Some­times I play air drums, when at home before a roar­ing pair of speak­ers. No one would know it, but I’m not half bad. Except when it comes to jazz. Then it’s too ridicu­lous even for soli­tary goof­ing off. But I’m just com­pe­tent enough to fake most basic rock beats… most… that is, but those of the most loud­ly sung drum­mers in clas­sic rock: Kei­th Moon and John Bon­ham.

In cat­e­gories all their own, it’s no sur­prise both drum­mers loved jazz, espe­cial­ly the hyper­ki­net­ic Gene Kru­pa. (Trag­i­cal­ly, they also shared an inter­est in fatal overindul­gence.) They took some com­mon influ­ences, how­ev­er, in very dif­fer­ent direc­tions.

For one thing, Moon hat­ed drum solos, that sta­ple of the jazz drummer’s kit. The one excep­tion to his rule may be Moon’s last appear­ance onstage in 1977, play­ing per­cus­sion in a cameo on Bonham’s solo on “Moby Dick,” one of the Led Zep­pelin drummer’s finest moments. “Bon­ham was known to solo on this song for up to 30 min­utes live!” writes Drum! mag­a­zine. It’s even said he “some­times drew blood per­form­ing ‘Moby Dick’ from using his bare hands to beat his snare and tom toms.”

The live ver­sion above, clock­ing in at a mere 15 min­utes, comes from a 1970 show at Roy­al Albert Hall. Robert Plant intro­duces the drum­mer with his full name, John Hen­ry Bon­ham, before he even names the song. Then, after a minute of Page, Bon­ham, and Jones play­ing the open­ing riff togeth­er, the solo begins.

Bon­ham leads us in slow­ly at first, then, with jaw-drop­ping skill, puts on dis­play what made him “a very spe­cial drum­mer” indeed, as the site Clas­sic Rock writes: “doing things with a bass ped­al that it took two of James Brown’s drum­mers to try and emulate—and they knew a bit about rhythm.”

His “pio­neer­ing use of bass drum triplets” is only a small part of his “impor­tant dis­cov­ery that all drum­ming is just triplets, or should be,” declares Michael Fowler’s rev­er­ent­ly tongue-in-cheek McSweeney’s trib­ute. “The next step, he saw, was in speed­ing up the beat with­out los­ing the basic triplet pat­tern… fly­ing around the kit with blind­ing speed, hit­ting every drum and cym­bal in those neg­li­gi­ble spaces.”

Bonham’s ridicu­lous­ly fast and com­plex patterns—whether deployed in half-hour solos or five-sec­ond drum fills (as above in “Achilles Last Stand” from 1979)—“shouldn’t be human­ly pos­si­ble,” Dave Grohl once said. But they were pos­si­ble for the great John Bon­ham, born on May 31st, 1948.

“Let’s face it,” writes Fowler, “no one else does or ever will” sound like Led Zeppelin’s drum­mer. Cel­e­brate his just-belat­ed birth­day by revis­it­ing more of his great­est live moments at Drum! and, just below, hear Robert Plant sing “Hap­py Birth­day” to his cel­e­brat­ed band­mate in 1973.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

John Bonham’s Iso­lat­ed Drum Track For Led Zeppelin’s ‘Fool in the Rain’

Kei­th Moon Plays Drums Onstage with Led Zep­pelin in What Would Be His Last Live Per­for­mance (1977)

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

30 years after its orig­i­nal release, The Cure per­formed the entire­ty of their 1989 album Dis­in­te­gra­tion at a con­cert held this past Thurs­day at The Syd­ney Opera House. Dis­in­te­gra­tion remains the band’s best-sell­ing album to date, and it now ranks #326 on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Great­est Albums of All Time.” You can watch the show, from start to fin­ish, above. Find a setlist, with time­stamps, below.

17:15 Deliri­ous Night

23:44 Fear of Ghosts

30:45 No Heart

34:20 Esten

38:17 2 Late

41:10 Out of Mind

44:46 Bab­ble

54:42 Plain­song

59:25 Pic­tures of You

1:06:44 Close­down

1:11:00 Lovesong

1:14:40 Last Dance

1:19:52 Lul­la­by

1:24:46 Fas­ci­na­tion Street

1:29:47 Prayers for Rain

1:35:34 The Same Deep Water as You

1:44:47 Dis­in­te­gra­tion

1:53:11 Home­sick

2:00:16 Unti­tled

2:10:55 Burn @​

2:17:52 Three Imag­i­nary Boys

2:21:30 Pirate Ships

via Laugh­ing Squid

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.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Three-Hour Mix­tape Offers a Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Under­ground Goth Music

Stream 15 Hours of the John Peel Ses­sions: 255 Tracks by Syd Bar­rett, David Bowie, Siouxsie and the Ban­shees & Oth­er Artists

A His­to­ry of Alter­na­tive Music Bril­liant­ly Mapped Out on a Tran­sis­tor Radio Cir­cuit Dia­gram: 300 Punk, Alt & Indie Artists

Gre­go­ri­an chants became a thing very briefly in the ear­ly 1990s, when Ger­man elec­tron­ic group Enig­ma com­bined them with the Soul II Soul “Keep On Movin’” drum loop and that ever­p­re­sent shakuhachi sam­ple for “Sad­ness Part One”. And then that song was *every­where* for the first half of the 90s, giv­ing rise to chill­out music like the Orb and The Future Sound of Lon­don.

Gre­go­ri­an music fad­ed away as a trend in dance music, but it’s nev­er real­ly gone away. Bol­stered by some claims that the sooth­ing voic­es help increase alpha waves in the brain, groups like Gre­go­ri­an (cre­at­ed by Enigma’s Frank Peter­son) set about arrang­ing pop songs in the Gre­go­ri­an style, start­ing in 1999.

Oth­ers have fol­lowed suit, or should I say fol­lowed cowl (such as Aus­cul­tate, which cre­at­ed the Queen cov­er below).

But Gre­go­ri­an (the group) is the king of them all, and Petersen’s project has gone on to sell over 5.5 mil­lion albums.

Corny or not, the project is immense­ly pop­u­lar world­wide, and has pro­duced ten “Mas­ters of Chant” albums, along with Christ­mas CDs and such. And while our cur­rent pop stars have to get into ath­let­ic con­di­tion for their Vegas-like shows, there’s some­thing to be said for a group of blokes just stand­ing around on stage singing in uni­son like they’re in a crypt. Looks like a decent gig. Here’s a full con­cert:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A YouTube Chan­nel Com­plete­ly Devot­ed to Medieval Sacred Music: Hear Gre­go­ri­an Chant, Byzan­tine Chant & More

The His­to­ry of Clas­si­cal Music in 1200 Tracks: From Gre­go­ri­an Chant to Górec­ki (100 Hours of Audio)

Expe­ri­ence the Mys­ti­cal Music of Hilde­gard Von Bin­gen: The First Known Com­pos­er in His­to­ry (1098 – 1179)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

In the mid-sev­en­ties, many peo­ple felt exclud­ed from and dis­dained by the main­stream of rock and roll, which had large­ly come to rep­re­sent itself as a straight white boys and girls club full of super­rich rock stars. The nar­row image fos­tered atti­tudes of implic­it racism and homo­pho­bia that explod­ed in the 1979 “Dis­co Sucks” back­lash. This despite the fact that rock and roll began as inter­ra­cial music built on the flam­boy­ant­ly ambigu­ous sex­u­al­i­ty of Lit­tle Richard, the racy short sto­ries of Chuck Berry, the grooves of Chub­by Check­er, the edgy beats of Bo Did­dley, and a great many unsung black female per­form­ers.

Now we tend to remem­ber 70s rock dif­fer­ent­ly, not so much as the era of KISS or the Eagles, but as the trans­gres­sive time of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, and Fred­die Mer­cury, of the huge com­mer­cial and cre­ative tri­umphs of women-led bands like Fleet­wood Mac and Heart, of punk and new wave out­siders set­ting the tem­plate for four decades of alter­na­tive rock: The Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, the Sex Pis­tols, Blondie, The Clash, Joy Divi­sion, Talk­ing Heads, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk…. We remem­ber it, still, as a time when rock was most­ly white, and when black artists most­ly record­ed dis­co, funk, soul, and R&B.

The record indus­try and radio mar­kets had seg­re­gat­ed, and it would stay that way into the 80s, though jazz artists like Miles Davis made seri­ous inroads into rock exper­i­men­ta­tion, bands like Parliament/Funkadelic released hard rock psy­che­delia, Prince chan­neled both Lit­tle Richard and Chuck Berry, and ear­ly punks like Detroit’s Death and Philadelphia’s Pure Hell made ground­break­ing punk and met­al. The for­mer escaped crit­i­cal notice, but the lat­ter became famous, then dis­ap­peared from rock his­to­ry for decades.

Death, the vision­ary trio of broth­ers who were recent­ly redis­cov­ered and cel­e­brat­ed, nev­er real­ly made it in their time out­side of a small cir­cle. Pure Hell, on the oth­er hand, were an inte­gral part of the New York punk scene and stars in Europe, and have been for­got­ten by most offi­cial punk his­to­ries. They “lived with the New York Dolls and played with Sid Vicious,” writes Cas­sidy George at Dazed, “but they’ve been large­ly writ­ten out of cul­tur­al his­to­ry.” They are some­times writ­ten back in, just as, to their dis­may, they were pro­mot­ed: as the “first black punk band.” But there’s far more to their his­to­ry than that.

“I don’t want to be remem­bered just because we were black,” says singer Ken­ny “Stinker” Gor­don. “I want to be remem­bered for being a part of the first tier of punk in the 70s.” He is not exag­ger­at­ing. New York Dolls gui­tarist John­ny Thun­ders pro­mot­ed the band, lead­ing to gigs as Max’s Kansas City and a fea­ture in Andy Warhol’s Inter­view mag­a­zine, “mark­ing their ‘place’ in a scene of cul­tur­al influ­encers.” They appeared in a 1978 issue of Melody Mak­er dur­ing their UK tour, in a pho­to with Sid Vicious, who wears his swasti­ka t‑shirt and pad­lock and chain. (Gor­don also wore a swasti­ka t‑shirt onstage.) Just one of many sec­ond-page write-ups in Melody Mak­er, NME, and the Euro­pean press.

All of the hype sur­round­ing the band is part of the his­tor­i­cal record, for those who look through back­pages and archives, but their music has most­ly gone unheard for over a gen­er­a­tion, large­ly because their album Noise Addic­tion only came out in 2006. After they released their first sin­gle in ‘78, then refused to change their sound for a record deal, their man­ag­er Cur­tis Knight abscond­ed with the mas­ter tapes and refused to release them. Lis­ten to their debut sin­gle, a cov­er of “These Boots Are Made for Walk­ing,” above. Melody Mak­er called it, with a wink, “the for­mer Nan­cy Sina­tra hit.” The song reached num­ber four on the UK alter­na­tive charts.

Pure Hell describe their jour­ney through the mid-sev­en­ties New York punk scene in the mon­tage of inter­view clips at the top, scored by wicked, riff-laden record­ings of their songs. The sto­ry began with four friends from a tough neigh­bor­hood in West Philadel­phia. “We dressed in drag and wore wigs, basi­cal­ly dar­ing peo­ple to both­er us. Peo­ple in the neigh­bor­hood would say, ‘Don’t go into hous­es with those guys, you may not come out!’” They were pres­sured to join a gang, says bassist Lenny “Steel” Boles, but refused. They packed up a U‑Haul and moved into the Chelsea Hotel, then played their first show across the street at Mother’s.

Leg­endary sto­ries about the band abound. (They played Sid Vicious’ last appear­ance onstage and were caught up in the media cir­cus sur­round­ing Nan­cy Spungen’s death). What’s most inter­est­ing about them is the music and their last­ing influ­ence, despite what Boles describes as being “snubbed” by record labels unless they agreed to “do this Motown thing, say­ing like, ‘You guys are black so you’ve got­ta do some­thing that’s dance­able.” After los­ing their man­ag­er and their mas­ters, they set­tled in L.A., where they played with the Germs and the Cramps but “lost their momen­tum,” writes George.

“It was total­ly over by 1980,” says Gor­don. All the same, their heavy pro­to-met­al sound, draw­ing from reg­gae and Hen­drix as much as from Bowie and Nan­cy Sina­tra, sparked the admi­ra­tion of many emerg­ing punk bands, includ­ing Wash­ing­ton, DC leg­ends Bad Brains, who acknowl­edge the debt their furi­ous reggae/metal thrash owes to Pure Hell. Bad Brains broke col­or bar­ri­ers in New York a few years lat­er, and got most of the cred­it for it, large­ly because Pure Hell left behind noth­ing but a mys­te­ri­ous sin­gle and a “rumor,” says Hen­ry Rollins, “that they had made an album and that it was sit­ting in a clos­et.”

After the tapes resur­faced, near­ly every­one who heard the record became an instant fan, includ­ing Rollins. “If the album had come out when they made it, that would have been a game chang­er,” he says. “I believe [it] would have had a tremen­dous impact. It’s one of those missed oppor­tu­ni­ty sto­ries.” But it is also a found oppor­tu­ni­ty sto­ry. They are now get­ting recog­ni­tion for their music and his­tor­i­cal role. In 2012 they reformed to play their first show since 1979, with Ran­cid, Buz­zcocks, Pub­lic Image Ltd, and Social Dis­tor­tion. Pure Hell will find their way back into the sto­ry of New York punk, and it will be a more inter­est­ing sto­ry for their redis­cov­ery.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

New Doc­u­men­tary Brings You Inside Africa’s Lit­tle-Known Punk Rock Scene

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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

Wayne’s World kind of ruined “Stair­way to Heav­en” for me. Yes, it’s been 27 years, but I still can’t help but think of Wayne turn­ing to the cam­era with his ston­er grin, say­ing “Denied!” when the gui­tar store clerk points out a “No Stair­way to Heav­en” sign. It was not a song I took par­tic­u­lar­ly seri­ous­ly, but I respect­ed the fact that it took itself so seri­ous­ly… and thread­ed my way out of the room if some­one picked up a gui­tar, earnest­ly cocked an ear, and played those gen­tle open­ing notes.

Now I gig­gle even when I hear the mag­is­te­r­i­al orig­i­nal intro. This is not the fault of Zep­pelin but of the many who approach the Zep­pelin tem­ple of rock grandios­i­ty unpre­pared, attempt­ing riffs that only Jim­my Page could pull off with author­i­ty. At least the joke gave us a way to talk about the phe­nom­e­non: in less­er hands than Led Zeppelin’s “Stair­way” can sound… well, a bit ridicu­lous (with apolo­gies to Dol­ly Par­ton.) Although accused (and acquit­ted) of rip­ping off the open­ing notes to Spirit’s instru­men­tal “Tau­rus,” the song is all Zep­pelin in every pos­si­ble way.

“Stair­way” is a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pler pack of the band’s sig­na­ture moves: mix­ing folk rock and heavy met­al with a Delta blues heart; explod­ing in thun­der­heads of John Bon­ham drum fills and a world-famous Page solo; Plant scream­ing cryp­tic lyrics that vague­ly ref­er­ence Tarot, Tolkien, Eng­lish folk tra­di­tions and “a bus­tle in your hedgerow”; John Paul Jones’ wild­ly under­rat­ed mul­ti-instru­men­tal genius; bizarre charges of Satan­ic mes­sages encod­ed back­wards in the record…. (bring­ing to mind anoth­er Wayne’s World actor’s char­ac­ter.)

“Stair­way… crys­tal­lized the essence of the band,” said Page lat­er. “It had every­thing there and showed us at our best. It was a mile­stone.” It set a very high bar for big, emo­tion­al rock songs. “All epic anthems must mea­sure them­selves against ‘Stair­way to Heav­en,’” writes Rolling Stone. It is “epic in every sense of the word,” says the Poly­phon­ic video at the top, includ­ing the lit­er­ary sense. It can “make you feel like you’re part of a dif­fer­ent time, part of a dif­fer­ent world. It can make you feel like you’re part of a sto­ry.”

That sto­ry? “One of the great­est nar­ra­tive struc­tures in human his­to­ry,” the Hero’s Jour­ney, as so famous­ly elab­o­rat­ed by Joseph Camp­bell in The Hero With a Thou­sand Faces—an arche­typ­al mytho­log­i­cal arc that has “per­me­at­ed sto­ries for as long as humans have told them.” Not only do Robert Plant’s mys­ti­cal lyrics reflect this ancient nar­ra­tive, but the song’s com­po­si­tion also enacts it, build­ing stage by stage, from ques­tion­ing to quest­ing to bat­tling to return­ing with the wis­dom of how “to be a rock and not to roll.”

The song’s almost clas­si­cal struc­ture is, of course, no acci­dent, but it is also no indi­vid­ual achieve­ment. Hear the sto­ry of its com­po­si­tion, and why it has been so influ­en­tial, despite the jokes at the expense of those it influ­enced, in the Poly­phon­ic video at the top and straight from Jim­my Page him­self in the inter­view above.

Out of all of Zeppelin’s many epic jour­neys, “Stair­way” best rep­re­sents “the rea­son,” as cul­tur­al crit­ic Steven Hyden writes, “why that band endures… the mythol­o­gy, that Joseph Camp­bell idea of an epic jour­ney into the wild that Zeppelin’s music rep­re­sents, the sense that when you lis­ten to this band, you feel like you’re plug­ging into some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than a band.” Or that the band is open­ing a door­way to some­thing big­ger and more pro­found than them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

48 Hours of Joseph Camp­bell Lec­tures Free Online: The Pow­er of Myth & Sto­ry­telling

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

What Makes John Bon­ham Such a Good Drum­mer? A New Video Essay Breaks Down His Inim­itable Style

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