Listen to Freddie Mercury’s Wondrous Piano and Vocal Tracks for “Bohemian Rhapsody” (1975)

in Music | June 12th, 2013

bohemian rhapsodyMaybe you liked hear­ing Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie belt out the vocal track for the 1981 hit, ‘Under Pres­sure.’ Well, here’s anoth­er one for you: Fred­die Mer­cury’s piano and vocal tracks for the Queen clas­sic, “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” Although the song was released on the 1975 album A Night at the Opera, Fred­die Mer­cury first began work­ing on the epic song dur­ing the late 1960s, often using his piano at home.

Accord­ing to the 2011 doc­u­men­tary Queen: The Days of Our Lives (watch it here), Mer­cury took ideas for three songs and knit­ted them into one com­plex oper­at­ic bal­lad. It was long enough (almost six min­utes) that it seemed unlike­ly to get any radio play. The music execs begged Mer­cury to sim­pli­fy things, to pare things down, but he did­n’t relent. It was all or noth­ing. And the record­ing process equaled the com­plex­i­ty of the song. Six dif­fer­ent stu­dios were used along the way, with Mer­cury try­ing to help the band record the sprawl­ing song he had mapped out in his mind.

The first video above fea­tures Mer­cury’s piano track that forms the back­bone of “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody.” On it, Mer­cury plays a Bech­stein con­cert grand piano, which oth­er­wise appears in the famous video that pro­mot­ed the song. The sec­ond video above fea­tures the iso­lat­ed vocal parts. Dur­ing the gru­el­ing record­ing ses­sions, Mer­cury, Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor spent 10–12 hours each day work­ing on the vocals. And final­ly, for good mea­sure, we’ve added below a fresh reminder of what a beau­ti­ful thing Queen cre­at­ed almost 40 years ago. Filmed just last week, the clip fea­tures a crowd of 60,000 singing along to “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody” before the start of a Green Day con­cert in Lon­don. I’ll just leave it with that.

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The National Gallery Makes 25,000 Images of Artwork Freely Available Online

in Art, Music, Technology | June 11th, 2013

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No sur­prise that in “Mas­ter­works for One and All,” an arti­cle about how muse­ums have begun to offer free, high-qual­i­ty down­load­able images of works from their col­lec­tions, the New York Times’ Nina Sie­gal brings up Wal­ter Ben­jamin. The pre­oc­cu­pa­tions of the philoso­pher behind “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechan­i­cal Repro­duc­tion” may seem more rel­e­vant than ever in these days of not just mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion, but uni­ver­sal, devel­oped-world own­er­ship of the means of mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion — and near­ly instan­ta­neous, effort­less mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion at that. Many rights-hold­ers, includ­ing cer­tain muse­ums, have effec­tive­ly decid­ed that if you can’t beat the mechan­i­cal repro­duc­ers, join ’em. “With the Inter­net, it’s so dif­fi­cult to con­trol your copy­right or use of images,” Sie­gal quotes the Rijksmu­se­um’s direc­tor of col­lec­tions as say­ing. “We decid­ed we’d rather peo­ple use a very good high-res­o­lu­tion image of [Ver­meer’s] ‘Milk­maid’ from the Rijksmu­se­um rather than using a very bad repro­duc­tion.” (See our pre­vi­ous post: The Rijksmu­se­um Puts 125,000 Dutch Mas­ter­pieces Online, and Lets You Remix Its Art.)

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Sie­gal goes on to men­tion the efforts of Wash­ing­ton’s Nation­al Gallery of Art, which has so far made super high-res­o­lu­tion images of 25,000 works freely avail­able on NGA Images, a site that describes itself as “designed to facil­i­tate learn­ing, enrich­ment, enjoy­ment, and explo­ration.” You can browse the images by col­lec­tion — French gal­leries, self-por­traits, music — view the most recent addi­tions, or pull up the works of art most fre­quent­ly request­ed by oth­ers. Leonar­do’s por­trait of the Flo­ren­tine aris­to­crat Ginevra de’ Ben­ci, seen up top, has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly pop­u­lar, as has Claude Mon­et’s The Japan­ese Foot­bridge just above. But does all this bear out Ben­jam­in’s con­cerns about mechan­i­cal repro­duc­tion cheap­en­ing the orig­i­nal aura of a work? “I don’t think any­one thinks we’ve cheap­ened the image of the ‘Mona Lisa,’” an NGA spokes­woman said to Sie­gal. “Peo­ple have got­ten past that, and they still want to go to the Lou­vre to see the real thing. It’s a new, 21st-cen­tu­ry way of respect­ing images.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Google Launch­es a New “Art Talks” Series: Tune in Tonight

Down­load Hun­dreds of Free Art Cat­a­logs from The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art

Free: The Guggen­heim Puts 65 Mod­ern Art Books Online

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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

in Art, Music | June 11th, 2013

KindofBlue_MilesDavisJust yes­ter­day, The New York Times ran a piece declar­ing that vinyl is back. Once a casu­al­ty of the CD, vinyl records are now sell­ing at a steady clip, and not just to nos­tal­gic sex­a­ge­nar­i­ans. Younger music fans are embrac­ing old-school records, frankly because they deliv­er a bet­ter sound than com­pressed MP3s. When Daft Punk released its lat­est album Ran­dom Access Mem­o­ries last month, 19,000 vinyl copies were sold, rep­re­sent­ing about 6% of over­all sales. And that may be a low­ball num­ber.

There is, of course, a nos­tal­gic com­po­nent to the vinyl revival. We fond­ly rem­i­nisce about the days when music had oth­er tan­gi­ble and aes­thet­ic dimen­sions. Remem­ber when you could feel the weight of the records, study the cov­er designs, rev­el in the lin­er notes, then slip the discs onto the turntable and watch them spin? Those mem­o­ries get cap­tured by a new pho­to exhib­it — “World Records” — being held at Kopeikin Gallery in Los Ange­les from June 8 to July 13. It fea­tures the work of Kai Schae­fer, who has pho­tographed over 100 clas­sic albums on an array of turnta­bles. Above, you’ll find a copy of Miles Davis’ jazz clas­sic, Kind of Blue, sit­ting on a Rekokut B‑12GH. Oth­er favorites of ours include Lon­don Call­ing by The Clash on a B&O Beogram 4004, The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street on a Dual1010, and VU’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico on a Thorens TD 124II. You can vis­it a larg­er online gallery of pho­tos here.

via Slate and Coudal

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s

Neil Young Busts a Music Store for Sell­ing a Boot­leg CSNY Album (1971)

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David Byrne’s Graduation Speech Offers Troubling and Encouraging Advice for Students in the Arts

in Art, Education, Graduation Speech, Music | June 10th, 2013


How could David Byrne nev­er have giv­en a com­mence­ment address before? As an expe­ri­enced pub­lic speak­er, a well-known cre­ator who has carved out his own cul­tur­al niche, an advo­cate of things (such as cycling) beloved among world-chang­ing young peo­ple, the founder of a band with a sur­pris­ing mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional appeal, and a man with no small com­mand of Pow­er­point, he’d seem to make an appeal­ing choice indeed. His first com­mence­ment address ever came this year at the Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty School of the Arts, and, view­able from 1:17:00 in the video above, it has cer­tain­ly made an impact in the inter­net. The mes­sage some grads and fans have tak­en away? “If you chose a career in the arts,” as the New York­er’s Rachel Arons puts it, “you are, basi­cal­ly, screwed.”

“A pie chart, based on 2011 data, showed that only three per cent of film and the­atre grads, and five per cent of writ­ing and visu­al-arts grads, end up work­ing in their areas of con­cen­tra­tion,” she writes of the visu­al aids deliv­er­ing Byrne’s grim ini­tial mes­sage. “A sub­se­quent bar graph showed that, accord­ing to those stats, four­teen writ­ing and four­teen Colum­bia visu­al-arts grad­u­ates will go on to careers in their fields, and eight the­atre and eight film grads will go on to careers in theirs.” But first­hand reports from the cer­e­mo­ny don’t describe a too ter­ri­bly shak­en Colum­bia grad­u­at­ing class, and even Byrne took pains to empha­size, or at least emphat­i­cal­ly imply, that tru­ly worth­while careers — such as, I would say, his own — lay out­side, or in between, or at the inter­sec­tion of, defin­able fields. And why would you want to work in the same field you stud­ied, any­way? To para­phrase some­thing Byrne’s friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor Bri­an Eno said about tech­nol­o­gy, once a whole major has built up around a pur­suit, it’s prob­a­bly not the most inter­est­ing thing to be doing any­more.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

David Byrne: From Talk­ing Heads Front­man to Lead­ing Urban Cyclist

David Byrne Gives Us the Low­down on How Music Works (with Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Daniel Lev­itin)

How David Byrne and Bri­an Eno Make Music Togeth­er: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Philadelphia Orchestra Quartet Gets Stuck on a Plane in China, Plays Dvořák for Grateful Passengers

in Life, Music | June 8th, 2013

When a quar­tet from The Philadel­phia Orches­tra (my home town) recent­ly found itself ground­ed on a plane at the Bei­jing air­port, they decid­ed after three long hours (in coach!) that enough was enough. It was time to pro­vide musi­cal relief to pas­sen­gers shar­ing in their fatigue and frus­tra­tion. Above you’ll find Juli­ette Kan and Daniel Han on vio­lin; Che-Hung Chen on vio­la; and Yumi Kendall on cel­lo, treat­ing every­one to an impromp­tu ver­sion of Dvořák’s String Quar­tet No. 12 in F Major, Op. 96 “Amer­i­can” Finale.

Thanks to Burl for send­ing this our way!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pak­istani Orches­tra Plays Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

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

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Hear Theodor Adorno’s Avant-Garde Musical Compositions

in Music, Philosophy | June 7th, 2013

Crit­i­cal the­o­rist and musi­col­o­gist Theodor Adorno was a con­trar­i­an, almost con­tra­dic­to­ry figure—a com­mit­ted Marx­ist thinker who was also a cul­tur­al elit­ist. Any­one who’s sat through a the­o­ry class will know his name (most like­ly through his sem­i­nal text Dialec­tic of Enlight­en­ment, writ­ten with Max Horkheimer). For those who don’t, Adorno was an inte­gral mem­ber of what was called the “Frank­furt School,” a group of ear­ly twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry Ger­man schol­ars and social the­o­rists who were high­ly crit­i­cal of both West­ern cap­i­tal­ism and Sovi­et com­mu­nism. Adorno’s work is wide-rang­ing, pen­e­trat­ing, and, at times, abstruse to the point of nigh-unin­tel­li­gi­bil­i­ty.

Despite Adorno’s hope for social trans­for­ma­tion, his influ­ence is (by design) pri­mar­i­ly in the aca­d­e­m­ic and cul­tur­al spheres, and his cri­tiques of pop­u­lar cul­ture and music were scathing and some­times just plain weird. He had a noto­ri­ous­ly irra­tional dis­like of jazz, for exam­ple. (His­to­ri­an Eric Hob­s­bawm said that his writ­ing con­tained “some of the stu­pid­est pages ever writ­ten about jazz.”) Adorno also dis­liked “protest music,” as you can see from the inter­view above, in which he slams the folky, hip­py stuff for its “cross-eyed trans­fix­ion with amuse­ment” that ren­ders it safe. Protest music, Adorno says, takes “the hor­ren­dous,” the Viet­nam War in this case, and makes it “some­how con­sum­able.” Maybe Dylan felt the same way when he gave up his Woody Guthrie act and start­ed writ­ing those bril­liant­ly arcane, poet­ic lyrics.

But Adorno didn’t just preach the virtues of dif­fi­cult art. He prac­ticed them. In addi­tion to cham­pi­oning the twelve-tone music of Arnold Schoen­berg, Adorno com­posed his own music, for piano and strings. The three piano pieces above are his, some­what rem­i­nis­cent of the most dis­so­nant pas­sages in Mod­est Mus­sorgsky. Per­formed by pianist Stef­fen Schleier­ma­ch­er, the pieces are titled “Langsame halbe—Immer ganz zart,” “Heftige Achtel,” and “Presto.”

A much longer, more sub­stan­tial work is Adorno’s Stud­ies for Strings in six move­ments. Move­ment one is above and move­ment two below (hear part 3, part 4, part 5, and part 6).  It’s chal­leng­ing and often quite sub­lime lis­ten­ing. The YouTu­ber who uploaded the music has seen fit to set it to a mon­tage of black-and-white images. I don’t know whether this hin­ders or helps your appre­ci­a­tion, but you may wish to leave the videos run­ning and lis­ten to each move­ment while you work on oth­er things. Or bet­ter yet, close your eyes and for­get every­thing you know, don’t know, or think you know about Theodor Adorno.

Note: You can watch a lec­ture on the Frank­furt School here. It’s part of a Yale Open course on lit­er­ary the­o­ry, which appears in our col­lec­tion of 700 Free Online Cours­es.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

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

Inter­views with Schoen­berg and Bartók

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

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Building Statues for Nikola Tesla and Bob Dylan: Two Kickstarter Campaigns

in Art, Music, Science | June 6th, 2013

In the mat­ter of a month, a group called North­ern Imag­i­na­tion raised $127,000 on Kick­starter, the amount need­ed to fund the build­ing of a stat­ue ded­i­cat­ed to the inven­tor Niko­la Tes­la in Sil­i­con Val­ley. It’s a way of pay­ing trib­ute to “the per­son who used his bril­liance to advance soci­ety” by mak­ing “hun­dreds of sig­nif­i­cant and ground­break­ing inven­tions in areas of wire­less ener­gy, wire­less com­mu­ni­ca­tion, mag­net­ism, radio, x‑rays, cos­mic rays, radar, robot­ics, engine-pow­ered air­craft and much more.” As cur­rent­ly planned, the stat­ue will sit on Cal­i­for­nia Ave in Palo Alto (right in my neck of the woods). Nat­u­ral­ly, it will host a free Wi-Fi hotspot and also a time cap­sule to be opened on Jan 7, 2043.

Mean­while, halfway across the coun­try, the “Dylan by Duluth” cam­paign is hop­ing to raise $159,000 (again on Kick­starter) to build a stat­ue hon­or­ing Duluth’s favorite son, the trou­ba­dour Bob Dylan. Once com­plete, the bronze stat­ue will stand approx­i­mate­ly 12 feet 6 inch­es tall and hope­ful­ly sit some­where near High­way 61. Three days in, the still-very-young cam­paign has received $5,089 from 40 back­ers. You can help make the Dylan mon­u­ment a real­i­ty right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Magi­cian Mar­co Tem­pest Daz­zles a TED Audi­ence with “The Elec­tric Rise and Fall of Niko­la Tes­la”

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

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Buzz Aldrin and Thomas Dolby Geek Out and Sing “She Blinded Me With Science”

in Comedy, Music, Science | June 6th, 2013

Buzz Aldrin is maybe the coolest ex-astro­naut alive, with the pos­si­ble excep­tion of Sto­ry Mus­grave. Both of these guys are forg­ing ahead with life at the age when less­er humans pack it in. At 77, Mus­grave has a five-year-old son and plans to go back into space soon (as a tourist); 83-year-old Aldrin is devel­op­ing a new sci-fi series based on his 1996 nov­el Encounter with Tiber. Cool, right? Just maybe don’t ask Buzz to dance to ‘80s syn­th­pop. He does have a great sense of humor, though.

Watch Aldrin duet with Thomas Dol­by on “She Blind­ed Me With Sci­ence” above. Buzz gets to shout “Sci­ence!” and bop back and forth like your grand­fa­ther rock­ing out at your wed­ding recep­tion. It’s cute. The per­for­mance hap­pened dur­ing a day­long Smith­son­ian con­fer­ence called “The Future is Here.” Aldrin was one of the four­teen fea­tured speak­ers who deliv­ered “nar­ra­tive talks that focused on both great tri­umphs and future inno­va­tions in sci­ence and tech­nol­o­gy.”

via Boing Boing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Moon Dis­as­ter That Wasn’t: Nixon’s Speech In Case Apol­lo 11 Failed to Return

Live: Watch NASA’s Cov­er­age of Aster­oid As It Buzzes By Earth

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

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