That Fatal Sneeze The Red Spectre Tunneling the Channel The Policemen’s Little Run The Golden Beetle The Dancing Pig The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon The Race For The Sausage Ride through Victoria and Vancouver, Canada Laughing Gas Premier Prix de violoncelle / First Prize for Cello The Lion Hunt Ben-Hur
I was interviewed last week for the United States WW1 Centennial Commission’s weekly ‘Centennial News’ podcast, and had the chance to discuss the musical trends of the era. The episode can be downloaded or streamed here – my part is 36 minutes in.
“This time James and Sean take a trip back to the 80s – the 1880s that is. Aside from the original music we have celebrity appearances from Arthur Sullivan, Johannes Brahms, William Ewart Gladstone and Queen Victoria herself (possibly) – plus some very drunk old Englishmen (not us)”
For UK readers, BBC4 are now re-showing the 2015 series Sound of Song. If you are interested in the history of sound recording and the ways in which changes in technology led to vast changes in popular music in the 20th century (and, as you are reading this, I’m guessing you are interested) then it’s …
Centuries of Sound’s radio show on Cambridge 105 is now available for listening at your convenience. Rather than simply present a mix of sounds from the year, here I discuss their recording and the world they were made in with my co-host Sean. This is our first ever show (sort of) so thanks for your …
Centuries of Sound on Cambridge 105 Radio – Episode 1 (1853-1885) Read More »
Not even close to being the first sound film, and not particularly advanced technologically (being simply a mime to a pre-recorded disc), it’s still something of a marvel to see this performance 20 years before ‘The Jazz Singer’ and a few years before even silent shorts started coming out of Hollywood. Three minutes of your …
An odd book, but not one I’m particularly fond of, The Wind in The Willows is a mix of Edwardian rapture at frolicking in the splendors of nature, the high-church volksgeist mysticism that was in vogue at the time and classic anthropomorphic children’s moral tales. It does sort of hang together, and there are many …
I’ve always used the terms “album” and “LP” interchangeably, so it came as a surprise to find out that the former predates the latter quite considerably. We started talking about albums in the sense of ‘photo album’ or ‘stamp album’ as early as the 1850s, and the first ‘music albums’ were along these lines – …
MP3 direct download | Itunes | Mixcloud | Feedburner (RSS) | MP3 pack This week has seen the passing of Geoff Emerick, who served as sound engineer on The Beatles’ Revolver, Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road albums, starting at the age of just 20. His death hasn’t generated as much interest as those of George …
January 6 — The first Montessori school and daycare center for working class children opens in Rome March – The 1907 Romanian Peasants’ Revolt results in possibly as many as 11,000 deaths April 17 — The first Minas Geraes-class battleship is laid down for Brazil, by Armstrong Whitworth on the River Tyne, in England, triggering …
