PBS?!?

Oh, don’t look so shocked: my wife and I are PBS contributors, and if it wasn’t for the beautiful, beautiful entity that is PBS Sprout, our 2-year-old daughter wouldn’t be half the kid she is today. I won’t be spending a tremendous amount of time on each show, but since we had two days’ worth of presentations, it would be thoroughly unfair if I didn’t offer up at least a little bit of a look at them all.

“The Electric Company”: It’s back! Sort of. It’s not really ‘The Electric Company’ you remember…or, at least, most of it isn’t. There’ll be certain elements from the original series which will return, such as Paul the Gorilla, the silhouettes who each say half of a word and then put the two halves together (“Ch.” “Ange.” “Change!“), and – after the epilogue of each episode – animation clips from the old days. But for the most part, the phrase “this is not your father’s ‘Electric Company'” will be apropos. We saw a few segments which looked pretty funny and will no doubt have the same effect on kids today that the original did for my generation, and there will be guest stars popping up to aid in the learning process (we saw Jack McBrayer in one of the clips, and other names cited were Mos Def, Lyn Manuel Miranda, Sean Kingston, Mark Linn-Baker, Mark Ecko, Cory Booker, Jacky Woodson, and Wyclef Jean, who’s doing the music for the series), but I have to admit that I was disheartened by the total lack of confirmation that any of the folks from the original “Electric Company” will be making appearances. Maybe they just don’t have that confirmation yet and they’re waiting to get it, but it would’ve been nice if they could’ve at least said, “We’re trying.”

Executive Session: We received several interesting announcements, including a documentary series entitled “Latin Music USA,” a new kids series about a chatty canine named Martha (“Martha Speaks”), and the new Ken Burns documentary (honest to God, it’s called “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea”), but the greatest controversy during this session came from PBS President Paula Kerger hemming and hawing about the upcoming production of Royal Shakespeare Company’s staging of “King Lear” and whether or not it would feature the notorious nude scene by the gentleman playing its title character, Sir Ian McKellen. Again, I’ve been trying desperately not to offer too many back-and-forths this year, but this one’s a must-include, I think…

Q: How are you going to deal with that on the screen?
Paula: The film is just being…it’s just been shot and…I haven’t actually seen the final version yet, and it will be broadcast next year. We’re actually going to bring it to press tour in January, so you’ll have a chance to see it then.
Q: That’s a pretty talked-about moment in the stage production where he’s fully nude. How do you feel about showing that in its entirety?
Paula: Well, again, I haven’t seen the taped version yet, so I can’t tell you…
Q: But would you be okay with that?
Paula: About the full-frontal nudity?
Q: Yes.
Paula: Let’s talk about this in January, okay?
Q: Oh, come on. You’re familiar with the scene, though, right?
Paula: I saw the production, yes.
Q: And what do you think about showing that on PBS?
Paula: Well, it’s not…it’s what I think about it and also what the FCC will allow. So we’ll cross that bridge…we’ll bring it to you in January. Ask me the question again, and I promise you…
Q: My readers can’t wait that long.
Paula: Oh, yes, they can.

“On Record: The Soundtrack of Our Lives”: Easily one of the biggest thrills of the entire tour, if only because it allowed me to be in the same room as Sir George Martin, the man who responsible for producing the bulk of the Beatles’ catalog. Disappointingly, Sir George was not doing one-on-one interviews due to his hearing loss…and if that’s not one of the great tragedies of recent musical history, I don’t know what is (I’m speaking of the hearing loss, not my inability to get an interview), but he nonetheless managed to do the panel by having the critics’ questions typed on a screen in front of him as they were being asked. Certainly, the most amusing part of the panel came when, after a series of probably a half-dozen Beatles-themed questions, Sir George finally got fed up after being asked his favorite Beatles song, snapping, “My favorite Beatles song? My God, can we get away from Beatles and talk about the program?” Okay, fair question, but he couldn’t possibly have been surprised that we’d want to get in as many questions about John, Paul,
George, and Ringo as we possibly could.

(For the record, though, it’s “In My Life,” and, when pressed, he explained why: “I loved John’s lyric. I loved the simplicity of the song. It wasn’t exactly ‘I Am the Walrus,’ was it? Also, the fact that, when there was a certain note that had to be filled in, while they went out and had their cup of tea, I devised something and played it myself. The little interlude is what I actually performed and wrote, so it’s personal to me, ‘In My Life.’ The words are personal, too, because there are friends and lovers that I’ve known and I miss. Look at the words. They’re great.”)

Beyond the inevitable Beatles questions, though, Sir George did manage to get out a few other very interesting nuggets of information:

* “I know it’s enormously popular, ‘American Idol,’ but it’s not my cup of tea. I would never dream of being on there. In spite of the money that’s being made, I’d much rather be poor.”

* “I’m not terribly happy with the current pop music. I like Coldplay. I think they’re pretty good. I like Radiohead, so I’m pretty provincial in English in my taste, I guess. I think they’re different from the run-of-the-mill. I think that Thom York is very versatile. Chris Martin is excellent, you know; he has to be, with a name like that.”

* “I’ve seen Elton (John) at work. He’s got a genius, because he can conjure up a great melody out of nowhere in a
very short space of time, and that’s a gift, but it’s also nurtured by the fact that he’s worked with so many people and learned how to do the right things in song. So it’s a combination of the two.”

* “I hope this series will, in fact, nurture a desire and a help for young people who are going through all those traumas. I remember when I was a kid, I ran a dance band when I was young. I wrote songs when I was 15 and 16, but I remember how difficult it was to be accepted by my peers…old fuddy-duddies like 80-year-old producers, for example. I really think that musical genius has to be nurtured; I think you’ve got to have it within you, and then I think you’ve got to develop it.”

And we’ll close out this segment with….what’s this? A Beatles anecdote? Yeah, well, if Sir George is gonna tell it, we’re not gonna miss a chance to print it. The question was very cleverly phrased, so as to technically avoid asking a Beatles question: “Would you give us a favorite example or two of a great recording technique, a moment when what happened in the studio…something that was done by the producer, by yourself, or whomever…really made the difference to make a great record happen?” I would’ve laughed out loud if he’d begun his reply by saying, “Well, there was this one time when I was working with America…” But, no, he did indeed cite an example from his work with the Fab Four:

“Yeah, well, there are various things that I’ve personally experienced. I think the most bizarre one, but a great moment, was in making ‘Tomorrow Never Knows.’ We had this iconic drum track which Ringo produced and this weird song from John. When we did it, I had to devise a new way of recording. I don’t want to go off too long; it will bore the pants off
you. (Writer’s note: every single writer around me either mouthed or said out loud, “No, it won’t.”) Really, working with just four tracks, what we wanted to do was to build up a series of weird sounds. So the boys all brought me in little loops they made on their Grundig recorders, which I listened to and played at different speeds forwards and backward and decided which ones to use. I selected 16 of these loops and what I wanted to do was to make them available so when they mix, we could bring in any one of these loops if we wished to. So at any one time we had eight playback machines playing these loops. They’re all over the studio and there were fellows in white coats holding the tape on to the head with a pencil and running all the time, fed through to our machine, our console, so that we could lift the fader and we’d hear (Makes a sound) or another one (Makes a sound), so you had them available like an organ. When we did the mix, we played around with those and we had them — all hands on deck, John and Paul, I, Geoff Emerick, the engineer, we’re all messing around until we got what we wanted. Halfway through, we changed all the loops, put another eight on, and did the same thing again. That was a moment where we were doing something really weird. That sticks in my mind.”

And now it’s stuck in mine, too. Thank you, Sir George.