We now remem­ber Karl­heinz Stock­hausen as a pio­neer of elec­tron­ic music, labor­ing away in stu­dios dom­i­nat­ed by hulk­ing ear­ly syn­the­siz­ers and tape machines toward a new son­ic expe­ri­ence, but he wrote his most pop­u­lar work for much hum­bler devices: music box­es. Com­posed in 1974 and 1975, Tierkreis, the Ger­man word for zodi­ac, con­sists of twelve melodies, each rep­re­sent­ing a sign on that astro­log­i­cal cal­en­dar, each cen­tered on a dif­fer­ent pitch, each played on its own ded­i­cat­ed music box. You can hear (and see) all of the Tierkreis box­es in action in these videos:

• Tau­rus
• Aquar­ius
• Scor­pio
• Can­cer
• Libra
• Capri­corn
• Leo
• Gem­i­ni
• Sagit­tar­ius
• Aries
• Pisces
• Vir­go

Despite their sim­plic­i­ty, Stock­hausen’s twelve- and some­times four­teen-tone ser­i­al com­po­si­tions may sound like noth­ing you ever heard come out of a music box in child­hood. But chil­dren must have made up a sig­nif­i­cant part of their ear­ly audi­ence: these melodies made their debut as part of the fairy-tale music the­ater piece called Musik im Bauch, or “Music in the Bel­ly,” a phrase Stock­hausen used to describe the nois­es that would issue from the insides of his young daugh­ter Juli­ka, to her great delight. After com­ing up with the twelve melodies, quite pos­si­bly the first music ever orig­i­nal­ly com­posed for the music box, he had to order the box­es them­selves cus­tom-made from the Swiss man­u­fac­tur­er Reuge. You can see an orig­i­nal Tierkreis box, play­ing the Aries melody, in the video below.

Reuge, accord­ing to Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Oliv­er Hall, “con­tin­ued to man­u­fac­ture the zodi­ac box­es into the eight­ies. In ‘98, Stock­hausen-Ver­lag pro­duced a lim­it­ed run for the composer’s 70th birth­day, fol­lowed by anoth­er series in 2005. The Pisces, Aries and Sagit­tar­ius box­es are sold out, but the shop still has a few of the oth­ers left at €310 a piece.” Pricey, cer­tain­ly, but what a gift they would make for musi­cal­ly inclined friends born under the oth­er zodi­ac signs, giv­en that Stock­hausen, writes All Music Guide’s Robert Kirzinger, “care­ful­ly con­sid­ered the char­ac­ter­is­tics of each sign and each month of the year, as well as the per­son­al­i­ties of peo­ple he knew were born under a par­tic­u­lar sign, in com­pos­ing this work.” Such a com­po­si­tion­al scheme may strike astro­log­i­cal non-believ­ers as odd, but remem­ber: this was back in the age of Aquar­ius.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Presents “Four Cri­te­ria of Elec­tron­ic Music” & Oth­er Lec­tures in Eng­lish (1972)

Watch Karl­heinz Stockhausen’s Great Heli­copter String Quar­tet, Star­ring 4 Musi­cians, 4 Cam­eras & 4 Copters

A Karl­heinz Stock­hausen Brand­ed Car: A Play­ful Trib­ute to the Ground­break­ing Elec­tron­ic Com­pos­er

Pachelbel’s Music Box Canon

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.

Think of “inter­view­ing Bri­an Eno” (lis­ten to it here) like a piece of his gen­er­a­tive music. Yes, the man has no prob­lems talk­ing and actu­al­ly encour­ages it. But input the same old ques­tions about those same four albums (you know them, right?) and you get the same old answers as out­put. Feed in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent subject–like his favorite film soundtracks–and lo and behold, a very intrigu­ing 80 min­utes fol­lows.

That’s what hap­pened when Hugh Corn­well (lead vocal­ist of The Stran­glers) inter­viewed Mr. Peter George St John le Bap­tiste de la Salle Eno–that’s Bri­an to you–in 2013 for his short-lived inter­net radio show on film.

Eno has always had an inter­est in film. As he men­tions in the sec­ond half of the show, he pro­duced his 1976/78 album Music for Films not for any spe­cif­ic film, but in the hopes that they would be used for sound­tracks in the future. Also, he hoped that the descrip­tive titles–“Alternative 3,” “Patrolling Wire Borders”–and the evoca­tive music would lead lis­ten­ers to cre­ate films in their heads. Since then every track has been used at least once, and doc­u­men­tar­i­ans like Adam Cur­tis have used Eno to great effect.

The only track, he reveals, on that album to be writ­ten for a film was clos­er “Final Sun­set” put to great, tran­scen­dent use in Derek Jarman’s 1976 film Sebas­tiane.

But if you think Eno might choose sim­i­lar ambi­ent tracks or instru­men­tals dur­ing the rest of the inter­view, you’re in for a sur­prise.

As he grew up, Eno had no expo­sure to what was “cool” and what was not. And that led to an ear that heard things stripped of cul­tur­al con­text. When he plays a track from the musi­cal Okla­homa called “The Farmer and the Cow­boy,” we might just be able to put aside our mem­o­ries of high school pro­duc­tions and hear the weird, humor­ous and very excit­ing vocal arrange­ment under­neath. Sim­i­lar­ly, despite not being the biggest fan of Elvis Pres­ley at the time (“I was a snob,” Eno says), he selects this jaun­ty pop num­ber “Did­ja Ever” from G.I. Blues. “One of the wit­ti­est, clever­est bits of writ­ing,” as he calls it, writ­ten by Sid Wayne and Sher­man Edwards, who wrote at least one song in every sub­se­quent Pres­ley movie.

Eno also has space for the jazz of Miles Davis and the evoca­tive score for Louis Malle’s 1961 film Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows, in par­tic­u­lar how it was record­ed: impro­vised live while watch­ing the screen. (Not men­tioned: its huge influ­ence on Ange­lo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks sound­track.)

There’s much more in the inter­view to check out, includ­ing the source of a sam­ple used in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and one of David Bowie’s best but most under­rat­ed songs. Lis­ten here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

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.

You know it’s got to be bad when you quit the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence just months after the rev­o­lu­tion­ary, expan­sive Elec­tric Lady­land hit num­ber one on US and UK charts, but if you’re Noel Red­ding, you’re plen­ty fed up with the psy­che­del­ic cir­cus. “The record­ing ses­sions were ridicu­lous,” Red­ding told Rolling Stone in a 1969 inter­view, “and on stage, it was get­ting ridicu­lous.” The last straw for Red­ding had come a few months ear­li­er at the Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val in June. After tear gas forced the band off­stage, fired by police at an unruly crowd, “I went up to Jimi that night,” says the bassist, “said good­bye, and caught the next plane back to Lon­don.”

Ten­sions had been build­ing for months. Hen­drix want­ed to expand the band, with­out con­sult­ing Red­ding or Mitch Mitchell. Record­ing ses­sions for the dou­ble Elec­tric Lady­land had been noto­ri­ous­ly riotous. “There were tons of peo­ple in the stu­dio,” Red­ding remem­bered, “you couldn’t move. It was a par­ty, not a ses­sion.” Hen­drix’s per­fec­tion­ism had him push­ing for 40–50 takes per song. But the prob­lems weren’t all under his con­trol. The three-day Den­ver festival—headlined by Three Dog Night, Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival, Joe Cock­er, Frank Zap­pa, Tim Buck­ley, John­ny Win­ter and the Experience—was beset with vio­lence, part of the gen­er­al devo­lu­tion of the decade.

Overzeal­ous cops bat­tled gate­crash­ers who showed up look­ing for a fight. Tear gas waft­ed through the air. Iron But­ter­fly sup­pos­ed­ly encour­aged fans to bring a fence down. Fes­ti­val pro­mot­er Bar­ry Fey remem­bers Joe Cock­er curled up in the bath­room in a fetal posi­tion: “He was scared to death. ‘Is this what America’s all about?’”

But Jimi’s drug use had also tak­en its toll on his rela­tion­ships. Fey’s account of his state that night is sad and sober­ing:

There’s a lot of sto­ries, but the worst one is Hen­drix…. I had Jimi Sep­tem­ber 1, 1968 at Red Rocks. We had become such good friends in a year or so. I mean, I just loved him. He was such a great guy. And then nine months lat­er at the Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val, I get to talk to Noel and Mitch, and they said, ‘We’re not going to play with him any­more, Bar­ry.’ I said, ‘What are you talk­ing about?’ They said, ‘We can’t stand him. Since you’ve seen us last, he’s dis­cov­ered hero­in, and you can’t deal with him.’ And then he showed up, and he hard­ly knew who I was. 

But onstage, Jimi was Jimi, crack­ing eso­teric jokes and shred­ding with aban­don. In the audio at the top, hear the band’s full Den­ver Pop Fes­ti­val set, which closed out the chaot­ic pro­ceed­ings on Sun­day night. Hen­drix jokes about the tear gas as the band tunes up, then they launch into Swedish duo Hans­son & Karls­son’s “Tax Free.”

Jimi plays “The Star-Span­gled Banner”—two months before his blis­ter­ing Wood­stock rendition—and the audio cuts out at the end of “Pur­ple Haze,” right before the last song of the night, “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” when the police fired off more tear gas and “the wind whipped in the sta­di­um,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, and “blew the tox­ic fumes back toward the stage. With their eyes burn­ing and their lungs choked for air, the Expe­ri­ence set down their instru­ments for the final time and fled for cov­er.”

See the setlist, minus “Voodoo Child,” below:

1. Tax Free
2. Hear My Train A Comin’
3. Fire
4. Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic
5. Red House
6. Foxy Lady
7. Star Span­gled Ban­ner
8. Pur­ple Haze

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of the Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence (Feb­ru­ary, 1967)

See a Full Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence Con­cert on Restored Footage Thought Lost for 35 Years

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness.

I’ve tend­ed to avoid reunion shows from my favorite bands of old, and I’ve missed some great per­for­mances because of it, I’m told, and also a few clunk­ers and for­get­table nos­tal­gia trips. But some­times it real­ly doesn’t mat­ter how good or bad the band is ten or twen­ty years past their prime—or that one or more of their orig­i­nal mem­bers has left their mor­tal coil or shuf­fled off into retire­ment. It’s such a thrill for fans to see their heroes that they’ll over­look, or fail to notice, seri­ous onstage prob­lems.

The crowd of thou­sands at Philly’s JFK Sta­di­um explod­ed  after “Rock and Roll,” Led Zeppelin’s open­er to their 1985 Live Aid reunion gig (above), with Phil Collins and Chic’s Tony Thomp­son dou­bling on drum duties (because it takes two great drum­mers to equal one John Bon­ham, I guess). But accord­ing to the musi­cians them­selves, the show was an absolute fail—so much so that Collins near­ly walked off­stage in the mid­dle of the 20-minute set. “It was a dis­as­ter real­ly,” he said in a 2014 inter­view, “It wasn’t my fault it was crap.”

Collins expands on the prob­lems in his can­did auto­bi­og­ra­phy:

I know the wheels are falling off from ear­ly on in the set. I can’t hear Robert clear­ly from where I’m sat, but I can hear enough to know that he’s not on top of his game. Dit­to Jim­my. I don’t remem­ber play­ing ‘Rock and Roll,’ but obvi­ous­ly I did. But I do remem­ber an awful lot of time where I can hear what Robert decries as ‘knit­ting’: fan­cy drum­ming…. you can see me mim­ing, play­ing the air, get­ting out of the way lest there be a train wreck. If I’d known it was to be a two-drum­mer band, I would have removed myself from pro­ceed­ings long before I got any­where near Philadel­phia.

As for the Zep­pelin mem­bers prop­er, Plant and Page had no fond mem­o­ries of the gig. “It was hor­ren­dous,” said Plant in 1988. “Emo­tion­al­ly, I was eat­ing every word that I had uttered. And I was hoarse. I’d done three gigs on the trot before I got to Live Aid.” Page, writes Rolling Stone, “was hand­ed a gui­tar right before walk­ing onstage that was out of tune.” “My main mem­o­ries,” he lat­er recalled, “were of total pan­ic.” Appar­ent­ly, no one thought to ask John Paul Jones about the show.

Bare­ly rehearsed (Jones arrived “vir­tu­al­ly the same day as the show”) and with fail­ing mon­i­tors ensur­ing the band could hard­ly hear them­selves, they strug­gled through “Rock and Roll,” “Whole Lot­ta Love,” and “Stair­way to Heav­en.” The footage, which the band scrapped from the 2004 DVD release, doesn’t show them at their best, for sure, but it’s maybe not quite as bad as they remem­bered it either (see the full con­cert above).

In any case, Plant was so inspired that he tried to reunite the band, with Thomp­son back on drums, in secret rehearsals a few months lat­er. The attempt was “embar­rass­ing,” he’s since said. “We did about two days…. Jonesy played key­boards, I played bass. It sound­ed like David Byrne meets Hüsker Dü.” Now that is a reunion I’d pay good mon­ey to see.

22 years lat­er, at Lon­don’s O2 Are­na, the band was con­fi­dent and total­ly on top of their game once again for the Ahmet Erte­gun Trib­ute Con­cert, with Jason Bon­ham behind the kit. Prob­a­bly their last per­for­mance ever, and it’s damned good. See “Black Dog” above and buy the full con­cert film here.

The clip below lets you see more than 90 min­utes of Led Zep­pelin reunion con­certs. Beyond their Live Aid show, it includes per­for­mances at Atlantic Records’ 4oth anniver­sary (1988) and at the Rock­’n Roll Hall of Fame (1995).

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

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

Led Zep­pelin Plays One of Its Ear­li­est Con­certs (Dan­ish TV, 1969)

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

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

You know what they say: each year the Christ­mas sea­son seems to start a lit­tle ear­li­er. Here it’s not yet Octo­ber, and already we’re hear­ing “Jin­gle Bells” — but then, this ver­sion does­n’t sound quite like any we’ve heard before. The song comes as the open­ing num­ber on Shat­ner Claus: The Christ­mas Album, which promis­es exact­ly what it sounds like it does. Offi­cial­ly drop­ping on Octo­ber 26th, it will con­tain, accord­ing to Con­se­quence of Sound, William Shat­ner’s “unique take on 13 hol­i­day sta­ples,” and fea­ture guest con­trib­u­tors like Iggy Pop on “Silent Night,” ZZ Top’s Bil­ly Gib­bons on “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Rein­deer,” and for­mer Black Flag front­man and all-around provo­ca­teur Hen­ry Rollins on “Jin­gle Bells,” a col­lab­o­ra­tion you can stream just above.

You may not describe Shat­ner’s dis­tinc­tive half-singing-half-speak­ing style as pos­sessed of a great “range,” tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, but who can doubt the for­mi­da­ble cul­tur­al range of his musi­cal career? On his debut album The Trans­formed Man fifty years ago he cov­ered the Bea­t­les, ten years lat­er he took on “Rock­et Man,” and more recent­ly he appeared on Dr. Demen­to’s punk album singing The Cramps’ “Garbage Man” with Weird Al Yankovic.

Shat­ner Claus demon­strates that the for­mer Cap­tain Kirk’s inter­est in punk rock has­n’t dis­si­pat­ed, and the pair­ing of him and no less an icon of that genre makes a cer­tain kind of sense, see­ing as both of them have spent decades blur­ring the per­for­ma­tive line between singing and the spo­ken word, each in his own dis­tinc­tive way.

Per­haps it comes as no sur­prise, then, that Shat­ner and Rollins are friends, and have been since they first record­ed togeth­er on Shat­ner’s album Has Been in 2004. Rollins once described Shat­ner to rock site Blab­ber­mouth as “extra­or­di­nar­i­ly friend­ly, a very ener­gized guy” despite being three decades the  mid­dle-aged Rollins’ senior. “He impress­es me in that he’s a guy who’s real­ly fig­ured out what he likes,” espe­cial­ly foot­ball: “I’ve been to the Shat­ner house many times for din­ner, for Super Bowl Sun­day, for foot­ball games. I don’t watch foot­ball, but I like his friends. I’m a shy per­son. I don’t real­ly go out of my way to hang out but I like him and his wife… and I like all the food he lays out.” The vast game-day spreads at chez Shat­ner have also giv­en Rollins sto­ries to tell at his spo­ken-word shows, and lis­ten­ing to Shat­ner Claus, you have to won­der: what must they have for Christ­mas din­ner?

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dr. Demento’s New Punk Album Fea­tures William Shat­ner Singing The Cramps, Weird Al Yankovic Singing The Ramones & Much More

A Cult Clas­sic: William Shat­ner Sings Elton John’s “Rock­et Man” at 1978 Sci­Fi Awards Show

William Shat­ner Sings Near­ly Blas­phe­mous Ver­sion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” (1968)

Stream a Playlist of 68 Punk Rock Christ­mas Songs: The Ramones, The Damned, Bad Reli­gion & More

Hear the 20 Favorite Punk Albums of Black Flag Front­man Hen­ry Rollins

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities 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 or on Face­book.