Remembering the “Father of Bossa Nova” João Gilberto (RIP) with Four Classic Live Performances: “The Girl From Ipanema,” “Corcovado” & More

in Music | July 8th, 2019

If you first heard the work of great Brazil­ian gui­tarist and singer João Gilber­to in a lit­tle tune called “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” you’re in the com­pa­ny of mil­lions, whose intro­duc­tion to Gilber­to and the sounds of bossa nova jazz came from that song, record­ed with sax­o­phon­ist Stan Getz. When the L.A. Times’ Ran­dall Roberts com­pares their col­lab­o­ra­tive album Getz/Gilberto to the arrival of the Bea­t­les in the U.S., this may sound like an exag­ger­a­tion. But bossa nova, like rock and roll, was already huge­ly pop­u­lar, and sound of this record was a qui­et rev­o­lu­tion.

Gilber­to, who died this past Sat­ur­day at age 88, was “one of the most influ­en­tial musi­cians of the 20th cen­tu­ry.” He and “his peer and col­lab­o­ra­tor Anto­nio Car­los Jobim helped cre­ate and pop­u­lar­ize bossa nova, a toned-down and roman­ti­cized take on Brazil­ian sam­ba music.” Jobim may have writ­ten “The Girl From Ipane­ma,” but Gilber­to first turned Amer­i­cans on to its charms, and to what Allmusic’s John Dougan calls “the sig­na­ture pop music of Brazil.”

Called O Mito, “the leg­end,” in his home coun­try, Gilberto’s influ­ence is incal­cu­la­ble and has “res­onat­ed in the work of artists includ­ing Cae­tano Veloso, Sade, Gal Cos­ta, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Stere­o­lab, Seu Jorge  and pret­ty much every Brazil­ian song­writer since 1960,” writes Roberts. His coun­try­man Veloso has said, “I owe João Gilber­to every­thing I am today. Even if I were some­thing else and not a musi­cian, I would say that I owe him every­thing.”

Many peo­ple have said sim­i­lar things over the years about John Lennon or George Har­ri­son, but an unas­sum­ing acoustic croon­er singing in Por­tuguese? Could he real­ly have that kind of cul­tur­al sway world­wide? It may be hard to see it now, but “bossa nova inte­grat­ed itself into the glob­al con­ver­sa­tion in much the same way rock ‘n’ roll did.” Yet instead of rebelling, it dressed up; rather than “upping the tem­po, atti­tude and ener­gy,” it “soothed and seduced.”

Bossa nova pro­vid­ed a coun­ter­point to the raw ener­gy of Amer­i­can and British rock, but not in the com­fort­ing, nos­tal­gic way of soft, soporif­ic music like that of Lawrence Welk. Rather—partly through its influ­ence on jazz musi­cians like Getz, Dizzy Gille­spie, and Char­lie Byrd—bossa nova became its own kind of hip pop­u­lar idiom, cool instead of hot, but still sexy and new. Elvis even tried to cash in on the music’s grow­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty in 1963 with his “rol­lick­ing ‘Bossa Nova Baby’” from the movie Fun in Aca­pul­co.

The shoes didn’t quite fit. Bossa nova was sub­dued and sub­tle, a sound cre­at­ed for small spaces and small moves. It’s said that Gilberto’s qui­et style of play­ing “devel­oped in 1955 when he sequestered him­self inside of a bath­room at his sister’s house so as not to dis­turb her fam­i­ly,” writes Felix Con­tr­eras at NPR, “and to take advan­tage of the acoustics pro­vid­ed by the bath­room tiles.” This inti­mate ori­gin sto­ry aside, his was also a style that demar­cat­ed class lines in pop music.

Pop­u­lar among a slight­ly old­er set of lis­ten­ers, in Brazil bossa nova first attract­ed “a new mon­eyed class eager to move away from the more tra­di­tion­al sam­ba sound of explo­sive drums and group singing.” In its influ­ence on Amer­i­can jazz, bossa nova also telegraphed lux­u­ry, with its deeply relaxed atmos­phere and lush, unhur­ried tex­tures. It is the sound of sea­side resort hotels and upscale night­clubs, of yacht par­ties, art gal­leries, and pent­house apart­ments. “The Girl from Ipane­ma” sounds like the singing six­ties worlds of James Bond and Hugh Hefn­er, not Haight Ash­bury.

Nonethe­less, the song is an absolute clas­sic for good rea­son, with Gilberto’s then-wife Astrud “on a sul­try vocal” in Eng­lish, repeat­ing his under­stat­ed Por­tuguese, and a “now-icon­ic tenor sax solo” by Getz. “It was a world­wide hit and won the 1965 Gram­my for record of the year. Getz/Gilberto won album of the year and would go on to become one of the high­est-sell­ing jazz albums of all time.” For a time, bossa nova was every­where, then it gave way to the hard­er-edged Trop­i­calia move­ment of younger musi­cians like Veloso and Gilber­to Gil, and its vocab­u­lary became absorbed into so many dif­fer­ent kinds of music that we are hard­ly aware of its pres­ence any­more.

If “The Girl from Ipane­ma” was the first, and maybe, the last, you heard of João Gilber­to, you owe it to your­self to learn more of his work. And, if you’re already a life­long fan, you’ll appre­ci­ate all the more these live per­for­mances from Gilberto’s career. At the top, see him per­form “The Girl From Ipane­ma” with the song’s com­pos­er and his old col­lab­o­ra­tor Jobim; fur­ther up, Gilber­to plays “Desa­fi­na­do” and “Car­in­hoso” live in con­cert,” and, just above, see him play “Cor­co­v­a­do.”

Gilber­to was cut out of his biggest glob­al hit for the 1964 TV per­for­mance above. Pro­duc­ers opt­ed to make Astrud the face and voice of “The Girl from Ipane­ma.” But the mil­lions who bought the record heard his mes­mer­iz­ing vocal and gui­tar work, and then kept hear­ing their influ­ence on records released for decades after­ward around the world.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

“The Girl from Ipane­ma” Turns 50; Hear Its Bossa Nova Sound Cov­ered by Sina­tra, Krall, Methe­ny & Oth­ers

The Strange His­to­ry of Smooth Jazz: The Music We All Know and Love … to Hate

The Exis­ten­tial Adven­tures of Icon­o­clas­tic Brazil­ian Musi­cian Tim Maia: A Short Ani­mat­ed Film

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

The Walkman Turns 40: See Every Generation of Sony’s Iconic Personal Stereo in One Minute

in Music, Technology | July 5th, 2019

Do you remem­ber your first Walk­man? If you grew up after the cas­sette era, of course, you might have owned a CD-play­ing Dis­c­man instead, or maybe — just maybe — even a Mini­disc Walk­man. Nowa­days you prob­a­bly have an iPod or iPod-like dig­i­tal audio play­er as well as a cell­phone equipped to serve the same pur­pose. But all the ways in which you’ve ever tak­en your tunes on the go evolved from a com­mon tech­no­log­i­cal ances­tor: Sony’s TPS-L2, which debuted on the mar­ket 40 years ago this month. First mar­ket­ed in the Unit­ed States as the Sound­about and the Unit­ed King­dom as the Stow­away, it did­n’t take long to achieve world­wide suc­cess under the Japan­ese-Eng­lish brand name that long ago became a byword for the per­son­al stereo.

“To cel­e­brate the Walk­man’s 40th anniver­sary, Sony has opened an exhi­bi­tion in Tokyo’s bustling Gin­za dis­trict,” writes design­boom’s Juliana Neira. “Titled #009 WALKMAN IN THE PARK 40 Years Since ‘the Day the Music Walked,’ the exhi­bi­tion focus­es on the peo­ple for whom the Walk­man has been a part of their every­day life.”

It also includes a wall “fea­tur­ing around 230 ver­sions of the Walk­man through­out its 40-year his­to­ry. From the nos­tal­gic old­er mod­els, all the way up to the lat­est mod­els, the exhib­it allows vis­i­tors to take in the changes in designs, spec­i­fi­ca­tions, and media for­mats over the years.” You can see all the rep­re­sen­ta­tive Walk­man mod­els from through­out the device’s four decades of his­to­ry in the minute-long offi­cial video above.

The Walk­man defined an era of per­son­al tech­nol­o­gy, but its brand has­n’t weath­ered so well in the 21st cen­tu­ry. “The beau­ti­ful­ly designed, easy-to-use TPS-L2 was the device that lib­er­at­ed the cas­sette from liv­ing room hi-fis and car tape decks to tru­ly make music portable,” writes Quartz’s Mike Mur­phy. But “a great many of the prod­ucts that Sony once dom­i­nat­ed with have been replaced, or have been con­sol­i­dat­ed into oth­er devices. Over the years, Sony has made fan­tas­tic cam­corders, stereo com­po­nents, cam­eras, portable media play­ers, and phones. Rel­a­tive­ly few peo­ple buy most of these prod­ucts any­more, with the smart­phone usurp­ing many of these devices’ func­tions.” Today’s Walk­man devices don’t reflect “the influ­en­tial (and often exper­i­men­tal) Sony of yes­ter­day. And with Apple grap­pling with its own exis­ten­tial ques­tions about its future, who is left to take up the man­tle of the king of con­sumer elec­tron­ics?”

Still, when we put on our head­phones or pop in our ear­buds on the morn­ing com­mute and see that every­one else around us has done the same, we have to admit that we live in the world the Walk­man cre­at­ed. This has its down­sides, as Aman­da Petru­sich acknowl­edges in a New York­er piece on pub­lic head­phone-wear­ing: these include “the dis­con­nec­tion they facil­i­tate” (and the hand-wring­ing about that dis­con­nec­tion they encour­age) as well as the engi­neer­ing of music itself to accom­mo­date low-qual­i­ty audio repro­duc­tion. But then, “ambling down a city street with head­phones on — you know, maybe it’s dusk, maybe it’s mid­sum­mer, maybe you had a real­ly nice day — is, with­out a doubt, one of life’s sim­plest and most per­fect joys.” Sony’s music-lov­ing co-founder Masaru Ibu­ka, com­mis­sion­er of the orig­i­nal Walk­man’s design, must have known sim­i­lar joys him­self. But what would he make of pod­casts?

via design­boom

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Good Are Your Head­phones? This 150-Song Playlist, Fea­tur­ing Steely Dan, Pink Floyd & More, Will Test Them Out

Con­serve the Sound, an Online Muse­um Pre­serves the Sounds of Past Technologies–from Type­writ­ers, Elec­tric Shavers and Cas­sette Recorders, to Cam­eras & Clas­sic Nin­ten­do

Lis­ten to Audio Arts: The 1970s Tape Cas­sette Arts Mag­a­zine Fea­tur­ing Andy Warhol, Mar­cel Duchamp & Many Oth­ers

City of Eight Mil­lion Sound­tracks

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

A Documentary Introduction to Nick Drake, Whose Haunting & Influential Songs Came Into the World 50 Years Ago Today

in Music | July 3rd, 2019

“All smok­ers will recog­nise the mean­ing of the title — it refers to five leaves left near the end of a pack­et of cig­a­rette papers. It sounds poet­ic and so does com­pos­er, singer, and gui­tarist Nick Drake. His debut album for Island is inter­est­ing.” There, in its entire­ty, is Melody Mak­er’s review of Nick Drake’s Five Leaves Left, which came out fifty years ago today. Drake now stands in music his­to­ry as some­thing of a doomed roman­tic hero, an artist who craft­ed a few dozen strik­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, haunt­ing songs and deliv­ered them into a world in which he nev­er felt at home. Unable to make that world appre­ci­ate his work, Drake depart­ed from it at the ear­ly age of 26, and only decades lat­er would Five Leaves Left and the oth­er two albums he record­ed in his life­time find their lis­ten­ers.

Sim­pli­fied though it is, that con­cep­tion adheres to the broad con­tours of Drake’s life. Born in Bur­ma to an Eng­lish civ­il engi­neer and the musi­cal­ly inclined daugh­ter of a high­er-up in the Indi­an Civ­il Ser­vice, he played in school orches­tras and cov­er bands grow­ing up and signed to Island Records while still a stu­dent at Cam­bridge.

By that point, hav­ing expe­ri­enced the music of pre­de­ces­sors like Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son, stints in Moroc­co and the south of France, and the mind-alter­ing sub­stances pop­u­lar in the late 1960s, Drake had fash­ioned him­self into an acoustic gui­tar-play­ing singer-song­writer who must have seemed well suit­ed to the transat­lantic folk-music boom then in effect. He cer­tain­ly man­aged to impress Joe Boyd, the young Amer­i­can record pro­duc­er respon­si­ble for bring­ing acts like Fair­port Con­ven­tion, John Mar­tyn, and the Incred­i­ble String Band into the main­stream.

Boyd did­n’t need to hear much of Drake’s demo tape before he decid­ed to pro­duce a prop­er album, and in the 2014 event above he remem­bers the expe­ri­ence of bring­ing Drake into the stu­dio and record­ing what would become Five Leaves Left. Accom­pa­ny­ing Drake’s voice and gui­tar with a string sec­tion, the album show­cas­es all the qual­i­ties that set him apart from most singer-song­writ­ers then and still do now, from his unusu­al com­po­si­tion­al struc­tures and gui­tar tun­ings to the unapolo­getic Eng­lish­ness of his pro­nun­ci­a­tion and cadence. And unlike so many of the much big­ger records that came out in 1969, it all sounds like it could have been record­ed yes­ter­day — an achieve­ment whose tech­niques engi­neer John Wood has, for the past half-cen­tu­ry, declined to explain. But Drake’s shy­ness and sen­si­tiv­i­ty made him tem­pera­men­tal­ly unsuit­ed to live per­for­mance; he strug­gled to pro­mote him­self, and died of an anti­de­pres­sant over­dose five years and two albums lat­er.

For some time there­after it looked as if Drake’s music might have died with him. But Five Leaves Left and its fol­low-ups remained in Island’s back cat­a­log and by the ear­ly 1980s had built up a cult fol­low­ing, espe­cial­ly among oth­er musi­cians. (The Cure’s Robert Smith has cred­it­ed his band’s name to a line from Drake’s “Time Has Told Me.”) The 1997 pub­li­ca­tion of Patrick Humphries’ Nick Drake: The Biog­ra­phy opened the peri­od of wide-rang­ing dis­cov­ery of Nick Drake, fur­thered by the BBC Radio 2 doc­u­men­tary Fruit Tree: The Nick Drake Sto­ry, the BBC2 tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­tary Nick Drake: A Stranger Among Us, the Dutch doc­u­men­tary A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake, and the many oth­er books about him pub­lished since. (Ten years ago, for Five Leaves Left’s 40th anniver­sary, I myself inter­viewed Humphries and two oth­er authors of books about Drake; you can down­load the pro­gram as an MP3 here.)

In 2004 BBC2 pro­duced a sec­ond radio doc­u­men­tary called Lost Boy: In Search Of Nick Drake, and to nar­rate it brought in a fan by the name of Brad Pitt. “I was intro­duced to Nick Drake’s music about five years ago, and am a huge admir­er of his records,” the actor said at the time, and it may not be a coin­ci­dence that the year 1999 saw the high­est-pro­file use of one of Drake’s songs by far — as the sound­track to a Volk­swa­gen com­mer­cial. Two decades after that big break, and near­ly 45 years after his death, Nick Drake is at the height of his pop­u­lar­i­ty, both in terms of how many lis­ten­ers claim his songs as favorites and how many cur­rent singer-song­writ­ers claim him as an influ­ence. Yet to this day, no oth­er per­former sounds quite like him; in all prob­a­bil­i­ty, none ever will. And no mat­ter how many times one has heard it, Five Leaves Left remains more “inter­est­ing” than ever.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ladies and Gen­tle­men… Mr. Leonard Cohen: The Poet-Musi­cian Fea­tured in a 1965 Doc­u­men­tary

Paul McCart­ney Breaks Down His Most Famous Songs and Answers Most-Asked Fan Ques­tions in Two New Videos

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

89 Essen­tial Songs from The Sum­mer of Love: A 50th Anniver­sary Playlist

Joni Mitchell: Singer, Song­writer, Artist, Smok­ing Grand­ma

Tom Pet­ty Takes You Inside His Song­writ­ing Craft

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Hear Wade in the Water: An Unprecedented 26-Hour-Long Exploration of the African American Sacred Music Tradition

in History, Music | July 3rd, 2019

Pho­to of Mahalia Jack­son by Dave Brinkman, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

It may well be a tru­ism to say that Amer­i­can music is African Amer­i­can music, but that doesn’t make it any less true. And when we reduce truths down to tru­isms they lose the gran­u­lar detail that makes them inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant. Every­one knows, for exam­ple, that there would be no rock and roll with­out Robert John­son at the cross­roads and Lit­tle Richard in his sequined jack­et and pom­padour. But how many peo­ple know that with­out North Car­oli­na-born Les­ley Rid­dle, A.P. Carter’s one­time musi­cal part­ner, folk and coun­try music as we know it might not exist?

Like­wise, Negro Spir­i­tu­als and the black gospel tra­di­tion are legendary—birthing such tow­er­ing fig­ures as Aretha Franklin and Sam Cooke. But that his­to­ry has often been turned into stereo­type, an easy ref­er­ence for down-home authen­tic­i­ty. Divorced from their roots, easy evo­ca­tions of African Amer­i­can gospel glide over a com­plex tapes­try of syn­cretism and syn­chronic­i­ty, inno­va­tion and preser­va­tion, and the build­ing of local and nation­al com­mu­ni­ties with a glob­al scope and pres­ence.

Black sacred music touch­es every part of U.S. his­to­ry. To hear this his­to­ry in gran­u­lar detail, you need to hear NPR’s just-re-released audio series Wade in the Water: African Amer­i­can Sacred Music Tra­di­tions. First released in 1994 by NPR and the Smith­son­ian, the 26-part doc­u­men­tary details “the his­to­ry of Amer­i­can gospel music and its impact on soul, jazz and R&B.” The series begins with a con­cep­tu­al overview and car­ries us all the way through to the con­tem­po­rary gospel scene.

Along the way, we learn about region­al scenes, the growth and world­wide pop­u­lar­i­ty of the Jubilee singers who so inspired W.E.B. Du Bois, the lined hymn and shaped-note tra­di­tions, and the use of gospel as a doc­u­men­tary medi­um itself, chron­i­cling the sink­ing of the Titan­ic, the Depres­sion, World Wars I and II, and more. Sacred music sup­port­ed Civ­il Rights strug­gles, and move­ment lead­ers like Fan­nie Lou Hamer sang as they marched and orga­nized, a pow­er­ful sound folk singers like Pete Seeger and Bob Dylan picked up and emu­lat­ed.

Talk­ing about music can only take us so far. Wade in the Water suc­ceed­ed by keep­ing music at the cen­ter, even releas­ing a four-CD set, with exten­sive lin­er notes. This time around, the dig­i­tal release comes with Spo­ti­fy playlists like the one above in which you can hear a sam­pling of songs from the series. Here you’ll find the usu­al crossover gospel greats—Aretha, the Sta­ple Singers, Bil­ly Pre­ston, Mahalia Jack­son, BeBe and Cece Winans. You’ll also hear unknown com­mu­ni­ty groups like a Demopo­lis, Alaba­ma Con­gre­ga­tion singing “Come and Go with Me” and the Gatling Funer­al Home singing “Gatling Devo­tion­al.”

The series was researched, pro­duced, and pre­sent­ed by Ber­nice John­son Reagon, who is both a liv­ing exam­ple and a his­to­ri­an of the African Amer­i­can musi­cal tra­di­tion. A founder of the SNCC Free­dom Singers dur­ing the Civ­il Rights move­ment, she went on to found and direct Sweet Hon­ey in the Rock, who appear in Wade in the Water and the playlist above. Reagon earned her Ph.D. from Howard Uni­ver­si­ty and pub­lished sev­er­al schol­ar­ly books on the his­to­ry she explores in the doc­u­men­tary series. Learn more about her (and hear more of her music) here, and hear all 26 episodes of Wade in the Water at NPR.

via metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

African-Amer­i­can His­to­ry: Mod­ern Free­dom Strug­gle (A Free Course from Stan­ford) 

Hear the First Record­ed Blues Song by an African Amer­i­can Singer: Mamie Smith’s “Crazy Blues” (1920)

Eliz­a­beth Cot­ten Wrote “Freight Train” at 11, Won a Gram­my at 90, and Changed Amer­i­can Music In-Between

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch The Velvet Underground Perform in Rare Color Footage: Scenes from a Vietnam War Protest Concert (1969)

in Music | July 2nd, 2019

There are many rea­sons to think of The Vel­vet Under­ground for­ev­er in black and white: Nico’s Nordic monot­o­ne; John Cale and Moe Tucker’s mono­chro­mat­ic drones; Lou Reed’s per­pet­u­al invo­ca­tion of rock and roll’s black and white 50s ori­gins. White Light/White Heat and its stark black-and-white cov­er; “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” from their debut; pal­lid, sun-starved faces and a pen­chant for black sun­glass­es; an indeli­ble asso­ci­a­tion with Warhol’s black and white Fac­to­ry scene….

Then there’s lit­er­al­ly the fact that we’ve almost aways seen the band filmed and pho­tographed in black and white, until now. “Yes, you read that right,” announces Dan­ger­ous Minds, “pre­vi­ous­ly unseen col­or film of the Vel­vet Under­ground has been dis­cov­ered!” and boy is it groovy.

Always walk­ing an avant-garde line between pro­to-punk and psy­che­del­ic folk/rock, this footage from 1969 seems to catch the band lean­ing in the lat­ter direc­tion for Dal­las Peace Day, a Viet­nam War Protest held on the grounds of the Win­frey Point build­ing over­look­ing White Rock Lake.

“There were like­ly between 600 and 3,000 peo­ple in atten­dance,” and the per­form­ers that day includ­ed Lou Rawls and groups like Vel­vet Dream, Stone Creek, and Bradley & David. “The VU were in town for a week of shows at a Dal­las club.… These were the first con­certs they ever played in the south. It’s unknown how the group became involved with Dal­las Peace Day.” They were a band in tran­si­tion. Bassist Doug Yule had recent­ly tak­en over for the depart­ed John Cale. They were leav­ing behind their Warhol/Nico/Factory days.

The unearthed film here includes some per­for­mance footage, at the top. The band plays “I’m Wat­ing for the Man,” “Begin­ning to the See the Light,” and “I’m Set Free.” There’s also an inter­view with Ster­ling Mor­ri­son, who talks about the “tone of anar­chy” at New York anti-war ral­lies and the vio­lence in Chica­go the pre­vi­ous year. Above, see some silent B‑roll and below, a lit­tle more footage, with some unre­lat­ed, over­dubbed music. All of this film comes cour­tesy of the G. William Jones Film & Video Col­lec­tion.

The footage “was uncov­ered only by chance and the archive doesn’t know the orig­i­nal motives for record­ing it, or even know how they came to obtain the film.” It’s a side of the band we don’t often see. While hard­core fans may be famil­iar with the post-John Cale—and post-Lou Reed—years, most peo­ple tend to asso­ciate The Vel­vet Under­ground with black leather and white… um… sub­stances… not pais­ley and peace ral­lies.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decid­ed to Give Up Paint­ing & Man­age the Vel­vet Under­ground Instead (1966)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Hear Lost Acetate Ver­sions of Songs from The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Queen Guitarist Brian May Is Also an Astrophysicist: Read His PhD Thesis Online

in Astronomy, Music, Physics | July 1st, 2019

Pho­to by ESO/G. Huede­pohl, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Queen could­n’t pos­si­bly have been Queen with­out Fred­die Mer­cury, nor could it have been Queen with­out Bri­an May. Thanks not least to the recent biopic, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the band’s already larg­er-than-life lead singer has become even larg­er still. But its gui­tarist, despite the film’s sur­face treat­ment of his char­ac­ter, is in his own way an equal­ly implau­si­ble fig­ure. Not only did he show musi­cal promise ear­ly, form­ing his first group while still at school, he also got his A Lev­els in physics, math­e­mat­ics, and applied math­e­mat­ics, going on to earn a Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence in Physics with hon­ors at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege Lon­don.

Nat­u­ral­ly, May then went for his PhD, con­tin­u­ing at Impe­r­i­al Col­lege where he stud­ied the veloc­i­ty of, and light reflect­ed by, inter­plan­e­tary dust in the Solar Sys­tem. He began the pro­gram in 1970, but “in 1974, when Queen was but a princess in its infan­cy, May chose to aban­don his doc­tor­ate stud­ies to focus on the band in their quest to con­quer the world.” So wrote The Tele­graph’s Felix Lowe in 2007, the year the by-then 60-year-old (and long world-famous) rock­er final­ly hand­ed in his the­sis. “The 48,000-word tome, Radi­al Veloc­i­ties in the Zodi­a­cal Dust Cloud, which sounds sus­pi­cious­ly like a Spinal Tap LP, was stored in the loft of his home in Sur­rey.” You can read it online here.

Accord­ing to its abstract, May’s the­sis “doc­u­ments the build­ing of a pres­sure-scanned Fab­ry-Per­ot Spec­trom­e­ter, equipped with a pho­to­mul­ti­pli­er and pulse-count­ing elec­tron­ics, and its deploy­ment at the Obser­va­to­rio del Tei­de at Iza­ña in Tener­ife, at an alti­tude of 7,700 feet (2567 m), for the pur­pose of record­ing high-res­o­lu­tion spec­tra of the Zodi­a­cal Light.” Space.com describes the Zodia­cial Light as “a misty dif­fuse cone of light that appears in the west­ern sky after sun­set and in the east­ern sky before sun­rise,” one that has long tricked casu­al observers into “see­ing it as the first sign of morn­ing twi­light.” Astronomers now rec­og­nize it as “reflect­ed sun­light shin­ing on scat­tered space debris clus­tered most dense­ly near the sun.”

In his abstract, May also notes the unusu­al­ly long peri­od of study as 1970–2007, made pos­si­ble in part by the fact that lit­tle oth­er research had been done in this par­tic­u­lar sub­ject area dur­ing Queen’s reign on the charts and there­after. Still, he had catch­ing up to do, includ­ing obser­va­tion­al work in Tener­ife (as much of a hard­ship post­ing as that isn’t). Since being award­ed his doc­tor­ate, May’s sci­en­tif­ic activ­i­ties have con­tin­ued, as have his musi­cal ones and oth­er pur­suits besides, such as ani­mal-rights activism and stere­og­ra­phy. (Some­times these inter­sect: the 2017 pho­to­book Queen in 3‑D, for exam­ple, uses a VR view­ing device of May’s own design.) The next time you meet a young­ster dither­ing over whether to go into astro­physics or found one of the most suc­cess­ful rock bands of all time, point them to May’s exam­ple and let them know doing both isn’t with­out prece­dent.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Bri­an May Explains the Mak­ing of Queen’s Clas­sic Song, ‘Bohemi­an Rhap­sody’

Bri­an May’s Home­made Gui­tar, Made From Old Tables, Bike and Motor­cy­cle Parts & More

Stephen Hawking’s Ph.D. The­sis, “Prop­er­ties of Expand­ing Uni­vers­es,” Now Free to Read/Download Online

Watch 94 Free Lec­tures From the Great Cours­es: Dystopi­an Fic­tion, Astro­physics, Gui­tar Play­ing & Much More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 6 ) |

Elvis Costello’s List of 500 Albums That Will Improve Your Life

in Music | June 24th, 2019

Pho­to by Vic­tor Diaz Lamich, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Ask a few friends to draw up suf­fi­cient­ly long lists of their favorite albums, and chances are that more than one of them will include Elvis Costel­lo. But today we have for you a list of 500 essen­tial albums that includes no Elvis Costel­lo records at all — not least because it was put togeth­er by Elvis Costel­lo. “Here are 500 albums that can only improve your life,” he writes in his intro­duc­tion to the list, orig­i­nal­ly pub­lished in Van­i­ty Fair. “Many will be quite famil­iar, oth­ers less so.” Costel­lo found it impos­si­ble “to choose just one title by Miles Davis, the Bea­t­les, Joni Mitchell, Dylan, Min­gus, etc.,” but he also made room for less well-known musi­cal names such as David Ack­les, per­haps the great­est unher­ald­ed Amer­i­can song­writer of the late 60s.”

Costel­lo adds that “you may have to go out of your way” to locate some of the albums he has cho­sen, but he made this list in 2000, long before the inter­net brought even the most obscure selec­tions with­in a few key­strokes’ reach with stream­ing ser­vices like Spotify–on which a fan has even made the playlist of Costel­lo’s 500 albums below.

And when Costel­lo writes about hav­ing most­ly exclud­ed “the hit records of today,” he means hit records by the likes of “Mar­i­lyn, Puffy, Korn, Eddie Mon­ey — sor­ry, Kid Rock — Limp Bizk­it, Ricky, Brit­ney, Back­street Boys, etc.” But when he declares “500 albums you need,” described only with a high­light­ed track or two (“When in doubt, play Track 4—it is usu­al­ly the one you want”), all remain enrich­ing lis­tens today. The list begins as fol­lows:

  • ABBA: Abba Gold (1992), “Know­ing Me, Know­ing You.”
  • DAVID ACKLES: The Road to Cairo (1968), “Down Riv­er” Sub­way to the Coun­try (1969), “That’s No Rea­son to Cry.”
  • CANNONBALL ADDERLEY: The Best of Can­non­ball Adder­ley (1968), “Mer­cy, Mer­cy, Mer­cy.”
  • AMY ALLISON: The Maudlin Years (1996), “The Whiskey Makes You Sweet­er.”
  • MOSE ALLISON: The Best of Mose Alli­son (1970), “Your Mind Is on Vaca­tion.”
  • ALMAMEGRETTA: Lin­go (1998), “Gramigna.”
  • LOUIS ARMSTRONG: The Com­plete Hot Five and Hot Sev­en Record­ings (2000), “Wild Man Blues,” “Tight Like This.”
  • FRED ASTAIRE: The Astaire Sto­ry (1952), “They Can’t Take That Away from Me.”

How many music col­lec­tions, let alone lists of essen­tial records, would put all those names togeth­er? And a few hun­dred albums lat­er, the bot­tom of Costel­lo’s alpha­bet­i­cal­ly orga­nized list proves equal­ly diverse and cul­tur­al­ly cred­i­ble:

  • RICHARD WAGNER: Tris­tan and Isol­de (con­duc­tor: Wil­helm Furt­wan­gler; 1952); Der Ring des Nibelun­gen (con­duc­tor: George Solti; 1983).
  • PORTER WAGONER AND DOLLY PARTON: The Right Com­bi­na­tion: Burn­ing the Mid­night Oil (1972), “Her and the Car and the Mobile Home.”
  • TOM WAITS: Sword­fishtrom­bones (1983), “16 Shells from a Thir­ty-Ought-Six,” “In the Neigh­bor­hood” Rain Dogs (1985), “Jock­ey Full of Bour­bon,” “Time” Frank’s Wild Years (1987), “Inno­cent When You Dream,” “Hang on St. Christo­pher” Bone Machine (1992), “A Lit­tle Rain,” “I Don’t Wan­na Grow Up” Mule Vari­a­tions (1999), “Take It with Me,” “Geor­gia Rae,” “Fil­ipino Box-Spring Hog.”
  • SCOTT WALKER: Tilt (1995), “Farmer in the City.”
  • DIONNE WARWICK: The Win­dows of the World (1968), “Walk Lit­tle Dol­ly.”
  • MUDDY WATERS: More Real Folk Blues (1967), “Too Young to Know.”
  • DOC WATSON: The Essen­tial Doc Wat­son (1973), “Tom Doo­ley.”
  • ANTON WEBERN: Com­plete Works (con­duc­tor: Pierre Boulez; 2000).
  • KURT WEILL: O Moon of Alaba­ma (1994), Lotte Lenya, “Wie lange noch?”
  • KENNY WHEELER with LEE KONITZ, BILL FRISELL and DAVE HOLLAND: Angel Song (1997).
  • THE WHO: My Gen­er­a­tion (1965), “The Kids Are Alright” Meaty, Beaty, Big and Boun­cy (1971), “Sub­sti­tute.”
  • HANK WILLIAMS: 40 Great­est Hits (1978), “I’m So Lone­some I Could Cry,” “I’ll Nev­er Get out of This World Alive.”
  • LUCINDA WILLIAMS: Car Wheels on a Grav­el Road (1998), “Drunk­en Angel.”
  • SONNY BOY WILLIAMSON: The Best of Son­ny Boy Williamson (1986), “Your Funer­al and My Tri­al,” “Help Me.”
  • JESSE WINCHESTER: Jesse Win­ches­ter (1970), “Qui­et About It,” “Black Dog,” “Pay­day.”
  • WINGS: Band on the Run (1973), “Let Me Roll It.”
  • HUGO WOLF: Lieder (soloist: Diet­rich Fis­ch­er-Dieskau; 2000), “Alles Endet, Was Entste­het.”
  • BOBBY WOMACK: The Best of Bob­by Wom­ack (1992), “Har­ry Hip­pie.”
  • STEVIE WONDER: Talk­ing Book (1972), “I Believe (When I Fall in Love It Will Be For­ev­er)” Innervi­sions (1973), “Liv­ing for the City” Ful­fill­ing­ness’ First Finale (1974), “You Haven’t Done Noth­in’.”
  • BETTY WRIGHT: The Best of Bet­ty Wright (1992), “Clean Up Woman,” “The Baby Sit­ter,” “The Sec­re­tary.”
  • ROBERT WYATT: Mid-Eight­ies (1993), “Te Recuer­do Aman­da.”
  • LESTER YOUNG: Ulti­mate Lester Young (1998), “The Man I Love.”
  • NEIL YOUNG: Every­body Knows This Is Nowhere (1969), “Down by the Riv­er” After the Gol­drush (1970), “Birds” Time Fades Away (1973), “Don’t Be Denied” On the Beach (1974), “Ambu­lance Blues” Free­dom (1989), “The Ways of Love” Ragged Glo­ry (1990), “Fuckin’ Up.”
  • ZAMBALLARANA: Zam­bal­larana (1997), “Ven­tu.”

Zam­bal­larana, for the many who won’t rec­og­nize the name, is a band from the Cor­si­can vil­lage of Pigna whose music, accord­ing to one descrip­tion, com­bines “archa­ic male polypho­ny with ele­ments of jazz, ori­en­tal and latin music as well as the inno­v­a­tive way of play­ing tra­di­tion­al Cor­si­can instru­ments such as the 16-string Cetrea, the drum Colom­bu and the flute Pivana.” That counts as just one of the unex­pect­ed lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ences await­ing those who fire up their favorite music-stream­ing ser­vice and work their way through Costel­lo’s list of 500 essen­tial albums. It may also inspire them to deter­mine their own essen­tial albums, an activ­i­ty Costel­lo endors­es as musi­cal­ly salu­tary: “Mak­ing this list made me lis­ten all over again.”

via Far Out Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 10 Best Albums of the 1960s as Select­ed by Hunter S. Thomp­son

Lou Reed Cre­ates a List of the 10 Best Records of All Time

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Elvis Costel­lo Sings “Pen­ny Lane” for Sir Paul McCart­ney

The Stunt That Got Elvis Costel­lo Banned From Sat­ur­day Night Live (1977)

Songs by David Bowie, Elvis Costel­lo, Talk­ing Heads & More Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

An Introduction to the Life & Music of Fela Kuti: Radical Nigerian Bandleader, Political Hero, and Creator of Afrobeat

in Music, Politics | June 24th, 2019

I can­not write about Niger­ian band­leader, sax­o­phon­ist, and founder of the Afrobeat sound, Fela Aniku­lapo Kuti, with any degree of objec­tiv­i­ty, what­ev­er that might mean. Because hear­ing him counts as one of the great­est musi­cal eye-open­ers of my life: a feel­ing of pure ela­tion that still has not gone away. It was not an orig­i­nal dis­cov­ery by any means. Mil­lions of peo­ple could say the same, and far more of those peo­ple are African fans with a much bet­ter sense of Fela’s mis­sion. In the U.S., the play­ful­ly-deliv­ered but fer­vent urgency of his activist lyri­cism requires foot­notes.

Afrobeat fan­dom in many coun­tries does not have to per­son­al­ly reck­on with the his­to­ry from which Fela and his band emerged—a Nige­ria wracked in the 60s by a mil­i­tary coup, civ­il war, and rule by a suc­ces­sion of mil­i­tary jun­tas. Fela (for whom the first name nev­er seems too famil­iar, so envelop­ing was his pres­ence on stage and record) cre­at­ed the con­di­tions for a new style of African music to emerge, an earth-shat­ter­ing fusion of jazz, funk, psych rock, high life from Ghana, sal­sa, and black pow­er, anti-colo­nial, and anti-cor­rup­tion pol­i­tics.

He took up the cause of the com­mon peo­ple by singing in a pan-African Eng­lish that leapt across bor­ders and cul­tur­al divides. In 1967, the year he went to Ghana to craft his new sound and direc­tion, his cousin, Nobel-prize win­ning writer Wole Soyin­ka, was jailed for attempt­ing to avert Nigeria’s col­lapse into civ­il war. Fela returned home swing­ing three year lat­er, a bur­geon­ing super­star with a new name (drop­ping the British “Ran­some” and tak­ing on the Yoru­ba “Aniku­lapo”), a new sound, and a new vision.

Fela built a com­mune called Kalaku­ta Repub­lic, a home for his band, wives, chil­dren and entourage. The com­pound was raid­ed by the mil­i­tary gov­ern­ment, his night­club shut down, he was beat­en and jailed hun­dreds of times. He con­tin­ued to pub­lish columns and speak out in inter­views and per­for­mances against colo­nial hege­mo­ny and post-colo­nial abuse. He cham­pi­oned tra­di­tion­al African reli­gious prac­tices and pan-African social­ism. He harsh­ly cri­tiqued the West’s role in prop­ping up cor­rupt African gov­ern­ments and con­duct­ing what he called “psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare.”

What would Fela have thought of Fela Kuti: the Father of Afrobeat, the doc­u­men­tary about him here in two parts? I don’t know, though he might have had some­thing to say about its source: CGTN Africa, a net­work fund­ed by the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and oper­at­ed by Chi­na Cen­tral Tele­vi­sion. Debate amongst your­selves the pos­si­ble pro­pa­gan­da aims for dis­sem­i­nat­ing the film; none of them inter­fere with the vibrant por­trait that emerges of Nigeria’s most charis­mat­ic musi­cal artist, a man beloved by those clos­est to him and those far­thest away.

Find out why he so enthralls, in inter­views with his band and fam­i­ly, flam­boy­ant per­for­mance footage, and pas­sion­ate, filmed inter­views. Part guru and rad­i­cal pop­ulist hero, a band­leader and musi­cian as tire­less­ly per­fec­tion­is­tic as Duke Elling­ton or James Brown—with the crack band to match—Fela was him­self a great pro­pa­gan­dist, in the way of the great­est self-made star per­form­ers and rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies. With force of will, per­son­al­i­ty, end­less rehearsal, and one of the great­est drum­mers to come out of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Tony Allen, Fela made a nation­al strug­gle uni­ver­sal, draw­ing on sources from around the glob­al south and the U.S. and, since his death in 1997, inspir­ing a Broad­way musi­cal and wave upon wave of revival and redis­cov­ery of his music and the jazz/rock/Latin/traditional African fusions hap­pen­ing all over the con­ti­nent of Africa in the 60s and 70s.

No list of superla­tives can con­vey the feel­ing of lis­ten­ing to Fela’s music, the unre­lent­ing funk­i­ness that puls­es from his band’s com­plex, inter­lock­ing polyrhythms, the ser­pen­tine lines his sax­o­phone traces around right­eous vocal chants and wah gui­tars. Learn the his­to­ry of his strug­gle, by all means, and cast a wary eye at those who may use it for oth­er means. But let no extra-musi­cal con­cerns stop you from jour­ney­ing through Fela’s cat­a­log, whether as a curi­ous tourist or as some­one who under­stands first­hand the musi­cal war he waged on the zom­bie relics of empire and a mil­i­ta­rized anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment.

Fela Kuti: the Father of Afrobeat will be added to our col­lec­tion Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a Young Bob Mar­ley and The Wail­ers Per­form Live in Eng­land (1973): For His 70th Birth­day Today

Every Appear­ance James Brown Ever Made On Soul Train. So Nice, So Nice!

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast