Exhibit 18: Irony

Irony was invented by a French chemist, Claude Delashmit, in the late 1920's. Delashmit was commissioned by a Parisian sweets manufacturer to concoct a candy to compete with bubblegum, which was becoming increasingly popular in French villages and a few unlicensed opium dens.

One afternoon Delashmit was in the process of mixing gum base and toffee for a candy he called sabots de sucre; he abruptly halted his work when he realized he was barefoot. The chemist searched frantically around his laboratory for his shoes, to no avail. Despondent, Delashmit then fatally impaled himself through his stomach with a candy thermometer. French police determined that Delashmit's missing shoes were actually at the bottom of the vat he was mixing at the time. Regardless of the tragedy, the company manufactured the candy to much commercial success, thanks to an ingenious commercial jingle with the chorus "Si délicieux, vous voudrez s'empaler" ("So delicious you'll want to impale yourself"). Delashmit posthumously became a millionaire; his beneficiaries spent the entire sum of his fortune on bubblegum.

From these humble, happenstance beginnings, irony then leaked to the rest of Europe with the help of secret societies and pharmacists with a knack for gallows humor. (An uncured form of irony was also snuck back to America in the satchels of G.I.'s returning from the Second World War, or as the given G.I.'s called it, The Baby Shower.) Artists and authors exploited the new technique to transform their works into new, heretofore uncharted territory: Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea (originally entitled Peppiness), George Orwell's 1984 (originally entitled Last Thursday At The Sunflower Farm With Bunnies), Noel Coward's Blithe Spirit (originally entitled Oom Poppa Mow Mow) and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (originally entitled Piccadilly Circus At The Height Of Tourist Season).

A refined specimen of irony finally reached American shores in the 1950's; Charles Bukowski obtained the first strain of irony while working as a milkman in Utah. As it inevitably trickled into the New York folk, beatnik and art scenes of the 1960's, irony began to have an intoxicating effect on pop and rock lyrics; its sly infiltration into previously benign Brill Building and Tin Pan Alley songs revolutionized creative thought and broke open new layers of meaning, which compensated for the songs' lack of royalty revenue.

A shining example of irony in action was the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane," the original, pre-irony version of which described a far less mischievous New York landscape than the final product:

Standing on the corner
Brochure in my hand
Jack is wearing a modest jacket and tie
Jane is wearing a flair blouse and a sensible skirt that covers her knees
And me, I'm passing out coupons for a Macy's White Sale
I'll do anything for a commission bonus
That is, anything that doesn't call for unreasonable acts of moral turpitude
For example, taking heroin or performing acts of sadomasochism, those are out of the question
I'm very happy I purchased these shoes
They're more sensible than leather boots and my feet don't blister

Jane's a fairly agreeable sort
Jane's a fairly agreeable sort
Well, Jane's a fairly agreeable sort
Jane's a fairly agreeable sort
Makes a darn good casserole as well, oh sing it

Irony worked its magic on several other notable rock songs of the period, reshaping the viewpoint of initially harmless songs like the Stooges' "Now I Want To Take You Out On A Chaperoned Date," the MC5's "Let's Have A Round Of Robust Square Dancing, Gentlefolk" and former Velvet Underground member Lou Reed's "Stroll In A Relatively Safe Suburb With Well-Tended Gardens" ("But she never lost her head/Even when she was clipping hedge").

As with any newly minted literary or narrative device, however, some pop musicians with a glut of enthusiasm were guilty of overusing irony. Unable to wield the gift with the same skillfulness as their more urbanite contemporaries, these musicians' ham-fisted and obvious injection of irony into their lyrics betrayed a quality of perverse naiveté rather than sophistication. One act that was repeatedly culpable in this regard was The Carpenters, who had to rewrite several of their lyrics to repair the awkward use of irony:

We've only just begun, to live
Codpieces and suction cups
A doctor's note and we're on our way
-----------
Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
Because they're winged demons of my lust-whip
-----------
I'm on the top of the world, looking down on creation
And I wonder if I should even bother with Australia
----------
Sing, sing a song, sing out loud, sing out strong
Especially if it's by Black Oak Arkansas
You have a dirty little tongue, cupcake

Irony is still employed in the present day, mainly amongst the rock critic community when trying to explain the meanings of Pavement songs. It was also famously and mistakenly used by Canadian songstress Alanis Morissette when she confused the meanings of "ironic" and "coincidental"; in her defense, she was going down on an unnamed man in a theatre at the time, which adversely affected her skills of reading for comprehension.

Exhibit 16: Graphic design

For years after the music industry's introduction of long-players, visual artists were troubled by the expense required to render cover art for albums. The revenue collected from the commission of the artist quite often did not cover the cost of paints, easels, photography, neutral grain spirits or French cigarettes. The musical artists, as well, were inconvenienced by having to sit for the rendering of portraits, especially when the pose was for a painting. (Jazz drummer Buddy Rich, a figure known for his frequent cantankerousness, once toppled the palette of a Belgian painter working on a portrait for Rich's unreleased album Swingin' Pre-Raphaelites. It was thought that Rich was incensed about having to pose for seven hours in a silk tunic while holding a bowl of apples, but accounts suggest Rich was more upset that the painter wore a beard.)

The job and Citannes budget of the visual artist was made much more manageable with the proliferation of graphic design. By combining prefabricated artistic elements for a single set piece, artists were not only freed of the toil of painstaking creation, they were also able to produce in a much higher quantity than before. Those artists who did not increase their output in light of this new convenience found their schedules opened up, which not only meant more smoking of French cigarettes, but also a higher potential that they would have more time to fly to Paris themselves to purchase the cigarettes personally, rather than rely on shady local associates with pencil-thin moustaches and a penchant for existentialism.

The aesthetics of graphic design also correlated with the sharp, brazen, scabrous style of rock and roll. Impressionism, with its indistinct lines and over-reliance on bonnets, could not keep pace with the instantaneous thrill of rock and roll. Graphic design was aligned with the immediacy of rock music: As the large majority of early hit singles ran less than three minutes, a graphic artist could conceivably finish the accompanying artwork in the same amount of time, given a readily available supply of construction paper.

Graphic design was best championed in the New Wave era of rock music. With a whole rash of newly aloof music heroes forging emotional detachment through mechanical instruments, the graphic artist helped to refine the dehumanization through art that could conceivably be produced with a garlic press. Several landmark examples of this renaissance era of graphic art are shown below:

For Split Enz's excellent album True Colours, the artist uses reflective triangles, alternately shaded squares and rectangles, and one single bold stroke to illustrate how the band's hometown of Auckland, New Zealand was built using a Fisher-Price Shape Sorter.

The cover of the Rolling Stones' New Wave-influenced album Some Girls was fashioned from a sample page of a wig catalogue and not, as was fervently rumored, a listing of the cheapest per-hour prostitutes in New York City.

Genesis' self-titled 1983 album cover featured all the Fisher-Price Shape Sorter blocks left over from the construction of Auckland (see above). Although the cover is a photograph, not technically graphic design, it was done nearly as quickly, as was the songwriting on the album itself.

The cover of this double-A single by punk band the Cortinas features the British Royal Family moments before a banquet in honor of Ronald Reagan. This is also not strictly graphic design, as only the Royal Family itself was assembled from construction paper and paste, as has been the monarchy's wont since the rule of James VI in the 17th century.

And finally, the 1988 issue of Elvis – Live With Love From Terre Haute, features this indisputable classic from the graphic design genre:

Exhibit 14: The Grammy Award for Best New Artist

The Grammy Award for Best New Artist was a weapon used for terminating the careers of young artists who, for whatever reason, had vexed or irritated the psychopharmacology industry.

The weapon of revenge was used most successfully in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the burgeoning industry took out a "hit," in effect, on middle-of-the-road and soft-pop artists, whose soothing songs were cutting into the sales and consumption of prescription medication. Grammy voters at the time, who were particularly fond of cocaine (see Exhibit 10), were only too happy in their hyperactive states to weed out the likes of Starland Vocal Band, A Taste Of Honey, Christopher Cross and Debby Boone. By seemingly "rewarding" these artists with the apparent praise of the Best New Artist Grammy, voters were virtually ensuring that the artists would never be heard from again in any widespread capacity.

Christopher Cross's 1981 Grammy triumph – in which he swept all four "big" categories of Record, Song, Album and Best New Artist of the Year – was a particularly vicious act of retribution on the part of the psychopharmacology industry. Dr. Vincent B. "Vinny Valium" Boccacini, was adamant that Cross's career be rubbed out with utmost verification, as exhibited in audio tapes from FBI surveillance of Boccacini's clinic in a Trenton, NJ strip mall:

"Chris Cross my fat ass. I wanna see that fuckface done with. I want that yacht-lovin' pastel cream-eatin' fuckface cryin' in his wheat germ. I wanna see this fuckfaces's sailin' ass in the Bermuda fuckin' triangle. I want Jimmy Buffett to tank this fuckface up on margaritas and float him over to Rio with a big sign stickin' out of his fuckin' ass sayin' 'Sailors Board Me Now.' Christopher Cross, you've sedated your last housewife. You have calmed your last Tupperware party. You have soothed your last receptionist. You have numbed your last dental patient. Chris Cross, my fuckin' ass. Fuckface."

As the psychopharmacology industry fell victim to RICOH prosecutions in the late '80s, their grip over the Best New Artist Grammy loosened, and eventually fell apart. Determined to restore the validity and prestige of the award, in December 1989 the Grammy's then-president C. Michael Greene declared:

"All right, fuckfaces. From this moment forward, the Best New Artist Grammy will only go to the most deserving, talented, important and worthy musical artists in the industry. Starting now! No more getting back at the Swingle Singers because they stiffed your dad at poker one night. No more giving Marvin Hamlisch the kiss of death just because he didn't come to your opening. No more squishing on Jody Watley because she's prettier than you. And let's not even talk about what happened to poor old Robert Goulet, you bastards. All the bakesales in the world will not give this man his instep back. From now on we use the Best New Artist Grammy as it was intended -- to reward bold new artistic genius. I mean it. Enjoy your watercress salads."

Grammy voters applauded Greene's resolve, and helped Greene keep his promise by giving the 1990 Best New Artist award to Milli Vanilli.

Exhibit 11: Gothic fonts

Gothic fonts are used in published materials for musicians and bands to connote a connection with the medieval mores and block character components of the Middle Ages. With their sharp diagonals, refined serifs and suggested (but rarely manifest) concavity, gothic fonts paradoxically invoke both the regality of stately monarchy and the bloody glory of divine violence; that is to say, with gothic fonts a musician may portray him- or herself as sovereign leader, Arthurian gangsta or, in a select few cases, both.

The imperial ornateness of the gothic font lends a sense of weight and social fixedness to the name of an artist or object. Its implicative qualities work immediately on the phrase, elevating it to a standard of permanence and institution that contemporary sans-serif and downscaled fonts cannot provide. Displayed in the most momentous of gothic fonts, any phrase can be transported from the temporal to the immortal:

The gothic font has proven surprisingly versatile in range of purpose. It has given authority and royalty to pop music works that appear, on first glance, slight on thematic grandeur:

The gothic font can often be used in collaboration with threatening countenance to imply severity and finality of a pending act of smackdown:

Gothic fonts are particularly effective when combining royalty and severity, in their deployment as symbols of ominous physical harm and dominant sovereignty:

Finally, gothic fonts yield yet another depth of mass when they are permanently seared onto flesh:

Gothic fonts have been known to get into very public, physical altercations with more modern fonts. Despite their chronic arthritis and use of primitive blunt instruments, gothic fonts almost always prevail in these skirmishes, leaving modern fonts alone to be branded upon technological gadgets and male-oriented anti-perspirants.

Exhibit 7: Record charts

The need for tabulating sales and radio play of units of musical consumption gave birth to record charts, ranked listings of the most popular, profitable or hygienically sound recordings of the moment, most frequently accounted and compiled in weekly shifts. The modern music chart as we know it is loosely based on The Ten Commandments, which were originally ranked in descending order of popular approval. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" was a huge regional hit before its ongoing, record-setting run at the top of the charts. "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's house" and "wife" have been Nos. 9 and 10, respectively, due to the innate difficulty in controlling internal acts of covetousness. The No. 11 Commandment, "Thou shalt not be bored," and No. 12, "Thou shalt remember thy parents' wedding anniversary," remain outside shots to crack the Top 10 before the year 3000.

The modern record chart was pioneered by Billboard Magazine, an entertainment industry periodical packed from front to back with an impressive array of popularity charts, though it is polite to say one reads it only for the articles. Billboard's Hot 100, ostensibly a listing of the top hundred songs in America at any given moment, has gone through several methodologies over the course of its existence. The Hot 100 was originally a consideration of the combined strength of record sales, radio and jukebox play. Other, more specialized charts emerged to reflect target audiences, such as the Top 40 dance songs, Top 40 country songs, Top 40 R&B songs, Top 40 songs hummed in the shower, Top 40 songs preferred by donkeys, and Top 40 dirges.

In the mid-20th century, critics of pop charts complained informal accounting systems exposed the Billboard Hot 100 to unfair manipulation, most often by nefarious promotional men who "bought" chart positions in exchange for favors or cash. This occurred most famously in 1961, when promoter Les Pochanski paid Billboard $50,000 for filling the top five spots of the Hot 100 with five different versions of "How Much Is That Doggie In the Window." The scandal resulted in an epidemic of back-alley neutering by hypertensive dog owners. Billboard toughened its standards for chart representation soon afterwards, and also stopped offering free top 10 chart positions with the purchase of a Zenith color television.

The Billboard charts were significantly changed in 1991, when Neilsen SoundScan replaced the informal data collection process with wholly accurate, computer-generated sales and airplay data, entered at the point of purchase or broadcast. Gone was the arduous, time-consuming task of gathering information through telephone calls to record stores, radio stations, and gay discos where the driving techno beat made statistical reports difficult to hear, especially over the phone.

Data entry is now automatically collected when a unit is sold, in a process that reflects true, inarguable science:

1. The consumer elects to purchase a recorded product at a retailer.

2. The consumer presents the desired item to a store-designated cashier.

3. The cashier "scans" the bar code of the desired item with a laser device.

4. Inside the laser device, a tiny leprechaun hurriedly scribbles down the bar code number with a tiny pencil.

5. At night the leprechaun compiles all the day's sales data and magically turns it into golden pixie dust.

6. The leprechaun does a jig and sings a merry song about the benefits of industriousness and hard work.

7. The leprechaun gathers up the golden pixie dust and casts it into the wind, which carries the dust to the Peppermint Palace at Gumdrop Hill.

8. The Jolly Dragon receives the golden pixie dust and magically reconstitutes it into data with his wagging tail.

9. Maids in attendance to the Jolly Dragon twitter in a way that can only be described as gleeful.

10. The Jolly Dragon then summons a unicorn to deliver the recompiled data across the Vanilla Cream River, through the Puffy Marshmallow Mountains, across the Sweet Strawberry Ocean, through the Minty Nougat Forest, and into the gleaming metropolis of Happy Cookie Land.

11. The data lands on the desk of Murray Steinberg, CPA.

The record chart process has worked in this dependable way for many years with no complications, except for one regrettable incident in which a leprechaun illegally accepted hashish as payola.

Fig. 1: Disgraced leprechaun Smiley O'Smartly arriving at his racketeering trial.