BOB DAVIS ART

Music

A. Background

Music has and always will exist. Before there were people, before there were apes, before there were animals, before dinosaurs, before trees, before plants, insects, amoebas, zoophytes, plastocytes, endocrinytes, and even before the beginnings of all things we hold dear, before that even there was music. On that first day the sun arose above the horizon and all was good on the new fresh and clean earth, there was already music playing through the night, and into that fateful morning.

God created the heavens and the earth in six very loud music-filled days. So the question arises, who was the legendary "third" member of that original band, the "fifth Beatle" of creation as it were? Their producer, Steve? I hear he caught the Babylonians at the Luxor and the Thessylarians really killed on drums, in the sessions that came to be known as the legendary "Assyrian Sessions."

The truth may never really be known, definitively, as to what the first notes that Adam and Eve, and their producer Steve, heard on their first day together as a group, but I can tell you this one thing: It was in A-minor, with a seventh lead, and a G-major fifth bridge to the Chorus of Angels singing their luscious songs of everlasting fealty, in 6-beat harmony. The note sequence was most certainly based on the A, C, F-sharp triad, played pianissimo.

History of Music

The recorded history of music begins in 1892 when Thomas Edison recorded the history of music onto a wax cylinder, known as a "recording device," that he had invented to record Alexander Graham Bell's first telephone conversation. Since then, the recording industry has taken off in all directions at once - tapes, CDs, DVDs, videos, dance crazes, cell-phone jingles, TV, nudie-bars and MP3s.

There are currently 14 viable formats for music, of which 3 will survive to the next decade, making enormous profits for their corporate masters, while the musicians get nothing. NOTHING! Have you invested well? Are you going to be on the side of history's winners when the industry shakes out and there are only three players left? How can you tell? You CAN'T! Only I know for sure, and I'm not telling! I can keep a secret from you, because you blab too much. You gossip and tell tales and I hear you're having an affair that you can't even keep that secret either, with your secretary's best friend, Susan! At the Barrett Motel on highway 13! I'm disgusted with you right now, so no way am I sharing my secret knowledge of the future of the music industry with you.

Size

416 albums are produced every 6 hours, in quantities ranging from 3 hundreds to 4.5 millions. They take up 4,122 warehouses strategically scattered around the country to best maximize their entry into your hometown. Altogether, there are 856 hectares of albums produced yearly, and stored in buildings under the watchful eye of our corporate masters.

Timeline

1215: Elfren the Dutch invents the saxophone.

1415: Jesse de Cordova invents the harmonica.

1611: Dennis the Meandering invents the harpsichord.

1655: Steven of Asbury invents the piano.

1712: The last surviving member of the Band, the Colonial Williamsburgers, invents the flute, before abandoning the colony and returning to England.

1822: Sir Steppen Lupen invents the subsidized Arts grant.

1943: Leslie Howard invents the whistle.

1982: The last instrument is finally invented, when Dave Pigglesbottom invents the guitar. Finally, we are ready for a new combo, the 4-guitar quartet. This art form is best mastered within the month by Bruce Springsteen.

Music Styles

There are 6 recognized styles of music:

- Country - a style whereby a twang is added to a twist, and the sadnesses of life come pouring out in lonely combinations.

- Rock - a style where the standard back-beat is superimposed on the random melody, thus overcoming the hard-scrabble indignities of life.

- Classical - a style where the violins play all the parts, leading to the remarkable discovery of the violin in 1872 in Vienna, by the Second Viennese School of the Arts, on Branden Street, alongside the cafe you liked so much when we visited there a few years ago, you know the one I'm talking about, the one with the tile floor, black and white checkerboard, and the very heavy cream dolloped into your coffee?

- Churrigeresque - a style brought to the Americas by the Spanish conquistadors, consisting of guitars, drums and bass, with backup by a saxophone trio. Often played on the beaches of Argentina. The singers often sing of subjects close to their hearts, like the gauchos of Argentina like to sing about cows, and the Meatpackers Union in Chicago likes to sing about beef, and Oprah likes to sing about salads. McDonald's is the prime example in the US of the churrigeresque style in commercial jingles, with their famous two-all-beef-patties-special-sauce song.

- Pop - the style perfected by Michael Jackson of Neverland Ranch, where black music is converted to white music right before the astonished eyes of the gawking public.

- Sixteen Anvils - a new style recently recognized as the official style of the European Union. Not yet heard in the United States. This style consists of sixteen anvils playing dense melodies in harmonic convergence, with polyphonic rhythms interlaced throughout.

This knowledge entry was written by BD and LvB, JSB, WAM, with help from PM, JL, RS, GH.

If you are using this for a school paper, please remember to credit the "Bob Davis Knowledge Base"

last updated February 19, 2007

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