Like ‘em or lump ‘em, you should give ‘em credit—Dave Grohl’s Foo Fight­ers have kind of rede­fined the con­cept album with their lat­est, Son­ic High­ways, push­ing a tired form in a refresh­ing direc­tion. Rather than a self-con­tained nar­ra­tive, the record opens itself up to tell the sto­ries of rock ‘n’ roll itself or, as All­mu­sic puts it, “the clas­sic rock that unites the U.S. from coast to coast.” Pick­ing up where his cel­e­bra­to­ry film Sound City left off, Grohl ties in his newest release with a series of HBO doc­u­men­taries that vis­it cities from New York, to Nashville, Austin, New Orleans, L.A., Wash­ing­ton, DC., and Seat­tle to tell their musi­cal sto­ries.

Of course, the musi­cal his­to­ry of that last metrop­o­lis can­not be nar­rat­ed with­out ref­er­ence to Grohl’s for­mer band, and so, Con­se­quence of Sound informs us, “Nir­vana received heavy focus dur­ing the [Seat­tle Son­ic High­ways] episode as Dave Grohl recount­ed his time in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame out­fit. Among the biggest rev­e­la­tions was the time Kurt Cobain asked to hear solo record­ings Grohl had been work­ing on dur­ing Nirvana’s 1992 tour.”

“Kurt heard that, and kissed me on the face, as he was in a bath,” Grohl revealed. “He was so excit­ed. He was like, ‘I heard you record­ed some stuff with Bar­rett [Jones].’ I was like, ‘Yeah.’ He was like, ‘Let me hear it.’ I was too afraid to be in the same room as he lis­tened to it.”

At the time, Grohl intend­ed these ear­ly Foo Fight­ers record­ings as an anony­mous side project, but the demos gar­nered enough atten­tion that he lat­er [after Cobain’s death] formed a band and, well… we pret­ty much know the rest of that sto­ry, tragedy and all. But as for the demos, we can hear them too, just as Cobain did, pos­si­bly while in the bath, in ‘92. These ear­ly ver­sions of songs like “Alone + Easy Tar­get” (top), “Big Me” (above), and “Exhaust­ed” (below)—all of which even­tu­al­ly made their way onto the first, epony­mous 1995 Foo Fight­ers album—have been col­lect­ed as an unof­fi­cial release called Nir­vana: Dave’s Demo­tapes 1992–1993.

Grohl plays all the instru­ments on these record­ings (hear more here), and wrote all the lyrics, though, as he tells us in an inter­view below, writ­ing lyrics isn’t some­thing he enjoys. He also dis­cuss­es his admi­ra­tion for Cobain’s nat­ur­al writ­ing abil­i­ty, and reveals that the Nir­vana front­man liked “Exhaust­ed” and “Alone + Easy Tar­get” so much he want­ed to turn them into Nir­vana songs. The oppor­tu­ni­ty was lost, but Cobain’s encour­age­ment clear­ly had pos­i­tive effect on the future Foo Fight­er.

Becom­ing a rock frontman—and a cur­rent sto­ry­teller of rock history—may have been an evo­lu­tion­ary leap for Grohl, but drum­ming has been a con­stant before, dur­ing, and after the Nir­vana phe­nom­e­non. As a denizen of the DC punk scene, Grohl lived part of the rock his­to­ry of that city as well, play­ing with sev­er­al hard­core bands, includ­ing Dain Bra­m­age, the project that fol­lowed his first band, Mis­sion Impos­si­ble. Music blog Antiqui­et brings us that band’s 1986 demo record­ings. They’re well worth a lis­ten, show­cas­ing a clas­sic mid-80s DC sound, backed by what was even then some pro­found­ly excel­lent drum­ming from Grohl. As Dain Bramage’s singer remarked, “After you’ve spent a cou­ple years with Dave Grohl as your drum­mer it’s easy to feel like no oth­er drum­mer exists.” The charis­mat­ic but hum­ble Grohl writes some pret­ty decent songs too, even while work­ing in the shad­ow of super­fa­mous Kurt Cobain.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nir­vana Plays in a Radio Shack, the Day After Record­ing its First Demo Tape (1988)

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

Lis­ten to The John Bon­ham Sto­ry, a Radio Show Host­ed by Dave Grohl

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

It’s not hard to guess what Bob Dylan will fans will be putting on their Christ­mas lists this year — either the new hard­cov­er book, The Lyrics: Since 1962, the 14-pound, 960-page book con­tain­ing all the lyrics Dylan wrote, record­ed, and per­formed through­out the years. Or the defin­i­tive edi­tion of The Base­ment Tapes, the new col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing 6‑discs and 138 tracks.

Above, actor Jeff Bridges (you know him as “The Dude” in The Big Lebows­ki) nar­rates the sto­ry behind The Base­ment Tapes, trac­ing Dylan’s jour­ney from Green­wich Vil­lage to the base­ment of “Big Pink,” the unas­sum­ing home in West Sauger­ties, New York where Dylan and The Band record­ed those famous tapes. We don’t need to rehearse the sto­ry. Bridges does a fine job of doing that. Below, you can watch him show off some of his musi­cal tal­ents, play­ing a cov­er of a Dylan song, “Ring Them Bells,” at the El Rey The­atre in LA in April 2013. He’s obvi­ous­ly a fan.

H/T Mike

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: 12 Rare Record­ings

Bob Dylan and George Har­ri­son Play Ten­nis, 1969

Chrissie Hyn­de knows a few things about being a female rock­er. When at the ten­der age of 14 she saw Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels play at a fair­ground in her home­town of Akron, Ohio, the band got into a fist­fight with each oth­er dur­ing the per­for­mance. She was hooked. “I thought,” she said to The Guardian ‘That’s got to be the life!’ ”

Not long after col­lege at Kent State, where she was in a band with Devo’s Mark Moth­ers­baugh, she end­ed up in Lon­don. There she worked at Mal­colm McLaren’s noto­ri­ous store SEX along­side the future mem­bers of The Sex Pis­tols. She even asked Sid Vicious and John­ny Rot­ten to mar­ry her for the work visa. She tried to start a band with Mick Jones of The Clash, but that didn’t take. She was kicked out of the band Mas­ters of the Back­side before they changed their name to The Damned and became famous. Then in 1978, she formed the band The Pre­tenders and quick­ly became a rock icon with hit tunes like “Don’t Get Me Wrong” and “Mes­sage of Love.”

In short, Hyn­de has been rock­ing for over 40 years now and she has some advice for aspir­ing lady rock­ers, which was orig­i­nal­ly print­ed as a pro­mo for her 1994 release “Night in my Veins.”

1. Don’t moan about being a chick, refer to fem­i­nism or com­plain about sex­ist dis­crim­i­na­tion. We’ve all been thrown down the stairs, and f—ed about, but no one wants to hear a whin­ing female. Write a loose­ly dis­guised song about it instead and clean up. ($)

2. Nev­er pre­tend to know more than you do. If you don’t know chord names, refer to the dots. Don’t go near the desk unless you plan on becom­ing an engi­neer.

3. Make the oth­er band mem­bers look and sound good. Bring out the best in them; that’s your job. Oh, and you bet­ter sound good too.

4. Do not insist in [sic] work­ing with “females.” That’s just more b.s. Get the best man for the job. If it hap­pens to a woman, great – you’ll have some­one to go to depart­ment stores with on tour instead of mak­ing one of the road crew go with you.

5. Try not to have a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship with the band. It always ends in tears.

6. Don’t think that stick­ing your boobs out and try­ing to look f—able will help. Remem­ber you’re in a rock and roll band. It’s not “f—me,” it’s “f—you”!

7. Don’t try to com­pete with the guys; it won’t impress any­body. Remem­ber, one of the rea­sons they like you is because you don’t offer yet more com­pe­ti­tion to the already exist­ing male egos.

8. If you sing, don’t “belt” or “screech.” No one wants to hear that sh–; it sounds “hys­ter­i­cal.”

9. Shave your legs, for chris­sakes!

10. Don’t take advice from peo­ple like me. Do your own thing always.

A lot of this is just sound advice for get­ting along at the work­place – don’t act like you know more than you do, don’t com­plain, make your work­mates look good but don’t doink them. But prob­a­bly the key points for Hyn­de is num­ber one and num­ber sev­en.

In that inter­view with the Guardian, she indeed proved to be reluc­tant to “moan” about sex­u­al dis­crim­i­na­tion in the rock­dom. “There’s always been women doing this, just not that many,” she said. “I don’t know what the fem­i­nists have to say about it. Over the years, you’d hear, ‘We weren’t encour­aged.’ Well, I don’t think Jeff Beck­’s moth­er was say­ing, ‘Jef­frey! What are you doing up in your room? Are you rehears­ing up there?’ No one was ever encour­aged to play gui­tar in a band. But I nev­er found it hard­er because I’m a woman. If any­thing I’ve been treat­ed bet­ter. Guys will car­ry my gui­tars and stuff – who’s going to say no? Guys always tune my gui­tars, too.”

Check out the video for “Night in my Veins” below:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Four Female Punk Bands That Changed Women’s Role in Rock

CBGB’s: The Roots of Punk Lets You Watch Vin­tage Footage from the Hey­day of NYC’s Great Music Scene

The Art of Punk Presents a New Doc­u­men­tary on The Dead Kennedys and Their Grit­ty Aes­thet­ics

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.

Open­ing with max­i­mum fan­fare and pomp, and clos­ing with the sound of dive bombers, “In the Flesh?,” the first track on Pink Floyd’s mag­num opus The Wall announces that the two-disc con­cept album will be big, bom­bas­tic, and impor­tant. All that it is, but it’s also somber, groovy, even some­times del­i­cate, har­ness­ing the band’s full range of strengths—David Gilmour’s min­i­mal­ist funk rhythms and soar­ing, com­plex blues leads, Nick Mason’s tim­pani-like drum fills and thump­ing dis­co beats, and Richard Wright’s moody key­board sound­scapes. Under it all, the propul­sive throb of Roger Waters’ bass—and pre­sid­ing over it his jad­ed, nos­tal­gic vision of per­son­al and social alien­ation.

Expert­ly blend­ing per­son­al nar­ra­tive with tren­chant, if at times not par­tic­u­lar­ly sub­tle, social cri­tique, Waters’ rock opera—and it is, pri­mar­i­ly, his—debuted just over 35 years ago on Novem­ber 30, 1979. The project grew out of a col­lec­tion of demos Waters wrote and record­ed on his own. He pre­sent­ed the almost-ful­ly formed album (minus the few col­lab­o­ra­tions with Gilmour like “Com­fort­ably Numb”) to the band and pro­duc­er Bob Ezrin, who described it as “Roger’s own project and not a group effort.” That may be so in its com­po­si­tion, but the final record­ing is a glo­ri­ous group effort indeed, show­cas­ing each member’s par­tic­u­lar musi­cal per­son­al­i­ty, as well as those of a host of guest musi­cians. The leg­endary stage show drew togeth­er an even larg­er pool of tal­ent, such as polit­i­cal car­toon­ist Ger­ald Scarfe, whose ani­ma­tions were pro­ject­ed on a giant card­board wall that slow­ly came down over the course of the con­cert.

At the top of the page, see the band play the entire­ty of the album at Earl’s Court in Lon­don, and just above, watch a “lost” doc­u­men­tary com­piled from behind-the-scenes footage of that show, the last of thir­ty the band per­formed on The Wall tour, which began in Los Ange­les. We get inter­views with the band and crew, Waters at sound check, and “the fre­net­ic oper­a­tion of the entire load-in process.” Archi­tect Mark Fish­er describes the plan­ning and cre­ation of the stage show—a year in the making—from the wall itself to the huge inflat­able char­ac­ters made from Scarfe’s ani­ma­tions. It’s a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the very first show of its kind, a huge mul­ti­me­dia extrav­a­gan­za that blew audi­ences away and raised the bar for every are­na rock tour that fol­lowed.

The film ver­sion of The Wall, which debuted almost three years lat­er in 1982, was also decid­ed­ly a col­lab­o­ra­tive affair. Just above, a doc­u­men­tary called “The Oth­er Side of The Wall” intro­duces us to “four very dif­fer­ent tal­ents”: Waters, Scarfe, direc­tor Alan Park­er, and star Bob Geld­of. (Album pro­duc­er Ezrin doesn’t get a men­tion, though he claims to have writ­ten the film’s script.) Giv­ing us a look at “how the final brick in The Wall fell into place,” the short film begins with Waters’ inspi­ra­tion for the con­cept album; he tells us in his own words how it grew from his frus­tra­tions with the sta­di­um tour­ing for Ani­mals. Park­er dis­cuss­es his artis­tic inten­tion to not make “a con­cept movie” (though the movie seems to be exact­ly that), and Scarfe talks about his designs for the album and film, which Park­er describes as “weird” and “psy­cho­path­ic.”

The final piece of behind-the-scenes mak­ing of The Wall we bring you is the BBC Radio inter­view, above, that Waters’ gave in 1979. He talks about the album’s gen­e­sis, and breaks down the mean­ing of each song at length. Waters’ rela­tion­ship with The Wall defined the rest of his career after he left Pink Floyd in 1986. In fact, since 2010, he’s been tour­ing his ver­sion of the stage show, and has pro­duced a doc­u­men­tary of its revival. But long before the cur­rent incar­na­tion of the endur­ing­ly clas­sic album and live spec­ta­cle, he brought a revival of The Wall to Berlin in 1990 to com­mem­o­rate the fall of that city’s lit­er­al wall eight months ear­li­er. See the full con­cert video of that show below. Fea­tur­ing an array of guest musi­cians, the show approx­i­mates the musi­cal inten­si­ty of the orig­i­nal 1980 tour—but noth­ing, of course, can sub­sti­tute for the incred­i­ble ener­gy of the orig­i­nal four mem­bers of the band play­ing togeth­er. The vision may have been all Waters, but the exe­cu­tion of The Wall need­ed Pink Floyd for its suc­cess.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Roger Waters’ Ear­ly, Work-in-Progress Record­ings of Pink Floyd’s The Wall

Watch Doc­u­men­taries on the Mak­ing of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here

Watch the Rare Reunions of Pink Floyd: Con­certs from 2005, 2010 & 2011

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

Image by Row­land Scher­man, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

If you’re look­ing for a sound­track for Thanks­giv­ing, you could do worse than to let Bob Dylan cre­ate it for you.

From May 2006 until April 2009, Dylan host­ed the Theme Time Radio Hour, a week­ly radio show on XM Satel­lite Radio. Each show revolved around a dif­fer­ent theme (e.g., “Weath­er,” “Drink­ing” or “Base­ball”). But the episodes all had one thing in com­mon — they pre­sent­ed lis­ten­ers with an eclec­tic mix of music, every­thing from LL Cool J and Chuck Berry, to They Might Be Giants, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, and John­ny Cash. Try­ing to describe the radio show, the­ater crit­ic Ter­ry Tea­chout wrote in The Wall Street Jour­nal: “To lis­ten to Theme Time Radio Hour is to redis­cov­er the sense of musi­cal adven­ture that old-fash­ioned disc jock­eys with strong­ly indi­vid­ual per­son­al­i­ties offered in the days before big-mon­ey sta­tions pinned their fis­cal hopes to the rigid Top 40-style playlists that took the fun out of radio.”

Today we bring you Episode 30 of Sea­son 1, “Thanks­giv­ing Left­overs,” which orig­i­nal­ly aired on Novem­ber 22, 2006. The show fea­tures 18 songs, select­ed and intro­duced by Dylan. The songs (find a list below) aren’t dish­es cooked fresh. No, they’re “left­overs” — tunes that Dylan had hoped to squeeze into pre­vi­ous radio shows but nev­er quite man­aged to do. Yet, togeth­er, they make for a pret­ty good meal. You can stream them all above. And if you like what you hear, head over to the Theme Time Radio Hour Archive, where they’ve appar­ent­ly archived all 100 episodes, audio includ­ed.

1. “Turkey In The Straw” — Lib­er­ace (1952)
2. “Hal­lelu­jah, I’m A Bum” — Har­ry McClin­tock (1926)
3. “Let Me Play With Your Poo­dle” — Tam­pa Red & Big Maceo (1942)
4. “Yard Dog” — Al Fer­ri­er (1972)
5. “The Turkey Hop” — The Robins with John­ny Otis Orches­tra (1950)
6. “Hon­ey­suck­le Rose” — Fats Waller (1934)
7. “Twelve Red Ros­es” — Bet­ty Har­ris (1966)
8. “Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes” — Skeets McDon­ald (1952)
9. “Them There Eyes” — Bil­lie Hol­i­day (1939)
10. “Angel Eyes” — Jesse Belvin (1959)
11. “Gun­slingers” — Mighty Spar­row (1963)
12. “Let’s Be Friends” — Bil­ly Wright (1955)
13. “Whiskey Is The Dev­il (In Liq­uid Form)” — The Bailes Broth­ers (1947)
14. “Teach Me Tonight” — Dinah Wash­ing­ton (1954)
15. “Teacher Teacher” — Rock­pile (1980)
16. “Iodine In My Cof­fee” — Mud­dy Waters (1952)
17. “You Eat Too Much” — Harold Bur­rage (1956)
18. “Pie In The Sky” — Cis­co Hous­ton (1960)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Mar­i­lyn Monroe’s Hand­writ­ten Turkey-and-Stuff­ing Recipe

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