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.

Day in, day out, we rum­mage around the inter­net, look­ing for new mate­r­i­al to bring your way. I start search­ing, and I nev­er quite know where the search will take me. Some paths lead to dead ends, oth­ers to inter­est­ing side streets. Speak­ing of inter­est­ing side streets.… Yes­ter­day a trip through some old Vel­vet Under­ground mate­r­i­al (more on that tomor­row) led me to this small, unex­pect­ed delight. Above, we have Math­ieu and Pauline, two young French musi­cians, singing an aching­ly charm­ing ver­sion of VU’s “Femme Fatale”. There’s so much beau­ty and youth in it, it kin­da hurts. Below, see them sing a cov­er of Serge Gains­bourg’s “Elisa.”

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and Google Plus and share intel­li­gent media with your friends. Or bet­ter yet, sign up for our dai­ly email and get a dai­ly dose of Open Cul­ture in your inbox.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots the Only Col­or Film of The Vel­vet Under­ground Play­ing Live in Con­cert (1967)

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Jimi Hen­drix lived fast, and I don’t just mean to evoke a rock star cliché, but to get at the speed at which his career moved. He arrived in Eng­land near the end of Sep­tem­ber, 1966, at the ten­der age of 23. In less than a month, he and his man­ag­er Chas Chan­dler had recruit­ed Noel Red­ding and Mitch Mitchell into the Expe­ri­ence and booked the band’s first gig on Octo­ber 13 across the chan­nel in Évreux, France, one of four French book­ings as a sup­port­ing act for The Black­birds and John­ny Hal­ly­day. They played most­ly cov­ers, includ­ing Howl­in’ Wolf’s “Killing Floor,” Otis Redding’s “Respect,” Don Covay’s “Mer­cy, Mer­cy,” and Chris Kenner’s “Land of a Thou­sand Dances,” and tra­di­tion­al song “Hey Joe,” soon to become the band’s first sin­gle. It’s unclear whether any­one record­ed that first gig, but we do have some audio of the fourth, on Octo­ber 18 at the Olympia in Paris. Just above hear them play “Hey Joe” from that night, and below, they do The Trog­gs’ “Wild Thing.”

Hen­drix was already a high­ly sea­soned per­former by this time, hav­ing blown minds all over the South while tour­ing with, among oth­ers, the Isley Broth­ers, Lit­tle Richard, and King Cur­tis in the ear­ly six­ties. He had been high­ly in demand as a back­ing and ses­sion play­er, but he grew tired of stand­ing in the back and want­ed to go solo. He met man­ag­er Chan­dler, then bassist for the Ani­mals, while fronting his own band in New York. Chan­dler, writes PRI, “knew just what to do with the young gui­tarist” upon their arrival in Eng­land.

Six days after the short tour through France, the band played its first offi­cial show in the UK, at the Scotch of St. James, where the Bea­t­les had a pri­vate booth. Hen­drix pro­ceed­ed to blow minds all over Eng­land, includ­ing, of course, those of all the British gui­tar greats: “Everyone’s eyes were glued to him,” remem­bers then girl­friend Kathy Etch­ing­ham, “He looked dif­fer­ent. His gui­tar play­ing was superb. Peo­ple in Eng­land hadn’t seen any­thing like it before. It was quite… out of this world.”

Peo­ple in the U.S. hadn’t seen any­thing like it either. While Hen­drix had honed many of his sig­na­ture stage tricks on the soul cir­cuit, by the time he appeared at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in 1967, he had ful­ly come into his own as a charis­mat­ic singer as well as a “near mirac­u­lous” gui­tarist. But in his move from R&B to rock and roll, he nev­er lost his blues roots. “Hen­drix wasn’t a typ­i­cal pop or rock musi­cian,” says Hen­drix schol­ar and Eng­lish pro­fes­sor Joel Brat­tin. He “was an impro­vis­er. So, if there are 100 dif­fer­ent record­ed ver­sions of Pur­ple Haze, it’s real­ly worth lis­ten­ing to all 100 because he does some­thing dif­fer­ent each time.” The same can be said of the songs he cov­ered, and made his own. Just above, see them play “Hey Joe” at The Mar­quee for Ger­man TV show Beat Club just months before the release of their 1967 debut album. And below, Hen­drix exhorts the crowd to sing along before launch­ing into “Wild Thing,” in a Paris appear­ance one full year after the record­ing above at the Olympia. Com­pare, con­trast, get your mind blown.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

See Jimi Hendrix’s First TV Appear­ance, and His Last as a Back­ing Musi­cian (1965)

Jimi Hen­drix at Wood­stock: The Com­plete Per­for­mance in Video & Audio (1969)

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view Ani­mat­ed (1970)

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

Pho­to cour­tesy of LivePict.com CC-BY-SA‑3.0.

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.