Watch the Trippy Screen Projections Used by Pink Floyd During their Dark Side of the Moon Tours

in Film, Music | March 30th, 2017

Even in the ear­ly years of Pink Floyd’s career, the band was exper­i­ment­ing with the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the live expe­ri­ence. Already daz­zling audi­ences with boom­ing sound, col­or­ful light shows, and bub­bling translu­cent oil pro­jec­tions, the group called in Abbey Road engi­neers to design a quadro­phon­ic sound sys­tem in 1967 to send Rick Wright’s key­boards around the con­cert hall, along with nature sounds, foot­steps, or mani­a­cal laugh­ter.

By the time of Dark Side of the Moon, the band had even more of a bud­get, and began to screen short films, some ani­mat­ed, dur­ing their world tour con­certs. Not real­ly pro­mo­tion­al videos, these films haven’t been seen out­side their live con­text since. But the Inter­net has a way of find­ing these things.

Ear­li­er this month, sev­er­al YouTube users uploaded the film reels used on Pink Floyd’s 1974 North Amer­i­can Tour, with music from Dark Side of the Moon added back in to give an indi­ca­tion of how it was used in the show. (The mix­es are also quite dif­fer­ent from the album–maybe a fan can tell us from where these come?)

We get some very Kubrick-like trav­el­ing shots down both an emp­ty hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dor and of Heathrow’s arrival lounge, and lat­er a fist punch­ing a bowl of eggs, Zabriskie Point-like explod­ing tele­vi­sions, shots of Nixon and Idi Amin, and final­ly back to open­ing shots of the moon for the finale.

But there’s also moments of ani­ma­tion cre­at­ed then-unknown film­mak­er Ian Emes.

The up-and-com­ing and self-taught artist had already made an ani­ma­tion “French Win­dows” set to the Floyd song “One of these Days,” filled with trip­py land­scapes and roto­scoped dancers. It won awards at ani­ma­tion fes­ti­vals and was shown on British TV. Accord­ing to Emes:

“Hav­ing seen my film French Win­dows on BBC’s The Old Grey Whis­tle Test, the band com­mis­sioned me to make their first-ever ani­mat­ed film, which they sub­se­quent­ly toured the world with. The Time sequence is used to this day. It was a breath­tak­ing expe­ri­ence to see my film pro­ject­ed live at Wem­b­ley Are­na before a huge crowd of tripped out fans.”

The con­cert films dif­fered from coun­try to coun­try, shar­ing 75 per­cent of their footage, which means if you are a true fan, you’ll have to watch the British Tour ver­sion and the French Tour to know what you’re miss­ing. The British ver­sion fea­tures more infor­ma­tion, but it’s not clear if it’s also by Emes.

After Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd con­tin­ued to bring visu­als into their live shows, most notably anoth­er ani­ma­tion for “Wel­come to the Machine,” seen below. This time they used anoth­er up-and-com­ing illus­tra­tor and ani­ma­tor called Ger­ald Scarfe to cre­ate the har­row­ing graph­ics. Scarfe, of course, would lat­er cre­ate many more works for Pink Floy­d’s The Wall, and those ani­ma­tions would be used in con­cert and lat­er in the Alan Park­er film, The Wall.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd Per­forms on US Tele­vi­sion for the First Time: Amer­i­can Band­stand, 1967

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

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

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.

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Hear the Prog-Rock Adaptation of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds: The 1978 Rock Opera That Sold 15 Million Copies Worldwide

in Literature, Music, Sci Fi | March 30th, 2017

Since the 1950s at least, Amer­i­cans have embraced sci­ence fic­tion of all kinds—from the high con­cepts of 2001 to the high kitsch of Bar­barel­la—even if some­times only among devot­ed cult fans. The Queen-scored Flash Gor­don, for exam­ple, did not do well in U.S. the­aters on its release in 1980, though it was a hit in the UK. But not long after, its icon­ic, puls­ing theme song, with its oper­at­ic blasts, became an unmis­tak­able call­back to the final days of 70s rock opera’s glo­ri­ous excess­es.

And yet some­how, anoth­er equal­ly bom­bas­tic sci-fi rock opera pro­duced in 1978, Jeff Wayne’s musi­cal adap­ta­tion of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, has been denied prop­er cult sta­tus in the States. At the time of its release, U.S. audi­ences, primed by the pre­vi­ous year’s colos­sal hit, Star Wars, per­haps sought more swash­buck­ling fare, not prog-rock dou­ble con­cept albums based on clas­sic nov­els. Amer­i­can indif­fer­ence, how­ev­er, in no way hin­dered the album’s pop­u­lar­i­ty abroad.

Accord­ing to its clunky web­site, Wayne’s adap­ta­tion, “is one of the best known and best-sell­ing musi­cal works of all time.” This is no emp­ty boast; it had “sold approx­i­mate­ly 15 mil­lion records around the world” by 2013 and in 2009 was named the 40th best-sell­ing album ever. And for good rea­son! While you may nev­er have heard of Wayne—he wrote music for TV com­mer­cials for much of his career, and once struck it big by pro­duc­ing David Essex’s 1973 hit “Rock On”—you know the “cast” of his War of the Worlds.

Richard Bur­ton nar­rates, lend­ing the pro­ceed­ings the grav­i­tas Orson Welles gave The Alan Par­sons Project’s adap­ta­tion of Edgar Allan Poe (and, many years ear­li­er, brought to his own infa­mous War of the Worlds adap­ta­tion). The songs promi­nent­ly fea­ture Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott and The Moody Blues’ Justin Hay­ward, both huge stars at the time, as well as David Essex, “musi­cal the­ater vet Julie Cov­ing­ton,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds’ Ron Kretsch, and “gui­tar ace and Sex Pis­tols demo pro­duc­er Chris Sped­ding.”

Sup­ple­ment­ing the album’s musi­cal charms, and they are many, the orig­i­nal LP also came “pack­aged in a gate­fold with a book con­tain­ing the com­plete script and some awe­some paint­ings, most­ly by not­ed Lord of the Rings cov­er artist Geoff Tay­lor.” For many of us, Jeff Wayne’s War of the Worlds will seem like a lost mas­ter­piece, a bril­liant­ly kitschy sci-fi, prog-dis­co clas­sic that nev­er got its due. For fans, how­ev­er, in “no less than 22 coun­tries,” as the album’s site pro­claims, where it chart­ed, reach­ing num­ber one in half of them, the strange­ly inspired rock opera may well be very famil­iar.

You can hear the com­plete dou­ble LP at the playlist above (or click here), along with two more “sides” of alter­nates, out­takes, and demos. (If you need Spo­ti­fy, down­load it here.) One of the songs, Hayward’s “For­ev­er Autumn,” above, was orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten for a “late-‘60s LEGO com­mer­cial,” but war­rant­ed inclu­sion because “Wayne sim­ply want­ed a bal­lad to be includ­ed.” The move is typ­i­cal of his more is more pro­duc­tion approach to War of the Worlds, and yet, some­how, it all comes togeth­er into an engross­ing expe­ri­ence. For some rea­son, in 2012, Wayne decid­ed to remake the album, with Liam Nee­son tak­ing on the nar­ra­tion duties. Judg­ing by its Ama­zon reviews, the new ver­sion is just as beloved by many fans as the old.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Orson Welles’ Icon­ic War of the Worlds Broad­cast (1938)

The Very First Illus­tra­tions of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1897)

The Great Leonard Nimoy Reads H.G. Wells’ Sem­i­nal Sci-Fi Nov­el The War of the Worlds

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

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Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Concerts: Intimate Performances from The Pixies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

in Music, Radio | March 28th, 2017

In times past, hap­pen­ing upon just the right radio sta­tion, record store, or tape trad­ing com­mu­ni­ty were some of the few serendip­i­tous ways of dis­cov­er­ing new music. And in those days, one faith­ful cura­tor of inno­v­a­tive new sounds, BBC DJ John Peel, nev­er dis­ap­point­ed. Because of a law lim­it­ing the amount of record­ed music radio could play, his name became syn­ony­mous with the hun­dreds of inti­mate per­for­mances punk, new wave, reg­gae, and oth­er bands record­ed live in his stu­dio. While the “Peel Ses­sions” will for­ev­er live in leg­end (stream some here), the man him­self passed away in 2004, and the musi­cal land­scape he helped cre­ate has changed irrev­o­ca­bly.

And yet, Peel’s ani­mat­ing spir­it lives on, most espe­cial­ly in NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­certs, live in-stu­dio per­for­mances record­ed “at the desk of All Songs Con­sid­ered host Bob Boilen.” Since 2008, Boilen has invit­ed estab­lished and up-and-com­ing artists alike to his desk, cap­tur­ing loose, unguard­ed, stripped-down, per­for­mances that sound like they’re hap­pen­ing in your liv­ing room.

Gui­tarists unplug, drum­mers trade their sticks for brush­es, and we not only get to lis­ten to old and new favorites; we get to watch them—like the Pix­ies at the top—up close as well. This per­for­mance, from 2014, gar­nered “the largest crowd we’d ever assem­bled for a Tiny Desk Con­cert,” writes Boilen, and fea­tured newest mem­ber Paz Lenchan­tin trad­ing her bass for vio­lin.

Where the Pix­ies usu­al­ly fill are­nas with their eeri­ly-qui­et-to-deaf­en­ing­ly-loud songs, the group fur­ther up, Dirty Dozen Band, can eas­i­ly fill pub­lic squares, foot­ball fields, and parade routes with­out stacks of over­driv­en amps. Hear­ing them explode in Boilen’s office with their ram­bunc­tious funk is a real treat, as is the larg­er-than-life voice of Adele, above, scaled down to col­lege cof­fee­house lev­els of close­ness.

Though Tiny Desk Con­certs often show­case pop, hip-hop, folk, coun­try, and indie stars—like Wilco, below—and even clas­si­cal stars like Yo-Yo Ma, above, it just as often intro­duces us to musi­cians we’ve nev­er heard, or seen, before, and gives us the chance to get to know them with­out the usu­al trap­pings of mar­ket­ing and boil­er­plate PR, or loud, crowd­ed clubs with bad acoustics and no vis­i­bil­i­ty.

The cur­rent home­page fea­tures a hand­ful of incred­i­bly tal­ent­ed musi­cians you’re unlike­ly to run across in most major venues. At least for now. Had he lived to see Tiny Desk Con­certs, and its preser­va­tion of a radio cura­to­r­i­al tra­di­tion, John Peel, I think, would have been proud. See more per­for­mances from The Nation­al, Susan Vega, Yusuf Islam/Cat Stevens, Steve Ear­le, and many, many more—450 con­certs in all—at NPR Music on Youtube.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Hear a 9‑Hour Trib­ute to John Peel: A Col­lec­tion of His Best “Peel Ses­sions”

Peter Framp­ton Plays a Tiny Desk Con­cert for NPR, Fea­tur­ing Acoustic Ver­sions of His Clas­sic Songs

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

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Hear Jimi Hendrix’s Virtuoso Guitar Performances in Isolated Tracks: “Fire,” “Purple Haze,” “Third Stone from the Sun” & More

in Music | March 27th, 2017

A gar­den of musi­cal curiosities—lush with rar­i­ties, out­takes, obscu­ri­ties, and live per­for­mances span­ning the globe—Youtube has ful­filled many a super­fan’s dream of instant access to record­ed musi­cal his­to­ry. One rar­i­fied bloom, the iso­lat­ed track, can prove a divi­sive strain. Why, aes­thetes and purists ask, rip a per­for­mance from its set­ting, place it before lis­ten­ers in a way musi­cians nev­er meant for it to be heard? Though at times expressed in ranty tones, the crit­i­cism has mer­it.

Think­ing of the “iso­lat­ed track” as pure solo vir­tu­os­i­ty does great injus­tice to the process­es that pro­duce these per­for­mances. As musi­cians well know, whether live or record­ed at sep­a­rate times in the stu­dio, most group per­for­mances result from count­less hours of rehearsal, revi­sion, some­times numb­ing rep­e­ti­tion, and devi­a­tions that become stan­dard over time.

For any band that plays togeth­er reg­u­lar­ly, parts emerge from the matrix of group dynam­ics or musi­cal “chem­istry.” Throw a dif­fer­ent musi­cian into the mix, and oth­er indi­vid­ual per­for­mances change as well.

That’s not even to men­tion the role of pro­duc­ers, record­ing and mix­ing engi­neers, etc. on shap­ing and refin­ing the sound. Many stu­dio pro­duc­tions nowa­days come from the lay­er­ing of beats, sequences, and sam­ples pro­duced in iso­la­tion from each oth­er. The results can sound ster­ile and inor­gan­ic. But in the 60s and 70s hey­day of album-ori­ent­ed rock, it was about the band, and almost no one put togeth­er bands that bet­ter com­ple­ment­ed his play­ing than Jimi Hen­drix. Con­verse­ly, no one played gui­tar like Hen­drix, in any con­text.

I would offer this in defense of hear­ing iso­lat­ed tracks from Hen­drix, or from Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie (who bucked the trend and wrote, arranged, rehearsed, and record­ed “Under Pres­sure” in the same night), Paul McCart­ney, Grace Slick, or any oth­er huge­ly tal­ent­ed per­former: We know these songs well enough already. So many of us have inter­nal­ized how their parts fit togeth­er into some­thing greater than them­selves. To have the indi­vid­ual tracks revealed only enhances our appre­ci­a­tion for the whole. When we return to the full arrange­ment we may hear nuances and quirks we’d nev­er noticed before, and notice afresh how these moments call and respond to the oth­er play­ers.

The iso­lat­ed Hen­drix gui­tar tracks here are sub­jects of study and appre­ci­a­tion, for gui­tarists, musi­col­o­gists, crit­ics, and ordi­nary fans. They allow us to hear very clear­ly what Hen­drix was doing in these songs under his cap­ti­vat­ing vocal deliv­ery, Mitch Mitchell’s rolling fills, and Noel Redding’s trav­el­ing lines. We gain a new appre­ci­a­tion for his rhythm play­ing, his deft tran­si­tions, and how his cool under­play­ing in vers­es made space for his indeli­bly flashy leads and intros.

Is it arti­fi­cial? Sure, but so is the record­ing process. And so is excerpt­ing parts of, say, Cit­i­zen Kane or Ver­ti­go to ana­lyze their edit­ing, cam­era work, or use of col­or. We don’t do it because we only want see part of the film, but because we want to bet­ter under­stand the tech­ni­cal intri­ca­cies of the work as a whole. Hear Hendrix’s iso­lat­ed gui­tar takes above (with some faint bleed from oth­er instru­ments) in “Fire,” “Pur­ple Haze,” “The Wind Cries Mary,” “Span­ish Cas­tle Mag­ic,” “Stone Free,” and, my per­son­al favorite, “Third Stone from the Sun.”

You can lis­ten to many more iso­lat­ed Hen­drix per­for­mances, and those from sev­er­al oth­er musi­cians, at the Dai­ly Motion chan­nel of Joh Phe. Then, by all means, return to the full record­ings and see how lit­tle bits of col­or, shape, and tex­ture that you hadn’t heard before now leap out at you.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Lis­ten to Grace Slick’s Hair-Rais­ing Vocals in the Iso­lat­ed Track for “White Rab­bit” (1967)

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

Jimi Hen­drix Plays the Delta Blues on a 12-String Acoustic Gui­tar in 1968, and Jams with His Blues Idols, Bud­dy Guy & B.B. King

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

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Rock Scene: Browse a Complete Online Archive of the Irreverent Magazine That Chronicled the 1970s Rock & Punk Scene

in Magazines, Music | March 27th, 2017

The web­site RockScen­ester, assem­bled by Ryan Richard­son, has cre­at­ed a com­plete online archive of Rock Scene mag­a­zine, which ran from 1973 through 1982.

In the book There Goes Grav­i­ty: A Life in Rock and Roll, Rock Scene’s co-founder Lisa Robin­son writes, the mag­a­zine “was print­ed on cheap paper and the ink came off on your hands.” “It was an irrev­er­ent, cult music mag­a­zine that doc­u­ment­ed and glam­or­ized the rise of glam­rock and punk rock.” “Part fanzine, part tabloid, Rock Scene was where you could see what hap­pened before or after the show, par­tic­u­lar­ly at par­ties and back­stage.” “Years after Rock Scene was out out print,” Robin­son con­tin­ues, “musicians–Michael Stipe, Duran Duran’s Nick Rhodes, Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament, Thurston Moore, Chrissie Hyn­de and many others–would tell me that they grew up try­ing to find it in their small towns.” They would­n’t have that prob­lem today.

Every sin­gle issue of Rock Scene, from 1973 through 1982, has been scanned cov­er to cov­er. (Richard­son per­son­al­ly dropped $1500 on the project.) You can flip through edi­tions fea­tur­ing David Bowie (1973), The New York Dolls (1974), Lou Reed (1974), The Rolling Stones (1974), Peter Gabriel (1975), Pat­ti Smith (1976) Robert Plant (1977), The Ramones (1977), Iggy Pop (1977) and Deb­bie Har­ry (1982). Or just explore the full archive here. There’s 54 in total.

More zines can be found in the Relat­eds below.

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.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

via @darkshark

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load 50+ Issues of Leg­endary West Coast Punk Music Zines from the 1970–80s: Dam­age, Slash & No Mag

Down­load 834 Rad­i­cal Zines From a Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Online Archive: Glob­al­iza­tion, Punk Music, the Indus­tri­al Prison Com­plex & More

A Com­plete Dig­i­ti­za­tion of the 1960s Mag­a­zine Avant Garde: From John Lennon’s Erot­ic Lith­o­graphs to Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Last Pho­tos

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The Jimi Hendrix of the Bass: Watch a Busker Shred the Bass on the Streets of Newcastle

in Music | March 26th, 2017

If you find your­self on the streets of New­cas­tle, Eng­land, you might stum­ble upon Ojay (aka Stephen Oliv­er Jones) busk­ing away, doing things you nev­er thought pos­si­ble with the bass gui­tar. Hence why he’s been dubbed the Jimi Hen­drix of the bass.

Ojay learned to play the bass with­out putting much effort into it. Years ago, he played in the Dust Junkys, a rap rock band in Man­ches­ter, before then mov­ing to New­cas­tle and giv­ing busk­ing a try. That was nine years ago, he told Tom Drap­er in this inter­view.

For Ojay, busk­ing offers more than a chance to earn a liv­ing. It pro­vides a cre­ative space, a chance to con­tin­u­al­ly impro­vise and work out new musi­cal ideas. Watch him in action above. And do your­self a favor, give the video a lit­tle time to unfold. It just keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter.

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.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

80s Pop Singer Jim­my Somerville Sur­pris­es Ger­man Street Musi­cian as the Busker Sings Somerville’s Hit

Bono and Glen Hansard Busk­ing in Dublin on Christ­mas Eve

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Stream Loads of “City Pop,” the Electronic-Disco-Funk Music That Provided the Soundtrack for Japan During the Roaring 1980s

in Music | March 24th, 2017

News about Japan today tends to focus on the coun­try’s long eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion and pop­u­la­tion decline, but in the 1980s it looked like the world’s next super­pow­er. Har­vard social sci­en­tist Ezra Vogel had just pub­lished the best­selling warn­ing Japan as Num­ber One. Post­war recon­struc­tion had turned into rapid growth, then into a kind of finan­cial gigan­tism. Inter­na­tion­al con­sumers drove Japan­ese cars and filled their homes with Japan­ese elec­tron­ics. Japan­ese con­glom­er­ates went on a world­wide spend­ing binge, snap­ping up oth­er coun­tries’ real estate, their man­u­fac­tur­ers, and even their movie stu­dios. Cam­era-wield­ing Japan­ese tourists replaced the “ugly Amer­i­can” as the boor­ish wealthy tourist of stereo­type.

What went on back in Tokyo as the rest of the devel­oped world looked on in amaze­ment (and a kind of hor­ror)? Out­side of Japan’s infa­mous­ly rig­or­ous work cul­ture — itself part of the rea­son for all the growth — its boom and con­se­quent­ly enor­mous asset bub­ble gave rise to new lifestyles and cul­tures, and the sound­track of the par­ty was “city pop.” Mix­ing Eng­lish lyrics in with Japan­ese, draw­ing influ­ences from West­ern dis­co, funk, and R&B, and using the lat­est son­ic tech­nolo­gies mas­tered nowhere more than in Japan itself, this new, slick­ly pro­duced sub­genre offered a cos­mopoli­tanism, accord­ing to Mori-ra at Elec­tron­ic Beats, that “appealed to those who ben­e­fit­ed from the so-called post-war ‘eco­nom­ic mir­a­cle.’ ” While out­side Japan “city pop might be viewed as gen­er­al 1980s Japan­ese music, now that Japan­ese music has become trendy, city pop has begun to be uncov­ered and even reis­sued.”

What’s more, city pop has become a sub­cul­ture again in our inter­net era, and a glob­al one at that. Its cur­rent enthu­si­asts, many of them not Japan­ese or in any case born too late to ben­e­fit from the boom, cre­ate and share their own city pop mix­es, care­ful­ly curat­ing the tracks (some­times even sup­ply­ing visu­als gath­ered from sources like the Japan­ese ani­ma­tion of the era, often with a Blade Run­ner aes­thet­ic) to per­fect­ly evoke the high life in 1980s Tokyo as they imag­ine it. (Friends who actu­al­ly lived in Japan then describe it as an envi­ron­ment of unal­loyed new-mon­ey obnox­ious­ness, but city pop, like all pop, sells fan­ta­sy, not real­i­ty.) You get a taste of that high life by sam­pling the many city pop mix­es freely avail­able on the inter­net. At the top of this post you’ll find the one post­ed to Youtube by a user called Van Paugam, whose chan­nel also fea­tures a 24-hour city pop radio stream (com­plete with night­time Tokyo dri­ving footage).

Below that, we have a 45-minute “Mix­tape from Japan” whose cre­ator goes by Star­funkel. It fea­tures not just city pop tracks but, for tran­si­tion­al mate­r­i­al, vin­tage record­ings and movie clips to do with the Land of the Ris­ing Sun. (Keep your ears open for the voice of Bill Mur­ray.) Then, the vinyl-only mix by I’m­manuel in Ams­ter­dam sim­ply titled “音楽 Ongaku #1” — Japan­ese for “music” — places city pop in a con­text with oth­er Japan­ese grooves of the era. You’ll find much more curat­ed city pop on Sound­cloud, from the ever-grow­ing “High School Mel­low” series to Brazil­ian funk musi­cian Ed Mot­ta’s 70s-ori­ent­ed mix to Mori-Ra’s own max­i­mal­ly mel­low “Japan­ese Breeze” col­lec­tion. Get too deep, though, and you’ll end up like me, mak­ing trips to Japan to go city pop-shop­ping and even (slow­ly) read­ing Japan­ese books on the sub­ject. The bub­ble may have long since burst, but the beat goes on.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Japan­ese Priest Tries to Revive Bud­dhism by Bring­ing Tech­no Music into the Tem­ple: Attend a Psy­che­del­ic 23-Minute Ser­vice

Blade Run­ner Spoofed in Three Japan­ese Com­mer­cials (and Gen­er­al­ly Loved in Japan)

A Wealth of Free Doc­u­men­taries on All Things Japan­ese: From Ben­to Box­es to Tea Gar­dens, Ramen & Bul­let Trains

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

 

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Watch Janis Joplin’s Breakthrough Performance at the Monterey Pop Festival: “One of the Great Concert Performances of all Time” (1967)

in Music | March 23rd, 2017

“No one to that point had seen a White girl sing the blues like she sang it. And she was a tough Texas girl, she lived real­ly tough, she drank tough, she did drugs, too many and too tough. But as a vocal­ist, her per­for­mance at Mon­terey was also one of the great con­cert per­for­mances of all time.”

That’s famed music and film pro­duc­er Lou Adler talk­ing in 2007 about Janis Joplin and her per­for­mance 40 years before at the Mon­terey Inter­na­tion­al Pop Fes­ti­val. After those three days of music (June 16-June 18, 1967) in the Sum­mer of Love, many of the acts cat­a­pult­ed to fame.

The Who explod­ed state­side, The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence essen­tial­ly launched their career from that stage, Ravi Shankar got intro­duced to Amer­i­cans, and Otis Red­ding played to a most­ly white audi­ence for the first time. Lau­ra Nyro and Canned Heat became famous overnight.

And then there was Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny, front­ed by a 24 year-old Janis Joplin. Their first album wasn’t due until August, and most of the crowd had not heard of this blues band when they took the stage on Sat­ur­day after­noon, June 17. Five songs lat­er, and fin­ish­ing with “Ball and Chain,” the crowd had gone wild. They knew they had seen some­thing spe­cial.

But D.A. Pen­nebak­er, the doc­u­men­tar­i­an behind Dylan’s Don’t Look Back and Bowie’s “Zig­gy Star­dust” con­cert films, had not filmed the set. In an unprece­dent­ed move, Joplin and band were invit­ed back to recre­ate the set the fol­low­ing evening–the only band to do two sets at the festival–and that is the footage seen above. Joplin’s per­for­mance is just as good, maybe even bet­ter, though the Sun­day per­for­mance does not fea­ture James Gurley’s extend­ed gui­tar solo. That ver­sion can be found here.

Not only did Mon­terey Pop launched sev­er­al careers, it legit­imized the idea that rock music was mature and impor­tant enough to have its own fes­ti­val, just like the worlds of jazz and folk. For orga­niz­ers Adler, along with John Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, Alan Paris­er, and Bea­t­les pub­li­cist Derek Tay­lor, it was a huge suc­cess. Two years lat­er a lit­tle gath­er­ing called Wood­stock went even fur­ther. And the rest as they say is…whoever’s head­lin­ing Coachel­la this year.

If you enjoy this footage, you will want to pick up a copy of the film, The Com­plete Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val, from the Cri­te­ri­on Col­lec­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Janis Joplin’s Final Inter­view Reborn as an Ani­mat­ed Car­toon

Wood­stock Revis­it­ed in Three Min­utes

Dick Cavett’s Epic Wood­stock Fes­ti­val Show (August, 1969)

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.

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