Hear the Evolution of Electronic Music: A Sonic Journey from 1929 to 2019

It’s easy to get the impres­sion that enthu­si­asts of elec­tron­ic music lis­ten to noth­ing else. (Not that it isn’t true for some of them, who tend to rel­e­gate them­selves to small­er sub­gen­res: con­sult Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music for a map of the son­ic ter­ri­to­ry.) And it’s equal­ly easy to believe that, if you aren’t explic­it­ly into elec­tron­ic music, then you don’t lis­ten to it. But in fact, its his­to­ry is one of long-term inte­gra­tion so thor­ough that many of us fre­quent­ly lis­ten to elec­tron­ic music — or at any rate, elec­tron­ic-adja­cent music — with­out being con­scious of that fact.

Watch the video above, a 24-minute jour­ney through the evo­lu­tion of elec­tron­ic music from 1929 to 2019, and take note of how many songs you know after hear­ing them for only a few sec­onds. Ear­ly exper­i­ments by the likes of Olivi­er Mes­si­aen, Hal­im El-Dabh, and Rune Lind­blad may ring no bells (and to the unini­ti­at­ed, may not sound like music at all). Doc­tor Who fans will perk up when the time­line reach­es 1963, with the appear­ance of that show’s theme song — a record­ing by Delia Der­byshire, inci­den­tal­ly, whose pio­neer­ing work we’ve often fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture. The first piece of full-fledged pop music is Ger­shon Kings­ley’s “Pop­corn,” from 1969, one of those songs whose melody we all know even if we’d nev­er be able to come up with the title.

In the mid-sev­en­ties, the names now wide­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the devel­op­ment of mod­ern elec­tron­ic music start to emerge: Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” in 1974, Tan­ger­ine Dream’s “Ruby­con” in 1975, Jean-Michel Jar­re’s “Oxy­gene” in 1976. But more impor­tant to the his­to­ry of pop­u­lar cul­ture is the song that rep­re­sents the fol­low­ing year: Don­na Sum­mer’s hit “I Feel Love,” which was co-pro­duced by a cer­tain Gior­gio Moroder. Per­haps the defin­ing fig­ure of elec­tron­ic music’s pas­sage through the dis­cos into the main­stream, Moroder made an even big­ger impact in 1978 with his own instru­men­tal com­po­si­tion “Chase,” which won him an Acad­e­my Award by being includ­ed in the film Mid­night Express.

The movies did a great deal to sell the world on the fusion of elec­tron­ic tech­nol­o­gy and pop music in the eight­ies. Who in the devel­oped world — or indeed, in most of the devel­op­ing world — could fail to rec­og­nize, for instance, Harold Fal­ter­mey­er’s “Axel F”? (And sure­ly nobody who came of age at the time of A Night at the Rox­bury can claim igno­rance of Had­daway’s “What Is Love.”) As this video assem­bles its his­to­ry, elec­tron­ic music finds its way back to the dance floor in the nineties, and it more or less stays there through the twen­ty-tens; per­haps you would’ve had to spend a lot of time in the clubs in that decade to know such seem­ing­ly era-defin­ing names as Marsh­mel­lo, Armin van Buuren, Shapov, Major Laz­er, and DJ Snake. But from an elec­tron­ic-influ­enced hit like Ed Sheer­an’s “Shape of You,” alas, there was no escape.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music: An Inter­ac­tive, Ency­clo­pe­dic Data Visu­al­iza­tion of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music

How Gior­gio Moroder & Don­na Summer’s “I Feel Love” Cre­at­ed the “Blue­print for All Elec­tron­ic Dance Music Today” (1977)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

What is Elec­tron­ic Music?: Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

A Huge Anthol­o­gy of Noise & Elec­tron­ic Music (1920–2007) Fea­tur­ing John Cage, Sun Ra, Cap­tain Beef­heart & More

Dis­cov­er­ing Elec­tron­ic Music: 1983 Doc­u­men­tary Offers a Fun & Edu­ca­tion­al Intro­duc­tion to Elec­tron­ic Music

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.

What Ancient Greek Music Sounded Like: Listen to a Reconstruction That’s “100% Accurate”

Between 750 BC and 400 BC, the Ancient Greeks com­posed songs meant to be accom­pa­nied by the lyre, reed-pipes, and var­i­ous per­cus­sion instru­ments. More than 2,000 years lat­er, mod­ern schol­ars have final­ly fig­ured out how to recon­struct and per­form these songs with (it’s claimed) 100% accu­ra­cy.

Writ­ing on the BBC web­site, Armand D’An­gour, a musi­cian and tutor in clas­sics at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty, notes:

[Ancient Greek] instru­ments are known from descrip­tions, paint­ings and archae­o­log­i­cal remains, which allow us to estab­lish the tim­bres and range of pitch­es they pro­duced.

And now, new rev­e­la­tions about ancient Greek music have emerged from a few dozen ancient doc­u­ments inscribed with a vocal nota­tion devised around 450 BC, con­sist­ing of alpha­bet­ic let­ters and signs placed above the vow­els of the Greek words.

The Greeks had worked out the math­e­mat­i­cal ratios of musi­cal inter­vals — an octave is 2:1, a fifth 3:2, a fourth 4:3, and so on.

The nota­tion gives an accu­rate indi­ca­tion of rel­a­tive pitch.

So what did Greek music sound like? Below you can lis­ten to David Creese, a clas­si­cist from the Uni­ver­si­ty of New­cas­tle, play­ing “an ancient Greek song tak­en from stone inscrip­tions con­struct­ed on an eight-string ‘canon’ (a zither-like instru­ment) with mov­able bridges. “The tune is cred­it­ed to Seik­i­los,” says Archae­ol­o­gy Mag­a­zine.

For more infor­ma­tion on all of this, read D’An­gour’s arti­cle over at the BBC.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Octo­ber, 2013.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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:

Hear What Homer’s Odyssey Sound­ed Like When Sung in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

Hear the Old­est Song in the World: A Sumer­ian Hymn Writ­ten 3,400 Years Ago

Hear The Epic of Gil­gamesh Read in the Orig­i­nal Akka­di­an, the Lan­guage of Mesopotamia

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The Most Iconic Hip-Hop Sample of Every Year (1973–2023)

Hip-hop was once a sub­cul­ture, but by now it’s long since been one of the unques­tion­ably dom­i­nant forms of pop­u­lar music — not just in Amer­i­ca, and not just among young peo­ple. There are, of course, still a fair few hip-hop hold­outs, but even they’ve come to know a thing or two about it through cul­tur­al osmo­sis alone. They’re aware, for exam­ple — whether or not they approve of it — that rap­pers usu­al­ly per­form over music con­struct­ed through sam­pling: that is, stitched togeth­er out of pieces of oth­er songs. If you’re not sure how it works, you can see the process clear­ly visu­al­ized in the video above from sam­ple provider Track­lib.

Offer­ing a break­down of sam­pling as it’s hap­pened through “fifty years of hip-hop,” the video begins even before the genre real­ly took shape, in 1973. It was then that DJ Kool Herc devel­oped what he called “the ‘Mer­ry-Go-Round’ Tech­nique,” an ear­ly exam­ple of which involved using dual turnta­bles to switch back and forth between the instru­men­tal breaks of James Brown’s “Give It Up or Tur­nit a Loose” and the Incred­i­ble Bon­go Band’s “Bon­go Rock.” The orig­i­nal idea was to give dancers more time to do their thing, but when the MCs picked up their micro­phones and start­ed get­ting cre­ative, a new music took shape almost imme­di­ate­ly.

Main­stream Amer­i­ca got its first taste of hip-hop in 1979, with the release of “Rap­per’s Delight” by the Sug­arhill Gang. In its repeat­ing rhythm part, many would have rec­og­nized Chic’s “Good Times,” which actu­al­ly was­n’t a sam­ple but an inter­po­la­tion, i.e. a re-record­ing. This drew a law­suit — hard­ly the last of its kind in hip-hop — but it also set thou­sands of DJs-to-be dig­ging through their record col­lec­tions in search of usable breaks. Dis­co proved a fount of inspi­ra­tion for ear­ly hip-hop, but so did jazz and even elec­tron­ic music, as demon­strat­ed by Afri­ka Bam­baataa and the Soul Son­ic Force’s “Plan­et Rock,” which sam­pled Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express.”

As sam­pling goes, noth­ing is artis­ti­cal­ly off-lim­its; in some sense, the less imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able, the bet­ter. With the evo­lu­tion of audio edit­ing tech­nol­o­gy, hip-hop artists have long gone even fur­ther in mak­ing these bor­rowed clips their own by slow­ing them down; speed­ing them up; chop­ping them into pieces and rear­rang­ing them; and lay­er­ing them one atop anoth­er. This some­times caus­es prob­lems, as when the dif­fi­cul­ty of licens­ing De La Soul’s many and var­ied source mate­ri­als kept their cat­a­log out of offi­cial avail­abil­i­ty. Along with A Tribe Called Quest, also fea­tured in this video, De La Soul are, of course, known as hip-hop groups beloved by music nerds. But if you seri­ous­ly break down any major work of hip-hop, you’ll find that all its artists are music nerds at heart.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

How Sam­pling Trans­formed Music and Cre­at­ed New Tapes­tries of Sound: An Inter­ac­tive Demon­stra­tion by Producer/DJ Mark Ron­son

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

The Sur­pris­ing­ly Long His­to­ry of Auto-Tune, the Vocal-Pro­cess­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Music Crit­ics Love to Hate

Hear Every Sam­ple on the Beast­ie Boys’ Acclaimed Album, Paul’s Bou­tique – and Dis­cov­er Where They Came From

Hear De La Soul’s High­ly Acclaimed & Influ­en­tial Hip-Hop Albums Stream­ing Free for the First Time

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 Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Illustrated Version of “Alice’s Restaurant”: Watch Arlo Guthrie’s Thanksgiving Counterculture Classic

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. As a sad post script, Alice Brock, the own­er of Alice’s Restau­rant–died last week at the age of 83.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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 900+ 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

How to Potty Train Your Cat: A Handy Manual by Jazz Musician Charles Mingus

Charles Min­gus, the inno­v­a­tive jazz musi­cian, was known for hav­ing a bad tem­per. He once got so irri­tat­ed with a heck­ler that he end­ed up trash­ing his $20,000 bass. Anoth­er time, when a pianist did­n’t get things right, Min­gus reached right inside the piano and ripped the strings out with his bare hands — a true sto­ry men­tioned in the BBC doc­u­men­tary, 1959: The Year that Changed Jazz.

But Min­gus had a soft­er, nur­tur­ing side too. If you head to the offi­cial Charles Min­gus web­site, you will find a copy of the Charles Min­gus Cat Toi­let Train­ing Pro­gram, a lov­ing lit­tle guide cre­at­ed for cat own­ers every­where. The trick to pot­ty train­ing your cat comes down to edg­ing the lit­ter box clos­er to the bath­room, even­tu­al­ly plac­ing the box on the pot­ty, and then cut­ting a hole in the cen­ter of the box. Expect to spend about three weeks mak­ing the tran­si­tion. And who knows, Min­gus says, your cat may even learn to flush. The full guide appears here. Or read it below:

1

First, you must train your cat to use a home-made card­board lit­ter box, if you have not already done so. (If your box does not have a one-piece bot­tom, add a card­board that fits inside, so you have a false bot­tom that is smooth and strong. This way the box will not become sog­gy and fall out at the bot­tom. The gro­cery store will have extra flat card­boards which you can cut down to fit exact­ly inside your box.)

Be sure to use torn up news­pa­per, not kit­ty lit­ter. Stop using kit­ty lit­ter. (When the time comes you can­not put sand in a toi­let.)

Once your cat is trained to use a card­board box, start mov­ing the box around the room, towards the bath­room. If the box is in a cor­ner, move it a few feet from the cor­ner, but not very notice­ably. If you move it too far, he may go to the bath­room in the orig­i­nal cor­ner. Do it grad­u­al­ly. You’ve got to get him think­ing. Then he will grad­u­al­ly fol­low the box as you move it to the bath­room. (Impor­tant: if you already have it there, move it out of the bath­room, around, and then back. He has to learn to fol­low it. If it is too close to the toi­let, to begin with, he will not fol­low it up onto the toi­let seat when you move it there.) A cat will look for his box. He smells it.

2

Now, as you move the box, also start cut­ting the brim of the box down, so the sides get low­er. Do this grad­u­al­ly.

Final­ly, you reach the bath­room and, even­tu­al­ly, the toi­let itself. Then, one day, pre­pare to put the box on top of the toi­let. At each cor­ner of the box, cut a lit­tle slash. You can run string around the box, through these slash­es, and tie the box down to the toi­let so it will not fall off. Your cat will see it there and jump up to the box, which is now sit­ting on top of the toi­let (with the sides cut down to only an inch or so.)

Don’t bug the cat now, don’t rush him, because you might throw him off. Just let him relax and go there for awhile-maybe a week or two. Mean­while, put less and less news­pa­per inside the box.

3

One day, cut a small hole in the very cen­ter of his box, less than an apple-about the size of a plum-and leave some paper in the box around the hole. Right away he will start aim­ing for the hole and pos­si­bly even try to make it big­ger. Leave the paper for awhile to absorb the waste. When he jumps up he will not be afraid of the hole because he expects it. At this point you will real­ize that you have won. The most dif­fi­cult part is over.

From now on, it is just a mat­ter of time. In fact, once when I was clean­ing the box and had removed it from the toi­let, my cat jumped up any­way and almost fell in. To avoid this, have a tem­po­rary flat card­board ready with a lit­tle hole, and slide it under the toi­let lid so he can use it while you are clean­ing, in case he wants to come and go, and so he will not fall in and be scared off com­plete­ly. You might add some news­pa­per up there too, while you are clean­ing, in case your cat is not as smart as Nightlife was.

4

Now cut the box down com­plete­ly until there is no brim left. Put the flat card­board, which is left, under the lid of the toi­let seat, and pray. Leave a lit­tle news­pa­per, still. He will rake it into the hole any­way, after he goes to the bath­room. Even­tu­al­ly, you can sim­ply get rid of the card­board alto­geth­er. You will see when he has got his bal­ance prop­er­ly.

Don’t be sur­prised if you hear the toi­let flush in the mid­dle of the night. A cat can learn how to do it, spurred on by his instinct to cov­er up. His main thing is to cov­er up. If he hits the flush knob acci­den­tal­ly and sees that it cleans the bowl inside, he may remem­ber and do it inten­tion­al­ly.

Also, be sure to turn the toi­let paper roll around so that it won’t roll down eas­i­ly if the cat paws it. The cat is apt to roll it into the toi­let, again with the inten­tion of cov­er­ing up- the way he would if there were still kit­ty lit­ter.

It took me about three or four weeks to toi­let train my cat, Nightlife. Most of the time is spent mov­ing the box very grad­u­al­ly to the bath­room. Do it very slow­ly and don’t con­fuse him. And, remem­ber, once the box is on the toi­let, leave it a week or even two. The main thing to remem­ber is not to rush or con­fuse him.

Bonus: Below you can hear The Wire’s Reg E. Cathey read “The Charles Min­gus CAT-alog for Toi­let Train­ing Your Cat.”

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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 

Charles Min­gus and His Evic­tion From His New York City Loft, Cap­tured in Mov­ing 1968 Film

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

What Peo­ple Named Their Cats in the Mid­dle Ages: Gyb, Mite, Méone, Pan­gur Bán & More

Cats in Medieval Man­u­scripts & Paint­ings

A 110-Year-Old Book Illus­trat­ed with Pho­tos of Kit­tens & Cats Taught Kids How to Read

Nick Cave Nar­rates an Ani­mat­ed Film about the Cat Piano, the Twist­ed 18th Cen­tu­ry Musi­cal Instru­ment Designed to Treat Men­tal Ill­ness

Hear the Isolated Vocals of Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush in “Don’t Give Up”: The Power of Perseverance

Just by chance, could you use a song about per­se­ver­ance and over­com­ing adver­si­ty? Some­thing to give you a lit­tle encour­age­ment and reas­sur­ance? Then we sub­mit to you “Don’t Give Up,” fea­tur­ing the iso­lat­ed vocals of Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush.

When he released the song on his 1986 album So, Gabriel told NME: “The cat­a­lyst for ‘Don’t Give Up’ was a pho­to­graph I saw by Dorothea Lange,… which showed the dust-bowl con­di­tions dur­ing the Great Depres­sion in Amer­i­ca. With­out a cli­mate of self-esteem it’s impos­si­ble to func­tion.” Else­where, on his web­site, Gabriel explained that the song was also “informed by the high lev­els of unem­ploy­ment under the Con­ser­v­a­tive gov­ern­ment of Mar­garet Thatch­er of the 1980s.” What­ev­er the chal­lenges they’ve faced, lis­ten­ers have sought solace in this song for the past 38 years. No doubt, for some, it will come in handy dur­ing the weeks and months ahead.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Dorothea Lange Dig­i­tal Archive: Explore 600+ Pho­tographs by the Influ­en­tial Pho­tog­ra­ph­er (Plus Neg­a­tives, Con­tact Sheets & More

Kate Bush Enjoys a (Long-Over­due) Revival, Sparked by Sea­son 4 of Stranger Things

Peter Gabriel Re-Records “Biko,” His Anti-Apartheid Protest Song, with Musi­cians Around the World

Watch a New­ly-Restored Peter Gabriel-Era Gen­e­sis Con­cert Film From 1973 in Stun­ning 4K Qual­i­ty

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

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Watch The Cure Perform a Three-Hour Concert in London, Celebrating the Release of Their New Album


Last Fri­day, The Cure cel­e­brat­ed the release of their new album, Songs of a Lost World, with a three-hour set at the Troxy in Lon­don. The band kicked off the show by per­form­ing all eight tracks from the album, before then play­ing anoth­er 23 songs, most­ly hits from their large cat­a­log of music. Orig­i­nal­ly live streamed on YouTube, you can now watch the entire show online. Just click play above.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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 Cure Per­formed the Entire “Dis­in­te­gra­tion” Album on the 30th Anniver­sary of Its Release: Watch The Com­plete Con­cert Online

Watch The Cure’s First TV Appear­ance in 1979 … Before The Band Acquired Its Sig­na­ture Goth Look

Lost Depeche Mode Doc­u­men­tary Is Now Online: WatchOur Hob­by is Depeche Mode

 

The Isolated Bass Grooves of The Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh (RIP)

This past Fri­day, the bassist of The Grate­ful Dead, Phil Lesh, passed away at age 84. Almost imme­di­ate­ly the trib­utes poured in, most rec­og­niz­ing that Lesh was­n’t your ordi­nary bassist. As Jon Par­e­les wrote in the New York Times, Phil Lesh held songs “aloft.” His “bass lines hopped and bub­bled and con­stant­ly con­versed with the gui­tars of Jer­ry Gar­cia and Bob Weir. His tone was round­ed and unassertive while he eased his way into the coun­ter­point, almost as if he were think­ing aloud. [His] play­ing was essen­tial to the Dead’s par­tic­u­lar grav­i­ty-defy­ing lilt, shar­ing a col­lec­tive mode of rock momen­tum that was teas­ing and prob­ing, nev­er blunt­ly coer­cive.”

My first encounter with the Grate­ful Dead came when I was 16 years old. I vivid­ly remem­ber the guy who played bon­gos on my friend’s head when we arrived at the show. I also remem­ber the spin­ners trip­ping on acid, danc­ing down the halls and short-cir­cuit­ing my lit­tle mind. But the con­cert itself remains only a hazy mem­o­ry. And cer­tain­ly the artistry of Lesh, Gar­cia, Weir, and the drum­mers was lost on me. Only years lat­er, did it all start to click. That’s when I dialed into the Bar­ton Hall con­cert at Cor­nell (May 8, 1977) and encoun­tered Lesh’s bass lines at the start of “Scar­let Bego­nias.” Once you hear them, they’re hard to shake. The video above zooms into that per­for­mance, explor­ing the devel­op­ment of Lesh’s bass play­ing through­out the spring of ’77. The next video down lets you hear the com­plete Bar­ton Hall per­for­mance of “Scar­let Bego­nias” in all of its glo­ry.

When oth­ers try to cap­ture what made Phil, Phil, they’ll fea­ture anoth­er beloved show–Vene­ta, OR (6/27/72). Below, you can hear iso­lat­ed tracks of Phil’s bass work on “Bertha” and “Chi­na Cat Sun­flower/I Know You Rid­er.” (Click the links in the pri­or sen­tence to hear Lesh and the band per­form­ing the songs together–so you can hear how the bass ties in.) Trained in free jazz and avant-garde clas­si­cal music, Lesh infused rock with the influ­ences of Coltrane, Min­gus, and Stravinsky–not to men­tion oth­ers. And, with that, the bass was nev­er the same.

For any­one want­i­ng to get fur­ther into the Phil Zone, read his excel­lent mem­oir Search­ing for the Sound: My Life with the Grate­ful Dead.

Bertha

Chi­na Cat Sunflower/I Know You Rid­er

Relat­ed Con­tent 

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played By Musi­cians Around the World (with Cameos by David Cros­by, Jim­my Buf­fett & Bill Kreutz­mann)

The Grate­ful Dead Pays Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in a 1982 Con­cert: Hear “Raven Space”

When the Grate­ful Dead Played at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

 

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