How “Space Oddity” Launched David Bowie to Stardom: Watch the Original Music Video From 1969

in Film, Music | January 24th, 2013

It may seem odd to con­tem­plate, but rock titan David Bowie’s rise to fame was a long, frus­trat­ing, stop-and-start affair until he burst onto the inter­na­tion­al scene as Zig­gy Star­dust (though he had some suc­cess with his two pri­or albums, the excel­lent The Man Who Sold the World and Hunky Dory). This is part­ly due to poor man­age­ment, and part­ly due to Bowie’s own dif­fi­cul­ty in find­ing a style that fit his ambi­tions. His first hit, “Space Odd­i­ty,” from his sec­ond, 1969, album of the same name, promised great things. (That record, orig­i­nal­ly called, like his first, just David Bowie, was renamed after the song did the Sev­en­ties equiv­a­lent of viral.) Most peo­ple who grew up with Bowie would tell you the song is a water­shed moment in their dis­cov­ery of pop music’s poten­tial. I recall dis­cov­er­ing Bowie at a young age through “Space Odd­i­ty,” and being giv­en the album on cas­sette as a birth­day present. Like many peo­ple, I was a lit­tle flum­moxed by the record. None of it resem­bles the sin­gle, which isn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a bad qual­i­ty in gen­er­al, but in this case, it’s hard to know what to make of that strange col­lec­tion of some­times com­ic, Bea­t­les-esque pop frag­ments (“Don’t Sit Down”), some­times cool pro­gres­sive rock (“Janine”), and some­times almost medieval, Judy Collins-like hip­py folk (“Mem­o­ry of a Free Fes­ti­val,” “Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud”). I grew to love it, but the album’s eclec­ti­cism did­n’t win many over.

Still, near­ly every­one knows and loves the album ver­sion of “Space Odd­i­ty.” But like a great deal of Bowie’s ear­ly work, the song exists in an ear­li­er, more ten­ta­tive ver­sion. Ini­tial­ly record­ed short­ly after his first album, 1967’s David Bowie—which Bowie biog­ra­ph­er David Buck­ley called “the vinyl equiv­a­lent of the mad­woman in the attic”—the song end­ed up on an abortive pro­mo­tion­al film com­mis­sioned by Bowie’s pro­duc­er, Ken­neth Pitt. Called Love You Till Tues­day, after the sin­gle from the first album, the film fin­ished shoot­ing in 1969, but didn’t see the light of day until 1984, long after Bowie hit it big.

The film ver­sion of “Space Odd­i­ty” (first video) dif­fers sig­nif­i­cant­ly in sound and vision from the one right above. For one thing, Bowie, who wore a wig for the extent of film­ing because he’d shorn off his hair to audi­tion for a role, looks decid­ed­ly less, well, like a rock star. As “Ground Con­trol,” his Janis Joplin glass­es clash odd­ly with an arty t‑shirt and what looks like a child’s base­ball cap perched atop his wig, both embla­zoned with “GC.” He stands cross-armed and awk­ward, lip synch­ing between space sequences. Of the lat­ter, “Major Tom” parts, one YouTube com­menter quips, “We have no bud­get, no props, only bak­ing foil and corn­flake pack­ets.… Oh well make the video any­way.” Sums things up pret­ty well.

Even more so than those who bought Space Odd­i­ty after hear­ing its name­sake sin­gle, any­one who heard this ear­ly ver­sion, then went and bought Bowie’s first album would have been thor­ough­ly per­plexed. ‘67’s David Bowie is a very strange, though some­times very intrigu­ing, record, large­ly influ­enced by the musi­cal com­e­dy of pop­u­lar Eng­lish enter­tain­er Antho­ny New­ley. Watch the film’s title track (and open­ing sequence), “Love You Till Tues­day” below, with Bowie, in wig and frilly Austin Pow­ers suit, doing some weird Tom Jones thing that just real­ly does­n’t work.

Had Bowie fol­lowed this tra­jec­to­ry, instead of find­ing his voice in the space­rock of his first big sin­gle, it’s pret­ty like­ly no one would have heard from him again. Lucky for us, the young pop star was noth­ing if not per­sis­tent.  And lucky for us, he still is. The 66-year-old Bowie just released his first sin­gle in a decade, the con­tem­pla­tive “Where Are We Now?” with an album, The Next Day, com­ing in March.

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Sto­ry of Zig­gy Star­dust: How David Bowie Cre­at­ed the Char­ac­ter that Made Him Famous

David Bowie Cel­e­brates 66th Birth­day with First New Song in a Decade, Plus Vin­tage Videos

David Bowie’s First Amer­i­can Fan Let­ter And His Evolv­ing Views of the U.S. (1967–1997)

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

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Gimme Shelter: Watch the Classic Documentary of the Rolling Stones’ Disastrous Concert at Altamont

in Film, History, Music | January 23rd, 2013

It’s often remem­bered as the day the Six­ties died. On Decem­ber 6, 1969, the Rolling Stones and a group of West Coast bands put on a free con­cert at the Alta­mont Race­way near San Fran­cis­co. The con­cert was billed as “Wood­stock West,” but instead of being anoth­er gath­er­ing of peace, love and music, it was more like a bad trip.

The event was hasti­ly put togeth­er by the Stones to cel­e­brate the end of their Amer­i­can tour, their first with gui­tarist Mick Tay­lor. The stage at the venue was unusu­al­ly low and was sit­u­at­ed at the bot­tom of a hill. To keep the audi­ence of 300,000 peo­ple from engulf­ing the stage, some­one had the bright idea of enlist­ing the Hells Angels motor­cy­cle gang to form a secu­ri­ty cor­don around the stage in exchange for (essen­tial­ly) all the beer they could drink.

As the con­cert descend­ed into chaos, the Hells Angels beat peo­ple with pool cues and motor­cy­cle chains. A gui­tarist and singer for the Jef­fer­son Air­plane, Mar­ty Balin, was knocked uncon­scious. When a man in the audi­ence bran­dished a pis­tol dur­ing an alter­ca­tion while the Stones were onstage, he was stabbed and beat­en to death by mem­bers of the gang.

The whole sor­ry episode is cap­tured in Gimme Shel­ter, the clas­sic doc­u­men­tary by the broth­ers Albert and David Maysles and Char­lotte Zwerin. The film was released in 1970 and can be seen above in its entire­ty. Gimme Shel­ter con­tains ele­ments of a typ­i­cal rock and roll doc­u­men­tary, with footage of the Stones on the road and play­ing a con­cert at Madi­son Square Gar­den in New York. But the main focus is Alta­mont. The Maysles broth­ers hired a large team of cam­era­men for the event, includ­ing film­mak­er Robert Elf­strom, Mag­num pho­tog­ra­ph­er Elliott Erwitt and a young George Lucas.

Gimme Shel­ter is a fas­ci­nat­ing record of the Six­ties coun­ter­cul­ture as it was falling apart. The last third of the pic­ture is painful to watch but dif­fi­cult to turn away from. The hubris and naiveté of the time are cap­tured in a scene before the event, when Mick Jag­ger tells a group of reporters what Alta­mont is all about: “It’s cre­at­ing a sort of micro­cos­mic soci­ety, which sets an exam­ple to the rest of Amer­i­ca as to how one can behave in large gath­er­ings.”

Relat­ed Con­tent

The Rolling Stones Jam With Their Idol, Mud­dy Waters

The Rolling Stones at 50: Mick, Kei­th, Char­lie & Ron­nie Revis­it Their Favorite Songs

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Day of Light: A Crowdsourced Film by Multimedia Genius Brian Eno

in Film, Music | January 21st, 2013

Over the past sev­er­al years, we’ve seen exper­i­men­tal artists adapt grace­ful­ly (or cash in, if you’re cyn­i­cal) to the user-gen­er­at­ed world we live in now. While the pre­dictably unpre­dictable Flam­ing Lips have been at the inter­ac­tive media game for a while in their own weird way, we’ve also seen Bjork branch out into mul­ti­me­dia with the Bio­phil­ia iPhone/iPad app to accom­pa­ny the album of the same name, and last week we cov­ered Philip Glass’s for­ay into the app mar­ket with his Glass Machine remix­ing app.

Not ever to be out­done, producer/composer/multimedia genius Bri­an Eno released his own app last year, Scape, which allows users to gen­er­ate their own ambi­ent com­po­si­tions on their i‑devices. Scape’s release came just before that of Eno’s lat­est ambi­ent album, Lux, a col­lec­tion of sound­scapes that were ini­tial­ly installed in art gal­leries and air­port ter­mi­nals. On the album’s release date this past Novem­ber, Eno had more in store for fans. He streamed the entire album online at four dif­fer­ent times dur­ing the same day: sun­rise, day­light, sun­set, and night.

Lis­ten­ers were invit­ed to upload pho­tos of each time of day, under the gen­er­al theme of “play of light” (a title Eno con­sid­ered for the album). Eno and his team then curat­ed their favorite images, from all over the globe, and edit­ed them togeth­er into the short film above, enti­tled “Day of Light.” The idea, he says, was to “make a col­lab­o­ra­tive, gen­er­a­tive work… to see what hap­pened if you just made a space for it to hap­pen in.” Judge the results for your­self. Does this prod­uct from the minds and eyes of the Eno col­lec­tive add up to more than the sum of its parts?

Relat­ed Con­tent

Bri­an Eno on Cre­at­ing Music and Art As Imag­i­nary Land­scapes (1989)

Bri­an Eno Once Com­posed Music for Win­dows 95; Now He Lets You Cre­ate Music with an iPad App

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

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R.E.M.‘s “Losing My Religion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

in Music | January 20th, 2013

Take R.E.M.‘s 1991 bal­lad “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and rework it from minor to major scale, and here’s what you get — some­thing that’s, as one Vimeo com­menter called it, “rec­og­niz­able enough to be nostalgic…unique enough to be shared!” Oth­er songs dig­i­tal­ly reworked by MajorScaled TV include “Rid­ers on the Storm” by The Doors, Metal­li­ca’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters,” and Djan­go Rein­hardt’s “Minor Swing.” Fol­low MajorScaled TV on Face­book for even­tu­al addi­tions to the col­lec­tion.

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:

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Reworked in Major Key, Becomes a Cheer­ful Pop Song

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emo­tion­al­ly-Charged Songs: “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

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Rachmaninoff Plays Rachmaninoff: Three Famous Pieces, 1919–1929

in Music | January 18th, 2013

After hear­ing this week from two great French com­posers linked to the Impres­sion­ist move­ment–Claude Debussy and Mau­rice Rav­el–we con­tin­ue our series of clas­sic piano-roll record­ings with a trio of per­for­mances by the last of the great Russ­ian Roman­tic com­posers: Sergei Rach­mani­noff.

When the Bol­she­viks seized the aris­to­crat­ic Rach­mani­nof­f’s estate short­ly after the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, he and his fam­i­ly fled to Scan­di­navia and then to Amer­i­ca, where they arrived in Novem­ber of 1918. To make mon­ey, the cash-strapped émi­gré put aside com­pos­ing and embarked on a gru­el­ing per­for­mance sched­ule, and in March of 1919 agreed to make a series of piano-roll record­ings for the Amer­i­can Piano Com­pa­ny, or “Ampi­co.”

It was a time of tran­si­tion for musi­cal enter­tain­ment. Most fam­i­lies who were not poor owned a piano, in keep­ing with the tra­di­tion that home enter­tain­ment was a do-it-your­self affair. But as tech­nol­o­gy advanced, peo­ple became more accus­tomed to the idea of hear­ing the music of a world-famous vir­tu­oso in their own liv­ing room. Play­er pianos, or pianolas, sound­ed bet­ter than ear­ly phono­graphs and could still serve the func­tion of a reg­u­lar piano, so for awhile there was a boom­ing busi­ness in the per­fo­rat­ed paper rolls that kept them play­ing.

Rach­mani­noff was inter­est­ed in tap­ping into the piano roll mar­ket, but was skep­ti­cal at first about the qual­i­ty of the record­ings. When he made his first record­ing at the Ampi­co stu­dio in New York, he was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised when he heard the play­back. “Gen­tle­men,” he report­ed­ly said, “I, Sergei Rach­mani­noff, have just heard myself play.” He would even­tu­al­ly record 35 pieces for Ampi­co between 1919 and 1929, twelve of which were his own com­po­si­tions. In the video above, we hear three of his best-known piano-roll record­ings:

  1. Rach­mani­noff plays his famous Pre­lude in C Sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 , from the 1892 suite, Morceaux de fan­taisie (“Fan­ta­sy Pieces”), record­ed on March 17, 1919.
  2. Rach­mani­noff plays his own piano tran­scrip­tion of his pop­u­lar 1902 song “Lilacs,” from 12 Romances (also known as 12 Songs), Op. 21, record­ed on April 6, 1922.
  3. Rach­mani­noff plays a famous short piece writ­ten by anoth­er Russ­ian com­pos­er: Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov’s 1903 “Flight of the Bum­ble­bee,” record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1, 1929.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rav­el Plays Rav­el: The Haunt­ing, Melan­choly ‘Oiseaux Tristes,’ 1922

Debussy Plays Debussy: The Great Com­poser’s Play­ing Returns to Life

Watch the Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Rach­mani­noff in Home Movies

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Watch Philip Glass Remix His Own Music—Then Try it Yourself With a New App

in Art, iPad, iPhone, Music, Video - Arts & Culture | January 18th, 2013

We told you in the fall about the album released by Beck and a troupe of oth­er musi­cians to cel­e­brate com­pos­er Philip Glass’s 75th birth­day. Rework—Philip Glass Remixed is a col­lec­tion of Glass works by artists includ­ing Beck, Tyondai Brax­ton, and Cor­nelius. Turns out that Glass him­self was pret­ty turned on by the results. In the above video, Glass plays around with his own music using an inter­ac­tive “Glass Machine” app, designed to com­ple­ment the album.

You can almost see the wheels in Glass’s head turn­ing as he swipes and taps away on the screen, cre­at­ing new loops with phras­es from his own music.

The app that Glass enjoys so much is avail­able to any­one with an iPad, iPod touch or iPhone (3Gs or new­er) and $10. The Rework app was designed by Scott Snibbe, who also cre­at­ed the inter­ac­tive galaxy in Bjork’s Bio­phil­ia app.

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The app includes eleven inter­ac­tive visu­al­iza­tions of remixed songs from the Rework album (exam­ple on left) and a Glass Machine, allow­ing users to cre­ate their own Glass-inspired music.

As Glass him­self said, while play­ing with the Machine, “the user has become the artist.”

Relat­ed Con­tent

Philip Glass, Seen and Heard Through the Cin­e­mat­ic Mind of Peter Green­away (1983)

‘The Bal­lad of the Skele­tons’: Allen Ginsberg’s 1996 Col­lab­o­ra­tion with Philip Glass and Paul McCart­ney

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at .  

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Hear Lost Acetate Versions of Songs from The Velvet Underground & Nico (1966)

in Music | January 18th, 2013

While the first Vel­vet Under­ground album may only have sold 30,000 copies, every­one who bought one start­ed a band. You know, if you have even a faint acquain­tance with rock his­to­ry, that that well-worn obser­va­tion comes from pro­duc­er, artis­tic inno­va­tor, and “non-musi­cian” musi­cian Bri­an Eno. And whether you could get into it or not, you’ve no doubt heard at least parts of that first album, The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico, the 1967 release that brought togeth­er such soon-to-be rock lumi­nar­ies as Lou Reed, John Cale, and the tit­u­lar Ger­man vocalist/Warhol Super­star Nico. The whole album, in fact, appeared under Warhol’s aegis, and like most works asso­ci­at­ed with him, it tends to push opin­ions far in one direc­tion or the oth­er. The Vel­vet Under­gound & Nico may still move you to found a rock band — or to scrap your inter­est in rock alto­geth­er — 45 years after its first release.

I refer to the record’s “first release” because it’s recent­ly under­gone a cou­ple more, both of which orig­i­nate in a ver­sion nev­er even intend­ed for mar­ket. “In 2002, a fel­low paid 75 cents at a New York City flea mar­ket for a curi­ous acetate record­ing of the Vel­vet Under­ground,” reports Boing Boing’s David Pescovitz. “Turns out, the acetate con­tained ear­ly record­ed takes and mix­es of songs in dif­fer­ent form.” That man had stum­bled upon the cov­et­ed Scepter Stu­dios acetate ver­sion of the album that launched 30,000 bands, boot­leg files of which soon began cir­cu­lat­ing on the net. The acetate received a legit­i­mate release last year as part of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico’s “45th Anniver­sary Super Deluxe Edi­tion,” and you can hear cuts from it, like “Hero­in” at the top of this post and “All Tomor­row’s Par­ties” just above. For Vel­vet Under­ground purists, of course, only hear­ing the acetate disc itself will do. They’ll have a hard time doing so — it last changed hands for $25,200 — but luck­i­ly they can now get at least one step clos­er with its brand new vinyl release.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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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Hear Ravel Play Ravel in 1922

in Music | January 17th, 2013

Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a piano-roll record­ing of the French com­pos­er Claude Debussy play­ing his “La soirée dans Grenade” in 1913. Today we bring you a lyri­cal and melan­choly work record­ed in 1922 on a sim­i­lar device by Debussy’s younger friend and rival, Mau­rice Rav­el. It’s called “Oiseaux tristes,” or “Sad Birds.”

The impe­tus for com­pos­ing the piece came in 1904, when Rav­el heard a sec­ond-hand account of some­thing Debussy had said. Accord­ing to Alex­is Roland-Manuel, Rav­el’s friend and biog­ra­ph­er, Debussy had told the pianist Ricar­do Viñes that when writ­ing his exper­i­men­tal piece, “D’un cahi­er d’esquiss­es,” he had been “dream­ing of a kind of music whose form was so free that it would sound impro­vised, of works which would seem to have been torn out of a sketch­book.”

Viñes recount­ed Debussy’s state­ment at a meet­ing of “Les Apach­es,” a group of rad­i­cal writ­ers, artists and musi­cians, of which Rav­el was a mem­ber. Rav­el respond­ed by say­ing that he was ready to put Debussy’s dream into action. He drew his inspi­ra­tion from an expe­ri­ence he had one morn­ing in the for­est at Fontain­bleau. Rav­el’s friend and for­mer music school class­mate Émile Vuiller­moz remem­bered:

He was stay­ing with friends and one morn­ing he heard a black­bird whistling a tune and was enchant­ed by its ele­gant, melan­choly arabesque. He had mere­ly to tran­scribe this tune accu­rate­ly, with­out chang­ing a note, to pro­duce the limpid, poet­ic piece which spir­i­tu­alis­es the nos­tal­gic call of this French broth­er of the For­est Bird in Siegfried.

After the meet­ing, Rav­el set to work on the E Flat Minor “Oiseaux tristes,” which he ded­i­cat­ed to Viñes and includ­ed in his five-piece suite, Miroirs. “Oiseaux tristes is the most typ­i­cal of my way of think­ing,” Rav­el wrote in his 1928 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sketch. “It evokes birds lost in the oppres­sive­ness of a very dark for­est dur­ing the hottest hours of sum­mer.”

Rav­el record­ed “Oiseaux tristes” and four oth­er pieces in Lon­don on June 30, 1922, using a Duo-Art repro­duc­ing piano. Unlike the Welte-Mignon machine used by Debussy in 1913 (Rav­el also made a pair of record­ings on the Welte-Mignon at about the same time as Debussy) the Duo-Art sys­tem did not auto­mat­i­cal­ly record the dynam­ics of the per­for­mance. So when Rav­el played “Oiseaux tristes” at the stu­dio in Lon­don, there was an engi­neer seat­ed next to him at a con­sole, turn­ing dials to cap­ture the dynam­ic mod­u­la­tions in his play­ing. After­ward, Rav­el lis­tened to a play­back on a pianola and, sat­is­fied with the results, signed his name on the orig­i­nal roll.

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