Rush is the only one Canadian rock band that I know. For Chinese rock music, the Tang Dynasty band is an indispensable part. And the band that deeply influenced the Tang Dynasty was the Rush band from Canada.

Background

Rush was a Canadian rock band forming in 1968, and comprising Geddy Lee (bass, vocals, keyboards), Alex Lifeson (guitars) and Neil Peart (drums, percussion, lyrics).

Rush is known for its musicianship, complex compositions, and eclectic lyrical motifs drawing heavily on science fiction, fantasy, and philosophy. “The band’s musical style has changed several times over the years, from a blues-inspired hard rock beginning, later moving into progressive rock, and including a period marked by heavy use of synthesizers. In the early 1990s, Rush returned to a guitar-driven hard rock sound, which continued for the rest of their career.”

Rush has received nominations for seven Grammy awards. They have won several Juno Awards, won an International Achievement Award at the 2009 SOCAN Awards, was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1994 and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2013.

The top 1 music of the Rush band is Tom Sawyer. The song relies heavily on Geddy Lee’s synthesizer playing and Neil Peart’s drumming. It peaked at #25 on the UK Singles chart in October 1981, #24 in Canada,  No. 44 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and  No. 8 on the Billboard Top Tracks chart.  “Tom Sawyer” was one of five Rush songs inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame on March 28, 2010.

The second song that I would talk about is 2112. 2112 was released to favorable reviews from music critics and quickly outsold the band’s previous albums. It peaked at No. 5 on the Canadian Albums Chart and No. 61 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape and was the band’s commercial breakthrough there. Rush supported the album with a tour of the United States, Canada and, for the first time, across Europe, from February 1976 to June 1977.

CanCon

Many people against government involvement in the arts because they think it’s a violation of freedom of expression – even though “CanCon” requirements are the sort of paternalistic interference Ottawa calls “protection”. Even if it could be shown that CanCon rules had some positive impact on the development of Canadian talent by the protection it from foreign competition. Rush paid to record an album and distributed it.

“They might have gone nowhere had a radio DJ in Cleveland, Ohio not been sent the record by a friend of the band. She checked it out and didn’t think much of a lot of what she heard, but really liked one track, “Working Man.” So she had it played. And the phones lit up. People loved it, and then the station played the rest of the record … more calls came in.”

References

1. Full Comment Forum: Without CanCon, would there still be Rush?  Feb 20, 2012. https://nationalpost.com/opinion/full-comment-forum-without-cancon-would-there-still-be-rush
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_(band)
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Sawyer_(song)
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2112_(album)

 

 

 

Hello everyone! In this blog post, I would like to talk about The Payola Scandal.

What is Payola?

“The term Payola is a play on the word ‘pay’ and ‘Victrola’, meaning to bribe to play on the radio Victrola was a phonograph made in the early 1920s by the Victor Talking Machine Company of Camden, New Jersey. Payola means a bribe to influence the programming content of a broadcast radio, television or cable television program.”

In the music business, payola is inhibition and a persistent problem. It is the illegal practice of payment or other inducements by record companies for the broadcast of recordings on music radio. In the American music industry, a radio station can play a specific song in exchange for money, and those songs shouldn’t be counted as the “regular play”. We can imagine that the more times of the songs are played, the more popularity of a song would get.

How did the payola scandal begin?

In 1958, the famous “game show” scandals attracted people’s attention.  “Federal investigators revealed that the wildly popular NBC-TV show ‘Twenty-One’ and ‘$64,000 Question’ were rigged.”  Therefore, a large-scale investigation direct to similar practices in radio. In 1960, the National Association of Broadcasters proposed that “radio disc jockeys accepting payment from record labels for broadcasting particular songs would be charged a $500 fine and spend a year in prison”.

Major players

Alan Freed

Alan Freed gained great reputation with coining Rock ‘N’ Roll’s name, while he would be associated with the shame of payola.  He was charged with 26 counts of commercial bribery and handed a bundled of fines and a suspended jail sentence. He lost everything and died pennilessly five years later.

Dick Clark

Alan Freed and Dick Clark were hauled into a series of closed and open sessions before the U.S. House Oversight Committee alongside over three hundred other American DJs who admitted to having accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes—framed as “consulting fees”.

Influences

Unless you are the artist whose career gets a boost or the label who sees increased sales, there are few benefits.  Actually, payola hurts everyone, and cause untold amounts of chaos within the music industry itself. People would never hear great music if the artist can’t afford the “consulting fees”. And it increased the cost of music creation, which is a huge obstacle for those artists to write a new song.

Recent Event

“In 2005, one of the world’s largest record labels, Sony BGM, pay out $10 million in fines after the state of New York found the company guilty of engaging in payola.”

Personal opinion

Payola would have less influence in today’s life.  Network, internet and other many kinds of media could help people to accept more information about music rather than only from radios.  Although these advanced technologies would lower the threshold for the entry, the top level of music is still affected by payola.  Therefore, prohibiting “pay to play” is still required for the music business.

References

Payola: Influencing the Charts. HEATHER MCDONALD. (2018. June 3)  https://www.thebalancecareers.com/payola-influencing-the-charts-2460759

Payola Scandal Rocks 50’s Radio Researched & written by Bob Neira   http://www.modestoradiomuseum.org/payola22.html

A Brief History of American Payola. Kim Kelly. (2016. February 14) https://noisey.vice.com/en_us/article/64y8y9/a-brief-history-of-american-payola

Hello everyone.

My name is Virgil Sun. For my first blog post, I would like to talk about Jelly Roll Morton, so-called the inventor of Jazz.

However, the first time that I know this man was from the movie: The Legend of 1900.  During the piano duel, Jelly Roll Morton played Big Foot Ham, The Crave and Finger breaker which shocked me in my young age.

Background

Jelly Roll Morton was born on October 20, 1890, in New Orleans, Louisiana, “a mix of African, French, and Spanish—he eventually adopted the last name of his stepfather, Morton.”  He was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, an early innovator in the jazz genre, he rose to fame as the leader of Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, also known for influencing the formation of modern-day jazz during the 1920s.

He was recognized as a pivotal figure in early jazz, he is perhaps most notable as jazz’s first arranger, and he is believed to have been the first jazz musician to put his arrangements to paper.  Morton’s claim to have invented jazz in 1902 aroused resentment, the lies left a terrible impression on the fans, which is also a significant reason why he has long been despised.

Morton learned to play piano at age 10, and within a few years he was playing in the red-light district bordello, where he earned the nickname “Jelly Roll.” He played in Los Angeles from 1917 to 1922 and later moved to Chicago, where he reached the peak of his career for the next six years.

Original Jelly Roll Blues

“Original Jelly Roll Blues” usually shortened to and known as “Jelly Roll Blues,” composed by Jelly Roll Morton.  “The Red Hot Peppers version is a typical New Orleans jazz presentation where the trumpet, clarinet, and trombone play lead melody and counterpoint, with the piano, guitar, string bass and drums providing the rhythmic accompaniment. However, Morton varies and enriches this basic structure by providing many instrumental breaks in suspended rhythm, as well as giving the horns and the piano solo passages”.

Mixed with tango-like rhythm and flavor, Jelly Roll Blues is a prime example of the mixture of the international cultural influences that produced New Orleans jazz.  “In this record and several other Morton recordings of 1926-7, the New Orleans early jazz style, as a collective blend of instruments varying the basic melody using both composed, written notes and improvisation, reached its peak of artistic development”.

The Crave

The Crave is the first jazz music that I have ever listened to and also my favorite.  In the movie The Legend of 1900, the main character 1900 can’t help crying and re-played this music in his own style.

“Jelly Roll Morton did not play, he caressed those notes, his hands were butterflies, so light.”

In this composition, Jelly makes use of Spanish rhythms for a piano style that he refers to as “Spanish Tinge.”  “Now in one of my earliest tunes, New Orleans Blues, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for Jazz”. —— Jelly Roll Morton

Black Bottom Stomp

 

 

Another of Morton’s rhythmic penchants was the use of “stop time,” which used short intervals of suspenseful silence to build the momentum of a song or dramatically introduce a solo. These diverse elements, along with Morton’s flair for intricate and energetic arrangements, are all evident on compositions like “Black Bottom Stomp,” which Morton recorded with his Red Hot Peppers between 1926 and 1930.

Later Career

When the Great Depression came, Morton’s days became harder, and he gradually went downhill. Like other characters in classical jazz, his music was considered obsolete. Morton’s fate seems to be more unfortunate than many of the early jazz masters. In New York, he has few real friends because of his poor reputation. No one is willing to give him a rescuing hand during difficult times. Moreover, Morton, who has a strong personality, is not willing to work as a spare, it is a shame for him to accompaniment for others. In his view, glory is more important than work, so he has been in a state of unemployment for a long time.

Ironically, classical jazz re-emerged shortly after his death. The revival of New Orleans Jazz and Dixieland Jazz was carried out vigorously. As the famous trombone player Kid Ory said, if he can live for a few more years, he may also achieve the glory of his most prosperous period.

References

Jelly Roll Morton Biography. (2014, April 2). The Biography. https://www.biography.com/people/jelly-roll-morton-9415945

Jelly Roll Morton AMERICAN MUSICIAN. (2018, July 6).  The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jelly-Roll-Morton

Sandmel, Ben “Jelly Roll Morton.” In knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana, edited by David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2010–. Article published February 25, 2013. http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/jelly-roll-morton.

Ragtime · Blues · Hot Piano Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton [Digital image]. Retrieved July 10, 2018, http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/jelly24.html

The Crave Jelly Roll Morton. 20sJazz. http://www.20sjazz.com/videos/jelly-roll-morton/the-crave-1.html

The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, September 2004, Cambridge University Press, p. 131

Hello everyone.

My name is Virgil Sun. For my first blog post, I would like to talk about Jelly Roll Morton, so-called the inventor of Jazz.

However, the first time that I know this man was from the movie: The Legend of 1900.  During the piano duel, Jelly Roll Morton played Big Foot Ham, The Crave and Finger breaker which shocked me in my young age.

Background

Jelly Roll Morton was born on October 20, 1890, in New Orleans, Louisiana, “a mix of African, French, and Spanish—he eventually adopted the last name of his stepfather, Morton.”  He was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, an early innovator in the jazz genre, he rose to fame as the leader of Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, also known for influencing the formation of modern-day jazz during the 1920s.

He was recognized as a pivotal figure in early jazz, he is perhaps most notable as jazz’s first arranger, and he is believed to have been the first jazz musician to put his arrangements to paper.  Morton’s claim to have invented jazz in 1902 aroused resentment, the lies left a terrible impression on the fans, which is also a significant reason why he has long been despised.

Morton learned to play piano at age 10, and within a few years he was playing in the red-light district bordello, where he earned the nickname “Jelly Roll.” He played in Los Angeles from 1917 to 1922 and later moved to Chicago, where he reached the peak of his career for the next six years.

Original Jelly Roll Blues

“Original Jelly Roll Blues” usually shortened to and known as “Jelly Roll Blues,” composed by Jelly Roll Morton.  “The Red Hot Peppers version is a typical New Orleans jazz presentation where the trumpet, clarinet, and trombone play lead melody and counterpoint, with the piano, guitar, string bass and drums providing the rhythmic accompaniment. However, Morton varies and enriches this basic structure by providing many instrumental breaks in suspended rhythm, as well as giving the horns and the piano solo passages”.

Mixed with tango-like rhythm and flavor, Jelly Roll Blues is a prime example of the mixture of the international cultural influences that produced New Orleans jazz.  “In this record and several other Morton recordings of 1926-7, the New Orleans early jazz style, as a collective blend of instruments varying the basic melody using both composed, written notes and improvisation, reached its peak of artistic development”.

The Crave

The Crave is the first jazz music that I have ever listened to and also my favorite.  In the movie The Legend of 1900, the main character 1900 can’t help crying and re-played this music in his own style.

“Jelly Roll Morton did not play, he caressed those notes, his hands were butterflies, so light.”

In this composition, Jelly makes use of Spanish rhythms for a piano style that he refers to as “Spanish Tinge.”  “Now in one of my earliest tunes, New Orleans Blues, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for Jazz”. —— Jelly Roll Morton

Black Bottom Stomp

 

 

Another of Morton’s rhythmic penchants was the use of “stop time,” which used short intervals of suspenseful silence to build the momentum of a song or dramatically introduce a solo. These diverse elements, along with Morton’s flair for intricate and energetic arrangements, are all evident on compositions like “Black Bottom Stomp,” which Morton recorded with his Red Hot Peppers between 1926 and 1930.

Later Career

When the Great Depression came, Morton’s days became harder, and he gradually went downhill. Like other characters in classical jazz, his music was considered obsolete. Morton’s fate seems to be more unfortunate than many of the early jazz masters. In New York, he has few real friends because of his poor reputation. No one is willing to give him a rescuing hand during difficult times. Moreover, Morton, who has a strong personality, is not willing to work as a spare, it is a shame for him to accompaniment for others. In his view, glory is more important than work, so he has been in a state of unemployment for a long time.

Ironically, classical jazz re-emerged shortly after his death. The revival of New Orleans Jazz and Dixieland Jazz was carried out vigorously. As the famous trombone player Kid Ory said, if he can live for a few more years, he may also achieve the glory of his most prosperous period.

References

Jelly Roll Morton Biography. (2014, April 2). The Biography. https://www.biography.com/people/jelly-roll-morton-9415945

Jelly Roll Morton AMERICAN MUSICIAN. (2018, July 6).  The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jelly-Roll-Morton

Sandmel, Ben “Jelly Roll Morton.” In knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana, edited by David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2010–. Article published February 25, 2013. http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/jelly-roll-morton.

Ragtime · Blues · Hot Piano Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton [Digital image]. Retrieved July 10, 2018, http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/jelly24.html

The Crave Jelly Roll Morton. 20sJazz. http://www.20sjazz.com/videos/jelly-roll-morton/the-crave-1.html

The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, September 2004, Cambridge University Press, p. 131

Hello everyone.

My name is Virgil Sun. For my first blog post, I would like to talk about Jelly Roll Morton, so-called the inventor of Jazz.

However, the first time that I know this man was from the movie: The Legend of 1900.  During the piano duel, Jelly Roll Morton played Big Foot Ham, The Crave and Finger breaker which shocked me in my young age.

Background

Jelly Roll Morton was born on October 20, 1890, in New Orleans, Louisiana, “a mix of African, French, and Spanish—he eventually adopted the last name of his stepfather, Morton.”  He was an American ragtime and jazz pianist, an early innovator in the jazz genre, he rose to fame as the leader of Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers, also known for influencing the formation of modern-day jazz during the 1920s.

He was recognized as a pivotal figure in early jazz, he is perhaps most notable as jazz’s first arranger, and he is believed to have been the first jazz musician to put his arrangements to paper.  Morton’s claim to have invented jazz in 1902 aroused resentment, the lies left a terrible impression on the fans, which is also a significant reason why he has long been despised.

Morton learned to play piano at age 10, and within a few years he was playing in the red-light district bordello, where he earned the nickname “Jelly Roll.” He played in Los Angeles from 1917 to 1922 and later moved to Chicago, where he reached the peak of his career for the next six years.

Original Jelly Roll Blues

“Original Jelly Roll Blues” usually shortened to and known as “Jelly Roll Blues,” composed by Jelly Roll Morton.  “The Red Hot Peppers version is a typical New Orleans jazz presentation where the trumpet, clarinet, and trombone play lead melody and counterpoint, with the piano, guitar, string bass and drums providing the rhythmic accompaniment. However, Morton varies and enriches this basic structure by providing many instrumental breaks in suspended rhythm, as well as giving the horns and the piano solo passages”.

Mixed with tango-like rhythm and flavor, Jelly Roll Blues is a prime example of the mixture of the international cultural influences that produced New Orleans jazz.  “In this record and several other Morton recordings of 1926-7, the New Orleans early jazz style, as a collective blend of instruments varying the basic melody using both composed, written notes and improvisation, reached its peak of artistic development”.

The Crave

The Crave is the first jazz music that I have ever listened to and also my favorite.  In the movie The Legend of 1900, the main character 1900 can’t help crying and re-played this music in his own style.

“Jelly Roll Morton did not play, he caressed those notes, his hands were butterflies, so light.”

In this composition, Jelly makes use of Spanish rhythms for a piano style that he refers to as “Spanish Tinge.”  “Now in one of my earliest tunes, New Orleans Blues, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for Jazz”. —— Jelly Roll Morton

Black Bottom Stomp

 

 

Another of Morton’s rhythmic penchants was the use of “stop time,” which used short intervals of suspenseful silence to build the momentum of a song or dramatically introduce a solo. These diverse elements, along with Morton’s flair for intricate and energetic arrangements, are all evident on compositions like “Black Bottom Stomp,” which Morton recorded with his Red Hot Peppers between 1926 and 1930.

Later Career

When the Great Depression came, Morton’s days became harder, and he gradually went downhill. Like other characters in classical jazz, his music was considered obsolete. Morton’s fate seems to be more unfortunate than many of the early jazz masters. In New York, he has few real friends because of his poor reputation. No one is willing to give him a rescuing hand during difficult times. Moreover, Morton, who has a strong personality, is not willing to work as a spare, it is a shame for him to accompaniment for others. In his view, glory is more important than work, so he has been in a state of unemployment for a long time.

Ironically, classical jazz re-emerged shortly after his death. The revival of New Orleans Jazz and Dixieland Jazz was carried out vigorously. As the famous trombone player Kid Ory said, if he can live for a few more years, he may also achieve the glory of his most prosperous period.

References

Jelly Roll Morton Biography. (2014, April 2). The Biography. https://www.biography.com/people/jelly-roll-morton-9415945

Jelly Roll Morton AMERICAN MUSICIAN. (2018, July 6).  The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica.  https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jelly-Roll-Morton

Sandmel, Ben “Jelly Roll Morton.” In knowlouisiana.org Encyclopedia of Louisiana, edited by David Johnson. Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, 2010–. Article published February 25, 2013. http://www.knowlouisiana.org/entry/jelly-roll-morton.

Ragtime · Blues · Hot Piano Ferd “Jelly Roll” Morton [Digital image]. Retrieved July 10, 2018, http://www.doctorjazz.co.uk/jelly24.html

The Crave Jelly Roll Morton. 20sJazz. http://www.20sjazz.com/videos/jelly-roll-morton/the-crave-1.html

The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Music, September 2004, Cambridge University Press, p. 131