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.

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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:

2. Gibson Flying V

Design: Orville Gibson, a mandolin maker from Kalamazoo, MI, founded Gibson way back in the late 1800s. But the Gibson Flying V didn’t hit the market until three quarters of a century later, in 1958, and was a flying flop that Ted McCarty, Gibson’s then-president, immediately discontinued.

Albert King

Look/Feel/Sound: In 1955, Gibson introduced its classic double-coil “humbucking” pickup, which was incorporated onto this odd, V-shaped guitar, clearly ahead of its time. Between the mahogany body and the double-coil pickup, the Flying V quickly became known for its powerful sound.

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: Bluesman Albert King got a hold of the Flying V in ’58 and never let go. But it wasn’t until Dave Davies started using one in the ‘60s that Gibson decided to reissue the guitar in 1967. Other famous guitarists who helped popularize the instrument include Hendrix, Billy Gibbons, Rudolph and Michael Schenker, Kirk Hammett, and Eddie Van Halen.

3. Fender Telecaster

Design: Another Leo Fender creation, the Telecaster hit the market in 1949 and has been going strong ever since. It is considered the very first solid-body guitar to make a significant impact on the music scene. It was also the first solid-body guitar mass-produced on an assembly line.

Keith Richards

Look/Feel/Sound: Like the Fender Strat, the Telecaster (aka Tele), is known for it’s bright, rich tone. It has two single-coil pickups, as opposed to the Strat’s traditional three. One of the most famous solos ever recorded with the Tele is Jimmy Page’s “Stairway to Heaven” solo.

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: The Father of Chicago Blues, Muddy Waters, was an early signature user, as were many other blues players such as Roy Buchanan and Albert Collins, who was sometimes called “The Master of the Telecaster.” The Clash’s Joe Strummer was rarely seen without one, and it was a favorite of Andy Summers, as well as Keith Richards.

Hear it in action:

4. Fender Stratocaster

Design: Fender first put out the “Strat,” the brilliant work of Leo Fender, George Fullerton and Freddie Tavares, in 1954.

Look/Feel/Sound: The Strat features a double-cutaway, sleek, contoured body, often referred to by Fender as a “Comfort Contour Body.” Those three single-coil pickups in the middle of the body further define not only the look of the Strat, but the famous sound, which is clean, crisp, and twangy.

Buddy Holly

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: While it’s hard to find a well-known guitarist who hasn’t recorded or owned a Strat, there are definitely certain musicians who relied heavily on the guitar during their careers. Early on in the guitar’s history, Buddy Holly helped turn the instrument into a familiar icon, using it almost exclusively in the late ‘50s, and most notably on his Ed Sullivan performance in 1958.

In the ‘60s, it was Jimi Hendrix who really helped push the guitar to legendary status. Because Hendrix was left-handed, yet generally used a right-handed Stratocaster flipped upside-down and strung left-handed, he got a bit of a different tone out of the instrument because the pickups were reversed. This gave a brighter punch to the lower strings, and warmer tone to the higher strings. Since his death, Fender has released many Hendrix “tribute” Strats, both left-handed versions, and right-handed versions, in attempt to try and recreate the Hendrix Stratocaster sound.

Hear it in action:

5. Gibson SG

Design: In 1961, Gibson added some horns to the cutaways of the Les Paul and slimmed down the body. The result was a really cool looking solid body (or SG) that Les Paul didn’t like at all. So he made Gibson take his name off the instrument, and like that the SG was born. It’s been in production in one form or another ever since.

Angus Young

Look/Feel/Sound: Gibson advertised the SG as having the “fastest neck in the world”, because the neck profile was slender. This, combined with the thinner body, means less sustain than the Les Paul, but the SG still packs quite a punch. It’s like Gibson’s answer to the Fender Strat, only with a slightly warmer tone.

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: Another long list here, including George Harrison, Tony Iommi, Elliot Easton, The Edge, Dave Grohl, and Frank Zappa. But perhaps the most famous is Angus Young, of AC/DC fame, who was rarely seen with anything but the SG. Gibson even produced an Angus Young Signature SG model.

6. Gibson Explorer

Design: For one brief year, between 1958 and 1959, Gibson put out one of the most unusual looking guitars to leave a major imprint on the scene, ever. Thing is, at first it was an exploratory flop, way ahead of its time. When other guitar manufacturers brought out Explorer knock-offs in the ‘70s, Gibson re-issued the once-futuristic looking guitar, and it became an instant favorite of heavy metal bands like Iron Maiden, and glam metal rockers like Mötley Crüe.

James Hetfield

Look/Feel/Sound: Obviously the look is unique. The same can’t really be said about this guitar’s sound, which is rather average. Although, in the early ‘80s, when metal bands were using them nearly to a fault, Gibson introduced an Explorer with high-output, “Dirty Fingers” humbucker pickups. This made an already ‘loud’ design, a really loud instrument. So loud, you would expect a Spinal Tap joke about how the guitar went to 14, four louder than 10.

Guitarists who helped make it a legend: Again, we’re talking loud bands here, so James Hetfield, Eddie Van Halen, and Dave Murray, for sure. But some others have helped bring the Explorer to center stage, including: The Edge, and bands like ZZ Top and Cheap Trick.

[If you're wondering why songs weren't used as examples in this post, mental_floss is no longer able to offer excerpts from copyrighted music. We apologize.]

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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.

3. “Rebel Rebel”

originally written and recorded by David Bowie, released in 1974 as a single on the album Diamond Dogs.

My problem with the original is that it just seems to run on a wee-bit too long, like Walt Whitman’s beard, or commercials toward the end of an episode of Saturday Night Live. Other interesting covers include one by the Bay City Rollers and, believe it or not, Dead or Alive. But my favorite comes from the film The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou and was recorded by Brazilian musician and actor Seu Jorge, who sang all those great Portuguese versions on the soundtrack. This one is just the right length, and works against the grain.

4. “Hurt”

originally written by Trent Reznor and released on Nine Inch Nails’ 1994 album The Downward Spiral.

When Nine Inch Nails opened for David Bowie, the year after Downward Spiral was released, Bowie sang “Hurt” in a duet with Reznor. But it was Johnny Cash who really made this song the classic that it is today, on his album, American IV: The Man Comes Around, released in 2002 and jam-packed with covers (another great one on this album is “Bridge Over Troubled Water” by Paul Simon). The recording went on to win awards and become the only entry he ever had on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart, where it hit #33 in 2003.

5. “Walk This Way”

originally released by Aerosmith as the second single from their 1975 album Toys in the Attic.

This was one of my favorite songs as a kid growing up in the ‘80s. First, in the late ‘70s, early ‘80s, we had the original version, which features that great drumbeat solo intro, which we all used to pound out on our air drums. And then in the mid ‘80s, we got the Run-D.M.C. cover released on the hip-hop trio’s album Raising Hell. It, of course, features Steven Tyler and Joe Perry on the track (which helped re-cast Aerosmith as a group worth paying attention to), and was the first rap song to crack the top 5 of The Billboard Hot 100.

Check out past On Music posts here.

(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.

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”).

3a. “She Loves You” by The Beatles

Released as a single in 1963, “She Loves You” is one of The Beatles all-time most popular tracks. In the U.K., it’s still the best-selling Beatles single ever.

3b. “All You Need is Love” by The Beatles

Magical Mystery Tour came out four years later, and featured the hit “All You Need is Love.” If you listen closely, you can hear the orchestra playing “Greensleeves” in the background (and elsewhere in the track, a lick from Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” and a little bit from Bach, as well.)

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.

3. Johann Sebastian Bach

We all know Bach had many famous sons who were also gifted composers (take Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, for instance). But do you know exactly how many children Bach fathered? Five? Seven? Thirteen?

How about TWENTY!

The first seven were with his first wife, and second cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, who he married in 1707. Johann was 22 at the time. His first child was born in 1708. While 10 of the 20 children wouldn’t survive to adulthood, Bach fathered the additional children, either with his first wife, or his second, Anna Magdalena Wilcke, when he was the following ages: 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 33, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 52, and 57 years old!

4. Albert Einstein

Obviously Einstein isn’t primarily known as a musician, but as most people know, he loved to play the violin, and took pride in his chops, which is why I’ve included him here.

Like some of the others on the list, he had his children with his first wife, Mileva Maric, who he married in 1903. But then he took up a mistress, Elsa Löwenthal, and, 13 years later, asked Mileva for a divorce. (Actually, demanded is more like it.) The result? Mileva spent the next two years in a Swiss psychiatric clinic.

Good times.

Eventually she agreed to a divorce, but only after Einstein agreed to sign over any future Nobel Prize money. He did, and he married Elsa, his first maternal cousin, his second paternal cousin. Funny thing here is that Elsa wouldn’t have had to change her name because she was born an Einstein. But she had taken her first husband’s name (Max Löwenthal), and so had to get Einstein back when she married back into the family in 1919.

Check out past On Music posts here.

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.

5 & 6) “Eruption” and “You Really Got Me” – Van Halen

Off their groundbreaking eponymous first album from 1978, these two songs come after the opening track, “Runnin’ with the Devil” on side 1. “Eruption” is, as most people know, one of the most famous guitar solos of all time. It, too, has something in common with the “Heavy Duty” mockery noted above, in that the chord structure is ripped from traditional Baroque tunes (like the Bach and Boccherini pieces mentioned).

Though VH’s remake of The Kink’s “You Really Got Me” is often played alone, I’ve never heard “Eruption” played alone on the radio. (It’s not even two minutes long.) It’s always followed by the Ray Davies’ cover.

Check out past On Music posts here.

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.]

While the majority of the tracks on First Things First feature Sirota alone, or with one other instrument, there is one larger work on the album, written by Greenstein, a piece for string quartet called “The Night Gatherers,” featuring the Chiara String Quartet.

Pretty Romantic, with a capital R, eh? That’s another thing that’s so compelling about this debut CD: there’s a little bit of everything, in a great, Post-Modern sort of way. Be sure to pick up a copy through New Amsterdam’s site, or try for your chance to win a free copy below, after the interview.

Q&A with Nadia Sirota

DI: Talk a little bit about how your relationship with New Amsterdam Records came about and what the process of putting out your first CD with them was like.

NS: I’ve been thinking of putting a record out on New Amsterdam since the label was founded, a couple years ago, I think, by a few wonderful composers. One of them, Judd Greenstein, I had worked with extensively, and, in fact, is the composer of two of the pieces on this record. Judd and I met at an idyllic music festival in the berkshires in 2004. There were a lot of bourbon-inflected commissions and general contemplations about the classical music infrastructure as it stood. That kind of thing. When I heard about this label, it seemed like the perfect home for the sort of record I wanted to make. New Amsterdam is unique in that it’s kind of a cooperative label. It offers the musician pretty complete artistic control and a lot of handy artist services, in addition to a lovely stable of label-mates. The handoff is that the projects are a bit more DIY than they might be on, say, Deutche Grammaphone, or whatever. What’s great about that is that I really feel like I poured a ton of me into this album.

DI: What’s the best part about having your own radio show?

NS: All the crazy programming I can dream up!

DI: What’s the worst part?

NS: Scheduling. Free landing in music is a puzzle. Fitting in radio is a puzzle. I dig it, though!

DI: Some of our readers may know this already, but violists have their own immense category of jokes made about them, a tradition that’s existed for decades. What do you know about the origin of this tradition? How does it make you feel when you hear a viola joke? What’s the best viola joke you’ve ever heard?

NS: So yeah. Back in the day, the story goes, the majority of violists were violinists who’d been politely asked to consider another profession. The resulting violists were somewhat less than stellar. Viola jokes inevitably emerged. Most of them are punny, cheap, lewd, that kinda thing. But come to think about it, that’s sort of how Jokes go. I’m happy to hear new ones! As for “the best I’ve ever heard,” I don’t think any of them really deserve a superlative in print, but here are couple of prime examples of the genre:

How do you know when the stage is level? The violist is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

What’s the difference between a violist an a prostitute? A prostitute knows more positions.

Sigh.

We’re giving away a copy of First Things First to one, lucky, random winner. To qualify, you must leave a comment below telling us what your favorite orchestral instrument is, and why. No brownie points if your answer is the viola!

Check out past On Music posts here.

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]

But not to give you the idea that Argue’s Secret Society is only about a fusion of styles; they DO do straight ahead jazz too, and they do it well. Take the following example from the last cut on the album, “Obsidian Flow.”

But this is just an excerpt from the song. When you listen to the whole track, which is nearly 10 minutes long, you once again begin to hear the band veering off into the world of progressive rock, and other styles.

Q&A with Darcy James Argue

1. Talk a little bit about what you call Steampunk Big Band. A lot of our readers are probably familiar with Steampunk fantasy fiction, but as it applies to music, not so much.

DJA: Honestly, it started as a lark, really, just casting about for something to put in the “Sounds Like” field when I first set up the band’s MySpace page. But I do feel the label captured something of what I’m trying to due with Secret Society, which is to take what is essentially a very old-fashioned form of music technology — the jazz big band — and repurpose it for futuristic ends.

The big band originally rose to popularity in the 30’s and 40’s because in those pre-amplification days, if you wanted to have a really slammin’ party, you needed a *lot* of saxophones and brass instruments to fill up the ballroom with their sound. The rise of the PA system changed all of that, obviously. Still, there’s something very attractive to me about taking an ensemble that is so strongly associated with a particular time, place, and sound, and then re-imagining it for the present day.

2. The title of your new album Infernal Machines comes from a 1906 John Philip Sousa quote about the recording industry. Sousa said, “These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy…in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape.”

Obviously this idea resonated with you, but do you really agree? Couldn’t it be argued that these machines have allowed people to make music who otherwise couldn’t because they lacked the skill, talent, or were even perhaps, tone-deaf?

DJA: I picked the quote because it so perfectly illustrates how the fear of new music technology is not anything new. Sousa — who was, by far, the biggest rock star of his day — comes off sounding a bit like Grandpa Simpson here. I actually came to the quote via Larry Lessig, who has used it in his lectures on copyright and Creative Commons — but he thinks Sousa was right! In his view, the rise of recorded music — the “infernal machines” — decimated participatory (read-write) culture in the Western world. In place of “young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs” — in other words, if you want music in your life you need to make it yourself — you have young people passively consuming on-demand recorded music, i.e., read-only culture.

Obviously it’s not quite so simple as that — records have always and will always inspire people to start their own bands. And of course it would be awfully hypocritical of me to put out a record if I was secretly pining for a world without recorded music. But there is also something potent about Sousa’s vision of kids gathering to sing songs on summer evenings because they needed music in their lives, and singing it themselves was the only way they could get it. I love technology as much as the next utopian-minded geek, but technology has consequences and it’s good to remind ourselves of that.

3. Egos in bands always produce fights on the road, in the studio. And here you’re traveling/working with 18 other musicians! Obviously you’re the bandleader, but how do you manage all the personalities?

DJA: I mostly play traffic cop on stage — when the conductor starts making sounds as well it’s usually a sign that something has gone pretty seriously amiss.

I would like to say I rule with an iron fist, but that’s not really the way it works. Everyone in the group is a fantastic and in-demand musician and they all have much more lucrative things they could be doing with their time than rehearsing and performing my stuff. I won’t pretend rehearsals are always all sunshine and waterfalls — it’s incredibly demanding music and it takes a lot out of all of us — but at the end of the day we are all in it for the music.

Want to score a free copy of Infernal Machines? All you have to do is drop a comment below telling us what your favorite big band song is. We’ll randomly pluck one of the comments and send you the CD! It’s that easy

Be sure to tune in tomorrow for Part 3! And check out past On Music posts here.