In the fall of 1965, six months after Bob Dylan freaked out the folkies at New­port, he sat down with Vil­lage Voice music crit­ic and colum­nist Nat Hentoff for an inter­view for Play­boy. Like Dylan him­self, the result­ing con­ver­sa­tion, as pub­lished in Feb­ru­ary, 1966, is by turns illu­mi­nat­ing and com­plete­ly con­found­ing. Top­ics shift abrupt­ly, words take on unfa­mil­iar mean­ings, and for all of the many strong opin­ions Dylan seems to express, it’s remark­able how lit­tle he actu­al­ly seems to say, since he takes back almost every­thing as soon as he says it.

The ver­bal tan­gles of his answers take many philo­soph­i­cal turns. Dylan defines the con­tem­po­rary art scene, say­ing “Art, if there is such a thing, is in the bath­rooms; every­body knows that. […] I spend a lot of time in the bath­room. I think muse­ums are vul­gar. They’re all against sex.” Asked “why rock ‘n’ roll has become such an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non,” Dylan wax­es onto­log­i­cal: “I can’t real­ly think that there is any rock ’n’ roll. Actu­al­ly, when you think about it, any­thing that has no real exis­tence is bound to become an inter­na­tion­al phe­nom­e­non.”

The bizarre nature of the pub­lished exchange is clas­sic, com­i­cal­ly aloof, mid-six­ties Dylan—so much in char­ac­ter we can imag­ine Cate Blanchett’s ser­pen­tine Dylan in I’m Not There say­ing the lines. But the print ver­sion of the con­ver­sa­tion is stream­lined and lucid com­pared to the unedit­ed, taped con­ver­sa­tion Dylan and Hentoff had the year pri­or before an edi­tor pared it down. As music site All Dylan has it, “to call them ver­sions ignores the fact that they are total­ly dif­fer­ent inter­views.”

The orig­i­nal take, which you can hear above in two parts, was much messier, and stranger.  Dylan often sounds like he’s not answer­ing ques­tions so much as putting words togeth­er in sen­tence-like forms. His speech takes on the qual­i­ties of abstract expressionism—recursive, and point­ed­ly vague. We might assume he’s real­ly stoned, except for a long-wind­ed speech about how passé it is to smoke pot.

Well, I nev­er felt as if there’s an answer through pot. I don’t want to make this, kind of, a drug inter­view or any­thing, like. LSD like… once you take LSD a few times… I mean, LSD is a med­i­cine. You know, you take it and you know… you don’t real­ly have to keep tak­ing it all the time. It’s noth­ing like that. It’s not that kind of thing, you know, where­as pot, you know, nobody’s got any answers through pot. Pot’s, you know, not that kind of thing. I’m sure that the peo­ple that say that the peo­ple who fig­ure they got their answers through pot, first of all, those peo­ple who say that, they’re just invent­ing some­thing. And the peo­ple that real­ly actu­al­ly think that they got their answers through pot, prob­a­bly nev­er even smoked pot, you know. I mean, it’s like… pot is, you know…who smokes pot any more, you know, any­way? 

Ever non­com­mit­tal, Dylan deflects a ques­tion about his rela­tion­ship with John­ny Cash, say­ing “I can’t real­ly talk about it too much,” but assur­ing Hentoff that he likes Cash “a lot. I like every­thing he does real­ly.” If Dylan gives as much as he takes away in the pub­lished inter­view, he does so dou­bly in this unedit­ed ver­sion, and it’s odd­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, even—and especially—when he decides to stop mak­ing words make sense. The taped inter­view was, in fact, the sec­ond inter­view Hentoff con­duct­ed with Dylan. After see­ing an edit­ed tran­script of the first attempt, Dylan insist­ed that Hentoff inter­view him again over the phone. Hentoff turned on his tape recorder and imme­di­ate­ly “real­ized I was going to be the straight guy,” he tells John White­head, “Dylan was impro­vis­ing sur­re­al­is­ti­cal­ly and very fun­ny.”

Vul­ture ranks the Play­boy inter­view at num­ber one in their list of “The 10 Most Incom­pre­hen­si­ble Bob Dylan Inter­views of All Time.” It must have been a tough call. At num­ber 10, they have the Time mag­a­zine inter­view from that same year, which you can see in the clip above from 1967’s Don’t Look Back. Dylan is con­fronta­tion­al, almost the­atri­cal­ly angry, but he is most­ly clear on the details. He ends the inter­view with a cryp­tic joke, com­par­ing him­self to opera singer Enri­co Caru­so: “I hap­pen to be just as good as him—a good singer. You have to lis­ten close­ly, but I hit all those notes.”

via All Dylan

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Bob Dylan Final­ly Makes a Video for His 1965 Hit, “Like a Rolling Stone”

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

Every sphere of record­ed music, from late-1960s folk to Philadel­phia hip-hop to Japan­ese jazz (a per­son­al pur­suit of mine), has its crate-dig­gers, those hap­py to flip through hun­dreds — nay, hun­dreds of thou­sands — of obscure, for­got­ten vinyl albums in search of their sub­gen­re’s even obscur­er, more for­got­ten gems. This holds espe­cial­ly true, if not in num­ber than in avid­i­ty, for enthu­si­asts of the 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal-exper­i­men­tal-elec­troa­coustic tra­di­tion that The Avant-Garde Project takes as its preser­va­tion man­date. The site offers mate­r­i­al “dig­i­tized from LPs whose music has in most cas­es nev­er been released on CD, and so is effec­tive­ly inac­ces­si­ble to the vast major­i­ty of music lis­ten­ers today.” To the best of the Archive’s knowl­edge, the LPs are all cur­rent­ly out of print, and all the music is extract­ed with an ana­log rig that ranks as “near state-of-the-art, pro­duc­ing almost none of the track­ing dis­tor­tion or sur­face noise nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with LPs.”

The Avant-Garde Pro­jec­t’s efforts, the archive of which you can browse here (or alpha­bet­i­cal­ly by com­pos­er, or through choice sam­plers, or through the “AGP top twen­ty,” or through the founder’s per­son­al favorites), has borne a great deal of fruit so far, espe­cial­ly from such music-his­to­ry class favorites as Arnold Schoen­berg, whose String Trio per­formed by the Los Ange­les String Trio you can hear above, and Igor Stravin­sky, whose Sym­pho­ny of Psalms you’ll find below. Every­thing in the Avant-Garde Pro­jec­t’s archive comes down­load­able as tor­rents of Free Loss­less Audio Codec (FLAC) files. This audio­phile’s com­pres­sion for­mat of choice requires a bit of spe­cial but eas­i­ly obtained soft­ware to play or burn to CDs, all of which you can get explained here (with even more infor­ma­tion here). Those who’d like to keep it sim­ple (if not quite as aural­ly pris­tine) can lis­ten through a small­er ver­sion of the archive at Ubuweb. Either way, you’ll enjoy all the artis­tic rich­ness of rare 20th-cen­tu­ry clas­si­cal-exper­i­men­tal-elec­troa­coustic music with none of the dig­ging.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Vi Hart Uses Her Video Mag­ic to Demys­ti­fy Stravin­sky and Schoenberg’s 12-Tone Com­po­si­tions

Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Visu­al­ized in a Com­put­er Ani­ma­tion for Its 100th Anniver­sary

Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musi­cal Com­po­si­tions

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.

These days “demo tapes” are often radio-ready record­ings, and bands often record one before they’ve even played their first gig. It’s a recent devel­op­ment, a byprod­uct of the rev­o­lu­tion in afford­able home record­ing tech­nol­o­gy. For most of the his­to­ry of rock and pop music, demos were raw sketch­es, pre­serv­ing ideas, tem­pos, changes, moods, but not at all ready to air. Lis­ten­ing back to demo ver­sions of songs we already know well can be like exca­vat­ing stra­ta under­neath a site like Stone­henge. Some­times you find noth­ing but sed­i­ment. Some­times you find anoth­er Stone­henge. Take for exam­ple John Lennon’s hyp­not­ic demo record­ings of “Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er,” the Bea­t­les’ acoustic White Album demos, or Roger Waters’ ear­ly demos of The Wall. Intrigu­ing­ly rough gems all.

Today we bring you demo record­ings of anoth­er artist whose work typ­i­cal­ly bespeaks pol­ish and stu­dio panache. As in the past, song­writ­ers today still push play on cheap voice recorders—or expen­sive iphones—and cap­ture new songs on the fly. But nobody today writes like Bowie did in his “Zig­gy Star­dust” phase. At the top of the post, hear Bowie’s solo acoustic demo record­ing of that song. You’ll find it on the sec­ond CD of the 30th Anniver­sary edi­tion of Zig­gy Star­dust and the Spi­ders from Mars, which also includes a demo ver­sion of “Lady Star­dust” and two ver­sions of “Moon­age Day­dream” and “Hang on to Your­self” by “Arnold Corns,” the orig­i­nal name of Zig­gy. I’ve heard more solo acoustic ver­sions of “Zig­gy” than I’d care to remem­ber, played by earnest cof­fee-shop croon­ers and gui­tar-bear­ing par­ty guests. But Bowie’s orig­i­nal demo I could lis­ten to again and again.

While the “Arnold Corns” incar­na­tions of Zig­gy Star­dust songs def­i­nite­ly fall into the cat­e­go­ry of not-Stone­henge, the 1969 demo record­ing of “Space Odd­i­ty” has a very mon­u­men­tal feel indeed—if that mon­u­ment were 2001’s enig­mat­ic Mono­lith. Set here to clips from that film, it seems like the per­fect accom­pa­ni­ment to the glossy fore­bod­ing of Kubrick’s space vision. This drum­less arrange­ment sounds some­how more con­tem­po­rary than the record­ing we’ve heard count­less times. It also sounds much clos­er to the psy­che­del­ic folk on the rest of the Space Odd­i­ty album, a col­lec­tion of songs many Bowie fans, myself includ­ed, great­ly admire, but which his first audi­ence didn’t take to so read­i­ly. “Space Odd­i­ty” went through at least one more iter­a­tion before land­ing on the album. Hear the slight­ly more funked-up ver­sion, and see its awk­ward video, below.

Per­haps no song oth­er than “Ash­es to Ash­es” so well artic­u­lates the cre­ative destruc­tion of Bowie’s many rock star personae—and the toll those meta­mor­phoses take—than 1971’s “Changes.” But it’s a song writ­ten and record­ed ear­ly in his career, before Zig­gy Star­dust, the char­ac­ter that first broke him into super­star­dom. The song appears on Hunky Dory in a record­ing with the Star­dust band—Mick Ron­son, Trevor Bold­er, and Mick Woodmansey—but it’s such a Bowie-cen­tric lyric that it out­last­ed hun­dreds of cos­tume changes and served as the obvi­ous choice of title for the 1990 com­pi­la­tion Changes­bowie.

Does the piano demo above reveal an alter­nate pre-his­to­ry? Not real­ly. The hand­claps and odd vocal­iza­tions are half-formed ideas at best, and the poor audio qual­i­ty is not a fea­ture. But what it does demon­strate, as do all of the rough record­ings above, is that Bowie is Bowie—a stel­lar song­writer and vocal performer—whether cap­tured on a cheap home tape machine or the best stu­dio equip­ment mon­ey can buy. Stu­dio wiz­ardry of the present can do things pro­duc­ers forty years ago could only dream about, but no amount of tech­nol­o­gy can sub­sti­tute for raw musi­cal tal­ent, nor for the long years of prac­tice Bowie endured.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

A 17-Year-Old David Bowie Defends “Long-Haired Men” in His First TV Inter­view (1964)

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

It’s hard to imag­ine the young lady seen per­form­ing her own songs on the BBC in the video above twerk­ing or even tweet­ing, for that mat­ter. The utter­ly unadorned qual­i­ty of this per­for­mance suits the now-leg­endary puri­ty of her youth­ful voice.

Woe, the dele­te­ri­ous effects of her long­time cig­a­rette habit.

Now, back to 1970, when just shy of 27, Joni Mitchell played a hit-filled set to a British stu­dio audi­ence, despite a “lit­tle Lon­don flu” she alludes to more than once.

If it seemed unpre­ten­tious at the time, it’s even more so now, nary a laser beam or back up dancer in sight. No cos­tume changes. Bare­ly any make­up. Just Joni, her gui­tar, her piano, and a nifty cus­tom dul­cimer made by “a dyna­mite girl who lives in Cal­i­for­nia.”

Pass­ing the time as she tunes this last instru­ment, she men­tions that the upcom­ing song, “Cal­i­for­nia,”con­cerns an adven­ture to which she’d recent­ly treat­ed her­self. She’d writ­ten it before her return, as a sort of post­card home. Mean­ing that that park bench in Paris, France was bare­ly cold! This is way more excit­ing to me than a bevy of hair exten­sions, served with a prac­ticed snarl and a side of auto tune.

A girl­ish gig­gle and dig­ni­fied bow seal the deal. Classy!

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Clas­sic Per­for­mances of Joni Mitchel­l’s “Both Sides Now” & “The Cir­cle Game” (1968)

The Music, Art, and Life of Joni Mitchell Pre­sent­ed in a Superb 2003 Doc­u­men­tary

James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell, Live and Togeth­er (1970)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

Ladies and gen­tle­men, we present Michael Winslow, the Man of 10,000 Sound Effects, singing Led Zep­pelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love.” And by sing, we mean that he per­forms the lead vocals, and the dis­tor­tion-filled sounds of the elec­tric gui­tar, all with his voice. The per­for­mance took place one night, back in Novem­ber, 2011, on Nor­way’s TV show Senkveld med Thomas og Har­ald (aka Late Night with Thomas and Harold). Winslow is joined by folk pop-musi­cian Odd Nord­sto­ga on the acoustic gui­tar. When you’re done pick­ing up your jaw, you’ll want to watch Winslow per­form the Sounds of 32 Type­writ­ers (1898–1983). It’s quite mag­nif­i­cent. Or watch an old re-run of Police Acad­e­my. That’s nev­er hurts, either.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jim­my Page Describes the Cre­ation of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lot­ta Love”

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Sound Effects Genius Michael Winslow Per­forms the Sounds of 32 Type­writ­ers (1898–1983)