A quicks heads up: If you like Herb Alpert and Engel­bert Humperdinck, then this BBC doc is def­i­nite­ly for you. Here’s what you get in 90 min­utes:

In-depth doc­u­men­tary inves­ti­ga­tion into the sto­ry of a pop­u­lar music that is often said to be made to be heard, but not lis­tened to. The film looks at easy lis­ten­ing’s archi­tects and prac­ti­tion­ers, its dan­gers and delights, and the mark it has left on mod­ern life.
From its emer­gence in the 50s to its hey­day in the 60s, through its sur­vival in the 70s and 80s and its revival in the 90s and beyond, the film traces the hid­den his­to­ry of a music that has reflect­ed soci­ety every bit as much as pop and rock — just in a more relaxed way.
Invent­ed at the dawn of rock ’n’ roll, easy lis­ten­ing has shad­owed pop music and the emerg­ing teenage mar­ket since the mid-50s. It is a genre that equal­ly sound­tracks our mod­ern age, but per­haps for a rather more ‘mature’ gen­er­a­tion and there­fore with its own dis­tinct pur­pose and aes­thet­ic. Con­trib­u­tors include Richard Car­pen­ter, Herb Alpert, Richard Clay­der­man, Engel­bert Humperdinck, Jim­my Webb, Mike Flow­ers, James Last and oth­ers.

You can watch Part 1 above, and the remain­ing ones here: Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

via Boing­Bo­ing

Talk about an inti­mate venue. A group of friends in Eng­land have built an unlike­ly enter­tain­ment fran­chise, film­ing per­for­mances by the musi­cians they admire–in the back­seat of a Lon­don taxi­cab. The project is called “The Black Cab Ses­sions,” and the method is sim­ple: “One Song. One Take. One Cab.”

It start­ed in 2007 as some­thing of a lark–an impro­vised col­lab­o­ra­tion between mem­bers of a music pro­mo­tion com­pa­ny, Hid­den Fruit, and a film com­pa­ny, Just So Films–but the project soon took on a life of its own. Musi­cians respond­ed enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly, embrac­ing the whim­sy and chal­lenge of play­ing in such cramped, unsteady quar­ters. Now there are per­for­mances by about 100 artists on the Black Cab Ses­sions web­site.  Most of the musi­cians are young indie acts, but there are some vet­er­an per­form­ers as well, includ­ing Martha Wain­wright, Richard Thomp­son and Bri­an Wil­son. There are some famous groups, like Weez­er, Mum­ford and Sons, My Morn­ing Jack­et and (yes, of course!) Death Cab for Cutie, but many of the most inspired per­for­mances are by musi­cians you might not have heard about.

The music ranges widely–from Delta blues to beat­box, and from hip hop to Pagani­ni. One of the most pop­u­lar ses­sions isn’t music at all, in the strictest sense, but a mes­mer­iz­ing poet­ry per­for­mance by Ben­jamin Zepha­ni­ah. The one rule, accord­ing to Black Cab Ses­sions co-founder Jono Stevens, is that the film­mak­ers love the artists’ work. “Big or small,” Stevens said in a TV inter­view, “It real­ly does­n’t mat­ter. It’s about some­one we real­ly, real­ly feel pas­sion­ate about.”

There’s a lot to dis­cov­er on the Black Cab Ses­sions web­site. You can dive right into the col­lec­tion here, or start by sam­pling a few of our favorites, includ­ing Death Cab for Cutie singing No Sun­light above, and:

Lykke Li
Aman­da Palmer
Lang­horne Slim
Kil­la Kela
Sea­sick Steve
Beach House
Ben­jamin Zepha­ni­ah
Char­lie Siem
My Morn­ing Jack­et

Clarence Clemons, the sax­o­phon­ist who played along­side Bruce Spring­steen for four decades, passed away today at 69. The Big Man and his sound will be missed.

Above, a sim­ple mourn­ful reminder of what we’ll be going with­out: First up, a soul­ful solo from “Jun­gle­land,” per­formed in Mil­wau­kee back in March 2008. And then a return to the ear­ly days, a youth­ful per­for­mance of “Thun­der Road” record­ed at the Capi­tol The­atre, Pas­sa­ic, NJ (1978). Clarence takes over at the 6:12 mark.

H/T to David Rem­nick for bring­ing this vin­tage clip to the suface.

A wit­ty ren­di­tion of Queen’s clas­sic played by the Finnish award win­ning street band Pork­ka Play­boys. More of their work appears on the band’s YouTube chan­nel. Enjoy…

FYI: It looks like “Inside Job,” the Oscar-Win­ning Doc­u­men­tary on the 2008 finan­cial melt­down, is back online, thanks to the Inter­net Archive.

via Alec Couros