Speaker 1: Hudson Riverradio dot Com.
Speaker 2: Now a little more allegro than last time.
Speaker 3: This is John Fulbright.
Speaker 4: Hi, this is jar Williams.
Speaker 5: Hi.
Speaker 6: This is Mitch Margle of the Tokens.
Speaker 7: Hi.
Speaker 8: This is Gary us Bonds mad here on the Rock
and Roll History Show.
Speaker 6: Hello, everyone, Welcome back to the Rock and Roll History
Show on Hudson River Radio. I'm Brian Horowitz. Tonight we're
gonna do just a little bit of non bacterial culture.
We're gonna talk about Beethoven, but we're not gonna go
so deep that it's gonna hurt your brain. Really, it's
gonna be a lot of fun, so stick around. I'm
looking forward to hearing what all the crambones have picked.
But before we hop in, it's always allow me to
introduce all the cranmbones joining us tonight. First and foremost,
from the Richter Observatory. He makes chili with only two
hundred and thirty nine beans because one more would be
too party. Neil.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 9: Yeah, Well, hey, I've got a dad joke for you
real quick.
Speaker 6: Bring it that.
Speaker 9: We're talking about Beethoven. Now, do you know by the
time he composed his ninth and final Symphony, he was
like practically deaf. That was unheard of at the time.
Oh oh, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: The jokes are strong that they.
Speaker 6: Flow freely amongst you and from paranormal yours. She says,
if you can't beat them, join them. But try beating
them anyway, because still be expecting you to join them,
and you'll have the element of surprise like a ninja.
Speaker 7: Absolutely, good evening, good day, good whatever.
Speaker 6: Everyone, And from the silver screen she saw Ego and
Super Ego walk into a bar, and our tender says, sorry,
I'll need to see some id.
Speaker 7: Love it.
Speaker 10: Brian good, hey, everybody, and.
Speaker 6: Our recently retired Crambone. As he gets older, he likes
to think about all the people he lost along the way.
He was a terrible tour guide, John Jelly John.
Speaker 3: Hey, Brian, Hey, everybody. Yes, it was quite a profession
there being a tour guide, of of course, good to.
Speaker 6: Be here, Pop, and last but not least, the host
of shaving Cream. She joined a condescending club. And the
first rule of condescending club is probably just too complex
for someone like you to understand, Barbara.
Speaker 3: Ville, is what I say.
Speaker 10: Absolutely, hey, everybody, Wow, that was great.
Speaker 6: All right, So everybody's heard of Beethoven. Right, Ludwig Bond
Beethoven lud Vega dog the dog right?
Speaker 7: Yes, I met his brother years ago. I know I've
mentioned this before.
Speaker 9: Yeah, seriously, the dog the dog.
Speaker 3: Can I ask a question about that dog? Did he
roll over?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 11: Wow?
Speaker 7: I was at a dog show in Connecticut many years ago,
and I was actually there to see the chow chows,
but I ended up talking to this really cute uh
Saint Bernard. And it turned out that his handler told
me that he was Beethoven's little brother, so it was
really cute.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm. I wonder how many other Saint Bernard owners
have said the same thing.
Speaker 4: No, no, let me tell you, Let me tell you.
Speaker 7: Martha Stewart used to show her chows at that show,
so it wouldn't surprise me.
Speaker 6: That's how she wounds up in prison.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 4: Chow chows dogs.
Speaker 1: Only if you get caught, as in the.
Speaker 4: One that was named Paupaw.
Speaker 6: You know I got you?
Speaker 7: Oh boy, all right, you can't take your guys anywhere.
Speaker 6: You can take us everywhere. You just regret it later.
That's all.
Speaker 3: We're a tough crowd, what can I say.
Speaker 6: That's why we're on zoom because we're not allowed to
be in the same room together, right.
Speaker 10: That never goes well?
Speaker 6: No, no, So I thought I'd give a quick rundown,
a quick bio on Beethoven, and then we'll hop in
sound good. Yeah, everybody's heard of him, but people may
not know the background, and maybe I'll get something wrong
and I'm going to get a bunch of emails, which
I'm good with that too. So he was born in
Bond in Germany in December of seventeen seventy. His grandfather
was a prominent musician and his role mind. His father
was a mediocre alcoholic singer who auditioned for the Ramones,
but he didn't make the cut.
Speaker 9: He should have been a better alcoholic.
Speaker 6: I think that was the part that was lacking. Yeah. Yeah.
His mom was supposedly a complete sweetheart to everybody. So
Ludwig got music lessons from his father, who literally beat
music into him, as in like physically beat music intlums.
So Beethoven, Ludwig the Son was a prodigy, either because
of his father or in spite of him.
Speaker 3: I will let you.
Speaker 6: Pick up your arguments on that.
Speaker 4: One, and that is probably yes, hm.
Speaker 6: He excelled at music, but he did not excel in
academics and dropped out of school at age ten to
do music full time. There's a speculation of whether he
crossed paths with Mozart or not. Mozart was older and
lived in Vienna. Mozart died in seventeen ninety two, and
Heyden was considered the best composer alive. So Beethoven and
move to Vienna with plans to study under Hyden. He
did study under Salieri and other composers at the time.
These names might ring a bell, especially if you saw
a movie amadaeis Yep. Yes, stuff we can dig into
later on.
Speaker 4: I loved that movie.
Speaker 6: Yep, I haven't seen that in so long. I have
to watch it again. So Beethoven hit the big time
with his first symphony, titled Symphony Number One, which seems
like there you go n C Major in eighteen hundred.
As his career started to rise, his hearing started to fail. Unfortunately,
it wasn't long before he couldn't make out words in
a face to face conversation with people. He tried to
hide it from the public.
Speaker 3: He would later.
Speaker 6: Resort to actually carrying notebooks to communicate and writing back
and forth and a lot of those notebooks still exist.
You can actually go read the conversations that Beethoven had
with members of the public and friends and all that
kind of stuff, which I think is awesome that somebody
thought to hang on to them. He was painfully shy
in real life, but he was also argumentative, a little cranky.
I can kind of understand, losing your hearing and all that.
Generally difficult little bit of a diva. And at the
time he was considered kind of ugly. Believe it or not.
He had some facial deformities and scars, probably from smallpox,
which was very common at the time, and maybe some
other maladies that we don't know about. But all that
was left out of the portraits and the sculptures that
we see now because they were filtering back then. It
is nothing new. You see it now, you saw it
back then. The more famous he got, the more complimentary
his painting's got. You see, everybody knows the famous portrait
with the wild hair brushback which we now considered, you know,
artistic and all that. No, back then it was more
you could probably call it more like BedHead woke up,
just didn't care, Just stick your finger in an outlet,
kind of hair style and all that. So filtering, Snapchat,
all that, nothing new. It just took longer because you
had to paint it as opposed to taken a pace.
Beethoven died a worldwide celebrity, on March twenty sixth, eighteen
twenty seven, at age fifty six, from liver cirrhosis. It's
believed at this point that his deafness was a result
of contracting typhus in seventeen ninety six. Typhus is a
bacterial infection that starts with flu like symptoms and a
rash and gets worse from there. Nowadays, it's treatable with antibiotics,
which of course they didn't have back then. Not typhoid,
it's typhus. They're two different things, not like typhoid, mary,
two totally different things. He was also found to have
a high level of lead when locks of his hair
were tested much later on in life. Lead was used
to both make drinking goblets that were in common use,
and they added it to wine as a sweetener. It
made cheap garbage wine. Yeah, right now, obviously they didn't
know any better back then. But before we start going, oh,
bah blah blah, We're sitting here sipping on our microplastics,
and we know better, and we're still doing it.
Speaker 7: I'm drinking out of a ceramic mug.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you and me both, but you know we're all
full of microplastics at this point. We're two steps away
from being little robots. One of my favorite coaches from Beethoven,
Here we go. Anyone who tells a lie has not
a pure heart and cannot make good soup. Bam boom.
If he had a microphone, he would have dropped it.
Speaker 3: That's prophetic.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I think he's right.
Speaker 9: I got the T shirt and that says.
Speaker 6: That as well. You should so. By forty he was
completely deaf. And the question comes up, well, how can
you write music when you're completely deaf? And the best
answer is because he knew what he was doing. He
understood music. He was a phenomenal music student. He knew
how notes worked, he knew how chords worked. He just
he knew. But he did commission a special piano that
had quadruple strings in it, designed to be louder. Unfortunately,
it didn't really work well for him. He would sometimes
hold a pencil in his mouth and then touch the
other end to the piano so he could feel the
vibrations that way. He cut the legs off of another
piano so it would sit flat on the floor and
he would sit on the floor to play it so
he could feel the vibrations through the floor. I'm sure
his neighbors loved him. He apparently ruined a few pianos
by banging on them so hard that they would just
start to fall apart, which I don't think he can
get much more rock and roll than that.
Speaker 1: I was going to say he was a punk rocker
before they did that with guitars.
Speaker 4: He did it with piano.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he just smashed it to the point where they
would just fall apart. There are stories of teeth marks
on some of his pianos. I think those are stories.
Speaker 9: I don't think he actually was his teeth though, Well.
Speaker 6: That could be. You know what if somebody tried to
steal a composition and he had to you want to
you want to steal this boom kind of little mob.
I don't think he did that either, but I can't
disprove it. Yeah, I think that the teeth marks a
kind of more of a story than reality. But as
he got older, as the hearing got worse. He could
feel lower frequency vibrations better because they would make things vibrate.
And you can see as his works progressed they shifted
to the lower end of the spectrum. Longer notes, whole notes.
Speaker 3: If you will.
Speaker 6: That's whole with a W for those of you with
a problem, And we're going to see some of that tonight. Now.
He obviously influenced composers and writers and rock and roll
much later on in history, which is why we're here
discussing it tonight. I have a clip of an interview
that Richie Blackmore from De Purple did. He's talking about
Smoke on the Water and how he got the riff
from Smoke on the Water from Beethoven. So let me
play this clip for you.
Speaker 12: It's playing false rigid false, which is going back to
the medieval times. That's how they played a lot of
short parts was parallel fourths. So now you have so
I listened to love Wick, then Beethoven, bomb bom bom
bom bom bom bom bomb, and I thought, play that backwards,
put something to it, and you've got bomb bomb bom
bom bomb. That's how I came up with it. Are
you telling me yes, that the famous wreck is from Beto.
It's an interpretation of inversion. You turn it back and
play it back and forth. It's actually Beethoven's fifth So
I owe him a lot of money.
Speaker 6: I love that.
Speaker 9: But but does his AMP go to eleven?
Speaker 6: It's a very good question, I would think, so, I
know pre dates it a little bit. You know, Beethoven's
AMP did with the quad strings on that one piano
that is the eighteen hundreds equivalent of going to eleven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the low techie techie.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yep. So and before the emails come in, Richie
Blackmore says inversion, and he used the term in version wrong.
In Version is when you're talking about chords, which is
a whole other thing. He meant backwards, playing it backwards,
which the musical term is retrograde if you play something backwards.
So there you go. I just want to get ahead
of the curve on that one. Okay, should we hop in?
Let's talk a little Beethoven and John.
Speaker 3: You are going to lead us off, okay. You know, Brian,
I got to tell you this.
Speaker 8: This subject challenged me a little bit, and you know,
and I know, I mean it's common knowledge. I think
even somebody with my limited musical knowledge that Beethoven had
a huge influence on rock music, a lot of classical
music in heavily influenced rock music. All you have to do,
and you a lot of you out there know, I
am a Toll fan. I am a diehard Toll fan.
And if you want to talk about influence, their influence
from in my experience has been Mozart. Okay, Now, they
was a little bit of Beethoven. I think there's a
recording from the late like around six seventy six or
seventy seven of them doing a Beethoven riff and a concert.
Speaker 3: So I thought about I thought about Jethro Tol.
Speaker 8: And then I thought, you know, let me take a
step back and try something different. And I was and
I found this band from Helsinki, Finland. It was a
cello quartet and they were all classically trained cellists. So naturally,
of course you think classically trained, they're going to be
classical cellis right, Absolutely not. These guys are heavy metal
and they recorded their own version of Beethoven's Fifth using
the cello and there with their heavy metal kind of
take on it. So without further ado, let's play.
Speaker 13: It sat.
Speaker 8: Hey, everybody that was Beethoven Smith read up and by Apocalyptica,
a Finnish band that met in Helsinki in nineteen ninety
three at university, and they released this in September of
Our Excuse Me in July of twenty twenty two. This
was on their EP Metal Classic Classic Metal, and one
of their cellis Iika Tolpinin I don't think I pronounced
that properly, was called Beethoven, one of the first metal heads.
Another interesting thing about this particular album they also did
their own take on Flight of the Bumblebee and Maurice
Ravel's Ballero. So these guys are kind of intense cellis
metal heads, and they take and remake classical music. And
I gotta tell you, I always wonder what would people
like Beethoven or Revel or what would they think of this?
Speaker 3: I think they might like it, actually, but what do
I know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, some composers are We're very picky about playing it
exactly is written. Others were looser with interpretations, and it's
you know, you know, you never.
Speaker 3: Know with some people.
Speaker 8: I actually recently went on a kind of like a
YouTube rabbit hole looking at classically trained musicians critiquing modern takes.
Uh you know, you know, rock takes on classical music
and classical instruments. And I saw some recent ones where
you had some classically trained trained I don't know if
I'm doing this properly.
Speaker 3: The FluTEST floutest many say it.
Speaker 8: And they were critiquing Jethro Tull and their musical style
with the flute Ian Anderson, and that's just pretentious in
my opinion, you know, but you know, everybody can help.
Speaker 6: I love I love those videos. I know what you're
talking about. Okay, yeah, yeah, it's just it's some of
them are sick the butt and you just can't skip them.
But other ones are they're you know.
Speaker 3: Some of them are good and they get it.
Speaker 8: Some of them you want to reach through the screen,
and just an other ones that's like okay, you know
they're explaining the flute or whatever.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but you know what, in the rock world, you
have Don Henley that does that, who you kind of
want to reach through and smack, and you have other
people that are just pretentious.
Speaker 8: And I think if you're going to make yourself known,
if you're going to make a name for yourself, you're
going to get these kinds of critiques.
Speaker 3: I think that's just the fact of life.
Speaker 8: But uh, I just thought this was interesting because you
took these these classically trained cellists, and one has to
wonder when they first started with the cello and with
classical music and with the you know, did they envision
themselves going down this role, this, this, this way, this avenue,
I might say, but I really enjoyed it, and I
have to give the rest of the album a good listen.
Speaker 3: So I hope you all enjoyed.
Speaker 8: Beethoven's Fifth by Apocalyptica from Finland.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 6: All right, good lead off and Barber your.
Speaker 1: Next Okay, Well for today's topic, my research led me
to a band called Beethoven's Wig. The band was created
in Los Angeles in two thousand and two by singer
songwriter Richard Pearl Mutter and is an American vocal group
that teaches children about classical music by adding fun lyrics
to each piece they cover. The rest of the band
members are Ellen Carlson, Jonathan Mack, Susan Boyd, John Joyce,
Jennifer Barnes, and Michael Geiger. The band has recorded five albums,
each of which has been Grammy nominated. In the category
of Best Musical Album for Children. Founding member Pearl Mutter,
having been a student of classical music and music composition,
wanted to write lyrics to classical music. He came up
with the phrase Beethoven's wig is very big, put to
the tune of the allegro combrio of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony,
and marveled how the words fit perfectly with the first
eight notes and was the perfect symbol for classical music.
From that same two thousand and two album sing Along
Symphonies comes track number five, called Just for Elise, which
put lyrics to Beethoven's classic for release. Let's pause now
and listen.
Speaker 14: Here's a short Beethoven piano piece. He wrote this piece
just for release. It's all about a fella named Maurice
who came from Greece with of aalase. Maurice loved Beethoven's
piano piece. He loved this piece more than Elise, and
nobody could keep it from Maurice. He fleeced Elise and
took her piece. He did her wrong, He took her song.
It's all he cared for all along.
Speaker 6: And when Elisa that Maurice had.
Speaker 14: Fleeced her piece, she called the police. They found the
piece in the valise. They all went to the justice
of the piece, who sent Maurice right back to Greece.
It was all right to her delight. At least can
play her piece all night. And if you hear Beethoven's
piece played by your nephew or your niece. Nephew or
niece performed this piece, please tell them to remember that
this piece, this little piece is.
Speaker 1: Furlase okay for Elise was one of Beethoven's most popular compositions.
The original name was Bagatelle Number twenty five. Beethoven wrote
it an a minor for solo piano. The piece was
not published during Beethoven's lifetime, but discovered forty years after
his death by Ludwig Knowl. It had been composed on
April twenty seventh, eighteen ten, and not published until eighteen
sixty seven. Now researchers have speculated about the identity of Elise,
but have not reached any conclusions, only several suggestions. The
most popular theory suggests that she was Teresa Malfatti von
Roorenbach zu Desa, a friend and student of Beethoven. It
is rumored that he proposed to her in eighteen ten,
but she declined and married someone else. It has also
been suggested that the title of the piece may have
been transcribed incorrectly, and that the name should have read
as Teres, but that's never been proven. And lastly, I
added this at the last minute because I was very
excited about this. Lastly, I wanted to add that this
tune was a Jeopardy clue on Wednesday, January fourteenth.
Speaker 6: Cool.
Speaker 10: That's great.
Speaker 1: One of the odds that you're watching Jeopardy and hey,
that's my song.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's great. Yeah, that became very popular after it
was published. It's almost a shame it wasn't published during
his lifetime.
Speaker 1: Yeah, get the recognition that you know, he deserved.
Speaker 4: While he was still alive.
Speaker 6: He was still an uber celebrity at the time, so
you can't feel that. Yeah, but it is a prime
example of you know, at this point he was pretty
much completely deaf, and how it shifted to the lower
end of the spectrum. Those notes are at the lower
end of the piano, and it's a standard for piano
students for good reason. For good reason. Awesome, thank you, Barbara.
Love that I never heard that before.
Speaker 3: That was a lot of fun.
Speaker 6: That was good.
Speaker 1: I was actually really surprised when I found this band.
Speaker 6: That was great, awesome. All right, we're gonna take a
real quick break and we'll be back with more right
after this. Hudson River Radio.
Speaker 3: Your dog likes us.
Speaker 7: This concludes the first part of this cassette.
Speaker 6: Please turn the cassette over and begin again.
Speaker 12: On side to.
Speaker 10: This is Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 6: Ah Way, and welcome back, Neil.
Speaker 3: We're up to you.
Speaker 6: What do you have for us?
Speaker 9: My ode to Beethoven pun intended, as you'll see, is
a little different in a few different ways, which should
come as a surprise to no one, no one. Wendy
Carlos Ay Wendy Carlos born Walter Carlos in nineteen thirty
nine is an American musician and composer, best known for
her work with electronic music and film scores. Now. In nine,
nineteen seventy nine, Carlos announced that she'd been living as
a woman since nineteen sixty eight and had undergone gender
affirming surgery in nineteen seventy two, and she has since
gone on to help raise public awareness about transgender issues. Now.
She was a native of Rhode Island, and studied physics
and music before moving to New York in nineteen sixty two.
There she worked with electronic musicians and technicians such as
Robert mog and helped to develop the Mogue synthesizer, the
first commercially available keyboard synthesizer. Now Carlos first came to
fame in nineteen sixty eight with her album of music
by classical composer Johann Sebastian Bach. It's performed entirely on
the Moge synthesizer and aptly called Switched on Bach, and
it helped popularize the instrument in the nineteen seventies. It
also won her three Grammy Awards, and his success led
her to work in film scores, the first being the
Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange in nineteen seventy one.
The film is based on a nineteen sixty two Anthony
Burgess novel set in a dystopian future. The film's main
character a charismatic but antisocial delinquent who leads a gang
of thugs and whose main interest, besides committing vicious crimes,
is listening to classical music, especially that of Beethoven. After
being jailed for his violent crimes. A version therapy is
used to rehabilitate him. He strapped to a chair with
his eyes clamped open and forced to watch violent films,
all accompanied by the music of his favorite composer, Ludwig
von Beethoven. So here's Beethoven's ninth the fourth and final movement,
commonly known as the Ode to Joy, performed by Wendy
Carlos on the synthesizer from the soundtrack of the film
A Clockwork Orange.
Speaker 2: Steam.
Speaker 9: And that was all done on a synthesizer, even even
the vocal parts. You probably didn't understand the words because
well it's in German. So But the interesting thing is
nowadays recording is a lot simpler. People have recording studios
in their bedrooms at this point. Back then not so easy.
Each instrument and each sound had to be recorded individually
on one track at a time to build the whole,
you know, the whole thing. It was all held together
by a click track so that he you know, that
could keep track of where they were in the song's progress.
But that was you know, taken out at the end.
But each each instrument, each note, each every sound you hear,
was put on individually and layered which pretty time consuming
and I think pretty cool.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very cool.
Speaker 9: Anyway, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony was the first example of a
major composer scoring vocals parts for a symphony, and it's
regarded by many critics as one of the supreme achievements
in musical history, and it's also one of the most
frequently performed symphonies in the world. Wendy Carlos would go
on to score another Kubrick film, The Shining Here's Johnny
in nineteen eighty and the Disney film Tron in nineteen
eighty two. Now, for some reason, as of twenty twenty,
many of Carlos's recordings are out of print and they've
not been made available or licensed for digital distribution. I
don't know why that would be. But Carlos is also
an accomplished photographer, especially that of solar eclipses, and her
work in that field has been published online by NASA.
So multi talented.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 9: And finally, as of this taping, Wendy Carlos, at age
eighty six, is still considered one of the most important
composers living today. So there you have it.
Speaker 7: Cool, very cool, impressive.
Speaker 6: I don't know if you came across the story of
when the actual symphony was premiered and Beethoven was conducting.
He conducted himself even though he was completely deaf at
this point. And side note, if you ever go see
an orchestra, your rule of thumb is, never be the
first person to clap, because you're going to clap in
the wrong spot. Wait till someone who knows better claps,
and then you clap later because you don't clap in
between movements number one, someone always you always hear one
stray and then somebody give us yeah, So never be
the first to clap. So they performed it. Beethoven was conducting,
and the conductor faces the orchestra back to the audience.
They were done, and Beethoven stood there because he couldn't
hear what was going on, and someone in the orchestra
actually got up and turned him around to face the audience,
and that's when he realized that everybody was just cheering
and going the equivalent of nuts.
Speaker 9: Back then, I'd forgotten that story. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that
was true.
Speaker 6: That's actually one of the story that he had no
idea that people were uploading so much behind him until
somebody turned him around. So very cool. All right, thanks Neil,
and we're going on to Gail. Gail, what do you
have for us?
Speaker 7: These are hard acts to follow. This was an extremely
challenging topic for me.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 7: But speaking of Ode to Joy, the song I chose
by a band called Bright Eyes, who I've never heard
of them before. Their song is road to Joy and
it's the last song on their album, their sixth studio
album called I'm Wide Awake It's Morning, and.
Speaker 4: That line is the album title.
Speaker 7: Is the first line of the song, which is road
to Joy. It's kind of a weird song to me.
It's got deep themes of existential anxiety.
Speaker 4: It's like maybe pretty apropos for today's world.
Speaker 7: And that contains an interpolation of Beethoven's Ode to Joy.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 7: The band called Bright Eyes is American and they're from
They're from the Great Northwest. Like I said, I I
never heard of them. They're still active. Apparently they're from Nebraska,
of all places. I didn't know there was an indie
music world in Nebraska, but apparently there is.
Speaker 4: So let's have a.
Speaker 5: The son came up with no conclusions. Flower sleeping in
their beds the city summer Tamori is coming I'm wide awake.
Speaker 2: It's small.
Speaker 5: I have my drugs, I have my woman to keep
away my boneliness. My parents say, have their religion, but
sleep in separate houses.
Speaker 2: I read the body come out.
Speaker 5: Of the paper, and now it's written all over my face.
Speaker 2: No one ever plans.
Speaker 11: To sleep out in the gutter.
Speaker 15: Sometimes that's just the most come never place.
Speaker 5: So I'm drinking, breathing, writing, singing. Every day I'm on
the clock. My mind races when on my longings, but
can't keep up with what I've got. So I hope
I don't sound too ungrateful. Quick a story gave modern
man tell of fun to talk to strangers. Machine guns,
amper countra limbs. So when you're asked to fight a
war that's over nothing, it's.
Speaker 16: Best to join the side that's gonna win.
Speaker 11: And know one. So this got started.
Speaker 6: We're gonna make our goddamn certain how it's gonna mt Oh.
Speaker 9: Yeah we will, Oh yeah we will.
Speaker 5: Well I could have them a famous singer if I
had someone else's voice. For failures.
Speaker 2: Oh it sounded better.
Speaker 5: Let's fuck get a voice.
Speaker 11: I'm not.
Speaker 7: That sounded so cuppy musically.
Speaker 9: No more espresso for them, there's a lot of there's
a lot of angst out there in Nebraska apparently, and.
Speaker 4: Apparently a lot of joy apparently.
Speaker 6: I guess that's the road, sadly.
Speaker 11: Uh.
Speaker 7: The band Bright Eyes consists of singer, songwriter and guitarist
Connor Oberst, multi instrumentalist and producer Mike Mogis, arranger, composer,
trumpet and piano player Nate Walcott, and a rotating lineup
of collaborators drawn primarily from Omaha's indie music scene, of
which I did not realize there was one, because one
doesn't think.
Speaker 9: Of Oh, I think we heard all of them right there.
Speaker 7: When you hear the word Omaha, you don't think, oh,
indie music scene.
Speaker 10: Don't be a New York snob, now, Gail.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're the Mormon indie music scene.
Speaker 7: Not exactly. During the two thousand and four election season,
Bright Eyes toured with Bruce Springsteen and R. E. M
on the Vote for Change Tour, further pushing Bright Eyes
into the public eye. Oberst sang numerous duets with the
likes of Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young nice so that
I thought was interesting.
Speaker 6: They keep good company, yep.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's all I got.
Speaker 6: All right, very cool. Yeah, that's definitely a road to joy.
Not you know, they hope, I hope they found it.
I hope they settled down.
Speaker 3: For a while.
Speaker 9: I think there's there's a lot of potholes and bumps
in that road.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 7: I liked it.
Speaker 10: Reminded me of something, but I couldn't put I wanted
to say violent fans, but absolutely.
Speaker 9: Oh I didn't. I didn't say I didn't like it either.
I just it's it's a little wow. Yeah, you know,
you can't just put it on and dance to it, though,
you know, well, maybe you good.
Speaker 10: But I think you ken a little moshing.
Speaker 9: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I think can you mosh in Nebraska because everybody's so
spread out.
Speaker 9: I guess if you take enough antidepressant drugs you get
happy to it. But I work.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was interesting.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 6: Uh, we're gonna take a second break, and we have
two more selections coming.
Speaker 17: Up, so stick around Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 13: Hudson River Radio dot Com.
Speaker 6: All right, we're up to Mercedes, who I would vote
as the least likely crambone to ever have gone to
see a symphony orchestra.
Speaker 10: Yeah, ever, I don't think so. I mean, I've been
to ballets where this live musicians. Okay, does that count
for something?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 6: I mean it's absolutely worthwhile and highly recommended. But no, okay, fair,
all right, we're going to work on that.
Speaker 10: Well, that's why I picked the song. Proud Mary, So
Brown Mary is a song written by John Fogerty of
Creeden's Clearwater Revival, released in nineteen sixty nine. Fogerty said
later said that it was his first really great song
and he knew it right away. He wrote it after
he was discharged from the National Guard. Ike and Tina
Turner also had a top ten hit with a song
and three years later in nineteen seventy one, which is
probably the most popular version. After Tina Turner broke with
Ike and went out on her own, she continued to
do Proud Mary. I saw her in nineteen eighty four
at Madison Square Garden, fourth row, and she performed it
and it was dazzling and unforgettable and damn those legs amazing.
So what does this have to do with Beethoven? Well,
the opening chord progression was inspired by Beethoven's Fifth Symphony
in C Minor. Like the symphony in C minor. The
emphasis is on the first notes like da da da da,
or descending by thirds. Is that right, Bryan? Okay? He
thought that riff sounded something like a paddlewheel, but didn't
have much else for the song, just that and the title.
The phrase left a good job in the city came
to him and then big wheel keep on turning. And
then he realized that the song was not about a woman.
It was the name of a ship. He had a
very particular idea of how the backing vocals should be,
and he was afraid the band would ruin it by singing.
He wanted it to sound like a guy gospel group.
Foggerty did all the vocals himself. At that point, the
group is upset, but Fogerty laid down the law and
told them he was taking charge and from then on
they would sing back up on stage, but everything else
would be his way. Later the band had to admit
that it worked. Proud Mary reached number two and they
were invited to play it on the Ed Sullivan Show,
and after that everybody was playing it. Phil Spector produced
a version, Solomon Burke sang it, Leonard Nimoy, Elvis and
Brian Wilson.
Speaker 1: Oh that's gonna be my earworm. Oh yeah, please please
fix it for me.
Speaker 4: Oh, thanks a lot, Mercedes.
Speaker 10: He went right back to write, to work writing, and
wanted each B side to be as strong as the
A side, which maybe the reason they never had a
number one song. Radio stations tended to play one side
or the other, which should like split the popularity of
the songs. So what is Proud Mary about?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 10: This quote comes from John Fogerty and American Son by
Thomas M. Kitts from twenty fifteen. Proud Mary's singer a
low wage earner, meaning the vocalist who's singing.
Speaker 6: It in the first person. Yes, yes, thank you protagonist.
Speaker 10: Protagonist Yes, a low wage earner leaves what he considers
a good job, which he might define as steady work,
even though for long hours under a dictatoral boss. He
decides to follow his impulse and imagination and hitches a
ride on a riverboat queen, which I don't know what
a queen, riverboat queen or all riverboats queens anybody know?
I don't know, Bidding farewell to the city. Only when
the boat pulls out does he see the good side
of the city, which for him is one in the distance,
far removed from his life. Down by the river and
on the boat, the singer finds protection from the man
and salvation from his working class pains in the nurturing
spirit and generosity of simple people who are happy to
give even if they have no money. The river in Fogerty,
and traditionally in literature and song, is a place holding
biblical and epical implications. Indeed, the river in Proud Mary
offers not only escape but also rebirth to the singer.
So let's do it.
Speaker 3: Waking well, man not envy.
Speaker 18: Speed, and when out away.
Speaker 19: Bom go away, going in on the rail.
Speaker 18: There's a lot of beads and milks want a lot
of things down to New Holy.
Speaker 11: But I never saw on.
Speaker 16: The food side of the city till i's ride on.
Speaker 18: The river both weeks befekee boat laden a mil keep board,
go away, go on in on the rilboat.
Speaker 11: No one rode rolling on the river.
Speaker 18: You come down to the river if you're gonna by
USand people who live.
Speaker 16: You don't have to worry you have no money. People
along the river have been a bill be we be
bond god man be bon.
Speaker 11: Do so.
Speaker 10: Billboard described CCR's Proud Mary as a driving blues item
with a strong beat, and cash Box described it as
a steady moving, mid speed chunk of funk and rhythm
that will make itself felt in both pop and underground spots.
As for the Turner version, Billboard stated that John Fogerty
version classic gets a powerhouse treatment with the Turner originality
and drive to put it back up the hot one
hundred and Soul Charts Dynamite entry for their rendition, I
Contain a Turner won a Grammy Award for Best R
and B Vocal Performance by a Group in nineteen seventy two,
and also Creten's clear Water received a I'm Sorry. Ike
and Tina their version and Ceciora's version received Grammy Hall
of Fame awards in nineteen ninety eight and two thousand
and three. Proud Mary ranked at number one fifty five
on Rolling Stone's two thousand and four list of the
five hundred Greatest Songs of All Time. And I have
to mention that growing up in a small town in
New Jersey, we had Joe's Subs, which had a jukebox,
and not only did me and a couple of friends
know when the guy was going to come in and
change the songs on the jukebox. We would sit in
the back booth and wait for him, and when he
would come in, we would tell him what songs to
take off that we didn't like that people and it
made us mad. Also, it was three songs for a quarter, so.
Speaker 4: We picked.
Speaker 10: We always picked the three longest songs to play and
proud marry the Icontina Turner one was one of the
longest ones, and the other one was if six Were
nine by Jimi Hendrix, and the third one was like a.
Speaker 6: Free for all nice.
Speaker 3: I love that song.
Speaker 6: I would have to respectfully argue. As much as the
Icontina version is phenomenal, I don't know if it's the
most popular, I would.
Speaker 10: The most known, I don't think so.
Speaker 9: I remember hearing the CCR version, you know, on the
AM top forty stations, Yes, all the time, and not
not so much the iking Tina turning again. I'm not
gonna she can't really compare the They're almost like two
different songs and that's the same, yeah, the same thing,
a whole different treatment.
Speaker 6: I've seen John Fogerty live many, many times and damn
those legs. He's eighty and he's still going, so I
can knock.
Speaker 4: It, okay, fair, Yeah, it's a tough one.
Speaker 6: It's a tough one.
Speaker 14: You know.
Speaker 6: The story, like you talked about his background vocals and
all that kind of stuff, and it's easy to kind
of paint him as the domineering, controlling persion and CCR,
which he was. But the long story short getting up
to that point was that he would always say bring songs.
He would tell everybody. Everybody wanted to participate, everybody wanted to,
you know, write stuff and all, and he would say,
bring it, bring it, bring it, And nobody ever brought
anything except him. And it got to the point where
if you ain't pooping, you ain't sitting on the pot anymore.
So he stepped in and did the job, and he.
Speaker 10: Said, nobody bring any more songs from now on.
Speaker 6: Really no one brought any anyway.
Speaker 9: So well as you said that there was there was
no love loss between Fogerty and the rest of the band,
you know, and particularly his own brother.
Speaker 10: So I'm sorry who was described in one article that
I read who was the older and more handsome one.
Speaker 9: Okay, that's subjective. I suppose.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well he did a lot of complaining and not
a lot of producing, so it's kind of you know,
I have obviously picked sides for you know where I
land on that one.
Speaker 9: Well again, he uh, John Fogerty took charge because you
know what somebody had to. Yeah, somebody had to. And
as far as singing all the back backup vocals to himself,
that is not an uncommon practice. In fact, it makes
it sound better if it's the same voice blending with itself,
you know, if you can multi track it. But you
can now, you know, and could then easily it sounds
a lot better. That's unless you've got like, you know,
you know, two or three other singers that are just
phenomenal too that can that can do that. I mean,
but not many could. So I think he made the
right choice. And and I'm sure that if they got
mad at him, you know, they weren't mad when they
went to the bank and cash checks.
Speaker 10: He just wanted the best for the band.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, he knew what it's his song, and he
knew what he wanted it to sound like. You know,
other songwriters are different. Everybody gets together and I have
this rough idea, let's flesh it out, and everybody kicks
in ideas, but he kind of came to the table
with a written song, knowing what he wanted it to
sound like. And you know, it's gotten more complex when
you see him now, his band, you know, his two
sons are in the band now, and the song has
gotten more complex, and I think better when you hear
it now. It's just it's different. He kind of you know,
it grew as he did CCRK, very simple, and it
just kind of got more complex and more interesting as
time went on.
Speaker 4: So I'm clear.
Speaker 10: I'm team Tina.
Speaker 3: So I remember seeing it at all.
Speaker 6: I think remakes are fantastic.
Speaker 9: I remember seeing icing Tina do it. I think it
was in the film Gimme Shelter, when the Rolling Stones
film of their their nineteen sixty nine tour of America,
which you know culminated at Altamont, of course, but the
bulk of the live stuff was recorded at Brian's favorite,
Madison's Quick Garden, and that's where I can Tina Turner
with the opening act, and they featured them in a
couple of songs. And I believe if my memory is
you know, you know, I've seen the film since, but
I saw it probably when it came out in like
nineteen seventy or so that that was included there too,
and it was just you know, the whole you know,
nice and easy and then nice and rough, you know,
was and oh yeah, they you know, they almost stole
the show. Let's say, let's face it, you don't steal
the show from the Rolling Stones, nobody does. But they
came close.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that's awesome. Cool, all right, well, thank you.
One of my favorites, so that one's good with me.
I went with a sixties group called the Shangri Laws.
They were an American girl group that formed in nineteen
sixty three at Andrew Jackson High School in Queens, New York.
There were four members, two sets of sisters, Mary Weiss
and Elizabeth Betty Weiss, and twins Marguerite, Marge Ganser and
Maryanne Ganser. They took their name from a local restaurant,
Shangri Law, which awesome, good advertising for that restaurant. Don't
know if they're still there. They performed locally in school
and all that. They got picked up for a record deal.
Their first hit was tie I'll Remember with the stupid
parentheses Walking in the sand I Hate Stupid Parentheses, that
hit number five in nineteen sixty four, up against the
Beatles and the Stones. They still hit number five with
their first single, That's Pretty Good. An unknown studio musician
played piano on the demo for that song. That unknown
piano player is named Billy Joel, who I think went
on to other things. He may have another hit or
too under his belt. I think he did all right.
I think I don't know. I'll have to look into
that one. Their next single was their biggest, the number
one hit Leader of the Pack, which I think everybody's heard.
I don't think we need to go into that one.
Speaker 1: Does she really go now?
Speaker 9: With me? She is?
Speaker 10: Well, there she is, let's ask her.
Speaker 6: They started performing with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
and James Brown, who was surprised to see that the
girls were white. He thought they were black from the
way that they sounded, and in an interview James Brown said.
Speaker 4: As one does.
Speaker 6: They supposedly developed a tough girl persona being from Queens,
New York, which they said helped keep away the creeps.
Speaker 9: Love it.
Speaker 6: They had a continuous string of hits and a lot
of touring up until nineteen sixty eight when things took
a turn and the.
Speaker 3: Group broke up.
Speaker 6: Mary Weiss went into the architecture and interior design business.
She later did a record. She recorded an album of
solo material in two thousand and seven titled Dangerous Game,
but that was it with regards to music from the
Shangri Las many years later two thousand and seven, and
she would perform every once in a while, but kind
of left the music business. She died in twenty twenty
four at age seventy five from copd. Her sister, Betty
Weiss was the only one to go on and have
a family, have a kid. She went on to different
jobs and she currently lives on Long Island and seems
to lead a very quiet life. Not that a Shangri
La would get mobbed walking down the street, but kind
of curious as to what she's up to. Marge Ganzer
went back to school, got married, worked for the phone
company on Long Island. I wonder how many calls she dropped.
She died of breast cancer in nineteen ninety eight at
age forty eight, which kind of sucks, and Marianne Ganzer
started having problems with drugs and alcohol as their popularity waned.
She unfortunately died of an opiate overdose in nineteen seventy
at age twenty two. Ooh yeah, that was pretty rough.
The song we're going to hear is called Past, Present,
and Future. It's a spoken word song done over Moonlight Sonata.
Beethoven wrote Moonlight Sonata in eighteen oh two and dedicated
it to one of his students who was a countess,
as in Dala Dala y'all. I wonder why it was
originally named Piano Sonata number four, but the name Moonlight
Sonata was suggested by a poet in eighteen thirty two
after Beethoven's death, and the new title just caught on.
The piece immediately became popular after it was published, and
again at this time it was sheet music, so they
would print it and people would buy the sheet music.
And it's another great example of after he lost his hearing,
how his pieces shifted down to the lower end of
the spectrum on the piano. So here we go, past,
present and future by the shangri la.
Speaker 2: Past past.
Speaker 15: Well, now let me tell you about the past. The
past is filled with silent joys and broken toys, laughing
girls and teasing boys. Z I ever in love.
Speaker 2: I called it love.
Speaker 15: I mean it felt like love.
Speaker 2: There were moments when.
Speaker 15: Well, there were moments when.
Speaker 2: Present.
Speaker 9: Go out with you?
Speaker 15: Why not.
Speaker 7: Do I like to dance?
Speaker 15: Of course, take a walk along the beach tonight, I'd
love to. Don't try to touch me. Don't try to
touch me, because that will never happen again. Shall we dance.
Speaker 11: The future?
Speaker 15: Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow's a long way off. Maybe someday I'll
have somebody's hand, Maybe somewhere someone will understand.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 15: I used to sing a tisket a tasket, a green
and yellow basket. I'm all packed up and I'm on
my way, and I'm gonna fall in love. But at
the moment it doesn't look good. At the moment, it
will never happen again. I don't think it will ever
happen again.
Speaker 3: Nice, uplifting little too.
Speaker 10: I had the vinyl of this. I used to always
skip that song.
Speaker 6: Really yeah, it's kind of a downer compared to their
other material, But it was well done, and it came
up while it was playing. That was not Billy Joel
playing the piano on that. He did the demo when
they were putting it together, and he didn't play the
actual recording that was released on the album. So there
you go another. Yeah, Moonlight's Not is another very common
student piece that kids learn again with good reason. You know,
it's such a cool tune in my opinion, can I say?
Speaker 7: So?
Speaker 6: There, that's it. We made it to the end, a
whole lot of Beethoven, a whole lot of culture. We
learned something and everybody survived. So the next step is
to get Mercedes to come see a symphony.
Speaker 9: Okay, we'll make it happen. I saw a symphony one
set at Carnegie Hall. But it was it wasn't. It
wasn't Johann Sebastian Bach. It was p d Q Bock.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 9: I did.
Speaker 6: Okay, you want to explain.
Speaker 9: Oh yeah, it's well, this is more in Barber's territory.
It's a parody they do, you know, Instead of the
four seasons, it was the four seasonings. So and it's
all you know, and it's all.
Speaker 6: P d Q back was he was a professor Peter Shiceley,
Peter pass away not that long ago. But he he
would do some amazing stuff. He would take two symphonies
and put him on top of each other and make
it work somehow. So I mean it's total nerd stuff,
I will admit.
Speaker 9: But well, what what what happened was a friend of
mine was actually singing in in the you know, in
the in the chorus in the back, you know, and
so I went, you know, and and actually got afterwards,
got to meet Chicile and you know, got his autograph
and stuff.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 4: Nice.
Speaker 6: I do have a bunch of the CDs downstairs, I
have to admit.
Speaker 9: But that that that's about aside from seeing you Brian
play in the orchestra.
Speaker 6: That that that's my I remember you got Well we'll
come back to that in a second.
Speaker 9: But I saw the I saw the Electric Light Orchestra.
But that's not quite the different too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Now, Chicile PDQ Buck they did a lot of
their recording it Sony Purchase across the river from us,
not that far, so they did it. They did it
pretty locally.
Speaker 9: Yeah. That may have been when they rehearsed, you know,
because I knew, you know, I was aware of the
whole thing going on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but it's pretty funny and they do a lot
of funny things like sound effects and all that.
Speaker 9: So yeah, it was almost like, yeah, like a Spike
Jones for classical.
Speaker 6: I was just going to say that, and he would
get big names coming out, like it's ot Pearlman would
come out and play a solo, so then Chicily would
sit down to play with him, but hold the bow
in the wrong hand and hold the violin and move.
Speaker 3: The violin and stead.
Speaker 1: I've seen on YouTube.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's it's pretty funny stuff. Yeah, I remember you
came out to see one of the symphonies you want
a bunch of the crambones, and you guys came on
a Tchaikowsky night, which even the orchestra gets a little
sick of Tchaikowski because my got it goes on forever,
and uh, I appreciate you coming, but I think you
got scared away for a little while because yeah, it
could go on for a good forty five minutes, and
I yeah, even members of the orchestra get a little fatigued.
You'll often see like a movement of a Tchaikowsky symphony
instead of all of them, and we did all of them.
So we'll have to get you back. We'll get Mercedes
to come when it's not a Tchaikowsky night because it's
a lot to absorb.
Speaker 10: Maybe some Vivaldi, yeah.
Speaker 3: Is nice, but yeah, bach is good. So don't worry.
Speaker 6: I will set you up and you will come. Okay,
we'll get you and we'll we'll buy your beverages before
and but beverages after could tolerable. All right, all right,
just don't clap until everybody else claps. That's don't be
the one you know out.
Speaker 4: To worry.
Speaker 3: All right, good, good, good good.
Speaker 6: I think it's time to pull the plug.
Speaker 3: What do you think?
Speaker 6: Any closing thoughts before we wrap it up and ski
daddle out to Nebraska. Get some angst, some joy.
Speaker 4: Nothing, all right, we listen to some good music.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely so. I thought these selections were great. We
didn't do any of the low hanging fruit, so I
like that. We dig the we dug a little deeper.
So very cool. Thank you, Crambones. Excellent selections. Thank you
all for joining us for the Rock and Roll History Show.
Don't forget to subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Check
out all the other shows we do here. There is
something for everybody. Go out, get some culture, listen to
some Beethoven. It won't kill you, guys. Promise we'll be
back next week with another brand new episode. Until then,
peace out, everybody, rock.
Speaker 8: Cop Bottom, it cram.
Speaker 2: Okay, Bye Bye.
Speaker 6: Hudson River Radio dot Com, a subsidiary of Glacier Entertainment LLC,
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