≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
“In 2009 Ben Folds released a greatest hits record, of sorts, sung entirely in a cappella. The album, Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella! features two tracks performed by Ben himself, but the bulk of the material was performed by various university a cappella groups.” You can catch a documentary version above.
≡ Category: Current Affairs, Music | ≅ 35 Comments
Yes, Jacko had undeniable talent. And, yes, Thriller drove more sales than any other album ever. But, Jacko released Thriller back in 1982 — roughly 27 years ago. And, what has he accomplished since? Creatively very little, and the personal story is very mixed. Despite that, his death is the big news story everywhere, both in [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
From Stanford’s Facebook Page:
Thanks so much for becoming a Fan of Stanford University on Facebook! As a small token of our appreciation, we’ve teamed up with the iTunes team to bring you a special summer mix with 30 free songs. Download at http://bit.ly/stanford-summer-mix (US residents only).
While we’re talking Facebook, you can become an Open Culture [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Back in March 1970, Miles Davis was the opening act for Neil Young at the Fillmore East in NYC. Not exactly the most likely combo. But that’s what concert promoter Bill Graham put together.
You can listen to mp3s of Miles’ live performance. (Make sure you scroll down.) What you get here is not bebop Miles Davis, or [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
The last sentence is the clincher…
Related Content:
The Beatles: Podcasts From Yesterday
What New Yorkers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot
John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Buddy Holly
The Grey Video: Mixing The Beatles with Jay-Z
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 3 Comments
Awesome way to give the Monday blues a swift kick in the ass. Last Thursday, in London’s Trafalgar Square, a big crowd of 13,500 got together and sang “Hey Jude.” The project (arranged somewhat spontaneously by T-Mobile) gets better as things move along — kind of like the song itself.
All credit for finding this one goes [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Pretty intriguing footage highlighted by Metafilter today: “John King, likely the world’s only classical ukulele virtuoso, died last month at the age of 55. Here he is performing a Bach prelude (above), playing more Bach, and playing Chopsticks.” You can find more clips of King’s work on this YouTube channel.
And while you’re at it, check out our list of Intelligent [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Pete Seeger, the great American folk singer who turns 90 next week, sits down here with biographer Alec Wilkinson, and talks about Turn! Turn! Turn!. It’s a song that Seeger wrote in 1959, using lyrics taken from the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. And it was then famously covered by The Byrds in 1965 [...]
≡ Category: Film, Music | ≅ 2 Comments
Out in remix culture, one is never sure what one will find. Take this video for example. If you watched American TV during the 1980s, you’re likely to remember Diff’rent Strokes, a sitcom that had a kind of far-fetched premise: a rich white widower adopts two African-American children from Harlem, and they live happily together [...]
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Paul McCartney played a long 35 song set at Coachella this past weekend. And now we’re getting a little peek at his performance. Here, in homage to George Harrison, Paul plays “Something” and a little ukulele.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Rewind the videotape to 1961. John Coltrane, Eric Dolphy, Reggie Workman, and Elvin Jones hit the stage in Baden Baden, Germany and give you a very smooth version of “My Favorite Things.” A jazz classic, no doubt. And certainly a brilliant bit of archival footage.
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≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
CBGB’s was a longtime mecca of the New York music scene, a venue that helped launch the Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, and the Talking Heads onto the national stage. And then it closed in 2006. If you never visited the club on Bowery and Bleecker Streets, you can still take a pretty vivid virtual tour. [...]
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Last week, Bob Dylan released for a limited time a free mp3 (”Beyond Here Lies Nothin”) from his upcoming album, Together Through Life. Over at Newsweek, you’ll now find another cut being streamed — ”Feel A Change Comin’ On.” Head on over and have a listen.
via Stereogum
≡ Category: Music, Web/Tech | ≅ Leave a Comment
At Stanford, students have found a way to get mobile phones to make music. As you’ll see, the iPhone can now reproduce the sounds of the ocarina, a twelve thousand year old flute-like instrument. That’s the hi-tech way of doing it. There’s also the low-tech way of getting the same result. In this classic bit [...]
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“Stevie Wonder, the awardee of the second Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, premieres “Sketches of a Life,” a sprawling, hybrid pop-classical concerto, written between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a commission for the Library of Congress in the Coolidge Auditorium.” The performance was recorded on February 23, and it [...]
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A quick find worth passing along…
Although somewhat unconventional as far as memoirs go, Chronicles: Volume One recaptures Bob Dylan’s “first stirrings of creativity with amazing urgency” (as Janet Maslin once put it) , and brings you to places that the normal Dylan biography won’t. It brings you back to the small moments that shaped Dylan’s early days as a [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
More just a heads up than anything else. If you’re spending money downloading MP3s from iTunes, you may want to give Amazon MP3 downloads a serious look. Amazon MP3s are generally cheaper, and you can find some outstanding deals there. Take, for example, $3.99 for The Pogues’ If I Should Fall from Grace, or $1.99 [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
Appearing last month at the TED Conference, jazz pianist Eric Lewis presented a quite amazing version of Evanescence’s hit Going Under. As you’ll see from the very outset, the piece has some rather unconventional elements (some won’t like it), but stay with it. It all hangs together in a strangely beautiful way.
via Minnesota Public Radio
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 2 Comments
Legendary Canadian musician Leonard Cohen is now touring the United States for the first time in 15 years (get all of the details here). Fans who can’t catch a show will be pleased to know that NPR’s All Songs Considered provides free access to Cohen’s recent show at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. (It was [...]
≡ Category: Music, YouTube | ≅ Leave a Comment
It was time to do something new. So I bought an acoustic guitar and decided to see what I could learn on my own. And this, then, led me to look for free resources on the web. Not shockingly, YouTube has a fair amount to offer. A number of different video providers have posted lessons [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Apparently, in April, Bob Dylan plans to release a new album. Let’s hope that he continues to defy gravity. Get more details here.
Related Content
When Bob Dylan Went Electric: Newport, 1965
Like A Rolling Stone 1966
Bob Dylan at The Super Bowl
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
U2’s next album, No Line on the Horizon, will be released internationally in early March. But not terribly surprisingly the album is already being circulated (not legally) on BitTorrent. And this has motivated the band to give fans free access to a streamed version on MySpace. To listen, just click here, scroll down to the [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
Somewhere back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites. As mentioned a few weeks back, Dylan recently agreed to lend this classic song to a TV commercial for an ethical banking and retail group in the UK. [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
In 1907, executives from the Gramophone Company headed to the basement of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax recordings of famous opera singers. Now, a century later, these recordings have been opened, dusted off, and (yes) even commercialized. Later this month, EMI will release the recordings under the title, “Treasures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ 2 Comments
This week marks the 50th anniversary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talking about the 1959 airplane crash that cut short the budding lives and careers of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. In ‘59, Buddy Holly’s musical career was just getting started, but his influence [...]
≡ Category: Music, Television | ≅ 2 Comments
As you’ll recall, we mentioned a few days ago that Bob Dylan allowed “Blowin’ in the Wind” to be used in a British commercial. Never before had Dylan allowed that to happen, at least in Britain. For one of our readers, there was a small silver lining. The company using the classic song (the Co-operative [...]
≡ Category: Music, Video - Arts & Culture | ≅ Leave a Comment
Here’s a nice vintage clip that comes out of a YouTube Channel called The Great Performers, which we’ve added to our page: Best YouTube Collections. The video features Arturo Toscanini conducting Beethoven’s 5th at Carnegie Hall in 1952. You can find the second movement here.
For more classical music see:
Free Beethoven and Mozart Recordings via Podcast
Beethoven’s Symphony No. [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
Stephen in the UK highlighted a piece in Guardian that will interest Bob Dylan fans. It begins:
Bob Dylan has given rare permission for his music to be used in a TV commercial.
Protest song Blowin’ in the Wind will be used to reinforce a message of change in a TV campaign for ethical banking and retail [...]
≡ Category: Music | ≅ 1 Comment
An excellent find by Kottke: “Amazon has hundreds of free mp3s available for download, including tracks by Brian Eno & David Byrne, Ani Difranco, and Reverend Horton Heat.”
Update: A reader informs us that this is US only. My apologies to any readers outside the US.
≡ Category: Music | ≅ Leave a Comment
At least in my mind, Aretha Franklin stole the show on Tuesday. It’s hard to top her singing My Country, ‘Tis of Thee — the beauty of the voice, the obvious poignant symbolism of the moment, and then her hat. Yes, the hat that has captured the public imagination. Just days later, we have a [...]
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