Tag: Decca

  • How ‘Apocalypse Now’ Etched Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ into Our Brains Forever

    How ‘Apocalypse Now’ Etched Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ into Our Brains Forever

    There would be only a handful of musical pieces that could rival Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” for its iconic status in screen music. It was present in the starting days of silent cinema when chosen by D.W. Griffith to partially score his controversial, artistic watershed, Birth of a Nation (1915), and it was lovingly parodied by…

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  • Les Paul, Pirate of the Airwaves?

    Les Paul, Pirate of the Airwaves?

    Lester William Polsfuss, the given name of guitar-maker Les Paul, was a legend. His technological innovations, as a result of a sheer addiction to tinkering, were vast. They include multi-track recording, overdubbing (which he famously called “sound on sound“), tape delay, reverb, phase effects, and “the log,” more commonly known as the solid-body electric guitar.…

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Elijah Fox at the piano