Chuck Berry (RIP) Reviews Punk Songs by The Ramones, Sex Pistols, The Clash, Talking Heads & More (1980)

in Music | March 18th, 2017

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

When the punk wave broke in the UK and the States in the mid-1970s, it threat­ened to leave behind the estab­lished rock bands that once seemed so rebel­lious. Pete Town­shend, the gui­tar-smash­ing song­writer of The Who, said: “I kind of wel­comed [the arrival of punk], chal­lenged it, and want­ed it to hap­pen, and then I real­ized that the per­son they want­ed to shoot was me.” And indeed Sid Vicious, of the Sex Pis­tols, would say, “I don’t have any heroes. They’re all use­less to me.”

And yet despite the pos­tur­ing, punk remained root­ed in the rock tra­di­tion, pay­ing trib­ute, whether they knew it or not, to their musi­cal fathers (The Bea­t­les, The Who, The Stones) and even the grand­fa­thers (Chuck Berry and Bud­dy Hol­ly). In Please Kill Me: The Uncen­sored Oral His­to­ry of Punk (a book I com­plete­ly rec­om­mend) edi­tor Legs McNeil writes:

Then the Ramones came back, and count­ed off again, and played their best eigh­teen min­utes of rock n roll that I had ever heard. You could hear the Chuck Berry in it, which was all I lis­tened to, that and the Bea­t­les sec­ond album with all the Chuck Berry cov­ers on it.

It all goes back to Chuck Berry, and Berry knew it. In a 1980 inter­view with the zin Jet Lag, Berry shared his thoughts on the punk anthems of the day and spot­ted his influ­ence in many of them.

The Sex Pis­tols’ “God Save the Queen”:

“What’s this guy so angry about any­way? Gui­tar work and pro­gres­sion is like mine. Good back­beat. Can’t under­stand most of the vocals. If you’re going to be mad at least let the peo­ple know what you’re mad about.”

The Clash’s “Com­plete Con­trol”:

“Sounds like the first one. The rhythm and chord­ing work well togeth­er. Did this guy have a sore throat when he sang the vocals?”

The Ramones’ “Sheena is a Punk Rock­er”:

“A good lit­tle jump num­ber. These guys remind me of myself when I first start­ed, I only knew three chords too.”

The Roman­tics’ “What I Like About You”: 

“Final­ly some­thing you can dance to. Sounds a lot like the six­ties with some of my riffs thrown in for good mea­sure. You say this is new? I’ve heard this stuff plen­ty of times. I can’t under­stand the big fuss.”

Talk­ing Heads’ “Psy­cho Killer”: 

“A funky lit­tle num­ber, that’s for sure. I like the bass a lot. Good mix­ture and a real good flow. The singer sounds like he has a bad case of stage fright.”

Wire’s “I Am the Fly” and Joy Divi­sion’s Unknown Plea­sures:

“So this is the so-called new stuff. It’s noth­ing I ain’t heard before. It sounds like an old blues jam that BB and Mud­dy would car­ry on back­stage at the old amphithe­atre in Chica­go. The instru­ments may be dif­fer­ent but the exper­i­men­t’s the same.”

Chuck Berry passed away today, still unsur­passed, at age 90. Long live Chuck.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds and h/t @alyssamilano and @austinkleon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen and the E Street Band Impro­vis­es and Plays, Com­plete­ly Unre­hearsed, Chuck Berry’s “You Nev­er Can Tell,” Live Onstage (2013)

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

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

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

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Hear Prince’s Personal Playlist of Party Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Party to Life

in Music | March 17th, 2017


Many years ago, I took a job as a wed­ding DJ for a few months to knit ends togeth­er in col­lege. What­ev­er you pic­ture about the job of a wed­ding DJ, I can assure you that it’s even less glam­orous than that. But among the late hours, low pay, and end­less schlep­ping lay at least one pearl-like perk—at every func­tion, when the mood began to ebb along with my san­i­ty, I would put on Prince’s “Con­tro­ver­sy,” turn up the speak­ers as loud as I could, and for the next sev­en min­utes, all would be well. (See him play the song in 2010, above, to an audi­ence in Antwerp.)

For the rest of the night and the rest of the week, I’d be lost in mid-nod to that per­fect dis­til­la­tion of funk, the great­est dis­til­la­tion of funk to include the Lord’s Prayer that was ever put to tape.

Prince wrote per­fect par­ty songs—dozens of them, includ­ing the defin­i­tive par­ty song, “1999,” which Mar­tin Schnei­der at Dan­ger­ous Minds calls “a supreme sig­ni­fi­er for a Six­teen Can­dles lev­el blowout cel­e­bra­tion”… for a cer­tain cohort at least.

An entire mix­tape of Prince tunes would do right by any par­ty, but what would the man him­self put on? Sure­ly he didn’t just play his own music, although… why not? We do know he kept it raw and funky for Pais­ley Park gath­er­ings. In a playlist he pro­vid­ed to the TV show The New Girl in 2013 for an episode fea­tur­ing a fic­tion­al Prince par­ty, he opens with the midtem­po stomp of The Sta­ples Singers’ 1974 Stax Record­ing “City in the Sky.” Before long we’re onto the stone cold groove of Ste­vie Wonder’s “High­er Ground” and the dirty funk of Ohio Player’s “Skin Tight” a song about a “bad, bad mis­sus” in “skin tight britch­es.”

The Prince par­ty playlist (avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, YouTube, or stream it all below) has just the right mix of erot­ic, roman­tic, and spiritual—with the psy­che­del­ic funk of Shug­gie Otis thrown in, naturally—some of the most fine­ly-tuned soul the sev­en­ties pro­duced. One of the lat­est record­ings on the playlist, Cha­ka Khan’s “I Was Made to Love Him” came out in 1978, the same year as Prince’s first album, so we can take a fair­ly good guess at what he was lis­ten­ing to when he made his debut. In fact, we might look at the playlist as a snap­shot of the funk-rock-soul genius from Min­neapo­lis’ orig­i­nal inspi­ra­tions, which still res­onate like cos­mic radi­a­tion in his late dig­i­tal-era record­ings.

With the Prince vault opened and hun­dreds of nev­er-before-heard songs set for release, we’ll have years of oppor­tu­ni­ty to play spot-the-influ­ence. In the mean­time, get some peo­ple over and put on the mix above. If you sense a lull, drop “Con­tro­ver­sy” and watch the most awk­ward guests come alive with moves they nev­er knew they had.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

Prince (RIP) Per­forms Ear­ly Hits in a 1982 Con­cert: “Con­tro­ver­sy,” “I Wan­na Be Your Lover” & More

The Life of Prince in a 24-Page Com­ic Book: A New Release

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

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Tears for Fears Sings “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” with Musician Who Created Divine Dulcimer Version of Their Song

in Music | March 17th, 2017

The web­site Twist­ed Sifter sets the stage for the delight­ful video above:

Last year, musi­cian Ted Yoder uploaded a ham­mered dul­cimer ren­di­tion of “Every­body Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears on YouTube. [Watch it below.]

Then last month, he did a Face­book live broad­cast of the song and both videos have since been viewed mil­lion of times. That’s when singer Curt Smith and drum­mer Jamie Wol­lam decid­ed to drop by Yoder’s orchard for an unfor­get­table encore.

It’s worth not­ing that Mr. Yoder is a Nation­al Ham­mered Dul­cimer cham­pi­on, and con­sid­ered by many  “the Bela Fleck of the ham­mered dul­cimer.” Over on YouTube you can hear him play dul­cimer ver­sions of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” “Don’t Stop Believ­ing,” Bach’s Pre­lude to Cel­lo Suite, “Scar­bor­ough Fair,” and more.

For any­one not famil­iar with the orig­i­nal 1985 ver­sion of “Every­body Wants to Rule the World,” have a lis­ten here.

via Twist­ed Sifter

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!

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David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Theme Song Gets the Seinfeld Treatment

in Music, Television | March 17th, 2017

And, by gol­ly, it works…

via Wel­come to Twin Peaks

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ange­lo Badala­men­ti Reveals How He and David Lynch Com­posed the Twin Peaks‘ “Love Theme”

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

Watch an Epic, 4‑Hour Video Essay on the Mak­ing & Mythol­o­gy of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks

Twin Peaks Tarot Cards Now Avail­able as 78-Card Deck

David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Title Sequence, Recre­at­ed in an Adorable Paper Ani­ma­tion

Hear the Music of David Lynch’s Twin Peaks Played by the Exper­i­men­tal Band, Xiu Xiu: A Free Stream of Their New Album

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Steve Reich is Calling: A Minimalist Ringtone for the iPhone

in Apple, Music | March 15th, 2017

What if min­i­mal­ist com­pos­er Steve Reich got his hands on the iPhone’s famil­iar Marim­ba ring­tone? That’s what the web­site Steve Reich is Call­ing imag­ines. Here’s how Jason Kot­tke describes the basic con­cept:

[Reich’s] 1967 piece Piano Phase fea­tured a pair of pianists repet­i­tive­ly per­form­ing the same piece at two slight­ly dif­fer­ent tem­pos, form­ing a con­tin­u­al­ly evolv­ing musi­cal round. Seth Kran­zler took this idea and made a Reich-like piece with two iPhones ring­ing at slight­ly dif­fer­ent tem­pos.

From what I can tell, there’s not actu­al­ly an offi­cial way to down­load the ring­tone and make it your own–though it does appear that there are, indeed, ways to con­vert Youtube videos into ring­tones. (Note: we haven’t test­ed these meth­ods, so pro­ceed cau­tious­ly.)

For any­one inter­est­ed in tak­ing a deep­er dive–a much deep­er dive–into Reich’s musi­cal world, please see this post in our archive: Hear Steve Reich’s Min­i­mal­ist Com­po­si­tions in a 28-Hour Playlist: A Jour­ney Through His Influ­en­tial Record­ings.

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!

Look­ing for free, pro­fes­­sion­al­­ly-read audio books from Audible.com? Here’s a great, no-strings-attached deal. If you start a 30 day free tri­al with Audible.com, you can down­load two free audio books of your choice. Get more details on the offer here.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Music of Avant-Garde Com­pos­er John Cage Now Avail­able in a Free Online Archive

Björk Presents Ground­break­ing Exper­i­men­tal Musi­cians on the BBC’s Mod­ern Min­i­mal­ists (1997)

The Avant-Garde Project: An Archive of Music by 200 Cut­ting-Edge Com­posers, Includ­ing Stravin­sky, Schoen­berg, Cage & More

 

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Rock Band: Hear The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” Played with Electromechanical Instruments That Make Music with Rocks

in Music, Technology | March 15th, 2017

From Neil Men­doza comes “Rock Band,” an amal­ga­ma­tion of “electro­mechan­i­cal instru­ments that make music with rocks by throw­ing them through the air, slap­ping them and mak­ing them vibrate.” Above, hear the band play one of my favorite Bea­t­les songs, “Here Comes the Sun.” There’s no Paul, John, George and Ringo here. Instead, you’ve got the fol­low­ing band mem­bers:

Pinger — fires small rocks at alu­mini­um keys using sole­noids.
Spin­ner — launch­es mag­net­ic rocks, Hematite, at pieces of mar­ble. Rocks are launched by spin­ning mag­nets using Applied Motion applied-motion.com step­per motors.
Slap­per — slaps rocks with fake leather.
Buzzer — vibrates the plunger of a sole­noid against a piece of mar­ble.

Accord­ing to Neil, “the whole project is con­trolled by a com­put­er run­ning a MIDI play­er writ­ten in open­Frame­works talk­ing to a Teen­sy. The machines were designed using Autodesk Fusion 360 and Autodesk Inven­tor.” You can find instruc­tions on how to build your own Pinger here.

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 The Kids Should See This

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How Did Beethoven Compose His 9th Symphony After He Went Completely Deaf?

in Biology, Math, Music, Science | March 14th, 2017

You don’t need to know any­thing at all about clas­si­cal music, nor have any lik­ing for it even, to be deeply moved by that most famous of sym­phonies, Lud­wig van Beethoven’s 9th—“per­haps the most icon­ic work of the West­ern musi­cal tra­di­tion,” writes The Juil­liard Jour­nal in an arti­cle about its hand­writ­ten score. Com­mis­sioned in 1817, the sub­lime work was only com­plet­ed in 1824. By that time, its com­pos­er was com­plete­ly and total­ly deaf. At the first per­for­mance, Beethoven did not notice that the mas­sive final choral move­ment had end­ed, and one of the musi­cians had to turn him around to acknowl­edge the audi­ence.

This may seem, says researcher Natalya St. Clair in the TED-Ed video above, like some “cru­el joke,” but it’s the truth. Beethoven was so deaf that some of the most inter­est­ing arti­facts he left behind are the so-called “con­ver­sa­tion books,” kept from 1818 onward to com­mu­ni­cate with vis­i­tors who had to write down their ques­tions and replies. How then might it have been pos­si­ble for the com­pos­er to cre­ate such endur­ing­ly thrilling, rap­tur­ous works of aur­al art?

Using the del­i­cate, melan­choly “Moon­light Sonata” (which the com­pos­er wrote in 1801, when he could still hear), St. Clair attempts to show us how Beethoven used math­e­mat­i­cal “pat­terns hid­den beneath the beau­ti­ful sounds.” (In the short video below from doc­u­men­tary The Genius of Beethoven, see the onset of Beethoven’s hear­ing loss in a dra­mat­ic read­ing of his let­ters.) Accord­ing to St. Clair’s the­o­ry, Beethoven com­posed by observ­ing “the math­e­mat­i­cal rela­tion­ship between the pitch fre­quen­cy of dif­fer­ent notes,” though he did not write his sym­phonies in cal­cu­lus. It’s left rather unclear how the com­poser’s sup­posed intu­ition of math­e­mat­ics and pitch cor­re­sponds with his abil­i­ty to express such a range of emo­tions through music.

We can learn more about Beethoven’s deaf­ness and its bio­log­i­cal rela­tion­ship to his com­po­si­tion­al style in the short video below with research fel­low Edoar­do Sac­cen­ti and his col­league Age Smilde from the Biosys­tems Data Analy­sis Group at Amsterdam’s Swammer­dam Insti­tute for Life Sci­ences. By count­ing the high and low fre­quen­cies in Beethoven’s com­plete string quar­tets, a task that took Sac­cen­ti many weeks, he and his team were able to show how three dis­tinct com­po­si­tion­al styles “cor­re­spond to stages in the pro­gres­sion of his deaf­ness,” as they write in their paper (which you can down­load in PDF here).

The pro­gres­sion is unusu­al. As his con­di­tion wors­ened, Beethoven includ­ed few­er and few­er high fre­quen­cy sounds in his com­po­si­tions (giv­ing cel­lists much more to do). By the time we get to 1824–26, “the years of the late string quar­tets and of com­plete deafness”—and of the com­ple­tion of the 9th—the high notes have returned, due in part, Smilde says, to “the bal­ance between an audi­to­ry feed­back and the inner ear.” Beethoven’s reliance on his “inner ear” made his music “much and much rich­er.” How? As one vio­lin­ist in the clip puts it, he was “giv­en more free­dom because he was not attached any­more to the phys­i­cal sound, [he could] just use his imag­i­na­tion.”

For all of the com­pelling evi­dence pre­sent­ed here, whether Beethoven’s genius in his painful lat­er years is attrib­ut­able to his intu­ition of com­plex math­e­mat­i­cal pat­terns or to the total free rein of his imag­i­na­tive inner ear may in fact be undis­cov­er­able. In any case, no amount of ratio­nal expla­na­tion can explain away our aston­ish­ment that the man who wrote the unfail­ing­ly pow­er­ful, awe­some­ly dynam­ic “Ode to Joy” finale (con­duct­ed above by Leonard Bern­stein), couldn’t actu­al­ly hear any of the music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stream the Com­plete Works of Bach & Beethoven: 250 Free Hours of Music

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s Ode to Joy

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

Leonard Bern­stein Con­ducts Beethoven’s 9th in a Clas­sic 1979 Per­for­mance

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

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See Japanese Musicians Play “Amazing Grace” with 273 Theremins Placed Inside Matryoshka Dolls–Then Learn How They Perform Their Magic

in Music, Technology | March 14th, 2017

In the arts, tech­nol­o­gy, or any oth­er realm, Japan­ese cul­ture encour­ages tak­ing one’s cho­sen pur­suits to the lim­its, even when their mate­r­i­al comes from oth­er cul­tures. We have here a par­tic­u­lar­ly notable exam­ple in the form of Man­darin Elec­tron, a musi­cal ensem­ble found­ed and led since 1999 by pio­neer Japan­ese theremin play­er Masa­mi Takeuchi. But its mem­bers (273 of whom set the theremin-ensem­ble Guin­ness World Record with the per­for­mance of “Amaz­ing Grace” above) don’t play quite the same touch­less, spooky-sound­ing instru­ment vin­tage elec­tron­ic music fans would rec­og­nize; instead, they mas­ter the Matry­omin, a theremin in the com­pact form of a tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian Matryosh­ka doll, con­ve­nient­ly designed “so as to dis­sem­i­nate theremin per­for­mance.”

The com­bi­na­tion isn’t quite as ran­dom as it sounds. Back in 2015 we post­ed about the his­to­ry of the theremin, which goes back to the work of a Russ­ian inven­tor named Léon Theremin. When he first devel­oped the instru­ment in 1919, he called it the Aether­phone, and in the 1920s demon­strat­ed it in Europe and the Unit­ed States.

In the decades there­after, Therem­in’s strange new musi­cal inven­tion cap­tured imag­i­na­tions all over the world, and last year Japan cel­e­brat­ed the inven­tor’s 120th Birth­day with a series of events called Theremin 120 — most of them some­how involv­ing Takeuchi. You can learn more about his his­to­ry with the theremin and its home­land from the video just above.

In a sense, Takeuchi, who moved to Rus­sia to study under Therem­in’s rel­a­tive and pupil Lydia Kavia, has real­ized the inven­tor’s orig­i­nal vision for his “instru­ment of a singing-voice kind.” Free­ing its sounds from their mid-2oth-cen­tu­ry West­ern asso­ci­a­tions — dri­ve-in hor­ror movies, nov­el­ty surf-rock — he has over­seen their trans­for­ma­tion into the ele­ments of an elec­tron­ic cho­rus. You can pur­chase your very own Man­darin Elec­tron-made Matry­omin (now on its third-gen­er­a­tion mod­el) and start learn­ing to play it with the video just above, but if its poten­tial still escapes you, have a look at Takeuchi and his ensem­ble’s exten­sive col­lec­tion of tour and media appear­ances. If the sound and sight of hun­dreds of peo­ple all tun­ing their Matryosh­ka-doll theremins at once does­n’t intrigue you, noth­ing could.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy Played With 167 Theremins Placed Inside Matryosh­ka Dolls in Japan

Sovi­et Inven­tor Léon Theremin Shows Off the Theremin, the Ear­ly Elec­tron­ic Instru­ment That Could Be Played With­out Being Touched (1954)

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

“Some­where Over the Rain­bow” Played on a 1929 Theremin

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

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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