Entertainment desk
< January 29	<< Dec \| January \| Feb >>	January 31 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Entertainment Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is an archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

January 30

Diegetic Simpsons theme

In the episode Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?, a version of the Simpsons theme song is played – apparently in-universe – when Homer accepts his award for excellence. Is this the first diegetic use of the theme song? --Lazar Taxon (talk) 00:09, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think so. Not the only one, though. I'm sure I remember someone whistling it recently, but can't remember the episode. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:09, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't as recent as I thought. Marge tells Bart to stop whistling "that annoying tune" in "Bart Gets Famous". Still a bit later, though. InedibleHulk (talk) 11:12, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

REALLY heavy beat

Pink Floyd's song "Run Like Hell" from The Wall came up on random shuffle on the iPod this morning, and it got me to wondering: did any arena rock bands ever contrive to put an actual pile driver on stage for some major percussion? (For that song, at least, I think they would have needed two, alternating, to get the beat right, but hell, that would have been twice as awesome.) —Steve Summit (talk) 04:54, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I could only find YouTube - Percussion With A Pile Driver. Alansplodge (talk) 10:30, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's a shame the mixing is so poor. The pile driver must be really loud in person but you can hardly hear it in the video :( SemanticMantis (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The general theme was explored in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in descriptions of the band Disaster Area. I imagine some from the Industrial music scene will have experimented with novel percussive instruments. And there's also Karlheinz Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet. Finally, in this brain dump, employing a decent sized cannon on stage was, I thought, de rigueur for any self-respecting performance of the 1812 Overture. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:47, 1 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Percussion_instrument#Unconventional led me to Sweet Emotion (that's arena rock right?) and Slipknot_(band) (which is definitely not arena rock). No pile drivers, but shotguns, baseball bats on beer kegs, that kind of thing. Of course Stomp_(theatrical_show) was hugely popular for a while with this sort of thing, their oil drum stilts were pretty loud. Then of course there's the 1812_Overture, which is often performed with real cannon. On a technical note, I'm not sure that common performance stages would withstand a conventional pile driver. Even if you put it on a concrete slab, you'd risk damage to the slab or driver, much like "firing" a bow without an arrow. I suppose you could drive an actual pile... but not on stage. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:52, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

For a live show, all you need is good amplification. For a good recording, all you need is a good music producer and engineer who know how to mix drums for a certain sound. One of the most famous drum sounds in terms of power was John Bonham of Led Zeppelin; however the actual drum sound on the recordings probably owes at least as much to Jimmy Page as a music producer. Jimmy_Page#Music_production_techniques briefly touches on his innovations in producing the drums. Get a decent pair of headphones and listen to "When The Levee Breaks" from Led Zeppelin IV. It's probably the zenith of the work he and engineer Andy Johns ever achieved with the drums. Similar effects can be done live with someone who similarly knows how to mic, mix, and amplify drums for the live stage. --Jayron 32 04:21, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It might be interesting to compare the power output of a small pile driver (the portion not doing the work of driving, that goes in to heat/sound) to the power output of those mega stacks of amps and speakers you see at large shows. But that's a fiddly and annoying physics problem I don't care to do at the moment :) My vague intuition is you might well get a louder sound out of the normal PA system... As to recording technique and audio engineering, that is hugely important. The simple foot stomps in "We Will Rock You" sound far louder than the actual pile driver in the video above! SemanticMantis (talk) 15:06, 2 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Alansplodge:, @SemanticMantis:, @Tagishsimon:, @Jayron32: belated thanks for those very good answers.

Not quite the answer I wanted, I admit, but we don't always get to choose, and they were very good answers all the same. That Percussion With A Pile Driver presentation was a very cute idea (although I share the disappointment that the sound quality was so poor).

I shall have to have a listen to When The Levee Breaks.

And how could I have forgotten Disaster Area?

Finally, in terms of the actual driving-piles-on-stage fantasy, no, I wasn't thinking of putting the pile driver right on stage, but rather off to the side, where depending on the arena you might not mind (or if you were really lucky you might even need, for an upcoming addition to the facilities) some extra piles in the ground. And while I can appreciate the almost limitless amounts of sonic energy you can get out of big amps and bigger speaker towers, the point here would be only party about the sound through the air from the pile driver, but more importantly that you would feel it, starting with your feet...

Anyway, thanks again, all. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:01, 18 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]