I recall with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic clar­i­ty the first time I heard the B‑52s. Forced on a youth-group ski trip by my par­ents, I arrived an angry thir­teen-year-old wan­na-be punk: mohawk, ripped jeans, patched leather jack­et, dis­af­fect­ed scowl, and feigned air of ado­les­cent cyn­i­cal world-weari­ness. Pop music, I had already decid­ed, was for suck­ers. The only sounds that spoke to me were loud, abra­sive, and delib­er­ate­ly unlove­ly. Then some­one in our dorm put on “Rock Lob­ster” and it blew my nar­row mind. Though the osten­si­ble pur­pose of this church-spon­sored vaca­tion was to stir up some Protes­tant piety, I came away con­vert­ed instead to the gospel of new wave. I cred­it my awak­en­ing to Kate Pierson’s oth­er­world­ly wail, Cindy Wilson’s throaty har­monies, and Ricky Wilson’s bizarrely tuned gui­tar.

Maybe it wasn’t quite that dra­mat­ic, but it was a deci­sive moment in my young fan­dom, after which I found myself seek­ing out the odd, angu­lar, jan­g­ly sounds I’d first heard on that B‑52s record—and find­ing them in John­ny Marr’s Smiths gui­tar work, every ear­ly R.E.M. album, and in more morose form, in The Cure, Psy­che­del­ic Furs, and count­less mopey British post-punks. What sur­prised me at the time was learn­ing how many of these bands arrived on the scene at the same time as the nas­ti­er, grit­ti­er bands that scored my angst-rid­den entry into cal­low teenage-hood. We’re famil­iar with the sto­ry of new wave bands like Talk­ing Heads and Television’s begin­nings at CBGB’s. But around that same time, in 1976, Georgia’s B‑52s got their start in the col­lege town of Athens. As one inter­vie­wee says—in the above short doc­u­men­tary on the South­ern art-rock scene that also birthed R.E.M.—“the B‑52s start­ed the music scene as we think of it.”

Tak­ing their sound from surf rock, 50s doo-wop and girl group har­monies, and a weird­ness that is Athens’ own, the B‑52s carved out a space for them­selves with­in music that had some­thing in com­mon with the Ramones except it was hyper-col­or­ful, thrift-store kitschy, and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly campy. Their warped take on 50s and 60s dance rock—complete with Pier­son and Wilson’s “B‑52” bee­hives—first broke out with “Rock Lob­ster” (a song John Lennon once cred­it­ed with influ­enc­ing his come­back). You can see them open with the song at the top in 1978 at Atlanta’s Down­town Cafe, just pri­or to the release of their debut album. (Stick around to watch the rest of the 28-minute set.) Fred Schnei­der, the band’s wry, flam­boy­ant front­man, intro­duces each band mem­ber with a series of quirky pseu­do­nyms. Above, they do my per­son­al favorite, “52 Girls”—with its pound­ing tom-tom surf rhythms and sung-shout­ed lyrics about “The prin­ci­pal girls of the USA.” Just below catch anoth­er ear­ly gig from 1980, at New Jersey’s Capi­tol The­ater.

The B‑52s plugged along through the 80s—suffered the loss of Ricky Wil­son to AIDS—then hit it very big on the pop charts with “Love Shack” and “Roam” from 1989’s Cos­mic Thing. For my mon­ey, though, noth­ing beats the glo­ri­ous joy­ful­ness of their debut, which sounds like the most fun any band has ever had mak­ing a record togeth­er.

Though the band has always been a high­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive ensem­ble, Kate Pierson’s huge voice came to shape their sound over the years. She would go on to record the torch song “Can­dy” with Iggy Pop and the ridicu­lous, love-it-or-hate-it “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple” with her home­town peers R.E.M. Now, at 67, she’s putting out her first solo album, Gui­tars and Micro­phones. Lis­ten to the super-catchy title track above, and hear an inter­view with Pier­son on NPR here and anoth­er on WBEZ’s Sound Opin­ions here. For more on the B‑52s ear­ly years, see ret­ro­spec­tives on Dan­ger­ous Minds and Pitch­fork. You owe it to your­self to get to know this band. They may not change your life like they did mine, but they might just expand your under­stand­ing of pop music’s pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

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

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

There’s no short­age of Grate­ful Dead con­certs freely avail­able on the web. Indeed, head over to Archive.org and you’ll find hun­dreds of Dead shows, some going as far back as the 1960s. But when you start rum­mag­ing around, you’ll dis­cov­er that some nights were mag­ic, while many oth­ers fell far short. That’s why we can be thank­ful that Dick­’s Picks came along. Named after the band’s tape archivist Dick Lat­vala, Dick­’s Picks (released between 1993 and 2005) fea­tured 36 volumes/albums of Grate­ful Dead con­certs, all sourced from sound­board record­ings cap­tured on two-track mas­ter tapes. The record­ings, as Tony Sclafani notes in The Grate­ful Dead FAQ, gave every­one a chance to “expe­ri­ence what going to a clas­sic Dead show was like” — “to eas­i­ly access record­ings of leg­endary shows.”

Caught up in some Grate­ful Dead nos­tal­gia myself, I quick­ly real­ized that all 36 vol­umes of Dick­’s Picks are avail­able on Spo­ti­fy — at no cost. As much for my own musi­cal edi­fi­ca­tion as for yours, I’ve cre­at­ed a list below. (Some of you might have a beef with Spo­ti­fy, or want to own your own copies, so I’ve includ­ed Ama­zon links too.) You can reg­is­ter for Spo­ti­fy and down­load the free soft­ware here.

Dead fans will sure­ly argue over which Dick­’s Picks are the best. But, from what I’ve seen, Vol. 4 (above), Vol. 8, Vol. 10, and Vol. 12. offer great places to begin.

And although it does­n’t appear in the Dick­’s Picks series, you can find on Archive.org what’s often con­sid­ered one of the Dead­’s finest live record­ings — their May 8, 1977 con­cert in Bar­ton Hall, at Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty.

Also, if you’re look­ing for a good intro­duc­tion to the Dead­’s musi­cal career, lis­ten to this recent episode of the Sound Opin­ions pod­cast, com­ing out of WBEZ in Chica­go.

Enjoy.

• Vol. 1, 1993 : Tam­pa, 12/19/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 2, 1995 : Colum­bus, 10/31/71 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 3, 1995 : Pem­broke Pines, 5/22/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 4, 1996 : Fill­more East, 2/13–14/70 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 5, 1996 : Oak­land, 12/26/79 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 6, 1996 : Hart­ford, 10/14/83 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 7, 1997 : Lon­don, 9/9–11/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 8, 1997 : Bing­ham­ton, 5/2/70 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 9, 1997 : Madi­son Square Gar­dens, 9/16/90 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 10, 1998 : Win­ter­land, 12/29–30/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 11, 1998 : Jer­sey City, 9/27/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 12, 1998 : Prov­i­dence & Boston, 6/26 & 28/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 13, 1999 : Nas­sau Col­i­se­um, 5/6/81 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 14, 1999 : Boston, 11/30/73 & 12/2/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 15, 1999 : Eng­lish­town, 9/3/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 16, 2000 : Fill­more Aud, 11/8/69 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 17, 2000 : Boston, 9/25/91 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 18, 2000 : Madi­son & Cedar Falls, 2/3 & 5/78 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 19, 2000 : Okla­homa City, 10/19/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 20, 2001 : Lan­dover & Syra­cuse, 9/25 & 28/76 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 21, 2001 : Rich­mond, 11/1/85 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 22, 2001 : Lake Tahoe, 2/23 & 24/68 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 23, 2001 : Bal­ti­more, 9/17/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 24, 2002 : Cow Palace, 3/23/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 25, 2002 : New Haven & Spring­field, 5/10–11/78 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 26, 2002 : Chica­go & Min­neapo­lis, 4/26–27/69 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 27, 2003 : Oak­land, 12/16–17/92 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 28, 2003 : Lin­coln & Salt Lake City, 2/26 & 28/73 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 29, 2003 : Atlanta & Lake­land, 5/19 & 21/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 30, 2003 : Acad­e­my of Music, NYC, 3/25 & 28/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 31, 2004 : Philadel­phia & Jer­sey City, 8/4–6/74 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 32, 2004 : Alpine Val­ley, East Troy , 8/7/82 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 33, 2004 : Oak­land, 10/9 & 10/76 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 34, 2005 : Rochester, 11/5/77 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 35, 2005 : San Diego, Chica­go and Hol­ly­wood, August 1971 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon
• Vol. 36, 2005 : Philadel­phia 9/21/72 — Spo­ti­fy — Ama­zon

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Grate­ful Dead’s “Rip­ple” Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

In the ear­ly sev­en­ties, at the height of their pow­ers, unfor­get­table hits seemed to tum­ble out one after anoth­er from The Rolling Stones, solid­i­fy­ing Jag­ger and Richards’ rep­u­ta­tion for ele­men­tal, imme­di­ate song­writ­ing that seemed to cut through more baroque stu­dio pro­duc­tions of the late six­ties and sev­en­ties and deliv­er the goods raw. As Bri­an Jones’ influ­ence waned, Richards’ dark, raunchy riffs took over the band’s sound, and even when Jag­ger’s vocals are near incom­pre­hen­si­ble, as in much of Exile on Main Street, his pecu­liar intonation—part fake Delta blues­man, part sneer­ing delin­quent schoolboy—gets across every­thing you need to know about the Rolling Stones’ ethos.

The imme­di­a­cy of the Stones’ record­ings is large­ly an arti­fact of their tri­al-and-error method in the stu­dio. Unafraid of last-minute inspi­ra­tion and unortho­dox tech­ni­cal exper­i­ments, they built songs like “Gimme Shel­ter” from inspired demos to pow­er­ful anthems over the course of many ver­sions and mix­es. We’ve told the sto­ry of that song’s last-minute inclu­sion of Mer­ry Clayton’s stir­ring vocal per­for­mance. Now, at the top, hear an ear­ly demo of the song lack­ing not only her voice, but Jagger’s as well—at least in the lead spot. Every­thing else is there: the tremo­lo-soaked open­ing riff, the haunt­ing, reverb-drenched “Oooo”’s. But instead of Jagger’s faux-South­ern drawl sud­den­ly break­ing the ten­sion, we get the much more sub­dued voice of Richards, pushed rather far back in the mix and sound­ing pret­ty under­whelm­ing next to the final album ver­sion.

It’s not that Richards is a bad singer—here he almost cap­tures the cadences of Jag­ger, if not the pro­jec­tion (we do hear Jagger’s voice back­ing his). It’s just that we’ve come to asso­ciate the song so close­ly with Jagger’s quirks that hear­ing any­one else deliv­er the lyrics is a lit­tle jar­ring. On the oth­er hand, Richard’s unadorned acoustic demo of “Wild Hors­es,” above, gets right to the heart of the song, sound­ing more like his friend Gram Par­sons’ mourn­ful ear­ly ver­sion than the lat­er 1971 release on Sticky Fin­gers. (Hear anoth­er acoustic demo here, with Jag­ger on vocals.)

These two tracks rep­re­sent rare oppor­tu­ni­ties to hear Richards take the vocal lead on Stones tracks, though he would begin releas­ing solo work in 1978 and front­ed his own band, the X‑pensive Winos, in 1987, assem­bled in trib­ute to his hero Chuck Berry. Just the year pre­vi­ous, the Stones released Dirty Work, a high point in an oth­er­wise cre­ative slump for the band. The album’s first track, “One Hit (to the Body),” became its sec­ond big hit, and you can hear a scratchy, lo-fi demo ver­sion, with Kei­th on lead vocals, above. A thread at the Steve Hoff­man Music Forums points us toward many more demos of Stones songs with Keith’s vocals, from out­takes and demos of Voodoo Lounge, Talk is Cheap and oth­er albums. Many of these record­ings show how much Richards was respon­si­ble for the band’s vocal melodies as well their sig­na­ture gui­tar tones and rhythms. Amidst all these demos—of vary­ing degrees of sound qual­i­ty and states of inebriation—one song in par­tic­u­lar stands out, and it’s not a Stones song.

Above, Richards’ deliv­ers a Bour­bon Street take on “Some­where Over the Rain­bow.” His qui­et voice haunts the song, again pushed so far back in the mix you have to strain to hear him at all as he trails in and out. The record­ing, from 1977, leaked in 2008, along with Richards cov­ers of oth­er stan­dards by Hoagy Carmichael and Per­ry Como. “The songs,” writes The Guardian, “fea­ture melan­choly piano, an even more melan­choly Keef and sound like he’s doing an impres­sion of ear­ly Tom Waits.” Fit­ting, then, that Richards would col­lab­o­rate with Waits in 2006, on a record­ing that sounds like he’d been prac­tic­ing for it his entire career.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

The Rolling Stones Release a Soul­ful, Nev­er-Heard Acoustic Ver­sion of “Wild Hors­es”

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

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

This week, 1,000 North Kore­ans wit­nessed the first live per­for­mance by a West­ern pop act on its soil. And it was per­haps a bit anti-cli­mat­ic.

The East Ger­mans got their first taste of West­ern rock in 1988 when Bruce Spring­steen played a mas­sive gig in East Berlin. (See video here.) The North Kore­ans had to set­tle for the Sloven­ian indus­tri­al rock band, Laibach. Accord­ing to The New York Times, their set includ­ed a “ ‘Sound of Music’ med­ley. A cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ ‘Across the Uni­verse.’ [And a] mar­tial-sound­ing ver­sion of the are­na rock anthem ‘The Final Count­down.’ ” You can watch short clips of the con­cert just below.

Laibach’s his­toric North Kore­an gig was appar­ent­ly arranged by Morten Traavik, a Nor­we­gian artist who pre­vi­ous­ly made the Inter­net gyrate when he released a clip of young North Kore­an accor­dion play­ers per­form­ing A‑ha’s 1984 hit, “Take On Me.” In 2012, Traavik met the musi­cians from the Kum Song Music School while trav­el­ing in North Korea. He told the BBC, “I lent them a CD of Take on Me on a Mon­day morn­ing. By the fol­low­ing Wednes­day morn­ing they had mas­tered the song, with no anno­ta­tion and no out­side help. It showed incred­i­ble skill.” And, says Traavik, it all just goes to show, “you can have fun in North Korea.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 98 Kore­an Fea­ture Films Free Online, Thanks to the Kore­an Film Archive

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

We are bom­bard­ed by music, all the time, whether we like it or not. In many cases—such as those almost dai­ly, inescapable trips to the gro­cery store, drug store, pet store, what-have-you store—the musi­cal accom­pa­ni­ment to our jour­ney through life has been cho­sen specif­i­cal­ly for its abil­i­ty to make us buy things: How­ev­er grat­ing we may find the soft rock, lite pop, or easy lis­ten­ing that pumps out of phar­ma­cy speak­er sys­tems, some sin­is­ter cabal of mar­ket­ing researchers deter­mined long ago that schmaltz equals sales. And so we endure yet anoth­er ter­ri­ble pop song while wait­ing in line with our essen­tials. For peo­ple like myself—highly sen­si­tive to sound and unable to tune out bad back­ground music—the expe­ri­ence can be excru­ci­at­ing.

In our own pri­vate spaces—offices, cars, the space between our ears with head­phones on—we become our own sound design­ers. We may pre­fer silence, or we may choose very spe­cif­ic kinds of music to accom­pa­ny our leisure and our work (as we dis­cussed in a few posts on music to write by some years back). These days, we can make our own dig­i­tal playlists, grab­bing music from all over the web, or we can have the algo­rithms of inter­net radio ser­vices like Pan­do­ra or Apple Radio curate our lis­ten­ing for us, a more—or some­times less—satisfying expe­ri­ence. Lovers of clas­si­cal music have a third online option, thanks to an enter­pris­ing dig­i­tal cura­tor who goes by the name of Ulysse­s­tone and who com­piled the Spo­ti­fy playlist below of 58 hours of clas­si­cal music — from Sibelius to Satie, Bach to Debussy. It’s designed for any­one who wants to study, work, or sim­ply relax.

Ulysses has pre­vi­ous­ly brought us a playlist of the endur­ing­ly clas­si­cal music in Stan­ley Kubrick­’s films and all of Mozart in a 127 hour playlist. As one music blog­ger put it, his inter­ven­tions have made Spo­ti­fy’s ser­vice “a whole lot eas­i­er for clas­si­cal lis­ten­ers.” See for your­self at Spo­ti­fy Clas­si­cal Playlists, where you’ll find blog posts on the changes to Spo­ti­fy’s clas­si­cal radio, as well as over 50 playlists ded­i­cat­ed to famous composers—“great start­ing points,” writes Ulysses, “for peo­ple who want to get into clas­si­cal music or explore a bit more.” You can stream the 58-hour playlist of study-enhanc­ing clas­si­cal music (fea­tur­ing 789 free tracks in total) by click­ing this link, or stream­ing the play­er above. To down­load Spo­ti­fy and start a free account, head on over to their site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Down­load Free Music from 150+ Clas­si­cal Com­posers, Cour­tesy of Musopen.org

The World Con­cert Hall: Lis­ten To The Best Live Clas­si­cal Music Con­certs for Free

The Clas­si­cal Music in Stan­ley Kubrick’s Films: Lis­ten to a Free, 4 Hour Playlist

Philip K. Dick’s Favorite Clas­si­cal Music: A Free, 11-Hour Playlist

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