Band Members Research Articles

Designing for group music improvisation: a case for jamming with your emotions

During improvisation, musicians express themselves through live music. This project looks at the relationship between musicians during music improvisation, the processes of expression and communication taking place during performance and possible ways to use musicians' emotions, to influence a digital instrument - and in consequence improvisation. To illustrate this, a three-layer model is described studying the relationship between band members and the audience as a system, where emotions, expressivity and generation of sound give shape to improvisation. Focus is applied specifically on how individual emotional arousal can be used as input to control as a group a musical instrument: EMjam. The instrument is illustrated, describing the design and implementation as well as the evaluation of it, to subsequently discuss the results.

Designing for group music improvisation: a case for jamming with your emotions

During improvisation, musicians express themselves through live music. This project looks at the relationship between musicians during music improvisation, the processes of expression and communication taking place during performance and possible ways to use musicians' emotions, to influence a digital instrument - and in consequence improvisation. To illustrate this, a three-layer model is described studying the relationship between band members and the audience as a system, where emotions, expressivity and generation of sound give shape to improvisation. Focus is applied specifically on how individual emotional arousal can be used as input to control as a group a musical instrument: EMjam. The instrument is illustrated, describing the design and implementation as well as the evaluation of it, to subsequently discuss the results.

Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance by Tiger C. Roholt

Reviewed by: Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance by Tiger C. Roholt Scott Gleason Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance. By Tiger C. Roholt. New York: Bloomsbury, 2014. [ix, 175p. ISBN 9781441166272 (hardcover), $100; ISBN 9781441104182 (paperback), $29.95; ISBN 9781441170774 (e-book), $25.99.] Music examples, illustrations, bibliography, discography, index. Why philosophize about musical groove, a phenomenon whose importance to so many African diasporic musics appears self-evident? Why philosophize as opposed to, for example, specifying with greater precision the qualities of grooves from traditional music-analytical perspectives, or seeking to understand ethnographically groove’s verbal discourses and cultures? In Groove: A Phenomenology of Rhythmic Nuance, Tiger C. Roholt intervenes in a contentious [End Page 106] problematic, with groove as his terrain: that of disembodied formalism’s inability to value Afrological musics, let alone to “get” them, to groove. Roholt argues that to comprehend a groove specifically is to feel it, actually to move one’s body, to attend to its “conspicuous affective dimension” (p. 2), and hence the “analytical” specification of grooves’ nuances falsely assumes it can adequately account for their bodily effects (pp. 40 and 51–82), which are their very defining features, the reasons we care about them in the first place. Roholt further utilizes a kind of ad hoc discursive ethnography in building his argument, which acknowledges groove’s status as an Afrological music, leading him to attend carefully to groove as a distinct cultural practice, hence seeking to value it as such. Where, then, does Roholt’s properly philosophical approach to groove lie? Utilizing the descriptive resources of phenomenology, appeal is made to the first-person introspection of experiences, which are verbally shareable and thus productive of knowledge. Roholt specifically argues that Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of “motor-intentionality” empowers us to address the type of feel grooves convey: to understand a groove is not solely or quite to feel it, but a more nuanced (if I may) and complex concept: “to comprehend it bodily and to feel that comprehension” (p. 5, emphasis original; see also, pp. 93–122). This implies a cycle of recursion: grooves are felt, but, too, our simultaneous understandings of them are also experienced as felt. This argument enables us to mediate concept and experience in music, an ongoing concern in philosophical and theoretical discussions. By placing priority on the feel of a groove, Roholt is able to do justice philosophically to what appears to be most listeners’ primary concern about groove: the feel, the feelings a groove evokes or embodies, and the way a groove makes you move. Discussion of the feelings or the feel of a musical groove could lead to claims about its ineffability, however. To his credit, Roholt (pp. 27–38) takes this possibility seriously, in the traditional philosophical manner of arguing against it. His argument takes the form of a critique of Diana Raffman’s cognitivist account of musical ineffability (in Language, Music, and Mind [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993]), which argues that musical nuances do not admit of cognitive representation—conceptualization and recall—and are thus inexpressible verbally. (Raffman specifically limits her discussion to the pitch domain [ibid., pp. 7–8]; Roholt is concerned primarily with musical temporality.) The tenor of Raffman’s analytic account is far from mystical (as is often implied by continental discussions of musical ineffability), and yet she does argue musical nuances are ineffable. Roholt argues, via his ad hoc ethnography and appeal to intuition and common experience, that musicians nonetheless find ways to communicate regarding desired musical nuances (pp. 22–26). A bass player tells a drummer to “drive harder” during the pre-chorus, to “relax into” a hypermetrically strong beat. These metaphors address microtimings nonanalytically—indirectly—and yet they are verbal expressions. The nuances of musical grooves are thus effable. Roholt’s discourse writes against a complex disciplinary problematic, mediating music studies (music theory and analysis), philosophy (phenomenology and analytic philosophy), (music) cognition, ethnography (ethnomusicology), and even critical race theory. Interesting here are the limits and pressures this interdisciplinary problematic places on the possibility of a phenomenology of groove. For example, an ethnomusicological optic sensitizes us to Roholt’s implicit ethnographic claims regarding what band members and...

Nuclear structure of122Xe studied via high-statisticsβ+/EC-decay

The nuclear structure of 122 Xe has been investigated with measurements of the β + /EC decay of 122 Cs with the 8 π γ -ray spectrometer at the TRIUMF-ISAC facility. The data collected have enabled the determination of relative B(E2) values of some low-energy transitions, and the in-band transitions of the excited 0+ bands have been observed. As a result, the 2+ rotational band members for the 0+ 2 and 0+ 3 states have been firmly identified.

Lion songs: Thomas Mapfumo and the music that made Zimbabwe

Like Fela Kuti and Bob Marley, singer, composer, and bandleader Thomas Mapfumo and his music came to represent his native country's anticolonial and cultural identity. Mapfumo was born in 1945 in what was then the British colony of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The trajectory of his career—from early performances of rock 'n' roll tunes to later creating a new genre based on traditional Zimbabwean music, including the sacred mbira, and African and Western pop—is a metaphor for Zimbabwe's evolution from colony to independent nation. Lion Songs is an authoritative biography of Mapfumo that narrates the life and career of this creative, complex, and iconic figure. Banning Eyre ties the arc of Mapfumo's career to the history of Zimbabwe. The genre Mapfumo created in the 1970s called chimurenga, or struggle music, challenged the Rhodesian government—which banned his music and jailed him—and became important to Zimbabwe achieving independence in 1980. In the 1980s and 1990s Mapfumo's international profile grew along with his opposition to Robert Mugabe's dictatorship. Mugabe had been a hero of the revolution, but Mapfumo’s criticism of his regime led authorities and loyalists to turn on the singer with threats and intimidation. Beginning in 2000, Mapfumo and key band and family members left Zimbabwe. Many of them, including Mapfumo, now reside in Eugene, Oregon. A labor of love, Lion Songs is the product of a twenty-five-year friendship and professional relationship between Eyre and Mapfumo that demonstrates Mapfumo's musical and political importance to his nation, its freedom struggle, and its culture.

“Execute Not Pardon”: The Pussy Riot Case, Political Speech, and Blasphemy in Russian Law

In February 2012, in the full swing of the then-current presidential campaign in Russia, a short video of the “Pussy Riot” feminist band, beseeching the Virgin Mary to “drive Putin away” while performing a wild dance in front of the altar of Russia's major Orthodox Cathedral, was uploaded to YouTube. The performance was followed by the rapid arrest of three band members and a trial in a criminal court that sentenced them to two years in a penal colony on charges of “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” and transformed the case into a symbol of the infringement on freedom of political expression in Putin's Russia. Through a legal analysis of the trial materials, this article examines the reasoning used by Russian law to authorize limitations on freedom of religiously contextualized speech and discusses the case's implications for expanding the “forbidden ground” excluded from legitimate public debate in contemporary Russia.

Indian spectacle: college mascots and the anxiety of modern America

Amid controversies surrounding the team mascot and brand of the Washington Redskins in the National Football League and the use of mascots by K-12 schools, Americans demonstrate an expanding sensitivity to the pejorative use of references to Native Americans by sports organizations at all levels. In Spectacle, Jennifer Guiliano exposes the anxiety of American middle-class masculinity in relation to the growing commercialization of collegiate sports and the indiscriminate use of Indian identity as mascots. Spectacle explores the ways in which white, middle-class Americans have consumed narratives of masculinity, race, and collegiate athletics through the lens of Indian-themed athletic identities, mascots, and music. Drawing on a cross-section of American institutions of higher education, Guiliano investigates the role of sports mascots in the big business of twentieth-century American college football in order to connect mascotry to expressions of community identity, individual belonging, stereotyped imagery, and cultural hegemony. Against a backdrop of the current level of the commercialization of collegiate sports--where the collective revenue of the fifteen highest grossing teams in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has well surpassed one billion dollars--Guiliano recounts the history of the creation and spread of mascots and university identities as something bound up in the spectacle of halftime performance, the growth of collegiate competition, the influence of mass media, and how athletes, coaches, band members, spectators, university alumni, faculty, and administrators, artists, writers, and members of local communities all have contributed to the dissemination of ideas of Indianness that is rarely rooted in native people's actual lives.

Call it Crass but There Is No Authority But Yourself: De-canonizing punk’s underbelly

In popular music histories of punk, much has been documented on punk music and the formation of a punk canon. Much of this is focused upon the discussion of its generic development, its politically disruptive nature as a music genre, and the construction of its history, however exclusive that might be. Within moving images, documentaries such as The Filth and the Fury, The Clash: Westway to the World and The Punk Rock Movie have all contributed to the canonization of particular bands, performers and artistes within the popular conception of punk history. While the canonical narratives of punk tended to concentrate on popular punk bands such as the Sex Pistols, The Clash and The Damned, for example, we can understand these bands as having their ideological messages commodified through their affiliation with major record labels. Outside of these major labels and their punk artistes existed a DIY punk scene known as ‘anarcho-punk’, which was associated with an overt sense of political commitment and authenticity. At the centre of this particular scene was the band Crass, who articulated an anarchic and pacifistic DIY ethic as a touchstone for an alternative way of living, and used punk music as a vehicle for furthering the anarcho-punk movement’s ideologies. Investigating the ways in which Dutch film-maker Alexander Oey mediates the story of Crass in his film There Is No Authority But Yourself, this article examines how Oey’s documentary seeks to evaluate and deconstruct established canonical approaches in order to illuminate a wider set of practices at work in the mediation of punk historiography. In doing so Oey’s documentary rewrites the narrative of punk history in a way that takes account of the significance of punk’s underbelly. Within this article I will show that, although the Crass documentary may on the surface appear to be generic and non-challenging, with regard to a narrative interspersed with archive material, it considers the reconstruction of the past in its grafting of Crass onto the punk narrative timeline. It also considers how current activities of the band members continue to be influenced by their early political principles and the political directives of the anarcho-punk movement. Alexander Oey’s documentary takes its title from the final lines of the Crass album Yes Sir, I Will, ‘You must learn to live with your own conscience, your own morality, your own decision, your own self. You alone can do it. There is no authority but yourself’, and thus reflected the band’s dogmatic belief in one’s personal responsibilities to enable change. In his previous work Alexander Oey is renowned for documenting stories that challenge some of society’s accepted values and has engendered controversy with his previous films Euro-Islam According To Tariq Ramadan, My Life as a Terrorist: The Story of Hans-Joachim Klein and Negotiating With Al-Qaeda?.

Lydia in Oz

With the recent publication of studies about Miles Davis’s recordings such as Kind of Blue (Williams, 2012) and of his quintet featuring Wayne Shorter (Waters 2011), George Russell’s Lydian Chromatic Concept Of Tonal Organization (2001[1953]) has been re-instated as a core influence in the evolution of jazz in the 1960s and particularly on the use of modes as a basis for improvisation and composition. Unfortunately, Russell’s achievements are narrowed by the prism of the celebrity of Kind of Blue (1959) to a systematisation of the relationship between chords and scales. By shifting our attention away from this narrow con-sideration of modal jazz and towards what is probably the earliest example of music influ-enced by Russell’s Lydian Concept outside of the USA, that of Australian pianist Bryce Rohde, I propose a different reading of Russell’s influence, which is less concerned with modes than with providing a coherent field for the blooming of a chromatic approach to im-provisation and composition. This paper begins with an overview (based on journal/magazine sources) of the recep-tion of Russell’s musical and theoretical work in 1960s Australia. Rohde’s acknowledgement of Russell’s influence brought the LCCOTO to the attention of fellow Australian musicians. The overview is followed by a musical analysis of key works by Bryce Rohde, which shows the variety of approaches, the structural complexity and chromaticism allowed by the LCCO-TO. In a final part we will see that Rohde’s band members (contemporary and historic inter-views) continued to pursue Russell’s Concept: one explored foreign scales and Eastern influ-ences while another developed further approaches to structures and harmony. Studying Aus-tralian jazz in the 1960s has provided evidence of the extensive influence of Russell, affords a re-evaluation of usual conceptions of the evolution of jazz harmony. This paper also opens up general lines of enquiry as to how exactly Russell’s ideas fit into the broader history of jazz innovation.

Of Kookaburras and Men (at Work): Copyright Infringement in Musical Works Revisited

The untimely death of Men at Work instrumentalist, Greg Ham in April 2012 appeared to provide a tragic coda to the long running copyright infringement litigation between music publishers, Larrikin Music and band members Colin Hay and Ronald Strykert and their record company, EMI. The resolution of Larrikin Music’s claim has not however, stilled the debate over the appropriate boundary of copyright protection in the context of musical works. Rather, it has re-ignited a wide ranging debate over the proper use of copyright protection in the musical realm in the face of technological advancements and increasingly creative uses of musical phrases in other works, particularly those that employ digital sampling techniques, in mash ups and for creative remixing in both a live, DJ environment and in recording studios. Those discussions highlight the troubling implications for composers and musicians in the fallout from the Larrikin decisions. More fundamentally perhaps, the substance of the determinations in the litigation saga raise a number of questions on issues that are crucial to a musical copyright infringement enquiry – what does “original” mean in respect of a musical work?; what is the appropriate procedure for determining infringement in respect of musical works?; and what comparisons are relevant to a consistent understanding of substantial similarity in the musical context?

Prevalence of Musculoskeletal Injury Among Collegiate Marching Band and Color Guard Members.

To investigate the prevalence of musculoskeletal injury (MSI) in collegiate marching band and color guard members and the associated factors. An electronic survey was developed and delivered via the Qualtrics survey platform to collegiate marching band and color guard members in the United States. Information collected included demographics; years of experience; training and performance characteristics; footwear worn; instrument played/equipment used; participation in stretching/strengthening programs; injury prevalence and type; treatment sought for injury; and participation time lost due to injury. There were 1,379 (792 female, 587 male) members of 21 collegiate marching bands who completed the survey. Respondents had an average age of 19.8 yrs, height 171.9 cm, weight 72.3 kg, and BMI 24.4 kg/m2. Twenty-five percent of respondents reported sustaining a MSI as a result of participating in marching band or color guard. Females were 20% more likely to sustain a MSI and 87.7% of MSI involved the lower extremity. A significant difference in BMI was found between those who did and did not sustain a MSI (p=0.014). Members of collegiate marching band and color guard may be at risk of sustaining a MSI due to the repetitive nature of the activities performed during practice and performance. The lower extremity is more prone to injury, and a higher BMI may be a risk factor for MSI in this population.

Marching Band Camp Injury Rates at the Collegiate Level.

Marching band camp injuries were recorded over the course of 1 week (10 field practices) to determine injury rate for preseason. Members were instructed to self-report any type of injury that occurred. The collected data were coded and analyzed for total injuries and injuries per section. The injury counts, along with total practices and band members per section, were used to calculate injury rate per 1,000 exposures for total injury and injury per section. There were a total of 191 injuries reported in 1,540 practice exposures. The overall injury rate was 124.03/1,000 exposures. The instrument with the highest injury rate was the mellophone (220.0/1,000 exposures), followed by the trombone (190.0/1,000 exposures), and percussion (184.62/ 1,000 exposures). The instrument with the lowest injury rate was the clarinet (43.75/1,000 exposures). The findings demonstrate that marching band is a strenuous activity and deserves to be considered an area of emerging practice for athletic trainers and other health care professionals.

It's All a Kind of Magic: The Young Ken KeseyRickDodgson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013.

It's All a Kind of Magic: The Young Ken Kesey Rick Dodgson. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013.More than a decade after the death of Ken Kesey (1935-2001), Rick Dodgson has written the first-ever biography of the American author, focusing only on the first twenty-nine years of the author's life, concluding with the publication of Sometimes a Great Notion (1964). The biography is balanced and informative, benefitting from the direct access which Dodgson had to Kesey's personal journals from the 1950s, as well as the Ken Kesey 1960-1973 Special Collection at the University of Oregon.Dodgson's scholarly biography provides insight and analysis which will be of great value to professors and students of American literature concerning Kesey's artistic development in his teenage and young adult years. Casual readers may be surprised to learn that Kesey did not drink alcohol (36) and never smoked marijuana until after the Menlo Park VA Hospital drug trials (128). In high school as well as at the University of Oregon, Kesey was focused on interscholastic then intercollegiate wrestling, magic and hypnosis, theatre, as well as the on the camaraderie and hijinks of fraternity life. He pledged Beta Theta Pi and was both an organizer and a performer in campus magic shows and in a dummy/ ventriloquist act and had a number of acting credits. Kesey married Faye Haxby during his junior year of college, and they spent the next two summers in Hollywood, attempting unsuccessfully to land acting roles in film.Dodgson credits Professor James Hall at University of Oregon teaching Kesey that literature and good magic employed similar simple tricks to great effect (65), a tenable analogy but perhaps overtaxed as the title motif of the biography. A Woodrow Wilson Fellowship took the young couple to Palo Alto so that Ken could pursue an MF A in Wallace Stegner's graduate writing program. Stegner was known to chide Kesey for confusing self-expression with self-indulgence (75), and Kesey's comments concerning Stegner in a 1963 interview so incensed Stegner that the latter refused any rapprochement with his former student.His experience at Stanford cannot be separated from his residence on Perry Lane, a collection of small wooden cottages on an unpaved road near campus. Perry Lane became the scene bohemian parties (Kesey famously said that he was young to be a beatnik and too old to be a hippie {124-5}), the initial acid tests (after Vic Lovell told Kesey about the paid drug experiments at the Menlo Park VA Hospital), and a melting pot of personalities from philosophers and professors to runaway teens and members of local bands like the Zodiacs and Warlocks (several of whom would, in 1965, realign themselves as a new band known as the Grateful Dead). Perry Laners were reading Joseph Campbell (122) and partying with establishment literary critic Malcolm Cowley (141)! …

"Art of drumming within jazz piano trio"

Name: Pauls Pokratnieks Main subject: Jazz Drums Research Coach: Yvonne Smeets Title of Research: “Art of drumming within jazz piano trio” Research Question: How can I through historical and stylistic understanding of jazz drummers in significant piano trios during jazz history, improve my skill as an interactive trio member? What are the differences and similarities in drummers playing within significant jazz piano trios during the history of jazz? What are the characteristics of these great jazz piano trios? How can understanding of these differences, similarities and characteristics help me to react appropriately in different musical situations and combinations? Summary of Results: As I remember myself jazz piano trio was always my favorite band format in jazz music. I like the simplicity of it and in the same time the magic how great players could get it to sound like an orchestra. Especially in this band format we can see how great musicians are as listeners and supportive players, there is a much bigger role and responsibility for everyone to make the music interesting and happening than in bigger settings. Individual levels are equally important because every one of the musicians can choose directions where the music will go. Music is really about collective improvisation and truly listening to each other. This “platform” is great to explore dynamics, interaction and to become as a one – a great rhythm section. After listening to all these albums and analyzing what the drummer chooses to play I understood that it’s not just the drummer’s personality that counts, but big impact to drummers decisions are what the other two band members are doing and suggesting in music. One needs always listen to each other and go one way musically. One’s job within jazz trio setting is to make other musicians sound good and make their job easier and more comfortable. This setting is really fragile and it can work only if each member of trio is working towards the same goal. In different jazz styles the basic fundament of drummer is the same – to keep music going with nice feel and energy. During my presentation I will show and explain how I applied specific exercises/concepts in my playing and I will perform with my own jazz piano trio to show different ways, approaches to play within this setting in different styles, with knowledge gained from this research. Biography: Pauls Pokratnieks is jazz and other improvised music style drummer and composer. Up until the age of 18 he actively performed in various local and international orchestras as a classical percussion player and took first prizes in competitions. At the age of 16 Pauls began to play a drum set and first developed an interest in jazz music. At the age of 18 he enrolled in the Riga Dome Choir School (RDCS) in the Jazz department, and there started to deeply study drums, jazz theory, harmony, bass, composition and other subjects. After graduating RDCS in 2009 Pauls decided to continue his music studies in Royal Conservatory in The Hague, The Netherlands. Now he is doing Master studies in Royal Conservatory in The Hague and working as freelance musician and teacher.

Seasonal Changes in Fitness Levels of Marching Band Members

Seasonal Changes in Fitness Levels of Marching Band Members

Hazing in the College Marching Band

The purpose of this study was to investigate hazing in collegiate marching bands. Specifically, the researchers were interested in marching band students’ experiences with hazing behaviors, to whom they were reported, attitudes toward hazing, and level of awareness of institutional hazing policies. Using a multistage cluster sampling approach, we distributed an online questionnaire to college marching band members attending National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I schools. Participants ( N = 1,215) were representative of 30 different states and included college freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors, and graduate students. Nearly 30% of respondents indicated they observed some form of hazing in their marching band. The most common acts of hazing involved public verbal humiliation or degradation, which generally went unreported. Reticence to report hazing was largely due to fear of social retaliation or perceptions that the hazing behaviors were innocuous. The vast majority of participants had negative attitudes regarding hazing and most learned about their institution’s hazing policy through a marching band orientation. Implications for the college marching band, contextualization of results, and future directions are discussed.

Dub, Dub-Key and Dabkeh: Palestinian Resistance through Reggae Music in Israel

Abstract Since the events of the Arab Spring, the Middle East has seen a significant rise in media that express resistance to oppression. Protestors and artists alike have made use of music to advance their political interests. The six-decade-old Palestinian-Israeli conflict significantly predates the Arab Spring, but it is not immediately clear if the events of the Arab Spring may have impacted the ways in which Palestinians express resistance. Palestinian reggae music draws our attention to the phenomenon of repurposing a foreign genre to create something separate, but meaningful, to Palestinians. In this study, we explore the Ministry of Dub-Key, a Palestinian reggae group. Through the analysis of their song ‘Dumyeh Plastikieh’ (Plastic Doll) as well as interviews with the band members, this research explores links between the band and the events of the Arab Spring.

A Musical Education: Lee Morgan and the Philadelphia Jazz Scene of the 1950s

When Michael LaVoe observed Lee Morgan, a fellow freshman at Philadelphia's Mastbaum Vocational Technical High School, playing trumpet with members of the school's dance band in the first days of school in September 1953, he could not believe his ears. Morgan, who had just turned fifteen years old the previous July, had remarkable facility on his instrument and displayed a sophisticated understanding of music for someone so young. Other members of the ensemble, some of whom al­ ready had three years of musical training and performing experience in the school's vocational music program, experienced similar feelings of dis­ belief when they heard the newcomer's precocious ability. Lee Morgan had successfully auditioned into Mastbaum's music program, the strongest of its kind in Philadelphia from the 1930s through the 1960s, and demon­ strated a rare ability that begged the title "prodigy." Almost exactly three years later, in November of 1956, Lee Morgan, now a member of the Dizzy Gillespie orchestra, elicited a similar response at the professional level after the band's New York opening at Birdland. Word spread, and as the Gillespie band embarked on its national tour, au­ diences and critics nationwide took notice of the young soloist featured on what was often the leader's showcase number: "A Night in Tunisia." Nat Hentoff caught the band on their return to New York from the Midwest in 1957. My back was to the bandstand as the band started "Night in Tunisia." Suddenly, a trumpet soared out of the band into a break that was so vividly brilliant and electrifying that all conversation in the room stopped and those of us who were gesturing were frozen with hands outstretched. After the first thunderclap impact, I turned and saw that the trumpeter was the very young sideman from Philadelphia, Lee Morgan. (Hentoff 1965)

Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times (review)

Reviewed by: Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times Alicia Doyle Led Zeppelin: Good Times, Bad Times. DVD. Surrey, UK: Pride Records, 2014. PGD2VD169. $26.99. In the late 1960s, musicians Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham fused disparate musical elements to form a uniquely “heavy” sound that came to define Led Zeppelin. Candidly outlined in the film, the genesis of the band’s musical style is a complicated and sometimes controversial saga. As original as the output of these four musicians was, it is evident that their music was derived from blues and folk traditions and from the musicians that had inspired them. This film provides an examination of the band’s formation and the musical heritage that contributed to Led Zeppelin’s innovative sound. Released in April 2014, this 2-disc set is available from Pride Records (4:3 screen format, Dolby Digital 2.0). Supported by extensive live footage and interviews with musicians, producers, scholars, and critics, this set offers a unique evidence-based look at the music of Led Zeppelin. Holding true to the DVD title and the song of the same name, the filmmakers present both good times and bad times. The material on Disc One is focused upon the evidence of the band’s musical genealogy in their first two albums (Led Zeppelin I and II). A primary goal in the film’s narrative is the dispelling of any myth that perpetuates the idea that the music of Led Zeppelin is sui generis. The film highlights each individual band member’s technical skills and musical experiences in addition to showcasing how highly inventive and creative the musicians were together as an ensemble. Following this investigation of the experience and skills of the individual band members, the next part of the film is an exploration of the tracks on the first two albums in terms of the apparent influence of folk, rockabilly, world music styles, blues, etc. It is often noted that Led Zeppelin I (1969) was recorded in just 60 hours. However, as the film reveals, some of the songs on this album were actually tunes from the band members’ collaborative past or were known traditional/folk songs. Despite the success of this album, it was this recycling and restyling of older tunes that initially was, and continues to be, a point of controversy. Coming on the heels of the first album’s success, the band’s sophomore effort, Led Zeppelin II (also released in 1969), did not disappoint the public. The interviewees in the film agree that this album represents Led Zeppelin truly owning their style. However, several songs again were clearly derivative and the album was not without its critics. The film’s contributors address accusations of plagiarism or at least improper writing credit regarding two tracks in particular, Whole Lotta Love, and Bring it on Home. In contrast, other tunes on the album, like the J.R.R. Tolkien-inspired Ramble On, did not raise questions of originality, but as is demonstrated in the film, were considered the foreshadowing of the band’s continuing and evolving creativity. Disc Two contains an examination of the developing style present on the Led Zeppelin albums that followed the first two. The film’s producers highlight the tunes [End Page 559] on the later albums that were recorded previously in Led Zeppelin’s career as a means to reflect upon the blues/folk roots of the band’s sound while the more progressive tunes are recognized for their inventive brilliance. The role of the band’s manager, Peter Grant, and the impact of Led Zeppelin’s own recording label, Swan Song, is also addressed. Along with the main body of material on the two discs there is a good deal of extras including an involved history of the Yardbirds, contributor biographies, and “The Hardest Interactive Led Zeppelin Quiz in the World Ever.” Despite the relatively low production quality of the discs and a few curiosities (typos in the quiz, lack of credits at the end of film, no liner notes in the DVD case) the information presented is valuable and is ideal for anyone interested in the musical heritage of Led Zeppelin...

Keeping It Real? Authenticity, Commercialisation and Family in Australian Country Music

Keeping It Real? Authenticity, Commercialisation and Family in Australian Country Music