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)

Back in June, our very own Josh Jones took us on an audio tour of five great rock bassists, break­ing down the styles of Paul McCart­ney, Sting, John Dea­con, John Paul Jones & Ged­dy Lee. If you got into the groove of that post, you’ll almost cer­tain­ly enjoy watch­ing bassist Marc Naj­jar, accom­pa­nied by Nate Bau­man on drums, tak­ing you through 100 great bass riffs. The rhythm duo cov­ers 60 years of music his­to­ry, in 17 min­utes, just above.

The riffs were notably per­formed in one con­tin­u­ous take, with a Sand­berg Umbo HCA Crème bass. (Find more gear used in the video here.) And the clip was put togeth­er by the Chica­go Music Exchange, the same folks who assem­bled the 2012 viral video, A His­to­ry of Rock ‘n’ Roll in 100 Gui­tar Riffs. They also sold me a sweet acoustic gui­tar that same year.

You can find a com­plete list of the riffs, and the songs from which they came, below. (Click the “more” link to see them, if they’re not already vis­i­ble.)  Please note that the bass sounds a lit­tle mut­ed at the out­set, but it quick­ly comes to the fore.

(more…)

The ice buck­et chal­lenge is pret­ty played out. So why post this pho­to? Quite sim­ply because I can find scant lit­tle infor­ma­tion about this curi­ous Bea­t­les pic. One Bea­t­les blog dates the pic­ture back to 1965. After that, bup­kis. No infor­ma­tion. So, for once, I’m throw­ing up my hands and ask­ing for a lit­tle help from our friends. Some­where out there, an ardent Bea­t­les fan knows the sto­ry, and we’re hop­ing that you can give us the low­down, either by email, or in the com­ments sec­tion below. We thank you in advance…

Update: We got an email from a for­mer radio exec who offers more details. Jon tells us:  “These shots were done in the Bahamas back in 1965 while the Bea­t­les trav­eled the world to film their sec­ond movie Help! This sequence most like­ly came as a result of set close up shots that direc­tor Richard Lester need­ed of each Bea­t­le dur­ing a pool sequence since John is wear­ing that same shirt dur­ing sev­er­al of those water sequences shot in the Bahamas. Ringo has always said it was cold dur­ing the shoot as they filmed it dur­ing a cool­er time (Jan.?) that year. That would explain John’s look after being doused.” And there you have it!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

Lis­ten to the Bea­t­les’ Christ­mas Records: Sev­en Vin­tage Record­ings for Their Fans (1963 – 1969)

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

Here in Los Ange­les, we learn to live with heli­copters. Whether police, news, or uniden­ti­fi­able, these great mechan­i­cal hum­ming­birds buzz over the city in a kind of omnipres­ence that can dri­ve new arrivals nuts. The movies have turned heli­copters into a visu­al icon of Los Ange­les, but in real life they’ve become more like the city’s son­ic sig­na­ture, to the point where the dis­tinc­tive­ly rapid, repet­i­tive thump of their rotor blades some­times bleeds into our dreams. Whether or not inno­v­a­tive Ger­man com­pos­er Karl­heinz Stock­hausen spent much time here I don’t know, but he, too, dreamt of heli­copters, and the inspi­ra­tion this vision grant­ed him led to his 1993 Helikopter-Stre­ichquar­tett, also known as the Heli­copter String Quar­tet. You can see a 2012 Birm­ing­ham per­for­mance by the Elysian String Quar­tet above. And no, the piece does­n’t mean “Heli­copter” as any kind of metaphor; you’ve got to have not just one but four of the things to prop­er­ly play it.

Stock­hausen, writ­ing about the ori­gins of the Heli­copter String Quar­tet, described the dream as fol­lows:

I heard and saw the four string play­ers in four heli­copters fly­ing in the air and play­ing. At the same time I saw peo­ple on the ground seat­ed in an audio-visu­al hall, oth­ers were stand­ing out­doors on a large pub­lic plaza. In front of them, four tow­ers of tele­vi­sion screens and loud­speak­ers had been set up: at the left, half-left, half-right, right. At each of the four posi­tions one of the four string play­ers could be heard and seen in close-up.

Most of the time, the string play­ers played tremoli which blend­ed so well with the tim­bres and the rhythms of the rotor blades that the heli­copters sound­ed like musi­cal instru­ments.

When I woke up, I strong­ly felt that some­thing had been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to me which I nev­er would have thought of on my own.  I did not tell any­one any­thing about it.

An actu­al per­for­mance, which gets even more com­pli­cat­ed than you’d imag­ine, involves not just sep­a­rate heli­copters for each string play­er but sep­a­rate video cam­eras to cap­ture and send (“pos­si­bly via satel­lite relay”) their images and those of the Earth behind them. It also requires pre­ci­sion-timed and music-syn­chro­nized ascents and descents, “blend­ing” of the sounds of the strings with the sounds of the rotors (via three dis­tinct micro­phones per chop­per), an active mix­er to keep the sig­nals in bal­ance, and a mod­er­a­tor to explain it all. At Ubuweb, Frank Schef­fer­’s 1995 Ger­man doc­u­men­tary has more to show and tell about what it took to bring the lit­er­al dream of the Helikopter-Stre­ichquar­tett into real­i­ty, a painstak­ing effort which must sure­ly count as one of the 20th cen­tu­ry’s largest-scale sub­li­ma­tions of annoy­ance into art.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hol­ly­wood by Heli­copter, 1958

MIT LED Heli­copters: The Ear­ly Smart Pix­els

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.