On 01/04/24 17:17, Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
> Rich Ulrich wrote:
>
>> As cash-poor college student, I traded two Beatles albums for
>> the third Mothers of Invention album, and [Google] only the
>> second rock double-album ever. "We're only in it for the Money"
>> featured a parody of the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's cover -- originally
>> folded to the inside when approval from the Beatles was not
>> readily obtained.
>
> I enjoy that album very much. I heard it only yesterday driving my car.

Though what it was doing in my pyjamas, I'll never know.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW

jerryfriedman wrote:

>>> "Although this album was compiled from four concerts in the mid-West
>>> of the United States, some additional recording took place not a
>>> thousand miles away from the home of the artiste. The generic term
>>> for this process is 'cheating'. Care has been taken to keep the essence
>>> of the gigs intact, including 'human imperfection'."
>
>>> https://www.discogs.com/release/1989674-Peter-Gabriel-Plays-Live

As early as 1953 Charles Minugs overdubbed his own, underrecorded bass
lines in one the most famous jazz concerts ever:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz_at_Massey_Hall.
Records are products of the music industry, this is quite common
procedure and this happens/ed all the time without anyone finding out.

Another approach was made by Leonard Bernstein, his later recordings
were all live recordings assembled together not from one but many
concerts without any notice of that in the CD booklet. I may have well
been sitting in the recording of Mahler's 5th symphony in the Alte Oper
in Frankfurt with the Wiener Philharmoniker; the CD came out about a
year after the concert and I remember lots of microphones on the stage,
but probably only a couple of probably now retired guys from Deutsche
Grammophone will know for sure where and when the whole thing was
recorded.

-jw-
--
And now for something completely different...

On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 08:18:42 +0200, Bertel Lund Hansen
<gadekryds@lundhansen.dk> wrote:

>Ruud Harmsen wrote:
>
>>>As cash-poor college student, I traded two Beatles albums for
>>>the third Mothers of Invention album, and [Google] only the
>>>second rock double-album ever. "We're only in it for the Money"
>>>featured a parody of the Beatles's Sgt. Pepper's cover -- originally
>>>folded to the inside when approval from the Beatles was not
>>>readily obtained.
>>
>> Parodies are free in copyright law, I thought?
>
>"Free" may be too strong, but there wide limits - under Danish law at
>least.

I would guess that Zappa was trying to avoid trouble
with laws on parody across multiple countries. Having
permission would be enough, but that was slow in coming.
Beatles said, "Ask our agent" and Zappa came back, "Your
agent should listen to youi."

By folding the double album so that what imitated the
Beatle cover was on the inside, they avoided claims that
some innocent bought their album because they saw it
on display and mistook it for the other.

--
Rich Ulrich

Garrett Wollman wrote:

> In article <5401e4c5f1fdd5d817f3468783797f7f@www.novabbs.com>,
> jerryfriedman <jerry.friedman99@gmail.com> wrote:

>>"Don't Give Up" is [Peter Gabriel's] best-known song in Britain?

>>Over here, where there are more people to know things, "Sledgehammer"
>>is certainly his best-known.

> Hmmm, I'm not sure I'd agree with that -- although it's probably true
> of my specific birth cohort who were listening to the radio on that
> week in 1986 when every current and former member of Genesis had
> something on the charts.

That is, except whatsisname (*Wikips*)--Anthony Phillips.

> It's true that "Sledgehammer" charted higher
> on the Hot 100, and it had a very memorable music video, but other
> Gabriel songs have had greater longevity, especially in other radio
> formats, such that if you took the integral over time I suspect you'd
> find that "Sledgehammer" is not the most popular in aggregate.

I'll admit that there's some evidence of people not even born in 1986.

What songs would you say are now better-known than "Sledgehammer", "In
Your Eyes"? "Solsbury Hill"? "Shock the Monkey"? "Digging in the Dirt"?

I'll just mention that this article from 2011 says "Sledgehammer" was
MTV's most often played video.

https://entertainment.time.com/2011/07/28/the-30-all-time-best-music-videos/slide/peter-gabriel-sledgehammer-1986/

> Several years ago he (or his record label, anyway) put out a two-disc
> compilation, with one disc of 15 tracks titled "Hit" and the other,
> with 14 tracks, titled "Miss". "Miss" included one US hit, "In Your
> Eyes". "Hit" included "Solsbury Hill", "Shock the Monkey",
> "Sledgehammer", "Don't Give Up", "Games Without Frontiers", "Big
> Time", "Digging in the Dirt", "Steam", "Red Rain", and some tracks I
> hadn't heard of. I think at least one of the tracks on "Hit" was
> actually recorded new for the compilation.

> (This fits with Gabriel's tradition of one-word album titles, like
> "So", the album that "Red Rain", "Sledgehammer", "Don't Give Up", "In
> Your Eyes", and "Big Time" were all on. "Digging in the Dirt" and
> "Steam" were both on "Us".)

For someone of my cohort, Gabriel's real tradition was not giving his
albums titles or numbers.

--
Jerry Friedman

In article <872102e55fef5096a8ff160232d97cdd@www.novabbs.com>,
jerryfriedman <jerry.friedman99@gmail.com> wrote:
>What songs would you say are now better-known than "Sledgehammer", "In
>Your Eyes"? "Solsbury Hill"? "Shock the Monkey"? "Digging in the Dirt"?

I think "Digging in the Dirt", "Don't Give Up", and "Games Without
Frontiers" get more ongoing play than "Sledgehammer", although that's
purely impressionistic and not backed by any actual research. They
just fit in more playlists than "Sledgehammer".

>I'll just mention that this article from 2011 says "Sledgehammer" was
>MTV's most often played video.

That I can easily believe, because it really was noteworthy back in
the days whem MTV played music videos. (It probably belongs in the
same category as the video for "Take On Me" by A-ha, and for many of
the same reasons.)

-GAWollman

--
Garrett A. Wollman | "Act to avoid constraining the future; if you can,
wollman@bimajority.org| act to remove constraint from the future. This is
Opinions not shared by| a thing you can do, are able to do, to do together."
my employers. | - Graydon Saunders, _A Succession of Bad Days_ (2015)

Rich Ulrich <rich.ulrich@comcast.net> writes:
> Definitions?
>
> I was browsing the shelf of music videos last week when I
> was surprised to see a DVD of Swan Lake -- a recorded-for-TV
> production of a ballet, with music throughout.
>
> Well, I guess it was more likely to find a buyer under Music
> Videos than under Movies. I bought it.
>
> And I started questioning my mental category of Music Videos.
>
> MTV puts on Music Videos which are productions built around
> single songs. These are always somewhat elaborate -- the
> most simple have a lot of dancers, etc., as a visual treat, but
> a lot of them have odd costumes, fantasy characters, CGI
> effects, what-have-you.
....
> Anyway - henceforth, I will be more thoughtful and precise
> and probably never stop with saying, simply, Music Video.

It's a topic I've wasted too much effort thinking about historically.
There's something annoying about the rote "Queen invented the Music
Video(tm) with their /Bohemian Rhapsody/" trope, as I'm not sure I see
what makes it unique, different from everything that came before.

What excludes Dylan's /Travelling Homesick Blues/, say?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGxjIBEZvx0

Phil
--
We are no longer hunters and nomads. No longer awed and frightened, as we have
gained some understanding of the world in which we live. As such, we can cast
aside childish remnants from the dawn of our civilization.
-- NotSanguine on SoylentNews, after Eugen Weber in /The Western Tradition/

jerry.friedman99@gmail.com (jerryfriedman) writes:
> Bertel Lund Hansen wrote:
>
>> jerryfriedman wrote:
>
>>> "Although this album was compiled from four concerts in the mid-West
>>> of the United States, some additional recording took place not a
>>> thousand miles away from the home of the artiste. The generic term
>>> for this process is 'cheating'. Care has been taken to keep the essence
>>> of the gigs intact, including 'human imperfection'."
>
>> I think that I have written about a recording that Frank Zappa made
>> where the drums were recorded in one country and the bass solo in
>> another, and they were not from the same melody (number? tune?). But
>> you didn't discover it if you didn't read the notes on the cover.
>
>> I don't call that cheating. An artist can combine whatever he likes if
>> he is satisfied with the result, and Frank Zappa was not trying to make
>> up for a bad/sloppy performance. He just wanted to combine two musical
>> elements.
>
> I agree that that's not cheating, but putting studio-recorded material
> on a "live" album is.

There are times when the recording's fucked, unfixable in the mixing
room, and the only way to fix it is back in the recording studio. E.g.

http://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=3397
"""
Recorded on August 30th, 1980 at a free concert on the steps of the
Reichstag, near the Berlin Wall.. This concert was probably the single
most important gig that Barclay James Harvest have ever done, so it was
natural to produce a live album. Unfortunately, while the concert itself
was a triumph, just about everything that could go wrong with the
recording, did - they told that John's main guitar was damaged during
the afternoon and was almost inaudible in the mix. The band reluctantly
decided to record a lot of new overdubs at Strawberry, which is one
reason that the LP didn't appear until 1982. The album was first
released in Germany in February 1982 as a limited edition 11-track
version on the Polystar label, with "Love On The Line" and "Rock 'N'
Roll Lady" as the extra tracks, and went straight to No.1, for many
weeks. Subsequent releases have only the nine tracks listed in
progarchives. One interesting anomaly is that whilst in Germany and most
other countries the album was titled Berlin - A Concert For The People,
the English version reverses the order, presumably to make it sound less
Germanic!! Anyway, n. 15 in the UK charts.

The most important live track here (in my opinion) is Hymn, of which you
can hear the best live version. A great "shouted" version from John and
from all the people of (West) Berlin!!!
"""

The intention was a good one, so it seems a bit harsh to brush it off
as cheating. They weren't trying to cheat anyone, they were trying to
provide people with the experience that actually happened.

Phil
--
We are no longer hunters and nomads. No longer awed and frightened, as we have
gained some understanding of the world in which we live. As such, we can cast
aside childish remnants from the dawn of our civilization.
-- NotSanguine on SoylentNews, after Eugen Weber in /The Western Tradition/