While driving home from a friend's place last night, I twiddled the dial on the radio and stumbled upon the once great and now zombie radio station 2UE. 2UE has gone from being probably Sydney's most raging commercial success to a tired old station, for tired old people, playing tired old music, under the ownership of Nine Entertainment Co.
I happened to stumble into 2UE playing the songs from the musical 'Grease', which unlike the titular track of the same name, no longer appears to have groove or meaning.
As someone who was born not long after the film version of the musical came out in 1978, I have been haunted by this piece of media for a very long time. What I found singularly strange about this particular listen though, is just how 1970s the music actually sounds. This is ironic given that it is supposed to be a satire/homage/subversion/celebration of the 1950s.
I know what music of the 1950s is supposed to sound like. This was that mad point in time where rock and roll had just exploded, where jazz was still hanging on, and where crooners and ballads and country, all were commonplace. That's mostly not the problem with Grease. It is absurdly easy for a semi-accomplished musician to think about doo-wop changes and 12-bar blues. No. The reason why Grease sounds so 1970s, is the orchestration.
Music from the 1950s was at best recorded onto 4-track tape in the studio and then if other highlights and embellishments needed to be made, they were added by 'bouncing' the existing tracks to stereo and adding the rest later. When it came to the consumer listening to music at home, almost the entirety of music was mono right up until about 1957. This means that music from the 1950s, sounds more compressed and if you want to achieve the proper sound coming from a jukebox, then you need to turn the bass up as far as it will go.
Grease doesn't sound like this at all. By 1978, Stereo was normal, 24-track recording was the industry standard, and in addition to electric organs, the synthesiser was already everywhere. The recording of Grease very obviously sounds like it exists alongside disco. It is definitely not a rock and roll record. Naturally if a thing purporting to be aping the 1950s doesn't actually sound like the 1950s, then I have a problem. If the thing committed to film and record doesn't match the thing it's supposed to be, then what in blue blazes was it originally supposed to sound like?
The actual musical which debuted on Broadway in 1971, has a score which is supposed to be played in real time by an upright piano, 2 guitars (being lead and rhythm, and depending on the number in electric or acoustic), one bass, 2 saxophones, and an unshielded drum kit. It is also supposed to have 4 female and 4 male singers, who are unseen by the audience.
This means that the live performance as originally played, would have likely sounded quite a lot like the 1950s. Coming up with old valve amplifiers would not have been a problem in 1971, as all transistor amplifiers only began to show up in the mid-1970s. Grease as a live show, probably would have sounded like a 1950s show because all the equipment was still nominally identical.
This means to say that the only set of recordings that I have heard are not even a good simulacrum of what they are supposed to be.
"Their lips are lying, only real is real"
If the only set of recordings that I have ever heard are wrong and if reality itself isn't real, then what kind of game are we playing at here?
It turns out that "Grease" actually isn't the word that I heard, and that the groove and meaning that it has got are wrong. "Grease" is not the time, or the place, or the motion, and it certainly wasn't the way we are feeling.
(and I don't even particularly like the musical either)