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.