Amidst all its oth­er unset­tling excess­es, 2016 has become a year of col­lec­tive mourn­ing as musi­cal icon after musi­cal icon pass­es away. The names begin to sound like a list of bat­tle­field casu­al­ties. Our lat­est loss was much more than a leader among men: he was roy­al­ty.

Prince’s death strikes me as a tragedy for so many rea­sons: he was too young, only 57. He was—as for near­ly every­one of my generation—a fix­ture of my child­hood, a fig­ure of impos­si­ble cool; his loss feels deeply per­son­al. Last­ly, Prince seemed so above it all—above all of the ugly, pet­ty crap the rest of us slog through every day, includ­ing death.

All pop stars seem like that to their fans.

But when it comes to Prince, it wasn’t just his for­ev­er young sex­u­al­i­ty that made me think he’d nev­er die, but the fact that he could do any­thing, and I mean any­thing at all as a musi­cian. He seemed to have no lim­i­ta­tions. Unlike many of this year’s lost stars, I was lucky enough to see him play. That show became the high water­mark by which I’ve unfair­ly mea­sured every oth­er per­former.

He played for three hours, then held an after­par­ty and played for two more. He tore through his cat­a­log, then played every­one else. Mem­bers of his band left the stage one by one, and Prince con­tin­ued, pick­ing up instru­ment after instru­ment. The huge­ness of the sound didn’t seem dimin­ished one bit when he remained on stage alone with his gui­tar at three o’clock in the morn­ing.

And that gui­tar, man.… Whether his trade­mark but­ter­scotch Tele­cast­er or series of unique, sig­na­ture instruments—he played like no one else: he made the gui­tar cry, sing, howl, wail, and launch into out­er space hys­ter­ics. His pow­er and con­trol were unmatched. Eric Clap­ton, when asked what it felt like to be the world’s great­est gui­tarist, sup­pos­ed­ly said, “ask Prince.” Apoc­ryphal or not, it’s believ­able. No gui­tarist can be any­thing but blown away by Prince’s prowess. Wit­ness his solo at the end of the 2004 all-star Rock and Roll Hall of Fame George Har­ri­son trib­ute per­for­mance of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” (top), wide­ly cit­ed as one one of the best gui­tar moments caught on tape, and as evi­dence for why Prince belongs in the top ten of world’s great­est play­ers. He’s accom­pa­nied on the stage by Tom Pet­ty (RIP), Steve Win­wood, Jeff Lynne and Dhani Har­ri­son.

I don’t think there’s any hyper­bole in say­ing that Prince may have been the great­est stage per­former of the past forty years, as a total pack­age: show­man, song­writer, and musi­cian. And though he dom­i­nat­ed cen­ter stage, he wasn’t too proud to play the side­man. Check him out above, for exam­ple, back­ing Lenny Kravitz on “Amer­i­can Woman.” But when it came time for Prince to take a solo (see him tear it up at around 4:50), it was like every­one else had left the stage.

Rest In Peace, Prince. As a gui­tarist, singer, and gen­er­al explo­sion of pur­ple amaz­ing­ness, he was in a class all his own.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

The Memo­r­i­al Ser­vice & Cel­e­bra­tion of “Lem­my” Kilmis­ter, Motör­head Front­man, is Now Stream­ing Live

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

Image by Emi­ly, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’ve tak­en any intro­duc­to­ry course or even read any intro­duc­to­ry books on music, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly have heard it described as “orga­nized sound.” Fair enough, but then what do you call dis­or­ga­nized sound? Why, noise of course. And all this makes per­fect sense until your first encounter with the seem­ing­ly para­dox­i­cal but robust and ever-expand­ing tra­di­tion of noise music.

“Mod­ern ‘noise music’ finds its roots in ear­ly elec­tron­ic and indus­tri­al musics,” says Sta­t­ic Sig­nals, which used to review a lot of the stuff. “Where com­posers began expand­ing their vocab­u­lary of sound and instru­men­ta­tion is where the con­cept of ‘noise’ begins: what sounds can pro­duce music and which are pure­ly sta­t­ic or noise? For some, music’s out­er bound­ary is defined by west­ern Euro­pean clas­si­cal instru­ments designed hun­dreds of years ago and the sounds, pitch­es, rhythms they can (clas­si­cal­ly) pro­duce. For oth­ers, no sound, rhythm, tone, or pitch is off lim­its; music can be made by any­thing that can vibrate air.”

The devel­op­ment of elec­tron­ic musi­cal instru­ments — and indeed, any kind of sound-manip­u­lat­ing elec­tron­ic device — came as a great boon to this explo­ration of the bor­der­lands between orga­nized and dis­or­ga­nized sound. You can hear the effects of that sort of tech­nol­o­gy and much else besides in An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music, a sev­en-part anthol­o­gy released by for­mi­da­ble Bel­gian exper­i­men­tal music label Sub Rosa, all of it avail­able on Spo­ti­fy (whose soft­ware you can down­load here if you need it). The first two vol­umes are embed­ded above; all sev­en vol­umes can be streamed via the links below. If you dig the col­lec­tion, we’d encour­age you to pur­chase your own copy and sup­port Sub Rosa’s project.

• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #1 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures John Cage, Ian­nis Xenakis, DJ Spooky, and Son­ic Youth (Buy on Ama­zon)
• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #2 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures Cap­tain Beef­heart, Per­cy Grainger, Sun Ra, and (Eraser­head’s sound genius) Alan R. Splet (Buy on Ama­zon)
• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #3 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures Faust, Merzbow, and Carsten Nico­lai with Alva Noto (Buy on Ama­zon)
• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #4 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures Gyor­gy Ligeti, Steve Reich, and the Loop Orches­tra (Buy on Ama­zon)
• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #5 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures Pere Ubu, Dub Tay­lor, and Li Chin Sung aka Dick­son Dee (Buy on Ama­zon)
• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #6 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures Sachiko M, Pain Jerk, Hen­ry Cow­ell, and Ultra­phon­ist (Buy on Ama­zon)
• An Anthol­o­gy of Noise and Elec­tron­ic Music #7 (Spo­ti­fy playlist) fea­tures Tzi­ga Ver­tov, Cabaret Voltaire, Novi_sad — and, to end the anthol­o­gy, a piece both anony­mous and unti­tled (Buy on Ama­zon)

To the noise music-unini­ti­at­ed — and prob­a­bly even to a few of the ini­ti­at­ed — some of the tracks here will sound like music, and some cer­tain­ly won’t. But most of them fall fas­ci­nat­ing­ly in-between the two states, ide­al­ly expand­ing the lis­ten­er’s con­cep­tion of the son­ic ter­ri­to­ry music can explore. Some musi­cal exper­i­ments, just like sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments, point in more fruit­ful direc­tions than oth­ers, but each one sheds a lit­tle new light on the musi­cal enter­prise itself. And “the noise,” to take the words straight from Sub Rosa them­selves, “goes on…”

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Hear the Exper­i­men­tal Music of the Dada Move­ment: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Cen­tu­ry Ago

Hear Albums from Bri­an Eno’s 1970s Label, Obscure Records

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

Mr. Rogers Intro­duces Kids to Exper­i­men­tal Elec­tron­ic Music by Bruce Haack & Esther Nel­son (1968)

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

How the Moog Syn­the­siz­er Changed the Sound of Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and style. 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.

For most of us, mak­ing a list of our favorite albums involves no small amount of nos­tal­gia. We remem­ber high­lights from high school and col­lege: songs on con­stant rota­tion after breakups and dur­ing sum­mers of bliss. More so than any oth­er media we con­sume, music—from clas­si­cal to the most com­mer­cial pop—feels deeply per­son­al.

But there are many oth­er ways to relate to music. Bri­an Eno’s jour­ney through the world of record­ed sound, for exam­ple, more resem­bles that of a 19th cen­tu­ry explor­er. He grav­i­tates toward the cul­tur­al­ly exot­ic, makes stu­dious obser­va­tions, and advances hypothe­ses and the­o­ries. In read­ing through an inter­view he gave to The Qui­etus for their “baker’s dozen” series—in which they ask famous artists to name their top 13 albums—one theme emerges in the way Eno talks about music: dis­cov­ery.

And as Eno reminds us in his com­men­tary on his first pick—a gospel record by Rev­erend Maceo Woods and The Chris­t­ian Taber­na­cle Choir—one pre­cur­sor to dis­cov­ery is curios­i­ty, unbound­ed by prej­u­dice or pre­con­cep­tion. It’s an approach that has enabled him to cre­ate some of the most con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing records decade after decade (hear 150 Eno tracks here), and to remain rel­e­vant long after most of his ’70s peers have dis­ap­peared.

Eno first heard, or mis­heard, the gospel group on U.S. radio. To his ears, the refrain “sur­ren­der to His will” sound­ed like “sur­ren­der to the wheel,” a cryp­tic phrase that pro­voked all sorts of asso­ci­a­tions. But even after he learned the real lyric, he was hooked on the group’s sound, and want­ed to know more, though he him­self is entire­ly non-reli­gious.

“Why am I so moved by a music based on some­thing that I just don’t believe in?,” Eno asked him­self. His response ranges into philo­soph­i­cal ter­ri­to­ry, then ends on an unex­pect­ed­ly upbeat note. If it sur­pris­es you that one of Eno’s favorite albums is an obscure record by an ama­teur gospel group, take a look at the rest of his picks. We’d expect the Vel­vet Under­ground to appear—giv­en his famous com­ment about their mas­sive influ­ence—and they do. The rest is a col­lec­tion of wild cards. See the eclec­tic list below and stop by The Qui­etus to read Eno’s thought­ful, can­did com­men­tary on each album.

The Dynam­ic Rev­erend Maceo Woods and The Chris­t­ian Taber­na­cle Choir in Con­cert, by Rev­erend Maceo Woods and The Chris­t­ian Taber­na­cle Choir

Farid El Atra­che, by Farid El Atra­che

Umut, by Arif Sag

“Go Where I Send Thee,” The Gold­en Gate Quar­tet (sin­gle)

Fresh, by Sly and the Fam­i­ly Stone

Plan­ta­tion Lul­la­bies, Me’Shell Nde­geO­cel­lo

The Vel­vet Under­ground, by The Vel­vet Under­ground

Ear­ly Works, by Steve Reich

Afro­disi­ac, by Fela Ran­some-Kuti & The Africa ‘70

Glid­er, by My Bloody Valen­tine

Heart­land, by Owen Pal­lett

Grande Liturgie Ortho­doxe Slave, by Chœur Bul­gare Sve­toslav Obreten­ov

Court and Spark, by Joni Mitchell

via The Qui­etus

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Lists His 25 Favorite LPs in His Record Col­lec­tion: Stream Most of Them Free Online

Tom Waits Makes a List of His Top 20 Favorite Albums of All Time

Kurt Cobain Lists His 50 Favorite Albums: Fea­tures LPs by David Bowie, Pub­lic Ene­my & More

Hear 150 Tracks High­light­ing Bri­an Eno’s Career as a Musi­cian, Com­pos­er & Pro­duc­er & Stream His 2015 John Peel Lec­ture

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

If you’ve ever learned to play an instru­ment, espe­cial­ly the gui­tar or piano, odds are you’ve spent count­less hours try­ing to mas­ter the rhythms and melodies of your favorite songs. And odds are at least one of those songs was writ­ten by Messrs. Lennon & McCart­ney. If you’re any­thing like me, you prob­a­bly real­ized ear­ly in the exer­cise that The Bea­t­les weren’t only praised as great song­writ­ers because of their lyri­cism and social and roman­tic insights. Their songs are also packed with inge­nious chord changes, unex­pect­ed time shifts, unusu­al hooks, etc.

What may seem at first lis­ten like a sim­ple tune reveals itself as high­ly chal­leng­ing for the ama­teur musi­cian. I well remem­ber sweat­ing over two of my favorites—“Julia” and “Martha My Dear”—for many days.

Even in mod­i­fied ver­sions that sim­pli­fy dif­fi­cult voic­ings, I strug­gled to mas­ter the let­ter of the songs while still con­vey­ing the spir­it. Sure­ly, that’s a tes­ta­ment to my own lack of skill, and yet the trou­ble I’ve had pulling off my favorite Bea­t­les’ songs has giv­en me all the more respect for musi­cians who make it look easy.

Even a straight-ahead blues like “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road” ain’t easy to sell—far from it. But I’ve nev­er heard any­one do it bet­ter than Tul­sa, Okla­homa-born blues­man Low­ell Ful­som (top). Fur­ther down, St. Vin­cent does a stel­lar live ren­di­tion of anoth­er of my favorites, “Dig a Pony.” A great song can take all kinds of bend­ing, stretch­ing, and pulling and still retain its essence. In Pao­lo Nutini’s smooth, stripped-down, organ, voice, and drums take on Lennon’s “Don’t Let Me Down,” above, the pas­sion remains, even if the impas­sioned shouts have been tamed.

There are hun­dreds more great Bea­t­les’ cov­ers out there, and prob­a­bly hun­dreds of ter­ri­ble ones, too—and many an odd­ball inter­pre­ta­tion that sharply divides opin­ion in either direc­tion (such as Marc Ribot’s machine-shop “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” which I hap­pen to love). Just above, we’ve put togeth­er a Spo­ti­fy playlist of over 80 great cov­er ver­sions of Bea­t­les’ songs, culled from sug­ges­tions made by @openculture followers/fans on Twit­ter. (You can down­load Spo­ti­fy’s soft­ware here.) And in the list below, find links to 20 fab­u­lous cov­er ver­sions on Youtube. (Those weren’t avail­able on Spo­ti­fy, but they’re def­i­nite­ly worth hear­ing). In total, you’ll find 100 tracks, by artists rang­ing from Ray Charles, to Joe Cock­er and Sarah McLach­lan, to Pat­ti Smith, David Bowie, and John­ny Cash. It makes for 6 hours of Bea­t­les bliss.

If we’ve missed an essen­tial cov­er, let us know in the com­ments below, and drop in a link if you can.

Jimi Hen­drix — Sgt. Pep­per
The Pix­ies — Wild Hon­ey Pie  
David Gilmour — Here, There and Every­where
Alice Coop­er and the Bee Gees — Because
Kris Kristof­fer­son — Paper­back Writer 
Bryan Fer­ry — She’s Leav­ing Home
Pao­lo Nuti­ni — Don’t Let Me Down
The Fall — A Day in the Life 
Elliot Smith — Because 
Elvis Costel­lo — Pen­ny Lane 
Marc Ribot — While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps
Ben E. King — Don’t Let Me Down
Ike & Tina Turn­er – She Came in Through the Bath­room Win­dow
St Vin­cent — Dig a Pony  
Peer Framp­ton and the Bee Gees — Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band (sound­track)
Ray Charles — The Bea­t­les Cov­ers
Book­er T. & the MGS — McLemore Avenue (Cov­ers of Abbey Road)  
George Ben­son — The Oth­er Side of Abbey Road

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks

Peter Sell­ers Cov­ers the Bea­t­les’ “A Hard Day’s Night,” “She Loves You” & “Help!”

Bea­t­les Trib­ute Band “The Fab Faux” Per­forms Live an Amaz­ing­ly Exact Repli­ca of the Orig­i­nal Abbey Road Med­ley

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

We’ve seen var­i­ous per­for­mances of John Cage’s famous silent piece 4′33″. But nev­er dur­ing our decade dig­ging up cul­tur­al curiosi­ties have we encoun­tered 4′33″ per­formed by Cage him­self. That is, until now. Above you can watch a video out­take from Nam June Paik’s Trib­ute to John Cage, filmed in 1973, in Har­vard Square. Boston’s WBGH describes the scene:

In the video he is seat­ed at a piano, with spec­ta­tors sur­round­ing him. He toys with his viewer’s expec­ta­tions by not play­ing the piano, which is what the gen­er­al pop­u­lace would expect from a per­for­mance involv­ing a piano. On the piano shelf there are a pock­et watch and a slip of paper. He keeps touch­ing and look­ing at the pock­et watch which draws the audience’s atten­tion to the idea of time, and that they are wait­ing for some­thing to hap­pen, and he also rais­es and low­ers the piano fall­board. There is also text that appears in this par­tic­u­lar video that says “This is Zen for TV. Open your win­dow and count the stars. If rainy count the rain­drops on the pud­dle. Do you hear a crick­et? …or a mouse.”

Anoth­er uncon­ven­tion­al item to add to the list: Cage per­forms 4′33″ in 1′22″!

For a clos­er look at 4′33″ read Josh Jones’ ear­li­er post on the Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33.” For more music by Cage, stream this free 65-hour playlist.

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:

See the Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4’33”

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

Stream a Free 65-Hour Playlist of John Cage Music and Dis­cov­er the Full Scope of His Avant-Garde Com­po­si­tions

How to Get Start­ed: John Cage’s Approach to Start­ing the Dif­fi­cult Cre­ative Process