ok stephan this musically great. the wembly concert when Dawkins came out on stage and spoke, since the song named after his book. also the visuals were way way better. actually brought me to tears with we were here
The Greatest Show on Earth is the title of Richard Dawkin's book about the history of life on earth. The show is life, there every day. Since you are a Pink Floyd fan, check out Nightwish's cover of "High Hopes" from the "End of an Era DVD" in 2005. Awesome. Also their cover of "The Phantom of the Opera" from that same DVD.
The title of the issue is taken from a 2009 book by evolutionary biologist and atheist writer Richard Dawkins, about the evidence for biological evolution. Dawkins also contributes to the album. Holopainen explained to HMV in March 2015: "I wrote him a letter a little over a year ago and explained what ideas we had for this album, mainly about evolution. Since one of the songs goes straight to one of his books, it felt like a perfect match to try and recite him on the album. A few weeks later, he sent me an email accepting the invitation." "Later in 2014, we recorded his parts at Hats Off Studios, Oxford. This is a huge honour for us, as Dawkins is one of our greatest heroes and his writings have been a huge inspiration for the album."
The title The Greatest Show on Earth refers to the book by the same name by Richard Dawkins & its about the beauty & perfection of the birth of the universe & evolution on Earth.
The title refers to Evolution and the development of life, not to the song. It is not narcissistic at all. A few notes: Troy: At some point we ended up watching Richard Dawkins lectures on the internet. After a while I suggested, half in jest, that maybe we should ask Dawkins to be our special guest on the new album. Tuomas: It was an amazing idea, and I immediately started wondering if we could really make it happen. Jukka: We were naturally a bit sceptical, too - we had to try and ask him of course, but it was better not to have such high hopes. Dawkins had pretty much shied away from popular culture apart from one episode of The Simpsons. Troy: I enthusiastically assured them that I can make this work, like "You'll see, guys". Well the next morning I wasn't feeling so confident any more and I remembered Tuomas and Jukka going "Told you so" TUOMAS: Still, there was no way we could let it drop without at least trying. So we started thinking about a proper manner to approach Dawkins. We decided our best option would be to send him a hand-written, polite letter, where we would tell him about the band, the scientific themes on the forthcoming album and the fact that he had been a great inspiration TROY: We got no reply, so we sent another letter. In the end, I guess we had a bit of luck, because it turned out Dawkins personal assistant knew the band and actually liked Nightwish. He suggested that Dawkins should take our inquiry seriously TUOMAS: I was in Paris doing interviews for the Scrooge album. When I got back to the hotel in the evening. I noticed there was an email from Dawkins, something like, "1 went to the internet and browsed your band, and what I heard l liked very much. So I'd be happy to co-operate. FLOOR: Tuomas sent us a triumphant message: "You won't believe what just happened: Dawkins said yes!" TROY: It was obvious from the start that Dawkins' appearance would attract a lot of attention - both positive and negative. His book God Delusion had created a worldwide controversy. after all. JUKKA: We didn't invite Dawkins to be on our album to criticize religion but to speak as a scientist: an evolutionary biologist. Of course neither the fans nor anybody else outside the band knew it at that point. TUOMAS: There has been a lot of unreasonable criticism hurled at him for all kinds of reasons. A lot of people seem to ignore the fact that Dawkins is also happy to listen to contrary opinions and is always open for new ideas. In that sense, he's like Esko Valtaoja, with whom we had the honour to work on Showtime, Storytime DVD. I had endless possibilities in my hands for "The Greatest Show on Earth" What is the sound of crumpling continental plates that mountains are made of? Or the disintegration of radioactive components? Or the sound of space particles bombarding the earth? And how would I refer to immortal works of music composed by man? Well, I included shades of "Dies Irae" by Thomas Celano, "Toccata" and "Fuga" by Johann Sebastian Bach, banjo music from Western movies, "Rock around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets, and "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. I was also thinking about borrowing "Sandstorm" by Darude, but in the end, we just went for an unrecognizable techno loop. Also Petzold and Bach. Recording - and Jukka Resigning: MARCO: Kaitsu handled the drum parts admirably, so we could continue with the other instruments right away, This time we tried to concentrate on one song at a time and kept on working on it till we felt there was nothing more we could add. TROY: And we didn't even have thunder. Rauhala does not have the best sound proofing in the world, so it would have been pretty challenging to mike the instruments if there had been rain and thunderclaps. TUOMAS: I actually got off easier than I expected, because a lot of the demo keyboards from Hämeenlinna were good enough to be included on the album. The stuff in "Sea-Worn Driftwood", part five of "The Greatest Show on Earth", for example, was salvaged straight off the demo. In Hämeenlinna, I had explained to Tero that this passage would be about "whales singing and rats taking over the world". I had just come up with that improvised stuff, and it made it on the album MARCO: Recording the vocals was teamwork in the best possible sense, no matter who was behind the mike. We kicked around suggestions and tried out all kinds of last minute ideas. Like, "Hey Floor, throw in some of that sweet upper octave of yours in the second verse... Yeah, that's a nice touch!" FLOOR: Marco kept on surprising us. He might just suddenly say, "Wait, I have an idea!" Then he'd pull out his bass and introduce an excellent harmony MARCO: It was great fun recording the vocals. I've never had the chance to impersonate a troglodyte in front of a microphone before, so creating gorilla sounds for "The Greatest Show on Earth" was pretty hilarious. I didn't want to undermine the majesty of the song in any way, but I didn't exactly do it with a straight face, either! TROY: I recorded my own ape grunts at home. To get in character, I took off my shirt, banged my chest with my fists, and pretended I was an ancient Homo Erectus. I think my wife was a bit worried MARCO: I cut my bass parts pretty quickly in about one and a half days. I even got a bit lazy towards the evening of the first day - if I had really pushed it, I might have been able to complete them in a single day. Notes: The first part, "Four Point Six", is a reference to the age of our planet -in billions of years. The journey starts with a simple but persistent keyboard theme, interrupted by massive thunder claps - the origin of life that despite the murderous bombardment by asteroids, sprouts time and again and finally manages to grow permanent roots. The word "archaean" in the lyrics refers to the Archean Eon, the first of the geological eons of the world (Gaea). Note that this piano intro is classic minimalism. It sounds repetitive but is in fact very slowly changing. In some ways it reminds me of Spiegel im Spiegel. The second part of the song chronicles the birth and the first on Earth. "Enter Luca" is a reference to an early life form, an acronym for the Last Universal Common Ancestor. We can make assumptions about the characteristics of Luca and other early life forms by reading the DNA of current organisms: "There's a writing in the garden, leading us to the mother of all." Right from the beginning, one of the key characteristics of living cells has been the ability to sense their environment and react to their perceptions: "Ion channels welcoming the outside world." In the third part, chronicling the age of man, there's a fascinating reminder: All of us current organisms are descendants of an unbroken lineage of winners. "Not a single one of your fathers died young". "Little Lucy of the Afar" refers to the famous fossil of Australopithecus Afarensis that was found in Afari, Ethiopia, a hominin that might have been the ancestor of man (genus Homo). In the long run, all species have the tendency to become extinct, and a fitting vision of the future of mankind is presented in the song, "One day'Il cease to be" On the other hand, man had earlier had "a dream to understand" and "[given] birth to poetry" . He wanted to leave his mark stating "We were here!" In the fourth part, man strives to understand it all, and Richard Dawkins takes up the story once again with a surprising claim:"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. The explanation folows shortly."Most people are never going die, because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been herein my place, but who will in fact never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara." In the fifth and final part, Dawkins recites the concuding words of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: "From so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." FLOOR: I felt real good after the final rehearsals [for EFMB] in a New York studio. There were obviously many challenging parts in the set - I'd have to be extra careful in the beginning of "The Greatest Show on Earth", for example because some of the phones rise from the back of the throat but "operatic vocals are produced in the front of the mouth
I find it hard to believe that any intelligent individual could possibly think that the title refers to Nightwish's performance rather than the undeniable "Greatest Show". Many things can be said of this wonderful group of musicians - but surely the last thing would be that they are in anyway narcissistic!
I heard and saw Nightwish for the first time at the age of 10 in Wacken 2013. From that moment on, I had become a Nightwish junkie. In December 2015 I saw the band live for the second time in London, where The Greatest Show On Earth was the last song. It took me about 2 weeks to calm down and understand what I had experienced. Since then I have attended at least 4 concerts on every Nightwish tour. Even one each in Japan and Mexico. Nightwish concert videos are awesome but nothing beats attending a concert of them. If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of their concerts, then you have to take the chance. There's no way you will regret it. Greetings; Kelsea
'The Greatest Show on Earth' performed by the 'Greatest Band on Earth'. You know, we live in a time when someone called Taylor Swift is rammed down our throats by the so called music media, she makes millions of dollars PER SHOW!... we have 'rappers' who are billionaires...etc. etc, has the world gone mad? Yes, I think so, because when a relatively unknown band (to the masses) who, let's face it wipes the floor (no pun intended) with 90% of modern music, in any form, and is mostly known through RUclips (where would we be without it!), yet are never broadcast (again to the masses), over terrestrial TV, especially this concert, or Wacken 2013, only then will the world know just what it is missing.
Tampere 2015 concert: ruclips.net/video/n3yYI2VWdC0/видео.html 1. Shudder Before the Beautiful, 2. Yours Is an Empty Hope, 3. Amaranth, 4. She is My Sin, 5. Dark Chest of Wonders, 6. My Walden 7. The Islander, 8.Élan, 9. Weak Fantasy, 10. Storytime, 11. Endless Forms Most Beatuful, 12. Alpenglow, 13. Stargazers 14. Sleeping sun, 15. Ghost Love Score, 16. The Greatest Show on Earth
ok you got me. never heard of dream theater. went from collage to alternative rocl $ a brother, and then to techno. especially remixes/. by the way check out Aviccii for a different music. he died too young. a poet and musician. wake me up
![Quando Rondo - Life Goes On [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/eIf3fhMXAow/mqdefault.jpg)
ok stephan this musically great. the wembly concert when Dawkins came out on stage and spoke, since the song named after his book. also the visuals were way way better. actually brought me to tears with we were here
The Greatest Show on Earth is the title of Richard Dawkin's book about the history of life on earth. The show is life, there every day. Since you are a Pink Floyd fan, check out Nightwish's cover of "High Hopes" from the "End of an Era DVD" in 2005. Awesome. Also their cover of "The Phantom of the Opera" from that same DVD.
Simply put - the greatest composition of my lifetime from the greatest composer of my lifetime, and I'm an old fart.
The title of the issue is taken from a 2009 book by evolutionary biologist and atheist writer Richard Dawkins, about the evidence for biological evolution. Dawkins also contributes to the album. Holopainen explained to HMV in March 2015: "I wrote him a letter a little over a year ago and explained what ideas we had for this album, mainly about evolution. Since one of the songs goes straight to one of his books, it felt like a perfect match to try and recite him on the album. A few weeks later, he sent me an email accepting the invitation."
"Later in 2014, we recorded his parts at Hats Off Studios, Oxford. This is a huge honour for us, as Dawkins is one of our greatest heroes and his writings have been a huge inspiration for the album."
a hundred or so years from now, people will look back upon this as we now look back on Mozart, and Beethoven.......
Nightwish - Devil & the Deep Dark Ocean - Live at Buenos Aires 2018
I concur
Yes!! I concur 😊 and Weak Fantasy 😊
we are the lucky ones, our father didn` die young.
The title The Greatest Show on Earth refers to the book by the same name by Richard Dawkins & its about the beauty & perfection of the birth of the universe & evolution on Earth.
The title refers to Evolution and the development of life, not to the song. It is not narcissistic at all.
A few notes:
Troy: At some point we ended up watching Richard Dawkins lectures on the internet. After a while I suggested, half in jest, that maybe we should ask Dawkins to be our special guest on the new album.
Tuomas: It was an amazing idea, and I immediately started wondering if we could really make it happen.
Jukka: We were naturally a bit sceptical, too - we had to try and ask him of course, but it was better not to have such high hopes. Dawkins had pretty much shied away from popular culture apart from one episode of The Simpsons.
Troy: I enthusiastically assured them that I can make this work, like "You'll see, guys". Well the next morning I wasn't feeling so confident any more and I remembered Tuomas and Jukka going "Told you so"
TUOMAS: Still, there was no way we could let it drop without at least trying. So we started thinking about a proper manner to approach Dawkins. We decided our best option would be to send him a hand-written, polite letter, where we would tell him about the band, the scientific themes on the forthcoming album and the fact that he had been a great inspiration
TROY: We got no reply, so we sent another letter. In the end, I guess we had a bit of luck, because it turned out Dawkins personal assistant knew the band and actually liked Nightwish. He suggested that Dawkins should take our inquiry seriously
TUOMAS: I was in Paris doing interviews for the Scrooge album. When I got back to the hotel in the evening. I noticed there was an email from Dawkins, something like, "1 went to the internet and browsed your band, and what I heard l liked very much. So I'd be happy to co-operate.
FLOOR: Tuomas sent us a triumphant message: "You won't believe what just
happened: Dawkins said yes!"
TROY: It was obvious from the start that Dawkins' appearance would attract a lot of attention - both positive and negative. His book God Delusion had created a worldwide controversy. after all.
JUKKA: We didn't invite Dawkins to be on our album to criticize religion but to speak as a scientist: an evolutionary biologist. Of course neither the fans nor anybody else outside the band knew it at that point.
TUOMAS: There has been a lot of unreasonable criticism hurled at him for all kinds of reasons. A lot of people seem to ignore the fact that Dawkins is also happy to listen to contrary opinions and is always open for new ideas. In that sense, he's like Esko Valtaoja, with whom we had the honour to work on Showtime, Storytime DVD.
I had endless possibilities in my hands for "The Greatest Show on Earth" What is the sound of crumpling continental plates that mountains are made of? Or the disintegration of radioactive components? Or the sound of space particles bombarding the earth? And how would I refer to immortal works of music composed by man? Well, I included shades of "Dies Irae" by Thomas Celano, "Toccata" and "Fuga" by Johann Sebastian Bach, banjo music from Western movies, "Rock around the Clock" by Bill Haley & His Comets, and "Enter Sandman" by Metallica. I was also thinking about borrowing "Sandstorm" by Darude, but in the end, we just went for an unrecognizable techno loop.
Also Petzold and Bach.
Recording - and Jukka Resigning:
MARCO: Kaitsu handled the drum parts admirably, so we could continue with the other instruments right away, This time we tried to concentrate on one song at a
time and kept on working on it till we felt there was nothing more we could add.
TROY: And we didn't even have thunder. Rauhala does not have the best sound proofing in the world, so it would have been pretty challenging to mike the instruments if there had been rain and thunderclaps.
TUOMAS: I actually got off easier than I expected, because a lot of the demo keyboards from Hämeenlinna were good enough to be included on the album. The stuff in "Sea-Worn Driftwood", part five of "The Greatest Show on Earth", for example, was salvaged straight off the demo. In Hämeenlinna, I had explained to Tero that this passage would be about "whales singing and rats taking over the world". I had just come up with that improvised stuff, and it made it on the album
MARCO: Recording the vocals was teamwork in the best possible sense, no matter who was behind the mike. We kicked around suggestions and tried out all kinds of last minute ideas. Like, "Hey Floor, throw in some of that sweet upper octave of yours in the second verse...
Yeah, that's a nice touch!"
FLOOR: Marco kept on surprising us. He might just suddenly say, "Wait, I have an idea!" Then he'd pull out his bass and introduce an excellent harmony
MARCO: It was great fun recording the vocals. I've never had the chance to impersonate a troglodyte in front of a microphone before, so creating gorilla sounds for "The Greatest Show on Earth" was pretty hilarious. I didn't want to undermine the majesty of the song in any way, but I didn't exactly do it with a straight face, either!
TROY: I recorded my own ape grunts at home. To get in character, I took off my shirt, banged my chest with my fists, and pretended I was an ancient Homo Erectus. I think my wife was a bit worried
MARCO: I cut my bass parts pretty quickly in about one and a half days. I even got a bit lazy towards the evening of the first day - if I had really pushed it, I might have been able to complete them in a single day.
Notes:
The first part, "Four Point Six", is a reference to the age of our planet -in billions of years. The journey starts with a simple but persistent keyboard theme, interrupted by massive thunder claps - the origin of life that despite the murderous bombardment by asteroids, sprouts time and again and finally manages to grow permanent roots. The word "archaean" in the lyrics refers to the Archean Eon, the first of the geological eons of the world (Gaea).
Note that this piano intro is classic minimalism. It sounds repetitive but is in fact very slowly changing.
In some ways it reminds me of Spiegel im Spiegel.
The second part of the song chronicles the birth and the first on Earth. "Enter Luca" is a reference to an early life form, an acronym for the Last Universal Common Ancestor. We can make assumptions about the characteristics of Luca and other early life forms by reading the DNA of current organisms: "There's a writing in the garden, leading us to the mother of all."
Right from the beginning, one of the key characteristics of living cells has been the ability to sense their environment and react to their perceptions: "Ion channels welcoming the outside world."
In the third part, chronicling the age of man, there's a fascinating reminder: All of us current organisms are descendants of an
unbroken lineage of winners. "Not a single one of your fathers died young".
"Little Lucy of the Afar" refers to the famous fossil of Australopithecus Afarensis that was found in Afari, Ethiopia, a hominin that might have been the ancestor of man (genus Homo). In the long run, all species have the tendency to become extinct, and a fitting vision of the future of mankind is presented in the song, "One day'Il cease to be" On the other hand, man had earlier had "a dream to understand" and "[given] birth to poetry" . He wanted to leave his mark stating "We were here!" In the fourth part, man strives to understand it all, and Richard Dawkins takes up the story once again with a surprising claim:"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. The explanation folows shortly."Most people are never going die, because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been herein my place, but who will in fact never see the light of day, outnumber the sand grains of Sahara."
In the fifth and final part, Dawkins recites the concuding words of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin: "From so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
FLOOR: I felt real good after the final rehearsals [for EFMB] in a New York studio. There were obviously many challenging parts in the set - I'd have to be extra careful in the beginning of "The Greatest Show on Earth", for example because some of the phones rise from the back of the throat but "operatic vocals are produced in the front of the mouth
I find it hard to believe that any intelligent individual could possibly think that the title refers to Nightwish's performance rather than the undeniable "Greatest Show". Many things can be said of this wonderful group of musicians - but surely the last thing would be that they are in anyway narcissistic!
I heard and saw Nightwish for the first time at the age of 10 in Wacken 2013. From that moment on, I had become a Nightwish junkie. In December 2015 I saw the band live for the second time in London, where The Greatest Show On Earth was the last song. It took me about 2 weeks to calm down and understand what I had experienced. Since then I have attended at least 4 concerts on every Nightwish tour. Even one each in Japan and Mexico.
Nightwish concert videos are awesome but nothing beats attending a concert of them.
If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of their concerts, then you have to take the chance. There's no way you will regret it.
Greetings; Kelsea
You’re speechless!
just watch ,your own time from Colorado. I`m watching
Nightwish - Dark Chest of Wonders - Live at 2013
The greatest show ,Is about the miracle of life in the universe,where ever ,who knows
Si... ESTO ES NIGTWISH, ONE WORD, ONE IDEA, ONE SOUL, ONE EMOTION...
Greetings from Finland 🤘
Nightwish doing Nightwish things (Chase Carneson)
🤗🍒🤘🏻 well done again
Nightwish - PAN - 2020
Mmm total agree with your comment, keep it up please 🤘👩🏻🎤💖💖
'The Greatest Show on Earth' performed by the 'Greatest Band on Earth'. You know, we live in a time when someone called Taylor Swift is rammed down our throats by the so called music media, she makes millions of dollars PER SHOW!... we have 'rappers' who are billionaires...etc. etc, has the world gone mad? Yes, I think so, because when a relatively unknown band (to the masses) who, let's face it wipes the floor (no pun intended) with 90% of modern music, in any form, and is mostly known through RUclips (where would we be without it!), yet are never broadcast (again to the masses), over terrestrial TV, especially this concert, or Wacken 2013, only then will the world know just what it is missing.
The evolution of music, first a little classic, (Beethoven or Bach i guess), than some Technobeat and than Metallica 😁🤘🤘🤘
the Gregorian Chants, followed by Bach, then, Metallica......covering the history of music.....
❤❤❤❤❤
i was there =) but song is about evolution not about band sayeing greattest =)
Amazing❤
U heared Emppu's "Enter Sandman..."!! 👍
Tampere 2015 concert: ruclips.net/video/n3yYI2VWdC0/видео.html
1. Shudder Before the Beautiful, 2. Yours Is an Empty Hope, 3. Amaranth, 4. She is My Sin, 5. Dark Chest of Wonders, 6. My Walden
7. The Islander, 8.Élan, 9. Weak Fantasy, 10. Storytime, 11. Endless Forms Most Beatuful, 12. Alpenglow, 13. Stargazers
14. Sleeping sun, 15. Ghost Love Score, 16. The Greatest Show on Earth
Request reactions here my friend: ruclips.net/video/oNPCmvWY-zo/видео.html
Next: Islander and Sragazers from this same concert, please
Request reactions here my friend: ruclips.net/video/oNPCmvWY-zo/видео.html
🎶🎶👍👍🇳🇱🤘🤘💕🎤🎸🎶🎶👏👏
oh yeah N W likes the the rock elite, so do a tribute in songs, and actually do a whole pink floyd with marko singing. awesome
Night wish - The Pet and the Pendulum - Live at Wembley 2915
ok you got me. never heard of dream theater. went from collage to alternative rocl $ a brother, and then to techno. especially remixes/. by the way check out Aviccii for a different music. he died too young. a poet and musician. wake me up
also try same song at Wembley. Same but different.
The Metallica rif is perhaps that Metallica meant a lot to Tuomas when hè was growing up.
A section for evolution of music has many other musical references than Metallica. But that's typically the only one people will spot.
Experiencing that live ranks with racing at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in the bucket-list things I've accomplished
Nightwish - "The Greatest Show on Earth" - Live at Wembley 2015 ( this version is better )