Civic disasters in the pre-regulation days of the early 20th century are on a scale I find hard to comprehend, but the thing that shocks the most isn’t the loss of human life, it’s the careless way it was thrown away. The 145 lives lost in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire in New York were largely …
The CoS Tapes are a series of CD-sized compilations available to Centuries of Sounds Members. A donation $5 per month will give you access to these compilations and other member benefits. Join here. Trailblazing artists are usually better-remembered than Vess L. Ossman. The first musician to make a ragtime record, the ‘King of the Banjo’, …
The CoS Tapes #1 – Vess L. Ossman “A Bunch of Rags” Read More »
Centuries of Sound is two years old now. I have made mixtapes / soundscapes for the years 1859 to 1909, plus 2016 and 2017. All of these will remain freely accessible without any advertising. But from the first of next month there will be a huge amount of other material available for anyone who becomes …
January 1 — Ernest Shackleton sets sail from New Zealand on the Nimrod, for Antarctica. January 13 — A fire at the Rhoads Opera House in Boyertown, Pennsylvania kills 170 February 1 — King Carlos I of Portugal and Infante Luis Filipe are shot dead in Lisbon. February 12 — The first around-the-world car race, …
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.
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 …
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 – …
A staple of weird history sites, the Poison Squad were a self-selected group of healthy young men who willingly ingested food laced with untested food additives including formaldehyde and Borax. From their brave efforts come the foundations of the US FDA. Stuff You Missed In History Class have an episode about them, usual provisos about …
I was in London yesterday, and had a little time free to visit this exhibition about the history of recorded sound at the British Library. Having something so exactly match up with my interests is a very lucky co-incidence – and if anything my expectations were exceeded, though it is by no means a large …
Listen: 140 Years of Recorded Sound at The British Library Read More »
