What would you think of a musical instrument variously accused of causing nervous disorders, domestic squabbles, premature deliveries, ‘fatal disorders’, and convulsions in animals? The musical instrument was even banned from a German town by orders of the police for ruining the health of people and disturbing public order (a child died during a concert). [more...]
Marmite is a sticky dark brown British yeast-based salty spread. Unlike its Australian rival Vegemite, which has inspired some professional love/hate Vegemite songs, the Marmite songs appear to be amateur productions—although some of them do have rather poignant or even disturbing lyrics. UK YouTuber Sheepstar15 sings lovingly about the “small brown jar” that helps her [more...]
The iconic sandwich spread Vegemite, beloved by generations of Australians, features in the lyrics of several popular songs. The first song about Vegemite was the jingle used on advertisements for the spread, although I can’t remember hearing or seeing this ad even though I grew up in Australia. I don’t doubt that the jingle was [more...]
Australian pop superstar Johnny Farnham rose to fame in 1967-68 with a massively-successful song Sadie, the Cleaning Lady (video). No other song by an Australian artist had done so well on the Australian charts during the 1960s. Although the song is musically unadventurous, it launched Farnham's career. The video is in black and white, because [more...]
In the 1670s a young Scotsman called William Cash sailed to the New World and set up home in Virginia. Nine generations later his direct descendant, country music star Johnny Cash, wanted to explore his ancestry. He crossed the Atlantic in the other direction, to visit the part of Fife once known as the “lands [more...]
The news that EMI are selling the Abbey Road Studios where the Beatles recorded the majority of their records, led me to do some research on the history of the building in which the studios are located. Number 3, Abbey Road, St John’s Wood, London, was built in the 1830s. Number 3 was called Agnes [more...]
This article is not about human organs (but if you think your organs need tuning, Quezi's pseudoscience department has a link for you). No, it's about pipe organs. Of course, pipe organs must be tuned when they are installed, but do they need retuning? The pipes just sit there in a big, substantial housing, so [more...]
What is a hemidemisemiquaver? Does it help to add hyphens: hemi-demi-semi-quaver? Maybe that suggests that something small. It is! It's the British musical term for what the Americans and Germans call a 64th note. And since occasionally 128th notes occur, they are called semihemidemisemiquavers or quasihemidemisemiquavers. A demisemiquaver is, of course, a 32nd note, and [more...]
Cass Elliot was the heavyweight of the 60s group The Mamas And The Papas in more ways than one. She had a fabulous voice and tremendous stage presence, but was also seriously obese. Cass died on 29 July 1974 at the age of 32 at Flat 12, 9 Curzon Place, Mayfair, London—the same flat where [more...]
You got your musical chops somewhere. But in which branch of the great family tree of your ancestors did the musical talent first make itself known? There are a number of very good sources for searching back several generations or more to find musically talented folk who were part of your family’s heritage. The [more...]
At first glance it seems obvious that slapping DRM on commercial music and video will stop people from copying the content, and will increase the profit of the content distributors. But a more careful analysis shows that this is unlikely to be the case. The apparent DRM profit (i.e. the extra profit due to DRM [more...]
Rolf Harris is a versatile multi-talented performer, born in Perth, Australia, on 30 March 1930. In 1952 he came to England to study art and, apart from brief stints in Australia and Canada between 1959 and 1962, has lived in England since. His early television break was as a children’s entertainer, and he continued that [more...]
If you’ve ever heard a song on the radio or an album and thought the words said something other than what they really were, you’ve experienced a mondegreen. Although “mondegreen” usually refers to misunderstood song lyrics, it can also refer to any poetry or even statement that’s misunderstood because of words or phrases that sound [more...]
Jambalaya is a catchy ditty from 1952 by Hank Williams Sr. (video). It’s an upbeat song about a great feast and party, but the words to Jambalaya are cryptic because they’re a mixture of English and Cajun French with a bit of poetic license thrown in: Goodbye Joe, he gotta go, me oh my oh [more...]
It’s hard to imagine that such a commonplace song as Happy Birthday to You is still under copyright, but in most countries that’s the case. The copyright is owned by the Time Warner conglomerate, and if you sing it in a public place (such as at a restaurant) you are liable to pay a royalty [more...]
Bubblegum music is a kind of pop music manufactured to appeal to young teens and pre-teens. The songs have simple melodies and regular “bopping” beats. The repetitive, easy-to-remember riffs and choruses make the songs easy to learn and easy to sing. The lyrics are straightforward, even stupidly simplistic, though sometimes with a double entendre thrown [more...]
Heavy metal music is a kind of hard rock music. It’s characterised by more than just its musical attributes, but music is the obvious place to begin… Most of all, heavy metal is loud. If it were played quietly as elevator music, it would be light metal music. It’s not the peak volume that counts, [more...]
In a 1929 interview, Albert Einstein said: If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music… I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin. And indeed he [more...]
Vinyl records fell out of use following the introduction of Compact Discs. However, they are still made in limited numbers, as are record players. A vinyl record contains a long spiral groove on each side. The sound is encoded into this groove by “wiggling” the groove from side to side in proportion to the sound [more...]
If you listen to records from the 50s and 60s you’ll find that the vocal pitch is often way off. But listen to modern pop music and it’s usually perfect pitch. What changed? Truly great singers like Bob Dylan never worried too much about whether they were singing on-key or not, but masses of aspiring [more...]