Ghost Echoes is a music history podcast with secret rules. It begins in 1970 and it will proceed up to the present day, discussing one musical recording per episode. Some of them are famous and acclaimed, others utterly obscure. Some are classical, most are pop. The list of recordings that Ghost Echoes will focus on throughout its run is already decided and set in stone, having been chosen in accordance with the podcast’s non-negotiable rules, of which there are three: 1. REDACTED, 2. REDACTED, and 3. The first two rules are secret.
These rules lead Ghost Echoes down countless historical side streets and blind alleys where it departs from music entirely and passes by Victorian booze palaces, angry Ontarian proletariats, inscrutable paintings about the space race, demolished movie theatres, drunk people, exceedingly large oval rugs, unlikely origin stories of venerable educational institutions, Charlie Brown cartoons, and conspiracy theories about extrajudicial assassinations by MI5.
Ghost Echoes is the story of music -- and everything else
Ghost Echoes is a music history podcast with secret rules. It begins in 1970 and it will proceed up to the present day, discussing one musical recording per episode. Some of them are famous and acclaimed, others utterly obscure. Some are classical, most are pop. The list of recordings that Ghost Echoes will focus on throughout its run is already decided and set in stone, having been chosen in accordance with the podcast’s non-negotiable rules, of which there are three: 1. REDACTED, 2. REDACTED, and 3. The first two rules are secret.
These rules lead Ghost Echoes down countless historical side streets and blind alleys where it departs from music entirely and passes by Victorian booze palaces, angry Ontarian proletariats, inscrutable paintings about the space race, demolished movie theatres, drunk people, exceedingly large oval rugs, unlikely origin stories of venerable educational institutions, Charlie Brown cartoons, and conspiracy theories about extrajudicial assassinations by MI5.
Ghost Echoes is the story of music -- and everything else
It’s a story we’ve been telling for centuries, in spite of the damage it’s caused. The story of the sculptor Pygmalion and his statue Galatea crops up everywhere from Broadway musicals to glam rock records to computer programming. In the fourth episode of Ghost Echoes, we take inventory of Galateas.
-- “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” can obviously be found on Roxy Music’s For Your Pleasure.
-- The recording of the doll song from Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann is performed by Joan Sutherland with Richard Bonynge conducting l’Orchestre de la Suisse Romande.
-- The excerpts from the My Fair Lady film soundtrack are “Wouldn’t it be Loverly” performed by Marni Nixon and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face” performed by Rex Harrison.
-- Kate Bush’s “Misty” is on her album 50 Words for Snow.
-- Ovid’s Metamorphoses has been translated into English by many, including A.D. Melville. Information on Project Borghild and sex dolls generally came from Anthony Ferguson’s The Sex Doll: A History and “A (Straight, Male) History of Sex Dolls” by Julie Beck in the Atlantic. On Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, Charles A. Berst’s Pygmalion: Shaw’s Spin on Myth and Cinderella was useful, as were this story from Studio 360 and Bernard Shaw’s own preface and postscript to the play. Here’s “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann. Examples of conversation with ELIZA came from this piece by Oliver Miller in Thought Catalogue.
-- The marching band audio in the Project Borghild scene comes from this archival video. All excerpts from Pygmalion are from the 1938 film version starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard. The montage towards the end features clips from Her, Ex Machina, Battlestar Galactica, Blade Runner and Blade Runner 2049.