“The joys of motor­ing are more or less fic­tion­al,” wrote Zel­da Fitzger­ald to Lud­low Fowler, a friend of her hus­band F. Scott, in 1920. But what an inspir­ing breadth of fic­tion they’ve inspired on the page and screen, most­ly set along the seem­ing­ly end­less road-miles of Amer­i­ca. But look over to Ger­many, a land of dri­vers renowned for their love of and respect for the auto­mo­bile, and you find a whole oth­er sort of, as it were, dri­ving-dri­ven cre­ativ­i­ty. Most famous­ly, 34 years after Fitzger­ald wrote to Fowler, a young Düs­sel­dorf band by the name of Kraftwerk looked to the joys of motor­ing and laid down their sig­na­ture song: “Auto­bahn.”

Tak­ing up 22 full min­utes of the epony­mous 1974 album (though less than three and a half as a sin­gle), “Auto­bahn,” which rock crit­ic Robert Christ­gau described as ema­nat­ing from “a machine deter­mined to rule all music with a steel hand and some mylar,” uses the kind of elec­tron­ic com­po­si­tion tech­niques Kraftwerk would go on to pop­u­lar­ize to evoke the feel­ing of move­ment on the tit­u­lar Ger­man high­way sys­tem.

“We used to dri­ve a lot,” per­cus­sion­ist Wolf­gang Flür once recalled. “We used to lis­ten to the sound of dri­ving, the wind, pass­ing cars and lor­ries, the rain, every moment the sounds around you are chang­ing, and the idea was to rebuild those sounds on the synth.”

But as vet­er­an road-trip­pers know, you aren’t real­ly dri­ving unless the dri­ving hyp­no­tizes you: not only should you spend pro­longed stretch­es of time on the road, you should ide­al­ly do it to a rhyth­mi­cal­ly and tem­po­ral­ly suit­able son­ic back­drop. And so we offer you this live 40-minute ver­sion of “Auto­bahn” which, in the words of Elec­tron­ic Beats, “demon­strates what a musi­cal force the group was back in the day,” tak­en from “a show in the Ger­man city of Lev­erkusen that fus­es the group’s lat­ter-era tech­no-futur­ism with its ear­li­er free-jazz psy­che­del­ic freak­i­ness.” To keep the road-robot mood rolling, why not fire up the ani­mat­ed “Auto­bahn” music video from 1979 we fea­tured last year? But please, don’t watch while you dri­ve — espe­cial­ly if there’s no speed lim­it.

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Psy­che­del­ic Ani­mat­ed Video for Kraftwerk’s “Auto­bahn” from 1979

Kraftwerk’s “The Robots” Per­formed by Ger­man First Graders in Adorable Card­board Robot Out­fits

Kraftwerk’s First Con­cert: The Begin­ning of the End­less­ly Influ­en­tial Band (1970)

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.

Image of Robert­son (left) and Bob Dylan (right) by Jim Sum­maria, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

A quick heads up: Marc Maron released this week a long, prob­ing and quite excel­lent inter­view with The Band’s Rob­bie Robert­son. The con­ver­sa­tion gives you:

the full low­down on the his­to­ry of The Band, from its ori­gins as a back­ing group to its final bow with The Last Waltz. Rob­bie talks about being with Bob Dylan when he went elec­tric and deal­ing with the blow­back of that, and he explains how he came to have such a great work­ing rela­tion­ship with Mar­tin Scors­ese on many of the direc­tor’s films.

You can stream the inter­view below. It’s worth lis­ten­ing to Maron’s impas­sioned mono­logue. But if you want to skip straight to the inter­view itself, then jump to the 15 minute mark.

Robert­son recent­ly pub­lished a new mem­oir called Tes­ti­mo­ny, and I should point out that you can down­load it as a free audio­book if you take part in Audible.com’s 30 day free tri­al pro­gram. Get details on Audi­ble’s free tri­al here.

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:

Watch The Band Play “The Weight,” “Up On Crip­ple Creek” and More in Rare 1970 Con­cert Footage

Mar­tin Scors­ese Cap­tures Lev­on Helm and The Band Per­form­ing “The Weight” in The Last Waltz

Jeff Bridges Nar­rates a Brief His­to­ry of Bob Dylan’s Base­ment Tapes

There are those albums that can change some­one’s per­cep­tion of an entire genre of music. Willie Nelson’s Red Head­ed Stranger was such an album for me. But Nelson’s approach on his 1975 con­cept record not only chal­lenged my pre­con­cep­tions, it chal­lenged the sureties of the coun­try scene of the time. By per­fect­ing the music’s capac­i­ty for aching beau­ty and sad­ness in spare, aus­tere folk songs, Nel­son para­dox­i­cal­ly expand­ed its pos­si­bil­i­ties. His fel­low artists thought it was “prac­ti­cal­ly blas­phe­mous and insub­or­di­nate,” notes Kelsey But­ter­worth, “to record coun­try in so spar­ing a man­ner.”

Record buy­ers dis­agreed. Nel­son fans loved Red-Head­ed Stranger’s dusty, wide open spaces, its bal­lads full of lone­li­ness and regret. With­out the over­wrought pro­duc­tion so many coun­try singers received at the time, the songs became show­cas­es for the plain­tive crag­gi­ness of Nelson’s voice, and for the unmis­tak­able sound of Trig­ger, his famous Mar­tin N‑20 clas­si­cal, “a gor­geous instru­ment,” writes Texas Month­ly, “with a warm, sweet tone,” bought in 1969 by “a strug­gling coun­try singer, a guy who had a pig farm, a fail­ing mar­riage, and a crap­py record deal.”

Trig­ger has been with Willie Nel­son ever since, a com­pan­ion as faith­ful as the horse it’s named after. The instru­ment is famous, most­ly, for its beat-up con­di­tion, includ­ing a large hole near the bridge. But in the video above from Rolling Stone (nar­rat­ed by Woody Har­rel­son) we learn much more about the rela­tion­ship between man and gui­tar. The love was first kin­dled by Nel­son find­ing in Trig­ger the tone he had been search­ing for—the tone of his gui­tar hero Djan­go Rein­hardt, “the best gui­tar play­er ever.”

But in Nelson’s hands, and play­ing his songs, Trig­ger became the dis­tinc­tive sound of so much Out­law Coun­try, the “blas­phe­mous and insub­or­di­nate” sub­genre pio­neered by Nel­son, Way­lon Jen­nings, John­ny Cash and oth­ers. “You hear that gui­tar,” says luthi­er Mark Erlewine, “even with­out him singing, and you go, ‘That’s Trig­ger.’” I think even casu­al fans of Nel­son who only know his great­est hits can instant­ly pick up on the dis­tinc­tive­ness of his guitar’s mel­low voice. “There’s a Hoodoo about Trig­ger,” says Erlewine, “that you just can’t mess with it.”

The biog­ra­phy of Trig­ger is insep­a­ra­ble from the sto­ry of Willie Nelson’s rise to fame, and we get a brief tour of his career above. Nel­son began as a tra­di­tion­al but­toned-up Nashville croon­er, but he decid­ed to retire his act and move back to Texas to farm. Then he found Trig­ger. That meet­ing of play­er and gui­tar pos­si­bly rein­vig­o­rat­ed Nelson’s entire career, inspir­ing his move to Austin and his com­plete rein­ven­tion of coun­try music.

“Willie Nel­son and His Famous Gui­tar: The Tale of Trig­ger” will be added to our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Willie Nelson–Young, Clean-Shaven & Wear­ing a Suit–Sings Ear­ly Hits at the Grand Ole Opry (1962)

Willie Nel­son Audi­tions for The Hob­bit Film Sequel, Turns 80 Today

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law, and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

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

In July of 2015, 1,000 musi­cians gath­ered togeth­er in Cese­na, Italy and per­formed in uni­son a rol­lick­ing ver­sion of the Foo Fight­ers’ song “Learn to Fly.”

Now, they’re back and play­ing the best-known song from Dave Grohl’s ear­li­er band. We’re talk­ing, of course, about Nir­vana’s hit, “Smells Like Teen Spir­it.”

Here we are now. Enter­tain us. Ladies and gen­tle­men, the world’s largest rock band.

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:

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Pat­ti Smith’s Cov­er of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Strips the Song Down to its Heart

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991