Sax­o­phon­ist Ornette Cole­man died yes­ter­day at age 85, leav­ing behind one of jaz­z’s most inter­est­ing and illus­tri­ous lega­cies. Cole­man strode into the fifties and six­ties with a hand­ful of van­guard artists—Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dave Brubeck—and, as the New York Times writes, “widened the options in jazz.” This meant tak­ing jazz places it had not been before, even­tu­al­ly into the psy­che­del­ic jams on Cole­man’s 1971 Sci­ence Fic­tion album, which fea­tures one track with “a ‘Pur­ple Haze’-styled bassline through a wah-wah ped­al,” Jaz­zTimes wrote in 2000, while “Ornette over­dubs on trum­pet and vio­lin and Dewey Red­man wails on musette over Ed Black­well’s inim­itable groove.” The track “Hap­py House” seems to bend space and time in new direc­tions, pair­ing two trum­pet play­ers and two drummers—one for each ear in stereo record­ing.

Cole­man’s free form will­ing­ness to exper­i­ment made him a sought after col­lab­o­ra­tor (at least once against his will) with artists who also bent, or invent­ed, their own genre bound­aries. Thir­ty-two years after Sci­ence Fic­tion, Cole­man made an appear­ance on the 2003 Edgar Allan Poe-trib­ute The Raven, a late album by Lou Reed, the pio­neer­ing artist who took pop and R&B down a dark, psy­che­del­ic path.

The result­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion, which you can hear at the top of the post, just bare­ly holds togeth­er in a gospel/free jazz/funk groove that hyp­no­tizes even as it bewil­ders lis­ten­ers, giv­ing us an ensem­ble of musi­cians each hear­ing slight­ly dif­fer­ent rhythms and tim­bres in the repet­i­tive drone of Reed’s lead vocal.

Reed was excit­ed about Cole­man’s con­tri­bu­tion, writ­ing on his web­site, “THIS IS ONE OF MY GREATEST MOMENTS.” The jazz great “did sev­en versions—all dif­fer­ent and all amaz­ing and won­drous.” You can hear four above. “Each take,” Reed explains, “is Ornette play­ing against a dif­fer­ent instrument—ie drum, gui­tar 1 gui­tar 2 etc. Lis­ten to this!!!” And lis­ten you should. Try to fig­ure out which of the sev­en takes made the album ver­sion above. Then lis­ten to them again. Then read this inter­view between Jacques Der­ri­da and Cole­man in which he explains how he came to devel­op his sin­u­ous style, one writes the New York Times Ben Ratliff, less behold­en to the rules of har­mo­ny and rhythm” and more in tune with “an intu­itive, col­lec­tive musi­cal lan­guage.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

Charles Min­gus Explains in His Gram­my-Win­ning Essay “What is a Jazz Com­pos­er?”

Lou Reed Rewrites Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.” See Read­ings by Reed and Willem Dafoe

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

“Ever get the feel­ing you’ve been cheat­ed?”

John­ny Rot­ten aka John Lydon’s clos­ing words at the last Sex Pis­tols gig (watch it online) seemed apt this week when Vir­gin Bank announced their cur­rent line of cred­it cards would fea­ture the band’s sig­na­ture art­work. That Jamie Reid’s famous cut-n-paste zine-cum-Sit­u­a­tion­al­ist aes­thet­ic has turned into a bit of cap­i­tal­ist plas­tic for your wal­let is an irony that the Sex Pis­tols might nev­er have seen com­ing back in 1976, when they played the “gig that changed the world.”

Recre­at­ed above in a clip from Michael Winterbottom’s 24 Hour Par­ty Peo­ple, the June 4, 1976 gig at Manchester’s Less­er Free Trade Hall spawned the British punk move­ment and the post-punk move­ment that was soon to fol­low in a scant two years. For in the audi­ence were future mem­bers of the Buz­zcocks Howard Devo­to and Pete Shel­ley (who orga­nized the gig and opened for the Pis­tols); a nascent ver­sion of Joy Divi­sion; the two founders of Fac­to­ry Records Mar­tin Han­net and Tony Wil­son; Mark E. Smith of The Fall, Mick Huck­nall of Fran­tic Ele­va­tors and much lat­er Sim­ply Red; and a one Steven Patrick Mor­ris­sey, who would form The Smiths. (That’s Steve Coogan play­ing Tony Wil­son in the clip, by the way.)

The Sex Pis­tols played 13 songs in their set, includ­ing cov­ers of Dave Berry’s “Don’t Give Me No Lip Child,” Paul Revere and the Raiders “(I’m Not Your) Step­ping Stone”, the Small Faces “What’cha Gonna Do About It,” The Stooges’ “No Fun”, and The Who’s “Sub­sti­tute.” When asked for an encore, they played “No Fun” again.

Of their orig­i­nals, their two most famous songs–”God Save the Queen” and “Anar­chy in the U.K.” had yet to be written–but “Pret­ty Vacant,” “Prob­lems,” “New York,” “No Feel­ings” are all here in their raw form.

A few songs nev­er made it onto their first album, but can be found on their heav­i­ly boot­legged demo tape they record­ed the same year.

Also of note is how non “punk” the mem­bers are dressed, not in the sense of how Mal­colm McLaren and Vivi­enne West­wood would design, pack­age and sell the fash­ion. The boys look clos­er to the work­ing class job­bers of ear­ly Devo and the Stooges. Plus: no Sid Vicious. He’d come lat­er. That’s Glen Mat­lock on bass, who left the band in ear­ly ’77 after clash­ing with Lydon. He went on to form Rich Kids with Midge Ure.

When the Pis­tols returned to Lon­don, every­body in Man­ches­ter and beyond had start­ed a band, or at least that’s how it felt. By the time the Pis­tols got back to Lon­don, The Clash and The Damned had formed. And even if you hadn’t been at Less­er Free Trade Hall, you told your friends you had been and picked up a gui­tar.

The Sex Pis­tols would return three weeks lat­er to play the Hall again, play­ing to hun­dreds this time and solid­i­fy­ing the dawn of the punk era.

Below is a BBC doc­u­men­tary on the famous gig, telling­ly titled I Swear I Was There, which has an accom­pa­ny­ing book.

On a side note: Less­er Free Trade Hall–named after the rad­i­cal Free Trade polit­i­cal move­ment–was the site of anoth­er famous moment in rock his­to­ry. It was here that a new­ly elec­tri­fied Bob Dylan was called “Judas” by a very upset folk music fan.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sex Pis­tols Do Dal­las: A Strange Con­cert from the Strangest Tour in His­to­ry (Jan­u­ary 10, 1978)

John­ny Rotten’s Cor­dial Let­ter to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: Next to the Sex Pis­tols, You’re ‘a Piss Stain’

Sid Vicious Sings Paul Anka’s “My Way” in His Own Spec­tac­u­lar Way

Rock Crit­ic Greil Mar­cus Picks 10 Unex­pect­ed Songs That Tell the Sto­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll

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.

It’s a bit­ter­sweet scene. Actu­al­ly, more bit­ter than sweet. The video above doc­u­ments a recent oper­a­tion where doc­tors removed a brain tumor from Antho­ny Kulkamp, a 33 year old Brazil­ian banker, all while he sang and played The Bea­t­les’ “Yes­ter­day” on the gui­tar. Clear­ly the song was­n’t an arbi­trary pick, not with lyrics like:

Yes­ter­day, all my trou­bles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay
oh, I believe in yes­ter­day

Sud­den­ly, I’m not half the man I used to be
There’s a shad­ow hang­ing over me
Oh, yes­ter­day came sud­den­ly.

There was a point to singing “Yes­ter­day” and oth­er songs. Sur­geons were able to mon­i­tor Kulkam­p’s cere­bral activ­i­ty and ensure that his sen­so­ry, motor, and speech areas remained unharmed dur­ing the oper­a­tion. Dr Jean Abreu Macha­do, a clin­i­cal direc­tor at the hos­pi­tal in Brazil, told The Tele­graph: “By keep­ing the patient awake dur­ing surgery, these areas [of the brain] can be mon­i­tored in real time. A kind of map­ping of impor­tant areas can be done.”

Mr. Kulkamp was dis­charged from the hos­pi­tal last Wednes­day, and we hope to see him play­ing some­thing opti­mistic before too long. Maybe a lit­tle “Here Comes the Sun” …

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Sci­ence of Singing: New, High-Speed MRI Machine Images Man Singing ‘If I Only Had a Brain’

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)