Based in Eng­land, Itha­ca Audio spe­cial­izes in cre­at­ing music for film, TV, ani­ma­tions and games. And they also have a knack for remix­ing audio visu­als and pro­duc­ing mashups. Care to sam­ple their work? Watch the video above.

The His­to­ry of Rock takes you from Elvis to The White Stripes, trav­el­ing from 1957 to 2003, in the space of 15 min­utes. 348 rock­stars, 84 gui­tarists, 64 songs, 44 drum­mers — they’re all knit­ted into a nar­ra­tive using a device–the Face­book timeline–that came into exis­tence in 2004. It’s anachro­nis­tic but clever, and I’m will­ing to sus­pend dis­be­lief and take the ride. A big­ger com­plaint might be the one made by For­rest Wick­man over at Slate. “No Lit­tle Richard. No Ike Turn­er and Jack­ie Bren­ston. No Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe. No Bo Did­dley or Big Joe Turn­er,” he observes. The His­to­ry of Rock would have you believe that “rock was [orig­i­nal­ly] pio­neered exclu­sive­ly by white artists.” Give Kei­th Richards and Mick Jag­ger the chance–two icons who orig­i­nal­ly saw them­selves as just play­ing the Amer­i­can blues–and they might tell the ori­gin sto­ry of rock n roll a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly.

Below you can see a list of tracks used in the mashup. And if you head over to the Itha­ca Audio web­site, you can down­load the sound­track in full.

Elvis Pres­ley — Jail­house Rock
The Yard­birds — For your Love
The Rolling Stones — Honky Tonk Women
The Rolling Stones — (I Can’t Get No) Sat­is­fac­tion
Cream — Sun­shine of your Love
Led Zep­pelin — Whole Lot­ta Love
Led Zep­pelin — Good Times, Bad Times
Led Zep­pelin — Immi­grant Song
Jimi Hen­drix — Hey Joe
Jimi Hen­drix — Pur­ple Haze
Fleet­wood Mac — Oh Well (Part 1)
The Kinks — You Real­ly Got Me
The Doors — Rid­ers on the Storm
Queen — Don’t Stop Me
Queen — Radio Ga Ga
Queen — Anoth­er One Bites the Dust
Queen — A Kind of Mag­ic
The Bea­t­les — Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band
The Who — Baba O’Ri­ley
The Who — Emi­nence Front
Black Sab­bath — Iron Man
Black Sab­bath — War Pigs
Deep Pur­ple — Woman From Tokyo
Deep Pur­ple — Smoke on the Water
Deep Pur­ple — Liv­ing Wreck
The Eagles — Life in the Fast Lane
Aero­smith — Walk this Way
Aero­smith — Dude Looks Like a Lady
Alice Coop­er — I’m Eigh­teen
The Clash — Train in Vain (Stand by Me)
The Police — Rox­anne
Jour­ney — Don’t Stop Believin’
Dire Straits — Sul­tans of Swing
Duran Duran — Girls on Film
Duran Duran — Wild Boys
Pink Floyd — Anoth­er Brick in the Wall
David Bowie — Let’s Dance
David Bowie & Queen — Under Pres­sure
Iron Maid­en — Run to the Hills
Def Lep­pard — Pour Some Sug­ar on Me
Guns N’ Ros­es — Mr Brown­stone
Guns N’ Ros­es — Sweet Child O’ Mine
AC/DC — Back in Black
Rage Against the Machine — Bomb­track
Rage Against the Machine — Guer­ril­la Radio
Rage Against the Machine — Killing in the Name
Metal­li­ca — Enter Sand­man
Nir­vana — Smells Like Teen Spir­it
Nir­vana — Heart Shaped Box
Oasis — Super­son­ic
Oasis — Live For­ev­er
Blur — Song 2
The Verve — Bit­ter­sweet Sym­pho­ny
Radio­head — High and Dry
Radio­head — Idioteque
Red Hot Chili Pep­pers — Can’t Stop
The Killers — All These Things That I’ve Done
Foo Fight­ers — All My Life
U2 — Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me
Linkin Park — One Step Clos­er
The White Stripes — Sev­en Nation Army
The Strokes — 12 51
Goril­laz — Clint East­wood
Kings of Leon — Sex on Fire

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Riffs

Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus Picks 10 Unex­pect­ed Songs That Tell the Sto­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll

The Evo­lu­tion of the Rock Gui­tar Solo: 28 Solos, Span­ning 50 Years, Played in 6 Fun Min­utes

Released 33 years ago this week, New Order’s “Blue Mon­day” (hear the orig­i­nal EP ver­sion here) became, accord­ing to the BBC, “a cru­cial link between Sev­en­ties dis­co and the dance/house boom that took off at the end of the Eight­ies.” If you fre­quent­ed a dance club dur­ing the 1980s, you almost cer­tain­ly know the song.

The orig­i­nal “Blue Mon­day” nev­er quite won me over. I’m much more Rolling Stones than New Order. But I’m tak­en with the adap­ta­tion above. Cre­at­ed by the “Orkestra Obso­lete,” this ver­sion tries to imag­ine what the song would have sound­ed like in 1933, using only instru­ments avail­able at the time— for exam­ple, writes the BBC, the theremin, musi­cal saw, har­mo­ni­um and pre­pared piano. Quite a change from the Pow­ertron Sequencer, Moog Source syn­the­siz­er, and Ober­heim DMX drum machine used to record the song in the 80s. Enjoy this lit­tle thought exper­i­ment put in action.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

Meet the “Tel­har­mo­ni­um,” the First Syn­the­siz­er (and Pre­de­ces­sor to Muzak), Invent­ed in 1897

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

One of the hard­est things to mas­ter as an inde­pen­dent musi­cian is the art of pro­mo­tion. Though many artists are extro­verts and atten­tion-seek­ers, many more are by nature intro­vert­ed, or at least inner-direct­ed, and dis­in­clined to embrace the tools of the mar­ket­ing trade. In days of yore, when such things as major record labels still roamed the earth at large, much of the pro­mo­tion could be left up to those majes­tic, lum­ber­ing beasts. These days, when the major­i­ty of work­ing musi­cians have to keep their day jobs and learn to do their own pro­duc­tion, styling, book­ing, and PR, it’s essen­tial to get over any squea­mish­ness about blow­ing your own horn. If you’re look­ing for point­ers, con­sid­er the exam­ple of self-invent­ed musi­cal genius Sun Ra, a mas­ter of self-pro­mo­tion.

No one bet­ter under­stood what Sun Ra was up to than Sun Ra him­self, and he knew how to sell his very out-there free jazz move­ment to a pub­lic used to more mun­dane pre­sen­ta­tions. As Mike Walsh at Mis­sion Creep suc­cinct­ly puts it, “noth­ing about Sun Ra’s six-decade musi­cal career could be called nor­mal.” He more or less re-invent­ed what it meant to be a jazz musi­cian and band­leader. It was in the 1950s that he real­ly came into his own. After work­ing steadi­ly as a tour­ing side­man for sev­er­al oth­er musi­cians, the man born Her­man Blount changed his name first to Le Sony’r Ra, then Sun Ra, and put togeth­er his famous “Arkestra.”

His shows began to incor­po­rate the elab­o­rate cos­tum­ing he became known for, and he would often stop the music “to lec­ture on his favorite sub­jects,” writes Jez Nel­son at The Guardian, “Egyp­tol­ogy and space. He began to claim he had been abduct­ed by aliens and was in fact from Sat­urn.” The act was both dead­ly seri­ous space opera (he rehearsed his band for 12 hours at a stretch, after all) and absur­dist schtick, and it both trans­port­ed audi­ences to new worlds and made them laugh out loud.

Sun Ra’s busi­ness cards from the 50s cap­ture this tonal spec­trum between avant-garde per­for­mance art and high-con­cept free jazz com­e­dy. Adver­tis­ing new releas­es, a band-for-hire, and ongo­ing local Chica­go res­i­den­cies, they com­bine the strict pro­fes­sion­al­ism of a work­ing band­leader with the word­play and silli­ness Ra loved: he calls his coterie “Atonites,” which psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor Robert L. Camp­bell reads as mean­ing both “wor­ship­pers of Aton,” Egypt­ian sun god, and “per­form­ers of aton­al music.” Audi­ences are invit­ed to “Dance the Out­er Space Way. Hear songs sung the Out­er Space Way by Clyde ‘Out of Space’ Williams” (one­time singer with the band). And the card at the top of the post makes per­haps the sim­plest, most com­pelling pitch of them all: “Why buy old sounds?” Indeed.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Sun Ra’s Full Lec­ture & Read­ing List From His 1971 UC Berke­ley Course, “The Black Man in the Cos­mos”

Sun Ra Plays a Music Ther­a­py Gig at a Men­tal Hos­pi­tal; Inspires Patient to Talk for the First Time in Years

The Cry of Jazz: 1958’s High­ly Con­tro­ver­sial Film on Jazz & Race in Amer­i­ca (With Music by Sun Ra)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness