Guns N’ Roses “Sweet Child O’ Mine” Retooled as 1920s New Orleans Jazz

in Comedy, Music | February 18th, 2014

Thanks to the efforts of Scott Bradlee’s Post­mod­ern Juke­box and singer Miche Braden, the world now knows how heavy met­al rock­ers, Guns N’ Ros­es sound with their knees rouged up and their stock­ings down.

Their New Orleans jazz take on 1987’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine” replaces the preen­ing rock god sen­si­tiv­i­ty of the orig­i­nal with a sort of mature, female swag­ger harken­ing all the way back Bessie Smith. (Braden’s stage cred­its include turns as Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Valai­da Snow, and Ma Rainey.)

The back­up musi­cians get in on the fun, too, retool­ing Slash’s gui­tar solo as a horn-dri­ven cake­walk. I know which par­ty I’d rather hit!

Over the years, “Sweet Child O’ Mine” has proved a remark­ably study work­horse, with­stand­ing attempts to make it over as elec­tron­i­ca, a Gre­go­ri­an Chant and Brazil­ian prog rock. Or how about this ver­sion played on the Guzheng, an ancient Chi­nese instru­ment. Post­mod­ern Juke­box’s entry into this stakes is not with­out gim­mick, but it’s a win­ning one.

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Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Radiohead’s “Creep” Per­formed in a Vin­tage Jazz-Age Style

Enjoy a Blue­grass Per­for­mance of Elton John’s 1972 Hit, “Rock­et Man”

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

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

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Download De La Soul’s Hip Hop Albums for Free — Until Noon Saturday

in Music | February 14th, 2014

25 years ago, the hip hop trio De La Soul released its debut album 3 Feet High and Ris­ing (above). Robert Christ­gau, the self-pro­claimed “Dean of Amer­i­can Rock Crit­ics” and long-time music edi­tor for the Vil­lage Voice, declared that it was “unlike any rap album you or any­body else has ever heard.” And it wound up 23rd on The Source Mag­a­zine’s list of The 100 Best Rap Albums.

To cel­e­brate the anniver­sary of this release, De La Soul has gone over and beyond and made all (but one) of their stu­dio albums free to down­load until noon tomor­row (Sat­ur­day). Head over to the band’s web site, select the albums that you want to down­load,  enter your name and email address, click “Sub­mit for Sounds” and then wait until you receive an email con­tain­ing the down­load links. It’s as sim­ple as that. Hap­py lis­ten­ing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

The Great­ness of Charles Dar­win Explained with Rap Music

The Large Hadron Col­lid­er Rap, Yo

A Brief His­to­ry of Sam­pling: From the Bea­t­les to the Beast­ie Boys

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Paul McCartney’s Conceptual Drawings For the Abbey Road Cover and Magical Mystery Tour Film

in Art, Music | February 14th, 2014

abbey-road-sketch

The web­site of Abbey Road stu­dios has an Earth­Cam trained on the inter­sec­tion of Abbey Road and Grove End Road, right out­side its state­ly Geor­gian Town­house. You can mon­i­tor the site all day and night if you like, and the prospect of doing so seems no cra­zier to me than indulging a fix­a­tion with Paul is dead con­spir­a­cies. It’s a mag­i­cal place, as like­ly to inspire awe as blind obses­sion. Although it has record­ed artists from Paul Robe­son to Lady Gaga, the his­toric stu­dio acquired its shrine sta­tus from one moment only—The Bea­t­les final record­ed album, Abbey Road, and its infa­mous cov­er shot.

abbey-road-empty-690808-580x389

See­ing the sausage of that cov­er made in the alter­nate takes post­ed at the Bea­t­les Bible site (two of which have Paul wear­ing san­dals) doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly dis­pel the mys­tique, but it does dis­abuse one of illu­sions of total spon­tane­ity. Even more so does the draw­ing at the top, which Paul McCart­ney made for pho­tog­ra­ph­er Iain Macmil­lan, who had 10 min­utes to get the hand­ful of shots he cap­tured with his Has­sel­blad. In the top right-hand cor­ner, you can see a small draw­ing added by Macmil­lan which adds depth to McCartney’s rudi­men­ta­ry com­po­si­tions. These sketch­es show McCart­ney and Macmil­lan care­ful­ly visu­al­iz­ing the sym­me­tries, strides, and even shad­ows of the cross­walk pho­to. (See the land­mark above, emp­ty, in a pho­to tak­en that same day.)

SgtPeppersSketch

Sketch­ing out impor­tant shots like these is com­mon prac­tice. For exam­ple, above you can see Peter Blake’s 1967 out­line for the Sgt. Pepper’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band cov­er art. But the Abbey Road sketch is fur­ther evi­dence of McCartney’s guid­ing hand in The Bea­t­les’ image-mak­ing. Of Sgt. Pepper’s, John Lennon went on record as say­ing of the con­cept that “Sgt Pep­per is Paul.” In this case, McCartney’s idea for the cov­er was instru­men­tal in Blake’s even­tu­al design: “a pre­sen­ta­tion fea­tur­ing a may­or and a cor­po­ra­tion, with a flo­ral clock and a selec­tion of pho­tographs of famous faces on the wall behind The Bea­t­les.” McCart­ney cir­cu­lat­ed a list among the band mem­bers, ask­ing them to list their choice of celebri­ties. Many of the sug­gest­ed fig­ures end­ed up on the cov­er.

McCartneyMMTSketch

Of their sub­se­quent con­cept album, The Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour, Ringo like­wise claimed “it’s Paul’s idea real­ly, he came up with this.” When­ev­er McCart­ney for­mu­lat­ed his ideas—for album struc­tures, cov­er designs, or movies—he says in this video (which we can’t embed, unfor­tu­nate­ly) that he would “draw some­thing out.” Above, see his con­cep­tu­al map for the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour film (click to enlarge). It may only be a coin­ci­dence that it looks some­thing like a dream­catch­er. Maybe it’s more of a pie chart. In any case, McCart­ney describes it in fair­ly mat­ter-of-fact terms as “vir­tu­al­ly a script” that allowed him to “focus his thoughts.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

John, Paul and George Per­form Duel­ing Gui­tar Solos on The Bea­t­les’ Farewell Song (1969)

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

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

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Celebrate Valentine’s Day with a Funny Medley of Male Pain, Selected By Musical Collective “Cadenza”

in Comedy, Music | February 14th, 2014

“If my Valen­tine you won’t be,

I’ll hang myself on your Christ­mas tree.”

― Ernest Hem­ing­way, 88 Poems

Strange­ly, that’s one activ­i­ty that did­n’t make Men’s Health reporter Markham Hei­d’s  list of 10 Valen­tine’s Day dis­trac­tions for the new­ly dumped. Yoga class­es and Sin­gles Fun Runs do sound health­ful, but many will find sug­ges­tion num­ber 10—wallowing in it—the most viable option.

Musi­cal exper­i­men­tal­ists Col­lec­tive Caden­za­’s Valen­tine’s Day Spe­cial “A His­to­ry of Men Mov­ing On” is to wal­low­ing as speed dat­ing is to courtship.

It’s a five minute med­ley of male roman­tic pain that takes us all the way from Roy Orbison’s 1960 “Only the Lone­ly” to Cee­Lo Green’s point­ed “Fuck You.”

Vocal­ist For­est Van Dyke exhibits con­sid­er­able dex­ter­i­ty, nav­i­gat­ing these styl­is­tic switch­backs. A shame he was direct­ed to deliv­er so much of this choice mate­r­i­al to a framed pho­to, awk­ward­ly posi­tioned on an upstage music stand. I know that the room was crowd­ed, but I would’ve liked to see his feet, too. A man who can dance is some­thing to see.

Kudos to musi­cal direc­tor Michael Thurber for mak­ing explic­it the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Gotye’s “Some­body That I Used To Know” and Ush­er’s “Papers” (as cov­ered by a goat). As with Hem­ing­way’s cou­plet, the lat­ter failed to make the round up. Does the heart­break ever cease?

Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Lover’s Spat Set to the Lyrics of 17 Bea­t­les Songs

Tom Waits Shows Us How Not to Get a Date on Valentine’s Day

Bar­ry White’s Phi­los­o­phy of Music and Mak­ing Love, Ani­mat­ed

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is sta­pling up a new issue of her zine, The East Vil­lage Inky. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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Watch All of The Beatles’ Historic Appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, 50 Years Ago

in History, Music, Television | February 10th, 2014

As you sure­ly know by now, The Bea­t­les invad­ed the U.S. by way of the Ed Sul­li­van Show fifty years ago yes­ter­day. What you may not know is that they appeared for three con­sec­u­tive Sun­day night broad­casts that year, begin­ning on Feb­ru­ary 9, 1964. That per­for­mance gar­nered a record 73 mil­lion view­ers and took place at the now his­toric Ed Sul­li­van The­ater. The sec­ond show on Feb­ru­ary 16  was broad­cast from Mia­mi Beach where the then-Cas­sius Clay and Son­ny Lis­ton were pro­mot­ing their famous bout on Feb. 25. The third broad­cast, Feb­ru­ary 23, showed a per­for­mance taped ear­li­er in the day of the orig­i­nal Feb. 9 appear­ance. Watch all three of those ’64 broad­casts above. (The band made a final live appear­ance on the show on August 14, 1965—watch “I Feel Fine” from that broad­cast below.)

It seemed like every­one want­ed a piece of The Beatles—the Amer­i­can press, the scream­ing hordes of teenage fans, even cer­tain British politi­cians—but the first Sul­li­van appear­ance was a gam­ble, arranged by their very savvy man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein to break the band in the States. Sul­li­van stood behind the band’s ini­tial head­lin­ing book­ing, despite his producer’s objec­tions, lat­er telling the New York Times, “I made up my mind that this was the same sort of mass hit hys­te­ria that had char­ac­ter­ized the Elvis Pres­ley days.”

Sul­li­van, the leg­end goes, first noticed the crazed response the band inspired (see above) when he wit­nessed “more than 1,500 young­sters lin[ing] the rooftop gar­dens of the Queen’s Build­ing and oth­ers con­gre­gat­ed on the ground” at Heathrow air­port after the group returned home from a trip to Stock­holm in Octo­ber, 1963. While the actu­al sto­ry of the first book­ing is a bit more com­pli­cat­ed, writes Bea­t­les’ his­to­ri­an Bruce Spiz­er, it still speaks to Sul­li­van’s impec­ca­ble instincts.

What was it like to be a view­er of that first broad­cast as a young fan? Above, Den­nis Mitchell, host of the “Break­fast with the Bea­t­les” radio show, remem­bers the moment. “Every­thing changed after that,” he says. Although the Sul­li­van broad­casts are mem­o­rable for all sorts of his­tor­i­cal rea­sons, “in the end, after it all,” says Mitchell, “it was the songs, it was the music.”

See­ing it on Ed Sul­li­van was over­whelm­ing, and the start of it all, but then we took it into our bed­rooms with the record play­ers and got deep­er into the music, because we knew that even though they’d done four or five songs on the Ed Sul­li­van show, there was more.

As the band evolved polit­i­cal­ly and styl­is­ti­cal­ly, says Mitchell, their fans “were all along for the ride. And they gen­uine­ly, it was almost like a mag­ic wand, changed things by chang­ing them­selves.” Could such a cul­tur­al moment hap­pen again? “No,” says Mitchell, “not at the lev­el that it did and not with the sig­nif­i­cance that it did.” In the fifty years since The Beatle’s arrival on U.S. shores, the world seems to have become both more frag­ment­ed and more close­ly drawn togeth­er, but we live in such a vast­ly dif­fer­ent media land­scape than the one that pro­duced the Ed Sul­li­van Show—and the last­ing fame of Elvis, The Supremes, and The Bea­t­les. After fifty years of post-Bea­t­les’ pop music, it’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a tele­vi­sion per­for­mance hav­ing such a wide­spread impact that it almost sin­gle­hand­ed­ly trans­forms an entire gen­er­a­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les’ Rooftop Con­cert: The Last Gig Filmed in Jan­u­ary 1969

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

The Kinks’ Ray Davies Reviews the Bea­t­les’ 1966 Album Revolver; Calls It “A Load of Rub­bish”

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

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

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Jimi Hendrix’s Final Interview Animated (1970)

in Music | February 8th, 2014

We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured Jimi Hendrix’s final inter­view, pre­served as an audio record­ing by NME’s Kei­th Altham, who sat down to talk with him on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970, one week before Hendrix’s death. Now, we bring you mul­ti­me­dia org Blank on Blank’s ani­ma­tion of that interview—breezy, sur­re­al, fun­ny, and pro­found. As I wrote in our pre­vi­ous post, Hendrix’s “off­hand lyri­cism and frac­tal imag­i­na­tion” are on full dis­play here. It’s rare that a musi­cian is as inter­est­ing to hear speak­ing as play­ing, but Hen­drix was one of them. Take, for exam­ple, Hendrix’s response when Altham sug­gests that he invent­ed psy­che­del­ic music:

Jimi Hen­drix: [chuck­les] A mad sci­en­tist approach. The way I write things, I just write them with a clash between real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy most­ly. You have to use fan­ta­sy to show dif­fer­ent sides of real­i­ty; it’s how it can bend. As a word real­i­ty is noth­ing, but each individual’s own way of think­ing. Then the estab­lish­ment grabs a big piece of that.

Then there’s Hen­drix on destroy­ing gui­tars onstage:

Jimi Hen­drix: One time I said: maybe I should burn a gui­tar tonight. You know [laughs] smash a gui­tar or some­thing like that. And they said: yeah, yeah! I said: you real­ly think I should? They said: yeah, that’d be cool. I said: well, ok. So like I just worked up enough anger where I could do it, you know. But like I didn’t know it was anger until they told me that it was, like with destruc­tion and all that. But I believe every­body should have like a room where they can get rid of all their releas­es, where they can do their releas­es at. So my room is a stage. [laughs]

There are many more of these gems in the full inter­view that didn’t make the cut above, but the abridged Blank on Blank ver­sion appro­pri­ate­ly cap­tures the whim­sy and good humor of the late lament­ed genius.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jimi Hendrix’s Final Inter­view on Sep­tem­ber 11, 1970: Lis­ten to the Com­plete Audio

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Pre­vi­ous­ly Unre­leased Jimi Hen­drix Record­ing, “Some­where,” with Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills

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

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The Greatest Jazz Films Ever Features Classic Performances by Miles, Dizzy, Bird, Billie & More

in Film, Music, Television | February 5th, 2014

Though both have their roots in the pre­vi­ous cen­tu­ry, jazz and cin­e­ma came of age as 20th cen­tu­ry art forms, and they very often did so togeth­er (though not always in the most taste­ful ways). Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer intro­duced the world to talkies. Cabaret, Lady Sings the Blues, The Cot­ton Club are all well-known fic­tion­al films that near­ly any­one might name if asked about the sub­ject. And though Ken Burns’ Jazz may seem like a defin­i­tive state­ment in jazz doc­u­men­tary, for decades, film­mak­ers have made jazz musi­cians their cen­tral sub­ject—for exam­ple, in jazz fan-favorites like Min­gus and Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er. Before these excel­lent, if some­times painful, por­traits, there were short films like Life mag­a­zine pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gjon Mili’s 1944 Jam­min’ the Blues with Lester Young and oth­er bop stal­warts, and 1950’s Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic, a selec­tion of clips fea­tur­ing Cole­man Hawkins, Char­lie Park­er, Lester Young, Bud­dy Rich, Ella Fitzger­ald, and oth­ers per­form­ing at Nor­man Granz’s leg­endary series of con­certs.

You’ll see excerpts from both Jam­min’ the Blues and Jazz at the Phil­har­mon­ic above in The Great­est Jazz Films Ever, a two-disc DVD set that appears to be out of print. (New copies cur­rent­ly retail on Ama­zon for any­where from $259.00 to almost $4,000, but you can watch it free online.) This great­est hits col­lec­tion also includes high­lights from sev­er­al tele­vi­sion spe­cials like Be Bop’s Nest—a rare Char­lie Park­er appear­ance with Dizzy Gille­spie on the short-lived vari­ety show Stage Entrance—and “The Sound of Miles Davis,” a 1959 episode of tele­vi­sion show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater that show­cased one of Davis’ most cel­e­brat­ed ensem­bles.

You’ll also see excerpts from The Sound of Jazz, which Fresh Sound Records calls “one of the great glo­ri­ous moments on tele­vi­sion,” and which con­tains per­for­mances from Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Lester Young, Thelo­nious Monk, the Count Basie Orches­tra, and more. Final­ly, we get excerpts from a 1959 tele­vi­sion spe­cial called Jazz From Stu­dio 61, fea­tur­ing the orig­i­nal Ahmad Jamal Trio with the Ben Web­ster Quin­tet. The Great­est Jazz Films Ever is an impres­sive and endur­ing col­lec­tion of doc­u­ments from the gold­en age of jazz. While the empha­sis here is gen­er­al­ly on musi­cian­ship, not film­mak­ing, it’s a col­lec­tion that also demon­strates jazz’s close rela­tion­ship to film and tele­vi­sion in the mid-20th cen­tu­ry. All­mu­sic has a com­plete track­list of the col­lec­tion. And for a detailed break­down of each clip, you won’t want to pass up a scroll through this help­ful French site.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

‘Jam­min’ the Blues,’ by Gjon Mili

‘The Sound of Miles Davis’: Clas­sic 1959 Per­for­mance with John Coltrane

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

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

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

in Music | February 5th, 2014

“I’m ready when you are, James.”

“… I know.”

Some­thing extreme­ly sweet was going on between James Tay­lor and Joni Mitchell when they played togeth­er at Lon­don’s Paris The­atre in 1970. You can hear it in these record­ings, taped by the BBC and broad­cast as one of John Peel’s Sun­day Shows.

Mm, just lis­ten to Sweet Baby James’ “mag­ic fin­gers boo­gie up and down those gold­en frets.” Is it any won­der he became the sub­ject of so many songs, two of them Joni’s?

(For the record, here are crit­ic David B. Wil­son’s Top 5 Songs About James Tay­lor:

  1. Joni Mitchell, “See You Some­time”
  2. Car­ly Simon, “We Have No Secrets”
  3. Joni Mitchell, “Just Like This Train”
  4. Car­ly Simon, “Jesse”
  5. James Tay­lor, “That’s Why I’m Here”)

Accord­ing to Joni’s own web­site, James’ “You Can Close Your Eyes,” above, is about her. (That would explain the lit­tle gig­gle at the top.)

He per­formed it solo on his 1971 release, Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Hori­zon.  Joni con­tributed back­ing vocals else­where on the album. In return, he played gui­tar on her Blue.

The gen­er­al pub­lic had to wait anoth­er year to hear  “See You Some­time,” David Wilson’s pick for the num­ber one song about James Tay­lor, but Joni must’ve made sure that James got a pre­view.

As she  lat­er told  Bill Flana­gan of Musi­cian Mag­a­zine, “I wrote a song for James Tay­lor that men­tioned his sus­penders. And then on his next album he went and wore his bloody sus­penders on the cov­er! Well, then the cat was com­plete­ly out of the bag!”

Oh, Joni, I’m not so sure the sus­penders were the give­away.

As for the young man she talks about after “For Free”—the guy who felt he was over the hill at the ripe old age of 21—it’s not James. It’s Neil Young, and the song his gloomy mood inspired was “Cir­cle Game.”  (Good luck find­ing that cut. Once a ubiq­ui­tous boot­leg, with the excep­tion of the songs post­ed here, the con­cert has all but dis­ap­peared, though those who still lis­ten to cds can put it in their bas­kets on Ama­zon’s UK site.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

James Tay­lor Per­forms Live in 1970, Thanks to a Lit­tle Help from His Friends, The Bea­t­les

James Tay­lor Teach­es You to Play “Car­oli­na in My Mind,” “Fire and Rain” & Oth­er Clas­sics on the Gui­tar

Watch Joni Mitchell Per­form “Both Sides Now” on the First Episode of The John­ny Cash Show (1969)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day was intro­duced to this con­cert as a WBEZ Uncon­cert in the ear­ly 80’s and wor­ries that her home­made cas­sette may one day cease to exist. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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