Giv­en that we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured two doc­u­men­taries on elec­tron­ic music pio­neer Delia Der­byshire, an intro­duc­tion to four oth­er female com­posers who pio­neered elec­tron­ic music (Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros), and sev­en hours of elec­tron­ic music made by women between 1938 and 2014, no loy­al Open Cul­ture read­er could claim igno­rance on the theme of this new mix­tape, Elec­tron­ic Lady­land. It comes from the French musi­cal project Aran­del, whose mem­bers remain anony­mous and could there­fore be of any gen­der, but who, in these 45 min­utes (made of 55 dif­fer­ent tracks by 35 female com­posers), dis­play a mas­tery of the field.

“We real­ized that an uncon­scious fem­i­nine elec­tron­ic music Inter­na­tionale has exist­ed through­out the ages and we won­dered whether a secret intu­ition might have gath­ered around shared research,” says Aran­del in a trans­lat­ed inter­view. “Was their mutu­al desires achieved dif­fer­ent­ly in dif­fer­ent coun­tries, with dif­fer­ent tools in dif­fer­ent time­zones? The idea was to see what would hap­pen if we gath­ered them in the same fic­ti­tious room for 45 min­utes, and built a choir from all their pro­duc­tions.”

Aran­del’s inter­view­er describes the musi­cians in the mix as com­ing from “very dif­fer­ent musi­cal hori­zons: we find aca­d­e­m­ic learned musi­cians, research music com­posers and exper­i­menters who used to do DIY works com­posed for adver­tis­ing or tele­vi­sion in a pop or easy lis­ten­ing con­text, some eccen­tric women like The Space Lady or Ruth White.” We also hear from famous names like Lau­rie Ander­son and Wendy Car­los, and Delia Der­byshire. “What she accom­plished is fas­ci­nat­ing,” says Aran­del of Der­byshire, “as is lis­ten­ing to her talk about her inter­est­ing work in doc­u­men­taries,” and they’ve also includ­ed work from Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Eliane Radigue, and Pauline Oliveiros, sub­jects of the oth­er doc­u­men­taries we’ve post­ed here.

Elec­tron­ic Lady­land drops you right into a retro-futur­is­tic son­ic land­scape equal­ly dance­able and haunt­ing, one with great vari­ety as well as an unex­pect­ed con­sis­ten­cy. It pro­vides not just a kind of brief overview of what cer­tain gen­er­a­tions of female com­posers dis­cov­ered with their new and then-strange elec­tron­ic instru­ments and oth­er devices, but one you may well want to keep in your library for fre­quent lis­ten­ing. It will also, accord­ing to Aran­del, make you think: “There is an almost mag­ic link between women and elec­tron­ic music, from the 50’s / 60’s. Have you asked your­self the ques­tion of social, artis­tic, maybe mag­ic rea­sons behind this link?” Hit the play but­ton, and you may start. Find the list of tracks below.

1. Gly­nis Jones : Mag­ic Bird Song (1976)

2. Doris Nor­ton : Nor­ton Rythm Soft (1986)

3. Colette Mag­ny : « Avec » Poème (1966)

4. Daphne Oram : Just For You (Excerpt 1)

5. Lau­rie Spiegel : Clock­works (1974)

6. Pauline Oliveiros : Bog Bog (1966)

7. Megan Roberts — I Could Sit Here All Day (1977)

8. Suzanne Ciani : Paris 1971

9. Lau­rie Ander­son : Tape Bow Trio (Say Yes) (1981)

10. Gly­nis Jones : Schlum Rooli (1975)

11. Ruth White : Mists And Rains (1969)

12. Wendy Car­los : Spring (1972)

13. Ann McMil­lan : Syrinx (1978)

14. Delia Der­byshire : Rest­less Relays (1969)

15. Mag­gi Payne : Flights Of Fan­cy (1986)

16. Else Marie Pade : Syv Cirkler (1958)

17. Daniela Casa : Ricer­ca Del­la Mate­ria (1975)

18. The Space Lady : Domine, Libra Nos (1990)

19. Johan­na Bey­er : Music Of The Spheres [1938]

20. Mad­dale­na Fagan­di­ni : Inter­val Sig­nal (1960)

21. Eliane Radigue : Chryp­tus I (1970)

22. Ruth White : Owls (1969)

23. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Spe­ichen (1979)

24. Beat­riz Fer­reyra — Demeures Aqua­tiques (1967)

25. Doris Nor­ton : War Mania Analy­sis (1983)

26. Tera De Marez Oyens : Safed (1967)

27. Daphne Oram : Rhyth­mic Vari­a­tion II (1962)

28. Mireille Chamass-Kyrou : Etude 1 (1960)

29. Lau­rie Spiegel : Drums (1983)

30. Tere­sa Ram­pazzi : Stom­a­co 2 (1972)

31. Tere­sa Ram­pazzi : Esofa­go 1 (1972)

32. Suzanne Ciani : Fourth Voice: Sound Of Wet­ness (1970)

33. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Expan­sion (1979)

34. Alice Shields : Sac­ri­fice (1993)

35. Megan Roberts and Ray­mond Ghi­rar­do : ATVO II (1987)

36. Lau­rie Ander­son : Drums (1981)

37. Doris Hays : Som­er­sault Beat (1971)

38. Lily Green­ham : Tillid (1973)

39. Ruth Ander­son : Points (1973–74)

40. Pril Smi­ley : Kolyosa (1970)

41. Cather­ine Chris­ter Hen­nix : The Elec­tric Harp­si­chord (1976)

42. Joan La Bar­bara : Solo for Voice 45 (from Song­books) (1977)

43. Sla­va Tsuk­er­man, Bren­da Hutchin­son & Clive Smith : Night Club 1 (1983)

44. Monique Rollin : Motet (Etude Vocale) (1952)

45. Sofia Gubaiduli­na : Vivente – Non Vivente (1970)

46. Ruth White : Spleen (1967)

47. Doris Hays : Scared Trip (1971)

48. Daphne Oram : Pulse Perse­phone (Alter­nate Parts For Mix­ing)

49. Mag­gi Payne : Game­lan (1984)

50. Lau­rie Spiegel : The Unques­tioned Answer (1980)

51. Ursu­la Bogn­er : Homöo­stat (1985)

52. Wendy Car­los : Sum­mer (1972)

53. Suzanne Ciani : Princess With Orange Feet

54. Pauline Oliveiros : Poem Of Change (1993)

55. Suzanne Ciani : Thir­teenth Voice: And All Dreams Are Not For Sale (1970)

via Elec­tron­ic Beats

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music in 476 Tracks (1937–2001)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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.

We’ve seen 1999 mem­bers of Choir! Choir! Choir! per­form “When Doves Cry,” a mov­ing, mass trib­ute to Prince. And they’re now back, 1500 strong, with Rufus Wain­wright at the helm, singing Leonard Cohen’s beloved and oft-cov­ered song, Hal­lelu­jah.” Per­formed at the Hearn Gen­er­at­ing Sta­tion in Toron­to, it must have been a won­der­ful thing to expe­ri­ence live in per­son.

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!

Bring­ing her down-home North Car­oli­na back­ground to the world of funk, Bet­ty Mabry spent a bet­ter part of the six­ties try­ing to make it big in the music scene, while also mod­el­ing to pay the rent. She ran in the same crowds as Jimi Hen­drix, Eric Clap­ton, and Hugh Masekela (who she dat­ed), and she wrote her own songs, sell­ing one to the Cham­bers Broth­ers, and then got a cou­ple of sin­gles on Capi­tol Records.

And then Miles Davis stepped in the pic­ture. First as a whirl­wind romance and mar­riage, then as a pro­duc­er who was going to launch Bet­ty Davis as the queen of funk (and refur­bish his image in the process.) He had already ded­i­cat­ed two songs to her and put her on the cov­er of his 1968 album Filles de Kil­i­man­jaro. And now he was set to pro­duce her solo debut.

That album is final­ly being released. Bet­ty Davis: The Colum­bia Years 1968–1969 drops tomor­row. To hear Light in the Attic’s video press release above breath­less­ly tell it, “music fans have long debat­ed the truth about one leg­endary ses­sion record­ed in 1969 at Columbia’s 52nd Street Stu­dios.” Per­son­al­ly I don’t know what was actu­al­ly debat­ed, but yes, Bet­ty Davis record­ed tracks for a funk album using mem­bers of Jimi Hendrix’s Expe­ri­ence band (Mitch Mitchell, drums) and his Band of Gyp­sies (Bil­ly Cox, bass), along with gui­tarist John McLaugh­lin, key­boardist Her­bie Han­cock, Har­vey Brooks on bass, Wayne Short­er on sax, and Lar­ry Young on organ. Teo Macero co-pro­duced with Miles Davis.

If this sounds like most of the band that went on to make Miles’ Bitch­es Brew (a record title sug­gest­ed by Bet­ty), then you’re right. It could be seen as a ses­sion that got the wheels spin­ning in Miles’ mind about a new direc­tion to take his own work. And it’s that moment that so fas­ci­nates music fans.

Colum­bia passed on the Bet­ty Davis album and buried it in its vaults. It would take four years until Bet­ty Davis was able to get a solo album out on her own terms. That epony­mous 1973 album and the two that fol­lowed were poor sell­ers, but earned cult sta­tus due to Bet­ty Davis’ unabashed and unapolo­getic sex­u­al­i­ty, fem­i­nism, and feroc­i­ty on stage—the same fac­tors that scared radio oper­a­tors and con­cert venues.

“She was the first Madon­na, but Madon­na was like Don­ny Osmond by com­par­i­son,” Car­los San­tana once quipped about her.

The Light in the Attic site has very brief clips from the songs on the new release, but since they are all from the open­ings of the tracks, they give lit­tle indi­ca­tion of the funky stew to fol­low, from the Cream and Cree­dence Clear­wa­ter Revival cov­ers (“Politi­cian Man,” “Born on the Bay­ou”) to her own songs. The CD and LP pack­age looks gor­geous of course, with lin­er notes and pho­tos.

Davis retired from music after her fourth album went nowhere but she is still around, and, accord­ing to the Light in the Attic web­site, a doc­u­men­tary is in the works on this influ­en­tial funky icon who needs redis­cov­er­ing.

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis’ Entire Discog­ra­phy Pre­sent­ed in a Styl­ish Inter­ac­tive Visu­al­iza­tion

The Night When Miles Davis Opened for the Grate­ful Dead in 1970: Hear the Com­plete Record­ings

Rare Miles Davis Live Record­ings Cap­ture the Jazz Musi­cian at the Height of His Pow­ers

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.

Back in 2012, we fea­tured a young Bob Dylan talk­ing and play­ing on The Studs Terkel radio show in 1963. Open Cul­ture’s Mike Springer pref­aced the inter­view with these words, “Dylan had just fin­ished record­ing the songs for his sec­ond album, The Free­wheel­in’ Bob Dylan, when he trav­eled from New York to Chica­go to play a gig at a lit­tle place part­ly owned by his man­ag­er, Albert Gross­man, called The Bear Club. The next day he went to the WFMT stu­dios for the hour-long appear­ance on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram. Most sources give the date of the inter­view as April 26, 1963, though Dylan schol­ar Michael Krogs­gaard has giv­en it as May 3.” In talk­ing with Studs, Dylan told some tall tales (schol­ars say) about his youth, ones that would have made Huck­le­ber­ry Finn proud. And that ten­den­cy to cre­ate an alter­na­tive biog­ra­phy is on dis­play again in an even ear­li­er inter­view, dat­ing back to March 11, 1962.

Ani­mat­ed by Blank on Blank above, the (excerpt­ed) inter­view lets us hear Dylan, only 20 years old, before the release of his epony­mous debut album, and before achiev­ing any kind of fame. Young Dylan tells Cyn­thia Good­ing, host of the “Folksinger’s Choice” radio pro­gram in NYC, about the six years he spent with the car­ni­val.

I was with the car­ni­val off and on for about six years… I was clean-up boy, I used to be on the main line, on the fer­ris wheel, uh, do just run rides. I used to do all kinds of stuff like that… And I did­n’t go to school a bunch of years and I skipped this and I skipped that.

Lat­er he con­tin­ued:

I wrote a song once. I’m try­ing to find, a real good song I wrote. An’ it’s about this lady I knew in the car­ni­val. An’ er, they had a side show, I only, I was, this was, Thomas show, Roy B Thomas shows, and there was, they had a freak show in it, you know, and all the midgets and all that kind of stuff. An’ there was one lady in there real­ly bad shape. Like her skin had been all burned when she was a lit­tle baby, you know, and it did­n’t grow right, and so she was like a freak. An’ all these peo­ple would pay mon­ey, you know, to come and see and … er … that real­ly sort of got to me, you know. They’d come and see, and I mean, she was very, she did­n’t real­ly look like nor­mal, she had this fun­ny kind of skin and they passed her of as the ele­phant lady. And, er, like she was just burned com­plete­ly since she was a lit­tle baby, er.

You can hear a near­ly com­plete audio record­ing of the inter­view (55 min­utes) below, and read a tran­script of the full inter­view on Expect­ing Rain.

Over on Spo­ti­fy, you can hear the 11 songs that Dylan played for Good­ing that day.

They include sev­er­al that Dylan wrote, along with some old folk and blues songs:

1. “(I Heard That) Lone­some Whis­tle” (Hank Williams/Jimmie Davis)
2. “Fix­in’ to Die” (Buk­ka White)
3. “Smoke­stack Ligh­n­ing” (Howl­in’ Wolf)
4. “Hard Trav­elin’ ” (Woody Guthrie)
5. “The Death of Emmett Till”  (Bob Dylan)
6. “Stand­ing on the High­way” (Bob Dylan)
7. “Roll on John” (Rufus Crisp)
8. “Stealin’ ” (tra­di­tion­al)
9. “It Makes a Long Time Man Feel Bad” (tra­di­tion­al)
10. “Baby, Please Don’t Go” (Big Joe Williams)
11. “Hard Times in New York Town” (Bob Dylan)

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:

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Bob Dylan Reads From T.S. Eliot’s Great Mod­ernist PoemThe Waste Land

Bob Dylan & The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987: Hear 74 Tracks

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

One of the ini­tial impres­sions of the British punks–and one that impre­sario Mal­colm McLaren tried to cultivate–was that they were dan­ger­ous, unschooled yobs cre­at­ing rock music from pri­mor­dial mate­ri­als. That’s why McLaren was unhap­py about John Lydon aka John­ny Rotten’s appear­ance on Cap­i­tal Radio’s Tom­my Vance Show in the mid­dle of the sum­mer of punk, 1977.

“Anar­chy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen” had already been released as sin­gles. The Pis­tols had made their infa­mous appear­ance on Bill Grundy’s chat show, where goad­ed into doing some­thing out­ra­geous, they swore a bit and the British press melt­ed down in parox­ysms of pan­ic. They had been dropped by both EMI and A&M, and had fin­ished record­ing the bulk of Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks the month before. The band was in lim­bo.

DJ Tom­my Vance was six­teen years old­er than Lydon, but Cap­i­tal Radio was an inde­pen­dent sta­tion and offered an alter­na­tive to the BBC, which only a few months ear­li­er banned out­right “God Save the Queen” from the air­waves and refused to award it a num­ber one sin­gle spot, even though the sin­gle had earned it, sales­wise.

Lydon was asked to bring in records from his own col­lec­tion and talk about them, and, in doing so, demon­strat­ed that he was­n’t a thug, but an eclec­tic young music fan with broad tastes. He liked a lot of reg­gae (Peter Tosh, Mak­ka Bees, Dr. Ali­man­ta­do) and dub, and says he grew up with it. It also explains the dub heavy out­ings he’d soon do with Pub­lic Image Ltd. And he choos­es tracks by singer-song­writ­ers like Tim Buck­ley, Kevin Coyne, and Neil Young; John Cale, Lou Reed, and Nico; and art rock like Can, a band intro­duced to him by Sid Vicious.

He’s still abrupt, insult­ing and dis­mis­sive when he needs to be. He calls David Bowie a “real bad drag queen,” doesn’t think much of the Rolling Stones or most ‘60s bands (“ter­ri­ble scratch­ing sound” he says), and says most of his con­tem­po­rary punk bands are “stag­nant” and pre­dictable. But it wouldn’t be John­ny Rot­ten any oth­er way, would it?

When asked about his record col­lec­tion, Lydon says it’s quite big:

I ain’t got a record play­er at the moment, so I have to pass them around, because music’s for lis­ten­ing to, not to store away in a bloody cup­board. Yeah, I love my music.

You can lis­ten to the broad­cast here:

And here’s the full track list­ing:

Tim Buck­ley – Sweet Sur­ren­der
The Cre­ation – Life Is Just Begin­ning
David Bowie – Rebel Rebel
Unknown Irish Folk Music / Jig
Augus­tus Pablo – King Tub­by Meets The Rock­ers Uptown
Gary Glit­ter – Doing Alright With The Boys
Fred Locks – Walls
Vivian Jack­son and the Prophets – Fire in a Kingston
Cul­ture – I’m Not Ashamed
Dr Ali­man­ta­do & The Rebels – Born For A Pur­pose
Bob­by Byrd – Back From The Dead
Neil Young – Rev­o­lu­tion Blues
Lou Reed – Men Of Good For­tune
Kevin Coyne – East­bourne Ladies
Peter Ham­mill – The Insti­tute Of Men­tal Health, Burn­ing
Peter Ham­mill – Nobody’s Busi­ness
Mak­ka Bees – Nation Fid­dler / Fire!
Cap­tain Beef­heart – The Blimp
Nico – Jan­i­tor Of Luna­cy
Ken Boothe – Is It Because I’m Black
John Cale – Legs Lar­ry At Tele­vi­sion Cen­tre
Third Ear Band – Fleance
Can – Hal­leluh­wah
Peter Tosh – Legalise It

via That Eric Alper/WFMU

Relat­ed con­tent:

John Lydon & Pub­lic Image Ltd. Sow Chaos on Amer­i­can Band­stand: The Show’s Best and Worst Moment (1980)

The Sex Pis­tols’ 1976 Man­ches­ter “Gig That Changed the World,” and the Day the Punk Era Began

Nev­er Mind the Bol­locks, Here’s … John Lydon in a But­ter Com­mer­cial?

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.