Entertainment For Lively Minds
Third Reich and Roll
I missed this, but through the magic of t'interweb, I am lead to believe it may still be possible to get hold of it...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/documentaries/thirdreichandroll.shtml
The fascinating story of how the Third Reich - a dictatorship with an advanced appreciation of media manipulation - developed magnetic tape recording, the very technology that led to the birth of rock’n’roll.
Over three weekly episodes, Stephen Fry tells the story of how Hitler’s huge financial investment in recording for propaganda purposes would eventually give rise to exactly those personal freedoms he was trying to suppress.
The story starts with how the Allies discovered both German Magnetophon recording machines and the plastic magnetic tape they recorded onto. It took two of America’s biggest entertainment stars to realise the potential of this revolutionary technology.
Bing Crosby produced America’s first taped network radio show. And his friend, Les Paul, created his ground-breaking over-dubbing techniques, the building blocks of today’s record production.
Part two features the rock’n’roll years and how the multi-track recording process changed the face of music production forever. Songwriters could now write in a new and liberating way and, for the very first time, artists could record in styles they had never dreamt of before.
In the final episode we go digital. The hard drive was born. Sampling and synthesizer technology were developed. This revolution led directly to the creation of new musical genres. We download this music to our mp3 players. And it is much more than music now - anyone can listen, anyone can podcast.
The Third Reich believed tape recording would help them assume complete control while in fact it started a train of events that led to our enjoyment of personal freedoms they could never have envisage.
Any one listen? Is it worth getting hold of?
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Pop will Goebbels itself?
It sounds like even the great James Burke would have baulked at making that connection, which sounds schpurious to say the least. You might as well equally claim that if it weren't for tanks rumbling down autobahns, we wouldn't be moaning today about contraflow cones.
If you know nothing whatsoever about magnetic tape, multitrack technology or digital sampling, I suppose it might be of some interest. I can't help thinking, though, that instead of spending an hour and a half listening to Le Fry with his best Listen with Mother voice on, you could devote the same time Googling and Wikipediating - starting here, for instance (where the Nazis, Bing and Les all get a look in) - and end up much better informed.
Radio used to be the best medium for imparting information about the things that we hear and listen to. I don't think it is any more.
Ouch
"BASF Hunbug", says Archie.
I tried to listen to a bit
I didn't last long. Stephen Fry was using his 30-second-voiceover voice, which over the course of a RADIO programme lasting half an HOUR can indeed get rather WEARING.
So
basically your OBJECTION seems to be FRY rather than the documentary itself?
I can't imagine they're seriously intending on using the Hitler angle as anything other than a (admittedly naff) framing device, but maybe I'm wrong.
so are we supposed to commentate
on our own footy matches now and I hope you've got been out and tracked down you own weather readings. One iffy radio doc and we have to throw out a hundred year old medium. Oh I remember James Burke once Linking billards balls to the bombing of Dresden!
Not throwing out, just reconsidering
Up until only a couple of years ago, before streaming web content and embedded audio and video, if someone said, "What's the best medium to tell people about the history of tape recording," I'd have said radio, without a doubt. Now I don't think I would say radio, because the Internet has radically changed something: it allows you to control the pace of the incoming flow of information.
I don't know a huge amount about this subject but - like most people here, I imagine - I do know little bit, so the diddums-didactic voiceover of the series, which seems to have been pitched at the know-nowts and hard of hearing, had me reaching for the off button and off to the Web.
Radio is a wonderful medium for what it's best at. I no longer think that people reading out facts is what it's best at, that's all.
That'll be this then. I knew it was fact.
If you missed it on listen again...
it's being torrented here
http://www.thebox.bz/details.php?id=71039
I really enjoyed it and have
I really enjoyed it and have just this second finished listening to pt 3 ... though that statement should probably be caveated twice:
1) I work for the BBC and
2) The 'audio aston' doing some of the narration is a friend of mine
nonetheless I found it interesting and informative and even though I work in the bit of the BBC that does stuff on websites with sound and so-on I learned things that I didn't know before ...
worth a listen and if you don't like it you can always stop listening rather than going online and slagging it off ...
Not sure that reasonable criticism
counts as 'slagging it off'
I did stop listening
Then I went online and slagged it off. The two aren't mutually exclusive.
Hmpf.
Just finished listening to this and have to say it's definitely a 6/10 effort.
The 'audio aston' gimmick was just irritating and the continuous irrelevant 2-second snippets of music got in the way.
The title was a little confusing as there was precious little about Nazi-era recording technology - they dismissed wire recording in 30 seconds - but as a general history of recording it was OK.
I guess this was all because it was a R2 production and had to be 'entertaining'. I suspect it could have been better if R4 had done it.
(although I'll admit to not knowing that Hey Jude was recorded at 12ips because EMI couldn't get their new 8-track recorder to work at 15ips)