If you’ve seen a David Byrne con­cert in recent years, you know that he per­forms with a large ensem­ble of musi­cians, each car­ry­ing their own instru­ments across the stage, all while mov­ing in intri­cate­ly chore­o­graphed pat­terns. On his cur­rent tour, Byrne and his band stopped by NPR’s stu­dio and played a very dif­fer­ent kind of show—a show tight­ly squeezed behind NPR’s Tiny Desk. As you will see above, they per­formed two songs (“Every­body Laughs” and “Don’t Be Like That”) from Byrne’s new album, along with two Talk­ing Heads favorites, “(Noth­ing But) Flow­ers” and “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­cert

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

Watch David Byrne Prac­tice His Dance Moves for Stop Mak­ing Sense in New­ly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

224 Books About Music in David Byrne’s Per­son­al Library

Alice’s Restau­rant. It’s now a Thanks­giv­ing clas­sic, and some­thing of a tra­di­tion around here. Record­ed in 1967, the 18+ minute coun­ter­cul­ture song recounts Arlo Guthrie’s real encounter with the law, start­ing on Thanks­giv­ing Day 1965. As the long song unfolds, we hear all about how a hip­pie-bat­ing police offi­cer, by the name of William “Obie” Oban­hein, arrest­ed Arlo for lit­ter­ing. (Cul­tur­al foot­note: Obie pre­vi­ous­ly posed for sev­er­al Nor­man Rock­well paint­ings, includ­ing the well-known paint­ing, “The Run­away,” that graced a 1958 cov­er of The Sat­ur­day Evening Post.) In fair­ly short order, Arlo pleads guilty to a mis­de­meanor charge, pays a $25 fine, and cleans up the thrash. But the sto­ry isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

Lat­er, when Arlo (son of Woody Guthrie) gets called up for the draft, the pet­ty crime iron­i­cal­ly becomes a basis for dis­qual­i­fy­ing him from mil­i­tary ser­vice in the Viet­nam War. Guthrie recounts this with some bit­ter­ness as the song builds into a satir­i­cal protest against the war: “I’m sit­tin’ here on the Group W bench ’cause you want to know if I’m moral enough to join the Army, burn women, kids, hous­es and vil­lages after bein’ a lit­ter­bug.” And then we’re back to the cheery cho­rus again: “You can get any­thing you want, at Alice’s Restau­rant.”

We have fea­tured Guthrie’s clas­sic dur­ing past years. But, for this Thanks­giv­ing, we give you the illus­trat­ed ver­sion.

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:

The Sto­ry Behind “Alice’s Restau­rant,” Arlo Guthrie’s Song That’s Now a Thanks­giv­ing Tra­di­tion

What Amer­i­cans Ate for Thanks­giv­ing 200 Years Ago: Watch Re-Cre­ations of Recipes from the 1820s

Read 1,000+ Thanks­giv­ing Books Free at the Inter­net Archive

William S. Bur­roughs’ Scathing “Thanks­giv­ing Prayer,” Shot by Gus Van Sant

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 13 Tips for What to Do with Your Left­over Thanks­giv­ing Turkey

Punk rock and heavy met­al were two gen­res that evolved over the ‘70s, but seemed to run par­al­lel to each oth­er, despite shar­ing com­mon fash­ion, sounds, and atti­tudes. But then there are moments in his­to­ry, where every­body plays togeth­er in the same sand­box. For exam­ple, the above remas­tered audio, which cap­tures the Aus­tralian band AC/DC on their first Amer­i­can tour, play­ing New York’s CBGB, syn­ony­mous now with punk and new wave music.

The date is August 24, 1977, and AC/DC were on a cross-coun­try trip that had tak­en in both club dates and are­nas, where they supported—yes, hard to believe, I know—REO Speed­wag­on. Their album Let There Be Rock had just dropped in June. The band would be in the States until the win­ter.

This CBGB gig finds them on the same bill as Talk­ing Heads and the Dead Boys, accord­ing to a poster from the time. And while there’s no video for this show, you can find a few pho­tos that doc­u­ment the con­cert here. You can feel the mug­gy New York sum­mer in these pho­tos, but also the excite­ment of an unfor­get­table gig.

At 15 min­utes, the set is short, but still three min­utes longer than the Ramones’ first set at the same club three years ear­li­er. That’s pret­ty met­al, man.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NYC’s Icon­ic Punk Club CBG­Bs Comes Alive in a Bril­liant Short Ani­ma­tion, Using David Godlis’ Pho­tos of Pat­ti Smith, The Ramones & More

CBGB’s Hey­day: Watch The Ramones, The Dead Boys, Bad Brains, Talk­ing Heads & Blondie Per­form Live (1974–1982)

Lis­ten to Pat­ti Smith’s Glo­ri­ous Three Hour Farewell to CBGB’s on Its Final Night

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club That Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Watch an Episode of TV-CBGB, the First Rock ‘n’ Roll Sit­com Ever Aired on Cable TV (1981)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

To many long­time fans, there are — at the very least — two Pink Floyds. The first is the rock band that in 1965 took the name the Pink Floyd Sound, an inven­tion of its newest mem­ber Syd Bar­rett. A gui­tar-play­ing singer-song­writer, the young Bar­rett soon became the group’s guid­ing cre­ative intel­li­gence, albeit of a cracked kind. It was under his influ­ence that, two years lat­er, the Floyd released their first two hit singles,“Arnold Layne” and “See Emi­ly Play,” as well as their debut stu­dio album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. This ear­ly mate­r­i­al exhibits a kind of dark­ly whim­si­cal Eng­lish eccen­tric­i­ty that turned out to fit neat­ly indeed with the psy­che­delia of the music-dri­ven late-six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture.

This first Pink Floyd last­ed until part­way through the pro­duc­tion of their sec­ond album, A Saucer­ful of Secrets. Up to that point, Bar­ret­t’s behav­ior had been turn­ing ever stranger and less man­age­able; even­tu­al­ly, he passed entire con­certs in a state of near cata­to­nia onstage (with the occa­sion­al spasm of a deep-seat­ed ten­den­cy to prac­ti­cal jokes).

After con­sid­er­ing and find­ing unfea­si­ble the option to retain him as a non-tour­ing con­trib­u­tor, the oth­er mem­bers decid­ed sim­ply to eject him from the band. Thus began the Floy­d’s sec­ond iter­a­tion, which, despite the loss of the man who’d been writ­ing 90 per­cent of their songs, did nev­er­the­less man­age to come up with albums like Atom Heart Moth­er, The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall.

When Bar­rett died in 2006, after decades of life as a recluse (and, ever the Eng­lish­man, an enthu­si­as­tic gar­den­er), he was wide­ly remem­bered as a casu­al­ty of the psy­che­del­ic drug wave. But accord­ing to Roger Waters, who took the band’s reins, “LSD was not sole­ly respon­si­ble for Syd’s ill­ness.” He says so in the video above, a com­pi­la­tion of his rec­ol­lec­tions of Bar­ret­t’s decline. “It felt to me at the time that Syd was drift­ing off the rails, and when you’re drift­ing off the rails, the worst thing you could do is start mess­ing around with hal­lu­cino­gen­ics.” There was “no doubt that Syd was schiz­o­phrenic, and that he was tak­ing those drugs at the same time.” It could well have been that Bar­ret­t’s state of mind allowed him to voy­age into realms that the Floyd could oth­er­wise nev­er have accessed. But what­ev­er the causal fac­tors and their pro­por­tions, he even­tu­al­ly found him­self unable to come back home.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

Under­stand­ing Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Their Trib­ute to Depart­ed Band­mate Syd Bar­rett

Short Film “Syd Barrett’s First Trip” Reveals the Pink Floyd Founder’s Psy­che­del­ic Exper­i­men­ta­tion (1967)

Watch David Gilmour Play the Songs of Syd Bar­rett, with the Help of David Bowie & Richard Wright

An Hour-Long Col­lec­tion of Live Footage Doc­u­ments the Ear­ly Days of Pink Floyd (1967–1972)

The Inven­tive Art­work of Pink Floyd’s Syd Bar­rett

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

We all know the man­child Mozart of Milos Forman’s 1984 biopic Amadeus. As embod­ied by a man­ic, bray­ing Thomas Hulce, the pre­co­cious and haunt­ed com­pos­er sup­pos­ed­ly loved noth­ing more than scan­dal­iz­ing, amus­ing, or exas­per­at­ing friends and ene­mies alike with juve­nile pranks and scat­o­log­i­cal humor. Sure­ly a fic­tion, eh? Gross exag­ger­a­tion, no? Undoubt­ed­ly Mozart com­port­ed him­self with more dig­ni­ty? Those famil­iar with the composer’s biog­ra­phy know oth­er­wise.

We have, for exam­ple, a ridicu­lous­ly dirty let­ter that the 21-year-old “poop-lov­ing musi­cal genius” wrote to his 19-year-old cousin Marianne—a mis­sive Let­ters of Note pref­aces with the dis­claimer “if you’re eas­i­ly offend­ed, please do not read any fur­ther” (oh, but how can you resist?). This piece of cor­re­spon­dence is but one of many “shock­ing­ly crude let­ters” Mozart wrote to his fam­i­ly. And if these slight­ly insane doc­u­ments don’t con­vince you, we offer as fur­ther evi­dence of Mozart’s exu­ber­ant­ly child­ish sen­si­bil­i­ty the above canon in B flat for six voic­es, Leck Mich Im Arsch, which trans­lates rough­ly to “Kiss My Ass.”

One of three naughty canons com­posed in 1782 with lyrics like “Good night, sleep tight, / And stick your ass to your mouth,” this piece was dis­cov­ered in 1991 at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty. Har­vard librar­i­an Michael Ochs, with a clear pen­chant for under­state­ment, said at the time: “These are minor works. They’re not the Requiem, or ‘Don Gio­van­ni.’ They were writ­ten for the amuse­ment of Mozart and his friends, and they show anoth­er side of him.” The first edi­tion of Mozart’s com­plete works, pub­lished in 1804, bowd­ler­ized the texts and removed the racy humor, chang­ing the title of Leck Mich Im Arsch to “Let us be glad!”—likely, writes Lucas Reil­ly at Men­tal Floss, “the com­plete oppo­site of what this tune means.”

Reil­ly also points out that Mozart’s “pot­ty mouth” was prob­a­bly not, as some have sup­posed, evi­dence of Tourette’s syn­drome, but rather of an espe­cial­ly strong cur­rent in Ger­man humor, shared by Johannes Guten­berg, Mar­tin Luther, and Mozart’s equal­ly bril­liant con­tem­po­rary, Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe. In fact, Leck Mich Im Arsch alludes to Goethe’s seri­ous dra­mat­ic work, Götz Von Berlichin­gen. The cho­rus reads as fol­lows in Eng­lish:

Kiss my arse!
Goethe, Goethe!
Götz von Berlichin­gen! Sec­ond act;
You know the scene too well!
Let’s sing out now sum­mar­i­ly:
Here is Mozart lit­er­ary!

Hear two addi­tion­al dirty choral pieces—Bona Nox and Dif­fi­cile Lec­tu—at Men­tal Floss. Some oth­er scat­o­log­i­cal canons thought to be Mozart’s, such as Leck mir den Arsch fein recht schön sauber (“Lick my ass right well and clean”), have since been attrib­uted to ama­teur com­pos­er and physi­cian Wen­zel Trn­ka, yet it appears that the three fea­tured at Men­tal Floss are gen­uine.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only 5 Years Old

Watch the First Per­for­mance of a Mozart Com­po­si­tion That Had Been Lost for Cen­turies

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Hear the Sounds of the Actu­al Instru­ments for Which Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn, and Han­del Orig­i­nal­ly Com­posed Their Music

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.