≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
A quick note: Paul McCartney’s album, Memory Almost Full, is going today for $2.99 on Amazon. Supposedly, it’s just a one day deal, so it seemed worth a mention…
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
This comes to us courtesy of TED Talks. Here, Itay Talgam, an Israeli conductor, talks about the art of leading an orchestra and shows the styles of six great 20th-century conductors. Ultimately, there are some general lessons here. Lessons about leadership. Give it a few minutes, and it gets going. Meanwhile, on a related note, you [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
A quick note: Amazon will let you download a Philip Glass sampler that contains 21 tracks. You can get them as mp3s, and they’re all free. But the deal ends (it seems) by the end of the day. So act quickly.
via Lifehacker
≡ Category: Music, Science | ≅ Comments
Stanford students head to the Galapagos Islands, then rap about what they’ve learned. Evolutionary rap. What a concept…
Meanwhile, the professor whose voice you hear at the outset, Bill Durham, taught a course in Stanford Continuing Studies (my day job) last year, and we have made it available as a free podcast. It’s called Darwin’s Legacy, and [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
According to the LA Times, U2 will live stream its concert this coming Sunday night on YouTube. Some 95,000 people have tickets for the Rose Bowl show in LA. If you’re not one of them, then you can watch the YouTube stream starting at 8:30 pm Pacific time. The footage will also be archived for [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music | ≅ Comments
In 2008, Martin Scorsese brought the Rolling Stones to film with “Shine a Light.” (Watch the trailer here.) But a good forty years before that, another giant of modern film had a similar idea. Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founders of New Wave French cinema, directed “Sympathy for the Devil” during the tumultuous summer [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
This clip of Coltrane’s 1960 classic comes to us via @hughmcguire.
Related Content:
Beethoven’s Fifth: The Animated Score
How a Bach Canon Works. More Brilliant Animation
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Gustavo Dudamel, the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, kicked off his tenure last Saturday with a free performance of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 at the Hollywood Bowl. 18,000 people were in attendance. You can listen to the concert in its entirety here, and read a review of Dudamel’s maiden voyage with the [...]
≡ Category: Music, Television | ≅ Comments
A little birthday present. John Lennon would have been 69 years old today. This memorable interview, recorded in 1971, features John and Yoko in a candid, relaxed and wide-ranging conversation with one of America’s leading talk show hosts at the time. To watch the full interview, see Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Here’s a sneak preview of Bob Dylan’s forthcoming Christmas album. It will hit the streets in October, and you can pre-order now. A safe assumption: this will be a “love it” or “hate it” album.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
On September 9th, EMI released a remastered version of the entire Beatles catalogue — the first remix since 1987. And now the Beatles are once again back on top of the charts. If you’re wondering whether to buy the remastered versions at all, or whether to buy the stereo or mono box sets (or some combination [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
What’s the story behind this video? Here it is, straight from the producer, Jarbas Agnelli from Brazil: “Reading a newspaper, I saw a picture of birds on the electric wires. I cut out the photo and decided to make a song, using the exact location of the birds as notes (no Photoshop edit). I knew [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
On Friday, we gave you this animated piece that shows the genius of Bach. Now, we give you an animated score of Beethoven’s 5th, and here you can find a chart that explains what the colors in the score mean. Essentially each color represents a particular instrument. Get the chart here, and don’t forget that you [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Brilliant. This moving manuscript depicts a single musical sequence played front to back and then back to front. Give the video (now added to our YouTube Favorites) a little time to unfold.
via @Slate. Catch @Openculture on Twitter here.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Speaking of The Beatles, I’m reminded that The Beatles: Rock Band, the new video game honoring The Fab Four, is hitting the streets this week. (See the software on Amazon for the Wii or Xbox.) The clip above shows you the intro to the game, and this Ars Technica piece tells you why The Beatles: Rock Band [...]
≡ Category: Life, Music | ≅ Comments
For good measure, I’m adding Ted Kennedy’s eulogy for his brother, Robert Kennedy, back in 1968. Get the audio here. And, in turn, you can also watch President Obama’s eulogy of Senator Kennedy, plus Ted Kennedy Jr.’s remembrances, from earlier in the day. Some moving words and some ideas to live by…
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Bob Dylan sings your favorite Christmas songs. “Here Comes Santa Claus,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Little Drummer Boy” and “Must Be Santa.”
It sounds strange. But it’s very real. All money will go to charity. You can pre-order now. And although the album won’t be released until October, it’s already #4 on Amazon.com’s sales chart.
If anyone comes across some [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Flashback to 1966. The Beatles hold a press conference in LA, on the eve of their very last live concert. As you’ll see, the questions range from the frivolous (”What do you think of American women’s legs?”) to the more serious (”Do you really think you’re more popular than God?” Or, “What would happen if [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Music | ≅ Comments
These days, David Sedaris is the thinking person’s favorite funny man. In the past, we have featured his live readings of comic material from When You are Engulfed in Flames. (See “Related Content” below.) Today, we’re highlighting something a little different. On August 19th, Sedaris appeared as a guest DJ on KCRW, a radio station in [...]
≡ Category: Comedy, Music | ≅ Comments
A little piece of classic Americana TV. We take you back to the 1950s and Sid Caesar’s comic work. It’s hard to imagine someone working Beethoven’s 5th into comic material, but Caesar did it. In the meantime, if you want something a little more serious, I give you this rare footage of Herbert von Karajan conducting [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
It was 40 years ago today — August 15 to August 18, 1969.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
One month you’re the governor of Illinois; the next you’re indicted and kicked out of office for trying to sell President Obama’s Senate seat; and several months later, you wind up imitating Elvis at block parties. Oh how the mighty have fallen. The money moment comes 50 seconds in. Have a good weekend. Back to [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Les Paul, the guitar master and inventor, passed away today at the age of 94. The clip above shows Paul at 90, just a few years ago, living a still vigorous life. He’ll be missed.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
In honor of the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, we have Jimi Hendrix playing the U.S. national anthem. It’s not your usual anthem. Nope, this is the anthem played dissonantly in a new counter-culture style, the anthem turned into a blistering commentary on the Vietnam War. No doubt, conservatives and the silent majority didn’t like it. But, like [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist and author of Musicophilia, a study that looks at the human brain and music, speaks in Harpers about the landscape altering iPod:
As Daniel Levitin has pointed out, passive listening has largely replaced active music-making. Now that we can listen to anything we like on our iPods, we have less motivation to [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
A quick fyi: The Free Music Archive now offers up over 10,000 free, high quality (and legal) mp3s. The archive is run by WFMU, the renowned freeform radio station that also runs the excellent “Beware of the Blog.” All of the audio has been hand-picked by music curators, and you can use the audio pretty much [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Comments
From The New Yorker’s Goings On Blog:
The Beatles’ “official Web site is featuring short documentaries, hosted by George Martin, on the making of the band’s original albums. The first one, about “Revolver,” is up now, though the site seems to be hobbling along, possibly due to high server load.”
Also, a little something for U2 fans… [...]
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