Tag Archives: authenticity

Shorties

The Show that Apparently Never Ends

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Emerson, Lake & Palmer first (“officially”?) broke up in 1979. That means 45 years ago.

Keith Emerson died in 2016. Greg Lake also died that year. Carl Palmer is still alive, age 73. Oddly, on his website in a post dated April 26, 2023, it says:

“This morning, Carl underwent a successful Ablation procedure to restore sinus rhythm as he was previously in Atrial Fibrillation.

“Carl would to thank his Consultant Cardiologist, Dr. Tushar Salukhe, who performed the procedure, and all the wonderful attending staff on the Sir Reginald Wilson Ward at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London who have been looking after him today.”

There are several pictures of post-op Palmer, with the patient grinning and giving a thumbs up, presumably indicating not only that the team at Royal Brompton Hospital did a first-class job, but that he is ready to rock with ELP.*

“But wait,” you think. “It says at the top that not only did the band break up decades ago but that two thirds of the members are dead. Does this mean that he is out there with two other people who conveniently have surnames that begin with an ‘E’ and an ‘L’?”

No, actually the two guys that are standing on stage with him for “Welcome Back My Friends, 50, The Return of Emerson, Lake & Palmer” are Paul Bielatowicz on guitar and vocals and Simon Fitzpatrick on bass and “Chapman stick.”

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Sounds All-Too Familiar

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Bad Dog is a band you’ve probably not heard of. It consists of two guys, David Post and Craig Blackwell, and is based in the Washington, DC area. They’ve been bumping around for a few decades now.*

And you may have heard music produced by Bad Dog but you may not think that you’ve heard Bad Dog because the given song was purportedly by someone else even though it was by Bad Dog. Perhaps that would provoke nothing more than a shrug, but think about how Post and Blackwell must have felt upon discovery of that.

Welcome to the Age of Ephemeral Digital Non-Ownership.

It’s like this.

As a story in The New York Times, appropriately headlined “Their Songs Were Stolen by Phantom Artists. They Couldn’t Get Them Back,” the band recorded a CD last July it planned to give away at a party in December.

The album was appropriately named—at least as regards to what has happened—“The Jukebox of Regret.”

In July Bad Dog uploaded the album to SoundCloud.

Then, as the NYT reports, “nearly every song on it somehow turned up on Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube and at least a dozen other streaming platforms.”

Which might have seemed to be a Big Win for Bad Dog, except for one thing:

The songs weren’t necessarily with their actual titles and they were labeled by “people” who aren’t Bad Dog.

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Shorties

Elvis Live(s)

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In 2023 Taylor Swift set a record for being at the top of the Billboard album chart, the Billboard 200, more frequently than any other individual: 68 weeks. Swift has been releasing albums since 2006, when her self-titled disc dropped. Her first album at the top was her second, Fearless (2008), which racked up 11 weeks there, or 16% of her total run (so far; she’s probably added to her dominance by the time you read this).

Swift took the top spot from Elvis, who, with 67 weeks, is the second solo artist on the list.

(Both have a ways to go to be at the overall top of the Billboard 200 cumulative list: the Beatles have marked 132 weeks.)

Elvis’ Billboard 200 numbers are for 10 albums released between 1956 and 2002, with that last date being pretty damn good for a guy who died in 1977, or 12 years before Taylor Swift was born.

In Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, if we use the Syd Field three-act structure from his Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (1979), the Confrontation occurs in a Las Vegas that resembles the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. A dirty bomb apparently went off in Vegas, although it seems as though it was a neutron bomb, given that with the exception of the massive statues that are being reclaimed by the desert, the casino hotels still stand, which gives Rick Deckard, portrayed by Harrison Ford, a place to live, hidden away from the Wallace Corporation. (Apparently he’s been there since the time of the first Blade Runner film, which is set in. . . 2019.)

As Ryan Gosling’s K, in 2049, wanders through the casino that houses Deckard, he goes into a theater, where a glitchy Vegas-era holographic Elvis performs “Suspicious Minds” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” about which Deckard, after engaging in a fist fight with K, says, “I like this song.” Elvis first released the song, which is based on a melody from a French composition of 1784 (“Plaisir d’amour”), in 1961. Deckard is in his 30s in the first film, which means he would have been born in 1989 at the latest or 1980 at the earliest: either way he was born after the 1969 residency at the International that is associated with Elvis and that rhinestone-decorated white jumpsuit.

Evidently, Elvis continued to have resonance maybe in the future (it is not disclosed when Sin City became Empty City, so it based on the setting of the first film in 2019, it could have been anytime between then and 2040, based on the idea that the ruin-like nature would have taken at least nine years to be as manifest as it is). Maybe that future is. . .2024.

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Shorties

Of Ukes and Fakes (?)

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According to The Theory of Everything Else: A Voyage Into the World of the Weird by Dan Schreiber—yes, the lengths we go to find things that may be of some moderate interest—when the remaining Beatles were producing “Free As a Bird”:

“. . .it was suggested that what they should do is add some ukulele music at the end.”

While the ukulele is generally associated with Hawaiian music thanks to the support of King Kalakaua, the last king and second-to-last monarch of Hawaii (following his death in San Francisco in 1891 he was succeeded by Princess Lydia Kamakaeha, who became Queen Liliuokalani, who was deposed in 1893 in a coup that included support of the U.S. military), it was invented in Portugal, but like a staple of Hawaiian breakfasts—Portuguese sausage—the musical creation of what was once a major seafaring nation established itself there as deeply and as thoroughly as the meat concoction.

But I digress.

Schreiber goes on to write that the Beatles decided to do something at the end that they’d done on earlier recordings (e.g., “Revolution 9”) when they were fully the Beatles: adding backmasking to the track. Backmasking is the method in which something is recorded backward and then, when played forward, reveals a message.

Schreiber:

“. . .the message they ended up using was a snippet of Lennon saying, ‘Turned out nice again.’ This turned out to be a perfect line to put over the ukelele as it was the catchphrase of musician and ukulele player George Formby.”

And now cue the “dun-dun-dun” sound of something that is about to be shockingly revealed.

After backmasking the phrase, when it was played back

“. . .it didn’t produce a garbled sentence as expected. Instead, what everyone heard was the voice of John Lennon, though a backward record, saying the words ‘Made by John Lennon.’”

Dun-dun-dun.

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Shorties

Just Fake It

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The story, it seems, is this.

There is a broadcaster (although that term may not be entirely encompassing, as there is a streaming service involved, so that’s not precisely “broadcasting,” although as the channel has some 167 million subscribers in the U.S., that certainly is broad) who talks about sports.

Charissa Thompson works as a co-host for both Fox Sports and Amazon’s “Thursday Night Football.” She is no rookie to sports talk, as she had gigs at GSN, the Big Ten Network, Versus, and ESPN, the last being the place she left in 2013 to move to Fox. She also was a host on “Ultimate Beastmaster,” but we’ll leave that one alone. (She actually began her career in the Fox Sports HR department, which is probably hard at work vis-a-vis Thompson at this very moment.

Thompson has a degree in Law and Society from University of California at Santa Barbara, which is a nice place to get a degree of any type from. The Law and Society degree tends to be focused more on sociology than statutes; however, the role of things legal and their impact on society are certainly part of the curriculum.

Last week on a podcast, Thompson said that sometimes during halftime at a football game when the booth threw it to Thompson on the sidelines, she found herself in a bit of a fix because the coach wouldn’t, for whatever reason, talk to her.

Thompson said: “I didn’t want to screw up the report, so I was like, ‘I’m just going to make this up.’ Because, first of all, no coach is going to get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves,’ ‘We need to be better on third down,’ ‘We need to stop turning the ball over and do a better job of getting off the field.’ Like, they’re not going to correct me on that.”

Seemed, to her, like a reasonable thing to do. And in the event that said coach heard her report after the fact and the various uncontroversial comments, there might have been a shrug, assuming that the coach even remembered the situation at all.

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“There’ll Be Spandex Jackets. . .”

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A painting known as the de Brécy Tondo recently went on display Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in Bradford, England. This is notable because the painting, for decades, has been controversial.

Some people claimed it was painted by Raphael. Others claimed it was a copy of the artist’s Sistine Madonna alterpiece done sometime during the Victorian period, more than 300 years after Raphael worked.

The conclusion that the work was done by the artist and not by some imitator was largely predicated on artificial intelligence. Of course.

Hassan Ugail, a professor at the University of Bradford, and the director the its center of visual computing, developed an AI model that was evidently trained on Old Masters.

Hassan told The Guardian, “My AI models look far deeper into a picture than the human eye, comparing details such as the brush strokes and pigments. Testing the Tondo using this new AI model has shown startling results, confirming it is most likely by Raphael.”

Somewhat more substantive that it was done in the 16th century not the 19th is that Howell Edwards, a molecular spectroscopy professional at the University of Bradford, determined the pigments used were Renaissance-era appropriate. Odds are that some Victorian didn’t chance upon a cache of 300-year-old paint and decide to fake a Raphael.

Whether it is actually the work of the artist is something that, until someone invents a time machine, will never be completely known, AI techniques notwithstanding.

How do we know that the de Brécy Tondo wasn’t painted by Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino’s dad, Giovanni Santi, who had been a painter, as well?

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Who Are They?

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When is a band not a band? That is, generally it would be thought that a group of people get together and decide that their individuality will contribute to a collective undertaking that will be known under a given label, or name. They don’t lose their individuality. But their performances with others are subsumed by the work of the band. It can become the case that except for fans the name of the collective is known while those of the individual members aren’t. So if a member or two happens to leave the band only to be replaced by others, it very well may be that the “band” continues to exist much as it did before, although for those who are fans the absence of the performer(s) may be enough for them to consider the band disbanded.

In some cases it is thought that there are individuals within a band—considering the band as a collective—who are more instrumental to the existence of the band as a whole than others may be and so as long as they are part of the performance, the band continues to exist.

An abiding example of this is “The Who.” The band began in 1964. The members were Roger Daltrey, Pete Townshend, John Entwistle and Keith Moon.

Albums the band released include:

  • My Generation (1965)
  • A Quick One (1966)
  • The Who Sell Out (1967)
  • Tommy (1969)
  • Who’s Next (1971)
  • Quadrophenia (1973)
  • The Who by Numbers (1975)
  • Who Are You (1978)*

But in September 1978 Keith Moon died. Kenney Jones replaced him. Oddly, or appropriately, Jones was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame—as a member of the Faces/Small Faces.

The band kept performing and recording. Then in June 2002, John Entwistle died. Entwistle was replaced by Pino Palladino.

Consider: The Who became what is considered to be The Who not merely as a result of Townshend’s playing and writing and because of Daltrey’s pipes and performance. The drums and the bass played a fundamental part of the sound that people became familiar with.

Yet there seems to be an idea that because Townshend and Daltrey were up front, their continued existence and participation are the things that would make a post-Moon and Entwistle organization essentially what it had been before, that the performances are of The Who, not “The Who.”

Isn’t it conceivable that starting in October 1978 and certainly July 2002 that the remnants of The Who, when performing or recording, should have been more appropriately titled Who2 or something of the like? Whatever it was it was not the band that formed in 1964.

But is a band more than a brand? If you have a box of Tide you probably think of it as, well, Tide. And it is Tide. But it isn’t the Tide that was invented in 1946. The formulation is different but the brand name remains the same.

To treat members of a band as being fully replaceable is to really not have a band so much as a brand.

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“Lennon Sings Sinatra”

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In the world of art there are generally four steps:

  • Creation
  • Production
  • Distribution
  • Acquisition

The artist comes up with an idea. That idea is then manifest in some outwardly physical (and possibly) repeatable form. Then that is put out in the world in some way.

The Creation part is as easy to understand as it is difficult to do.

The Production part can take various forms. For example, for a piece of music this might be writing it down in musical notation or recording it on some form of media, whether tape (that can be used to create things like albums) or as a digital file.

Then there is the Distribution. Certainly an artist who is only interested in the Creation part might not even go to the Production step, simply having the music in her head or performing it in the world yet not capturing it so that the performance is ephemeral. But she might want to create artifacts for her own use or edification. In this case, the work of art doesn’t go out into the wider world but it still exists in a form that someone else could have it. (E.g., If Renée Fleming sings in her shower, no matter how wonderful it is, it only exists in that period of time. If she records herself singing in the shower, then that performance exists after the time of the performance.)

In the case of something that has been created and transformed into some sort of artifactual being, there is the possibility for the Acquisition by others: Someone buys the painting or downloads the music.

While this is a linear model that leads from the creator to the object and vice versa, there are situations where there is a disruption because it very well may be the creator is not the person who is thought to be the person who has created the work in question.

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Girl with The Twelfth Album

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Johannes Vermeer lived in the Netherlands in the 17th century. The painter died at age 43 in 1675. What is arguably his most famous work—and not just because of Scarlett Johansson—is Girl with a Pearl Earring. (It almost seems as though it is one in the “Girl” series, as among his other works are Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window, Girl Interrupted at Her Music, and Girl with the Red Hat.) Vermeer painted Girl with a Pearl Earring in 1665. Quite a talent at 33.

While it is a painting that is certainly wonderfully executed and valued as one of the world’s masterpieces (it is sometime referred to as the “Mona Lisa of the North”), the painting was lost for 200 years. In 1881 a collector, Arnoldus Andries des Tombe, bought a painting that was in not particularly good condition for not a whole lot of money. When cleaned it was discovered to be what is now considered to be one of Vermeer’s masterpieces.

There are approximately 35 Vermeer oils in existence. There were thought, until recently, to be approximately 36.

In 1942 the U.S. National Gallery of Art received a collection of paintings known as the Widener Collection. The recent provenance of the painting had it discovered in 1906 by Abraham Bredius, director of the Mauritshuis in the Hague; the Mauritshuis happens to be the museum that des Tombe had donated Girl with a Pearl Earring to in 1902. Arguably Bredius was familiar with Vermeer’s work. Girl with a Flute was purchased by Joseph Widener in 1923. René Gimpel, an influential Parisian art dealer, wrote of the sale in his diary, “It’s truly one of the master’s most beautiful works.”

The name of the painting may be familiar to you because earlier this month the National Gallery came to the conclusion that it isn’t by Vermeer. As the museum’s Marjorie E. Wieseman wrote of Girl with a Flute, “With present knowledge, we cannot be sure whether it was created in honest emulation or with the deliberate intent to fool a discerning 17th-century Dutch art market, as it fooled connoisseurs in the early 20th century.”

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50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong–or Can They?

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While the numbers are not laser etched in diamond*, Michael Jackson has sold some 258.9-million albums. This puts him behind the Beatles (289.5 million) but ahead of his first, former father-in-law (well, he would have been had he not been dead for 17 years): 230.6 million. All of these are/were (how do you count when the Beatles no longer exist, nor do either of the two Kings?) pikers compared to Rihanna, who has sold an estimated 334.7 million albums and the 34-year-old billionaire has, presumably, a long career ahead of her.

But back to Jackson. According to Spotify, he has 30,531,780 monthly listeners.

“Billie Jean” has had 1,149,441,023 streams. Consider: the population of China is 1.4-billion people, so it is as though most all of them know that “She’s just a girl who claims I am the one.”

Given these numbers it is safer than houses to claim that there have been a lot of people who have listened to Michael Jackson, either then or right now.

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