Yesterday Jason slagged Greta Van Fleet for sounding “old,” because their classic-rock sound and Robert Plant-manque lead singer make them sound like a 50-year-old band, Led Zeppelin. Well, I’m here to argue that old music is one of the best art forms for speaking to us from the past, and serves as a point of commonality for communities. Making the point for me is the first computer programmed to “sing,” the IBM 7094:
As the video explains, this was 1961. The song, better known as “A Bicycle Built for Two,” was written in 1892, and was more famously sung by a more famous computer, the HAL 9000 in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” as a tribute to this pioneer, as the AI computer is disabled by Keir Dullea. The actor who voiced HAL, Canadian thespian Douglas Rain, died last November. His rendition begins at 5:00, but you’d be half-crazy to skip the most riveting scene in one of Kubrick’s best films:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgkyrW2NiwM
It’s almost as if both the IBM programmers and Stanley Kubrick chose old music to make a point.