Michael Mills. And he went on a crusade. to convince people that stairway to heaven, okay? The famous Led Zeppelin classic song. This was his sort of his token great example of hidden satanic messages. That stairway to heaven, if you played it backwards, there was a patch that said,
Starting point is 00:12:29 here's to my sweet Satan. And let me play this for you guys very, very quickly. And here's the segment in question played forward. Yes, there are too bad you can go by. But in the long run, there's still time to change the road. Oh, that's my favorite part of the song. Yeah, perfectly normal, right? All right, so here's that segment reversed.
Starting point is 00:12:59 So in his ears, in his ears, it is as clear as day that they're saying, and here's to my sweet safe. Sure, and when you combine it with what the words are that it's intended to be, you will hear that because of the power of suggestion of the words being there. Right, right. It's like by chance. I don't know. Well, so Michael Mills, and there was another big figure there was Pastor Gary Greenwald of California.
Starting point is 00:13:26 And they basically took up the torch for spreading the message that rock music, this insidious message is getting inside our children's heads. And they would go on tours and speaking tours. Pastor Greenwald would hold record burnings, you know. You have just like a mass record burning and come out and just trash those evil satire. record. This wasn't just sort of a fringe belief. I mean, this really bubbled up. It's bad. I wish it were true because it would be awesome to embed secret codes and music. Like, if you could say words forwards and backwards and they had different meanings, but it's not completely impossible to actually do that.
Starting point is 00:14:03 If we could design language again, maybe we would have done that where you could say one thing backwards and would say one thing forwards. It's like an auditory. That's creature tape actually. No, no, no, no. Wait, so that's my question. Are there any auditory palindromes that the way that you say it is the same word? I'm sure. I don't know any. I wonder if it works as the same way it's, yeah, rotor. Yeah, there you go.
Starting point is 00:14:24 You know what, would it, though, because there's like a different noise at the beginning. No one had really done any serious research on the two things of like, one, can your brain actually understand something that's being said backward, right? And then, and then two, if your brain does understand it, can it influence behavior? Right, right, exactly. I need to try poop. You should. It's a lot of fun. Just play it backwards.
Starting point is 00:14:48 Here I am. Okay, I'm going to say poop normal. Poop. I'm going to insert backwards poop. Ooh, here it is. In the 1980s, they undertook an actual study of this phenomenon. Can we play backward encoded messages for people and are they intelligible? And what they found is no.
Starting point is 00:15:06 It is, they did find that it's just a very human phenomenon to want to make things intelligible. And as you say, you can kind of hear some words in there. What they also found, though, is that people would only hear the supposed satanic messages if they were primed ahead of time. They would only hear them if they said, all right, we want you to listen and see if you can hear this. But basically, it was no better than chance otherwise if they heard anything. And then secondarily, they found no influence of hearing these messages on your actual behavior. Here's where it gets just crazy for me.
Starting point is 00:15:38 Now, I want to remind you, all right? this is this is 1980s okay the state legislature of California passed a bill that stated distributing material that contains backward messages without public notice is an invasion of privacy and opened up the distributor to lawsuits this is the state of California legislature passed this bill so I know Prince has a song darling Nikki and at the end of it there's a section he's singing backwards Did they have to put out a notice saying that there's backwards music? I guess he would have been arrested in California. But by all the research I can do, it seems that there were actually no teeth to any of these various pieces of legislation. But, you know, I mean, like a lot of politicians, you want a grandstand and pass them. But still, the state of Arkansas, all right, this is this one, this one goes even further. In Arkansas, they passed a bill.
Starting point is 00:16:31 And now this is verbatim. They had to place stickers on records and tapes that say, warning, this record contains, backward masking, which may be perceptible at a subliminal level when the record is played forward. That makes me want to buy it. Yeah. I think, like, a lot of things, like, if all you're going to do is just, yeah, if you make something to seem forbidden, kids are going to want to have it more.
Starting point is 00:16:53 In the one, like, happy little twist to this story again. So this was passed by the Arkansas legislature. It went to the governor's desk for approval, and it was vetoed and sent back by Governor Bill Clinton. Oh, wow. Yes, in a moment of clarity. So thank you, Bill, at a 30-year removed. You know, it's funny is...
Starting point is 00:17:14 Because he'd be like, what is this? Because he loved Led Zeppelin, probably. But Gore's wife was responsible for... Yes, that's right. The tipper sticker. The Parents Resource Music Council, which started in 1985 and was very, very heavily born out of this hysteria. Like, they came into being, and one of their first goals was seeing,
Starting point is 00:17:34 are there really hidden satanic messages in our rock music? Man, people are bored. You know, people are bored and maybe a little... They wouldn't help you, protect you. It died down for a bit. They said one of the reasons that the hysteria died down was because as people moved away from records into CDs, it wasn't as easy to play things backwards.
Starting point is 00:17:53 And there are people out there who still really, really believe that the Church of Satan is actively working with rock bands to put their messages in their songs. I wonder how much that sponsorship is. Yeah. No, yeah, no. Have they been approached? Yeah, from backwards.
Starting point is 00:18:07 Satan advertising. Yeah, in the pocket of big Satan. So the moral of the story is you hear what you want to hear. That's true. That's true. I promise you guys, I am going to talk about music, but it's going to be a weird, twisty way of getting there. But I'm going to start off by asking you guys this question.
Starting point is 00:18:28 Do you know what the Ferris wheel is called in some Latin American countries, like in Costa Rica and Chile? I do not. I don't. No. Some people call it the Rueida de Chicago, which means Chicago wheel. Really? And the reason why is because the original Ferris wheel made by Mr. Ferris, George Ferris, the first Ferris wheel was at the Chicago World's Fair.
Starting point is 00:18:56 And that was in 1893, or it was also called the World's Columbian Exposition. It was to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus. arrival into the new world. Really, really big deal. And I think the idea to me of a world's fair is pretty awesome. Just these long-running expos featuring different countries, showcasing culture and
Starting point is 00:19:18 history and exoticism, architecture, and lots of innovation and vision of the future. And a lot of notable firsts. This fair, this particular fair, was so big in scale and so grand that it easily far exceeded all the other world fairs at that point. And it really became a symbol of America.
Starting point is 00:19:36 And, you know, that time. So, in addition to the Ferris wheel debut, juicy fruit gum also debuted. Paps Blue Ribbon, PBR, debuted at the World's Fair. In a lot of these fairs, they have international pavilions, right? Different countries have their showcase. So Spain, they had a showcase. They recreated the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, the ships. There was also an Egyptian attraction called a street in Cairo.
Starting point is 00:20:05 You know, so they had a snake charmers and music and dancers. And this is where belly dancing was introduced to the world, even though belly dancers were not really Egyptian at all. Right. But, you know, when you watch cartoons, you see snake charmers and stuff, they play songs on the flu and the snake drums come out. That song, there's that song, that quintessential snake charmer. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:20:29 Yeah. That was improvised, a man named Saul Blum. Yes. who was running the show, later became an American politician, he was said to have come up with that quintessential snake charmer song. Yep. And he didn't copyright it, so it went into public domain. That's why you hear it everywhere.
Starting point is 00:20:48 Of course, yeah. A place in France for the naked ladies dance. I read that in my research, but I was like, I have no idea what this record is doing. Kids sing it on the playground. There's a place in France where the naked ladies dance. Yeah. I'm another rest. I did.
Starting point is 00:21:02 The next refrain I always heard was, And the man don't care They just throw their underwear Which didn't make sense to me But you don't question on the playground When you're getting laughs on the playground It's a little bit naughty Right, right
Starting point is 00:21:18 And that song was made famous Because of the Chicago's World Fair Wow Yeah In addition to all of this All the spectacle and the Marvel There was a lot of idea exchange And seminars
Starting point is 00:21:30 And it's not just flashy stuff This was a turn of century, and people and experts were really involved in showcasing new ideas and new methodology, including the idea of education for children. So I want to introduce to you guys a very special lady. Her name is Patty Hill, and she's one of the key figures in shaping the foundation for the modern kindergarten we have today in America. She was an educator, and she was at the Chicago World's Fair representing her branch of experimental schooling for young kids. kids and she was the principal for the Louisville Experimental Kindergarten School. So what was the big difference between her, you know, method and previous methods? She really saw importance of the idea of playing and pretend play in classrooms to facilitate
Starting point is 00:22:18 learning. She felt that children needed to socialize and free play to develop kind of an explore the world around them. So, you know, when you go see like in a kindergarten classroom, you see like toy cars and play money and little kitchen sets and big blocks and stuff. Like, it's thanks to her and thanks to her push. She thought that maybe having pretend play that kids will work together more, they'll cooperate, they'll move around.
Starting point is 00:22:47 Exactly, they'll move around more. And she also saw the importance of using songs and music in classrooms. So Patty and her sister, Mildred, was also a kindergarten teacher, and they came up with songs, and one notable song they coined was called Good Morning to All, and they would sing this song, a simple greeting song to welcome students to class every day. Now, you may know the song, of course, under a different name. You may know the melody a little bit better. And this is definitely the most performed song and most recognized song in the entire world. Can you guess what song is. Happy birthday song. Yay. Now, unlike the D-D-D-D-D-D-D-G guy, Patty Hill and her sister actually
Starting point is 00:23:33 got it copyrighted. So, yes, good morning to all, in fact, was published in songbooks, but the trail gets muddy in terms of when the lyrics Happy Birthday to You was a revamped. By the mid-1930s, the birthday song had appeared in Broadway musicals and TV shows, radio shows, and it became a thing. And of course, this point was when Jessica Hill, the third Hill sister, kind of sprang up and filed a copyright suit. Oh, really? You're like, wait a minute. This, this happy birthday song that's appearing everywhere is using the same exact melody. A hundred percent. Right. And she was able to secure the copyright of happy birthday to you for her sister and her family in 1934. Okay. So they already had the copyright for Good Morning to All, but they were able to
Starting point is 00:24:24 essentially get Happy Birthday to You folded into that. Covered under that. Yes. Because everybody was using it. Right. So due to copyright laws and weird extension rules and whatnot, the Happy Birthday song will not pass into the public domain until 2030. Right. At the earliest.
Starting point is 00:24:41 At the earliest. Because, as we know, with a lot of copyright laws, like they might change the law to extend the copyright, et cetera. So we actually all heard this rumor. They're like, oh, happy birthday is actually not public domain and you're not about, that is true. I mean, I've seen, like, at the end of credits in movies, you'll see, you know, the birthday song, whatever, copyright, yeah. And if you go to, if you go to, like, a small restaurant, like a family-owned restaurant, and they, you have a birthday, maybe they'll come out
Starting point is 00:25:06 and sing happy birthday to you, illegally. However, but if you ever go to, like, a big chain restaurant, like a TGI Fridays or whatnot, they will have their own birthday song, a special birthday song that they sing, because they, as a big company, don't want to get in trouble. So the Darden group, the restaurant group that owns Red Lobster and Olive Garden required every one of their restaurants, the different restaurant chains that they own to have their own special birthday song so they would not infringe the copyright. I mean, so what does this mean that, like, does everybody who sings happy birthday to you at parties is infringing or doing it illegally? No. Well, it's something around public performance. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:25:49 royalties are due when you're using the song for commercial uses so like you said in movies in TV singing it for profit in shows incorporate into items so if you have like those musical greeting cards that you open up so you have to pay licensing fees for that public performance definitely so any performance which occurs quote at a place open to the public or at any place where a substantial number of persons outside of a normal circle of a family and its social acquaintances is gathered. Restaurants, arena, sport complex. And now, who owns the rights, though, now? It's not the family anymore. It's like some giant media conglomerate that owns the rights now, right?
Starting point is 00:26:31 Warner Music. Okay, right, right. Well, an investment group that owns Warner Music, Warner slash Chapel. And the company, back in 1988, paid $25 million to acquire a small company whose musical holdings included the birthday song. I don't think they cared about all the other songs
Starting point is 00:26:51 I'm willing to guess they didn't It was for the birthday song Yep 25 million for the birthday song Yep And it has been reported that to use the happy birthday song in a film They charge up to $10,000 Okay Television shows $700 per show
Starting point is 00:27:08 They collect approximately $2 million per year Just for a happy birthday song That's just for existing $2 million a year And so yeah Because of the copyright issues, filmmakers rarely show the complete sing-along
Starting point is 00:27:23 or they just sub-in for he's a jolly good fellow because that is public domain. So they void the song entirely. And for clever shows, a lot of clever shows out there, they would sing happy birthday song that's kind of like the birthday song
Starting point is 00:27:40 but not right. And I'm going to play one for you guys. What day is today? It's Nibbler's birthday. What a day for a birthday. Let's all have some cake. And you smell like one, two. That was, of course, from Future Emma.
Starting point is 00:28:02 Close. Close. Sounds really close. Thank you for taking this journey with me. Starting from the Chicago World's Fair to the happy birthday song. But, actually, the World's Fair stuff, super interesting, super, super interesting. So have you read a book called, um, Devil in the White City.
Starting point is 00:28:19 Yes. So, this is my segue into our sponsorship break, actually. The Devil in a White City by Eric Larson is an awesome, awesome book. And it's available on Audible as an audiobook. And it's about the craziness of the Chicago World's Fair, like, of the scandal. I mean, of the triumph of every little nitty-gritty, lots of trivia bits here. Yeah. But it's also true crime.
Starting point is 00:28:47 Yeah. Crazy pants. true cut. It's really compelling. That would be one of my big audible picks. It's like this guy built a murder mansion in Chicago or near Chicago. People come into town for the world's fair. God, it was crazy. So don't listen to this audio book at night, is what you're saying. You can spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and get more time to actually play the games you love with the IGN
Starting point is 00:29:11 daily update podcast. All you need is a few minutes to hear the latest from IGN on the world of video games. movies and television with news, previews and reviews. You'll hear everything from Comic-Con coverage to the huge Diablo for launch. So listen and subscribe to the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. That's the IGN Daily Update, wherever you get your podcasts. Steve Cubine and Nan McNamara's podcast from Beneath the Hollywood Sign. Mary Astor has been keeping a diary.
Starting point is 00:29:47 Mary writes everything. down. And so this torrid affair with George S. Kaufman is chronicled on a daily basis. In great detail. And Iif pulls out a box and gives McAllister a ring saying, here's something to remember me by. This article caused Daryl Zanick to hit the roof. Actress Ruth Roman followed that up with playing a foil to Betty Davis in Beyond the Force. I mean, if you can stand toe to toe with her, boy. And she does because she plays the daughter of the man that Betty Davis kills out in the hunting trip. And it's directed by King Vidor,
Starting point is 00:30:22 so he's no slouch. How do you go wrong with that? Speaking of the Oscars, talking about what I call Beginners Luck, it's all about the actors and actresses who won an Oscar on their very first film. Get your fix of Old Hollywood from Stephen N on the podcast from
Starting point is 00:30:38 Beneath the Hollywood Sign. I have a music-related quiz for you guys. Yay! It's called rock on TV. And it has to do with rock stars and TV scandals. Oh. All right. What is, what's that mean? Well, let's, I don't know, but I got my buzzer. All right. Your buzzer is ready. All right. First question. These two rock stars with the same first name were both reported to have thrown TV sets out of the hotel window, out of the same hotel's window, but in different rooms. Chris. Elvis Presley and Elvis Costello.
Starting point is 00:31:14 Nope. Dang. God, I thought I was going to be like Oasis or something. These were maybe the first rock stars who've ever done that or started the whole like meme of rock stars throwing TVs out of hotels. Was one of them a beetle? Hot mess in the 60s. Hot mess.
Starting point is 00:31:31 No, no Beatles. No, Jim, Jim, Jim, Jim. You guys give up? Jerry. No, no. I give up. Keith Richards and Keith Moon. Keith Moon.
Starting point is 00:31:43 Both through the television sets. out of the same hotel in LA. Do you know what the name of the hotel was? I guess not. It's the Hyatt on sunset or the Continental Hyatt. Wow. Is this still there?
Starting point is 00:31:56 It's still there. It was in almost famous. It shows up in a lot of TV shows. Yeah. Two windows, two different rooms. They both did it. I wonder if they have a little plaque or something. It would be interesting.
Starting point is 00:32:06 A lot of crazy things happened in that hotel. You should check out the Wikipedia entry. Elvis Presley got the nickname Elvis the Pelvis after appearing on what TV show? Colin. I think that was Ed Sullivan's show, right? No. Oh.
Starting point is 00:32:21 Really? Nope. Oh, hold on. God, I remember seeing the black and white. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, the Beatles from the show. Was it on the Big Cabot show? What was it?
Starting point is 00:32:32 Oh, American Bandstand? Nope. No, he thought he was. It was the Milton Burrell show. Oh, really? Do you guys know what song he was singing? I'm all shook up. It was, you ain't nothing but a hound dog.
Starting point is 00:32:43 Yeah. I watched the video this morning on YouTube. And I'm like, yeah, sure, there was some pelvis shaking. I didn't see where the name came from. Ed Sullivan did famously try not to show him dancing in that way from the waist up. But just when he was doing the dance, they did above the waist up. It's not that racy. It's not that. I mean, it would have curled his hair if you could see what people do now. Speaking of controversial TV appearances, Shnade O'Connor was the center of this controversy after appearing. on Saturday Night Live for doing what? Everybody ripping up a picture of the Pope. Raging Against the Machine was banned
Starting point is 00:33:23 from ever appearing on Saturday Night Live. Really? They were scheduled to do two songs but only ended up doing one. Do you know why? They tore up a picture of Schneid O'Connor. No. Is it because they...
Starting point is 00:33:36 Profanity? Nope. They wanted to hang the American flag upside down on their speakers. And during dress rehearsal, they were told they weren't able to do that. And then the moment before they were cutting to them to perform, the roadies were trying to hang it up.
Starting point is 00:33:53 And then there was like a scuffle and they were able to, they ripped it down. And then after their performance, they said, you have to leave the building right now. Wow, yeah. And that's why they didn't get to say good night at the end. And they were banned from performing on Saturday Night Live. Which I'm sure they actually wore as a badge of pride. Just from a professionalism standpoint. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:34:11 Yeah. Simpson had a calamitous appearance on Saturday Night Live, when her lip sync track started for the wrong song. Yes. What song started playing? Oh, man. Okay. Frank Sinatra's luck to be a lady.
Starting point is 00:34:26 No. I couldn't name any Ashley Simpson's song on. What was her hit at that time? Autobiography, Shadow of Me. So autobiography was the one that she was supposed to start singing. Holy moly. I'm trying to see if Karen's going to retrieve it. Oh, God.
Starting point is 00:34:38 This was a question for Karen. What was it? Pieces of me. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, pieces of me. Okay. Madonna's commercial for what soda company enraged Catholics? I think it was Pepsi.
Starting point is 00:34:49 Yep, Pepsi. What song? That was like a prayer, right? Yeah. People were upset because there were a lot of religious overtones. She had the stigmata. She made out with a saint. Do you guys know which saint she was making out with in that video?
Starting point is 00:35:02 Sebastian. Oh, I know was the guy from Cool Runnings. I don't know what saint he was. Basil? St. Runnings. St. Runnings. St.
Starting point is 00:35:10 St. Jamaica. Martin de Pores, who is the patron saint of mixed people. Really? Yes. There is a saint for mixed people. I guess there is a saint for everything. And he was the saint of racial harmony and mixed race people. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:35:24 Okay. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson stirred up controversy with their infamous wardrobe malfunction during the 2004 Super Bowl. What song were they performing when the malfunction happened? Oh, man. Are lucky enough to be nasty boys? I know the line. right the line is like I'll have you naked by the end of this song oh yeah yeah
Starting point is 00:35:44 rock your body rock your body yes good time thank you call it teamwork wow which teams played during that super bowl oh man patriots and the rams yeah the panthers oh patriot patriots and panthers patriots and panthers patriots that's how you remember yeah it got real conservative after that it was like
Starting point is 00:36:05 Paul McCartney you too yeah people who do not have wardrobe malfunctions on stage. Or if they did, it wouldn't be a big deal. Yeah. Wait a minute, yes, it would. If YouTube or Paul McCartney had a wardrobe malfunction. Anyway, good job, you guys. Wow, thanks.
Starting point is 00:36:26 So we've been talking about some things that have happened during the history of music. So I'm going to take you back in time again. Now, I finally get to play musical segments. Ah. Oh. I'm going to kick this off by playing a musical club. And I would like you, someone, to buzz in and identify this speaker. Tell me who is speaking in this clip.
Starting point is 00:36:49 All right. The first words, I spoke in the original pornograph. A little piece of practical poetry. Mary had a little lamb. It speaks with quite as slow. And everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go. Colin? Is that Thomas Edison?
Starting point is 00:37:09 That is Thomas Alva Edison, the man himself. He was speaking on the 50th anniversary of the phonograph, the sound recording and playback device that he invented. It was the year 1927 when he was speaking. Edison's phonograph was the first device that could record a sound and then you could play it back and listen to it again. Basically what would happen, right, is he'd have like a membrane or really tightly stretched diaphragm, which would vibrate
Starting point is 00:37:39 when sounds hit it. It was essentially sort of like our ear drums, right? Vibrates. It's attached to a stylus or, you know, a very fine kind of needle, which would then vibrate and then it would etch the sound moving up and down on a piece of tinfoil that was wrapped around a cylinder. And then you could take that piece of tinfoil and essentially reverse the process and recreate the sound by using the tinfoil to vibrate the needle.
Starting point is 00:38:05 Yeah, well, that's how a record player works. You know, it's just a groove that vibrates a needle. No, but to record it. Oh, yeah. And then to play it back again. It vibrates in the same way, but it etches it into the tin foil. Now, this was actually, I just found out, preceded by another device that also recorded sound. And it was invented in 1857 by a guy named Edward Leon Scott de Martinville.
Starting point is 00:38:31 And it was called the phonoautograph or sound automatic writer. Edward Leon Scott de Martinville, Leo Scott, as I'm going to call him for the rest of this. He was actually writing on, though, instead of tinfoil, was a sheet of soot-covered paper. So you'd take that paper and just sort of lightly trace a line in it with the vibrations of the styles. It turns white. Right. Scott was not trying to play any of this stuff back. He wanted to study sound visually. He wanted to be able to look at what sound looked like.
Starting point is 00:39:07 quantify it somehow. Right. So the phono autograph, the reason we don't talk about this dude today is because, you know, you didn't play anything back. It just was just sort of recording sound, which is cool. In 2008, a group of scholars, university professors, were able to reconstruct some of the phone autographs digitally. They used a, it was a virtual stylus. They scanned the image. They got really, really nice versions of the graphing, you know, of the sounds.
Starting point is 00:39:37 And they followed the path of the stylus digitally and then created sound waves out of that. Now, this should have actually been impossible since the phonotograph was hand-cranked, which means that there would have been a lot of differences in speeds and, yeah, variations. And actually, that really should have rendered these recordings unproducible because you don't know what the tone is supposed to be. But Scott actually thought ahead with this and did something really clever with his later recordings. which is he included a reference tone. So for all of the recordings that he recorded, while they were doing this,
Starting point is 00:40:14 he would play in another recorder one constant tone so that you could then calibrate it again. Exactly, so that they can then go back to the ones that have reference tones. So here is one of those recordings, a man, almost surely Scott himself, singing a vocal scale. This sound you're hearing is from the year 1860. This is one of the very, very earliest recordings we have of a human voice. And he gets a little faster towards the end because he knows his time is about to run out Because he only has so much paper, so he rushes the last note there. Wow.
Starting point is 00:41:10 Yeah. And he never intended for the, I mean, to play that. He didn't think he was going to ever hear them. So, yeah, yeah, it was right only in no reading. Now, as I said, we do not have Thomas Edison's original recording of Mary had a little lamb yet. I mean, maybe somebody is going to find it. But it is believed that what I'm about to play for you guys right now is the first recording on an Edison-style metal cylinder that was ever. something that he intended to actually sell to the public.
Starting point is 00:41:40 And this is something that would have been included in a proposed, an idea for a talking doll. Hmm. Can you tell what that? I'm sorry for turning this into like a horror film. What? Can you tell what that was? Satan is my lord. My dear sweet Satan.
Starting point is 00:42:10 Can you tell what that was? Uh-uh. I can't make it out into the static. That's very interesting. We'll tell you what it is. It's twinkle, twinkle little star. Now, Edison wanted to create talking dolls that would say twinkle, twinkle, little star. And he had the method by which you could, you know, somebody would speak into a cone and it would vibrate the diaphragm and record a metal cylinder.
Starting point is 00:42:32 but there was no technology at this point to make copies of this. Edison hired, apparently, two women to be in this recording studio, essentially, the first, essentially, professional recording studio. And these women were, of course, the first professional paid recording voice actors, right, artists. And just say, twinkle, twinkle, little star over and over and over again. Because every time they said it, they could create one. cylinder for one doll. Every time you spoke it, that was one doll, and then you had to do it again for the next doll and again for the next doll. So they're in there eight hours a day, just saying twinkle, twinkle, little star. I wish he got to see Teddy Ruckspun. He would have been very pleased.
Starting point is 00:43:18 Here's an actual piece of music, and I want you to try to identify the piece of music, and then to tell me, if you know, why this particular piece of music, or the larger work of music that this fits into, is important in the history of recorded music. All right. Yes, that's exactly right. Do you know what the Nutcracker suite, what sort of place of prominence it occupies in recorded musical history or trivia?
Starting point is 00:44:09 Ballet. First orchestra recording. First complete set of records. First duplicated or replicate? Colin basically has it. Is this the first album? Indeed. The 1908 recording by Odeon Records of the Nutcracker Suite in general is considered to be the first.
Starting point is 00:44:29 record album because instead of just buying one record which has a couple of minutes of songs on each one they did the whole nutcracker suite on four records each of which was inserted into a sleeve which is in a leather bound album hence the phrase a record album I was really hoping this is going to come up in the show today yeah that's why it's called an album yeah like a photo album or now I'm going to play you two more clips Let's keep in this mindset of famous milestones in the history of recorded music going into more modern times. Here is a clip, and I want you to tell me who did this piece of music and what relevance it has to the history or milestones in recorded music. Because you had to be a big shot, did you?
Starting point is 00:45:23 You had to open up your mouth. You had to be a big shot, didn't you? All your friends were so knocked out. You had to have a... Colin? Well, that's Billy Joel. Sure is. Big shot.
Starting point is 00:45:38 Yes. Okay. Just based on the time period, I'm going to guess, was this the first song recorded on a CD? It was. Oh, wow. It was not the first song ever recorded on a CD, but Billy Joel's album, 52nd Street, which began to the song, Big Shot,
Starting point is 00:45:53 was the first commercially released. album on Compact Diss. That's great. October 1982 in Japan. Huh. The album itself is from 1978, but it was such a huge hit for Sony's, you know, music group. That's definitely a pub quiz worth of question.
Starting point is 00:46:10 Absolutely. Here's something that's a little less pub quiz. I'm going to play one more track, and again, this is a more dubious honor, perhaps. A more dubious distinction for this, the album that this track was off. Maybe a slightly embarrassing distinction is here. Night after night, no questions asked. Who can't go and cold wind? I'm at all.
Starting point is 00:46:39 And the time when it's hard to be simple and it's real hard to be nice. Uh, Dana. Fleetwood Mac. It is. It is. It's Fleetwood Mac. Yeah. A song called No Questions Ask.
Starting point is 00:46:54 Uh, Karen. Most bootlegged song Or piloted song No I don't there's something to be proud of Yeah First mini-disc song Not first mini-disc song
Starting point is 00:47:03 No that would be dubious Eight track What about it? Last eight track You were absolutely right That was off of the album Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits It was only on the greatest hits
Starting point is 00:47:14 Album was a bonus track And Fleetwood Mac's greatest hits Is considered to be Released in November 1988 The last album released by a major label. Okay.
Starting point is 00:47:25 On 8 track. What did you say? 1988? That's really late for 8th track. At that point, you had to be ordering it like through a catalog. Wow. The stores had generally stopped it. Now, we have a lot of children who listen to this podcast.
Starting point is 00:47:38 Kids, an 8-track is, I guess if you were to imagine. Like an old video game cartridge? They don't know about that either. I don't even know what in the size of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but on thicker bread. Right. Plastic. And the 8-track. It's a cartridge.
Starting point is 00:47:53 It only went four. forwards. Yeah. Yeah. So if you wanted to go backwards, you couldn't. You just had to go to a different part of the tape and listen to those songs instead and then wait for the first part to come around. It was wildly inconvenient. The advantage that had over cassettes, though, was that it had random access, meaning that you could jump.
Starting point is 00:48:10 You know what I mean? Like, you could jump ahead. You could at least jump on the program. You could. Yes. Chris was mentioning the Edison cylinders. The first ones were, in fact, you know, wrapped with tin around a core. and then they moved into wax.
Starting point is 00:48:24 You know, early on, they were really focused on this as a tool for recording speech. You know, one thought they had is like, oh, maybe this could supplant handwritten letters. You know, you would dictate your letter and send the cylinder across and somebody would have, you know, yeah, or putting it into talking dolls, you know,
Starting point is 00:48:41 they were, there was one of those things like, all right, we got this great technology and how do we commercialize it? Yep. It was not very long before, hey, we can put music on these things. Wow. Yeah, yeah, we can put music on them and sell.
Starting point is 00:48:52 them to people. One of the drawbacks in recording cylinders was there was no means of mass production. If you wanted three copies of something, you had to record it three times. If you wanted 50 copies of something, you had to sit and record it 50 times. There's no control C in control. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, again, if you're using this as a replacement for letters, you know, fine, that's not big a deal. But if you want to put out Chikovsky or music, this is a problem. You can't scale up. Now, you might think this doesn't seem very sustainable. Somebody's got to come up with a better solution than one person to one recorder. So come around the 1890s, someone had the brilliant idea.
Starting point is 00:49:27 What would you do, Karen? Well, you have the person performing, and you would just surround them with a lot of them. Oh, that's what they did. That was their solution. Cram the room. You would get the band or the singer, whoever, and you would literally set up as many phonograph recording devices as you could fit into the room. You would coordinate them all, all blank.
Starting point is 00:49:48 You would flip the switch, they all start at the same time, and the band would perform, the singer would sing, you know, and you might be able to record as many as a dozen at a time, right? So this was the solution for a surprisingly long time. Eventually, someone hit on the idea of using a pantograph. And if you guys know what a pantograph is from drawing, it's the cool device where you attach it to your pen and there's a little stylus on the other end. that as you draw, it mirrors what you're drawing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's a real thing. That's right. Pantograph.
Starting point is 00:50:23 I've seen it in cartoons where you write a letter and then there's like a weird arm. Right, right. But still, it wasn't really until, you know, the turn of the century that Edison and his factory, got to give him a little bit of credit here, they were one of the pioneers and really come up with a reliable reproduction system, which is, it's very straightforward. It's so they would just make casts and molds. So they would still record the single master cylinder one way.
Starting point is 00:50:47 coat it with metal, melt out the wax, and then you can cast new cylinders from the inside of that one. But I just thought the idea of them sitting in a little room with, surrounded by a dozen blanks recording all at once. Okay, guys, take it again from the top. Oh, God, just shoot me, please. I do not want to play this again. You have to wait for them to set it all up again, too. Yeah, right, right. Ooh, boy, that was a long journey from the caves of Germany to Billy Joel. That might be the longest time span We've covered it in an episode
Starting point is 00:51:20 So we got one last quiz segment Colin, take it away Yes, I have a quiz for you guys called Let's Go to Work Sounds like the worst quiz I'm going to name for you guys A fictional workplace So this may be a workplace
Starting point is 00:51:35 As seen in a TV show or a movie or a book Most of them are actually from TV Tell me what setting it comes from So for example, if I were to say Dundermiff The office. He would say the office. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:51:48 I think you guys get it. And we're going to do this one as a lightning round here. So I'll say it. Buzz in if you think you know it. Here we go. Get your buzzers ready. Strickland propane. What?
Starting point is 00:51:59 King of the Hill. Yes. They're pretty. Sterling Cooper. This is Madman. Yes. Pawtucket Brewery. This is Family Guy.
Starting point is 00:52:14 Yes, it is Family Guy. guy where Peter, I believe, works in the later episodes. Wernham Hogg. This is British office. Yes. Can't get anything past Dana if it's on British TV. The Bluth Company.
Starting point is 00:52:31 Arrested Development. Indeed. Inetech. Oh. Office space. Yes, office space. Michael Bolton at all. Your name is Michael Bolton?
Starting point is 00:52:43 I love his music. The Lansford Lunchbox Roseanne Indeed Ewing oil Dallas Yep Oh Jerry
Starting point is 00:52:55 McDowels I think this is coming to America Yes Yes they have the golden arches I have the golden arch That was great They have the Big Mac I have the Big Mick
Starting point is 00:53:09 Bushwood Country Club Wow Taddy Shack. Indeed. Oh, so good. Zuckerman's Farm. I believe this is Charlotte's Web.
Starting point is 00:53:23 Yes, it is. Wow. Charlotte's Webb. Yes, Suckerman's Picket. The Wayland-Utani Corporation. Well, a lot. Yes. Okay, well.
Starting point is 00:53:35 Any one of the... Prometheus. Yes. Alien. The aliens. Oh, okay. Right. They're the evil giant corporation that sends people out to die.
Starting point is 00:53:43 Oh, cool. The Shineheart Whig Company 30 Rock Yes, the apparent company of NBC Spacely Space Sprockets The Jetsons It is the Jetsons And their rival, do you know, for bonus
Starting point is 00:53:58 Cogswell Cogs Yes, Cogswell Cogs I watched a lot of cartoons The Paper Street Soap Company Fight Club Yes, fight club The book and the movie We'll just call it the book
Starting point is 00:54:10 To class it up a little bit Yeah, there you go Oh, there's a movie at Fight Club? Sacred Heart Hospital. Oh, it's Scrubs. Yes, it is Scrubs. Sugar Baker Designs. Oh.
Starting point is 00:54:25 Designing women. Yes, designing women. Why do we all see? When we all look at Chris, all that's been first. When I think southern women, I think Chris Kohler. I'm a proud of southern woman. She's smart. The 407.7.
Starting point is 00:54:42 Mobile Army Surgical Hospital Uh MASH Indeed Franken and Hire Architects Oh Franken and hire This is a literary
Starting point is 00:54:56 Fountainhead Correct I was like what book is about architecture That one Close it out with my favorite Fictional Workplace All right
Starting point is 00:55:08 You listed some good ones already So I'm psyched Van DeLay and industries. Seinfeld. It is Seinfeld. This is George's fake company whenever he needs a fake employer. Good job, guys.
Starting point is 00:55:20 I think you got every single one there. Well, done. Well, that is our show. Thank you guys for joining me. Thank you guys, listeners, for listening in. I hope you learn a lot about fictional workplaces. But more importantly, our big journey of music from the Kays of Germany to the eight tracks, to scandals on TV, to the Chicago World's Fair, to happy birthday, to every day.
Starting point is 00:55:42 a lot covered a lot and you can find us on iTunes on Stitcher on SoundCloud and also our website good job brain.com and check out our sponsor Audible and we also have our page up so now you can see our book recommendations and yeah we'll see you guys next week bye bye I'm sure my friend The creators of the popular science show with millions of YouTube subscribers comes the Minute Earth podcast. Every episode of the show dives deep into a science question you might not even know you had, but once you hear the answer, you'll want to share it with everyone you know. Why do rivers curve?
Starting point is 00:56:30 Why did the T-Rex have such tiny arms? And why do so many more kids need glasses now than they used to? Spoiler alert, it isn't screen time. Our team of scientists digs into the research and breaks it down into a short, entertaining explanation, jam-packed with science facts and terrible puns. Subscribe to Minute Earth wherever you like to listen.

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