Speaker 1: Hudson Riverradio dot com.
Speaker 2: Now we have to find another school for you.
Speaker 3: And if you get kicked out of that one, you're
Speaker 3: going straight in the army. Well, you'll be sent straight
Speaker 3: to America's latest military quagmire. Will it be North Korea? Iran?
Speaker 4: Anything's possible with Commander Kuckoo Bananas in charge?
Speaker 5: How does sassa Janni from the Asberry Jukes?
Speaker 6: Hey, this is Tom Chapin.
Speaker 3: Hello, just preaching in Rock and Roll History Show.
Speaker 7: You're listening right now?
Speaker 3: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Rock and Roll History
Speaker 3: Show on Hudson River Radio. I'm Brian Horowitz. Remember in
Speaker 3: high school, all that geometry that he kept saying, when
Speaker 3: am I ever gonna use this? Why do I need
Speaker 3: to know that?
Speaker 6: Well?
Speaker 3: Guess what tonight we're talking about shapes and we're gonna
Speaker 3: use it, and you're gonna have to call your old
Speaker 3: man teacher and apologize when this show is over. But
Speaker 3: before we hop in has always allowed me to introduce
Speaker 3: all the crambones who were joining us here tonight, First
Speaker 3: and foremost from the Richter Observatory. He hates speed bumps,
Speaker 3: but he's slowly getting over them. Neil Richter is back.
Speaker 5: Oh, it's gonna be a bumpy ride today.
Speaker 3: I think, oh, very good.
Speaker 5: Well, how are you doing?
Speaker 8: Everybody?
Speaker 3: Good to see you from paranormal yours. She believes Humpty
Speaker 3: Dumpty was pushed Gail Nuclem's back.
Speaker 9: Hi Gail, and he wants the wall.
Speaker 3: From the silver screen. After the Saint Patrick's Day parade,
Speaker 3: she was in a bar, one of those that had
Speaker 3: all the aquariums all the way around it. So in
Speaker 3: walks a pipe and drum band, and one of the
Speaker 3: guys puts his bagpipes down so he could go get
Speaker 3: a drink, and an octopus crawls out of the aquarium
Speaker 3: makes its way over to the bagpipes. The guy comes
Speaker 3: back and says, what are you doing, and the octopus says,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to get her pajamas off. Mercedes Kent is here.
Speaker 2: Perfect but with the beer green, That's all I want
Speaker 2: to know. Of course, it was okay, good at hey, everybody.
Speaker 3: And finally, after a multi week absence, making his triumphant return.
Speaker 3: Some say it's got the most triumphant in the history
Speaker 3: of our country. Nobody has ever had this much triumphant
Speaker 3: in terms of levels of triumphant there's so much triumphant.
Speaker 3: We're gonna slap thirty percent tariff on the triumphant coming
Speaker 3: in from Mexico, or as they like to call it,
Speaker 3: l triumphant. He's our official teacher. He never farts in
Speaker 3: the classroom. He's a private tutor. Welcome back, John Kelly.
Speaker 10: Hey, everybody, it's great to be back.
Speaker 7: And it's a huge.
Speaker 3: Return, huge triumphant. No one's ever seen this amount of triumphant.
Speaker 10: Nobody, nobody, Frankly. Frankly, it's just enormous.
Speaker 3: It's levels that have never been seen before. As our
Speaker 3: official medical person, she wants to know why saying have
Speaker 3: a nice day is considered polite, but saying enjoy the
Speaker 3: next twenty four hours is somehow creepy.
Speaker 9: Jessica Dean is bad.
Speaker 11: Hey, everybody, how are you?
Speaker 3: And, last, but not least, the host of shaving cream,
Speaker 3: She learned that Rossini composed the William tell overture all
Speaker 3: by himself. That makes him the lone arranger. Barbara, Hi, Barb,
Speaker 3: very good, Ryan, thank you? Hey, everybody. All right, I'm
Speaker 3: done torturing everybody tonight. We're talking about shapes, geometry, all
Speaker 3: that good stuff. We're gonna hop right in and John,
Speaker 3: since you've been gone the longest and you have the
Speaker 3: most homework to make up for, you get to go first.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 10: Well, for the subject of shapes, there is a plethora
Speaker 10: of choices to pick from. Actually, the toughest part of
Speaker 10: this was not finding a decent piece of music. It
Speaker 10: was weeding through what would be the best for the show.
Speaker 10: And a lot of my choices that I've picked over
Speaker 10: the last few months even before that have kind of
Speaker 10: gravitated to the late sixties and seventies, I think, and
Speaker 10: tonight is no different. So I have picked Circle Sky
Speaker 10: from the Monkeys and this was a ninety nineteen sixty
Speaker 10: eight version. It was written by Michael Nesmith. Okay, and
Speaker 10: it also appeared in their film called Head as a
Speaker 10: live concert performance. It's an interesting song. It's it's written
Speaker 10: in performance in a style of reminiscent to Bo Diddley,
Speaker 10: mostly in a single chord a major, and the lyrics
Speaker 10: are impressions of sights and sounds on a Monkey's tour,
Speaker 10: while Hamilton's smiling down, one of the lyrics refers to
Speaker 10: heavy to a Hamilton music stand used for rehearsal. Rehearsals
Speaker 10: and recording. Now, that's not something I would have I
Speaker 10: even realized had I not been a part of this show.
Speaker 10: Just dismissed it as a cool little you know, toe
Speaker 10: tapping kind of a monkey song, like all the monkey
Speaker 10: songs are toe tapping, you know. I kind of like
Speaker 10: it there. Sometimes I look at the Monkeys as a
Speaker 10: what's the word I'm looking for?
Speaker 7: I don't know.
Speaker 10: They're kind of like a lost late sixties band to me.
Speaker 10: You don't hear much about them. You did in the seventies,
Speaker 10: maybe a little in the eighties, but I don't know.
Speaker 10: I can't speak for the rest of you, but you know,
Speaker 10: the Monkeys are not spoken about as other you know.
Speaker 3: Yes they did. They had a reunion in the eighties,
Speaker 3: like eighty six ish and they did it tour. And
Speaker 3: Mickey Dolan's is still out playing all over the place.
Speaker 3: He hasn't slowed down. So right, they're out there.
Speaker 10: They're out there exactly, So why don't we get right
Speaker 10: into the song and then I have a little bit
Speaker 10: of a little piece about it after when we're done.
Speaker 3: So it's just.
Speaker 4: Put be very.
Speaker 3: Very but very flock.
Speaker 4: Yes, but very.
Speaker 8: Thin.
Speaker 12: Let let's do.
Speaker 4: H played it once?
Speaker 10: Let me, okay, that was Circle Sky by the Monkeys.
Speaker 10: Kind of a little interesting little tidbit about the song itself.
Speaker 10: While the movie that we were talking about earlier included
Speaker 10: the song performed live from the Monkeys in Salt Lake City, Utah,
Speaker 10: in May of nineteen sixty eight during a free show
Speaker 10: at the Valley Music Hall, the original soundtrack album instead
Speaker 10: substituted a studio recording made by Nessmuth and session musicians,
Speaker 10: which that became a bit of tension with the entire group.
Speaker 10: The film version also intercut Vietnam War footage with concert
Speaker 10: footage and featured several mirrored shots of the band on stage.
Speaker 10: So I think this is true, like late sixties, early
Speaker 10: seventies kind of psychedelic monkeys is kind of the best
Speaker 10: way to describe it. But you know, it's a fun song.
Speaker 10: You know, they were a fun group. They probably were
Speaker 10: fun to hang out with back in the day if
Speaker 10: you had the opportunity, I'm sure, But I hope you
Speaker 10: all enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Cool. Yeah, that was a good one at the beginning.
Speaker 3: Was almost a little pearl Jamie. Yeah, you know, yeah, cute, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 3: all right, Well, welcome back, Thank you, John.
Speaker 10: Thank you everybody good to be here, and Jess, you
Speaker 10: are up.
Speaker 11: Okay.
Speaker 1: So when we first discussed this topic and I started
Speaker 1: looking for ideas, I saw lots of songs about circles, diamonds, hearts,
Speaker 1: and stars.
Speaker 11: I was looking for something really unique.
Speaker 1: So when I came across a song called Parallelograms, I
Speaker 1: was definitely intrigued. The song fits the topic for sure,
Speaker 1: so I think I nailed this assignment. Even the lyrics
Speaker 1: are basically just.
Speaker 11: Names of shapes.
Speaker 1: The song is by Linda Perhacks and was first released
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy and it was largely unsuccessful. So of
Speaker 1: course I was thinking, why would anybody write about this?
Speaker 1: Is there a deeper hidden meaning.
Speaker 11: To these lyrics?
Speaker 1: In my quest to find these answers, I came across
Speaker 1: an amazing article and interview with the artist which was
Speaker 1: published by NPR in twenty fourteen. So Linda Perhacks was
Speaker 1: a dental hygienist who worked in Los Angeles and had
Speaker 1: a lot of celebrities as clients in you know, in
Speaker 1: her practice.
Speaker 11: So they came to get their teeth cleaned.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: She she also so she had her life as a
Speaker 1: dental hygienist and and interacting with these, you know, all
Speaker 1: kinds of famous people and stuff. And then where she
Speaker 1: lived was basically in sort of a hippie kind of area,
Speaker 1: and a lot of her friends and her husband at
Speaker 1: the time like this very artsy kind of musical sort
Speaker 1: of culture, and you know, her she had this creative
Speaker 1: side and wanted to write music and stuff, so so
Speaker 1: she she would she would write and do pieces.
Speaker 2: And one day one of her.
Speaker 1: Dental hygiene clients, who was not an actor but more
Speaker 1: on the production side of things, and she did say
Speaker 1: that she really always enjoyed like interacting with those individuals.
Speaker 1: It was Leonard Rosenman, and you know, he was saying, like,
Speaker 1: you're you're deeper than this, like I know that there's
Speaker 1: something about you that's, you know, more than just a
Speaker 1: dental hygienis.
Speaker 11: And she's like, how did you know?
Speaker 1: So I guess they were looking for, you know, more material,
Speaker 1: like the next big thing, and he was like, I
Speaker 1: want you to write something for me, like give me
Speaker 1: a tape, and she did and he fell in love
Speaker 1: with it, and you know, wanted to move forward with production,
Speaker 1: which they did, and then of course the label like
Speaker 1: basically completely changed her music and it was not successful
Speaker 1: at all. She even said when she got her copy
Speaker 1: of the vinyl, she threw it in the trash. So
Speaker 1: I want to read to you a little bit of
Speaker 1: something that she said about writing the music itself. So
Speaker 1: she was talking about taking a drive on the venture,
Speaker 1: a freeway like kind of through the desert, and she said,
Speaker 1: in the sky, I saw beautiful lights, hard to describe,
Speaker 1: but they were so magnificent. And I said, Linda, you're
Speaker 1: seeing music, you're just not hearing it. Stop and draw
Speaker 1: what you're seeing before you forget.
Speaker 6: So she did.
Speaker 1: So she went into a deserted gas station and started
Speaker 1: drawing pictures on pieces of paper so that she wouldn't
Speaker 1: forget what she'd seen. And then she went home, took
Speaker 1: a melody that she'd been working on and put it
Speaker 1: on the front end of that idea and created this
Speaker 1: three dimensional sound sculpture from the beauty that she had
Speaker 1: just seen in the sky, and that was the song Parallelograms.
Speaker 1: So that was her vision when she was creating the song,
Speaker 1: and then, like I said, when it was actually ultimately produced,
Speaker 1: and then, like pressed, it was not the sound that
Speaker 1: she wanted. She described the album as it was wooden.
Speaker 1: It had no depth. When I heard my first vinyl,
Speaker 1: I threw it in the trash. It bothered me. I said,
Speaker 1: I can't listen to this. So that was again what
Speaker 1: was produced in the nineteen seventies. So the songs are
Speaker 1: somewhere in the neighborhood of about four and a half
Speaker 1: minutes long.
Speaker 11: You'll get the idea when you hear the first bit.
Speaker 1: So let's take a listen to what was originally released
Speaker 1: in nineteen.
Speaker 8: Seventy long Grab lou Spy, You're a long grad Spy,
Speaker 8: roun round rail Ground.
Speaker 7: Quacky Drew.
Speaker 3: To Lucky you Drew.
Speaker 7: You don't want to sign side see.
Speaker 6: Ba ground.
Speaker 7: Spa ground Spy, ground.
Speaker 2: Semibal Semi many.
Speaker 13: Realrial.
Speaker 3: So boy, that got old fast.
Speaker 9: That was interesting.
Speaker 3: That's a very nice way of playing.
Speaker 1: It's right eterial now, so so here's there is such
Speaker 1: a good way I think.
Speaker 3: So yeah.
Speaker 1: So basically the album flopped and Linda went back to
Speaker 1: being a dental hygienist. And fast forward a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of years and it's the year two thousand now, and
Speaker 1: she almost died of pneumonia that year.
Speaker 3: So now I can't make jokes.
Speaker 2: That is true.
Speaker 6: That is true.
Speaker 1: Actually, And there's a quote from her interview where it
Speaker 1: said the pulmonary experts walked away saying she's not going
Speaker 1: to live.
Speaker 11: We're not coming back. This girl's not going to make it.
Speaker 2: But she did.
Speaker 11: She defied everyone.
Speaker 1: But she had been in the hospital for a really
Speaker 1: long time, and when she got home in her mailbox
Speaker 1: was a CD from Michael Piper, who ran a small
Speaker 1: CD company in Brooklyn, saying if this is the right Linda,
Speaker 1: I've been searching for you and basically saying this album,
Speaker 1: this music is getting a lot of traction and we
Speaker 1: want to collaborate with you.
Speaker 6: So they did.
Speaker 1: They collaborated, and then she explained to him that, you
Speaker 1: know how, the original release of the song was not
Speaker 1: the music that she had actually created. So what she
Speaker 1: said to him was, you're copying the wrong master. You're
Speaker 1: copying that old vinyl that's lost half of its sound.
Speaker 1: So she actually had maintained an original of her reel
Speaker 1: to reel that had been in her house in California
Speaker 1: in a closet for thirty something years.
Speaker 11: So what had actually happened was that the.
Speaker 1: Tape itself like kind of melted together, so it was
Speaker 1: all stuck together, so they actually had to bring it
Speaker 1: back to New York and like work on it in
Speaker 1: like this very intense manners.
Speaker 3: To bring up the temperature and as a whole thing
Speaker 3: behind that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: But they made enough progress with it that they were
Speaker 1: able to make a CD out of the master and
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, it just it took off.
Speaker 3: So it was.
Speaker 1: It was re released then, and she developed a following.
Speaker 1: So forty four years after her original album was released,
Speaker 1: she released a second album. So just what an amazing
Speaker 1: story inspiring woman. I believe if I calculated her, if
Speaker 1: I did my math correctly, I believe she is somewhere
Speaker 1: around the age of eighty two right now, and she
Speaker 1: is still active and still performing and still writing music.
Speaker 1: So I think I managed to find a copy of
Speaker 1: the re release that was much harder to track down,
Speaker 1: So honestly, I'm not even sure if it's the right one,
Speaker 1: but we can take a quick listen to what I
Speaker 1: found that I think is the two thousand release.
Speaker 11: That should be a sort of different sound. So what
Speaker 11: did you guys think? Did you hear a different sound?
Speaker 3: Totally different?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I don't want to see she almost died so I
Speaker 3: can't make a joke, so I was gonna say it
Speaker 3: wasn't really better, it was different different.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just you know, I I have to admit,
Speaker 1: like I'm not necessarily in love with the song, but
Speaker 1: when I read her story, I was like, this is
Speaker 1: just such an incredible, you know, story, and what an
Speaker 1: amazing life to lead. And I think that interview is
Speaker 1: definitely worth checking out the article. I think there's a
Speaker 1: couple of video interviews out there with her too, And
Speaker 1: you know, logistically, I almost had to miss this episode
Speaker 1: and I was really kind of bummed about it because
Speaker 1: I was I was so excited to share her story
Speaker 1: and how inspiring it is.
Speaker 11: So you know, I just I thought it was incredible.
Speaker 6: And I thank you guys for letting me share the
Speaker 6: Story's cool.
Speaker 3: It's kind of a lesson that, you know, if you're
Speaker 3: going to be a songwriter, that you really want to
Speaker 3: maintain control over your own material to make it really
Speaker 3: you know, it's okay to collaborate and whatnot, but you know,
Speaker 3: make it sound the way you want to sound.
Speaker 2: I get it, Yeah, but they don't make it easy
Speaker 2: to do that.
Speaker 3: No, definitely, no, definitely not.
Speaker 2: I mean it was on all the control, right.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could put out your own stuff, but
Speaker 3: good luck getting ears on it. It was hard enough
Speaker 3: even in the sixties seventies FM radio trying to get
Speaker 3: somebody to listen. Now where everybody can put stuff out
Speaker 3: on YouTube and you can put your own stuff on
Speaker 3: Spotify and do you know, it's very hard to get
Speaker 3: anybody's attention. So yeah, it's the music was interesting. Her
Speaker 3: vocals were just not my cup of tea.
Speaker 2: That was the part that a little too dreamy for you.
Speaker 3: Just the harmony just not my thing.
Speaker 9: It reminds me.
Speaker 7: Of music that.
Speaker 9: People like massage therapists or people to classes doing like meditation.
Speaker 5: Like New age, like yeah, yeah, reminds me of that.
Speaker 3: Nothing wrong, just not really my cup of tea. But yeah, say,
Speaker 3: that's that's why we're here, is to hear new things.
Speaker 5: So well, I think under certain certain conditions it would
Speaker 5: probably sound a lot better.
Speaker 11: Like in context, whatever could you be talking about, Neil.
Speaker 5: I'll leave it up to your imagination, but I think
Speaker 5: you get I think you get edition.
Speaker 2: Of Neil's brain in the seventies pretty much.
Speaker 7: I'm not context.
Speaker 5: That's all you need to know.
Speaker 3: I'm with you yet, for the remix that she changed
Speaker 3: the angles in the parallelogram, straighten it out at all?
Speaker 12: Or was it?
Speaker 3: No? All right, thanks Jess, Sorry to beat up your artist.
Speaker 2: Story artists.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I haven't heard anything else she did,
Speaker 3: but I will say trying to type her name in
Speaker 3: P E R H A C s it autocorrection.
Speaker 2: Changing it of course, yes, I know, and you're like, no.
Speaker 3: It's perhaps perhaps, perhaps perhaps. Yeah, so that was an
Speaker 3: adventure too, So thanks for that. All right, quick break,
Speaker 3: We'll be back with more right after this. Stick around
Speaker 3: Hudson River Radio.
Speaker 10: Your dog likes us.
Speaker 11: This concludes the first part of this cassette.
Speaker 2: Please turn the cassette over and begin again on side two.
Speaker 11: This is Hudson River Radio dot.
Speaker 3: Com ah Way and welcome back tonight. It's shapes and geometry,
Speaker 3: all that good stuff, and Mercedes, we are up to you.
Speaker 3: We are So.
Speaker 14: The lyrics of my song have nothing really to do
Speaker 14: with shapes, but the word diamond is in the title,
Speaker 14: so I feel like he counts. It's a song by
Speaker 14: David Bowie. I don't think I have to talk too
Speaker 14: much about who he was. He is, of course a legend.
Speaker 14: The song is Diamond Doggs from the album of the
Speaker 14: same name, released in nineteen seventy four. The track was
Speaker 14: not released as a single in the US, but reached
Speaker 14: number twenty one in the UK. It was Bowie's eighth
Speaker 14: studio album and was a concept album. He had disbanded
Speaker 14: his backing band, The Spiders from Mars, and was not
Speaker 14: sure what direction to go in. According to Chris O'Leary,
Speaker 14: a biographer, the concept was a combination of several projects
Speaker 14: that Bowie had been working on. It has also been
Speaker 14: suggested that the song was influenced by Dalgren, a science
Speaker 14: fiction novel by Samuel R.
Speaker 2: Delaney.
Speaker 14: Bowie was an admirer of William S. Burrows and his
Speaker 14: working methods. That being of cut up technique is what
Speaker 14: it's called a mechanical method of juxtaposition, in which Burrows
Speaker 14: literally cut up passages of prose by himself and other
Speaker 14: writers and then pasted them back together at random. This
Speaker 14: makes the lyrics very disjointed. Previously, Bowie was inspired to
Speaker 14: use this method on a musical based on Ziggy's Stardist
Speaker 14: and said that at the time, and this is a quote,
Speaker 14: forty scenes are in it and it would be nice
Speaker 14: if the characters and actors would learn the scenes and
Speaker 14: we all shuffled them around in a hat the afternoon
Speaker 14: of the performance and just performed it as the seeds
Speaker 14: come out.
Speaker 3: That's like those refrigerator magnets they do for kids.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 14: He was also a big fan of Orwell and nineteen
Speaker 14: eighty four, and he wanted to adapt it for television,
Speaker 14: but neither project happened. At the end of nineteen seventy three,
Speaker 14: George Orwell's widow Sonya Orwell, denied Bowie the rights to
Speaker 14: use the novel. The rejection annoyed Bowie, who criticized her
Speaker 14: for it in Circus Magazine. A few years later, she
Speaker 14: refused to allow any adaptation of her husband's work for
Speaker 14: the rest of her life. No adaptations were possible until
Speaker 14: after her death in nineteen eighty Unable to adapt the novel,
Speaker 14: Bowie decided to create his own apocalyptic scenario inspired by
Speaker 14: the works of Burroughs. In this song, we listeners are
Speaker 14: introduced to Halloween Jack, who lives on the top of
Speaker 14: Manhattan Chase, an abandoned skyscraper in a post apocalyptic Manhattan,
Speaker 14: and he was a real cool cat And who were
Speaker 14: the Diamond Dogs. As Bowie put it in nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 14: the Diamond Dogs were ragamuffins who had taken over this
Speaker 14: barren city, this city that was falling apart. Describing them
Speaker 14: as violent Oliver twists like if Fagin's gang had gone
Speaker 14: completely a poop. Bowie envisioned them as a roller skating
Speaker 14: as roller skating vicious hoods with funny colored hair, whose
Speaker 14: moto transportation was lifted right out of the pages of
Speaker 14: Burrows the Wild Boys. It wasn't a way a precursor,
Speaker 14: precursor to what was a punk thing, you know, Bowie
Speaker 14: told the BBC that's where it was going. He went
Speaker 14: on to say they'd been able to break into windows
Speaker 14: of jewelers and things, so they dressed themselves up in
Speaker 14: furs and diamonds and all that. They had to snaggle
Speaker 14: teeth and they were really filthy.
Speaker 3: From Dig they should have met Linda Perhaks.
Speaker 2: From dig dot com.
Speaker 14: The song's opening is a sample of crowd noises taken
Speaker 14: from Faces nineteen seventy four live album Coast to Coast,
Speaker 14: and that's Rod's torr yelling hey as the guitar riff
Speaker 14: gets in Destride and also it closes on a few
Speaker 14: podidliisms for a good measure across both its lyrics and music.
Speaker 14: Diamond Dogs was Bowie's magpie mindset, working over time to
Speaker 14: construct a post apocalyptic landscape populated with little Johnny Rottens
Speaker 14: and Sid Viciouses, all skinny because they hadn't eaten enough.
Speaker 2: And of course it is Bowie at the beginning of
Speaker 2: the track saying this ain't rock and roll. This is genocide.
Speaker 5: Hear it.
Speaker 7: As it pulled you out of the York Sign town.
Speaker 8: You ask all the last why when the silver call
Speaker 8: helping the tense stuff just sock of resource. Doc Dowley
Speaker 8: speaking all scanning down on your hands and knee.
Speaker 13: I'm sorry, I'll not protected for this land to see
Speaker 13: the diamond dots of oats and they hop their trees,
Speaker 13: looks at the ground.
Speaker 7: They will mad gnsman kill bel.
Speaker 4: A keeper friends Lain.
Speaker 8: They come home or maybe they can come to me.
Speaker 4: And they got ress, come me, I go.
Speaker 13: Come and call you can't you tap in the fall?
Speaker 8: Young?
Speaker 13: They call down the Dimon Dogs, young girl. They called
Speaker 13: me down the Dimon Dot time.
Speaker 7: It's a real.
Speaker 9: Cool cat and he lives some time.
Speaker 7: On the head chase Peto das Brook.
Speaker 13: So he sat down the wool on True Spirit.
Speaker 3: On Tossic old man need this little bossl with his
Speaker 3: first town of Brooch.
Speaker 12: She its the sas detail.
Speaker 4: She wins a watch to sweat.
Speaker 2: Came out and say something.
Speaker 13: Mother did say what I.
Speaker 4: Came serene.
Speaker 2: That if you can follow the lyrics, you're a better
Speaker 2: human than I.
Speaker 14: It is confusing, but I feel like the descriptive descriptions
Speaker 14: are absolutely brilliant. I mean, mannequins with kill appeal. I
Speaker 14: don't know what that would mean, but I want.
Speaker 2: To know what that means.
Speaker 14: If you have a chance, you should look up the
Speaker 14: lyrics because, like I said, I'm not sure what's happening,
Speaker 14: but the descriptions are very cool. So the Belgian artist
Speaker 14: Guy Pellert Pellerite painted the controversial cover artwork depicting Bowie
Speaker 14: as half man, half dog hybrid. The initial release had
Speaker 14: the genitals showing that it was clearly male. RCA demanded
Speaker 14: that the painting be airbrush to make the dog gender neutral.
Speaker 14: How much do you think those are worth today? Those
Speaker 14: original ones?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: So that's it. That's diamond Dogs.
Speaker 1: I couldn't follow the lyrics, definitely, but like I was
Speaker 1: expecting a much more musically just disjointed piece after listening
Speaker 1: to your description, and I felt like the music kind
Speaker 1: of flowed.
Speaker 14: Yeah, it was just the lyrics said he cut up
Speaker 14: and repasted together.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I can see why it's catchy because you just
Speaker 3: sing along and you don't know, so you don't know
Speaker 3: what you're singing. You're just singing along. And if you
Speaker 3: screw up the lyrics, you're not ruining the song, you know, right.
Speaker 14: So I love the part about Halloween Jack who lives
Speaker 14: in the top of Manhattan Chase, but the elevators broke.
Speaker 2: Does anybody catch the next part?
Speaker 1: So he so he comes down our rope?
Speaker 2: Is that what they said?
Speaker 4: Rope?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, good to know. I did look up the lyrics,
Speaker 2: but I forgot to check that part. I was curious.
Speaker 3: All right, nice, all right, good one, Thank you Mercedes
Speaker 3: uh Neil. What do you have for us?
Speaker 5: And oh well, I got a song about shapes, but
Speaker 5: I ain't no square that is true?
Speaker 6: This we know.
Speaker 5: And this the song that I've chosen is titled Pull
Speaker 5: Shapes by the Pipettes. And if you know, you know,
Speaker 5: But the Pipettes they were an English indie pop girl
Speaker 5: group who are active between two thousand and three and
Speaker 5: twenty eleven. The band was the brainchild of singer songwriter
Speaker 5: Robert Barry, who went by the name of Monster Bobby.
Speaker 8: I love that, and.
Speaker 5: He sought to emulate the Phil Spector girl group sound
Speaker 5: in style of the nineteen sixties, but also give it
Speaker 5: a more modern twist. I'd say not unlike the way
Speaker 5: the Go Gos or Banana Rama did in the eighties.
Speaker 5: Though described as an experiment in reviving the vibe of
Speaker 5: the sixties girl group aesthetic, the band insisted that they
Speaker 5: were not quote a manufactured studio creation. Their name combines
Speaker 5: the reference of a laboratory instrument. I guess a pipette
Speaker 5: is kind of like a tube pipe.
Speaker 3: That well, okay that yeah, they pronounce the name. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it sounds more British if you say, that's what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the why I've heard it.
Speaker 3: So anyway, Yeah, it's a little squeezy thing. Yeah, you'd
Speaker 3: fill a little sample.
Speaker 5: With and these as well as a nod to the
Speaker 5: similarly named groups of the nineteen sixties like the Ronets,
Speaker 5: So there you go. The group was originally they consisted
Speaker 5: of three female singers Julia Clark Lowse, Rose eleanor Dougal
Speaker 5: who they just called Rose, and Rebecca Stevens who went
Speaker 5: by the name of Riot Becky. And they were backed
Speaker 5: by an all male band known as the Cassettes, again
Speaker 5: with the Ets, and of course they were led by
Speaker 5: our man Monster Bobby.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 5: By the time that their debut album, We Are the
Speaker 5: Pipettes came out in July of two thousand and six,
Speaker 5: Clark Lowse had already left the band and she'd been
Speaker 5: replaced by Gweno's Saunders, who simply went by the name Gueno.
Speaker 5: Four singles were released from that album, and the most
Speaker 5: successful being Pull Shapes, the song that We're about to
Speaker 5: Hear that peaked at number twenty six on the UK
Speaker 5: Singles Chart. The entire debut album was remixed then in
Speaker 5: two thousand and seven for release here in the US.
Speaker 5: And oh, by the way, the term to pull shapes,
Speaker 5: it's British slang. It's a British term and it means
Speaker 5: to dance. So hey, let's hit the dance floor and
Speaker 5: pull some shapes.
Speaker 3: Pit up their dads.
Speaker 5: With me.
Speaker 4: You want to not be to me and be all
Speaker 4: casbin me money, I want to break all shape.
Speaker 6: I like to do st.
Speaker 4: I like to hear you just let the music shape
Speaker 4: leading the.
Speaker 8: Last nd.
Speaker 3: Start.
Speaker 4: Well, I've just gotta break out. I'm just fun to
Speaker 4: move episodes about me.
Speaker 13: Want to know.
Speaker 6: Me?
Speaker 8: Mother?
Speaker 13: Cast meet on money and I want to bring shape.
Speaker 4: It's that drum me.
Speaker 2: And is the base shape?
Speaker 4: Well, then them is going to put together.
Speaker 7: I'm sort.
Speaker 13: You want to stop me.
Speaker 4: Jest, bring me all the money and we want to break?
Speaker 12: What do you do when the music stuff? What do
Speaker 12: you do when the music stop?
Speaker 7: What do you do when the music stop?
Speaker 5: What do you do?
Speaker 13: Six?
Speaker 4: Stop your hands?
Speaker 8: You want some mu shut your hands, you want some more?
Speaker 13: Shape your hands, you want some more shave your hands,
Speaker 13: you want sat shut your hands, you want.
Speaker 5: Well, I'm not given to dancing all that much, but hey,
Speaker 5: I couldn't help dancing.
Speaker 12: So great.
Speaker 14: Yeah, you've totally been holding out of men all the
Speaker 14: good stuff to yourself.
Speaker 5: Well anyway. By two thousand and eight, singer Rose and
Speaker 5: riot Becky had left the group, meaning that none of
Speaker 5: the original female singers were left. Now several members of
Speaker 5: the Cassettes had also left and been replaced, so by
Speaker 5: twenty ten, the vocal lineup consisted of Gueno and her
Speaker 5: younger sister Annie Glass for recording and performing, and they
Speaker 5: did it as a duo. The band's second album, called
Speaker 5: Earth Versus the Pipets, was released in October of twenty
Speaker 5: ten in the UK, along with a couple of singles,
Speaker 5: but the album was a commercial flop and the band
Speaker 5: disbanded in twenty eleven. Now the song poll Shapes was
Speaker 5: featured on an episode of the Showtime TV series The
Speaker 5: l Word, and also appeared on the soundtrack of a
Speaker 5: twenty eighteen rom com called Angus Thongs and Perfect Snogging,
Speaker 5: which I don't.
Speaker 3: Know what it means, and I you know exactly what
Speaker 3: that means.
Speaker 5: I know, then we'll tell me after we're you know
Speaker 5: later anyway, And this surprised me. But in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 5: Billboard ranked the song as number eighteen on their list
Speaker 5: of the one hundred Greatest girl group Songs of All Time.
Speaker 3: Okay, wow, that's.
Speaker 5: That's pretty that's pretty heavy stuff, you know when you
Speaker 5: consider all the great girl group songs that are out there.
Speaker 3: So well, that's it.
Speaker 5: That's my shapely song.
Speaker 3: That was a good one. I like that style down. Yeah,
Speaker 3: very cool, all right, Barbara, what do you have for us?
Speaker 6: Oh? I always hate to follow Neil because his songs
Speaker 6: are so awesome, But here goes nothing. The song I
Speaker 6: chose is called turn a Square and it's by a
Speaker 6: band called the Shins, and I just after listening to
Speaker 6: samples of all these different shape related songs, I just
Speaker 6: kind of liked this one. That's why I picked it.
Speaker 12: So.
Speaker 6: The Shins were formed in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in nineteen
Speaker 6: ninety six by singer James Mercer as a side project
Speaker 6: to his main project called Flake Music, which was actually
Speaker 6: his band name. Mercer has been the only constant band
Speaker 6: member of the Shins, with the lineup changing at various times.
Speaker 6: The Shins single Oh God, I Can't See I Can't
Speaker 6: Say This. The Shins single New Slang was featured on
Speaker 6: their debut album Oh Inverted World in June of two
Speaker 6: thousand and one, and that song earned them mainstream attention
Speaker 6: and a record deal when it was featured in the
Speaker 6: two thousand and four film Garden State. Mercer licensed the
Speaker 6: single New Slang out to McDonald's to use in their
Speaker 6: ad that aired during the two thousand and two Winter Olympics.
Speaker 6: The royalties he earned and this cracks me up from
Speaker 6: doing this allowed him to purchase a house and he
Speaker 6: relocated to Portland, Oregon. There he built a basement studio
Speaker 6: for the Shins, which was described as being uncomfortable and.
Speaker 2: Not too pleasant.
Speaker 6: But I'm sure the house was nice. But they managed
Speaker 6: to record their second album. My song choice turn a
Speaker 6: Square is from that album, entitled Shoots Too Narrow, and
Speaker 6: it was released on October twenty first, two thousand and three.
Speaker 6: It became their first album to chart, peaking at eighty
Speaker 6: six on Billboard.
Speaker 3: So why don't we hear it now?
Speaker 6: And we've got some further details afterwards.
Speaker 7: Shown up right black and night web and ten is
Speaker 7: show it's made.
Speaker 3: To gots.
Speaker 13: We got it right.
Speaker 12: You got a nice, nice, nice, just.
Speaker 7: A glimpse of the ankle and gut.
Speaker 10: React like it'd safeteen of bottle.
Speaker 13: Add to swim to the polls just to find the
Speaker 13: right sadder, dire.
Speaker 4: It, to calm the strength to be.
Speaker 13: Oh no, I try.
Speaker 7: So forget about it.
Speaker 13: Girl.
Speaker 7: My head's like a kite. When such a creature a
Speaker 7: side to town.
Speaker 12: Where you feed the prints on the ground.
Speaker 7: Have I left my bone?
Speaker 4: Just whining this.
Speaker 7: Microphone because we're serving time there.
Speaker 12: We talk, can't afford to We just wanted a flock.
Speaker 7: But that's your love when you have such a wealthy lock.
Speaker 7: He was classic the changes me. My friends know how
Speaker 7: to try, so forget about it.
Speaker 4: Girls, You and I don't know why. I can't just say,
Speaker 4: because I keep my hands on no wheels.
Speaker 7: I'm trying to task my right. My head's like I
Speaker 7: get tight because I'm my thoughts are on the straight
Speaker 7: and I will walk in push it. But such a
Speaker 7: creature ry sight, Okay.
Speaker 6: From two thousand and eight to twenty thirteen, Mercer went
Speaker 6: on a hiatus from the Shins because he was basically
Speaker 6: exhausted and wanted to quit the band, becoming uncomfortable with
Speaker 6: the friends slash band member dynamic and creative aspect. Neil,
Speaker 6: you know anything about that dynamic?
Speaker 3: I wan share? Yeah.
Speaker 6: During this time, he collaborated with other musicians basically that
Speaker 6: reached out to him, and he was approached by Brian
Speaker 6: Burton of Danger Mouse to work with him him on
Speaker 6: a new project called Broken Bells. Mercer enjoyed the feeling
Speaker 6: of meeting and working with new musicians.
Speaker 9: And interrupt Yeah, there are a couple of songs by them,
Speaker 9: I really really like good good.
Speaker 6: So he enjoyed meeting and working with these new musicians
Speaker 6: so much that he parted ways with his original bandmates
Speaker 6: from the Shins. He and his Broken Bells bandmates recorded
Speaker 6: a new album in twenty twelve called Port of Morrow,
Speaker 6: but it was released as a new Shins album, with
Speaker 6: Burton and the other new musicians Jessica Dobson, Richard Swift,
Speaker 6: Joe Plummer and Yuki Matthews from the Crystal Skulls as
Speaker 6: the new lineup. So lastly, my final thought. After giving
Speaker 6: his former bandmates the pete Best treatment, Mercer's Port of
Speaker 6: Morrow debuted at number three on the US charts.
Speaker 3: It was good. It was a nice mix of like
Speaker 3: a surf rock kind of feel, but the core changes
Speaker 3: were out there a little bit and all that, so
Speaker 3: that that's a good mix. I like that one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I had heard of them, I had am believing
Speaker 5: or I never heard them, so yeah, I was. I
Speaker 5: was digging that song definitely.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I tried to pick songs that I like, and I
Speaker 6: actually liked that one.
Speaker 2: I always get them mixed up with the Struts, the
Speaker 2: Shins and the Struts.
Speaker 9: I love the Struts.
Speaker 2: I went to see them recently.
Speaker 14: I wasn't quite sure if I was going to walk
Speaker 14: into a Shin's concert or a Struts cuts.
Speaker 2: I saw the struts.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 15: At least you didn't yell struts during the concert. Yeah, shins,
Speaker 15: Wait a minute, or wore the wrong T shirt?
Speaker 6: Yeah?
Speaker 3: All right, cool, Thank you, Barbara. That was definitely a
Speaker 3: good one. All right, we're gonna take another quick break
Speaker 3: and we'll be back with more. So stick around Hudson
Speaker 3: River Radio dot com. Hudson River Radio dot com, and
Speaker 3: welcome back. We're down to our final two. So Gail,
Speaker 3: you are up. Tata.
Speaker 9: Okay, have any of you ever heard the word tesselate
Speaker 9: t E S S E L l.
Speaker 3: A t E. Those are the repeating shapes?
Speaker 9: Yes, very good, Brian.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was so excited.
Speaker 11: I was going to say I saw it on the
Speaker 11: song list for today. It's the first time I saw
Speaker 11: the word.
Speaker 3: Use this word in a sentence.
Speaker 2: My brain went my brain went straight to tesla.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well that too. The word teslate means to decor
Speaker 9: or cover a surface with a pattern of repeated shapes,
Speaker 9: especially polygons that fit together closely without gaps or overlapping,
Speaker 9: and oddly enough Tesselate is the title of the song
Speaker 9: that I chose for This Evening's recording of Rock and
Speaker 9: Roll History Show. It's a song by the English indie
Speaker 9: rock band Alt j from their debut studio album, which
Speaker 9: was called An Awesome Wave from twenty twelve. The song
Speaker 9: was written by Joe Newman, Gus Unger, Hamilton, Gillem Sainsbury.
Speaker 9: I don't know if he's related to the chain of
Speaker 9: grocery stores and Tom Green know not that Tom Green
Speaker 9: and produced, but the first thing I thought of when
Speaker 9: I was searching this, but yeah, you know, and produced
Speaker 9: by Charlie Andrew. It was originally released on October thirteenth,
Speaker 9: twenty eleven as a double a side single with a
Speaker 9: song called blood Flood that Sounds a Little Scary, before
Speaker 9: being released separately on the thirteenth of July twenty twelve
Speaker 9: as the album's third single. Now this band is kind
Speaker 9: of interesting. The reason they're called Alt Jay is the
Speaker 9: band's actual name is the triangle shaped symbol Greek symbol.
Speaker 9: So I don't know why they don't just call themselves Delta,
Speaker 9: because that's what the symbol is, is delta ah, And
Speaker 9: so they picked out the name alt jay, because that's
Speaker 9: the key sequence you have to hit to generate the
Speaker 9: delta symbol on an Apple Mac computer. So let's have
Speaker 9: a listen to tesselate and then I will tell you
Speaker 9: some more about bullshag afterwards.
Speaker 3: By chunk, I mean.
Speaker 12: You're a shock and I'm swimming.
Speaker 7: I ask your sounds as I leave.
Speaker 12: I know your friend, I'm sniffing triangles. I'm my favorite cha.
Speaker 10: Theme points.
Speaker 12: But do like means my lord, jump on you.
Speaker 3: Let's testlate.
Speaker 7: W long my blow.
Speaker 6: And keep my.
Speaker 7: Lovely, my breed stone, Hello, my lode.
Speaker 4: Long my.
Speaker 9: Three guns and one goes off, one's empty on sometho.
Speaker 4: One bone, one red, one red, say it's a greens
Speaker 4: by the cat speaking.
Speaker 12: Chunks of you will sit down with the shoes.
Speaker 3: Blob of roots in mourning, but most you.
Speaker 12: Are yes and yours the way you decide.
Speaker 3: To say, you will self warm me.
Speaker 12: Triangles on my fair sche.
Speaker 2: Three points with.
Speaker 13: Two lines meet chow child back the bagles go mile
Speaker 13: it very late.
Speaker 4: Week, tell morn.
Speaker 3: That's that's late.
Speaker 9: So while the song was playing, Brian said, oh.
Speaker 3: Look here come to bus. Let's push Brian under no.
Speaker 9: No, you said that that that was the most Gail selection.
Speaker 3: Oh evening, okay, yeah I said that. I said other
Speaker 3: stuff too, that.
Speaker 9: Your family oriented show. Thank you, define define what a
Speaker 9: Gail choice is.
Speaker 3: You expect sounds to flow and then boom cut off
Speaker 3: and something else jumps in and oh, I guess under
Speaker 3: the overarching term of weird.
Speaker 2: Why thank you?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah, it's not a criticism. It's just it doesn't
Speaker 3: go where you expect where it goes. You know, you
Speaker 3: hear the keyboard come in on, boom stops and something
Speaker 3: else comes in the opening just the chord, the opening chord.
Speaker 3: Do you expect a beat to come underneath? And it's
Speaker 3: not the beat you expect, you know. That's the reason
Speaker 3: for this.
Speaker 9: The band's sound was heavily influenced by unusual instrument choices,
Speaker 9: including drummer Tom Green's decision not to use symbols. The
Speaker 9: only slightly symbol like thing he uses is the back
Speaker 9: end of a saucepan, which he uses for the high hat.
Speaker 9: The album's drums were recorded first, followed by bass, guitar
Speaker 9: and other instruments. Green's drumming was always recorded to a
Speaker 9: click track. Someone's going to have to explain that to me.
Speaker 3: Metronome they just put it in.
Speaker 9: Oh, okay because and who wanted it to have the
Speaker 9: precision of electronic drums? Go figure. Usually people who are
Speaker 9: using electronic drums are trying to make them sound like
Speaker 9: real drums, but in this case, they wanted the real
Speaker 9: drums to sound like electronic drums. Okay, So it sounds
Speaker 9: like they're kind of interesting people. And one of the
Speaker 9: lines in this song is triangles are my favorite shape.
Speaker 9: And during concerts they make triangle symbols with their fingers,
Speaker 9: which now kind of makes me want to go see
Speaker 9: them and.
Speaker 6: Play the triangle.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And they say that it's just due to it
Speaker 9: being a visually appealing shape. The cover art of the
Speaker 9: band's debut album, An Awesome Wave shows an overhead view
Speaker 9: of the largest river delta in the world, where the
Speaker 9: Ganges River meets the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh. So
Speaker 9: I think they're a very interesting sounding band. I'm gonna
Speaker 9: have to look into some more of their songs. This
Speaker 9: song was used as the opening theme song to the
Speaker 9: anime series Ingress Never Heard Of It. It's been featured
Speaker 9: in the soundtrack of the first episode of the twenty
Speaker 9: twenty four television series Day of the Jackal. I did
Speaker 9: not know there was a television series called Day of
Speaker 9: the Jackal. I had no idea. It charted twenty twelve
Speaker 9: twenty thirteen in Belgium at seventy four. Canada Rock forty
Speaker 9: six singles, it charted at one twenty UK Indie. It
Speaker 9: charted at six US Hot Rock and Alternative Songs in Billboard.
Speaker 9: It peaked at forty three. US Alternative airplay in Billboard
Speaker 9: it peaked at nineteen, and US Rock Airplay it peaked
Speaker 9: at thirty three. And as I stow though, that's it right?
Speaker 2: Do you know their other song are their like hit
Speaker 2: song left Hand Free in the Ring? I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't think so.
Speaker 9: Is it the same concept as one Hand in My Pocket?
Speaker 2: I don't know. It's possible.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 14: I've never looked up the lyrics. I kind of liked
Speaker 14: the song. It's a little bit more.
Speaker 2: Normal beat.
Speaker 14: Yeah, the one we just started, well, you know me,
Speaker 14: I like the mysterious stuff, of course.
Speaker 5: You do.
Speaker 3: All right? Good one, Thank you, Gail, thank you. One
Speaker 3: more to go I had. I had to narrow down
Speaker 3: the list. So about two weeks ago I made another
Speaker 3: pilgrimage out to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Speaker 3: in Cleveland, and one of the first main exhibits. You see,
Speaker 3: it's all about the old pre rock and roll blues musicians,
Speaker 3: all that kind of stuff, which which is fantastic. So
Speaker 3: I started going down that rabbit hole with the shapes
Speaker 3: and all that. But an opportunity has presented itself to
Speaker 3: trash a giant scumbag corporation, and I just can't pass
Speaker 3: that up. So I changed directions. So we're gonna be
Speaker 3: talking about the song Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend.
Speaker 3: It is from the musical Gentleman Prefer Blonde, which came
Speaker 3: out in nineteen forty nine. The music was written by
Speaker 3: Julie Stein. Julie short for Julius. He was the son
Speaker 3: of immigrants from Ukraine who moved to England and then
Speaker 3: Chicago when he was eight. Julie turned out to be
Speaker 3: a prodigy on the piano and performed with several major
Speaker 3: symphony orchestras before he was ten. In case anybody wants
Speaker 3: to feel like a loser this weekend, he went to
Speaker 3: the Chicago Musical College. He wrote over fifteen hundred songs,
Speaker 3: including the music for a Funny Girl for Gypsy and others.
Speaker 3: Wow Yeah. He passed away in nineteen ninety four at
Speaker 3: age eighty eight. The lyrics for the song were written
Speaker 3: by Leo Robin, who also had success in the musical world.
Speaker 3: He wrote a bunch of musicals. The thing with the
Speaker 3: musical world is that a lot of stuff is popular
Speaker 3: and it fades away. Think of all the rock tunes
Speaker 3: that may have been popular at the time, and they
Speaker 3: fade away and they're forgotten about the ones that weren't
Speaker 3: really hits. So Robin had a huge amount of success
Speaker 3: writing me musicals that unfortunately are just not around anymore.
Speaker 3: But he was successful. He also moved to Los Angeles
Speaker 3: to work on film scores. He died in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: four at age eighty nine. Now an oversimplified synopsis of
Speaker 3: the musical. The main character is Laura Lai. She is
Speaker 3: from Little Rock, Arkansas. She and her friend are going
Speaker 3: to Paris to perform the Showgirls, leaving her wealthy boyfriend behind.
Speaker 3: The boyfriend's father has someone follow her to make sure
Speaker 3: she isn't cheating and giving the rich family a bad name.
Speaker 3: There's also a diamond tiar that Laura Lai wants, but
Speaker 3: she doesn't have the money, so she convinces somebody to
Speaker 3: lend her the money. But two French detectives are trying
Speaker 3: to recover this tiara, and that's where this song comes in.
Speaker 3: Because the diamonds are on the tir it's more complicated, Mercedes,
Speaker 3: you can talk about the musical on the silver screen.
Speaker 3: That's more of your purview on that one. Now. The
Speaker 3: musical was released as a film in nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 3: with Marilyn as Laura Lai. She sang most of the
Speaker 3: song herself. She did have some help with overdubs. This
Speaker 3: was before auto tune where they would just have you
Speaker 3: do your best and fix it. They actually had other
Speaker 3: singers overdubbed. How much help she had is still up
Speaker 3: for debate. What phrases she sang, what range, whatever. Many
Speaker 3: other singers have paid tribute to Marilyn's performance in the movie.
Speaker 3: The big one is Madonna's Material Girl. The video for that,
Speaker 3: where she's all dressed up and comes out that's almost
Speaker 3: a knockoff this same way. Yeah, yeah, that's almost a
Speaker 3: knockoff of that. More recently, Megan the Stallion's twenty twenty
Speaker 3: song Diamonds follows that same idea. So it's had a
Speaker 3: big impact. This one song has had a lot of
Speaker 3: impact in the music world. So how did diamonds become
Speaker 3: a thing? Why do we even care? Well, let's take
Speaker 3: a look at the De Beer's Group, which is a
Speaker 3: South African slash British corporation that until recently controlled about
Speaker 3: eighty five percent of the diamond market. The company was
Speaker 3: founded in eighteen eighty eight and very very long story
Speaker 3: short again, they have been involved in price fixing, dealing
Speaker 3: in blood diamonds, using slave labor, all that good stuff.
Speaker 3: They put out a statement saying that they are now
Speaker 3: committed to not using slave labor within the company. Take
Speaker 3: a guess what year they put out this statement.
Speaker 6: Twenty fourteen, like twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty, twenty twenty that De Beer's Company released a
Speaker 3: statement that they are now committed to not using slave
Speaker 3: labor in the company.
Speaker 2: Should we thank them now or later? Yeah? I have
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: Gale's Group makes triangles on stage. I make lowercase eyes.
Speaker 3: So so why are diamonds so desirable? Who made up
Speaker 3: the rule? What an engagement ring should cost? All that nonsense. Well,
Speaker 3: the de Beers Group hired a marketing company n. W
Speaker 3: Ayer and Son to increase the sale of diamonds now diamonds.
Speaker 3: Up to this point, they've always been jewelry. People have
Speaker 3: always found them. They're pretty, they sparkly, but they were
Speaker 3: primarily industrial because they're so hard. They were used for
Speaker 3: cutting things, So most of the diamonds were actually used
Speaker 3: on the industrial side of things, not so much on
Speaker 3: the jewelry side. They are the ones who came up
Speaker 3: with the slogan diamonds are Forever in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 3: and that was still in use. You probably heard that
Speaker 3: more recently. They shifted the marketing of diamonds into jewelry
Speaker 3: and a bunch of different types of relationship rings for
Speaker 3: men and women, and then they jacked up the price.
Speaker 3: Engagement rings have always been around. They've been around since
Speaker 3: at least ancient Rome, sometimes with diamonds if they happened
Speaker 3: to find one, but often other materials they would use,
Speaker 3: like ivory, which isn't any better, but that's another conversation.
Speaker 3: They would use flint because it's shiny, copper because it's
Speaker 3: minds up nice. But the ring that we know it
Speaker 3: now wasn't really a thing until these people came along
Speaker 3: in the nineteen forties. To keep that in mind, my
Speaker 3: suggestion don't do an engagement ring starter a roth Ira
Speaker 3: because you'll be rich at the end another show. So
Speaker 3: De Beer's and nw A Air also started product placement
Speaker 3: in movies. They paid to have diamonds placed into movies,
Speaker 3: including gentlemen prefer blondes just to help their sales. So
Speaker 3: Maril Monroe has the most famous version of diamonds are
Speaker 3: a girl's best friend. But it was Carol Channing who
Speaker 3: originated the role on Broadway and that's who we're going
Speaker 3: to hear tonight. Carol Channing also originated and really defined
Speaker 3: the lead in the musical Hello Dolly. If you haven't
Speaker 3: heard that yet, you should. Oh yeah. She did a
Speaker 3: ton of other roles very famous. She was born in
Speaker 3: Seattle in nineteen twenty one. She grew up in the
Speaker 3: San Francisco area, where she got to see a lot
Speaker 3: of good theater, which influenced her decision and her career path.
Speaker 3: She attended Bennington College in Vermont, majoring in drama and dance.
Speaker 3: While she was in college, her mom told her that
Speaker 3: she had a black ancestry on her father's side. Carol's
Speaker 3: father's mother, so her paternal grandmother was black, and her
Speaker 3: mom told her this just in case while Carol was
Speaker 3: on the opposite coast she dropped a black baby, so
Speaker 3: she wouldn't be surprised. Carol's mom did not know about
Speaker 3: genetics and did not understand how anything worked. But how
Speaker 3: about that bomb while you're going to college.
Speaker 2: But by the way, yeah at that time, uh huh wow.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there you go. Wow. We try to keep
Speaker 3: things interesting here. So Carol Channing got a small part
Speaker 3: on Broadway in her junior year of college and that
Speaker 3: prompted her to quit school, didn't graduate, but it took
Speaker 3: her four years to then find another role where she
Speaker 3: got cast, so kind of an ops. Yeah. In between,
Speaker 3: she worked at whatever she could do. She did a
Speaker 3: stint up in The Catskills. Think dirty dancing. That would
Speaker 3: be Carl Channing in real life. She got her first
Speaker 3: role in New York City in nineteen forty one, and
Speaker 3: her career just took off from there on. She was
Speaker 3: just a powerhouse on Broadway, on TV, in films. In
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy, she was one of the first group of
Speaker 3: celebrities to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show. Up
Speaker 3: until that point, it was still marching bands and your
Speaker 3: typical football thing. So she was part of that first
Speaker 3: show where it changed everything. And now we have the
Speaker 3: Super Bowl halftime show, which is, you know, peak of
Speaker 3: the mark kind of thing. Carol Channing passed away in
Speaker 3: twenty nineteen at age ninety seven, after an incredible, illustrious career,
Speaker 3: the kind of person that nobody had anything bad to
Speaker 3: say about, which is just phenomenal. Just everybody loved her.
Speaker 3: So we're gonna listen to Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend,
Speaker 3: But you crambones have a choice. We can listen to
Speaker 3: the original from the movie. Or In nineteen eighty, Carol
Speaker 3: Channing made an appearance on The Muppets and did a
Speaker 3: duet with Miss Piggy.
Speaker 9: Now we hear that one?
Speaker 3: Which, yeah, which one would you.
Speaker 13: Like to hear?
Speaker 2: Puppets?
Speaker 4: How did I want?
Speaker 6: Peggy?
Speaker 3: So here's Carol Channing and Miss Piggy singing Diamonds are
Speaker 3: a Girl's Best Friends, Piggy, That's.
Speaker 2: What I wanted to tell you.
Speaker 16: Abouts on the hand, maybe quite continental, but diamond Girl's
Speaker 16: best friend. Jeez, hand, but it won't pay the rental
Speaker 16: on your humble flat.
Speaker 4: Or help you at the autumn.
Speaker 7: Cool as girls.
Speaker 4: Grew homes are charms in the.
Speaker 7: Hair shape.
Speaker 4: These rocks don't lose their shape.
Speaker 2: Dimmon, girl's best.
Speaker 4: Excuse a more coat? You mean who? Diamonds are a
Speaker 4: girl's best bred.
Speaker 13: Never may come a time when it lasts a layer,
Speaker 13: but diamonds.
Speaker 4: Are a good.
Speaker 16: May come a time when a hard boiled employer thinks
Speaker 16: you're awful.
Speaker 2: Nice, but get that ice or else.
Speaker 13: No die.
Speaker 4: When stocks go, but beware when they start to be.
Speaker 16: Said, then that those louses go back to their spouses.
Speaker 4: Diamonds. Your time rolls on and us gone, and.
Speaker 16: You can't straighten up way bat.
Speaker 3: Stiff back or.
Speaker 4: You stand straight? Rap stuff? Ja, girls, I don't mean right.
Speaker 3: How awesome were the Muppets?
Speaker 6: Peggy right?
Speaker 9: The world was a much better place when there was
Speaker 9: a Muppet show.
Speaker 3: I don't know about that. I just think we didn't
Speaker 3: know everything that was going on.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Will probably, Yeah, we were blissfully unaware.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so there you have it, diamonds. Gee, what else
Speaker 3: can I say?
Speaker 2: They had a point?
Speaker 14: Get the ice because you know your looks are gonna
Speaker 14: last forever, But diamond is going to give you some cash.
Speaker 3: Investing in your future. Yep, argue that all right, Well,
Speaker 3: any final words there, crambones. I think everybody needs to
Speaker 3: go call their math teacher and say, oh, I use
Speaker 3: shapes today.
Speaker 6: Yeah. I actually failed my geometry regions because I had
Speaker 6: one hundred and three fever, and I figured, well, what
Speaker 6: have I got to lose? The worst that could happen
Speaker 6: is I'll fail and I'll have to take it again.
Speaker 6: If I don't show up, I'm still gonna have to
Speaker 6: take it again.
Speaker 3: So I went with fever, and I was.
Speaker 6: Kind of delirious that I failed. Had I had to
Speaker 6: take it again?
Speaker 3: But you did all right the second time?
Speaker 12: Right?
Speaker 6: I did it right the second time?
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 9: I would need oweiji board to contact my geometry teacher,
Speaker 9: but I'm old, So.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I didn't do I didn't do too well in
Speaker 5: geometry either. I didn't really go to too many classes either, which.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there may be a correlation there, yeah you know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, Well, I think it's a good time to
Speaker 3: pull the plug.
Speaker 2: So it's been a very shape please show right right right.
Speaker 11: We did have such a good variety though it was.
Speaker 3: It was excellent time everybody picks something different.
Speaker 2: I really wanted to pick Hip to be Square.
Speaker 3: The first one that came to everybody's mind. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 3: Thank you Cranbones. Excellent selections as always, and thank you
Speaker 3: all for joining us for the Rock and Roll History Show.
Speaker 3: Don't forget to subscribe in your favorite podcast app and
Speaker 3: check out all the other shows that we do here
Speaker 3: at Hudson River Radio. There is something for everybody. We'll
Speaker 3: see you next week with another brand new episode. Until then,
Speaker 3: have a great weekend and peace out, everybody.
Speaker 4: Rock cop bottomed Okay the bye.
Speaker 3: Hudson River Radio dot com a subsidiaria of Glacier Entertainment LLC.
Speaker 7: Potentially successful.
Speaker 3: It's a multi hundred dollars corporation.