Was "Mad Men" the first TV show to play a Beatles song?

As though she weren't delightful enough already, Megan Draper, Don Draper's second wife on "Mad Men," won a special place in my heart this last week by introducing her husband to the Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows." Appropriately, the 40-year old Don pulled the needle off the record halfway through the song, which he surely found incomprehensible. According to the New York Times, this was a Major Moment in television history:

Aside from songs that have been played in the occasional commercial or the Beatles cartoon series that was shown on ABC in the 1960s, the use of “Tomorrow Never Knows” on “Mad Men” is probably one of the only times that a Beatles track has been used in a TV show, music and advertising executives say.

Jeff Jones, the head of Apple Corps, the Beatles’ company, wrote in an e-mail on Monday that it was the first such license in the five years he has been with the group, although he said he could not be sure about earlier uses that predate his time at the company. Mr. Weiner said he was told that it was the only time a Beatles song has been in a television show, other than the band’s live performances.

I have a strong memory of hearing a few seconds of a Beatles song, possibly "I Want to Hold your Hand," playing on Col. Raynor Sarnac's clock radio on an episode of "Call to Glory." I have no idea if this was historically accurate -- whether clock radios existed at the time that could wake people up to music, whether a middle-aged Air Force colonel would be listening to a station that played the Beatles in 1963, etc. -- but I'm pretty sure it happened on TV, nearly 30 years ago. Can anyone back me up on this?

Yeah, that's Elisabeth Shue.

Update: Good point in comments from Matt Glassman: "Life Goes On" used the Beatles' "Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da" in the opening credits every damned episode!

To the blandest go the spoils

Beverly just rocked too
hard for Carson Daly.

I found the selection process on "The Voice" pretty interesting. Generally, whether the selecting was being made by the professional coaches (elites) or the audience (masses), the pattern was pretty much the same, with the more interesting artists being eliminated in favor of the blander but more broadly acceptable ones. The duos, the country singer, the chanteuse, the guy who sounded like a gal... all fell to generic pop singers. The final episode was no exception: the elimination began with both of the show's lesbians, leaving only the very attractive, versatile, but almost completely uninteresting Javier and Dia.

I think there's a lesson there for democratic elections. I'm not sure whether to consider "The Voice"'s electoral system nonpartisan or multi-partisan (the four judges had broad power to "nominate" their contestants). Regardless, it shows the down side of Downsian convergence. No one is really offended, but no one is really satisfied, either.

Okay, there are important differences between being The Voice and being, say, The President. Beverly or Xenia or someone else could have been chosen as a pop star and done the job very well, while, say, Dennis Kucinich or Michele Bachmann, while very interesting candidates, would not make particularly good presidents, in my opinion anyway. The nature of the job makes it vitally important to have allies who can help pass legislation, and bomb-throwers really don't have those kinds of allies. A pop singer doesn't need such alliances.

Okay, comparison over.

The Dream

Matt Yglesias' post on the rather meager ambitions of the liberal vision of the American Dream reminded me of Pink Floyd's "The Gunner's Dream":

A place to stay, enough to eat
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud about your doubts and fears, and what's more,
No one ever disappears, you never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
And everyone has recourse to the law
And no one kills the children anymore.

Roger Waters' vision wasn't particularly radical, but even three decades later, it still sounds pretty appealing.

Showmanship

I went to see U2 last Saturday at Invesco Field. It really was a great show -- those guys still know how to play to a stadium crowd in a way very few other bands can. The set list was wonderful, although I wish they'd played some different stuff off the new album. ("Unknown Caller" and "Breathe" would have been welcome replacements for "Get on your Boots" and "Moment of Surrender.")

I have to say that Bono came off a bit weird, with his old swagger coming across as more of a stagger. He seemed to be either a) in his 50s; b) recovering from back surgery; or c) suffering from altitude sickness. It is entirely possible that all three were true. He's still got plenty of energy, and his voice is pitch-perfect, but the stories he was telling were somewhat unfocused. Still, I suppose it's an improvement over when he used to make me feel guilty for playing Sun City or supporting the IRA. (Not that I did those things, but he was very effective with the guilt.)

I've been reflecting a bit on U2's contribution to the genre of aging rock acts. Below is a video from the "Rattle and Hum" film showing a 1987 performance of "Where the Streets have no Name." The performance is fantastic, as is the cinematography. But what struck me was just how little most of the band moves. Edge is pretty stationary and can make the sounds he makes without a whole lot of theatrics. Larry obviously has to exert some energy as a drummer, but he avoids Keith Moon's antics or Neil Peart's anal retentiveness or even Ringo's personality and instead just goes for quiet competence. And Adam, God bless him, probably burns fewer calories per dollar earned than any other entertainer in the world.

It's Bono who does all the real work. He belts out the very lyric-heavy tunes with tremendous power, in addition to dancing and strutting a bit and going off on political rants, and he's the only one who attempts to connect with the audience. The man works his butt off. That's a big burden to carry for a 50-year old with a back injury. My impression is that the rest of the band can continue to perform well into their 60s or even 70s, but Bono's going to have to come up with a different way of doing this sooner or later.

This is our Bin Laden, look at his head noddin'

Awesome video. Such a piece of its time.

Learning guitar

Me during my midterm.

One of the things I've been doing during my sabbatical is taking guitar lessons. I've been attending classes once a week with a graduate student in classical guitar. He's actually taught me how to read music, something I haven't been able to do since middle school.

Guitar isn't totally new to me -- my friend Marc taught me some chords in college -- but I'm basically learning a completely new skill that's totally divorced from my career choice. I can't remember the last time I did that. (Perhaps making fondant.) It's surprisingly difficult. If my brain was ever wired to do this, it really isn't now. But making beautiful music after days or weeks of struggling with a piece is a very satisfying experience. The trick now is to keep at it after classes end.

I can see it in your smile

Via.

Hey little girl, is your daddy home?

The Denver Post today provides us with the three favorite songs of each of the 3,000 people currently running for mayor of Denver. In most cases, these lists aren't particularly revealing about the type of mayor the candidate would turn out to be. But I was struck by one of them: Chris Romer -- a recent state senator and the son of a former governor -- claims his favorite song is Bruce Springsteen's "I'm on Fire."

Let me just submit that "I'm on Fire" is nobody's favorite song. If you were to rank the top 500 Springsteen songs (and you probably could), "I'm on Fire" would probably come in somewhere south of 450, if it even made the list. Sure, it was a hit, but only in the sense that virtually everything on the "Born in the USA" album became a hit, in the same way that any show sandwiched between "Friends" and "Seinfeld" was going to be a hit, even if it starred Jonathan Silverman and Ernest Borgnine. And even if Romer just wanted to give a shout out to Boss fans, why choose this piece?

There was actually one other politician who listed "I'm on Fire" as a favorite song. That would be Barack Obama. My hypothesis is that this is a form of dog-whistle politics. The Denver mayor's race is a crowded field consisting largely of Democrats in an officially nonpartisan race. Romer is signaling to the largely Democratic electorate that he is the true Obama Democrat in the race.

Okay, it's thin gruel, but I can't come up with any other reason for listing that song as a favorite.

The new music model

I heard a fascinating interview with OK Go's lead singer Damian Kulash on NPR yesterday.  The jist of the interview was that the old world of major record labels picking and promoting new artists is dying.  In that model, labels would send A&R people out to find new acts. The label would then sign a bunch of acts with the notion, says Kulash, that one out of 20 would make it big -- the profits from the successful act would subsidize the capital spent on the 19 unsuccessful ones.

Today, however, you don't necessarily need a record label or a recording studio to make decent music.  This can be done at home with some instruments and a personal computer, and maybe a camera to make a video. So some artists are trying to work around the labels.  And, indeed, OK Go has done quite well for itself without a label's backing largely building on the buzz created by their free videos (see here for their brilliant Rube Goldberg one).

Now, I don't know how accurate this narrative is. (It may be a lot like candidate nominations -- there's a popular belief that with the demise of party machines, regular people have a shot at office and don't need the party bosses anymore, but this is largely untrue.) But to the extent it is, it strikes me as not necessarily all that liberating for struggling musicians out there.

Under the old system, A&R people could actually pluck artists from obscurity and give them the backing they needed to be heard. With the labels out of the picture, theoretically no one is selected out of the system, but it's a lot harder to break into the upper levels.  Maybe you really don't need the label to provide you with equipment and studio time any more, but not every band or artist can afford to tour, which is pretty vital to building a career in music. This means that wealthier bands have a bigger advantage than they used to.

Besides, if the old model meant that 5% of supported bands made it, what's that percentage now with basically every kid with a guitar and a Mac in the denominator? Yes, some bands figure a way to make themselves heard, but a lot more fall by the wayside. This strikes me as one of those societal changes that sounds more "democratic" but really means that more people are free to fail.

Whip My Hair

Somehow I'd missed this when it first aired.  This is Jimmy Fallon (doing Neil Young) and an old-school Bruce Springsteen covering Willow Smith's "Whip My Hair."  This is not only brilliant, but it's actually good.  Fallon is downright scary.

The Way

This song is one of the real highlights of Springsteen's "The Promise," the new release of material he worked on between "Born to Run" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town."  There's a lot of amazing work in there (you could make a career out of the music Springsteen discards and still be better than John Mellencamp), but this one in particular is haunting me.

Why do non-southerners still hold such a dim view of the South?

Three words: Hank. Williams. Junior.

There's so much to take apart in this piece of excrement.  But just for one, is he really suggesting that Texas would have a more draconian justice system than it currently has if it were not (nominally) part of the United States?