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

in Music | May 21st, 2015

JohnCageArchive

You don’t know avant-garde music unless you know John Cage. And now we have anoth­er rich, eas­i­ly acces­si­ble online resource that can help us get to know John Cage bet­ter. The new site is called Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion, and it has its ori­gins in the cel­e­bra­tion of Cage’s 100th birth­day put on by con­duc­tor Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny in Feb­ru­ary 2013.

This Cage-devot­ed, Knight Foun­da­tion-fund­ed site, in the words of Hyper­al­ler­gic’s Alli­son Meier, “presents a com­pre­hen­sive overview of his career, from a water­ing can poured on nation­al tele­vi­sion to a rhyth­mic solo piano per­for­mance inspired by lost love,” mate­r­i­al from Cage’s life and career as well as mate­r­i­al inspired by it, and of course “video and audio from the 2013 per­for­mances in Mia­mi Beach, includ­ing some famil­iar and some obscure pieces from [Cage’s] influ­en­tial and exper­i­men­tal career of both music and staged silence.”

You may remem­ber when we fea­tured Cage’s 1960 per­for­mance of Water Walk on I’ve Got a Secret. The site does­n’t fail to include that clas­sic tele­vi­sion clip, but it also offers videos on the stag­ing of Water Walk today, from its direc­tion and back­ground to its rehearsal to the the­atri­cal­i­ty of its per­for­mance to the place­ment of the cam­eras film­ing it. You can find these and many oth­er audio­vi­su­al explo­rations of the nuts and bolts of Cage’s work at Mak­ing the Right Choic­es’ cat­a­log of videos.

“John Cage gen­uine­ly want­ed to open up the beau­teous expe­ri­ence of sound for every­one,” writes Tilson Thomas in a piece on the com­pos­er. “Much of his work could be described as kits to be used in the cre­ation of a per­for­mance that relies on the per­cep­tions, imag­i­na­tions and choic­es of the musi­cians. It was a spir­i­tu­al mis­sion for him to cre­ate the oppor­tu­ni­ty for the per­for­mance to exist while at the same time to inter­fere with it as lit­tle or as sub­tly as pos­si­ble.” That chal­lenge Cage set for him­self keeps his work fas­ci­nat­ing to us to this day — and as Tilson Thomas and the New World Sym­pho­ny sure­ly found out, it remains as much of a chal­lenge as ever for those who pick it up today.

Vis­it Mak­ing the Right Choic­es: A John Cage Cel­e­bra­tion .

via Hyper­al­ler­gic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cage Per­forms Water Walk on US Game Show I’ve Got a Secret (1960)

10 Rules for Stu­dents and Teach­ers Pop­u­lar­ized by John Cage

Lis­ten to John Cage’s 5 Hour Art Piece: Diary: How To Improve The World (You Will Only Make Mat­ters Worse)

Hear Joey Ramone Sing a Piece by John Cage Adapt­ed from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

Watch a Sur­pris­ing­ly Mov­ing Per­for­mance of John Cage’s 1948 “Suite for Toy Piano”

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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

in Comedy, Music | May 20th, 2015

In the ear­ly six­ties, Peter Sell­ers, one of the great­est com­ic actors of his gen­er­a­tion, met per­haps the great­est musi­cians of the age, the Bea­t­les, through their mutu­al pro­duc­er George Mar­tin. The par­tic­u­lar­ly British sen­si­bil­i­ties of the band and the actor—slapstick and word­play, accent and cos­tume changes—had sur­pris­ing­ly broad appeal in the six­ties, and a com­mon his­to­ry in their mutu­al admi­ra­tion of Eng­lish come­di­an and writer Spike Mil­li­gan.

Sell­ers rose to promi­nence on the Mil­li­gan-cre­at­ed BBC radio pro­gram The Goon Show, which the Bea­t­les cit­ed as a major influ­ence on their work. Their con­stant pat­ter in inter­views, films, even rehearsals, their ten­den­cy to break into music hall song and dance, comes right out of Sell­ers in a way (see, for exam­ple, the great com­ic actor in a rare inter­view here), but was also very much an expres­sion of their own extro­vert­ed per­son­al­i­ties. It stands to rea­son then that Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les, as we wrote in an ear­li­er post, “became fast friends.”

And as the Bea­t­les had paid trib­ute to Sell­ers’ com­e­dy, he would return the favor, cov­er­ing three of their most pop­u­lar songs as only he could. At the top of the post, see Sell­ers do a spo­ken word ver­sion of “A Hard Day’s Night” as Lawrence Olivier’s Richard III. And above and below, he gives us sev­er­al ren­di­tions of “She Loves You,” in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent accents, “in the voice of Dr. Strangelove, again with cock­ney and upper-crusty accents, and final­ly with an Irish twist. The record­ings were all released posthu­mous­ly between 1981 and 1983 on albums no longer in cir­cu­la­tion.”

There are many more Beatles/Sellers con­nec­tions. Before tap­ing his “Hard Day’s Night” skit for Grana­da tele­vi­sion spe­cial “The Music of Lennon & McCart­ney,” Sell­ers had pre­sent­ed the band with a Gram­my for the song, which won “Best Per­for­mance of a Vocal Group” in 1965. “Inci­den­tal­ly,” writes Mersey Beat’s Bill Har­ry, “the [Gram­my] pre­sen­ta­tion was made on the stu­dio set of ‘Help!’ and, inter­est­ing­ly, Sell­ers had orig­i­nal­ly been offered the script of ‘Help!’ (Obvi­ous­ly under a dif­fer­ent title) but turned it down.” Sell­ers and the Goon Show cast had pre­vi­ous­ly worked with Richard Lester, direc­tor of the Bea­t­les films and the John Lennon-star­ring How I Won the War.

Com­pletists out there may have also heard the record­ed con­ver­sa­tion between Sell­ers and the Bea­t­les that appears at the end of a boot­leg ver­sion of the White Album, which cir­cu­lat­ed for years under the title The Peter Sell­ers Tape. That the band and the come­di­an got along so famous­ly is no great sur­prise, nor that Sell­ers had so much fun rework­ing the rather sil­ly, and infec­tious­ly catchy, pop songs of the Bea­t­les’ ear­ly career, bring­ing to them his bat­tery of char­ac­ters and voic­es. We’ve saved what may be Sell­ers’ best Bea­t­les cov­er for last. Below, hear him—in the voice of a lec­tur­ing vic­ar and with a back­ing choir—deliver “Help!” as a 45 RPM ser­mon.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

The Bea­t­les Per­form a Fun Spoof of Shakespeare’s A Mid­sum­mer Night’s Dream (1964)

John Cleese, Ringo Starr and Peter Sell­ers Trash Price­less Art (1969)

John Lennon’s Appear­ances in How I Won the War, the Absur­dist 1967 Film

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

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William S. Burroughs — Alternative Rock Star — Sings with Kurt Cobain, Tom Waits, REM & More

in Music | May 19th, 2015

William_S_Burroughs visual

Image via Chris­ti­aan Ton­nis

Like many of the best coun­ter­cul­tur­al icons, William S. Bur­roughs had at least two sep­a­rate peri­ods of under­ground fame. The first came in the late 1950s and 60s when he wrote such clas­sics-to-be of Beat lit­er­a­ture as Junkie, Naked Lunch, and the “cut-up” tril­o­gy of The Soft Machine, The Tick­et That Explod­ed, and Nova Express. The sec­ond came in the 1980s and 90s, when a new wave of coun­ter­cul­tur­al icons, them­selves raised on Bur­roughs’ writ­ing, came of age and sought out their hero for col­lab­o­ra­tion.

“How a nov­el­ist with no musi­cal back­ground who began his career in the 1940s became so pop­u­lar an alter­na­tive music fig­ure that Kurt Cobain backed him up on one of Cobain’s last record­ings is one of the odd­er, more fas­ci­nat­ing foot­notes in this oth­er­wise heav­i­ly exam­ined musi­cal era,” says Music for Mani­acs.

Many rock­ers who looked up to Bur­roughs attend­ed his live read­ings, but for some, “it was­n’t enough to just lis­ten to Bur­roughs read his own works, with increas­ing­ly elab­o­rate musi­cal back­ings, but to hire him to per­form on record­ings. And that is what we have here: not Bur­roughs’ own releas­es, but his var­i­ous mis­cel­la­neous appear­ances on oth­er bands’ songs.”

Above, hear Bur­roughs with Tom Waits on jazz tune “T’Ain’t No Sin” and with Min­istry on “Quick Fix.” You can lis­ten to all of these record­ings, in which Bur­roughs records with or cov­ers the mate­r­i­al of REM, The Doors, Lau­rie Ander­son, Mar­lene Diet­rich, Kurt Cobain, and oth­ers, at Ubuweb. The playlist runs as fol­lows. Click to lis­ten:

  1. Fuck Me Kit­ten (with REM, from “Songs in the Key of X: Music from and Inspired by ‘the X‑Files’ ” — 1996)
  2. Is Every­body In? (with The Doors, recit­ing Jim Mor­ri­son poet­ry, from “Stoned Immac­u­late: The Music of the Doors”)
  3. Sharkey’s Night (with Lau­rie Ander­son, from “Mis­ter Heart­break” — 1983)
  4. What Keeps Mankind Alive (from Kurt Weill trib­ute album “Sep­tem­ber Songs”)
  5. ‘T ‘Aint No Sin (1920s jazz song, per­formed on Tom Waits’ “The Black Rid­er” — 1993)
  6. Quick Fix (w/Ministry, “Just One Fix” b‑side — 1992)
  7. Old Lady Sloan (w/The Eudo­ras, cov­er­ing a song by a Lawrence, Kansas punk band from “The Mor­tal Micronotz Trib­ute!” — 1995
  8. Ich Bin Von Kopf Bis Fub Auf Liebe Eingestellt (Falling In Love Again) — Mar­lene Deitrich cov­er, from “Dead City Radio” — 1988
  9. The “Priest” They Called Him — (w/Kurt Cobain, 1992)

Not only do per­form­ers like Bur­roughs rarely enjoy a two-act career like his, they hard­ly ever put out mate­r­i­al as odd in their last act as they did in their first. But noth­ing in the life of the “rock star to rock stars,” as Music for Mani­acs calls him, hap­pened in the tra­di­tion­al mat­ter. And once you get through his stint as an alter­na­tive rock star, do have a look at his stint as an alter­na­tive per­former on the sil­ver screen.

via Ubuweb

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs “Sings” R.E.M. and The Doors, Backed by the Orig­i­nal Bands

William S. Bur­roughs Explains What Artists & Cre­ative Thinkers Do for Human­i­ty: From Galileo to Cézanne and James Joyce

Pat­ti Smith Shares William S. Bur­roughs’ Advice for Writ­ers and Artists

The Mak­ing of Drug­store Cow­boy, Gus Van Sant’s First Major Film (1989)

Gus Van Sant Adapts William S. Bur­roughs: An Ear­ly 16mm Short

Col­in Mar­shall writes on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Yoko Ono Lets Audience Cut Up Her Clothes in Conceptual Art Performance (Carnegie Hall, 1965)

in History, Music, Theatre | May 19th, 2015

Back before it was com­mon prac­tice to pref­ace one’s web posts with the phrase “trig­ger warn­ing” (which, BTW, might well apply here)…

Before the Inter­net…

And slight­ly before the pub­lic rev­e­la­tion of her rela­tion­ship with John Lennon turned a Japan­ese avant-garde artist into an Amer­i­can house­hold name…

Yoko Ono main­tained an aura of imper­vi­ous­ness onstage at Carnegie Hall, as audi­ence mem­bers accept­ed the chal­lenge to cut away her cloth­ing one piece at a time.

This now-famous con­cep­tu­al per­for­mance was doc­u­ment­ed by film­mak­ers Albert and David Maysles, who cap­tured ner­vous laugh­ter and audi­ence com­men­tary along with the onstage action. (Ono had pre­vi­ous­ly per­formed the piece twice in Japan where—with the excep­tion of one man who wield­ed the scis­sors as if intend­ing to stab her—audiences proved ret­i­cent and respect­ful.)

What does Cut Piece mean?

The motion­less­ness Ono imposed upon her­self (and all sub­se­quent per­form­ers of the work) keeps things open to inter­pre­ta­tion.

It’s been hailed as a deeply sym­bol­ic fem­i­nist work and rep­re­sent­ed in the press of the time as an unin­hib­it­ed, inter­ac­tive strip show. Many an aca­d­e­m­ic paper has been writ­ten.

With so much con­trol ced­ed to the audi­ence, even the per­former could­n’t pre­dict for cer­tain whether the inten­tion of the piece would synch with the real­i­ty.

Cut Piece can­not be mis­tak­en for pure impro­vi­sa­tion, how­ev­er. Like John Cage’s 4’33”, it has a score, com­plete with vari­a­tions:

 Cut Piece 

First Ver­sion for sin­gle per­former: 

Per­former sits on stage with a pair 

of scis­sors placed in front of him. 

It is announced that mem­bers of the audi­ence 

may come on stage–one at 

a time–to cut a small piece of the 

performer’s cloth­ing to take with them. 

Per­former remains motion­less 

through­out the piece. 

Piece ends at the performer’s 

option.

Ono has said that the impulse for Cut Piece came from the desire to cre­ate art free from ego, the “men­tal­i­ty of say­ing, ‘here you are, take any­thing you want, any part you want,’ rather than push­ing some­thing you chose on some­one else.”

She also took inspi­ra­tion from a famil­iar child­hood sto­ry about the Bud­dha self­less­ly giv­ing his own body to pro­vide food for a hun­gry tiger. It seems an apt metaphor, giv­en the facial expres­sions of cer­tain audi­ence par­tic­i­pants. Were they fak­ing a con­fi­dence they didn’t feel, or were they just jerks?

Did I men­tion the trig­ger warn­ing?

Doc­u­men­ta­tion, as any per­for­mance artist will tell you, is not quite the same as being there. Reen­act­ments, too, may fall short of the orig­i­nal.

Ono reprised the work in 2003, at the age of 70, not­ing that her moti­va­tion had shift­ed from rage to love, and a desire for world peace.

When artist Jon Hen­dricks per­formed it in 1968, he did so in a thrift store suit, thus ignor­ing its cre­ator’s con­vic­tion that part of its pow­er came from start­ing out in one’s best clothes.

It’s all very ball­sy, and hor­ri­fy­ing, and com­pelling, and a lit­tle hard to watch.

Would you con­sid­er try­ing it in your local library, com­mu­ni­ty hall, or as part of a school fundrais­er?

A longer analy­sis and his­to­ry of Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece can be found here cour­tesy of Kevin Con­can­non.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Yoko Ono, Age 80, Still Has Moves, Dances with The Beast­ie Boys, Ira Glass, Rober­ta Flack & Friends

Down­load the John Lennon/Yoko Ono “War is Over (If You Want It)” Poster in 100+ Lan­guages

John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appear­ances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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The Thrill is Gone: See B.B. King Play in Two Electric Live Performances

in Music | May 15th, 2015

One of the last great Mis­sis­sip­pi blues­men, Riley B. King, is gone, passed away last night at the age of 89. King made per­haps the most suc­cess­ful crossover of any blues artist into main­stream rock and roll, record­ing with Clap­ton and play­ing for rock audi­ences for decades. But his sound remained root­ed firm­ly in the very blues he cut his teeth on in the fields of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta and in Mem­phis, where he hitch­hiked at 22, with $3 in his pock­et, and quick­ly became a hit as a song­writer and D.J. called the Beale Street Blues Boy—B.B. for short. He “was paid four cents,” writes Buz­zfeed, “for every album he made.”

“By his 80th birth­day,” writes The New York Times, “he was a mil­lion­aire many times over. He owned a man­sion in Las Vegas, a clos­et full of embroi­dered tuxe­does and smok­ing jack­ets, a chain of nightclubs…and the per­son­al and pro­fes­sion­al sat­is­fac­tion of hav­ing endured.” King’s sig­na­ture gui­tars, cus­tomized Gib­son 355s he named Lucille, are as ele­gant and styl­ish as the man him­self. I once stood in front of one of them in a glass case at the Stax muse­um in Mem­phis, star­ing in awe, exam­in­ing the places where his hands had worn into the wood, try­ing to absorb a lit­tle of the mag­ic. King’s sto­ry is one of suc­cess far beyond what most of his peers could imag­ine. But it is also one of pro­found ded­i­ca­tion to the blues, and of over­com­ing racism, pover­ty, and pain—suffering he chan­neled into his music and nev­er lost sight of through the wealth and fame.

Well-deserved trib­utes from fans and fel­low musi­cians are every­where today—to King’s per­son­al warmth and charm, to his impas­sioned singing, and, of course, his incred­i­bly expres­sive vibra­to gui­tar play­ing. “The tone he got out of that gui­tar, the way he shook his left wrist, the way he squeezed the strings,” says gui­tarist Bud­dy Guy, “… man, he came out with that and it was all new to the whole gui­tar playin’ world. The way BB did it is the way we all do it now. He was my friend and father to us all.” See and hear B.B. do it above in live per­for­mances of “The Thrill is Gone” and “Blues Boys Tune.” And just above, see him play and tell his sto­ry in a short 1972 doc­u­men­tary called “Sound­ing Out.” It may be too late now to see the great man per­form live, but it’s nev­er to late to learn about his lega­cy as the undis­put­ed “king of the blues.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

B.B. King Explains in an Ani­mat­ed Video Whether You Need to Endure Hard­ship to Play the Blues

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

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An Animated John Coltrane Explains His True Reason for Being: “I Want to Be a Force for Real Good”

in Jazz, Music | May 12th, 2015

Last week, we post­ed an inter­view with the late, great Ray Brad­bury that was bril­liant­ly ani­mat­ed by the folks over at Blank on Blank. This week, they unveil a new piece fea­tur­ing John Coltrane. You can watch it above.

Coltrane is, of course, one of the true giants of 20th cen­tu­ry music. He first got atten­tion play­ing with the Miles Davis Quin­tet in the mid-1950s on albums like Relax­in’, Cookin’ and Steamin’ before he released his sem­i­nal solo album Blue Train. But his career quick­ly fal­tered. He was hooked on hero­in and Davis, a for­mer junkie him­self, fired him from the Quin­tet. When he cleaned him­self up, Coltrane found he was a changed man. “In the year of 1957,” he writes in the lin­er notes for his mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme, “I expe­ri­enced, by the grace of God, a spir­i­tu­al awak­en­ing, which was to lead me to a rich­er, fuller, more pro­duc­tive life.”

Through­out the 60s, Coltrane sought to express his rapid­ly evolv­ing sense of spir­i­tu­al­i­ty through music that grew ever more com­plex and avant-garde. Late peri­od Coltrane is a far cry from the moody grace of Blue Train; it’s a cas­cade of fren­zied notes that can be as sub­lime as it is dis­cor­dant and chal­leng­ing.

The piece above is a record­ing by Paci­fi­ca Radio reporter Frank Kof­sky who talked with Coltrane in Novem­ber 1966, just eight months before he died at the age of 40 of liv­er can­cer.

At one point in the piece, Kof­sky asks him how much he prac­tices. Trane was famous for the man­ic inten­si­ty with which he played. He once report­ed­ly spent ten hours per­fect­ing the sound of a sin­gle note. 12-hour prac­tice ses­sions were the rou­tine. In the inter­view, how­ev­er, Coltrane is non­cha­lant. “I find that it’s only when some­thing is try­ing to come through you know that I real­ly prac­tice and then it’s just, I don’t know how many hours, it’s just all day. “

Lat­er in the video, when Coltrane dis­cuss­es switch­ing from a tenor sax to a sopra­no, you get a glimpse of how dri­ven he was by his muse.

The sound of that sopra­no was actu­al­ly so much clos­er to me in my ear. I didn’t want admit this damn thing because I said well the tenor’s my horn, this is my baby but the sopra­no, there’s still some­thing there, just the voice of it that I can’t… It’s just real­ly beau­ti­ful. I real­ly like it.

But the most poignant moment comes at the end of video when he describes what kind of per­son he wants to be.

I mean I want to be a force for real good. In oth­er words, I know that there are bad forces. I know that there are forces out here that bring suf­fer­ing to oth­ers and mis­ery to the world, but I want to be the oppo­site force. I want to be the force, which is tru­ly for good.

For Jazz fans every­where, there is no ques­tion that he was a force for good. And it was all embod­ied in his music.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Coltrane Per­forms A Love Supreme and Oth­er Clas­sics in Antibes (July 1965)

John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Watch John Coltrane Turn His Hand­writ­ten Poem Into a Sub­lime Musi­cal Pas­sage on A Love Supreme

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow. And check out his blog Veep­to­pus, fea­tur­ing lots of pic­tures of bad­gers and even more pic­tures of vice pres­i­dents with octo­pus­es on their heads.  The Veep­to­pus store is here.

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Watch Miles Davis Improvise Music for Elevator to the Gallows, Louis Malle’s New Wave Thriller (1958)

in Film, Jazz, Music | May 11th, 2015

The modal exper­i­men­ta­tion in Miles Davis’ clas­sic albums Mile­stones and, espe­cial­ly, 1959’s Kind of Blue seemed to come out of nowhere. Along with sim­i­lar­ly ground­break­ing releas­es at the end of the fifties, these records irrev­o­ca­bly changed the sound of jazz. But hard­core jazz fans, and cinephiles, would have seen the devel­op­ment com­ing, hav­ing heard Davis’ sound­track to Louis Malle’s 1958 crime thriller Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows (Ascenseur pour l’Echafaud—trail­er below). As the sto­ry goes, Davis hap­pened to be in Paris in 1957 dur­ing the film’s post­pro­duc­tion to per­form at the Club Saint-Ger­main. Malle’s assistant—perhaps inspired by the moody jazz sound­tracks of films like Roger Vadim’s Does One Ever Know and Alexan­der Mackendrick’s Sweet Smell of Suc­cess—sug­gest­ed Davis to the direc­tor. After a pri­vate screen­ing of the film, the trum­peter and com­pos­er agreed to take the gig. It was Davis’ first sound­track and Malle’s first fea­ture film.

At the top of the post, we have the great priv­i­lege of seeing—and hearing—Miles and his four side­men record the sound­track, live. The two-day ses­sion took place at Le Post Parisien Stu­dio in Paris on Decem­ber 4th and 5th. Accord­ing to Discogs, “Davis only gave the musi­cians a few rudi­men­ta­ry har­mon­ic sequences he had assem­bled in his hotel room, and once the plot was explained, the band impro­vised with­out any pre­com­posed theme, while edit­ed loops of the musi­cal­ly rel­e­vant film sequences were pro­ject­ed in the back­ground.”

The filmed ses­sion is cap­ti­vat­ing; Davis and band stare intent­ly at the screen and, on the spot, cre­ate the film’s mood. (In the sec­ond half of the clip, the film­mak­ers ban­ter in French about the pro­duc­tion while Davis plays in the back­ground.) See­ing this footage, writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, is akin to “watch­ing Picas­so paint.” Fur­ther­more, “it could be argued that Malle’s cin­e­mat­ic style and the unique pac­ing and char­ac­ter of this par­tic­u­lar film—which Miles obvi­ous­ly had to con­form to in order to score it properly—had a notice­able influ­ence on his music.”

Miles would say as much, claims his biog­ra­ph­er Ian Carr, telling Malle “a year or two lat­er” that “the expe­ri­ence of mak­ing the music for the film had enriched him.” Crit­ic Jean-Louis Gini­bre wrote in Jazz mag­a­zine at the time that Davis “raised him­self to greater heights” dur­ing the ses­sions, “and became aware of the trag­ic char­ac­ter of his music which, until then, had been only dim­ly expressed.” For his part, Malle remarked, “Miles’s commentary—which is of extreme simplicity—gives a real­ly extra­or­di­nary dimen­sion to the visu­al image.” Fans of the film will sure­ly agree. Fans of Miles Davis may want to rush out and get their hands of a copy of the score. (You can find a dimin­ished copy on Youtube here). It was nev­er released in the U.S., but ten songs appeared state­side on an album called Jazz Track. While the sound­track may not work as well with­out the images (All­mu­sic describes some num­bers as “rather ster­ile”), it nonethe­less pro­vides us with a kind of miss­ing link between Davis’ fifties hard bop and the cool jazz he pio­neered the fol­low­ing decade in his most-laud­ed, best-sell­ing album, Kind of Blue.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds/Discogs/

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Watch Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music for Miles Davis’ “So What,” Char­lie Parker’s “Con­fir­ma­tion” & Coltrane’s “Giant Steps”

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

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Dementia Patients Find Some Eternal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

in Life, Music | May 11th, 2015

Last April, Mal­colm Young left AC/DC, the band he co-found­ed with his broth­er Angus in 1973. Only 61 years old, the gui­tarist found him­self unable to remem­ber his famous licks and riffs. The cause, doc­tors dis­cov­ered, was demen­tia. Young now lives in a nurs­ing home where he receives full-time care.

Above, you can watch a video cre­at­ed by the Brazil­ian radio sta­tion 89FM, where, touch­ing­ly, elder­ly Brazil­ians, also suf­fer­ing from demen­tia, lis­ten to the sounds of AC/DC and sum­mon to mind their younger, care­free days, when rock pro­vid­ed their sound­track to their youth. Long live rock…

To under­stand why music seems to trig­ger mem­o­ries in unusu­al ways, and how music ther­a­py can be used to improve the lives of those with demen­tia, see the research cov­ered at Live Sci­ence.

via Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock

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