PBStupidity

Public radio station WAMC from Albany runs pretty continuously in our house, and I support it and get a lot from it. But the stupidity of their music stories lately is about to drive me to random acts of violence. On Thanksgiving they did a vapid, all-morning “analysis” of the complete Beatles’ White Album with a bunch of variously educated talking heads, of which the only comment I remember was the insightful, “Ooooooh, the maracas!” And this week they’ve been promising a “mathematical” analysis of the striking opening chord to “It’s Been a Hard Day’s Night.” Well, you put “mathematics” and “chord” together, and I get interested. It turns out some sound expert did a Fourier analysis to find out that what sounded like just an unusual guitar chord was actually doubled on piano. The same genius then spent a full minute of air time (was this national?) speculating that it might be possible to find patterns in a Fourier analysis of the sound waves that could reveal which parts of the songs were written by Lennon, and which by McCartney. No hint of what you’d look for, to discern personality in sound waves – it just might be possible. Meanwhile, the station’s truculent guru Alan Chartock, whose obstreperousness I treasure, veers away from covering classical music because he considers it elitist. But isn’t there anything else musically non-elitist besides letting a bunch of nutballs who don’t know jackshit about music sit around and mouth off about the Beatles? Isn’t that expanding the very definition of elitism to include almost everything?