Back in 1998, the Bea­t­les pro­duc­er, George Mar­tin, pro­duced an album called In My Life. It’s prob­a­bly not an LP that ever made it into your record col­lec­tion, unless you’re a fan of mid­dling cov­ers of Bea­t­les songs. (In which case, you’ll love our old post, The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs: William Shat­ner, Bill Cos­by, Tiny Tim, Sean Con­nery & Your Excel­lent Picks.) But the com­pi­la­tion does fea­ture one record­ing that has­n’t quite fad­ed from view — Jim Car­rey’s take on “I Am the Wal­rus.” There’s a comedic com­po­nent to his per­for­mance. But Car­rey also demon­strates a “vocal elas­tic­i­ty” that you might not have expect­ed. If you’ve nev­er heard the Bea­t­les’ orig­i­nal record­ing (God help you), you can find it here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Dif­fer­ent Accents

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Those of you deeply into both jazz vio­lin and pro­gres­sive rock no doubt jumped right on the play but­ton above. Quite a few more will lis­ten — so expe­ri­ence has taught me — pure­ly out of inter­est in any­thing and every­thing Pink Floyd has done. But on the lev­el of music his­to­ry, the track above, a ver­sion of the cere­bral Eng­lish rock band’s Pink Floy­d’s well-known 1975 song “With You Were Here” promi­nent­ly fea­tur­ing a solo from the French “Grand­fa­ther of Jazz Vio­lin­ists” Stéphane Grap­pel­li, should fas­ci­nate just about any­one. It speaks to the par­tic­u­lar kind of high-pro­file musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ism that thrived in that era, at least in some quar­ters — or, rather, in some stu­dios. In this case, the Grap­pel­li and the Floyd boys found them­selves record­ing in adja­cent ones. Why would the lat­ter invite the for­mer, already an elder states­man of jazz and a col­lab­o­ra­tor with the likes of Djan­go Rein­hardt, to sit in on a ses­sion? (Watch Djan­go and Grap­pel­li play togeth­er in the 1938 film, Jazz Hot here.) Well… why not? They need­ed some­thing impres­sive to fol­low Dark Side of the Moon, after all.

Still, for all the rich­ness of the result you hear here and all the fan-hours spent lis­ten­ing to Pink Floy­d’s Wish You Were Here album in the 35 years after it came out, the pub­lic nev­er got to hear Grap­pel­li’s play­ing fore­ground­ed until Immer­sion reis­sued it three years ago. This long-lost but redis­cov­ered mix of the title track marks, to the mind of Pink Floyd found­ing mem­ber Nick Mason, a marked improve­ment over the ver­sion on the orig­i­nal album. “I think that was the jew­el in that par­tic­u­lar crown,” he said to Son­ic Real­i­ty. “It was some­thing that I assumed had been lost for­ev­er. I thought we’d record­ed over it. [ … ] I can’t imag­ine why we didn’t use it at the time.” In the one they did use at the time, what remains of Grap­pel­li’s play­ing came out so inaudi­ble that the album’s cred­its did­n’t even name the vio­lin­ist. I’d like to chalk up anoth­er point for the cul­tur­al revi­sion made pos­si­ble by our tech­no­log­i­cal age, but alas, I doubt any sort of redis­cov­ery will break true Floyd acolytes of their adher­ence to the canon.

via Some­thing Else Reviews

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

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

Dark Side of the Rain­bow: Pink Floyd Meets The Wiz­ard of Oz in One of the Ear­li­est Mash-Ups

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

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Leg­end Djan­go Rein­hardt

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.

As they say, the show must go on.…

Writes the LA Phil­har­mon­ic on their Youtube Chan­nel:

On March 28, 2014 at 9:09pm, a 5.1 mag­ni­tude earth­quake rocked Los Ange­les. The Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic was six min­utes into a per­for­mance of Rav­el’s “Daph­nis and Chloé” with guest con­duc­tor Charles Dutoit when the quake hit. A strong jolt fol­lowed by a minute of rum­bling did not unhinge the orches­tra or Mae­stro Dutoit, and the stir­ring con­cert con­tin­ued with­out a hitch.

What you’ll hear above is an actu­al record­ing. Anno­ta­tions help explain the sequence of events.

via Boing­Bo­ing

There are few things more fraught for a writer or artist than approach­ing a sub­ject that has already passed into pop­u­lar leg­end and myth. This is sure­ly the case with Kurt Cobain, who—deservedly or not—attained a sta­tus as cul­tur­al icon unsur­passed by any mem­ber of his gen­er­a­tion. Cobain com­mit­ted sui­cide an almost unbe­liev­able twen­ty years ago today, and some recent approach­es to his mem­o­ry have been, well, awk­ward to say the least. First, there is the ama­teur­ish com­mem­o­ra­tive stat­ue in Cobain’s home­town of Aberdeen, Wash­ing­ton. Var­i­ous­ly described as “bizarre,” “hideous,” and resem­bling a “cry­ing wino,” the mawk­ish statue’s exis­tence is made even more pathet­ic by the fact that Cobain’s home­town didn’t care much for him in life, and the feel­ing was mutu­al. Now Aberdeen wants to cash in, declar­ing a “Kurt Cobain Day.” Aberdeen May­or Bill Simp­son hopes the stat­ue will become “just as big as Grace­land, even­tu­al­ly.” Cobain had a mor­bid sense of humor, but I doubt know­ing he’d be turned into a kitschy tourist des­ti­na­tion would have light­ened the despair of his last days.

As exhib­it B, I offer the media’s cultish fas­ci­na­tion with new­ly-released police pho­tos of Cobain’s death scene. The cov­er­age prompt­ed a CNN arti­cle with what Dead­spin spin-off The Con­course called “The Worst Kurt Cobain Lede Ever” (they go on to mock said lede mer­ci­less­ly, and deserved­ly). Atro­cious though such cov­er­age may be, there’s good rea­son beyond nos­tal­gia, hero-wor­ship, or sick fas­ci­na­tion to revis­it Cobain’s lega­cy. On April 10, Michael Stipe will induct Nir­vana into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, for­mal­ly enshrin­ing the once scruffy out­siders in the hal­lowed com­pa­ny of ulti­mate rock insid­er-dom. This ges­ture might make some peo­ple (maybe it’s just me) feel a lit­tle con­flict­ed. After all, wasn’t it pre­cise­ly the grandiose, pop­u­lar-kid cul­ture of halls of fame that drove Cobain to the mar­gins, where he did his best work, and ulti­mate­ly drove him to hate what he’d become—a star? In his strange sui­cide note, we see Cobain beat­ing him­self up for being unable to live up to the hype—unable, as he put it, to be a “Fred­dy Mer­cury” and “rel­ish in the love and ado­ra­tion from the crowd.” There’s some­thing, per­haps, almost trag­i­cal­ly insen­si­tive, how­ev­er well-inten­tioned, in posthu­mous­ly turn­ing Kurt Cobain into Elvis.

One might con­sid­er such things while watch­ing the 2006 BBC doc­u­men­tary above, The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain. In con­trast to the sen­sa­tion­al­ism of most Cobain-relat­ed media, its tone is dry and unaf­fect­ed as it can­vass­es the reluc­tant rock star’s life and death, inter­view­ing fel­low rock stars, band mem­bers, and jour­nal­ists, as well as reg­u­lar Joes and Janes who knew and inter­act­ed with him dur­ing his trou­bled youth in Aberdeen. Much more than its title sug­gests, the hour and twen­ty minute doc works well as a biog­ra­phy of Cobain and a brief his­to­ry of Nir­vana and the Seat­tle scene that birthed them. An Aus­tralian mag­a­zine accu­rate­ly describes the film thus:

The doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views with Nir­vana band mem­bers, friends, and wit­ness­es of his where­abouts dur­ing that dread­ful week. The DVD also focus­es on his incred­i­ble tal­ents, show­ing the mak­ing of the track Drain You, excerpts from Smells Like Teen Spir­it, In Bloom, Come As You Are and more. Also fea­tured is the sto­ry behind the con­tro­ver­sial Nev­er­mind cov­er and an inter­view with the star. 

Opin­ion on the film’s qual­i­ty is, unsur­pris­ing­ly, strong­ly divid­ed among Nir­vana fans on Youtube. But as you sure­ly know, with all such wide­ly sen­sa­tion­al­ized sub­jects on the inter­net, it’s gen­er­al­ly best if you don’t read the com­ments.

You can find The Last 48 Hours of Kurt Cobain list­ed in our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, part of our larg­er col­lec­tion of 675 Free Movies Online.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s Home Videos: An Inti­mate Look at the Band’s Life Away From the Spot­light (1988)

Kurt Cobain’s Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track From ‘Smells Like Teen Spir­it,’ 1991

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