Today is 09/09/09, and you know what that means!

The big Beatles: Rock Band release. (GET IT? Number 9, number 9, number 9…) To get you in the mood, here are 9 rather obscure facts about those four lads from Liverpool that we bet you don’t know. (Nein?)

1. Before Lennon/McCartney there was McCartney/Lennon

If you pick up a Beatles album today, you’ll notice the songs are credited to Lennon-McCartney, in alphabetical order, thanks to a longstanding agreement between the two songwriters whereby each would get full credit no matter who came up with the tune or lyric first. But this alphabetical listing was not always the case. The credits on their first album, Please Please Me, list the eight original compositions to McCartney-Lennon. One reason for this could be that Paul McCartney wrote “P.S. I Love You” and “Love Me Do,” the first two songs on the album. The McCartney-Lennon credit would appear twice more on McCartney’s 1976 live album, Wings Over America, and once again on 2002’s Back in the U.S., albeit much to Yoko Ono’s disapproval.

2. The Ed Sullivan Show was not The Beatles’ American TV debut

For that matter, CBS can’t really claim bragging rights, NBC can. Yes, it’s true: NBC scooped CBS, as The Beatles made their American television debut on NBC’s evening news show, The Huntley-Brinkley Report, not The Ed Sullivan Show, nor Walter Cronkite’s evening news. Although virtually unknown in America at the time, the band was causing mass hysteria in England and all three U.S. television networks sent camera crews to film their November 16, 1963, concert in Bournemouth. NBC used the footage in a four-minute segment on November 18th, but CBS waited until November 22nd to air the story during its morning newscast with Mike Wallace. The network planned to air the story on its evening newscast as well, but just hours after the Beatles story was broadcast, Walter Cronkite broke the news that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. On December 10th, Cronkite aired the Beatles segment during prime-time, which set into motion the Beatlemania that culminated with their February 1964 performances on The Ed Sullivan Show.

3. Eric Clapton almost replaced George

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Long before I ever knew what a mondegreen was, I used to think the lyrics of David Bowie’s “Suffragette City” went like this:
Hey man, oh leave me alone, you know
Hey man, oh Henry, get off the phone, I gotta
Hey man, I gotta straighten my face
This malaprop chick’s just put my spine out of place

Of course, now I know the original malaprop chick is actually a “mellow-thighed chick,” and my head hangs low in shame. But we all do it, right? We all make up lyrics (even words!) when we don’t know what the artist is actually singing.

A misheard, or made-up lyric, is called a mondegreen, after Lady Mondegreen.

So who is Lady Mondegreen? Well, she’s a misheard lyric herself from an ancient Scottish ballad called “The Bonny Earl of Murray.” The last two lines of the original lyric go like this:

They have slain the Earl of Murray,
And they layd him on the green.

The American writer, Sylvia Wright, is the one who misheard the lyric when she was a child and wrote about it years later, coining the word mondegreen for this first time in a Harper’s Magazine essay published in 1954.

So okay, “Lady Mondegreen.” Not so funny, but the ballad is over 300 years old. Much funnier, perhaps, is the mondegreen used in the TV show, Friends, when Phoebe mishears the words of a certain Elton John song and sings, “Hold me closer Tony Danza.”

What about you? We’d love to know what some of your favorite misheard lyrics are.

Check out past On Music posts here >>

[It is with sadness that we report Les Paul's death today, at the age of 94. I had the pleasure of meeting Les a couple times when I was playing guitar with Pat Martino. Pat and Les were good friends, and the three of us had drinks once when Les had his standing gig at a small, now defunct jazz club across the street from Lincoln Center. That night, I asked Les if he really loved the guitar named after him, and he said dryly, "It pays the rent."In honor of Les, I thought we'd rerun this post, which, curiously, went up earlier this week. Goodbye Les, we'll all miss your music making...]

Each guitar on this list helped define either a genre, a sound, or in some cases, a career. Think of it as an introduction to some of the most popular guitars in the world. For the companion post on 5 Legendary Keyboards, click here.

1. Gibson Les Paul

Design: In the early ‘50s, Gibson president Ted McCarty approached jazz phenomenon Les Paul and asked if the guitarist would lend his name to a new guitar, then in design stages. Paul agreed, and also lent some minor advice along the lines of color schemes. In 1952, one of the world’s most famous guitars of all-time was unveiled. Except for a period of time in the mid ‘60s, it’s been in production ever since.

Les Paul with his LesPaul

Look/Feel/Sound: The signature sound of the Les Paul is warm and full, with lots of sustain. In fact, the instrument’s sustain is so well known, it was used as a joke in This Is Spinal Tap. Nigel Tufnel is showing mockumentarian Marty DiBergi his guitar collection and holds up a Les Paul Standard, showing off the sustain without actually playing a note. While there are many different models and styles, with slightly different pickup configurations and cut-aways, all Les Paul’s, like all Gibson’s in general, feature top-mounted strings, rather than through the guitar body, as seen in competitor Fender’s designs.

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: Les Paul, of course, but just about every important guitarist over the last half century has recorded with one. The most famous devotee is probably Jimmy Page, who, when he wasn’t playing his trusty double neck, was generally armed with one. Coupled with his Marshall stack amplifiers and sometimes a cello bow, Page was able to pull even more sustain out of the instrument.

Hear it in action:

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Some of you may recall my post last year about original recordings that were better than their covers. Well now it’s time to honor some covers that, at least by my way of thinking, rank right up there with the originals. Unfortunately, the floss is no longer allowed to include soundbites, so you’ll have to go check these out on iTunes, or hit the YouTube vids provided. Of course, these are just some of my favorites. I’m sure you all have your own, and we’d love to hear about them in the comments below.

1. “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

originally written and recorded by The Rolling Stones, released as a single in 1965.

This tune has been covered by Britney Spears, Jimi Hendrix, Cat Power and Vanilla Ice, but the one I think beats out the original is by Devo and was produced by Brian Eno and released on their 1978 debut album Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (They had actually released an earlier single of the cover, but the reworked version is better.) And by the way, if you’re a Devo fan (and who isn’t?) and haven’t heard yet, the band is back! Check out their latest video over on their Web site.

2. “Unchained Melody”

originally written for the 1955 film, Unchained, with music by Alex North and lyrics by Hy Zaret.

Todd Duncan was the first to record this classic, one of the most often covered songs penned in the last 100 years, with more than 500 versions in hundreds of languages. Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, Jimmy Young and Roy Hamilton all released versions in the next decade that topped the charts, but my favorite is the Phil Spector version, sung by the Righteous Brothers, released as a single in 1965.

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Four-tracks have been getting smaller every decade. When I was a kid, in the 80s, I had one. A Tascam 244 (pictured 2nd in list) to be exact, that recorded four tracks of audio to a standard cassette tape. It was the size of a suitcase, and about as rugged as one, too. Remember those Tourister commercials with the gorilla? Exactly.

(from left: Teac reel-to-reel ca. '70s, Tascam cassette tape ca. '80s, Boss digital ca. 2000, iPhone 4-track app 2009)

But of course four tracks weren’t enough for an ambitious songwriter. So I’d ping pong tracks, but not in mono. Ohhhh, no. Mono was for amateurs. I’d do four drum tracks and dump them down to a standard cassette deck. Then I’d copy those two stereo tracks onto two new tracks, on a new tape, on the four-track and add two more, and then repeat.

True, there was serious generation loss each time, but the mounting tape hiss was a fair trade off for eight or even ten tracks in stereo.
Today, kids growing up don’t have to worry so much about tape hiss. And suitcase-sized 4-tracks have been replaced by iPhones.

Wait, hold on, rewind. Did he say iPhones???

Don’t believe me? Check out the making of The 88’s recent single “Love Is The Thing.”

Check out past On Music posts here.

There’s something cool about musicians quoting themselves. While there are many more than three examples, these are just some of my favorites. How about you? Let’s get a long list going so someone can write a book about the subject. Give us the lyric and the two songs. (Try not to include concept album lyrics, like The Wall, or something, where songs come back throughout the album in different permutations.)

1a. “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” by the Police

Released on the 1981 album, Ghost in the Machine, this top-10 hit features the following lyric: Do I have to tell the story/
Of a thousand rainy days/
Since we first met?/
It’s a big enough umbrella/
But it’s always me that ends up getting wet

1b. “O My God” by the Police

Following up in 1983 with one of their best-selling albums, Synchronicity, Sting used the same exact lyric toward the end of the song “O My God.” (He’d go on to use it AGAIN on his solo album Ten Summoner’s Tales in the track “Seven Days.”)

2a. “Sexx Laws” by Beck

Put out in late 1999, as Y2K fears ridiculously gripped the world, Midnight Vultures contains two songs with the same lyric. Here it is first, in its most famous incarnation, off the first song on the album: I’m a full-grown man/But I’m not afraid to cry

2b. “Debra” by Beck

A totally different type of tune altogether, “Debra” is the final song on the album and contains every word in the above referenced lyric, hold the last (“cry”).
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We’ve written before about famous folk who married their cousins. But it’s such a great subject, and there are more stories to tell, so we thought we’d dive back in with another post today, and keep the focus on famous musicians.

1. Igor Stravinsky

The composer of huge ballets like The Rite of Spring and The Firebird, Stravinsky was married twice. His first wife was also his childhood sweetheart and first cousin, Katrina Nossenko. They tied the family knot in 1906, when life in Russia was, er, simpler. So simple that Stravinsky wasn’t able to copyright his works because Russia was not part of the international agreements to protect intellectual property. This meant he made almost no money off the performances of some of his biggest, most successful pieces, unless he was conducting them. Later in life, after having four children with Katya, Stravinsky would take up a mistress, Vera Sudeykina, who he eventually married after his first wife died.

2. Sergei Rachmaninoff

Stravinsky wasn’t the only Russian composer to marry his first cousin. Sergei Rachmaninoff actually beat him to the punch by four years, marrying Natalia Satina in 1902. But unlike Stravinsky, who had left the Russian Orthodox Church when he was 18 (he’d later come back to it and compose many religious pieces), Rachmaninoff was devout (well, at least his family was). As you probably know, the church had issues with cousins marrying, and though engaged, Sergei was not allowed to marry his beloved. The result? He fell into depression for a couple years and didn’t pen much music at all.

But he remained engaged, and, after a lot of squabbling with the priests, and finally permission from none other than the Tsar (don’t forget, Rachmaninoff was already pretty famous), the two were allowed to wed and remained married until the composer’s death in 1943.

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Before I even get into the subject, let me just state up front: I know there are plenty of other songs that are usually played back-to-back on the radio. These are just some of my favorites. How about you all? Let’s hear what some of your favorite pairs are in the comments below.

1 & 2) “Heartbreaker” and “Living Loving Maid (She’s Just A Woman)” – Led Zeppelin

These two songs open side 2 of the 1969 release, Led Zeppelin II, the second studio album the band put out. In all my years of listening to the radio, I’ve never, ever heard them played separately. Interestingly, however, when the band played “Heartbreaker” live, they NEVER went directly into “Living Loving…” because guitarist Jimmy Page hated the tune.

Also interestingly, on many of the bootleg recordings I own, in the middle of the extended “Heartbreaker” guitar solo, Page starts playing Bach’s “Bourrée in E Minor.” This is later mocked in the movie This is Spinal Tap. During a performance of the song “Heavy Duty,” the band suddenly breaks into a minuet by composer Luigi Boccherini.

3 & 4) “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “With a Little Help from My Friends” – The Beatles

These two songs open the eighth studio album released by the Beatles, the 1967 release, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. While you might think the crowd sounds interspersed in the transition between the two songs are Beatlemania-Ed-Sullivan-Show-esque, they actually have nothing to do with the band. Yes, they were recorded years earlier. Yes, they were recorded by producer George Martin, but those cheers are from a British theatrical show called Beyond the Fringe, which was very popular in the early ’60s.

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Ed. note: If you missed our first post earlier this week on New Amsterdam Records, be sure to check it out here. Part 2 in the mini-series, on Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, can be found this-a-way. Today, we continue with Part 3 by introducing you to another of New Amsterdam’s exciting, new artists, Nadia Sirota.

If you live in NYC, or listen to WNYC online, and you are, like me, a night owl who loves to listen to the radio, you probably already know violist Nadia Sirota. She co-hosts Overnight Music, the midnight show on 93.9 FM. While she’ll often play new recordings of big, famous symphonies, the best part of the show is when she promotes up-and-comers on the scene, local musicians like those we’ve been talking about this week in connection with New Amsterdam Records.

Sirota, herself, has a new album out on the label, First Things First, featuring new music by composers Nico Muhly, Marcos Balter, and Judd Greenstein, New Amsterdam co-founder.

Sirota commissioned nearly all the pieces on the album, including this cool track called entitled “Etude 1A” (there’s a second, similar piece later on the CD entitled “Etude 
1″). For these two pieces (an etude is traditionally a lesson piece, or a study piece) Sirota commissioned composer Nico Muhly. You can’t help but hear the Philip Glass influence in
 these lovely little pieces, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Muhly’s day job is assisting Glass full-time (one of Muhly’s jobs is 
to feed Glass’s manuscripts into a computer program that plays the scores back to the composer).

If you’re wondering how she got the viola to sound like an organ, she didn’t. That’s a computerized organ accompanying her.




[Read on for more track excerpts and a short Q&A with Sirota where she unearths the origins of all those nasty viola jokes. Also, be sure to check out our contest at the end of the interview for your chance to win a copy of First Things First.]
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Ed. note: If you missed our first post on New Amsterdam Records yesterday, be sure to check it out here. Today, we continue with Part 2 of our little series by introducing you to one of their exciting, new artists, Darcy James Argue.

By the way, Darcy and his big band, Secret Society will be debuting their new album live at Galapagos as part of this Friday’s Undiscovered Islands music festival in Brooklyn. Click here to learn more.

Breaking News!… We’re giving away a free copy of Infernal Machines at the end of the interview below!

During the ‘30s and ‘40s, big bands dominated the radios and dance halls, swinging on the top pop charts from the jazz age right up until rock and roll took the world by storm in the early ‘50s.

But big bands (defined as generally a dozen to two dozen musicians) never completely went the way of the dinosaur; they hung around, playing fancy weddings, The Johnny Carson Show, of course (ba-da-ba-daaa-ba…), and even made a brief, trendy comeback when Harry Connick Jr. re-popularized old jazz standards and Broadway tunes for a new generation in When Harry Met Sally.

So what about today, in a music scene dominated by computers? Can the big band thrive without falling back on the music of the ‘30s and ‘40s, a la HC Jr? Composer/conductor Darcy James Argue thinks so.

He’s got a debut album out called Infernal Machines, featuring his band, Secret Society. With five winds, about a dozen brass players and a tight rhythm section (guitar, piano, bass, drums), Argue’s Secret Society imagines what would have happened to big band jazz had it continued to evolve through the ‘50s and ‘60s, right up until today.

Argue’s music is a fusion of many different sounds, incorporating everything from hip-hop to straight ahead rock, from jazzy ballads to driving blues. On his Web site, he calls it Steampunk Big Band (more on that in my interview with Argue below),

For example, check out this excerpt from the first track off Infernal Machines called “Phobos” (that’s one of Mars’s moons, in case you forgot).

That cool, funky beat sounds like something right out of a drum and bass track. But when it’s met with a distorted guitar, it starts to sound like Radiohead. Then the Secret Society winds and horns swell in and the summation is pure Darcy James Argue.

[read on for more excerpts and a brief Q&A with the bandleader himself]
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