Remembering Janis Joplin: Some Classic Live Performances and Previews of a New Joplin Musical

in Music | October 24th, 2012

Janis Joplin died forty-two years ago this month at age 27 of the same excess­es that killed many of her peers and at the absolute height of her career. But in the mid-nine­teen fifties, Joplin was a mis­fit kid with ter­ri­ble acne liv­ing a lone­ly exis­tence in Port Arthur, Texas. Then she dis­cov­ered the blues, and it trans­formed her. Bessie Smith and Lead­bel­ly, Odet­ta and Aretha Franklin. By 1964, she was liv­ing in San Fran­cis­co and record­ing blues stan­dards with future Jef­fer­son Air­plane gui­tarist Jor­ma Kauko­nen. She rose to promi­nence and found her­self a place to fit in with psy­che­del­ic pio­neers Big Broth­er and the Hold­ing Com­pa­ny. Big Broth­er didn’t ini­tial­ly take to Joplin’s soul­ful rasp, but she even­tu­al­ly won them over, and won mil­lions of fans over to the band, par­tic­u­lar­ly with their sec­ond album Cheap Thrills, which spawned the sin­gle “Piece of My Heart,” and my favorite, her ren­di­tion of blues clas­sic “Ball and Chain.” Her per­for­mance of the lat­ter at the Mon­terey Pop Fes­ti­val in 1967 is leg­endary, and the record­ing of it above is pris­tine, with excel­lent live sound qual­i­ty and close-up cam­era angles of Joplin and the rest of the band.

Joplin broke away from Big Broth­er short­ly after Cheap Thrills and formed a solo act, tour­ing and record­ing with The Kozmic Blues Band, with whom she record­ed just one album, I Got Dem ‘Ol Kozmic Blues Again Mama!. Crit­ics didn’t love it, but this tran­si­tion­al phase was impor­tant for Janis since it enabled her to work in a more blue-based sound bet­ter suit­ed to her dra­mat­ic per­sona. Kozmic draws on the clas­sic Stax/Volt records tem­plate, with horns and back­ing vocals as promi­nent accom­pa­ni­ment.  The record’s strongest moments are prob­a­bly the Bee Gees-penned “To Love Some­body” and the funk-soul “Try (Just a Lit­tle Bit Hard­er)” (above in Frank­furt, Ger­many).

In the last year of her life, Joplin head­lined the all-star Fes­ti­val Express train tour through Cana­da, with Bud­dy Guy, The Band, The Grate­ful Dead, and oth­ers. The tour was doc­u­ment­ed by Acad­e­my Award win­ning cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Peter Biziou and the footage has been acquired by His­toric Films Archive, who are dig­i­tiz­ing almost 96 hours of film from the tour, includ­ing, they claim, the only known live footage of Joplin singing “Me and My Bob­by McGee.” Below is a full, ener­getic, per­for­mance of “Tell Mama” from the Fes­ti­val Express tour:

Joplin con­tin­ued, through most of that year, to ele­vate her art, record­ing the best-sell­ing, posthu­mous­ly-released Pearl with new back­ing band Full Tilt Boo­gie. This is the Joplin most casu­al fans know—of “Me and My Bob­by McGee” and “Mer­cedes Benz,” and for good rea­son. One of her final pub­lic appear­ances was on The Dick Cavett Show in June of 1970 (below), where she per­forms sev­er­al live num­bers with Full Tilt Boo­gie. In Cavett’s inter­view with her, Joplin returns to her painful teenage years, say­ing that her high school class­mates “laughed me out of class, out of town, and out of the state.”


While the final peri­od of Joplin’s life saw her pro­duce some incred­i­ble work, her name occa­sion­al­ly becomes a short­hand for rock and roll excess­es that obscure her amaz­ing, if all-too-brief, career. In an effort to cel­e­brate her life, rather than dwell on her death, the pro­duc­ers of the new show One Night With Janis Joplin (cur­rent­ly at the Are­na Stage in Wash­ing­ton, DC) elide the drug abuse that killed her and focus on the music. Joplin’s broth­er Michael talks about their musi­cal upbring­ing in the video below, which also includes clips from the loose­ly-plot­ted musi­cal, with Mary Brid­get Davies as the star.

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.

 

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John Lennon & Yoko Ono’s Two Appearances on The Dick Cavett Show in 1971 and 72

in Music, Television | October 23rd, 2012

I imag­ine there are some pret­ty bizarre con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries out there about the fact that John Lennon pre­miered his film for the song “Imag­ine” on Sep­tem­ber 11th, 1971. You won’t find any of them here, but it is an odd coin­ci­dence. Lennon and his oft-maligned wife Yoko Ono made their first appear­ance on The Dick Cavett show on that day (above) to debut their new work. They ban­ter about their hair­cuts (they donat­ed their long hair to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s—it wasn’t). They dis­cuss Lennon’s chang­ing music career. There’s some strange fun with peo­ple in head-to-toe burqua-like bags. Most­ly they plug: screen­ing some of their films and debut­ing a song from Yoko’s weird (I’d argue weird­ly-bril­liant) dou­ble album Fly.

Cavett looks ner­vous, but most­ly holds his own against Lennon’s quick-wit­ted music hall chat­ter, always unpre­dictably dis­arm­ing. Lennon is the star here, of course; he had just turned thir­ty and only days ear­li­er released the Imag­ine album in the U.S., which would go to num­ber one world­wide. Nev­er­the­less, he does his lev­el best to make this a joint inter­view and to pro­mote his wife’s work as much, if not more, than his own. I imag­ine there’s no short­age of peo­ple who hat­ed this, and still do, but I think it’s gal­lant and sin­cere. But maybe I’m easy on them. Because I can fast for­ward. View­ers of the orig­i­nal broad­cast had to wait till near­ly the end to see the “Imag­ine” film. With the mag­ic of dig­i­tal, all you have to do is skip ahead to 58:05. It’s worth the effort.

John and Yoko returned to Cavett’s show in 1972.  Lennon seems a bit jumpy here—nervous per­haps since both he and Yoko per­form live in this appear­ance; John does his less-than-stel­lar anthem “Woman is the Nig­ger of the World” and elo­quent­ly defends the inflam­ma­to­ry title line; Yoko sings her, well, weird “We are Water,” both with the back­ing band Elephant’s Mem­o­ry.

There’s a humor­ous ref­er­ence to George Harrison’s appear­ance on the show the pre­vi­ous year, but things take a slight­ly more seri­ous turn here than their pre­vi­ous inter­view. The show aired in May, just a few months before the his­toric 1972 elec­tion in which incum­bent Nixon round­ly trounced the recent­ly depart­ed George McGov­ern. Lennon and Ono dis­cuss their pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion that year due to Nixon’s dis­plea­sure at their anti-war activ­i­ties. This nev­er came to pass, but it was a tense time for Lennon since he had made New York his base of oper­a­tions for the past year. I imag­ine someone’s writ­ten an alter­nate his­to­ry in which Lennon was deport­ed, said the hell with it, and nev­er returned to New York. No telling what he’d be up to now, but as these inter­views make clear, he wouldn’t be sell­ing nos­tal­gia or mount­ing Bea­t­les reunion tours.

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.

 

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Watch Herbie Hancock Demo a Fairlight CMI Synthesizer on Sesame Street (1983)

in Music | October 22nd, 2012

Rea­son num­ber 1,834,334 to love the inter­net: a clip from a 1983 episode of Sesame Street star­ring Her­bie Han­cock demon­strat­ing the Fairlight CMI syn­the­siz­er to a group of kids, includ­ing a very young Tatyana Ali (who grew up to play Ash­ley Banks on The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). The Fairlight CMI (Com­put­er Music Instru­ment) was a syn­the­siz­er and sam­pler with 28 megabytes or more of mem­o­ry, used by a ros­ter of clas­sic elec­tron­ic artists like Jean-Michel Jarre, Jan Ham­mer, Art of Noise, and Depeche Mode, to name only a few.

And, of course, by Her­bie Han­cock, one of the first jazz pianists to embrace elec­tron­ic key­boards (and who’s also been known to rock a key­tar). The Fairlight, pro­duced in sev­er­al ver­sions between 1979 and 1985 by an Aus­tralian (!) com­pa­ny, was state-of-the-art for its time. In this clip, its oper­a­tion appears to be a two man job, since Han­cock is backed by an engi­neer, Clive.

In anoth­er demon­stra­tion of the Fairlight’s capa­bil­i­ties (below), however–from hard-to-find doc­u­men­tary I Love Quin­cy–Her­bie works alone. Well, almost. He’s joined by Quin­cy Jones, just kind of hang­ing out while Han­cock does his thing. Jones says the sounds Han­cock makes on the syn­the­siz­er are like “sculpt­ing… tak­ing a pure elec­tric sig­nal and sculpt­ing it into some­thing of beau­ty.” Worth not­ing in the video: this ver­sion of the Fairlight incor­po­rat­ed a touch­screen mon­i­tor, with a sty­lus to allow the engi­neer to high­light and select oper­a­tions. Watch Her­bie demon­strate the Fairlight’s capa­bil­i­ties as a syn­the­siz­er, sam­pler, and sequencer. As fas­ci­nat­ing as music nerds will find this, those fans out there who aren’t gear­heads should still appre­ci­ate these ear­ly clips of Han­cock, whether hors­ing around with the Sesame Street kids or geek­ing out in the stu­dio with Quin­cy Jones.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Her­bie Han­cock Is Now Teach­ing His First Online Course on Jazz

All Hail the Beat: How the 1980 Roland TR-808 Drum Machine Changed Pop Music

Her­bie Han­cock: All That’s Jazz. A Doc­u­men­tary

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

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.

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Commuters Play Beethoven’s “Bus Station Sonata” in the UK

in Music | October 20th, 2012

At the Hay­mar­ket Bus Sta­tion in New­cas­tle (UK), com­muters and passers-by were invit­ed to con­tribute a note or two to a Beethoven Sonata. Men and women, young and old, peo­ple from dif­fer­ent walks of life — they all lent a hand and shared in a cen­turies-old musi­cal tra­di­tion. Com­pared to some of the elab­o­rate flash­mob per­for­mances we’ve seen, this pre­sen­ta­tion was rather sim­ple. But, as you know, some­times less is more.

Thanks Anton for send­ing our way.

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“Name That Tune” at the Bob Dylan Concert (Echoes of Newport, 1965)

in Music | October 20th, 2012

On Thurs­day night, I final­ly under­stood it — how fans felt back in July 1965, when Bob Dylan strapped on an elec­tric gui­tar and did son­ic vio­lence to the norms and expec­ta­tions of the New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. Fans want­ed to hear the Bob Dylan they knew and loved — the folk Dylan who played a sim­ple acoustic gui­tar, har­mon­i­ca and not much more. But the times were-a-changin, and they got some­thing dif­fer­ent, very dif­fer­ent. See here.

Almost 50 years lat­er, Dylan keeps giv­ing his fans a dif­fer­ent Dylan. When the Nev­er End­ing Tour rolled through San Fran­cis­co this week, he played songs the fans came to hear — clas­sics like Love Minus Zero/No Lim­it, Like A Rolling Stone, Tan­gled Up in Blue, and A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall. Except he set them to new melodies, and between his grav­el­ly voice and the grav­el­ly sound sys­tem, it took some fans min­utes to real­ize what they were lis­ten­ing to. I cite one exam­ple above. In how many min­utes can you name that tune?

(Note: The song above was orig­i­nal­ly record­ed in Dres­den in July. It was also played in SF this past week.)

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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The Strange Tale of Rodriguez: Detroit Musician Becomes a Star in South Africa … Without Knowing It

in Film, Music | October 17th, 2012

Rock and pop musi­cians, as we all remem­ber from the end of This is Spinal Tap, some­times find fame in the least expect­ed coun­tries. Tufnel, St. Hub­bins, and Smalls found them­selves embraced in Japan, a coun­try that has since become the go-to cliché for the final rest­ing place of fan enthu­si­asm for Amer­i­can and Eng­lish has-beens and nev­er-weres. But what to say about a per­former who becomes famous specif­i­cal­ly in South Africa? It hap­pened to the singer-song­writer Rodriguez, the Detroit-bred son of Amer­i­can immi­grants whose 1970 and 1971 albums Cold Fact and Com­ing from Real­i­ty pro­vid­ed the sound­tracks for thou­sands upon thou­sands of South African ado­les­cences. His poet­ic protest songs seemed to hit home with a gen­er­a­tion fed up with apartheid soci­ety, and you can only imag­ine what a loss they must have felt upon hear­ing that their bard of choice had fatal­ly set him­self aflame onstage.

Both the South African pop­u­lar­i­ty and the rumors of self-immo­la­tion came as a sur­prise to the man him­self, who had remained liv­ing in Detroit as a stu­dent and demo­li­tion labor­er since the sev­en­ties. He’s since enjoyed occa­sion­al bursts of redis­cov­ery, like the one that sent him on his first South African tour in 1998, but only now, at age sev­en­ty, has he attained the kind of recog­ni­tion that his ded­i­cat­ed lis­ten­ers would insist he deserved long ago. This owes to the efforts of the young Swedish film­mak­er Malik Bend­jel­loul, whose iPhone-shot doc­u­men­tary Search­ing for Sug­ar Man opened the 2012 Sun­dance Film Fes­ti­val with Rodriguez’s sto­ry. You can watch its trail­er at the top of this post, and a recent 60 Min­utes seg­ment fea­tur­ing Bend­jel­loul and Rodriguez him­self just above. YouTube also hosts many Rodriguez per­for­mances, includ­ing this ren­di­tion of his sig­na­ture song “Sug­ar Man” per­formed at the Triple Door in Seat­tle.

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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

in Music, Television | October 16th, 2012

The Cana­di­an pianist Glenn Gould was one of the most bril­liant and idio­syn­crat­ic inter­preters of the music of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. In this 1962 spe­cial for the Cana­di­an Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion, Gould reveals the same bril­liance and idio­syn­crasy in his under­stand­ing of Bach’s place in his­to­ry.

Bach, says Gould, was not so much ahead of his time as out­side it. “For Bach, you see, was music’s great­est non-con­formist, and one of the supreme exam­ples of that inde­pen­dence of the artis­tic con­science that stands quite out­side the col­lec­tive his­tor­i­cal process.”

“Glenn Gould on Bach,” was first broad­cast in Cana­da on April 8, 1962, two years before Gould’s retire­ment from per­form­ing and only two days fol­low­ing his con­tro­ver­sial Carnegie Hall con­cert with the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, in which Gould’s inter­pre­ta­tion of the Bra­hams D‑minor piano con­cer­to was so eccen­tric that Leonard Bern­stein felt com­pelled to make a dis­claimer to the audi­ence. The cen­ter­piece of the Bach broad­cast is a per­for­mance of the Can­ta­ta BWV 54 fea­tur­ing the Amer­i­can coun­tertenor Rus­sell Ober­lin. “Glenn Gould on Bach” is a fas­ci­nat­ing and enter­tain­ing half hour–essential view­ing for lovers of Baroque and Clas­si­cal music.

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Free Bach Music:

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

A Big Bach Down­load: The Com­plete Organ Works for Free

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Short Film Jamel Rockt Shows How German Musicians Respond to Neo-Nazi Occupation of Small Town

in Current Affairs, Music, Politics | October 16th, 2012

Amid the many dis­turb­ing reports of ris­ing fas­cist groups in Europe comes one par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious sto­ry of the small town of Jamel in the east Ger­man region of Meck­len­berg. Accord­ing to The Inde­pen­dent, in the tiny vil­lage of some 40 peo­ple, sev­en of the ten hous­es are owned by mem­bers of Germany’s far right Nation­al Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty (NPD), mak­ing the vil­lage “almost a pure neo-Nazi strong­hold,” where oth­er res­i­dents and neigh­bors of the town are fright­ened into silence. Der Spiegel writes that the NPD, “which glo­ri­fies the Third Reich,”

has been in the state par­lia­ment since 2006 and neo-Nazi crimes are part of dai­ly life. In recent months, a series of attacks against politi­cians from all the demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ties has shak­en the state. Some­times hard­ly a week goes by with­out an attack on anoth­er elec­toral dis­trict office, with paint bombs, right-wing graf­fi­ti and bro­ken win­dows.

Despite their dom­i­nance in minis­cule Jamel, how­ev­er, the NPD does not go unop­posed. Two res­i­dents, Horst and Bir­git Lohmey­er, have decid­ed to fight back with the most potent weapon they could find: music. The Lohmey­ers, who migrat­ed to Jamel from Ham­burg, seek­ing a rur­al retreat, have instead found them­selves orga­niz­ing a music fes­ti­val in their back­yard to counter the neo-Nazi pres­ence. The short film above, Jamel Rockt, doc­u­ments how the Lohmey­ers were gal­va­nized into action after their town was occu­pied by NPD. The film is full of cap­ti­vat­ing per­for­mances and inter­views.

The Lohmeyer’s mode of protest resem­bles any oth­er small-town out­door rock fes­ti­val, but its sig­nif­i­cance is thrown into high relief by the threat posed by their fas­cist neigh­bors. Kay Sond­gen, of the band Youth Red Cross, sums up the feel­ings of the par­tic­i­pants quite well, say­ing, “if you don’t fly the flag and just look away, then fear gains the upper hand. And lat­er peo­ple will say, ‘It wasn’t my fault. Noth­ing to do with me.’ You have to fly the flag! If every­one does that then extrem­ism, in what­ev­er form, sim­ply can’t gain the upper hand.” Sondgen’s phrase “fly­ing the flag” could mean any num­ber of things. For the rock­ers and fans of the Jamel fes­ti­val, it means coun­ter­ing extrem­ism with art, and refus­ing to be intim­i­dat­ed in a place “where right-wing extrem­ists can do vir­tu­al­ly what­ev­er they want.”

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.

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