Losertown: History of Music 1

Hello. I'm Professor Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards. For the last forty years I have dedicated myself to painstaking research into the field of music. I now know more about music than anyone else in the world. Welcome to this, my History of Music.

Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards's History of Music, part 1: prehistoric music.

[a bit Attenborough] It is the dawn of man. Primitive cave-dwelling homo sapiens, gathered around the newly-discovered fire. The light flickers around their fur-lined bodies like some palaeolithic seventies disco, giving their simple brains the primal urge to, get down and boogie. And thus was music invented.

Ancient artefacts found in well-preserved caves suggest that prehistoric man had a [beat] simplistic grasp of music. Simple rhythms sounded on drums of animal skin with bones for drumsticks. Archeologists have found, amazingly, that their Casio keyboards had only three rhythms, and no bossa nova, and the most popular band of the era is thought to be Status Quo.

And so, we conclude, that prehistoric music... was crap. The caveman musicians were wasting their time trying to compose music with no grasp of melody, harmony, or vocals beyond the grunt. It's a wonder music ever caught on. But it would be two and a half million years before true quality would enter the world of music with the rise of Abba. And so we leave the cavemen to their pathetic so-called music, hopefully never to return. (Bloody stupid waste of time.)

Next week, in part 2 of Eddie 'The Eagle' Edwards's History of Music: the music of the ancient Babylonians; was it rubbish or what?