As his loy­al fans already know, Bob Dylan will release next week a six-CD col­lec­tion called The Base­ment Tapes Com­plete: The Boot­leg Series, Vol. 11, which fea­tures 139 songs record­ed dur­ing the late 1960s, when, Dylan, recov­er­ing from a motor­cy­cle acci­dent, holed him­self up in a base­ment in Sauger­ties, NY and began play­ing music casu­al­ly with The Band. The sto­ry behind the mak­ing of The Base­ment Tapes gets nice­ly told by Sasha Frere-Jones in the lat­est edi­tion of The New York­er, and over at NPR you can now stream a selec­tion of songs from the upcom­ing Base­ment Tapes release. Just thought you might want to know.…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

I’ve writ­ten before that every band Eric Clapton’s been involved with could right­ful­ly be called a super­group. But for my mon­ey, there’s only one wor­thy of the name, and that’s Cream. Since form­ing a deep attach­ment to the psy­che­del­ic pow­er trio from a young age, I’ve found it espe­cial­ly irk­some to see them some­times billed as “Eric Clap­ton and Cream.” Drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er and bassist/singer Jack Bruce are at least as—if not more—talented and inter­est­ing as musi­cians. But though Bak­er has long been cel­e­brat­ed, though most­ly from a safe dis­tance, Bruce, in my opin­ion, is almost crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed. That may change as trib­utes and reap­praisals pour in after his pass­ing of liv­er dis­ease this past Sat­ur­day at age 71.

We’re like­ly to hear more Cream than usu­al, at least, which is nev­er a bad thing. What you may not hear casu­al­ly is Bruce’s play­ing in his lat­er years. Like many rock stars of his era, includ­ing his Cream band­mates, he nev­er real­ly stopped. But unlike some musi­cians from the 60s, he only got bet­ter with age, adapt­ing his jazz and blues chops to mod­ern takes on the psych rock he helped invent. Not a flashy play­er, Bruce’s style is char­ac­ter­ized by emo­tive pow­er and a near per­fect syn­the­sis of the rhyth­mic and the melod­ic. Key to his style is the walk­ing bassline like that on “White Room,” from Cream’s third record, 1968’s dou­ble album Wheels of Fire. He plays ‘em lit­er­al­ly walk­ing around, or rather strut­ting. In the video above, see Bruce pull out an amaz­ing solo dur­ing a per­for­mance of “White Room” at an event called Hip­pie Fest in 2008.

The fes­ti­val also fea­tured leg­ends Eric Bur­don and the Ani­mals and the Tur­tles but I can only imag­ine Bruce left the strongest impres­sion on audi­ence mem­bers who’d seen him in his prime and those who hadn’t. Watch him rip through anoth­er intense solo above in “Sun­shine of Your Love,” fol­lowed by a blues num­ber record­ed ear­li­er in the day at the same con­cert. Although most of Cream’s lyrics were writ­ten by poet and “unof­fi­cial fourth mem­ber” Pete Brown, the music was most­ly Bruce. His range of influ­ences was wide, and his will­ing­ness to fol­low them wher­ev­er they led, adven­tur­ous. David Fricke at Rolling Stone has a playlist of Bruce’s top ten “Deep Tracks,” includ­ing one from ear­ly 60s out­fit The Gra­ham Bond Organization—which also fea­tured Gin­ger Bak­er and vir­tu­oso jazz gui­tarist John McLaughlin—and sev­er­al of Bruce’s solo tunes. “If you only know Cream,” writes Fricke in appre­ci­a­tion of Bruce’s ver­sa­til­i­ty,” then stray far, every way you can—as he did.” It’s good advice.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Paul McCart­ney Offers a Short Tuto­r­i­al on How to Play the Bass Gui­tar

The Sto­ry of the Bass: New Video Gives Us 500 Years of Music His­to­ry in 8 Min­utes

100 Great Bass Riffs Played in One Epic Take: Cov­ers 60 Years of Rock, Jazz and R&B

Jazz Leg­end Jaco Pas­to­rius Gives a 90 Minute Bass Les­son and Plays Live in Mon­tre­al (1982)

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

I dis­cov­ered one of my favorite pieces of rock ‘n’ roll memorabilia—a full page ad for the 1983 album from David Bowie’s Zig­gy Star­dust con­cert film—at a flea mar­ket. It’s a nice lit­tle piece of his­to­ry, but a lit­tle bit mis­lead­ing to con­sumers at the time, since it says, “fea­tur­ing the sin­gle ‘White Light/White Heat.’” As every­one knows, “White Light/White Heat” is not a Bowie sin­gle, but a Lou Reed song, one of his many odes to hero­in as lead singer of the Vel­vet Under­ground.

But what­ev­er the admen had in mind in pro­mot­ing this track over Bowie’s many orig­i­nal hits, the star him­self has nev­er been shy about acknowl­edg­ing his debts. When it comes to Zig­gy, “the song­writer who most influ­enced” the glam rock alien is cer­tain­ly Reed, as Bowie him­self says in this 1977 inter­view.

Today, on the one-year anniver­sary of Reed’s death, we revis­it their cre­ative and per­son­al rela­tion­ship, a mutu­al admi­ra­tion that spanned more than four decades. Not only did Bowie cov­er Reed’s songs and pro­duce his 1972 solo album Trans­former, but he wrote 1971’s “Queen Bitch” as a trib­ute to Reed and the Vel­vets. In 1997, Bowie and Reed took the stage togeth­er to per­form the song. The occa­sion was Bowie’s 50th birth­day cel­e­bra­tion at Madi­son Square Gar­den, and the all-star line­up that night includ­ed Frank Black, Dave Grohl, Son­ic Youth, Robert Smith, and Bil­ly Cor­gan (see the full setlist here). But Reed’s appear­ance was the most excit­ing, and in hind­sight, most poignant. At the top of the post, see the two old friends play “Queen Bitch,” just above, they do “White Light/White Heat,” and below, Reed’s clas­sic “Wait­ing for the Man” (they also played Reed’s 1989 “Dirty Boule­vard” togeth­er).

At the time, Bowie was at “some­what of a low point” in his career, writes Rolling Stone, though poised for a come­back with the upcom­ing sin­gle (and Trent Reznor-star­ring video) “I’m Afraid of Amer­i­cans,” which he played with Son­ic Youth that night. But the first time he and Reed shared the stage, in 1972, Bowie was rid­ing high in all his Zig­gy Star­dust glo­ry and reg­u­lar­ly cov­er­ing Vel­vet Under­ground songs on tour. That year, he brought Reed on stage in Lon­don for his “very, very first appear­ance on any stage in Eng­land.” Hear them do “White Light/White Heat” in some­what muf­fled live audio below. They also played “Wait­ing for the Man” and “Sweet Jane” togeth­er, which you can hear at the bot­tom of the post.

While Bowie seems to have tak­en every oppor­tu­ni­ty to lav­ish praise on his idol, Reed was a bit more under­stat­ed, though no less sin­cere, in his appre­ci­a­tion. In 2004, he told Rolling Stone, “We’re still friends after all these years. We go to the occa­sion­al art show and muse­um togeth­er, and I always like work­ing with him […] I saw him play here in New York on his last tour, and it was one of the great­est rock shows I’ve ever seen. At least as far as white peo­ple go. Seri­ous­ly.” Seri­ous­ly, Lou Reed, you are sore­ly missed.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Rock and Roll Heart, 1998 Doc­u­men­tary Retraces the Remark­able Career of Lou Reed

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

David Bowie Recalls the Strange Expe­ri­ence of Invent­ing the Char­ac­ter Zig­gy Star­dust (1977)

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

There may have been no more influ­en­tial a label in the late 1980s than Def Jam Records. Found­ed by Rick Rubin, Def Jam launched the careers of The Beast­ie Boys, LL Cool J, and dozens more hip-hop pio­neers. But its begin­nings were hum­ble. The ear­li­est Def Jam releas­es list the mail­ing address as “5 Uni­ver­si­ty Pl. #712.” Cur­rent and for­mer NYU stu­dents out there may rec­og­nize this address—it’s a dorm room in the university’s Wein­stein Res­i­dence Hall, where in 1984, Rubin set up shop and began try­ing to repro­duce the sound, as Rolling Stone writes, of “the raw per­for­mances he heard in clubs and the wild par­ties he threw.”

In the short Rolling Stone doc­u­men­tary above, “Rick Was Here,” see the pio­neer­ing pro­duc­er revis­it his ori­gins, return­ing to his old dorm for the first time in 30 years. He talks about the “very spe­cif­ic feel­ing” of ear­ly hip-hop, and his desire to shift the focus of hip-hop records from R&B back­ing tracks to the DJ, who was all-impor­tant in live per­for­mances. Def Jam’s first release, T La Rock and Jazzy Jay’s “It’s Yours,” remains a clas­sic of the genre. At the time, says Rubin, “it didn’t sound like any­thing else,” and through that record, Rubin met Rus­sell Sim­mons, already “a big fish in the small pond of hip hop.” Sim­mons brought along a host of artists and gave Rubin more cred­i­bil­i­ty in the com­mu­ni­ty. Now the two are super­pro­duc­ers and moguls, but their ori­gin sto­ry is one of scrap­py deter­mi­na­tion that sparked a musi­cal rev­o­lu­tion.

The short film also fea­tures inter­views with Sim­mons, LL Cool J, the Beast­ie Boys’ Adam Horowitz, and some of Rubin’s for­mer dorm-mates and accom­plices. For more on Def Jam’s ear­ly years, MetaFil­ter points us toward the his­to­ry Def Jam Record­ings: The First 35 Years of the Last Great Record Label and Rus­sell Sim­mons’ auto­bi­og­ra­phy Life and Def: Sex, Drugs, Mon­ey, + God.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The “Amen Break”: The Most Famous 6‑Second Drum Loop & How It Spawned a Sam­pling Rev­o­lu­tion

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

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

In 2012, Rolling Stone issued a revised list of the 500 Great­est Albums of All Time, at the very top of which sits The Bea­t­les’ 1967 record, Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band. Jus­ti­fy­ing mak­ing the album its num­ber one pick, Rolling Stone wrote:

Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band is the most impor­tant rock & roll album ever made, an unsur­passed adven­ture in con­cept, sound, song­writ­ing, cov­er art and stu­dio tech­nol­o­gy by the great­est rock & roll group of all time. From the title song’s regal blasts of brass and fuzz gui­tar to the orches­tral seizure and long, dying piano chord at the end of “A Day in the Life,” the 13 tracks on Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band are the pin­na­cle of the Bea­t­les’ eight years as record­ing artists. John Lennon, Paul McCart­ney, George Har­ri­son and Ringo Starr were nev­er more fear­less and uni­fied in their pur­suit of mag­ic and tran­scen­dence.…

Sgt. Pep­per for­mal­ly ush­ered in an unfor­get­table sea­son of hope, upheaval and achieve­ment: the late 1960s and, in par­tic­u­lar, 1967’s Sum­mer of Love. In its iri­des­cent instru­men­ta­tion, lyric fan­tasias and eye-pop­ping pack­ag­ing, Sgt. Pep­per defined the opu­lent rev­o­lu­tion­ary opti­mism of psy­che­delia and instant­ly spread the gospel of love, acid, East­ern spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and elec­tric gui­tars around the globe. No oth­er pop record of that era, or since, has had such an imme­di­ate, titan­ic impact. This music doc­u­ments the world’s biggest rock band at the very height of its influ­ence and ambi­tion.

Giv­en Sgt. Pep­per’s icon­ic sta­tus, it’s hard to imag­ine a con­tem­po­rary band decid­ing to cov­er the entire album. (Can you real­ly improve upon it?) But that’s just what The Flam­ing Lips have done with With a Lit­tle Help From My Fwends. Sched­uled to be released next week, the album fea­tures con­tri­bu­tions by fwends like Moby, My Morn­ing Jack­et, Miley Cyrus, and oth­ers. Pro­ceeds from the album — which is now stream­ing free for a lim­it­ed time at NPR — will go to the Bel­la Foun­da­tion, a non-prof­it that assists low-income, elder­ly or ter­mi­nal­ly ill pet own­ers with the cost of vet­eri­nary care when it can­not be afford­ed. You can pre-order the Flam­ing Lips album on Ama­zon and iTunes.

In oth­er news, Paul McCart­ney announced today that he has unearthed a Wings’ song he played (back in the day) with John Bon­ham on drums. An intrigu­ing idea. Catch it here.