I like music quite a bit, which sometimes makes me ashamed about how little I know about it. I have trouble even understanding the concepts of basslines and tempos and treble clef aria reverb synthesizers. I also don’t know a lot about the people who make music. But just in case I ever get roped into some sort of Music Knowledge contest, I’m going to make this list, so that the facts will be on the Internet to back me up! Here comes a list of the Top Ten Things PDR Knows About Music:
- Music is played by musicians or groups of musicians (colloquially known as “bands”). The act of playing music (called a “gig”) is, in fact, a form of communicating with noise!
- The first musician was probably Beethoven! This was ironic because in his later life, he suffered from a condition which would make it hard to appreciate music: Orneriness!
- Instruments were first added to singing by accident after a singer forgot the words and tried to cover it by pretending to get a trombone stuck in his mouth, but it turned out even better.
- Modern music was invented by humans (Homo Sapiens), a species on the planet Planet Earth. They use music to give people time to think between commercials on the radio!
- Elvis Presley was a musician whose name is an anagram of “les evil’s prey” because he was constantly being hunted by Les Evil, supercannibal.
- Rick Davies from Supertramp and Ray Davies from the Kinks are not the same person, in spite of the fact they have the exact same name!
- Speaking of names, the band Radiohead takes their name from a song by Talking Heads. The name of that song is “Radio Head”, which leads to the astounding coincidence that the song the band took their name from, has the same name as the band! Spooky coincidences like that make me suspect their may be some truth to those people who think musicians are in league with the devil (or multiple devils).
- They even have music in Greenland! It is not even punishable by death there!
- Even the full twenty-three minute long version of Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” is not long enough to sate me. I could listen to that song for roughly Four Hours at a time.
- From classical to country, from reggae to rap, from folk to funk, music is always, always, capable of rocking.
