If you do not believe in Cap­tain Beef­heart, I doubt the 1974 Old Grey Whis­tle Test appear­ance above will con­vert you. If you are a Beef­heart believ­er, you know. And if you don’t know where you stand on Beef­heart, get to know this wild-eyed rock and roll shaman, poet, blues­man, painter, and child­hood friend of Frank Zap­pa. (Start with his fair­ly straight­for­ward take on Delta blues and six­ties garage rock, 1967’s Safe as Milk.)

Beefheart’s Mag­ic Band, a shift­ing col­lec­tion of musi­cians that ini­tial­ly includ­ed Ry Cood­er (who served as some­thing of a musi­cal direc­tor) cre­at­ed some of the most warped music of the last few decades, much of it very rec­og­niz­ably blues-based and much of it (such as the freak outs on Beefheart’s Trout Mask Repli­ca) occu­py­ing a space all its own—a space that only exists, real­ly, in Cap­tain Beefheart’s head and heart. While Beef­heart acquired a rep­u­ta­tion as an uncom­pro­mis­ing, and sin­gu­lar­ly demand­ing, employ­er of musi­cians, speak­ing as a musi­cian, there are few oth­ers that I wish I’d had the chance to play with in their hey­day.

Despite his demon­i­cal­ly inspired weird­ness and sto­ried dif­fi­cul­ty, what attract­ed musi­cians to Beef­heart was his abil­i­ty to push con­cepts so far beyond the bounds of intel­li­gi­bil­i­ty so as to make insan­i­ty make per­fect sense. Take, for exam­ple, his list of instruc­tions, or rather “com­mand­ments,” issued to Moris Tep­per when the gui­tarist joined Beefheart’s band in 1976. This is not an obnox­ious prac­ti­cal joke—it is the tech­nique of a Zen mas­ter, dis­ori­ent­ing his stu­dent with non­sen­si­cal truths mixed in with some very prac­ti­cal advice. Which one is which is for the stu­dent to decide.

Cap­tain Beefheart’s “Ten Com­mand­ments of Gui­tar Play­ing”

1. Lis­ten to the birds

That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know every­thing about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hum­ming­birds. They fly real­ly fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going any­where.

2. Your gui­tar is not real­ly a gui­tar.

Your gui­tar is a divin­ing rod. Use it to find spir­its in the oth­er world and bring them over. A gui­tar is also a fish­ing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.

3. Prac­tice in front of a bush.

Wait until the moon is out, then go out­side, eat a mul­ti-grained bread and play your gui­tar to a bush. If the bush does­n’t shake, eat anoth­er piece of bread.

4. Walk with the dev­il.

Old Delta blues play­ers referred to gui­tar ampli­fiers as the “dev­il box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal oppor­tu­ni­ty employ­er in terms of who you’re brin­ing over from the oth­er side. Elec­tric­i­ty attracts dev­ils and demons. Oth­er instru­ments attract oth­er spir­its. An acoustic gui­tar attracts Casper. A man­dolin attracts Wendy. But an elec­tric gui­tar attracts Beelze­bub.

5. If you’re guilty of think­ing, you’re out.

If your brain is part of the process, you’re miss­ing it. You should play like a drown­ing man, strug­gling to reach shore. If you can trap that feel­ing, then you have some­thing that is fur bear­ing.

6. Nev­er point your gui­tar at any­one.

Your instru­ment has more clout than light­ning. Just hit a big chord then run out­side to hear it. But make sure you are not stand­ing in an open field.

7. Always car­ry a church key.

That’s your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He’s one. He was a Detroit street musi­cian who played in the fifties on a home­made instru­ment. His song “I Need a Hun­dred Dol­lars” is warm pie. Anoth­er key to the church is Hubert Sum­lin, Howl­in’ Wolf’s gui­tar play­er. He just stands there like the Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty — mak­ing you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he’s doing it.

8. Don’t wipe the sweat off your instru­ment.

You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.

9. Keep your gui­tar in a dark place.

When you’re not play­ing your gui­tar, cov­er it and keep it in a dark place. If you don’t play your gui­tar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.

10. You got­ta have a hood for your engine.

Keep that hat on. A hat is a pres­sure cook­er. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow.

If any of the above leads you to think you need to know more about Beef­heart, then watch the doc­u­men­tary above, intro­duced and nar­rat­ed by the leg­endary tastemak­er John Peel, a true Beef­heart believ­er if one there ever was.

Via Let­ters of Note

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Frank Zap­pa Reads NSFW Pas­sage From William Bur­roughs’ Naked Lunch (1978)

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

Yes­ter­day, we told you about a new Kick­starter cam­paign that intends to put 245 pieces by Frédéric Chopin into the pub­lic domain. The cam­paign is being spear­head­ed by Musopen.org, a non-prof­it locat­ed a few miles up the road from us, in Palo Alto, CA. Oper­at­ing since 2005 (a year before we took flight), Musopen pro­vides free pub­lic domain scores and a library of record­ings by clas­si­cal com­posers that you’ll want to check out.

The library is best accessed via this page where you can browse record­ings orga­nized by com­pos­er, per­former, instru­ment, form, and time peri­od As you’ll see, Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart — they’re all there. So is Debussy, Rav­el and Cop­land, not to men­tion anoth­er 140+ com­posers.

Music can be streamed online for free. But if you become a reg­is­tered user for the site, you can down­load 5 tracks per day in stan­dard audio qual­i­ty. Or, if you pay $55 per year, you can enjoy unlim­it­ed down­loads in high qual­i­ty audio. Pay­ing mem­bers help sus­tain the site, and they also get to help deter­mine what music will be made avail­able online in the future. Have more ques­tions? Check out Musopen’s FAQ.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

85,000 Clas­si­cal Music Scores (and Free MP3s) on the Web

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue broke new ground in the world of jazz in a year that saw an unusu­al num­ber of ground­break­ing jazz releas­es, 1959. Fol­low­ing up his exper­i­ments on 1958’s Mile­stones, Davis’ move from bop to modal jazz impro­vi­sa­tion­al tech­niques shift­ed the terms of the genre, and, as many crit­ics have argued since, the terms of West­ern music, pop­u­lar and clas­si­cal. Released in August of ’59, Kind of Blue was record­ed in New York by Davis’ famous sex­tet in March and April of that year, and before lis­ten­ers had a chance to hear the record, those few peo­ple lucky enough to be in atten­dance at the April per­for­mance above—at CBS’s Stu­dio 61—got a chance to hear what Davis was up to. Doubt­less those lucky atten­dees were few indeed, but one of them, pro­duc­er and pre­sen­ter Robert Her­ridge show­cased the per­for­mance for a July, 1960 broad­cast of his show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater.

The Davis sex­tet play a few ver­sions of “So What” from Kind of Blue, pre­view­ing the album Quin­cy Jones would call his “orange juice” for its dai­ly jolt of inspi­ra­tion. The remain­der of the per­for­mance con­sists of com­po­si­tions by Dave Brubeck, Gil Evans, and Ahmad Jamal. See the full track list below.

1 So What
2 Intro­duc­tion (Robert Her­ridge)
3 The Duke
 (D. Brubeck)
4 Blues for Pablo 
(G. Evans)
5 New Rhum­ba
 (A. Jamal)
6 Announce­ment (Robert Her­ridge)
7 So What (reprise)
8 So What (reprise)
9 Orches­tral frag­ment

The style of “So What” and the oth­er com­po­si­tions from Kind of Blue have been cred­it­ed with cre­at­ing, in Chick Corea’s words, “a new lan­guage of music.” But Davis can­not take all of the cred­it. He must share it with pianist and edu­ca­tor George Rus­sell who pub­lished a the­o­ret­i­cal account of a new way of impro­vis­ing in 1953 called Lydi­an Chro­mat­ic Con­cept of Tonal Orga­ni­za­tion. Davis was great­ly influ­enced by Russell’s the­o­ries and found in them a way out of the man­ic style of bop that had begun to tire him. Russell’s “modal” jazz moved away from bas­ing jazz impro­vi­sa­tion on chords and tra­di­tion­al major and minor scales. Though the the­o­ry was new, its basis, the Lydi­an mode, is as ancient as the Greeks. In the video above, see Rus­sell in an inter­view dis­cussing his modal the­o­ry, which Ben Ratliff in Russell’s 2009 New York Times obit describes as “sim­ple”:

[Rus­sell] believed that a new gen­er­a­tion of jazz impro­vis­ers deserved new har­mon­ic tech­niques, and that tra­di­tion­al West­ern tonal­i­ty was run­ning its course. The Lydi­an chro­mat­ic con­cept — based on the Lydi­an mode, or scale, rather than the famil­iar do-re-mi major scale — was a way for musi­cians to impro­vise in any key, on any chord, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the music’s blues roots.  

With­out Rus­sell, we’d have no Kind of Blue, but it’s prob­a­bly safe to say that with­out Davis’ bril­liant appro­pri­a­tion of modal the­o­ry, Russell’s ideas may have fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty. The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the hum­ble the­o­rist, the flam­boy­ant com­pos­er and band­leader, and his tremen­dous­ly tal­ent­ed 1959 ensem­ble pro­duced one of the most endur­ing musi­cal doc­u­ments of all time, and in the archival footage above, we can see some of its crit­i­cal pieces come togeth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

Miles Davis and His ‘Sec­ond Great Quin­tet,’ Filmed Live in Europe, 1967

Rare Miles Davis Live Record­ings Cap­ture the Jazz Musi­cian at the Height of His Pow­ers

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

“It is 164 years after Chopin’s death. His music is well into the pub­lic domain, yet most peo­ple con­sume it as if it were still copy­right­ed: from CDs, iTunes, or Youtube videos (many of which are copy­right­ed). We think Chopin deserves bet­ter.” That’s how Musopen.org frames its new Kick­starter cam­paign called Set Chopin Free. If the cam­paign reach­es its goal of rais­ing $75,000 (it’s already at $34,748), Musopen will work with tal­ent­ed musi­cians to “pre­serve indef­i­nite­ly and with­out ques­tion every­thing Chopin cre­at­ed.” They will record per­for­mances of 245 Chopin pieces in both 1080p video and 24 bit 192kHz audio, and then release them all into the pub­lic domain. Sounds like some­thing our read­ers can get behind. If you con­tribute to this cam­paign, you can get some pret­ty nice-look­ing gifts, while mak­ing your own gift to the cul­tur­al com­mons. Learn more about the Set Chopin Free cam­paign here. And, of course, we’ll let you know when this project is com­plete and the pub­lic domain record­ings are online.

Note: If you want to savor the fruits of anoth­er Kick­starter cam­paign, please vis­it our pre­vi­ous post: The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

On Jan­u­ary 29, 1972 Lou Reed and John Cale, found­ing mem­bers of the Vel­vet Under­ground, reunit­ed with Nico, the Ger­man actress, mod­el and musi­cian who sang sev­er­al songs on the band’s debut album, for a spe­cial con­cert at le Bat­a­clan night­club in Paris.

In this scene Nico (in her “deep nar­cot­ic monot­o­ne voice,” as one writer apt­ly described it) sings one of three songs she sang on 1967’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. The song, “Femme Fatale,” was writ­ten by Reed at the request of the band’s man­ag­er, Andy Warhol. “Andy said I should write a song about Edie Sedg­wick,” Reed lat­er explained. “I said, Like what?’ and he said, ‘Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale, Lou?’ So I wrote ‘Femme Fatale’ and we gave it to Nico.”

The Bat­a­clan con­cert was staged four years after Cale left the Vel­vet Under­ground and almost two years after Reed left. The show was record­ed for French tele­vi­sion and has been wide­ly boot­legged. Nico’s per­for­mance of “Femme Fatale” came mid­way through a 16-song set, but was placed at the end of the orig­i­nal 23-minute TV spe­cial. You can watch the com­plete spe­cial on YouTube.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel