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

“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

The arrival of the com­pact disc was thought to be the death sen­tence for LPs. Vinyl was big, impre­cise, and stuck in the past: CDs were the wave of the future. Recent years, how­ev­er, have seen a sur­pris­ing trend. Vinyl col­lec­tors have man­aged to weath­er the dig­i­tal music storm of the ‘80s and ‘90s, while com­pact discs, hav­ing seen bet­ter days, have dropped in pop­u­lar­i­ty. In fact, accord­ing to The Tele­graph, LP sales are bet­ter than they’ve been at any point over the past 12 years. Although it is the hob­by­ist col­lec­tor and the DJ who have buoyed vinyl sales for many years, the recent surge in LP pop­u­lar­i­ty is, in part, due to younger fans who pre­fer the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to vinyl records over dig­i­tal down­loads. Daft Punk, Arc­tic Mon­keys, The Nation­al, and Vam­pire Week­end are just some of the A‑list bands tak­ing advan­tage of the trend.

But how are LPs man­u­fac­tured today? Pret­ty much the exact way they’ve been pro­duced through­out the past 50 years, actu­al­ly. Many of the LP press­ing plants use restored press­es, bought sec­ond-hand for about $25,000. The video above, made in 1956 by RCA Vic­tor, gives a detailed descrip­tion of the process. After the sound record­ing, the audio is trans­ferred to a lac­quer mas­ter disc.

The play­ing time of the music dic­tates the num­ber of grooves on the disc, and the sound dynam­ics deter­mine the dis­tance between them. As the video explains, the loud pas­sages need more room, while qui­et ones need less. A fine­ly ground and elec­tri­cal­ly heat­ed piece of sap­phire cuts the vinyl with pre­ci­sion. Once it is com­plete, the mas­ter disc is coat­ed in var­i­ous met­als, which, when sep­a­rat­ed, cre­ate a new, sil­ver-faced mas­ter copy. This metal­lic mas­ter can’t be played, and is used to cre­ate a mold, which must be checked for sound qual­i­ty. Final­ly, the mold is used to make a stam­per, which stamps the appro­pri­ate grooves on the records. The record press heats the plas­tic, turn­ing it into a warm, mold­able goo, press­es it, and cools its once the grooves have been stamped. If you got lost some­where along the way, don’t wor­ry. Visu­als help, and the video above should give you an idea of how things hap­pen.

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via Boing Boing

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A Cel­e­bra­tion of Retro Media: Vinyl, Cas­settes, VHS, and Polaroid Too

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

World Records: New Pho­to Exhib­it Pays Trib­ute to the Era of Vinyl Records & Turnta­bles

Pink Floyd had to find its way again after found­ing singer Syd Bar­rett had a men­tal break­down and left the band in 1968. The new group became intro­spec­tive, explor­ing a range of effects and sound­scapes that increas­ing­ly trend­ed toward (or invent­ed) New Age music. For exam­ple the open­ing instru­men­tal, “Shine On You Crazy Dia­mond (Part 1)” from 1975’s Wish You Were Here sounds for all the world like Van­ge­lis. At this point in their career, the band seemed like it would be per­fect­ly at home scor­ing sci-fi films, which—given the gold­en age of far out space-glam futur­ism that was the 1970s—I con­sid­er a won­der­ful thing. What this also means how­ev­er, is that Wish You Were Here is an album short on songs, fea­tur­ing only five prop­er­ly list­ed, though the first and last tracks are over ten minute long rock operettas.

Musi­cal­ly, it’s a tremen­dous­ly accom­plished piece of work, lush and expan­sive but curi­ous­ly restrained. The cen­ter­piece, “Have a Cig­ar”— sure­ly a pre­cur­sor of bit­ter show­biz rant dis­guised as dou­ble con­cept album, The Wall—is in fact sung by a ringer, Roy Harp­er. (The only oth­er time the band fea­tured a guest vocal­ist was on the soar­ing, word­less “Great Gig in the Sky” from the pre­vi­ous album, Dark Side of the Moon.) Though the col­lab­o­ra­tion was a fluke—Harper sim­ply hap­pened to be record­ing in the next stu­dio over—his pres­ence seems essen­tial in hind­sight. The band were big fans of Harper’s, an eccen­tric folk singer who has released 22 albums to date. It’s easy to see why. He’s like a psy­che­del­ic British Neil Young, an artist whom, I would argue, some­times has a lot in com­mon with Pink Floyd, such as a will­ing­ness to release albums almost ful­ly com­posed of extend­ed jams.

Wish You Were Here was writ­ten around the song “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” an extend­ed jam bro­ken into two extend­ed sequences that book­end the album. The song is about their trag­i­cal­ly befud­dled for­mer singer, and the album has some of the sad­dest lyrics in the band’s oeu­vre, which I sup­pose says quite a lot (I attend­ed many an ado­les­cent par­ty where someone—yes, some­times that some­one was me—picked up the acoustic gui­tar and led a maudlin sin­ga­long of the title track.) Fans of the band will need no fur­ther per­suad­ing to watch the above doc­u­men­tary about the mak­ing of Wish You Were Here, but if my tout­ing does­n’t sway you, con­sid­er it then a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to see some of the most tal­ent­ed musi­cians of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry at work, shin­ing even into their very Eng­lish old­er years (though rarely in the same room), with a dig­ni­ty and ded­i­ca­tion that is dif­fi­cult to find in mod­ern pop music. I say this with full aware­ness of how cranky it may sound, but so be it. They don’t make bands like this any­more.

Peo­ple do still occa­sion­al­ly make records like Pink Floyd’s, espe­cial­ly like 1973’s Dark Side of the Moon—which more or less per­fect­ed the sound of space rock—but no one has ever made one so per­fect­ly real­ized. And yet if asked to choose between that album and Wish You Were Here, I could not do it. They are far too dif­fer­ent in their approach­es. In the Mak­ing of Dark Side of the Moon doc­u­men­tary above, Roger Waters char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly says that Dark Side was made at a time when the band “still had a com­mon goal—that is to become rich and famous.” And for all its acid satire of wealth and fame and its often mor­bid themes, it’s the sound of a band full of youth­ful self-con­fi­dence and ambi­tion, where the follow-up’s orches­tral pieces speak of deep­er and sad­der realms.

The songs on Dark Side of the Moon were part­ly fin­ished live as the band debuted exper­i­men­tal ver­sions of the songs in a 1972 tour, and the album’s suc­cess the fol­low­ing year saw the band real­ize their dreams. Pink Floyd became a sta­di­um act overnight. One can imag­ine the toll the Dark Side of the Moon tour­ing took on the band, who—despite their renown for stage spectacles—have always seemed like very retir­ing indi­vid­u­als, except for the fre­quent­ly grandiose Waters.

Waters has tak­en a lot of flack for his part in the long­stand­ing ani­mos­i­ty between him­self and co-leader, gui­tarist David Gilmour, but see­ing him mas­ter­mind Dark Side of the Moon—through ret­ro­spec­tive inter­views mainly—reminds us of what an enor­mous tal­ent he had. Speak­ing of retir­ing per­son­al­i­ties, Waters, for a time the band’s pri­ma­ry lyri­cist, penned the unfor­get­table line, “hang­ing on in qui­et des­per­a­tion is the Eng­lish way” from “Time”—a line cribbed from Thore­au but that could have been writ­ten by Eve­lyn Waugh or Som­er­set Maugh­am, says gui­tarist Nigel Williamson. It’s a “descrip­tion of the Eng­lish char­ac­ter,” says Williamson, that “permeate[s] the whole record, and indeed the whole of Pink Floyd’s career.”

H/T and thanks goes to @BrainPicker for send­ing the top film our way.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Syd Bar­rett: Under Review, a Full Doc­u­men­tary About Pink Floyd’s Bril­liant and Trou­bled Founder

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)

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