Good Job, Brain! - 69: The Sound of Music
Episode Date: July 10, 2013The 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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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.
Did you say dark?
Yeah, what's a dark?
Oh, as in Fader.
Mall.
Yeah.
Sidious.
Got it.
Yeah.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Coco.
So cute.
It was just her birthday the other day.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
Coco.
All right.
Last question, orange wedge.
What is the primary ingredient in tofu?
Oh, everybody.
Soy beans.
Soy beans.
Soybeans.
Soybeans.
All right.
Okay.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
playing it backwards?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Steve Cubine and Nan McNamara's podcast from Beneath the Hollywood Sign.
Mary Astor has been keeping a diary.
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,
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
Sebastian.
Oh, I know was the guy from Cool Runnings.
I don't know what saint he was.
Basil?
St. Runnings.
St.
Runnings.
St.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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?
King of the Hill.
Yes.
They're pretty.
Sterling Cooper.
This is Madman.
Yes.
Pawtucket Brewery.
This is Family Guy.
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.
Arrested Development.
Indeed.
Inetech.
Oh.
Office space.
Yes, office space.
Michael Bolton at all.
Your name is Michael Bolton?
I love his music.
The Lansford Lunchbox
Roseanne
Indeed
Ewing oil
Dallas
Yep
Oh Jerry
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
Bushwood
Country Club
Wow
Taddy Shack.
Indeed.
Oh, so good.
Zuckerman's Farm.
I believe this is Charlotte's Web.
Yes, it is.
Wow.
Charlotte's Webb.
Yes, Suckerman's Picket.
The Wayland-Utani Corporation.
Well, a lot.
Yes.
Okay, well.
Any one of the...
Prometheus.
Yes.
Alien.
The aliens.
Oh, okay.
Right.
They're the evil giant corporation that sends people out to die.
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
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
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.
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.
Mobile Army Surgical Hospital
Uh
MASH
Indeed
Franken and Hire Architects
Oh
Franken and hire
This is a literary
Fountainhead
Correct
I was like what book is about
architecture
That one
Close it out with my favorite
Fictional Workplace
All right
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.
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.
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
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