Recent­ly an old­er musi­cian acquain­tance told me he nev­er “got into ‘Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that,” refer­ring to the “first major space jam” of Pink Floy­d’s career and the sub­se­quent explo­sion of space rock bands. I found myself a lit­tle tak­en aback. Though I was born too late to be there, I’ve come to see “’Inter­stel­lar Over­drive’ and all that” as one of the most inter­est­ing things about the end of the sixties—the com­ing of Cap­tain Beef­heart and the Mag­ic Band, of The Soft Machine, of Hawk­wind and oth­er psy­che­del­ic war­riors.

Too oft over­looked in the pop­u­lar Wood­stock/Alta­mont bina­ry short­hand for fin-de-six­ties rock and roll, these bands’ brand of prog/­jaz­z/blues/psych-rock exper­i­men­tal­ism got its due in Amou­gies, Bel­gium, in a 1969 fes­ti­val meant as Europe’s answer to the three-day “Aquar­i­an expo­si­tion” staged in upstate New York that same year.

Spon­sored by Paris mag­a­zine Actuel, “The Actuel Rock Fes­ti­val” fea­tured all of the bands men­tioned above (except Hawk­wind), along with Yes, Pharoah Sanders, Don Cher­ry, and many more. MC’ing the event, and serv­ing as Beefheart’s man­ag­er, was none oth­er than impre­sario of weird him­self, Frank Zap­pa, who sat in with Floyd on “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive,” bring­ing his con­sid­er­able lead gui­tar prowess to their dark, descend­ing instru­men­tal.

Just above, hear that Zappa/Floyd per­for­mance of the song. The live audio record­ing is fuzzy and a bit hol­low, but the play­ing comes through per­fect­ly clear. Zap­pa, in fact, jammed with near­ly all the artists on the ros­ter, though only a few record­ings have sur­faced, like this one from an audi­ence mem­ber. Of their col­lab­o­ra­tion, Pink Floyd drum­mer Nick Mason said in 1973, “Frank Zap­pa is real­ly one of those rare musi­cians that can play with us. The lit­tle he did in Amou­gies was ter­ri­bly cor­rect.” I think you’ll agree.

Dan­ger­ous Minds records many of Zappa’s rec­ol­lec­tions of the event, includ­ing a char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly sar­don­ic account he gave in an inter­view with The Simp­sons’ Matt Groen­ing in which he com­plains of feel­ing “like Lin­da McCart­ney” and about the scourge of “slum­ber­ing euro-hip­pies.” Zap­pa appar­ent­ly did not remem­ber jam­ming with Floyd but “the pho­tos don’t lie and nei­ther does the record­ing.” He does recall play­ing with Cap­tain Beef­heart, who says he him­self “enjoyed it.” You can hear Beef­heart’s set with Zap­pa above.

Accord­ing to a biog­ra­phy of found­ing Pink Floyd singer and gui­tarist Syd Bar­rett—gone by the time of the festival—footage of the Zappa/Floyd jam exists, part of an unre­leased doc­u­men­tary of the event by Gerome Laper­rousaz. That film has yet to sur­face, it seems, but we do have the film above—slipping between black-and-white and color—of Pink Floyd play­ing “Green is the Colour,” “Care­ful With That Axe, Eugene,” and “Set the Con­trols For the Heart of the Sun.” It’s a must-watch if only for Roger Waters’ bone-chill­ing screams in the sec­ond song.

The fes­ti­val is notable not only for these ear­ly per­for­mances of the new­ly Gilmour-front­ed Pink Floyd, but also for the appear­ance of Ayns­ley Dun­bar, future Zap­pa drum­mer and jour­ney­man musi­cian extra­or­di­naire. Alleged­ly Zap­pa met Dun­bar at the fes­ti­val and was quite impressed with the latter’s jazz chops (though Dun­bar first joined Zappa’s band on gui­tar before mov­ing to drums). You can hear Zap­pa jam with his even­tu­al star drummer’s band, Ayns­ley Dunbar’s Retal­i­a­tion, above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix, Pink Floyd, Traf­fic & Oth­er Bands Play Huge Lon­don Fes­ti­val “Christ­mas on Earth Con­tin­ued” (1967)

Andy Warhol Hosts Frank Zap­pa on His Cable TV Show, and Lat­er Recalls, “I Hat­ed Him More Than Ever” After the Show

Ani­mat­ed: Frank Zap­pa on Why the Cul­tur­al­ly-Bereft Unit­ed States Is So Sus­cep­ti­ble to Fads (1971)

Watch Frank Zap­pa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Ver­sa (1967)

Psy­che­del­ic Scenes of Pink Floyd’s Ear­ly Days with Syd Bar­rett, 1967

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

After mak­ing one of the grand­est entrances in music his­to­ry on the stages of East Vil­lage clubs, the BBC’s The Old Grey Whis­tle Test, and Sat­ur­day Night Live, the­atri­cal Ger­man new wave space alien Klaus Nomi died alone in 1983, a vic­tim of the “first beach­head of the AIDS epi­dem­ic.” The dis­ease fright­ened Nomi’s friends away—no one knew any­thing about what was then called “gay can­cer” but that it was dead­ly. Soon after­ward, the immense­ly tal­ent­ed singer’s rep­u­ta­tion declined. Writer Rupert Smith pro­nounced Nomi “large­ly for­got­ten” in a 1994 issue of Atti­tude mag­a­zine, and made a case for renewed atten­tion. “Nomi,” wrote Smith, “remains rock music’s queer­est expo­nent, who out­shone the many acts fol­low­ing in his wake.”

But Nomi has since received his due, in a moment of revival that has extend­ed over sev­er­al years, thanks in part to many of those lat­er acts. In his own day, wrote LD Beghtol at The Vil­lage Voice, “the under­ground punk-opera singer was most­ly unknown beyond his small cir­cle of friends and fans.” Nomi was “queer in mul­ti­ple sens­es of the word and stood well apart from his fel­low East Vil­lage bohos.

And he pos­sessed an unde­ni­able gift, a voice that surged up from a husky Weimar croon into the falset­to stratos­phere. Oper­at­ic coun­tertenors, though, were hope­less­ly déclassé. His pro­fes­sion­al options were few.” It’s also the case that Nomi’s opera expe­ri­ence wouldn’t have tak­en him very far. “As young Klaus Sper­ber,” writes Smith, “he had worked front-of-house at the Berlin Opera in the late Six­ties, and would enter­tain col­leagues with his ren­di­tions of the great arias as they swept up after per­for­mances.”

But with or with­out the résumé, Nomi had the voice—one audi­ences could hard­ly believe came from the strange, diminu­tive cabaret char­ac­ter with heavy make­up and tri-cor­nered reced­ing hair­line. At the top of the post, see Nomi’s 1978 debut at New Wave Vaude­ville, a four-night revue at Irv­ing Plaza. “Nomi,” Smith tells us, “was a smash.” Skip ahead to 2:14 to see Nomi’s musi­cal direc­tor Kris­t­ian Hoff­man intro­duce his per­for­mance of “Mon cœur s’ou­vre à ta voix” (“My heart opens to your voice”) from Camille Saint-Saëns’ 1877 opera Sam­son et Dalila. After every sub­se­quent per­for­mance, Hoff­man says, the cabaret’s MC had to assure audi­ences that Nomi’s voice was “not an elec­tri­cal record­ing.”

Nomi’s voice and pres­ence attract­ed the atten­tion of stars like David Bowie, who hired him as a back­up singer for that SNL appear­ance in 1979 after he appeared on the cult New York pub­lic access show TV Par­ty. Glenn O’Brien’s intro­duc­tion of Nomi as “one of the finest pas­try chefs in New York,” above, is only part­ly tongue in cheek; that was indeed the singer’s day job. But in char­ac­ter, he wield­ed his oth­er­world­ly falset­to like a ray­gun. “Every song,” writes Pitch­fork in an appre­ci­a­tion, “includ­ed dra­mat­ic mul­ti­ple shifts in octave, where Klaus would rise to extreme highs and lows, han­dling both effort­less­ly. He would jerk his hands into karate chops with each chang­ing note, widen­ing his eyes every time he skirt­ed into high­er octaves.”

Nomi’s brand of opera-infused synth-pop and retro-futur­ist, shiny-suit­ed cabaret act—the “Klaus Nomi Show” as it was called—brought him noto­ri­ety in the New York art scene dur­ing his life­time, and has since made him a star, decades after his trag­ic death. As grat­i­fy­ing as that may be for long­time fans of Nomi’s work, we should also remem­ber that Nomi’s devo­tion to opera was no mere gim­mick, but a life­long pas­sion and unde­ni­able tal­ent. As we not­ed in an ear­li­er post, in Nomi’s last per­for­mance before his death—in a small 1982 Euro­pean tour—he sang the aria “Cold Genius” from Hen­ry Purcell’s 1691 opera King Arthur or, The British Wor­thy, a per­for­mance, wrote Matthias Rasch­er, that was “cer­tain­ly one of the most mem­o­rable in oper­at­ic his­to­ry.” Per­haps we might call it one of the most mem­o­rable moments in pop music his­to­ry as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Klaus Nomi: Watch the Final, Bril­liant Per­for­mance of a Dying Man

David Bowie and Klaus Nomi’s Hyp­not­ic Per­for­mance on SNL (1979)

Klaus Nomi’s Ad for Jäger­meis­ter (Cir­ca 1980)

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

Jimi Hen­drix arrived on the Lon­don scene like a ton of bricks in 1966, smash­ing every British blues gui­tarist to pieces the instant they saw him play. As vocal­ist Ter­ry Reid tells it, when Hen­drix played his first show­case at the Bag O’Nails, arranged by Ani­mals’ bassist Chas Chan­dler, “there were gui­tar play­ers weep­ing. They had to mop the floor up. He was pil­ing it on, solo after solo. I could see everyone’s fill­ings falling out. When he fin­ished, it was silence. Nobody knew what to do. Every­body was dumb­struck, com­plete­ly in shock.”

He only exag­ger­ates a lit­tle, by all accounts, and when Reid says “every­body,” he means every­body: Kei­th Richards, Mick Jag­ger, Bri­an Jones, Jeff Beck, Paul McCart­ney, The Who, Eric Bur­don, John May­all, and maybe Jim­my Page, though he denies it. May­all recalls, “the buzz was out before Jimi had even been seen here, so peo­ple were antic­i­pat­ing his per­for­mance, and he more than lived up to what we were expect­ing.” In fact, even before this leg­endary event sent near­ly every star clas­sic rock gui­tarist back to the wood­shed, Jimi had arrived unan­nounced at the Regent Street Poly­tech­nic, and asked to sit in and jam with Cream, where he pro­ceed­ed to dethrone the reign­ing British gui­tar god, Eric Clap­ton.

Nobody knew who he was, but “in those days any­body could get up with any­body,” Clap­ton says in a recent inter­view, “if you were con­vinc­ing enough that you could play. He got up and blew everyone’s mind.” As Hen­drix biog­ra­ph­er Charles Cross tells it, “no one had ever asked to jam” with Cream before. “Most would have been too intim­i­dat­ed by their rep­u­ta­tion as the best band in Britain.” To hear the sto­ry as it’s told in the clip above from the BBC doc­u­men­tary Sev­en Ages of Rock, no one else would have ever dared to get onstage with Eric Clap­ton. Clap­ton, as the famed graf­fi­ti in Lon­don announced, was God. “It was a very brave per­son who would do that,” says Jack Bruce.

Actu­al­ly, it was Chan­dler who asked the band, and who also tried to pre­pare Clap­ton. Jimi got onstage, plugged into Bruce’s bass amp, and played a ver­sion of Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killin’ Floor.” Every­one was “com­plete­ly gob­s­macked,” Clap­ton writes in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy. “I remem­ber think­ing that here was a force to be reck­oned with. It scared me, because he was clear­ly going to be a huge star, and just as we are find­ing our own speed, here was the real thing.” Fear, envy, awe… all rea­son­able emo­tions when stand­ing next to Jimi Hen­drix as he tears through “Killin’ Floor” three times faster than any­one else played it (as you can see him play it in Stock­holm above)—while doing the splits, lying on the floor, play­ing with his teeth and behind his head…

“It was amaz­ing,” writes Clap­ton, “and it was musi­cal­ly great, too, not just pyrotech­nics.” There’s no telling how Jimi might have remem­bered the event had he lived to write his mem­oirs, but he would have been pret­ty mod­est, as was his way. No one else who saw him felt any need to hold back. “It must have been dif­fi­cult for Eric to han­dle,” says Bruce, “because [Eric] was ‘God,’” and this unknown per­son comes along, and burns.” He puts it slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly at the top: “Eric was a gui­tar play­er. Jimi was some sort of force of nature.”

Rock jour­nal­ist Kei­th Altham has yet a third account, as Ed Vul­liamy writes at The Guardian. He remem­bers “Chan­dler going back­stage after Clap­ton left in the mid­dle of the song ‘which he had yet to mas­ter him­self’; Clap­ton was furi­ous­ly puff­ing on a cig­a­rette and telling Chas: ‘You nev­er told me he was that fuck­ing good.’” Who knows if Hen­drix knew Clap­ton had strug­gled with “Killin’ Floor” and decid­ed not to try it live. But as blues gui­tarist Stephen Dale Petit notes, “when Chas invit­ed Jimi to Lon­don, Jimi did not ask about mon­ey or con­tracts. He asked if Chas would intro­duce him to Beck and Clap­ton.”

He had come to meet, and blow away, his rock heroes. “Two weeks after The Bag O’Nails,” writes Clas­sic Rock’s John­ny Black, “when Cream appeared at The Mar­quee Club, Clap­ton was sport­ing a frizzy perm and he left his gui­tar feed­ing back against the amp, just as he’d seen Jimi do.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hen­drix Unplugged: Two Great Record­ings of Hen­drix Play­ing Acoustic Gui­tar

23-Year-Old Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Gui­tar Sound (1968)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

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

You know the sound of the theremin, that weird, war­bly whine that sig­nals mys­tery, dan­ger, and oth­er­world­ly por­tent in many clas­sic sci-fi films. It has the dis­tinc­tion of being not only the very first elec­tron­ic instru­ment but also the only instru­ment in his­to­ry one plays with­out ever touch­ing any part of it. Instead, the theremin play­er makes hand motions, like the con­duc­tor of an invis­i­ble choir, and the device sings. You can see this your­self above, as the instrument’s inven­tor, Leon Theremin, demon­strates his therem­invox, as he called it at the time, in 1954. Speak­ing in Russ­ian, with Eng­lish sub­ti­tles, Theremin describes how the “instru­ment of a singing-voice kind” works “by means of influ­enc­ing an elec­tro­mag­net­ic field.”

Theremin orig­i­nal­ly invent­ed the instru­ment in 1919 and called it the Aether­phone. He demon­strat­ed it for Vladimir Lenin in 1922, and its futur­is­tic sound and design made quite an impres­sion on the ail­ing com­mu­nist leader. Theremin then brought the device to Europe (see a silent news­reel demon­stra­tion here) and to the U.S. in 1927, where he debuted it at the Plaza Hotel and where clas­si­cal vio­lin­ist Clara Rock­more, soon to become the most devot­ed pro­po­nent and play­er of the theremin, first heard it.

Although many peo­ple thought of Theremin’s inven­tion as a nov­el­ty, Rock­more insist­ed that it would be tak­en seri­ous­ly. She appren­ticed her­self to Theremin, mas­tered the instru­ment, and adapt­ed and record­ed many a clas­si­cal com­po­si­tion, like Tchaikovsky’s “Berceuse,” above. More than any­one else, Rock­more made the theremin sing as its inven­tor intend­ed.

The ori­gin sto­ry of the theremin, like so many inven­tion sto­ries, involves a hap­py acci­dent in the lab­o­ra­to­ry. Just above, Albert Glin­sky, author of the his­to­ry Theremin: Ether Music and Espi­onage, describes how Theremin inad­ver­tent­ly cre­at­ed his new instru­ment while devis­ing an audi­ble tech­nique for mea­sur­ing the den­si­ty of gas­es in a chem­istry lab. The first iter­a­tion of the instru­ment had a foot ped­al, but Theremin wise­ly decid­ed, Glin­sky says, that “it would be so much more intrigu­ing to have the hands pure­ly in the air,” manip­u­lat­ing the sound from seem­ing­ly nowhere. Although there are no frets or strings or keys, no bow, slide, or oth­er phys­i­cal means of chang­ing the theremin’s pitch, its oper­a­tion nonethe­less requires train­ing and pre­ci­sion just like any oth­er musi­cal instru­ment. If you’re inter­est­ed in learn­ing the basics, check out the tuto­r­i­al below with therem­i­nist Lydia Kav­ina, play­ing a ‘there­ami­ni’ designed by syn­the­siz­er pio­neer Moog.

In his day, Theremin lived on the cut­ting edge of sci­en­tif­ic and musi­cal inno­va­tion, and he hoped to see his instru­ment inte­grat­ed into the world of dance. While work­ing with the Amer­i­can Negro Bal­let Com­pa­ny in the 1930s, the inven­tor fell in love with and mar­ried a young African-Amer­i­can dancer named Lavinia Williams. He was sub­se­quent­ly ostra­cized from his social cir­cle, then he either abrupt­ly picked up and left the U.S. for the Sovi­et Union in 1938 or, more like­ly, as Lavinia alleged, he was kid­napped from his stu­dio and whisked away. What­ev­er the case, Theremin end­ed up in a Gulag lab­o­ra­to­ry called a sha­ras­ka, design­ing lis­ten­ing devices for the Sovi­et Union. There­after, he worked for the KGB, then became a pro­fes­sor of physics at Moscow State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Theremin nev­er gave up on his elec­tron­ic instru­ments, invent­ing an elec­tron­ic cel­lo and vari­a­tions on his theremin dur­ing a 10-year stint at the Moscow Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music. He gave his final theremin demon­stra­tion in the year of his death, 1993, at age 97. (See him play­ing above in 1987 with his third wife Natalia.) To learn much more about the inventor’s fas­ci­nat­ing life sto­ry, be sure to see Steven M. Martin’s 1993 doc­u­men­tary Theremin: An Elec­tron­ic Odyssey.

And if you’re intrigued enough, you can buy your very own Theremin made by Moog.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Learn How to Play the Theremin: A Free Short Video Course

Watch Jim­my Page Rock the Theremin, the Ear­ly Sovi­et Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment, in Some Hyp­not­ic Live Per­for­mances

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

Leon Theremin Adver­tis­es the First Com­mer­cial Pro­duc­tion Run of His Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment (1930)

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

In Novem­ber 1973, Scot Halpin, a 19-year-old kid, scalped tick­ets to The Who con­cert in San Fran­cis­co, Cal­i­for­nia. Lit­tle did he know that he’d wind up play­ing drums for the band that night — that his name would end up etched in the annals of rock ’n’ roll.

The Who came to Cal­i­for­nia with its album Quadrophe­nia top­ping the charts. But despite that, Kei­th Moon, the band’s drum­mer, had a case of the nerves. It was, after all, their first show on Amer­i­can soil in two years. When Moon vom­it­ed before the con­cert, he end­ed up tak­ing some tran­quil­iz­ers to calm down. The drugs worked all too well. Dur­ing the show, Moon’s drum­ming became slop­py and slow, writes his biog­ra­ph­er Tony Fletch­er. Then, halfway through “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” he slumped onto his drums. Moon was out cold. As the road­ies tried to bring him back to form, The Who played as a trio. The drum­mer returned, but only briefly and col­lapsed again, this time head­ing off to the hos­pi­tal to get his stom­ach pumped.

Scot Halpin watched the action from near the stage. Years lat­er, he told an NPR inter­view­er, “my friend got real excit­ed when he saw that [Moon was going to pass out again]. And he start­ed telling the secu­ri­ty guy, you know, this guy can help out. And all of a sud­den, out of nowhere comes Bill Gra­ham,” the great con­cert pro­mot­er. Gra­ham asked Halpin straight up, “Can you do it?,” and Halpin shot back “yes.”

When Pete Town­shend asked the crowd, “Can any­body play the drums?” Halpin mount­ed the stage, set­tled into Moon’s drum kit, and began play­ing the blues jam “Smoke­stack Light­ing” that soon segued into “Spoon­ful.”  It was a way of test­ing the kid out.  Then came a nine minute ver­sion of “Naked Eye.” By the time it was over, Halpin was phys­i­cal­ly spent.

The show end­ed with Roger Dal­trey, Pete Town­shend, John Entwistle and Scot Halpin tak­ing a bow cen­ter stage. And, to thank him for his efforts, The Who gave him a con­cert jack­et that was prompt­ly stolen.

As a sad foot­note to the sto­ry, Halpin died in 2008. The cause, a brain tumor. He was only 54 years old.

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Relat­ed Con­tent 

Kei­th Moon’s Final Per­for­mance with The Who (1978)

The Neu­ro­science of Drum­ming: Researchers Dis­cov­er the Secrets of Drum­ming & The Human Brain

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