Radiohead-Approved, Fan-Made Film of the Band at Roseland for 2011’s The King of Limbs Tour

in Music | November 30th, 2012

Hav­ing seen Radio­head a few times since their post-2000 Kid A trans­for­ma­tion, I can tell you first­hand that while their last sev­er­al records have trend­ed toward bed­room rock, the live show is still a full-on expe­ri­ence. No twid­dling behind lap­tops and drum machines. And if you haven’t had the plea­sure of see­ing them per­form since their break with noisy alt-rock, now you can, thanks to the fans who pro­duced the above film, shot at NYC’s Rose­land Ball­room and the sec­ond of only three shows the band played in 2011 in sup­port of The King of Limbs.

Edit­ed togeth­er from the YouTube footage of ten dif­fer­ent fans, the video is a remark­able exam­ple of crowd­sourced ded­i­ca­tion. Radio­head gen­er­ous­ly donat­ed the audio straight from the sound­board, pro­vid­ing stel­lar sound, and the fan-edi­tors obtained at least two cam­era angles for every song, giv­ing this pro­duc­tion the look of a pro­fes­sion­al con­cert film. It’s quite an achieve­ment over­all (and not the first time this has been done).

The pro­duc­ers of the film have made it avail­able for free down­load (via tor­rent). You can find more infor­ma­tion on the film at the project coordinator’s blogspot. The band and fan film­mak­ers ask that you con­sid­er donat­ing any funds you might have used to pur­chase the film to orga­ni­za­tions ben­e­fit­ting the Haiti Earth­quake Fund, or to those help­ing Hur­ri­cane Sandy vic­tims, such as Doc­tors with­out Bor­ders or the Red Cross. The film is ded­i­cat­ed to Scott John­son, the Radio­head drum tech­ni­cian who died in a stage col­lapse at an out­door con­cert in Toron­to last June.

Final­ly, in the spir­it of fan col­lab­o­ra­tion, YouTube user MountainMan1092 help­ful­ly typed up and post­ed the track­list below:

0:00:58 Bloom 0:07:23 Lit­tle By Lit­tle 0:12:07 Stair­case 0:17:02 The Nation­al Anthem 0:22:03 Fer­al 0:26:20 Sub­ter­ranean Home­sick Alien 0:31:24 Like Spin­ning Plates 0:34:50 All I Need 0:39:06 True Love Waits/ Every­thing In Its Right Place 0:44:49 15 Step 0:49:04 Weird Fishes/ Arpeg­gi 0:55:08 Lotus Flower 1:00:55 Codex 1:06:43 The Dai­ly Mail 1:10:33 Good Morn­ing Mr. Mag­pie 1:16:22 Reck­on­er 1:24:00 Give Up The Ghost 1:29:19 Myx­o­mato­sis 01:33:24 Bodys­natch­ers 1:41:28 Super­col­lid­er 1:47:17 Nude

via Slate

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Library of Congress Releases Audio Archive of Interviews with Rock ‘n’ Roll Icons

in Archives, Music, Radio | November 30th, 2012

Back in the mid-to-late 1980s, some of the fig­ures we con­sid­er Rock and Roll icons were near or at the nadir of their pop­u­lar­i­ty. With Duran Duran, The Police and Michael Jack­son at the top of the charts, artists like George Har­ri­son, Bob Dylan and even David Bowie had put out their last great records and were wait­ing for the nos­tal­gia wheel to turn.

Enter Joe Smith, record­ing indus­try exec­u­tive and for­mer disc jock­ey. Over two years in the late 80s, while pres­i­dent of Capi­tol Records/EMI, Smith record­ed near­ly 240 hours of inter­views with a cat­a­log of major musi­cal artists from Mick Jag­ger, Bowie and Paul McCart­ney to Yoko Ono, George Har­ri­son and Lin­da Ron­stadt.

Smith used excerpts of the inter­views for the book Off the Record, pub­lished in 1988. Now retired, he has donat­ed the archive of unedit­ed audio inter­views to the Library of Con­gress. The Joe Smith Col­lec­tion will fea­ture talks with more than 200 artists. As an indus­try insid­er Smith had extra­or­di­nary access. It’s not that these artists aren’t already heav­i­ly inter­viewed and doc­u­ment­ed. It’s the inti­mate tone of the con­ver­sa­tions that pleas­es and sur­pris­es.

In a leisure­ly con­ver­sa­tion with Smith, David Bowie (above) talks about tak­ing class­es from Peter Framp­ton’s father in art school. Yoko Ono, inter­viewed in late 1987, comes across as still liv­ing in the shad­ow of her late hus­band. By now, Ono has a big­ger rep­u­ta­tion as an artist in her own right. Lin­da Ron­stadt, who Smith signed to a record­ing con­tract, reflects on her years per­form­ing at L.A.’s Trou­ba­dour night­club dur­ing the rise of coun­try rock.

By now each of these super­stars has writ­ten his or her mem­oir and the gold­en era of major labels has been dis­sect­ed by musi­cal dig­gers. So lis­ten­ing to these inter­views from the 1980s takes on a nos­tal­gic feel of its own. Smith’s ques­tions sound naive now. Isn’t it amaz­ing, he remarks to the leg­endary pro­duc­er George Mar­tin, that the Bea­t­les were so heav­i­ly influ­enced by African-Amer­i­can blues?! It’s sweet to hear leg­endary artists and an indus­try insid­er stum­ble upon obser­va­tions like that one, which have now been so thor­ough­ly digest­ed.

Smith tran­si­tioned from broad­cast radio to record pro­mo­tions, even­tu­al­ly ris­ing to exec­u­tive ranks as pres­i­dent of Warn­er Broth­ers, Elektra/Asylum and Capi­tol Records/EMI. He signed the Grate­ful Dead, Jimi Hen­drix and Van Mor­ri­son, so it’s no sur­prise that Mick­ey Hart is inter­viewed, shar­ing an inti­mate sto­ry about his father.

So far, audio for only 25 inter­views is avail­able on the library’s site. More inter­views will be uploaded over time, includ­ing one with Smith him­self in which he talks dirt about his rela­tion­ship with for­mer busi­ness part­ner Frank Sina­tra.

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Woody Guthrie’s Fan Letter To John Cage and Alan Hovhaness (1947)

in Letters, Music | November 28th, 2012

I’ve always felt a cer­tain close affin­i­ty with Woody Guthrie. Could be my admi­ra­tion for his unstint­ing working-man’s pol­i­tics or that he hails from my mother’s home state of Okla­homa. Those are strong appeals, and I sup­pose it’s all of that and more: Guthrie could carve out com­pact gran­ite sen­tences even Robert Frost would envy. If the let­ter above doesn’t con­vince you, read the man’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy. In the let­ter, the unapolo­getic work­ing-class folksing­ing Okie who embod­ied depres­sion-era authen­tic­i­ty writes to “Disc Com­pa­ny of Amer­i­ca” to enthuse over John Cage for his “over­haul of the fam­i­ly piano” and his “choked down odd and unusu­al kinds of things.”

Odd and unusu­al are two words that spring to mind when imag­in­ing Guthrie writ­ing a let­ter in praise of Cage. (He also prais­es Armen­ian com­pos­er Alan Hov­haness—Guthrie spells it “Hov­aness”). Writ­ten in 1947, it is the kind of text one wants to quote in its entire­ty. For­tu­nate­ly, we have the repro­duc­tion above, and you can read it for your­self. What isn’t repro­duced is the post­script, in which Guthrie wrote: “I need some­thing like this odd­strik­ing music to match the things I feel in my soul tonight.” He also wrote that that morn­ing, his wife, Mar­jorie, had “giv­en birth to a big 7‑pound boy”—Arlo.

Guthrie’s let­ter ref­er­ences a (now extreme­ly rare) two-disc set enti­tled Piano Com­po­si­tions by Alan Hov­haness and John Cage played by Maro Ajemi­an and Alan Hov­hanes, fea­tur­ing a hand-drawn cov­er by acclaimed jazz-record illus­tra­tor David Stone Mar­tin. Accord­ing to LA Times music crit­ic Mark Swed, the Cage com­po­si­tion on Guthrie’s 78-rpm record was the pre­pared piano solos from Cage’s Amores, com­posed in 1943. Below, watch a per­for­mance of the “odd­strik­ing” Amores by Span­ish ensem­ble Neop­er­cusión.

Thanks to Tris­tan for point­ing us to this let­ter orig­i­nal­ly blogged over at Stool Pigeon.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 8 ) |

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Concert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

in K-12, Music | November 27th, 2012

We’ve writ­ten before about the pub­lic ser­vice Leonard Bern­stein ren­dered the Amer­i­can pub­lic as an ambas­sador of clas­si­cal music. Bern­stein made some appear­ances on an arts and cul­ture pro­gram called Omnibus in the 50s, and in 1972, as the Charles Eliot Nor­ton Pro­fes­sor of Poet­ry at Har­vard, he deliv­ered a mas­ter­ful series of pub­lic lec­tures. Through his var­i­ous appear­ances on radio and tele­vi­sion pro­grams, he suc­ceed­ed bril­liant­ly in mak­ing high art acces­si­ble to the aver­age per­son. In Jan­u­ary of 1958, just two weeks after tak­ing over duties as the direc­tor of the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, Bern­stein took up a tra­di­tion in Amer­i­can orches­tras called “young people’s con­certs.”  He would lead a total of 53 such con­certs, even after his tenure at the Phil­har­mon­ic end­ed in 1969, con­tin­u­ing as con­duc­tor emer­i­tus until 1972. The con­certs were first broad­cast on Sat­ur­day morn­ings, but for a few years, CBS—probably in reac­tion to FCC direc­tor New­ton Minow’s 1961 “vast waste­land” speech about the state of television—moved the pro­gram to prime time. Bern­stein made the con­certs cen­tral to his work at the Phil­har­mon­ic, describ­ing them in hind­sight as “among my favorite, most high­ly prized activ­i­ties of my life.”

The first con­cert (above), enti­tled “What Music Means,” begins with Rossini’s “William Tell Over­ture.” While the orches­tra works away with pre­ci­sion, the cam­era cuts to the faces of aston­ished kids react­ing to what they knew at the time as the theme to The Lone Ranger TV show. Bern­stein then stops the piece, the kids cry out “Lone Ranger!” and he deft­ly piv­ots from this dis­arm­ing moment to a fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of why music isn’t about “sto­ries,” isn’t about “any­thing, it just is.” He com­mu­ni­cates his for­mal­ist the­o­ry with­out dumb­ing-down or con­de­scen­sion, but with clar­i­ty and pas­sion. Strip­ping away the pop­u­lar notion that every work of art has some inher­ent “mean­ing” (or “hid­den,” or “deep” mean­ing), Bern­stein shows his young audi­ence instead how all art–“high” or “low”–is first and fore­most about aes­thet­ic plea­sure, and appre­ci­a­tion begins with an under­stand­ing of how any giv­en work can only appeal to our emo­tions through the sens­es. Music, Bern­stein insists, is just “made of notes.”

This con­cert, at Carnegie Hall, was the first of its kind to be tele­vised. Lat­er episodes marked the first con­certs to be tele­vised from New York’s Lin­coln Cen­ter. The remain­ing three parts of “What Music Means” are avail­able here (Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), and a full ver­sion (with Span­ish sub­ti­tles) can be found here.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

 

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hear the 1962 Beatles Demo that Decca Rejected: “Guitar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

in Music | November 27th, 2012

It’s been called the biggest mis­take in music his­to­ry. On New Year’s Day 1962, Dec­ca Records had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to hear two new bands. One was Bri­an Poole and the Tremeloes. The oth­er was an obscure group from Liv­er­pool called the Bea­t­les. Of course, Dec­ca chose the Tremeloes. “Gui­tar groups are on their way out, Mr. Epstein,” was what the label’s senior A&R man, Dick Rowe, report­ed­ly said to Bea­t­les man­ag­er Bri­an Epstein. The Bea­t­les, who at that time includ­ed Pete Best on drums, record­ed 15 songs on New Year’s Day at the Dec­ca Stu­dios in Lon­don and select­ed 10 for their demo tape. The orig­i­nal 10-song tape (see the hand-writ­ten list of tracks below) will be auc­tioned today in Lon­don. Orga­niz­ers expect it to sell for around $30,000. Despite all the pre-auc­tion hype, the demo tracks them­selves have been around for decades on boot­leg and “grey mar­ket” records. And they’re online. You can lis­ten below and decide for your­self: If you were a record com­pa­ny exec­u­tive, would you have signed the Bea­t­les?

  1. “Like Dream­ers Do” (Lennon-McCart­ney)
  2. “Mon­ey (That’s What I Want)” (Gordy/Bradford)
  3. “Till There Was You” (Mered­ith Will­son)
  4. “The Sheik of Ara­by” (Smith/Wheeler/Snyder)
  5. “To Know Her is to Love Her” (Phil Spec­tor)
  6. “Take Good Care of My Baby” (King/Goffin)
  7. “Mem­phis, Ten­nessee” (Chuck Berry)
  8. “Sure to Fall (In Love with You)” (Cantrell/Claunch/Perkins)
  9. “Hel­lo Lit­tle Girl” Lennon-McCart­ney)
  10. “Three Cool Cats” (Leiber/Stoller)
  11. “Cry­ing, Wait­ing, Hop­ing” (Bud­dy Hol­ly)
  12. “Love of the Loved” (Lennon-McCart­ney)
  13. “Sep­tem­ber in the Rain” (Warren/Dubin)
  14. “Bésame Mucho” (Con­sue­lo Velásquez)
  15. “Searchin’ ” (Leiber/Stoller)

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Mak­ing of the Bea­t­les Song ‘Tomor­row Nev­er Knows’

‘Here Comes the Sun’: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

The ‘Straw­ber­ry Fields For­ev­er’ Demos: The Mak­ing of a Bea­t­les Clas­sic

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 10 ) |

Johnny Cash Sings “Man in Black” for the First Time, 1971

in Music, Television | November 26th, 2012

Recent­ly we fea­tured a video of Neil Young per­form­ing on The John­ny Cash Show in 1971. Today we bring you anoth­er extra­or­di­nary moment from the very same episode: John­ny Cash intro­duc­ing his now-clas­sic song, “Man in Black.”

It’s from a spe­cial called “John­ny Cash on Cam­pus” which aired on Feb­ru­ary 17, 1971. The per­for­mance was taped in front of an all-stu­dent audi­ence at the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in down­town Nashville. A few days ear­li­er Cash had trav­eled across town to vis­it stu­dents on the cam­pus of Van­der­bilt Uni­ver­si­ty and, as he explains here in the intro­duc­tion, an idea began brew­ing.

1971 was a time of wide­spread stu­dent protests over the Viet­nam War and oth­er issues. The Kent State shoot­ings had hap­pened the year before. As a protest song, “Man in Black” shows Cash’s abil­i­ty to reach across gen­er­a­tions and appeal to audi­ences much wider than those usu­al­ly afford­ed to coun­try music.

When Cash first played the song at Ryman Audi­to­ri­um it was so new he need­ed cue cards to fol­low the words. The video offers a rare glimpse of an artist try­ing out a major work when the paint was still wet.

Relat­ed con­tent:

John­ny Cash: Singer, Out­law and, Briefly, Tele­vi­sion Host

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Hold Me Closer, Tony Danza and Other Misheard Lyrics for Your Listening Pleasure

in Comedy, Music | November 23rd, 2012

As the Ramones so mem­o­rably did­n’t sing, “Twen­ty-twen­ty-twen­ty-four hours to go…I want a piece of bacon.” Sub­sti­tute ham, and you’ve got your­self Col­lec­tive Caden­za’s His­to­ry of Mis­heard Lyrics, Opus No. 13. The clas­si­cal­ly trained per­form­ers are noth­ing if not game. The visu­al aids are ridicu­lous­ly on mes­sage. The goal? A one-take musi­cal com­pendi­um of pop’s most com­mon­ly mis­ap­pre­hend­ed phras­es. (Pri­or projects include sub­ject­ing “What a Won­der­ful World” to six­teen musi­cal gen­res and a love­ly His­to­ry of Lyrics That Aren’t Lyrics.)

With all the cur­rent debate over the real world wor­thi­ness of expen­sive col­lege edu­ca­tions, it’s reas­sur­ing to see recent Jul­liard grads help­ing them­selves to the crown once sport­ed by Mr. Jaws and Dr. Demen­to.

And now, read­ers, it’s your turn to shake it like a polar bear nin­ja. Was your favorite aur­al fail acknowl­edged above? Or will you be using the space below to demand its inclu­sion in a fol­low up?

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 22 ) |

Ai Weiwei’s Parody of ‘Gangnam Style’

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | November 23rd, 2012

Some­how this one slipped by me, and per­haps by you too. In recent weeks, Chi­nese dis­si­dent artist Ai Wei­wei post­ed a video par­o­dy­ing Gang­nam Style, the unex­pect­ed­ly mas­sive hit record­ed by the South Kore­an rap­per Psy. To date, the music video for Gang­nam Style has been viewed 792 mil­lion times on YouTube. That has to be some kind of record. And every­one has had fun riff­ing on it. The North Kore­ans have used it to mock rival South Kore­an politi­cians. And Ai Wei­wei seems to be tak­ing a shot at Chi­na’s rul­ing par­ty (you see the hand­cuffs, no?). Or maybe he’s just blow­ing off some steam.

Ear­li­er this month, the artist also pro­duced a new video titled “How to Sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly Remove a Shiny Screw with Chi­nese Char­ac­ter­is­tics From a Mov­ing Vehi­cle in Eigh­teen Turns.” The video, writes Hint­mag, fol­lows Ai Wei­wei “on a bus mak­ing its way through Beijing—notably pass­ing by Tianan­men Square—while lit­er­al­ly unscrew­ing a screw. It’s thought to be a state­ment on the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of Chi­na and the new 18th Nation­al Con­gress, which took office two weeks ago.” You can watch it right below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Who’s Afraid of Ai Wei­wei: A Short Doc­u­men­tary

Ai Wei­wei and the Seeds of Free­dom

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 3 ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast