We recent­ly fea­tured a video of Bri­an Eno giv­ing con­tro­ver­sial advice to artists: “don’t get a job.” Eas­i­er said than done, of course, but he makes a com­pelling case. Along the way, he says some­thing inter­est­ing about the fetish we make of genius—an obses­sive focus on lone, and almost always male, artists as self-made, hero­ic embod­i­ments of great­ness. “Although great new ideas are usu­al­ly artic­u­lat­ed by indi­vid­u­als,” he says, “they’re near­ly always gen­er­at­ed by com­mu­ni­ties.” (He pro­pos­es the neol­o­gism “sce­nius” in place of “genius” to describe “coop­er­a­tive intel­li­gence.”) Eno would prob­a­bly agree that great art not only comes out of cre­ative com­mu­ni­ties of peers, but also from the influ­ence of great teach­ers.

One such fig­ure, Nadia Boulanger (1887 –1979), has been described as “the most influ­en­tial teacher since Socrates.” This is hard­ly hyper­bole. As Clemen­cy Bur­ton-Hill notes at the BBC, “her ros­ter of music stu­dents reads like the ulti­mate 20th Cen­tu­ry Hall of Fame. Leonard Bern­stein. Aaron Cop­land. Quin­cy Jones. Astor Piaz­zol­la. Philip Glass,” and so on.

“It is no exag­ger­a­tion, then, to con­sid­er Boulanger the most impor­tant musi­cal ped­a­gogue of the modern—or indeed any—era.” She was also a tal­ent­ed com­pos­er, a men­tor and fierce cham­pi­on of Igor Stravin­sky, and the first woman to con­duct major sym­phonies in Europe and the U.S., such as the New York Phil­har­mon­ic and the Boston Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra.

Boulanger had her own take on genius: “We are as fools to say, ‘he’s a genius,’” she opines in the inter­view at the top. She also describes her method of weed­ing out unse­ri­ous stu­dents by ask­ing them, “Can you live with­out music?” If the answer is yes, she tells them “thank the Lord and good­bye!” Even at an advanced age, her fierce­ly uncom­pro­mis­ing approach is pal­pa­ble, a qual­i­ty Philip Glass remem­bers from his first meet­ing with her in 1964, when “she was already a rel­ic,” writes Matthew Guer­ri­eri at Red Bull Acad­e­my. She iden­ti­fied a bar from one of Glass’s com­po­si­tions as “writ­ten by a real com­pos­er,” says Glass. “It was “the first and last time she said any­thing nice to me for the next two years.”

Amer­i­can com­posers sub­ject­ed them­selves to Boulanger’s harsh dis­ci­pline as a “rite of pas­sage,” vis­it­ing her in her Paris apart­ment where she did most of her teach­ing. She also made her way through “lead­ing con­ser­va­toires,” Bur­ton-Hill notes, “includ­ing the Juil­liard School, the Yehu­di Menuhin School, the Roy­al Col­lege of Music and the Roy­al Acad­e­my of Music.” Boulanger’s ear­ly life is as fas­ci­nat­ing as her teach­ing career; she was the def­i­n­i­tion of “a tough, aris­to­crat­ic French­woman,” as Glass describes her, and grew up sur­round­ed by music. Her father, Ernest, was a com­pos­er, con­duc­tor, and singing pro­fes­sor. Her younger sis­ter Lili, who died in 1918 at the age of 24, was the more tal­ent­ed com­pos­er. (Nadia, writes Bur­ton-Hill, was “riv­en with envy.”)

A few years after Lili’s trag­ic death, Nadia aban­doned com­po­si­tion to focus pri­mar­i­ly on her teach­ing, men­tor­ing stu­dents with tremen­dous promise and those with less evi­dent gifts alike. “Any­one could be a Boulanger stu­dent,” Guer­ri­eri writes (pro­vid­ed they couldn’t live with­out music): “Those with less­er skills were tak­en in along­side prodi­gies and pro­fes­sion­als.” She did not dis­crim­i­nate on any basis, though her polit­i­cal atti­tudes make her a dif­fi­cult fig­ure for many peo­ple to ful­ly embrace. “She espoused nation­al­ism, monar­chism and, although her good man­ners kept it from her often-Jew­ish stu­dents, anti-Semi­tism.” She held democ­ra­cy in con­tempt and did not believe women should vote. And she was espe­cial­ly hard on her female stu­dents. (When one woman final­ly met her approval, Boulanger addressed her as “Mon­sieur.”)

Boulanger was as tra­di­tion­al in her musi­cal attitudes—spurning Arnold Schoenberg’s inno­va­tions, for example—as in her pol­i­tics. Yet she worked with jazz musi­cians like Jones and Don­ald Byrd, and with com­posers like Joe Raposo, “the musi­cal chameleon behind the songs of Sesame Street and The Elec­tric Com­pa­ny.” She was an encour­ag­ing pres­ence in the lives of her stu­dents long after they had gone on to suc­cess and fame. When Leonard Bern­stein sent her the score to West Side Sto­ry, she pro­nounced, “I am enchant­ed by its daz­zling nature” (though she added a cri­tique about its “facil­i­ty”). Per­haps her most rad­i­cal stu­dent, Philip Glass, has nev­er been accused of musi­cal con­ser­vatism. But through his dif­fi­cult course of study with Boulanger, he says, “I learned to hear.”

“To under­go Boulanger’s rig­or­ous train­ing,” writes Guer­ri­eri, “was to absorb her sense of music his­to­ry: evo­lu­tion, not rev­o­lu­tion.” Then again, many of history’s rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies have also been some of the keen­est stu­dents of tra­di­tion, usu­al­ly assist­ed, guid­ed, and trained by his­to­ry’s great teach­ers.

via @dark_shark/Red Bull Acad­e­my

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Min­i­mal Glimpse of Philip Glass

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed at Har­vard in 1973)

1200 Years of Women Com­posers: A Free 78-Hour Music Playlist That Takes You From Medieval Times to Now

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

Mar­vin Gaye’s mega-hit, “I Heard it Through the Grapevine,” turns 50 this year.

Smokey Robin­son and Gladys Knight got the first cracks at the now icon­ic Bar­rett Strong-Nor­man Whit­field tune, but Gaye’s 1968 ren­di­tion is the famous one, the best­selling Motown sin­gle of the decade.

Gaye’s for­mer broth­er-in-law, Motown Records founder Berry Gordy, is per­haps the only one who wasn’t impressed, refus­ing to believe it could be a viable sin­gle until its enthu­si­as­tic recep­tion by radio DJs and the lis­ten­ing pub­lic con­vinced him oth­er­wise. In short order, In The Groove, the 1968 album on which it first appeared, was reti­tled with the name of its mon­ster hit.

It’s giv­en a con­sid­er­able boost to the danc­ing raisins, Lawrence Kasdan’s film, The Big Chill, and the many emerg­ing tal­ents who’ve sam­pled the track in the decades fol­low­ing the singer’s untime­ly death.

Strip all that away.

For an even pur­er lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence, strip away its famous orches­tra­tion, described by Time Magazine’s Gilbert Cruz as “ a sin­gle drum shot,” “a dan­ger­ous-sound­ing elec­tric-piano riff,” and “a por­ten­tous tam­bourine rat­tle.”

As author Nel­son George, an his­to­ri­an of African Amer­i­can music, observed in his 1984 essay, “Mar­vin Gaye’s Abid­ing Unrest”:

In the ’60s Mar­vin bent his voice to the wish­es of Motown, but he did so his way, vocal­ly if not musi­cal­ly. He claimed he had three dif­fer­ent voic­es, a falset­to, a grit­ty gospel shout, and a smooth midrange close to his speak­ing voice…. His ver­sion of “Grapevine” is so intense, so pret­ty, so god­damn black in spir­it, it seems to cat­a­logue that world of black male emo­tions Charles Fuller evokes in his insight­ful Soldier’s Play. 

The superla­tives that accom­pa­ny Gaye’s 6th place rank­ing on Rolling Stone’s 2010 list of the 100 Great­est Singers of All Time speak to both the emo­tion­al pow­er he brought to his work, as well as his “bril­liant musi­cal­i­ty”:

These days we have Pro Tools and a thou­sand tracks, and you can do dif­fer­ent vocals on every track. But back then you real­ly had to inno­vate, like the way Mar­vin answered him­self in songs, or all that real­ly dis­tant back­ing work, where his voice is all the way in the back and echo­ing. It’s haunt­ing; he deliv­ered every sin­gle song with such clar­i­ty…

Even ex-wife Janis Gaye had sweet words for that voice in a recent inter­view with Voice Coun­cil mag­a­zine. Among the shock­ing rev­e­la­tions that got left out of her tell-all mem­oir about their tem­pes­tu­ous relationship—Gaye was a pri­mar­i­ly self-taught artist who smoked unfil­tered Camels:

…some­times he would walk around like Pavarot­ti just to make the kids laugh. But, yes, he would also run through scales, drink tea with hon­ey and lemon and lit­tle con­coc­tions of cayenne pep­per with vine­gar and things like that. But he didn’t warm up before every per­for­mance.

Lis­ten to “Let’s Get It On,” “Sex­u­al Heal­ing,” and oth­er iso­lat­ed vocal tracks from Mar­vin Gaye’s hit list here.

via Twist­ed Sifter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her at the New York Soci­ety Library on April 23 for her month­ly low-bud­get vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

Some of us are still reel­ing from the death this last Jan­u­ary of Mark E. Smith, the front­man and acer­bic brains behind The Fall, sure­ly one of post-punk’s finest groups, and def­i­nite­ly its longest last­ing. The band might not have scored that many Top 40 sin­gles, but Britain’s music press loved and feared Smith in equal amounts. He was always good for a bel­liger­ent quote, or a beer-fueled inter­view down the pub. To para­phrase DJ John Peel, Smith was the yard­stick against which oth­er musi­cians were mea­sured.

And his death has also brought out a trea­sure trove of clip­pings, includ­ing this one from the August 15, 1981 edi­tion of NME. “Por­trait of the Artist as a Con­sumer” was an occa­sion­al series, ask­ing musi­cians for their favorite books, art, writ­ers, come­di­ans, films, and even oth­er music. We’ve past­ed the orig­i­nal scan above, but just in case, we’ve tran­scribed his lists with a lit­tle bit of com­men­tary.

READS
Gulcher — Richard Meltzer
A Small Town in Ger­many — John Le Car­ré
A Scan­ner Dark­ly — Philip K. Dick
The Sirens of Titan — Kurt Von­negut Jr.
The Deer Park - Nor­man Mail­er
The Black Room — Col­in Wil­son
Rit­u­al in the Dark — Col­in Wil­son
Cogan’s Trade — George V. Hig­gins
At the Moun­tains of Mad­ness - H.P. Love­craft
Beyond Good and Evil — Fred­erich Niet­zsche

AND
U.S. Civ­il War Hand­book — William H. Price
How I Cre­at­ed Mod­ern Music — D. McCul­loch (a week­ly ser­i­al)
True Crime Month­ly
Pri­vate Eye
Fibs About M.E. Smith by J. Cope (a pam­phlet)

Okay, for long­time fans of The Fall, the appear­ance of Philip K. Dick and H.P. Love­craft should come as no sur­prise, as Smith ref­er­enced them often in his lyrics. Gulcher (sub­ti­tled Post-Rock Cul­tur­al Plu­ral­ism in Amer­i­ca) was one of the first ever col­lec­tions of seri­ous rock crit­i­cism from one of the first ever rock crit­ics. The blurb on Col­in Wil­son over at Ama­zon says he “wrote wide­ly on true crime, mys­ti­cism and the para­nor­mal” which sounds pret­ty much like Smith’s CV. George V. Hig­gins was also a crime writer, with a gift for mafioso gab. And as for The Deer Park by Mail­er, Smith took the title for an ear­ly Fall song:

Of Smith’s fas­ci­na­tion with the U.S. Civ­il War, I can think of his own visu­al­iz­ing between the North and South in his own belea­guered Britain, and the lyric from “The N.W.R.A.”:

“The streets of Soho did rever­ber­ate
With drunk­en High­land men
Revenge for Cul­lo­den dead
The North had rose again
But it would turn out wrong”

Don’t go look­ing for the McCul­loch and Cope writings—they’re both jokes at the expense of fel­low Man­cu­ni­ans Ian McCul­loch (Echo and the Bun­ny­men) and Julian Cope, who Smith gigged with back in the day and went on to—as Smith no doubt saw it—sell out to the main­stream

WRITERS
Claude Bessy
Bur­roughs

Of William S. Bur­roughs much has been writ­ten, but Claude Bessy was a French writer who start­ed and/or wrote for sev­er­al punk fanzines, includ­ing Ange­leno Dread and Slash, was the res­i­dent VJ at Manchester’s Hacien­da Club, and directed—supposedly—music videos for The Fall (which ones, I can’t dis­cern).

ART
Wyn­d­ham Lewis
Mal­colm Alli­son
Vir­gin Prunes
The Worst live, March­ester Dec. ’77

Those who have seen Lewis’ writ­ings for BLAST, the mag­a­zine of the vor­ti­cist move­ment in Britain, cir­ca 1914, might be mis­tak­en that they were look­ing at a M.E.S. lyric sheet.

The list is Smith’s joke over what is con­sid­ered art: Mal­colm Alli­son was an Eng­lish foot­ball play­er and man­ag­er; the Vir­gin Prunes were an Irish post-punk band; The Worst was a lit­tle known punk band that shared the bill with The Fall and John Coop­er Clark at the Elec­tric Cir­cus gig—the record­ing of which was the Fall’s first release.

COMEDIANS
Lenny Bruce
Alan Pel­lay
Bernard Man­ning
All Ian Cur­tis deriv­a­tives

Lenny Bruce and Bernard Man­ning are oppo­site ends of a very odd spec­trum. More inter­est­ing is Alan Pel­lay aka Al Pel­lay aka Lana Pel­lay, who front­ed a group I Scream Plea­sures that often opened for The Fall, and whose angry dec­la­ra­tions over dub tracks by Adri­an Sher­wood are son­ic cousins to Smith.

FILMS
Polanski’s Mac­beth
Mel Brook’s (sic) High Anx­i­ety
Fellini’s Rome
The Man with X‑Ray Eyes and The Lost Week­end star­ring Ray Mil­land
Visconti’s The Damned
Days of Wine and Ros­es with Jack Lem­mon
Char­lie Bub­bles with Albert Finney

The most per­son­al selec­tion here is the last one, a 1968 film that starred Finney as a des­per­ate but suc­cess­ful writer who returns to his child­hood home…Salford, near Man­ches­ter, Smith’s own home­town.

TV
Bluey
John Cleese adverts

Of the two, Bluey is the rare one, a cult Aus­tralian cop dra­ma from 1976 cre­at­ed by Jock Blair and Ian Jones. We also have no idea why he liked it.

MUSIC

Take No Pris­on­ers — Lou Reed
Peter Ham­mill
John­ny Cash
The Pan­ther Burns
God Save the Queen — The Sex Pis­tols
Raw and Alive — The Seeds
Peb­bles Vol. 3 — Var­i­ous
16 Great­est Truck Dri­ver Hits cas­sette
Radio City — Philip John­son (cas­sette)
Der Plan
Alter­na­tive TV
Land of the Homo Jews and Hank Williams Was Queer, live — Fear (L.A. Group)
We’re Only In It for the Mon­ey — Moth­ers of Inven­tion

So, at last, the music list. No sur­pris­es see­ing Lou Reed, John­ny Cash, The Pis­tols, or Zap­pa on here. The Pan­ther Burns was a favorite group of Claude Bessy; The Seeds was a great garage rock band of the ‘60s; Peb­bles is a com­pi­la­tion of Amer­i­can psy­che rock; Alter­na­tive TV, Fear, and Der Plan had vary­ing degrees of suc­cess in the punk and elec­tron­ic gen­res.

Of note, two things: the 16 Great­est Truck Dri­ver Hits cas­sette, which the band must have picked up some­where on tour. A baf­fling release, it has songs not cred­it­ed to any artist, so per­haps this is a stu­dio band con­coc­tion of coun­try cov­ers. But it might have inspired Smith to write his own ver­sion of the Amer­i­can truck­er song, “Con­tain­er Dri­vers”:

Also Philip John­son. Radio City was one of a dozen self-released cas­settes by an ear­ly elec­tron­ic artist, which DieorDIY described as “A fan­tas­tic cut up of var­i­ous cur­rent affairs radio broad­casts, with the clas­sic AM radio sound qual­i­ty, made good by that cosi­ly depress­ing fer­ric oxide degra­da­tion tech­nique.” For those look­ing for the var­i­ous influ­ences on the genius of Mark E. Smith, this entire list gives you a good place to start.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pat­ti Smith’s 40 Favorite Books

David Bowie’s Top 100 Books

Springsteen’s Favorite Books & Read­ing List

Hayao Miyaza­ki Picks His 50 Favorite Children’s Books

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

At the inter­sec­tion of pro­gres­sive rock, con­cep­tu­al psy­che­delia, bluesy, anthemic clas­sic rock, and exper­i­men­tal sound you’ll find Pink Floyd, a band every­one thinks they know but who always man­age to sur­prise even ardent fans with the strange twists and turns of their discog­ra­phy. One might even say, as Bill Wyman writes at Vul­ture, that “there are at least four, or arguably five, Pink Floyds.”

“The first was a goofy and absur­dist pop-rock band, led by one Syd Bar­rett,” writes Wyman. This orig­i­nal Floyd released The Piper at the Gates of Dawn then fell apart after its lead singer/writer/guitarist’s men­tal health declined pre­cip­i­tous­ly. The sec­ond Pink Floyd first took shape “before Bar­rett joined, and then reached full pre­ten­tious flower after his depar­ture” and replace­ment by David Gilmour. This was the “psy­che­del­ic, space-rock­‑y, qua­si-impro­vi­sa­tion­al ensem­ble” of A Saucer­ful of Secrets, Ummagum­ma, and Atom Heart Moth­er.

The third Floyd, Wyman argues, “is the one we know and love; the organ­ic unit that cre­at­ed Med­dle, The Dark Side of the Moon, and Wish You Were Here”—arguably the band’s cre­ative zenith. From here, we move to the fourth ver­sion, “which saw a dom­i­neer­ing [Roger] Waters tak­ing con­trol,” pro­duc­ing records that increas­ing­ly became Roger Waters solo albums—Ani­mals, The Wall, and The Final Cut. The band’s sta­di­um shows became bom­bas­tic affairs of Spinal Tap pro­por­tions.

Final­ly, the fifth and final iter­a­tion, crit­i­cal­ly snubbed but com­mer­cial­ly suc­cess­ful, left the dis­af­fect­ed Waters to his solo work and went on with Gilmour at the helm to record A Momen­tary Lapse of Rea­son, The Divi­sion Bell, and twen­ty years lat­er, the final Pink Floyd album, the most­ly instru­men­tal End­less Riv­er, made in 2014 after key­boardist Richard Wright’s death and draw­ing on record­ings from The Divi­sion Bell ses­sions.

It’s easy to find fault with this schemat­ic out­line of Pink Floyd’s career—which leaves out their detours into film sound­tracks with More, Obscured by Clouds, and an abort­ed score for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s film Zabriskie Point. It leaves out a mis­be­got­ten, but notable excur­sion into bal­let (!), and exper­i­ments with found sound record­ings in the late-60s. This quick sur­vey also under­es­ti­mates the impor­tance of Syd Bar­rett.

Pink Floyd’s first front­man may have tak­en his odd­ball sen­si­bil­i­ty with him when he left the band—and brought it to his cap­ti­vat­ing­ly weird solo work—but his pres­ence remained with them for years after­ward and haunts one of their finest achieve­ments, 1975’s Wish You Were Here. There are all sorts of lines that run through the var­i­ous ver­sions of Pink Floyd, con­nect­ing their strange, youth­ful, unpre­dictable ear­ly work to the high­ly-pol­ished, and much less inter­est­ing, mature late record­ings.

And yet, Wyman’s sum­ma­ry is a use­ful cat­e­go­riza­tion nonethe­less, a suc­cinct expla­na­tion for how Pink Floyd “may be the only rock band that can cred­i­bly be com­pared to both the Bea­t­les and Spinal Tap.” His mas­sive under­tak­ing—rank­ing every Pink Floyd song from worst to best—deserves a thor­ough read. Long­time lovers of the band and new­com­ers alike will find the com­men­tary enlight­en­ing and infor­ma­tive (and he does include those film scores and gives Bar­rett his due).

While you read about each of the band’s offi­cial­ly-released, 165 songs, you can lis­ten to them as well in the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, which not only includes every stu­dio release, but every live album as well. 17 hours total of Pink Floyd’s quirky pop, space‑y, prog­gy exper­i­men­tal­ism, mas­ter­ful psych-rock sound­scapes, cli­mac­tic, polit­i­cal­ly-charged con­cept albums, and the denoue­ment of their final three albums. No mat­ter how long you’ve fol­lowed the band over their 40-plus year career, you’re like­ly to find some sur­pris­es here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Lost” Pink Floyd Sound­track for Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Only Amer­i­can Film, Zabriskie Point (1970)

When Pink Floyd Tried to Make an Album with House­hold Objects: Hear Two Sur­viv­ing Tracks Made with Wine Glass­es & Rub­ber Bands

Pink Floyd’s “Echoes” Pro­vides a Sound­track for the Final Scene of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey

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