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David Byrne has played many roles: front­man of Talk­ing Heads, archi­tec­tur­al observ­er, com­pos­er of opera (specif­i­cal­ly opera about Imel­da Mar­cos, for­mer first lady of the Philip­pines, the coun­try from which I write this post today), enthu­si­as­tic musi­cal col­lab­o­ra­tor, urban cycling advo­cate — and that only counts the ones he’s played here in Open Cul­ture posts. (Some­day, we’ve got to write up his love of Pow­er­point.) But did you know he’s also done a free inter­net radio show, and for near­ly a decade at that? “For one or two days a month I queue up David Byrne’s Radio Sta­tion on the web and lis­ten to his two-hour loop of new, won­der­ful, deli­cious tunes,” writes Kevin Kel­ly in a Cool Tools post from 2008, just over halfway into the life of the show so far. “Rock-star Byrne is a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cal pio­neer, admirably eclec­tic in his taste, yet astute­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ing at the same time. Over years of lis­ten­ing to all kinds of music — exper­i­men­tal, indie, inter­na­tion­al, fringe, clas­si­cal, pop — he’s heard enough to make some great rec­om­men­da­tions.”

Kel­ly cites such tan­ta­liz­ing Byrnean playlists as “Ice­landic Pop,” “Opera high­lights,” “Eclec­tic Stuff,” and “African Fusion Pop.” More recent ses­sions, which can run for three hours or longer, include “South­ern Writ­ers,” “Songs of Burt Bacharach,” and “Raga Rock.” A new playlist comes out every month. You can list to his August playlist, “Cus­tom Jack­ets, Now and Then,” a cel­e­bra­tion of women “who have been taint­ed or touched by coun­try music” includ­ing Neko Case, Emmy­lou Har­ris, Gillian Welch, and Lucin­da Williams. You can also hear a brand new Novem­ber playlist on the davidbyrne.com front page, which uses a new­er audio play­er than all the pre­vi­ous install­ments. “Viva Mex­i­co Part 1” promis­es a selec­tion of artists from that vibrant coun­try who “have found ways to incor­po­rate their Mex­i­can musi­cal her­itage and cul­ture into what might be called the glob­al pop form,” result­ing not in “imi­ta­tions of North Amer­i­can or UK alt-rock” but songs that “sound like noth­ing but them­selves.” And if you can’t trust David Byrne to know musi­cal unique­ness when he hears it, who can you trust?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne’s Grad­u­a­tion Speech Offers Trou­bling and Encour­ag­ing Advice for Stu­dents in the Arts

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Try to imag­ine a world with­out The Ramones. Just close your eyes and try…. Okay, maybe you can do it, but I can’t. Poof! Sev­er­al dozen scuzzy punk bands that played the sound­track to my ado­les­cence sud­den­ly van­ish. The Queens, NY band’s brat­ty take on 50s girl group pop and doo wop—played at dou­ble and triple speeds, har­monies chant­ed more than sung—saved rock and roll from its bloat­ed, delu­sion­al self. They made dumb music for smart peo­ple, and if they tend­ed toward self-par­o­dy in their lat­er years, includ­ing the sad spec­ta­cle of Dee Dee’s abortive rap career, they can and should be for­giv­en.

In a dis­dain­ful swipe at sev­en­ties pro­gres­sive rock, crit­ic Robert Christ­gau once attrib­uted to Chuck Berry the words “beware of mid­dle­brows bear­ing elec­tric gui­tars.” Cat­ty, but it’s true that when bud­gets swelled and the music busi­ness boomed, rock went full-on MOR; The Ramones pro­vid­ed the per­fect anti­dote. With songs like “Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue” and “I Don’t Wan­na Be Learned/I Don’t Wan­na Be Tamed” they pro­claimed them­selves defi­ant low­brows and proud of it. Both tunes show up on their first demo record, above (at 10:40 and 18:22), a glo­ri­ous­ly fuzzy, lo-fi affair fea­tur­ing a few cuts that didn’t appear on their self-titled 1976 debut.

Record­ed in 1975—and some per­haps as ear­ly as ’74—these record­ings cap­ture the band at their most raw and unmedi­at­ed. The blog Ramones: Hum­ming a Sick­en­ing Tune has an excel­lent break­down of each demo song, and sums up this pre­cious arti­fact nice­ly: “[The ear­ly demo record­ings] offer a fas­ci­nat­ing alter­na­tive insight into how the even­tu­al debut album might have oth­er­wise sound­ed. Their dense, pri­mal sound reveals the sur­pris­ing amount of dilu­tion that the first record’s some­what con­cep­tu­al mix wrought upon the quar­tet’s fun­da­men­tal pow­er.”

The increas­ing pro­fes­sion­al­iza­tion of the Ramones, and their grad­ual tran­si­tion to almost-pop, has served to obscure the tru­ly hyp­not­ic, pound­ing, buz­z­saw drone they made as com­plete ama­teur unknowns. Dare I say I like their ear­ly work bet­ter? If only because they made a sound every lo-fi DIY band from my youth, includ­ing my own high school garage out­fit, strove might­i­ly to emu­late, whether they could actu­al­ly play their instru­ments or not. None of this praise is meant to dimin­ish the bril­liance of Ramones, which can­not be called a tra­di­tion­al stu­dio rock record by any stretch. Record­ed for Sire Records in sev­en days on a $6,400 bud­get, the band’s first album is as lean and scrap­py as major label prod­uct gets. But the demos above show us that they could do just as well, maybe bet­ter, with almost noth­ing but their instru­ments and sui gener­is genius. Or as blog­ger Bun­combeShi­no­la puts it: “crunchy and charged, these record­ings make the six grand spent on The Ramones seem like a dubi­ous extrav­a­gance.” Indeed.

Songs you can hear above include:

1. 53rd & 3rd Demo
2. I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend Demo
3. Judy Is A Punk Demo
4. Now I Wan­na Sniff Some Glue Demo
5. I Can’t Be Demo
6. I Don’t Wan­na Be Learned I Don’t Wan­na Be Tamed Demo
7. You Should Nev­er Open That Door Demo

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

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

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

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

After retir­ing for per­son­al rea­sons from prog-rock giants Gen­e­sis, Peter Gabriel went on to record a total of four solo records enti­tled Peter Gabriel, dis­tin­guished from each oth­er by ref­er­ences to their cov­er art (“Car,” “Scratch,” “Melt”) and an alter­nate title insist­ed upon by his label (“Secu­ri­ty”). This inten­sive focus on the epony­mous per­haps bespeaks of ego, per­haps humil­i­ty. It also maybe sig­ni­fies the decep­tive­ly straight­for­ward pre­sen­ta­tion Gabriel would offer the world—shorn of the make­up and cos­tumes of his Gen­e­sis days, he might appear to have become anoth­er earnest, bal­ladeer­ing singer/songwriter. (See our post on clas­sic Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis from yes­ter­day.) Yet that first, 1977, solo out­ing was as imag­i­na­tive, baroque, and glee­ful­ly exper­i­men­tal as his pre­vi­ous work. His expan­sive musi­cal vocab­u­lary gave the first Peter Gabriel what Stere­ogum calls “a pur­pose­ful­ly eclec­tic, any­thing-flies approach to songcraft” that some­times worked, some­times didn’t.

Some of the uneven­ness of the first solo album is due to what Gabriel him­self felt was over­pro­duc­tion on the part of Bob Ezrin, par­tic­u­lar­ly on the song “Here Comes the Flood.” He would there­after per­form this song solo on piano—re-record­ing it thus in 1990. At the top of the post, you can hear him play it as the open­er for his first ever solo show at the Capi­tol The­atre in Pas­sa­ic, New Jer­sey.

The March 5, 1977 con­cert kicked off the tour for the first Peter Gabriel, for which he assem­bled an all-star band, some of whom had fea­tured on the album, includ­ing King Crim­son gui­tarist Robert Fripp (appear­ing under the name “Dusty Rhodes” and appar­ent­ly play­ing off­stage behind the cur­tain). After “Here Comes the Flood” is “On the Air,” and just above, hear the weird, wob­bly “Mori­bund the Burg­er­meis­ter” from that night. Below, in four parts, hear the remain­ing songs in the set (see the full setlist here). Over the audio in each Youtube clip, see mon­tages of still images—some pre­sum­ably from the tour, some of album and pro­mo art­work.

While Gabriel may have ditched the flam­boy­ant onstage per­son­ae, he nev­er aban­doned his visu­al flair, as we know from those ground­break­ing music videos. Wit­ness the artis­tic pedi­gree on dis­play in the cov­er art of Peter Gabriel (Car)—a pho­to­graph by Throb­bing Gris­tle mem­ber and artist Peter “Sleazy” Christo­pher­son of Gabriel slumped in a car owned by famed album cov­er design­er Storm Thorg­er­son.

But the new Peter Gabriel, the solo artist, had—as he put it in the first album’s big sin­gle “Sols­bury Hill”—“walked right out of the machin­ery” of Gen­e­sis’ exces­sive pre­sen­ta­tion. That song, still one of his most mem­o­rable, has been cov­ered by every­one from Lou Reed to Era­sure. Speak­ing to his strength as a song­writer, the tune with per­haps the broad­est appeal is also one of his most personal—purportedly about his deci­sion to leave Gen­e­sis. Hear it live in Part 5 below.

Though he may have left behind the band that made him famous, he still pays trib­ute to them in his first solo concert’s finale. At the close of the set, below, he ends with a Gen­e­sis song, “Back in N.Y.C.,” from the last, dou­ble con­cept album he record­ed with them. It doesn’t feel out of place at all, prov­ing per­haps that, even with­out the makeup—as All­mu­sic writes—Peter Gabriel was “unde­ni­ably the work of the same man behind The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Gen­e­sis (from the Peter Gabriel-Era) Per­form in a Glo­ri­ous, 1973 Restored Con­cert Film

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

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

If you’re of a cer­tain vintage—let’s just say old enough to bore mil­len­ni­als to death with nos­tal­gic rants about how MTV used to play music videos, man—then you will remem­ber Peter Gabriel’s visu­al­ly stun­ning “Sledge­ham­mer” video from his award-win­ning 1986 album So. You will have had your heart­strings tugged by his “In Your Eyes” and its pitch-per­fect appro­pri­a­tion in Cameron Crowe’s Say Any­thing. And you will know—though maybe not as well as Patrick Bate­man—the sounds and images of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight.” This music may not have aged as well as those of us who grew up hear­ing it (or vice ver­sa), but it left an indeli­ble impres­sion on a gen­er­a­tion and defined 80s pop cul­ture as much as Michael Jack­son or The Ban­gles.

But if you are of a slight­ly ear­li­er vin­tage, you will remem­ber these fine musi­cians for an entire­ly dif­fer­ent rea­son. Before the catchy dance-pop silli­ness of “Sus­su­dio” and “Big Time,” there was the arty, high-seri­ous­ness of Gen­e­sis, as front­ed in its hey­day by Gabriel, with Collins pound­ing the drums. Though the band per­sist­ed well into the 80s and 90s after Gabriel’s 1975 depar­ture, meld­ing funk, soul, and pop in inno­v­a­tive ways as Collins took the lead, die-hard Gen­e­sis fans swear by its clas­sic con­fig­u­ra­tion, with its sur­re­al con­cept albums and stage shows rival­ing Wall-era Pink Floyd or Bowie’s Star­dust phase. If you’re none too keen on lat­er Gen­e­sis, the slick synth-rock hit machine, and if the afore­men­tioned flam­boy­ant pro­duc­tions are your cup of Eng­lish prog-rock tea, then we have a treat for you.

Just above is a ful­ly restored con­cert film of a 1973 per­for­mance at England’s Shep­per­ton Stu­dios, “per­haps,” writes Dan­ger­ous Minds, “the sin­gle best rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Peter Gabriel-era Gen­e­sis on film.” Though the con­cert pre­cedes the band’s Gabriel-era swan song—double con­cept album, The Lamb Lies Down on Broad­way—it does show­case the strongest mate­r­i­al from their two pre­vi­ous records, Fox­trot and the tru­ly excel­lent Sell­ing Eng­land by the Pound. Promi­nent­ly on dis­play are the eccen­tric­i­ties that sharply divid­ed crit­ics and enam­ored fans: the odd time-sig­na­tures and abrupt tem­po changes, vir­tu­osic musi­cian­ship, lit­er­ate, eso­teric lyrics, and Gabriel’s the­atri­cal make­up and cos­tum­ing. The effect of it all is some­times a bit like Rush in a pro­duc­tion of God­spell, and while This is Spinal Tap took a lot of the air out of this sort of thing three decades ago, the film remains an impres­sive doc­u­ment even if the per­for­mances are hard to take entire­ly seri­ous­ly at times. See below for a full track­list:

“Watch­er of the Skies” (8:04)
“Danc­ing with the Moon­lit Knight” (9:02)
“I Know What I Like” (5:46)
“The Musi­cal Box” (11:39)
“Sup­per’s Ready” (23:59)

The sto­ry of the film’s restora­tion is intrigu­ing in its own right. The Shep­per­ton footage was res­cued by a small group who pooled resources to buy it in a New York estate sale. Since then, Youtube uploader King Lerch and his con­fr­eres have upgrad­ed the orig­i­nal restora­tion to the HD ver­sion you see above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Gabriel and Gen­e­sis Live on Bel­gian TV in 1972: The Full Show

Watch Pink Floyd Play Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

David Bowie’s Final Gig as Zig­gy Star­dust Doc­u­ment­ed in 1973 Con­cert Film

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

The End­less Riv­er, Pink Floyd’s unex­pect­ed new album, dropped Fri­day, and unless we cred­it sly hints dropped by drum­mer Nick Mason, it’s like­ly the last we’ll ever hear from them. But one should always clar­i­fy, when speak­ing of the band, exact­ly which Pink Floyd is under dis­cus­sion. Is it Pink Floyd 1.0, with mad­cap singer/guitarist Syd Bar­rett at the helm? Pink Floyd 2.0—the most endur­ing combo—featuring Mason, Bar­rett replace­ment David Gilmour, bassist Roger Waters, and key­boardist Richard Wright? At anoth­er time, Wright was out of the pic­ture, then back in. After 1985, Waters, the band’s pri­ma­ry lyri­cist, and arguably most vision­ary mem­ber, was gone for good. They would nev­er again make music as soar­ing and ambitious—if also bombastic—as they did with his over­bear­ing pres­ence.

The title of the last album Waters record­ed with the band, 1983’s The Final Cut, pre­scient­ly announces itself as a coda for Floyd 2.0 (or 2.5? What­ev­er…). It also alludes to the band’s cin­e­mat­ic reach: whether scor­ing films, writ­ing them, or mak­ing records with the scope and breadth of epic movies. Floyd and film have always formed an organ­ic part­ner­ship. Before the quick fix of Youtube, they made fea­ture-length music videos that seemed to emerge ful­ly formed from nar­ra­tive and con­cept-rich records. The Final Cut, the album, ini­tial­ly intend­ed to be part of 1982’s rock opera The Wall, took on a life of its own when Waters re-con­ceived it as a protest against the Falk­lands War and Mar­garet Thatch­er, as well as a eulo­gy and vin­di­ca­tion for his ser­vice­man father who died in World War II. The Final Cut, the film (above—not to be con­fused with a 2004 sci-fi flick of the same name), is a nine­teen-minute piece that dra­ma­tizes four songs from the album: “The Gunner’s Dream,” “The Final Cut,” “Not Now John,” and “The Fletch­er Memo­r­i­al Home.”

The album itself brought the band to an impasse—pushing Waters’ increas­ing­ly per­son­al focus to such an extent that, writes All­mu­sic, it “pur­pose­ful­ly alien­ates all but the most ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­er.” That may be so, but if one is will­ing to indulge it, it’s a very reward­ing lis­ten, “more like a nov­el than a record.” And it makes a fas­ci­nat­ing con­trast to The End­less Riv­er, “a suite of most­ly instru­men­tal moods and frag­ments” rem­i­nis­cent of the band’s film scores. Tak­en togeth­er, these two doc­u­ments show­case the endur­ing strengths of Pink Floyd proper—they were a band who excelled both at telling com­plex sto­ries and cre­at­ing deeply felt moods that are, like the title of The End­less Riv­er’s clos­ing track, “Loud­er than Words.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

Pink Floyd Plays With Their Brand New Singer & Gui­tarist David Gilmour on French TV (1968)

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

Dur­ing the gold­en age of vinyl, Ron­co sold vac­u­ums to keep your records clean. But there was always a cheap­er DIY hack — a hack demon­strat­ed in a video cre­at­ed by a Youtu­ber who sim­ply goes by “ghettofunk13.” Just pour some wood glue on your record, spread it around care­ful­ly as the turntable spins (don’t get it on the cen­ter label), and you can appar­ent­ly get rid of those snaps, crack­les, and pops. The video is pret­ty straight­for­ward. But it’s worth not­ing the adden­dum “ghettofunk13” lat­er added in text: “You can use con­sid­er­ably less glue and still get the same effect — it cuts the dry time way down. Just be sure that you get the whole record cov­ered!”

Over on Metafil­ter, one com­menter took “ghettofunk13” to task, say­ing “The bass is mud­dy and there’s no clar­i­ty and sparkle at the high end.… He should have used de-ion­ized wood glue from a poly­car­bon­ate (NOT polypropy­lene) bot­tle, and spread it in the direc­tion of rota­tion with a hand-pol­ished cedar shake. Ama­teur.” Just some­thing to con­sid­er if you plan to do some DIY record clean­ing this week­end. You can get a few more details on the process here. Try at your own risk.

FYI, over at Kottke.org, you can see an excel­lent micro­scop­ic pho­to of vinyl record grooves. Jason writes, “When you look real­ly close­ly at record grooves, like at 1000x mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, you can see the wave­forms of the music itself. Sooo cool.”

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Vinyl Records Are Made: A Primer from 1956

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles