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We’ve got a special number for ya, folks. Instead of a guest or even politics, Charles Cooke, James Lileks and Peter Robinson talk football and music. Tune in for a recap on the Super Bowl—get Charles’ take on the season and the Lileksian review of the game’s ads; plus the two of them give Peter a serious crash course in post-Beatles pop music!
- Sound clips from the open are from the State Farm, BMW, CeraVe ads, along with The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.
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A lovely bit of humor from Charlie around the nineteen minute mark, “…or even the CIA in a non tyrannical state”. Good one as we have a regime trying to remove its opponent from the ballot and political prisoners rotting in jail. Are the vandals from the Archive sitting in the DC Gulag?
Regarding Ellen/Elliott Page, what are people’s thoughts on name changes? Not the whole debate about the reasons behind it, but the change itself. I see two camps. The first is Ellen to Elliot. The second is Bruce to Caitlyn. The first seems boring, simple, and not much of a change. The second seems brasher. I’m not a creative guy but I’m with Bruce. If you’re going to make the change, might as well go big and break from your old name.
More episodes like this please. Peter, you are the perfect foil as the uncool Dad for James and Charlie’s giving you the inside scoop.
Peter was between 13 and 23 in the 70s , how could he miss the Beatles? I’m not a musicophile at all, I have no records, I never voluntarily listen to music and even I could not help knowing all about them, they were impossible to avoid.
I haven’t listened yet, but I’m going to be very concerned if there’s no reference to and even a clip from the song of the title.
Yeah, like Peter didn’t watch Ed Sullivan? C’mon!
As for “The Day That Music Died”, let’s not forget self-taught musical prodigy Ritchie Valens (Richard Valenzuela), who already had a few hit songs, when he died at 17.
The idea that Buddy Holly would have been swiftly superseded, if he’d lived, seems odd to me. Some of his most sophisticated work was released after his death (at 22), like “Peggy Sue Got Married” and “It Won’t Matter Any More”. He was going from strength to strength.
There is a apocryphal story about Don McLean. When asked what is the meaning of American Pie, he said:
“It means I never have to work again unless I want to.”
Great show guys! I reminisced all through my walk today.
My father loved big band music, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Cole Porter songs, all of it. My father even requested, and had, Frank Sinatra music at his memorial service. I enjoy all of his music to this day.
I have 2 older brothers who were in high school when I was in elementary, so I was tuned into popular music at a young age. The Beatles were big. One of my first TV memories is the Beatles on Ed Sullivan. I remember my father complaining during the whole performance (they look like girls! Noise!, etc) while my brothers kept trying to shush him.
Here is a Beatles memory. I was driving carpool with my son and his middle school friends 25 years or so ago and heard one ask “Who are the Beatles?” The response was a flippant “Oh, just some pop band in the 60s.” It just about stopped the car and gave those boys a talking to.
A girlhood memory of mine is roller skating in my neighbors basement listening to Beatles music. We pretended that the basement poles were our dates — John, Paul, Ringo, and George. Of course, my bully neighbor always called Paul for her date. (She also only gave me the yellow crayon to color with when she had a shoebox full of crayons. Oh, and cut my hair – twice!)
American Pie was THE song of my eighth grade year. This was when houses had radio intercoms so you could listen in your room and crank up the volume, such as it was. One evening a WQXI am disc jockey played the song and would talk over the lyrics saying what they referred to — “Woodstock!, Big Bopper!, etc. Being only 13, most of the music history went over my head.
Peter and I are the same age, from the same area, and seem to have had the same dads — console stereo, big band records. I, however, very much got into the Beatles.
When James was talking about not liking Joni Mitchell, I literally said out loud, “Oh, come on, what about Hejira?’ And then he said he loves Hejira. I still listen to it several times a year, and listened today, after the podcast.
Excellent episode, I really enjoyed hearing everyone’s thoughts on music. I hope you can do it again sometime when Rob is there.
EDIT: I listen to the album several times a year, NOT a day. :)
Sorry, but I have to pity the people who had a console stereo. Very few of them were any good for sound quality. Not least because the speakers aren’t far enough apart for proper stereo. And only a few models even had the speakers acoustically isolated from the rest of the cabinet, or each other. Mostly, for most people in most situations, they were just furniture. The best thing I ever heard anyone say about any of them was if they had “good tone.” Which usually meant, among other things, not enough treble.
I told a bit of a related story in my comments on:
https://ricochet.com/948695/jim-steinman-rip
Ellen made the movie and Bruce won the medals. Those are the names that should be on the books . . .
What an enjoyable podcast!
I think music was better before the mid-80s to 90s. When it was produced and performed with people with talent. As we move into latter generations when auto-tune and other post production editing can allow almost anyone to market a song… Maybe this is why the music industry has been in constant contraction since the 90s … Blame Napster, but its really the talent less hacks they promote… Maybe?
This one of the reasons why I like You Tube cover bands so much – you see their talent, not their post production team work…
What? You think people performing on youtube don’t use AutoTune etc? The technology is so much cheaper now, ANYONE can use AutoTune and seem to have a whole orchestra as “studio musicians” etc.
The “GarageBand” SOFTWARE PACKAGE was one of the biggest things for Apple.
Readers Digest Great Bands collection. Excellent set – I had a copy of it back at the end of High School.
The Glenn Miller Orchestra is still touring, playing off the original charts. I’ve seen them three times in the past few years, including just last November. Highly recommended.
Bands Peter should check out – The Moody Blues, and Supertramp.
No, I dont think its an absolute, but there is much less of it, than on a professionally over produced piece of pop music that you’d hear from a label.
Wings of Pegasus goes through a lot of artists and analysis their performances for auto tune/pitch corrections…
For example:
I think that performance from say, Voice Play, Pentatonix or someone like that… is going to have less post production work than a label song…
For bands to check out next? How about Rush?
Canadian Progressive Rock. Active 1969 -2019. They have a massive catalogue. 19 studio albums. Tom Sawyer, from 1981 is probably their biggest single song. A lot of their albums were not commercially successful so all their music will likely be new to you.
Niel Pert, the band’s drummer is widely regarded as one of the greatest drummers ever… Just looking at his kit, you’ll see its an order of magnitude more than most drummer do…
I think Ringo Star was the butt of an unfortunate joke, when asked if “Ringo was the best drummer in the world” John Lennon replied that “Ringo wasnt even the best drummer in the Beatles” … While pretty funny, I think that had a lasting damaging to Ringo’s reputation.
First of all, thank you @peterrobinson for the mention, and for telling us more about your exploration of what many of us regard as the canon of 20th Century popular music. I am glad to indulge this weekend in the fantasy that I can dictate the agenda of the Ricochet podcast.
This comes at a great time, because I have recently been lucky enough to enjoy the company of friends from grade school, and fresh in my mind are memories of when we began paying attention to popular music. But amid all the reminiscing, I realized how seriously we took scrutinizing radio playlists. And now I have come to appreciate that we should not assume that our sequence of development (breathe, crawl, walk, talk, memorize Beatles lyrics and album release dates) was universally shared or naturally determined. It is important to extend grace to those whose experiences differed.
No one should begrudge Peter for prioritizing his academic studies then; his CV since testifies to the wisdom of his way. And never let it be forgotten that this is a man who has dined with David Bowie!
So there is no essential order when one decides to pay attention to any form of art. And Peter can do so now, free of any adolescent anxiety about liking (or admitting not to like) the “right” kind of bands, or with which tribe to affiliate. Enjoy what you enjoy, and don’t let any insufferable snobs like me tell you should have known this already.
I end with the words of two musicians, Ian Anderson and Duke Ellington:
You’re never too old rock ‘n’ roll if you’re too young to die.
There are only two kinds of music: there is good music and there is the other kind.
I’ve seen some of Rush’s performance, and my younger brother played their albums constantly back in the day; for starters I don’t think Peter would find the vocals very appealing.
Meanwhile, for drummers I haven’t seen anyone yet who beats Clem Burke. You don’t see enough of him in this video, but what you CAN see….. damn!
You expect you’re gonna watch Debbie, but what impresses is Clem Burke’s drumming. That’s a testament to how good he is!
Peter, here is a start. 1981, the singer/guitarist is 19/20, the guitarist is 20, drummer and base player are 16.
No musical training. Just a bunch of kids from south Minneapolis. Paul Westerberg is a terrific songwriter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHXBOoDmQk8
Play this album, preferably loud, and remember it was done by kids.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorry_Ma,_Forgot_to_Take_Out_the_Trash
Other examples: Echosmith (at start, 16-year-old girl singer with at least 2 of her brothers), and Michelle Branch: started writing and performing as a young teenager, signed with a record label at 17 and released her first album which was a big hit after just turning 18. The next year while still 18 or possibly having just turned 19, she was chosen out of possibly hundreds of auditions by Carlos Santana to be part of his/their hit single “The Game Of Love.”
Regarding the pronunciation of “Jaguar” I’m not sure if I pronounce it with two or three syllables when talking about the animal, because it practically never comes up. But if I am talking about the British automobile manufacturer I definitely pronounce it with three syllables. When watching an auto race where Jaguar is competing, the British announcers pronounce it with three syllables, so I figure that is how to say it.
The big questions is, how do Germans pronounce “Porsche?” One syllable or two?
• Joni Mitchell is hippie music? Huh, never thought of her that way. I thought of her as a sophisticated post-hippie adult contemporary singer-songwriter. Court and Spark is pretty good.
• Not only was it Ellen Page who starred in Juno, the film is about her as a pregnant teen female trying to figure out what to do about the baby growing inside of her. That makes the “transing”of her name extra ironic.
• Does anyone else think about non-rock songs that are “bangers” as much as anything in the rock era? For example, Stompin’ at the Savoy still sounds as modern to me as anything else out there. I’d say the same thing about Monk’s big band arrangement of Straight, No Chaser.*
*Or Straight No Chaser. Online I see it used interchangeably.
Finally got bitten by the double post gremlin.
Although there are plenty of bands I like, it would be difficult for me to name ten drummers. However, I was fortunate to meet and talk with Clem Burke a few years back at memorial services for a mutual friend and he impressed me as a very good and decent man. Now I’m a fan.
Yes, great music video there! But another thing about it that relates to this podcast is the dominant color worn by Debbie, Clem, and one or two other band members. Is that the “metallic, teal, turquoisey, blue tint” that James sees saturating Super Bowl ads 45 years later?
If it is, it needs to be given an official name and should be considered for inclusion in the Crayola Crayon 64 box.
Sing, sing, sing!
I pronounce it “jag-wahr.” Steve Jobs pronounced it “jag-wire,” which I’d never heard anyone do before. I wonder how many distinct pronunciations there are of it, just in the U.S.
In an episode (maybe two parts?) of “Married With Children” where it’s a Mexican car company planning to build a factory in Chicago, they said it “Hawg-wahr.” It was a funny episode.