Unpro­fes­sion­al, obnox­ious, rude, bor­ing, bullying—all adjec­tives that can apply when mid­dle-aged men com­ment inces­sant­ly on a woman’s looks, when that woman has met with them to talk about her career. The cringe-fac­tor is mag­ni­fied a thou­sand­fold when it’s broad­cast over air­waves, or fiber and 4G. The actress­es and singers who have endured such abuse in front of audi­ences spans the his­to­ry of radio and TV.

Blondie’s Deb­o­rah Har­ry got the treat­ment. Sub­ject­ed to “years of super­fi­cial, tedious, and demean­ing ques­tions from jour­nal­ists,” notes doc­u­men­tary pro­duc­tion com­pa­ny Pub­lic Inter­est, she final­ly “devis­es a bril­liant way to turn inter­views on their head.” The video above pulls togeth­er a mon­tage of inter­view clips in which both male and female talk­ing heads start near­ly every con­ver­sa­tion with Har­ry by refer­ring to her as “a rein­car­na­tion of Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe” or some­thing to that effect. She is vis­i­bly annoyed but keeps her cool, which a cou­ple inter­view­ers take as an invi­ta­tion for near-harass­ment.

Some might claim the crude inter­est in Harry’s looks was jus­ti­fied, giv­en her ear­ly per­sona as a punk-rock pin­up, but note that most of the inter­view­ers nev­er get around to talk­ing about the music—the rea­son we know and admire her in the first place. Instead, one British TV pre­sen­ter fol­lows up the Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe ques­tion (if it can be so called) by ask­ing if Har­ry is “think­ing about going into mar­riage.”

The ques­tions aren’t always lech­er­ous but they are always inane. Har­ry is clear about one thing. It’s an oblig­a­tion; she’s there to sell a prod­uct. How does she turn the tables? A stuffed ani­mal mas­cot, a few well-placed “can you believe this shit?” looks at the cam­era, and a flat-out refusal to answer any ques­tions about Madon­na, for a start. Lou Reed and Bob Dylan get cred­it for being some of the cranki­est inter­view sub­jects in rock and roll, but Har­ry had more rea­son than either of them to hate this part of the job.

See how she han­dles it, and for con­trast, read an inter­view she did with Bill Brew­ster in 2014, when Blondie released the reunion album Ghosts of Down­load. Brew­ster keeps the focus on the music, and she seems total­ly thrilled to get the chance to talk about it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Deb­bie Harry’s Stun­ning Ethe­re­al Vocal Tracks from “Heart of Glass,” “Call Me,” “Rap­ture,” and “One Way or Anoth­er”

Watch Iggy Pop & Deb­bie Har­ry Sing a Swelli­gant Ver­sion of Cole Porter’s “Did You Evah,” All to Raise Mon­ey for AIDS Research (1990)

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

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

Jazz is a col­lab­o­ra­tive art, no mat­ter how big the egos and out­sized the per­son­al­i­ties involved. Even band­lead­ers as auto­crat­ic as Miles Davis are referred to in the con­text of their ensem­bles and in the com­pa­ny of their finest play­ers. Davis knew how good his col­lab­o­ra­tors were. He gave them ample space to prove it and pushed them to improve. Usu­al­ly pushed them out the door, to leg­endary solo careers and new musi­cal dynas­ties: John Coltrane and Her­bie Han­cock come to mind imme­di­ate­ly.

As the 80s dawned, pop­u­lar music on the whole became increas­ing­ly pro­duc­er-dri­ven. Dig­i­tal syn­the­siz­ers and sam­plers took promi­nence, and jazz greats like Davis and Han­cock fol­lowed suit. (Would Coltrane have made com­put­er music in the 80s had he lived to see them?) In 1986, Davis’s album Tutu fierce­ly “divid­ed fans and crit­ics,” notes Jazz­wise mag­a­zine. “Miles record­ed his trum­pet parts over a lush elec­tric sound­scape, pro­duced from a bat­tery of sam­plers, syn­the­siz­ers, sequencers and drum machines.”

Most­ly “pro­duced, arranged, played, and com­posed,” by bassist Mar­cus Miller—anticipating the cur­rent phe­nom­e­non of pro­duc­er-cre­at­ed albums—Tutu “was a prod­uct of the 80s, a decade where music was often in dan­ger of becom­ing sub­servient to tech­nol­o­gy.” In Davis’ hands, the tech­no­log­i­cal approach to jazz pro­duced a clas­sic that “con­tin­ues to thrive” in the jazz world, cov­ered by sev­er­al major artists. Anoth­er album Davis record­ed around the same time, Rub­ber­band, nev­er got the chance to have this kind of impact—but we will soon get to imag­ine what might have hap­pened had he released the 1986 funk, soul, dance album at the time.

In its fin­ished form—finished, that is, by orig­i­nal pro­duc­ers Randy Hall and Zane Giles, and Davis’ nephew Vince Wilburn, Jr., who played drums on the album—Rub­ber­band sounds ahead of its time, seem­ing to fore­cast the smooth neo-soul sound of a decade lat­er. But who knows how much this is an arti­fact of recent stu­dio deci­sions. The impres­sion, in any case, comes only from the title track, released last year in five dif­fer­ent ver­sions on the Rub­ber­band EP. Fea­tur­ing singer Ledisi, the song presages the hip-hop-adja­cent, horn-and-female-vocal-dri­ven funk of the Brand New Heav­ies, Erykah Badu, and Meshell Nde­geo­cel­lo.

At the same time, “Rub­ber­band” incor­po­rates some of the more banal ele­ments of the genre, such as an upbeat, some­what insipid cho­rus about mak­ing a bet­ter life. The track cross­es ful­ly over into con­tem­po­rary dance music—it is no longer jazz at all, real­ly. Whether or not we can say that about the entire album remains to be seen. The full, com­plet­ed, album will be released on Sep­tem­ber 6th (pre-order here), with a cov­er paint­ing by Davis him­self. “Set to be his first album for Warn­er Bros. Records fol­low­ing his depar­ture from long­time label Colum­bia,” reports Pitch­fork, “that record was ulti­mate­ly shelved” in favor of Tutu.

The record fea­tures oth­er guest singers, so we might expect more jams like “Rub­ber­band,” but one nev­er real­ly knows with Davis, who arguably invented—or at least perfected—producer-driven, stu­dio-made jazz records many years ear­li­er, first on the ground­break­ing In a Silent Way in 1969, then on the even more ground­break­ing Bitch­es Brew in 1970. Even as his music began to sound more com­mer­cial, its roots in four decades of rad­i­cal­ly chang­ing jazz every few years made it whol­ly orig­i­nal to the minds of Miles Davis and his col­lab­o­ra­tors.

via Pitch­fork

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Kind of Blue: How Miles Davis Changed Jazz

Hear a 65-Hour, Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Miles Davis’ Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Jazz Albums

Lis­ten to The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970

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

This strat­e­gy will not work in most ran­somware attacks—if your per­son­al data is stolen, releas­ing all of it to the pub­lic for a small fee might dif­fuse the blackmailer’s bomb, but your prob­lems will only have just begun. But for Radio­head, releas­ing 18 hours of demo mate­r­i­al from mini­disks record­ed between 1995 and 1998, dur­ing the mak­ing of their land­mark OK Com­put­er, turned out to be just the thing. For a lim­it­ed time, 18 days from the announce­ment, you can buy all 18 hours of that mate­r­i­al on Band­camp for the low price of £18 (about $23), with all pro­ceeds ben­e­fit­ing the cli­mate change advo­ca­cy group Extinc­tion Rebel­lion. The music can also be streamed for free (click on the play­er above) dur­ing that time.

The mini­disk archive was stolen from Thom Yorke by a hack­er who demand­ed $150,000 or threat­ened to release them. Gui­tarist Jon­ny Green­wood announced the theft on Twit­ter and Face­book. “We got hacked last week—someone stole Thom’s mini­disk archive from around the time of OK Com­put­er…. For £18 you can find out if we should have paid that ran­som.”

He pref­aced the demos with some mod­est com­men­tary: “Nev­er intend­ed for pub­lic con­sump­tion (though some clips did reach the cas­sette in the OK Com­put­er reis­sue) it’s only tan­gen­tial­ly inter­est­ing. And very, very long. Not a phone down­load. Rainy out, isn’t it though?”

Although bands release demo mate­r­i­al all the time—or their record com­pa­nies do, at least—few go out of their way to talk up alter­nate takes, sketch­es, skele­tal ear­ly ver­sions, and reject­ed songs. But fan com­mu­ni­ties often treat such mate­r­i­al as akin to find­ing lost ancient lit­er­ary sources. Wit­ness the 65-page doc­u­ment titled OK Mini­disc already pub­lished online, a detailed analy­sis of the demos by a group from online Radio­head fan­dom that will like­ly now for­ev­er fea­ture in the band’s accu­mu­lat­ed lore.

The demo col­lec­tion, sim­ply called MINIDISCS [HACKED], will give Radio­head schol­ars lay and pro­fes­sion­al a wealth of evi­dence to draw on for decades—insights into their pro­duc­tion process and the evo­lu­tion of Thom Yorke’s writ­ing. (The first track is an ear­ly ver­sion of OK Com­put­er’s “Exit Music (For a Film)” with mopey, self-pity­ing lyrics that might have fit bet­ter on the band’s debut album).

As a lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, sit­ting through 18 hours of out­takes may be “only tan­gen­tial­ly inter­est­ing” and cer­tain­ly “very, very long.” But when it comes to an album as wide­ly and deeply wor­shipped as OK Com­put­er, this mate­r­i­al might as well be Dead Sea Scrolls.

Sure­ly the mini­disk archive’s kidnapper(s) count­ed on the mas­sive pro­file of the 1997 album when they named their price, but they didn’t know quite who they were deal­ing with. Con­tribute to cli­mate action and become an inde­pen­dent Ok Com­put­er schol­ar your­self by buy­ing and down­load­ing (with a sol­id broad­band con­nec­tion) all 18 hours of the MINIDISCS [HACKED] col­lec­tion at Band­camp. Or stream it all above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 10 Most Depress­ing Radio­head Songs Accord­ing to Data Sci­ence: Hear the Songs That Ranked High­est in a Researcher’s “Gloom Index”

Clas­sic Radio­head Songs Re-Imag­ined as a Sci-Fi Book, Pulp Fic­tion Mag­a­zine & Oth­er Nos­tal­gic Arti­facts

Radiohead’s Thom Yorke Gives Teenage Girls Endear­ing Advice About Boys (And Much More)

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

Owing to its sim­plic­i­ty and inex­pen­sive­ness, the recorder has become one of the most com­mon­ly taught instru­ments in grade-school music class­es. But that very posi­tion has also, per­haps, made it a less respect­ed instru­ment than it could be. We may vivid­ly remem­ber the hours spent fum­bling with the holes on the front of our plas­tic recorders in an attempt to mas­ter the basic melodies assigned to us as home­work, but did we ever learn any­thing of the instru­men­t’s long his­to­ry — or, for that mat­ter, any­thing of what it can sound like in the hands of a vir­tu­oso instead of those of a frus­trat­ed ten-year-old?

The recorder goes back at least as far as the Mid­dle Ages, and with its pas­toral asso­ci­a­tions it remained a pop­u­lar instru­ment through­out the Renais­sance and Baroque peri­ods. But then came a peri­od of wide­spread dis­in­ter­est in the recorder that last­ed at least until the 20th cen­tu­ry, when musi­cians start­ed per­form­ing pieces with instru­ments from the same his­tor­i­cal peri­ods as the music itself.

Despite the instru­men­t’s going in and out of style, the list of com­posers who have writ­ten for the recorder does boast some for­mi­da­ble names, includ­ing Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach, George Frid­er­ic Han­del, Clau­dio Mon­tever­di, Hen­ry Pur­cell, and Anto­nio Vival­di, whose Recorder Con­cer­to in C Major you can see per­formed in the video at the top of the post.

“After a few mea­sures, musi­cian Mau­rice Ste­ger stepped up to the micro­phone and with amaz­ing skill, shred­ded sev­er­al seri­ous solos on the recorder,” Laugh­ing Squid’s Lori Dorn reports of the spec­ta­cle. “Ste­ger rest­ed for a few bars to catch his breath and then start all over again. Sim­ply a won­der to behold.” We also, in the video just above, have Lucie Horsch’s also-vir­tu­osic per­for­mance of Vivaldi’s Flauti­no Con­cer­to in C Major, albeit trans­posed to G major trans­po­si­tion for sopra­no recorder. Even among those who learned to despise the recorder in school, there will be some who now can’t get enough. But even if it has­n’t become your favorite instru­ment, you’ve got to admit that we’re a long way indeed from “Hot Cross Buns.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

14-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Why We Love Vivaldi’s “Four Sea­sons”: An Ani­mat­ed Music Les­son

Stream 58 Hours of Free Clas­si­cal Music Select­ed to Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

Watch John Bonham’s Blis­ter­ing 13-Minute Drum Solo on “Moby Dick,” One of His Finest Moments Live Onstage (1970)

Hear the World’s Old­est Instru­ment, the “Nean­derthal Flute,” Dat­ing Back Over 43,000 Years

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.

When David Bowie left us on Jan­u­ary 10, 2016, we imme­di­ate­ly start­ed see­ing the just-released Black­star, which turned out to be his final album, as a farewell. But then, if we looked back across his entire career — a span of more than half a cen­tu­ry — we saw that he had been deliv­er­ing farewells the whole time. Through­out much of that career, Bowie’s observers have reflex­ive­ly com­pared him to a chameleon, so often and so dra­mat­i­cal­ly did he seem to revise his per­for­ma­tive iden­ti­ty to suit the zeit­geist (if not to shape the zeit­geist). But peri­od­ic cre­ative rebirth entails peri­od­ic cre­ative death, and as the Poly­phon­ic video essay above shows us, no rock star could die as cre­ative­ly as Bowie.

The video con­cen­trates on two of Bowie’s most famous farewells, in par­tic­u­lar: his last, on Black­star and the musi­cal Lazarus, and his first, deliv­ered onstage 43 years ear­li­er in his last per­for­mance in the char­ac­ter of Zig­gy Star­dust. “Not only is it the last show of the tour,” he announced to 3,500 scream­ing fans at Lon­don’s Ham­mer­smith Odeon, “but it’s the last show that we’ll ever do.”

There fol­lowed a clos­ing per­for­mance of “Rock ‘n’ Roll Sui­cide,” a song described by the video’s nar­ra­tor as “Zig­gy Star­dust’s final moments, washed up and exhaust­ed from life as a rock star.” Though only 26 years old at the time, Bowie had already released six stu­dio albums and expe­ri­enced more than enough to reflect elo­quent­ly in song on “a life well lived.”

But then, if the phe­nom­e­non of David Bowie teach­es us any­thing, it teach­es us how a life can be com­posed of var­i­ous dis­crete life­times. Bowie under­stood that, as did the oth­er artists whose work he ref­er­enced in his farewells: names cit­ed in this video’s analy­sis include Jacques Brel, Charles Bukows­ki, and the Span­ish poet Manuel Macha­do. And as any fan knows, Bowie was also adept at ref­er­enc­ing his own work, a ten­den­cy he kept up until the end as in, for exam­ple, the reap­pear­ance of his mid-70s char­ac­ter (and sub­ject of a pre­vi­ous Poly­phon­ic study) the Thin White Duke in the “Lazarus” music video. In that work he also left plen­ty of mate­r­i­al to not just inspire sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions of cre­ators, but to send them back to the realms of cul­ture that inspired him. We may have heard David Bowie’s final farewell, but in our own life­times we sure­ly won’t hear the end of his influ­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Sings ‘I Got You Babe’ with Mar­i­anne Faith­full in His Very Last Per­for­mance As Zig­gy Star­dust (1973)

David Bowie Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Thin White Duke: A Close Study of David Bowie’s Dark­est Char­ac­ter

How Leonard Cohen & David Bowie Faced Death Through Their Art: A Look at Their Final Albums

David Bowie Offers Advice for Aspir­ing Artists: “Go a Lit­tle Out of Your Depth,” “Nev­er Ful­fill Oth­er People’s Expec­ta­tions”

Dave: The Best Trib­ute to David Bowie That You’re Going to See

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.

As a ded­i­cat­ed fan of the long jam—I always felt like I should try to dig the Grate­ful Dead. I did­n’t not dig the Grate­ful Dead. But I suf­fered from under­ex­po­sure to their music, if not to their rep­u­ta­tion as end­less noodlers. By the time I gave the Dead a chance my head was full of ideas of what a long jam should be, from the likes of Kraftwerk, Coltrane, Neil Young, Vel­vet Under­ground, Son­ic Youth, Pink Floyd, Sun Ra…

Here­in lies a dif­fer­ence. Some jams are struc­tured, con­trolled, almost orches­tral, build­ing into move­ments or dron­ing on into a haze of noise and son­ic wash. Then there’s the Dead, the world’s finest pur­vey­ors of mean­der­ing end­less noodling. I don’t mean that to sound deroga­to­ry. One could say the same thing about many jazz ensembles—like Sun Ra’s Arkestra or Miles Davis’ Bitch­es Brew period—without tak­ing away from the bril­liant abstrac­tion, the keen con­ver­sa­tion­al inter­play, the dynam­ic range and moments of antic­i­pa­tion, the phe­nom­e­nal solos.…

Maybe there’s a lot more going on than noodling, after all, even if the “end­less” part can seem accu­rate when it comes to the Dead, a point on which I’ve seen Dead­heads agree. Of what might be the band’s longest jam—a near­ly 47-minute live ren­di­tion of “Play­ing in The Band” from 1974 (top)—one Red­dit fan, MrCom­plete­ly, writes, “Playin’ is sig­nif­i­cant­ly longer than it is good.” Form your own opin­ion. Your atten­tion span might make up your mind for you.

A far more com­mon top­ic  in forums like Reddit’s r/gratefuldead are con­ver­sa­tions about not only which live song ranks as the longest jam, but how bliss­ful and mag­i­cal said jam was and whether the Dead­head saw the jam or for­ev­er regrets miss­ing the jam. One Dead fan, Pyrate­fish, cites “The Oth­er One” from 9–17-72 as “a beast” to beat them all. “Forty minute ride in to the far reach­es of the uni­verse that cul­mi­nates in a bat­tle for your very soul.” Top that.

Maybe we can, with anoth­er can­di­date for longest jam, a per­for­mance of “Dark Star” in Rot­ter­dam in 1972. Men­tion of this jam brought up oth­er con­tenders, most of them ver­sions of “Dark Star” or “Dark Star” med­leys. One fan, lastLeaf­Fall­en, even sug­gests a “jazzy, exper­i­men­tal, and mind-bend­ing” ver­sion of the song from 1990, but they don’t get any tak­ers on that one, even though “Bran­ford Marsalis sits in on sax mak­ing this jam espe­cial­ly spe­cial!”

The Grate­ful Dead were gen­uine jaz­zheads and meshed well with musi­cians like Marsalis and Miles Davis. But they didn’t play jazz them­selves so much as they used loose jazz fig­ures and ideas to make exper­i­men­tal rock. When done well, it is done excep­tion­al­ly well, as in the inevitably-over­stuffed, 48-minute-long Rot­ter­dam “Dark Star” fur­ther up. We can hear strains of future post-rock bands like Tor­toise and even late Radio­head, hints of music that hadn’t arrived yet on the plan­et. And oth­er long pas­sages that sound like some­thing only the Grate­ful Dead could play.

Just as their ear­ly fusion of coun­try, rock, and blues had pro­duced some­thing unlike any of them, their fusion of jazz and rock could syn­the­size new forms. Or it could fall apart, or both sev­er­al times over in the same song or at the same time. Hear the full 1974 con­cert at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Seat­tle at the site Live for Live Music. The epic, 47-minute “Play­ing in The Band” is track 17. Sug­gest oth­er can­di­dates for longest Grate­ful Dead jam in the com­ments.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Grate­ful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Mon­ster, 600-Speak­er Sound System–Changed Rock Con­certs & Live Music For­ev­er

Take a Long, Strange Trip and Stream a 346-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Live Grate­ful Dead Per­for­mances (1966–1995)

Stream 36 Record­ings of Leg­endary Grate­ful Dead Con­certs Free Online (aka Dick’s Picks)

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