This week marked the eight anniversary of Johnny Cash’s death. Google didn’t give Johnny a doodle, unlike Freddie Mercury earlier this month. However the Googlers did create a special theme for their Chrome browser based on The Johnny Cash Project. And they announced it on Monday Night Football earlier this week. (Watch the commercial above.)
As you may recall, The Johnny Cash Project was launched as a global art initiative to honor the legacy of the influential singer. The project asked fans to use a custom drawing tool to create personal portraits of Johnny. Then, the images were integrated into a music video set to “Ain’t No Grave,” the first track on the album released posthumously in February, 2010. The clip right above brings you inside the making of the crowdsourced video. The end result can be viewed right here.
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Earlier this summer, the good folks at The Word assembled 40 Noises That Built Pop, a collection of distinctive pop music sounds that have “caused your ears to prick up, or your eyebrows to raise.” Some were originally created in quite calculated ways. Others were happy accidents. Either way, theses sounds are now part of the pop tradition. We have highlighted four sounds that speak to us. But you should really dive into and enjoy The Word’s collection that was clearly put together with loving care.
The Power Chord from The Kinks: You Really Got Me (1964)
“It’s the essential building block of rock; the root and the fifth of the chord played at substantial volume on guitar and distorted to taste. It’s also the musical equivalent of the poker face; with just the two notes, it’s neither a sunny-sounding major chord nor a gloomy minor… Without the power chord entire genres of metal simply wouldn’t exist.”
Vinyl Scratch from Herbie Hancock: Rockit (1983)
“Any DJ cueing up a record through one ear of a pair of headphones will have heard the sound of scratching, but it wasn’t until the early days of hip hop that it was incorporated into musical performance… Grandmaster Flash, Afrika Bambaataa and Kool Herc became the pioneers of “turntablism”, while Grand Mixer DXT’s work on Rockit propelled the sound into the mainstream and transformed the DJ into an unlikely frontman.”
Handclap from Kool & The Gang: Ladies Night (1979)
“As a percussive sound, [the handclap has] been used by everyone from flamenco dancers to Steve Reich, but it was in the mid-1970s when it found its true calling. Layered on top of the snare drum to emphasise the second and fourth beats of the bar, its formidable “crack” can be heard throughout disco and funk, and has since been employed by anyone wishing to hint at a party atmosphere…”
Guitar Feedback from Gang Of Four: Anthrax (1981)
“A classic case of rock music taking an undesirable noise and moulding it to suit its own purposes. The reason for feedback is simple: the guitar pickup “hears” itself being blasted out of a speaker cabinet, processes the sound and passes it to the speaker: noise piled upon noise. As rock music became less polite, more liberties were taken with feedback; while there’s an unintentional burst at the front end of I Feel Fine by The Beatles, the outro to The Who’s My Generation uses the sound more creatively.”
Later this year, Barry JC Purves will debut a puppet animation film that interprets the life and work of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the great Russian composer. You can’t watch any final footage quite yet. But you can enjoy a timelapse video that brings you inside the actual animation process. Here’s a quick description of what you’re seeing, as written by Joe Clarke, the camera/lighting man on the film.
Whilst working on the film I shot this series of time-lapses with the help of students. Instead of just leaving the camera to click away at set intervals, we manually took a frame in synch with the frames Barry was taking as he animated, showing the puppet moving at his intended 25fps, almost!
The Velvet Underground first released “Sweet Jane” in 1970, and a cool version it was. But, soon enough, Lou Reed launched his solo career, put out a live version of “Sweet Jane” on Rock n Roll Animal (1974), and made the song his own. That same year, Reed performed another funk-laden version in Paris, with Prakash John playing bass and Steve Hunter on guitar. And that’s what the vintage video gods are serving up today.
All these years later, Sweet Jane still fires the rock ‘n roll imagination. In 2009, Reed performed the anthem with Metallica at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Benefit Concert at Madison Square Garden, and it laid the foundation for a project now coming to fruition — a collaborative album called Lulu that will drop on October 31st in the US, and November 1 abroad. Reed originally wrote the songs for a play called Lulu, then he brought Metallica into the sometimes emotional project and things just rolled along. In a recent interview with New York Magazine, Reed said, “the version of the Lulu music I did with Metallica is awe-inspiring. It’s maybe the best thing done by anyone, ever. It could create another planetary system. I’m not joking, and I’m not being egotistical.” The bar is now officially set high…
Michael Schur, the co-creator of NBC’s Parks and Recreation, has had a long-running fascination with David Foster Wallace’s sprawling magnum opus, Infinite Jest. So when his favorite band, The Decemberists, asked him to shoot a video for their new track “Calamity Song,” he knew the creative direction he wanted to take. And so here it is — the newly-premiered video that makes “Eschaton” its creative focus. Fans of DWF’s novel will remember that Eschaton — “basically, a global thermonuclear crisis recreated on a tennis court” — appears on/around page 325. The New York Times has more, and you can also find another version of the video if you’re having problems viewing it here.
Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas) has always had a penchant for the rockumentary. In 1978, he directed The Last Waltzfeaturing the farewell concert of The Band — a film later called “the greatest rock concert movie ever made.” Then, after a hiatus, Scorsese returned to music again, shooting No Direction Home: Bob Dylan (2005) and Shine a Light, a tribute to the Rolling Stones, in 2008.
If you’re tackling Dylan and the Stones, then why not go for the trifecta and bring your cinematic talents to bear on The Beatles? And so it shall be. On October 5th and 6th, HBO will air George Harrison: Living in the Material World, a two-part documentary dedicated to the Beatle who long played in the shadow of John and Paul. Scorsese’s latest film will feature unseen archival materials and interviews with Paul, Ringo, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Terry Gilliam, Phil Spector and others. It will also be co-released with a 400-page hardcover book written by Olivia Harrison, which uses photographs, letters, diaries, and memorabilia to trace the arc of George’s life. Can hardly wait. H/T Wired
Note: You can find The Last Waltz and Taxi Driver in our collection of Free Movies Online.
James Taylor has started to offer free guitar lessons online. He is, after all, your Handy Man.
Now let’s get this out of the way: The jury is still out on whether these video lessons will offer serious guidance or not. The first video offers a somewhat detailed primer on … caring for your fingernails. And it comes coupled with a short lesson, “Little Wheel” in e minor, that is decidedly short on pedagogy. More lessons will be coming soon though. Sign up for JT’s email list, and they’ll ping you when new videos are posted online.
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