Neil Young has worked with Rick James in the Mynah Birds and David Cros­by, Steven Stills, and Gra­ham Nash in CSNY. He’s record­ed every­thing from tear­jerk­ing piano bal­lads to bril­liant­ly mean­der­ing psych rock to folk, coun­try, and ear­ly 80s elec­tron­ic. He per­fect­ed the spon­ta­neous sound of albums record­ed live and loose in a barn, but he is metic­u­lous about tech­nol­o­gy and sound qual­i­ty. He’s a super­star and self-described “rich hip­pie” who has near-uni­ver­sal cred­i­bil­i­ty with indie artists. He is both “a hip­pie icon but also the god­fa­ther of grunge,” says the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Young’s many seem­ing con­tra­dic­tions only strength­en his musi­cal integri­ty. The shag­gy Cana­di­an singer, song­writer, gui­tarist, and leader of Buf­fa­lo Spring­field and Crazy Horse has made films under the pseu­do­nym “Bernard Shakey,” record­ed sound­tracks for acclaimed films, and inspired far more than the sig­na­ture Seat­tle sound, though Pearl Jam and Nir­vana both acknowl­edged their debt.

The Vel­vet Under­ground may get much of the cred­it for the son­ic qual­i­ties of indie and alter­na­tive rock, but Young deserves more than a lit­tle recog­ni­tion for influ­enc­ing not only Kurt Cobain but also the likes of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, Son­ic Youth’s Kim Gor­don, and Pave­men­t’s Stephen Malk­mus.

It’s a hell of a rock and roll resume, to have achieved last­ing, sig­nif­i­cant influ­ence on mod­ern folk, coun­try, and indie rock, just to name the most obvi­ous gen­res Young has touched, in a career show­cas­ing some of the most emo­tion­al­ly hon­est music ever cap­tured on record. Despite the sham­bling, seem­ing­ly out-of-con­trol nature of much of his out­put, it’s a very care­ful­ly craft­ed show­case. The 1979 live album Rust Nev­er Sleeps, for exam­ple, func­tions as both a sum­ma­tion of his musi­cal out­put up to that point and a meta­com­men­tary on the many—or well, the two—sides of Neil Young.

On one side, mel­low, moody, solo acoustic folk, on the oth­er, rau­cous, dis­tort­ed rock and roll, cour­tesy of Crazy Horse. Book­end­ing the record, the mir­ror image songs “My My, Hey Hey (Out of the Blue)” and “Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black),” tracks that apply the two dif­fer­ent treat­ments to sim­i­lar lyrics and arrange­ments, inte­grat­ing the two sides of Young, which Poly­phon­ic rough­ly divides into his acoustic Cana­di­an pas­toral side—warbling home­sick bal­lads full of ref­er­ences to Ontario and oth­er points north—and his Amer­i­can side: raw, edgy, full of right­eous polit­i­cal indig­na­tion in songs like “Ohio, “South­ern Man,” “Alaba­ma,” and “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Those who love Neil Young need no fur­ther induce­ment to embrace his con­tra­dic­tions, even when his work is uneven. The ten­sion between them keeps fans hang­ing on, know­ing full well that his less suc­cess­ful efforts are paths on the way to yet more bril­liant restate­ments of his major themes and minor chords. Those less famil­iar, or less appre­cia­tive, of Neil Young’s for­mi­da­ble lega­cy may find they’ve under­es­ti­mat­ed him after watch­ing this whirl­wind tour through his tire­less cru­sade against musi­cal com­pla­cen­cy, war, racism, and envi­ron­ment destruc­tion, and the rust that has crept over so many of his con­tem­po­raries.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

When Neil Young & Rick James Cre­at­ed the 60’s Motown Band, The Mynah Birds

Neil Young Per­forms Clas­sic Songs in 1971 Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Neil Young’s Film “Le Noise” Debuts Online

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

When Led Zep­pelin appeared in late 1968, they already had the mak­ings of a super­group, so to speak, though only found­ing mem­ber Jim­my Page was a famous rock star. Four equal­ly tal­ent­ed and sea­soned musi­cians, each inte­gral to the band’s sound. But it might have been oth­er­wise. Page first intend­ed to cre­ate a lit­er­al super­group, join­ing his fel­low for­mer Yard­bird Jeff Beck and The Who’s Kei­th Moon and John Entwistle.

Who knows what might have come of it? Moon sup­pos­ed­ly quipped that it would go down like a lead bal­loon, inspir­ing the name of the band that was to come. This his­to­ry makes all the more poignant the fact that Moon’s last onstage per­for­mance before his death was with Led Zep­pelin.

Moon joined the band dur­ing the L.A. stop of their 1977 tour to ram­ble drunk­en­ly into the micro­phone and sit in on a drum and tam­bourine with John Bon­ham dur­ing a near­ly 20-minute drum solo on “Moby Dick.”

Moon also joined the band dur­ing the two-song encore of “Whole Lot­ta Love” and “Rock & Roll.” See parts of those per­for­mances at the top in audi­ence footage. His brief moments behind John Bonham’s drums can­not be con­sid­ered rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what a hypo­thet­i­cal Kei­th Moon-backed Led Zep­pelin might sound like. Not only was he play­ing anoth­er drummer’s kit—a sig­nif­i­cant hand­i­cap for Moon—but also, the Kei­th Moon of 1977 was not the Kei­th Moon of 1968. These doc­u­ments of rock his­to­ry can’t tell us what might have been, only, for a brief moment, what was.

Moon has been regard­ed as one of the great­est drum­mers in rock for his huge musi­cal per­son­al­i­ty. “No drum­mer in a true rock & roll band has ever been given—has ever seized, perhaps—so much space and pres­ence,” wrote Greil Mar­cus in trib­ute when Moon died the year after his Led Zep­pelin cameo. Moon, “as Jon Lan­dau point­ed out years ago… played the parts con­ven­tion­al­ly giv­en over to the lead gui­tar.” Moon called him­self, with typ­i­cal sar­casm, “the best Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer,” an insight into just how sin­gu­lar his play­ing was. His total lack of restraint fit The Who per­fect­ly.

But his­to­ry would decree that Bon­ham become the ide­al Led Zep­pelin-type drum­mer. He played lead parts as well, but nev­er at the expense of rhythm. The pit­fall of a supergroup—or a group of equal­ly superb musicians—is that every­one can tend to over­play. Bon­ham was a superb musi­cian, but also a drum­mer who knew exact­ly how to accom­mo­date oth­ers’ virtuosity—building spa­cious rhyth­mic struc­tures that held togeth­er the bom­bast of Plant and Page in a coher­ent whole. Bon­ham could fol­low Page’s riffs just as often as he could deploy his own thun­der­ing hooks.

Kei­th Moon was at his best play­ing Kei­th Moon, sound­ing “as if he came out of nowhere to take over the world,” wrote Mar­cus. The Who’s “best sin­gles and album tracks not only fea­tured Moon, they were built around him,” Entwistle and Town­shend pro­vid­ing struc­ture while Moon sup­plied the fiery core. Hear him at his incan­des­cent best in the iso­lat­ed drum track for “Wont’ Get Fooled Again” above and read more about what made him so indeli­bly unique in Mar­cus’ eulo­gy for “the best drum­mer in the his­to­ry of rock ‘n roll.” Lis­ten to a full audi­ence audio record­ing of that 1977 con­cert just below.

via Jam­Base

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Watch/Hear Led Zeppelin’s Ear­li­est Per­for­mances from 1968–69 & Cel­e­brate the 50th Anniver­sary of the Band’s Birth

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.

Harp gui­tars have been around since at least the 19th cen­tu­ry, and if you want a good, enthu­si­as­tic, intel­lec­tu­al argu­ment on the exact date of its birth, you’ll find many an orga­nol­o­gist ready to do that. (Here’s a page filled with infor­ma­tion about the sub­ject.) But it was only recent­ly, in 2014, that the Grove Dic­tio­nary of Musi­cal Instru­ments final­ly rec­og­nized the harp gui­tar as its own thing. New- or old-fan­gled as it might be, the harp gui­tar con­tains both the usu­al six strings and fret­ted neck and a neigh­bor­ing series of unstopped open strings. Well known musi­cians who have played them include John McLaugh­lin, David Lind­ley, and Rob­bie Robert­son.

But look up the instru­ment on the ‘net and there’s one name that will pop up before any­body else: 29 year old Cana­di­an Jamie Dupuis. He’s earned mil­lions of views on his YouTube chan­nel for arrang­ing and per­form­ing cov­ers of rock and met­al clas­sics.

He’s cer­tain­ly a fan of Pink Floyd, as you can see above in his cov­er of “Com­fort­ably Numb.” The ring­ing, echo­ing qual­i­ty of the harp guitar’s body suit the song well, as it starts to resem­ble a sort of synth-string wash.

The acoustic-based Floyd songs work as well as you might expect. “Wish You Were Here” for exam­ple.
Dupuis shows his skill with the more exper­i­men­tal elec­tron­ics of Dark Side of the Moon. He adds a slide gui­tar and effects to “Time”:

…which works even bet­ter on “Breathe”:

And he brings out the very strange look­ing Dyer Elec­tric Gui­tar Harp for “Wel­come to the Machine,” using some dou­ble-track­ing to give him some solo­ing space.

You can hear all his Floyd cov­ers as a playlist here, and then check out his oth­er Harp Gui­tar cov­ers from Ozzy Osbourne to Tears for Fears here as well as some clas­si­cal arrange­ments.

Oh and yes, he also plays reg­u­lar ol’ acoustic gui­tar and some ban­jo. The man cer­tain­ly knows his way around a fret: enjoy!

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Pink Floyd’s “Great Gig in the Sky” Played on the Theremin

Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” Mov­ing­ly Per­formed by the Six-String Sol­diers, of The Unit­ed States Army Field Band

Dire Straits’ “Sul­tans Of Swing” Played on the Gayageum, a Kore­an Instru­ment Dat­ing Back to the 6th Cen­tu­ry

A One-Man Pink Floyd Band Cre­ates Note-Per­fect Cov­ers of “Echoes,” “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Moth­er” & Oth­er Clas­sics: Watch 19-Year-Old Wun­derkind Ewan Cun­ning­ham in Action

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.

What if every­thing you thought you knew about grunge was a lie? Maybe you’ve sus­pect­ed all along! But even if you were there, or some­where, in that time of abysmal­ly low inter­net lit­er­a­cy and con­nec­tiv­i­ty, when every tra­di­tion­al media out­let was flan­nel, flop­py hair, mopey half-protests, fes­ti­vals, Seat­tle.… When you could save $6-$13 on “women’s grunge” and “$5 on kids’ grunge too!” at major depart­ment store chains…

But we may still remem­ber grunge as a movement—with charis­mat­ic lead­ers and trag­ic heroes. A move­ment to reclaim seri­ous, heavy, emo­tion­al hair rock from the pro­found­ly unse­ri­ous hair bands of the 80s. The first wave of Pacif­ic North­west bands to emerge with Nir­vana, Soundgar­den, and Pearl Jam were earnest and well-mean­ing and “pri­mal,” says Bruce Pavitt, co-founder of the leg­endary Seat­tle record label Sub Pop.

Sub Pop mid­wifed the scene by sign­ing so many of the bands that made it big, cul­ti­vat­ing the sound and look of dirty, angry back­woods­men with gui­tars. “Grunge Made Blue-Col­lar Cul­ture Cool,” wrote Steven Kurutz in The New York Times Style Sec­tion just a few days ago, an implic­it acknowl­edg­ment that the most­ly-white and large­ly male scene sold a par­tic­u­lar image of blue-col­lar that res­onat­ed, says Pavitt, because it rep­re­sent­ed an “ ‘Amer­i­can arche­type.”

Pavitt and co-founder Jonathan Pone­man were diehard fans of the music but they were no star­ry-eyed idealists—they under­stood exact­ly how to sell the region’s quirks to a nation­al and inter­na­tion­al media. “It could have hap­pened any­where,” Pone­man has said, “but there was a lucky set of coin­ci­dences. [Pho­tog­ra­ph­er] Charles Peter­son was here to doc­u­ment the scene, [pro­duc­er] Jack Endi­no was here to record the scene. Bruce and I were here to exploit the scene.”

But what was the scene? Was it “Grunge”? What is “Grunge”? How do you pro­nounce “Grunge”? What do “Grunge” peo­ple eat? After being pep­pered with one too many ques­tions when the shock­wave of Nirvana’s major label debut Nev­er­mind hit in 1992, Pone­man referred a reporter to a for­mer Sub Pop employ­ee, Megan Jasper, then work­ing as a sales rep for Car­o­line records. The reporter, Rick Marin, was call­ing from The New York Times’ Style Sec­tion, ask­ing for help com­pil­ing a grunge lex­i­con. What kinds of things do “Grunge” peo­ple say?

“By then,” writes Alan Siegel at The Ringer, “only out­siders earnest­ly used the term ‘grunge’ as a noun.” It was, says Charles Cross, for­mer edi­tor of alter­na­tive paper The Rock­et, “an over­hyped, inflat­ed word that doesn’t have actu­al mean­ing in Seat­tle.” As for grunge slang, such a thing “didn’t exist.” The only thing to do, Jasper decid­ed, was “react by try­ing to make fun of it,” she says. She had done the very same thing months ear­li­er, when British mag­a­zine Sky made the same request. “I gave them a bunch of fake shit.”

As she says in the inter­view clip at the top, she asked Marin to toss out nor­mal words and she would give him “grunge” equiv­a­lents. “I kept esca­lat­ing the crazi­ness of the trans­la­tions because any­one in their right mind would go, ‘Oh, come on, this is bull­shit.’… but it nev­er  hap­pened because he was con­cen­trat­ing so hard on get­ting the infor­ma­tion right.” Thus, the grunge lex­i­con below, pub­lished in The New York Times in 1992. (“All sub­cul­tures speak in code,” goes the cap­tion. This one would be appear­ing in malls nation­wide.)

• bloat­ed, big bag of bloata­tion – drunk
• bound-and-hagged – stay­ing home on Fri­day or Sat­ur­day night
• cob nob­bler – los­er
• dish – desir­able guy
• fuzz – heavy wool sweaters
• harsh realm – bum­mer
• kick­ers – heavy boots
• lames­tain – uncool per­son
• plats – plat­form shoes
• rock on – a hap­py good­bye
• score – great
• swingin’ on the flip­pi­ty-flop – hang­ing out
• tom-tom club – uncool out­siders
• wack slacks – old ripped jeans

It’s unlike­ly Marin ever trav­eled to Seat­tle and tried to bond with fel­low kids, or he would not have pub­lished Jasper’s hoax glos­sary in an arti­cle oth­er­wise crit­i­cal of the main­stream­ing of grunge. Marin com­pared the phe­nom­e­non to “the mass-mar­ket­ing of dis­co, punk and hip-hop. Now with the grung­ing of Amer­i­ca, it’s hap­pen­ing again. Pop will eat itself, the axiom goes.” It’s a thor­ough, well-sourced piece that quotes many of the scene’s founders, includ­ing Pone­man, nev­er sus­pect­ing they might be hav­ing a laugh.

The fake news grunge lex­i­con was a huge hit in Seat­tle, where Jasper was cel­e­brat­ed by her friends and fam­i­ly. “I got a very nice pat on the back,” she says. Peo­ple clipped the lex­i­con to their shirts at shows. Indie label C/Z records then print­ed t‑shirts. “Lames­tain” appeared on one. “Harsh Realm” on anoth­er. Mud­honey spread around Jasper’s slang in a Melody Mak­er inter­view with straight faces. It should have been debunked imme­di­ate­ly “but this was 1992,” writes Siegel, “Snopes wasn’t around yet. Hell, The New York Times was still four years away from launch­ing a web­site.”

Then, writer and reporter Thomas Frank called Jasper and asked, “there’s no way this is real, right?” Imme­di­ate­ly, she respond­ed, “Of course it’s not real.” Frank pub­lished the scoop in 1993; the Times smeared him as a hoax­er to dis­cred­it the rev­e­la­tion. The Baf­fler faxed the Times this note: “When The News­pa­per of Record goes search­ing for the Next Big Thing and the Next Big Thing pid­dles on its leg, we think that’s fun­ny.” These days, we might expect a Twit­ter war.

No one Siegel inter­views seems to have been par­tic­u­lar­ly upset about the whole thing. Marin’s “eye­brow is total­ly raised” through­out his piece, says his for­mer edi­tor Pene­lope Green. (Marin him­self declined to be inter­viewed.) But the sto­ry has far less to do with one cred­u­lous reporter work­ing a dead­line and more to do with his argument—grunge had been rapid­ly pack­aged and sold, and by The Times, no less! But maybe its image was sort of a joke to begin with, one that now gets such straight-faced, rev­er­ent, sealed-behind-glass-cas­es treat­ment that you have to laugh.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

The Pow­er of Eddie Vedder’s Voice: Hear Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks from Three Clas­sic Pearl Jam Songs

A Mas­sive 800-Track Playlist of 90s Indie & Alter­na­tive Music, in Chrono­log­i­cal Order

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

Dylan’s “Tan­gled Up in Blue” strikes a mid­dle point between his more sur­re­al lyrics of the ‘60s and his more straight­for­ward love songs, and as Polyphonic’s recent video tak­ing a deep dive into this “musi­cal mas­ter­piece” shows, that com­bi­na­tion is why so many count it as one of his best songs.

It is the open­ing track of Blood on the Tracks, the 1975 album that crit­ics hailed as a return to form after four mid­dling-at-best albums. (One of them, Self-Por­trait, earned Dylan one of crit­ic Greil Mar­cus’ best known open­ing lines: “What is this shit?”–in the pages of Rolling Stone no less.)

Blood on the Tracks is one of the best grumpy, mid­dle-age albums, post-rela­tion­ship, post-fame, all reck­on­ing and account­abil­i­ty, a sur­vey of the dam­age done to one­self and oth­ers, and “Tan­gled” is the entry point. Dylan’s mar­riage to Sara Lown­des Dylan was floun­der­ing after eight years–affairs, drink, and drugs had estranged the cou­ple. Dylan would lat­er say that “Tan­gled” “took me ten years to live and two years to write.”

It would also take him two stu­dios, two cities, and two band line-ups to get work­ing. A ver­sion record­ed in New York City is slow­er, low­er (in key), and more like one of his gui­tar-only folk tunes. In Decem­ber of 1974, Dylan returned home to Min­neso­ta and played the songs to his broth­er, who wasn’t impressed and sug­gest­ed he rere­cord. The ver­sion we know is faster, brighter, jan­gli­er, and as Poly­phon­ic explains, sung at a key near­ly too high for Dylan. But it’s that wild, near exas­per­a­tion of reach­ing those notes that gives the song its lifeblood.

And he also reworked the lyrics, remov­ing whole vers­es and chang­ing oth­ers, until the fin­ished ver­sion is, indeed, tan­gled. It jumps back and forth from present to past to wish­ful future, verse to verse, and even line to line.

The pro­nouns change too–the “she” is some­times the lost love, some­times a woman who reminds the singer of the for­mer. The fur­ther he goes to get away from his first love, the more he meets visions of her else­where.

Then there’s the details of the trav­els and the jobs the nar­ra­tor takes on, leav­ing fans to parse which are true and which are not (Sara Lown­des, for exam­ple, was work­ing at a Play­boy club–the “top­less place”–when he met her). And even if we could know who the man is in verse six who “start­ed into deal­ing with slaves”…would it make any dif­fer­ence?

In the end the song feels uni­ver­sal because it is both so spe­cif­ic and so inten­tion­al­ly con­found­ing. “Tan­gled Up in Blue” affects so many of its lis­ten­ers, yours tru­ly includ­ed, because it recre­ates the way mem­o­ries nes­tle in our minds, not as a lin­ear sequence but as a kalei­do­scope of images and feel­ings.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Talk­ing Heads and Bri­an Eno Wrote “Once in a Life­time”: Cut­ting Edge, Strange & Utter­ly Bril­liant

Clas­sic Songs by Bob Dylan Re-Imag­ined as Pulp Fic­tion Book Cov­ers: “Like a Rolling Stone,” “A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall” & More

Watch Joan Baez Endear­ing­ly Imi­tate Bob Dylan (1972)

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly-Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

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.

Could the return of mar­ble-based mad­ness be a reac­tion to our dig­i­tal age? That we must con­struct real fan­tas­ti­cal machines that per­form hum­ble amuse­ments in the face of CGI-filled block­busters? Do we need to know that if soci­ety col­laps­es we can look to mem­bers of the Swedish folk­tron­ic band Win­ter­gatan to help rebuild it? After watch­ing the above video, friends, I say yes to all those (rhetor­i­cal) ques­tions.

The Mar­ble Con­vey­er Belt does what its name implies in a lov­ing series of cranks, gears, “fish stairs,” ratch­ets, pis­tons, curved tracks, and springs, and no real amount of florid descrip­tion will do jus­tice to the visu­al poet­ry of watch­ing Wintergatan’s Mar­tin Molin operate/play what they have dubbed Mar­ble Machine X.

This is not Molin or the band’s first machine. Accord­ing to Wikipedia, between Decem­ber 2014 and March 2016, Molin built the first Mar­ble Machine, that played instru­ments like a vibra­phone, bass gui­tar, cym­bals, and a contact-microphone’d mini drum kit fol­low­ing a pro­grammed wheel that trig­gered mar­ble release arma­tures.

In fact, we told you all about it in a pre­vi­ous post in 2016, just in case this is all sound­ing famil­iar.

When that was a suc­cess, they dis­as­sem­bled the machine and set about work­ing on Machine X.
Each step of the process was doc­u­ment­ed on YouTube, which is per­fect for this sort of thing. The 79 videos can be watched over at this mas­sive playlist. (Watch it below.) This time, Molin worked with a team of design­ers and engi­neers, along with fan input, to build some­thing big­ger and bet­ter.

Molin pro­vid­ed some specs over at the fin­ished video’s YouTube page:

The Mar­ble Con­vey­er Belt is Com­plet­ed and it deliv­ers Per­fect­ly.
— lifts 8 mar­bles per crank turn.
— thanks to it being dri­ven by ratch­ets and pis­tons, it makes a short halt to load and unload the mar­bles, on exact­ly the same spot every time.
— The pis­tons are con­nect­ed to the crank shaft with a 2:1 gear reduc­tion which means that the con­vey­er belt go in time with the music, and in half time. I can even use the mechan­i­cal sounds from the ratch­ets and the mar­bles climb­ing the fish stair to cre­ate parts of the beats.
— I only had one kick drum chan­nel up and run­ning so the kick drum plays on 2–4 like a snare nor­mal­ly would. Sounds a lit­tle strange but I just made this piece of music to demon­strate the con­cepts are work­ing. (no music you hear in the videos are going to be used for the album, its quick and dirty func­tion­al pieces for the videos only)
— Its been a jour­ney but we are now on our way. Again.
— the throw of the pis­tons s 40mm, the pitch of the chain is 15,875x2 mm, an impe­r­i­al val­ue, and it hap­pens to be exact­ly twice the mar­ble diam­e­ter. All this makes it pos­si­ble to lift exact­ly one row of mar­bles per crank turn. The ratch­ets move 40 mm but only grabs onto the chain to move it exact­ly 31,75mm per crank turn.
The car­ri­ers are flame pol­ished cnc:ed acrylic
— The chain was cus­tom made in Japan and I wait­ed 5 months for it to be deliv­ered. haha. Of all the time con­sum­ing dar­lings on the MMX I love the con­vey­er belt /fish stair com­bo the most.
the mar­bles looks like they are stuck over the demag­ne­tis­er wheel, this is by design, as soon new mar­bles come into the pipes from below, the mar­bles are slow­ly pushed over the demag wheel which ensures per­fect demag­neti­sa­tion.

Molin has some kind of mad­ness, the good kind. Where he goes after this achieve­ment is anybody’s guess.

via thekidshouldseethis.com

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Metrop­o­lis II: Dis­cov­er the Amaz­ing, Fritz Lang-Inspired Kinet­ic Sculp­ture by Chris Bur­den

See the First “Drum Machine,” the Rhyth­mi­con from 1931, and the Mod­ern Drum Machines That Fol­lowed Decades Lat­er

200-Year-Old Robots That Play Music, Shoot Arrows & Even Write Poems: Watch Automa­tons in Action

Watch a Musi­cian Impro­vise on a 500-Year-Old Music Instru­ment, The Car­il­lon

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.

When I first moved to North Car­oli­na, one of the first vis­its I made was to the lit­tle town of Car­rboro. There sits a plaque on East Main com­mem­o­rat­ing Eliz­a­beth “Lib­ba” Cot­ton: “Key Fig­ure. 1960s folk revival. Born and raised on Lloyd Street,” just west of Chapel Hill, in 1893. It’s an accu­rate-enough descrip­tion of Cotten’s impor­tance to 60s-era folk, but the lim­it­ed space on the sign elides a much rich­er sto­ry, with a typ­i­cal musi­cal theft and unusu­al late-life tri­umph.

The sign sits next to a retired train depot con­vert­ed into a restau­rant called The Sta­tion, which adver­tis­es two claims to fame—R.E.M. played their first show out­side of Geor­gia there in 1980, and Eliz­a­beth Cot­ten “was inspired to write her famous folk song, ‘Freight Train,’ in the ear­ly 1900s as a trib­ute to the trains that stopped in Car­rboro, which she could hear at night from the bed­room of her child­hood home.” The song became a stan­dard in Amer­i­can folk and British skif­fle.

“Freight Train” was cred­it­ed for years to two British song­writ­ers, who claimed it as their own in the mid-fifties. How­ev­er, not only did Cot­ten write the song, but she did so decades ear­li­er when she was only 11 or 12 years old. It first made its way to Eng­land by way of Peg­gy Seeger, who had heard it from her one­time nan­ny, Lib­ba, when she was young. “Freight Train” was then picked up by sev­er­al singers and groups, includ­ing The Quar­ry­men, the skif­fle band that would become The Bea­t­les.

Cot­ten “built her musi­cal lega­cy,” writes Smithsonian’s Folk­ways, “on a firm foun­da­tion of late 19th- and ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry African-Amer­i­can instru­men­tal tra­di­tions.” She had a keen grasp of her musi­cal roots, with her own inno­va­tions. A self-taught gui­tar and ban­jo play­er, she flipped the instru­ments over to play them left-hand­ed. She did not restring them, how­ev­er, but played them upside-down, devel­op­ing a cap­ti­vat­ing fin­ger­style tech­nique “that lat­er became wide­ly known as ‘Cot­ten style.’”

Per­suad­ed by her church to stop play­ing “world­ly music,” Cot­ten all but gave it up and moved to Wash­ing­ton, DC. There, she might have fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty, the sto­ry of “Freight Train” high­light­ing just one more injus­tice in a long his­to­ry of mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ed black Amer­i­can music. But the folk-singing Seeger fam­i­ly worked to secure her recog­ni­tion and relaunch her career.

Cot­ten first “land­ed entire­ly by acci­dent” with the Seegers after return­ing a young, lost Peg­gy to her moth­er Ruth at a Wash­ing­ton D.C. depart­ment store where Cot­ten had been work­ing. The fam­i­ly hired her on as help, and did not learn of her tal­ent until lat­er. After her song became famous, Mike Seeger record­ed Cot­ten singing “Freight Train” and a num­ber of oth­er tunes from “the wealth of her reper­toire” in 1957. He was even­tu­al­ly able to secure her the cred­it for the song.

Thanks to these record­ings, Cot­ten “found her­self giv­ing small con­certs in the homes of con­gress­men and sen­a­tors, includ­ing that of John F. Kennedy.” In 1958, Seeger record­ed her first album, made when she was six­ty-two, Eliz­a­beth Cot­ten: Negro Folk Songs and Tunes. “This was one of the few authen­tic folk-music albums avail­able by the ear­ly 1960s,” notes Smith­son­ian, “and cer­tain­ly one of the most influ­en­tial.”

Cotten’s sto­ry (and her gui­tar play­ing) is rem­i­nis­cent of that of Mis­sis­sip­pi John Hurt, who left music for farm­ing in the late 20s, only to be redis­cov­ered in the ear­ly six­ties and go on to inspire the likes of fin­ger­style leg­ends John Fahey and Leo Kot­tke. But Cot­ten doesn’t get enough cred­it in pop­u­lar music for her influ­ence, despite writ­ing songs like “Freight Train,” “Oh, Babe, It Ain’t No Lie,” and “Shake Sug­a­ree,” cov­ered by The Grate­ful Dead, Bob Dylan, and a host of tra­di­tion­al folk artists.

Fans of folk and acoustic blues, how­ev­er, will like­ly know her name. She toured and per­formed to the end of her life, giv­ing her last con­cert in New York in 1987, just before her death at age 94. The record­ing indus­try gave Cot­ten her due as well. In 1984, when she was 90, she won a Gram­my in the cat­e­go­ry of “Best Eth­nic or Tra­di­tion­al Folk Record­ing.” Two years lat­er, she was nom­i­nat­ed again, but did not win.

The recog­ni­tion was a long time com­ing. In 1963, when Peter, Paul & Mary had a hit with their ver­sion of “Freight Train,” few peo­ple out­side of a small cir­cle knew any­thing about Eliz­a­beth Cot­ten. In 1965, The New York Times pub­lished an arti­cle about her head­lined “Domes­tic, 71, Sings Songs of Own Com­po­si­tion in ‘Vil­lage,’” as Nina Rena­ta Aron points out in a pro­file at Time­line.

But thanks to her own qui­et per­sis­tence and some famous bene­fac­tors, Eliz­a­beth Cot­ten is remem­bered not as a house­keep­er and nan­ny who hap­pened to write some songs, but as a Gram­my-win­ning folk leg­end and “key fig­ure” in both Amer­i­can and British musi­cal his­to­ry. In addi­tion to her Gram­my and oth­er awards, she received the Burl Ives Award in 1972 and was includ­ed in the com­pa­ny of Rosa Parks and Mar­i­an Ander­son in Bri­an Lanker’s book of por­traits I Dream a World: Black Women Who Changed Amer­i­ca.

In 1983, Syra­cuse, New York, where she spent her last years and now rests, named a park after her. And it may have tak­en them entire­ly too long to catch up to her lega­cy, but in 2013, the state of North Car­oli­na rec­og­nized one of its most influ­en­tial daugh­ters, putting up the His­tor­i­cal Mark­er sign in her hon­or.

In the videos here, see Cot­ten, in her spry, pro­lif­ic old age, play “Freight Train,” at the top, “Span­ish Flang Dang” and “A Jig,” fur­ther up, in 1969, and “Wash­ing­ton Blues” and “I’m Going Away,” above in 1965.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Rock Pio­neer Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe Wow Audi­ences With Her Gospel Gui­tar

Pete Seeger Teach­es You How to Play Gui­tar for Free in The Folksinger’s Gui­tar Guide (1955)

Down­load Images From Rad Amer­i­can Women A‑Z: A New Pic­ture Book on the His­to­ry of Fem­i­nism

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