In the years between the first and second world wars, it was common for blues musicians, string bands and jug bands to earn a large proportion of their income on the ‘Medicine Show’ circuit. These shows would travel from town to town throughout the southern US with musicians like Blind Willie McTell in tow to [...]
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In 1964, Iceland obtained its first mainframe computer - an IBM 1401. Chief maintenance engineer on the machine was one Jóhann Gunnarsson, a keen musician. During idle hours he found a way of extracting tunes from the machine by manipulating the electromagnetic waves it emitted and recording them through a radio receiver. The machine was scrapped in [...]
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The song “Gloomy Sunday” is the stuff of legend. So many stories surround this ballad – some true, some exaggerated, some patently ridiculous. It was written in 1933 by two Hungarians, Rezso Seress and Lazslo Javor (the librettist). The lyrics are indeed gloomy, alluding to a lover considering suicide to join his or her deceased [...]
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