The Lit­tle Drum­mer Boy. Ani­mat­ed. Off of Dylan’s 2009 Christ­mas album. Have a joy­ful and safe hol­i­day…

This Mon­day, the great Shaquille O’Neal, now play­ing for the Boston Celtics, made his con­duct­ing debut, lead­ing the Boston Pops Orches­tra and Tan­gle­wood Fes­ti­val Cho­rus at the Hol­i­day Pops Con­cert. You’ll imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nize the tunes: the Christ­mas stan­dard, “Sleigh Ride,” lead­ing into Queen’s pow­er bal­lad “We Are the Cham­pi­ons.”

via Moth­er Jones

They had a big falling out in 1962. But that was all over Brahms. When it came to Bach, things were more har­mo­nious. So let’s rewind the video­tape to 1960. Glenn Gould per­forms with Leonard Bern­stein and the New York Phil­har­mon­ic, play­ing (if I have this right) J. S. Bach’s Key­board Con­cer­to in d minor BWV 1052. Enjoy…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

Bern­stein Breaks Down Beethoven

This was too good to pass up. This week’s cel­e­bra­tion of John Lennon’s life unearthed a price­less pic­ture of The Bea­t­les prepar­ing to take their icon­ic walk across Abbey Road. One detail worth point­ing out: Sir Paul has yet to kick off his shoes.

Although tak­en back in 1969, tourists still flock to the same cross­walk today, hop­ing to snap a quick imi­ta­tive pho­to before a car races by. You can watch the some­times hair-rais­ing action on this great live web­cam pro­vid­ed by Abbey Road Stu­dios. There’s obvi­ous­ly more to see dur­ing day­light hours in the UK. Thanks to Kot­tke for flag­ging this…

Bea­t­les Box Sale: Just a heads up. We noticed that Amazon.com has deeply dis­count­ed the remas­tered Bea­t­les Box Sets. The Stereo Box Set now goes for $126.32 for 14 discs, and the Mono Box Set runs $129.99 for 12 discs. Respec­tive­ly, that’s 51% and 57% off list price, and it’s right in time for the hol­i­day sea­son…

Last year, Dave Brubeck­’s jazz stan­dard, Take Five, turned 50 years old. (Watch his 1961 per­for­mance above.) And, today, the artist cel­e­brates his 90th birth­day. Through­out his 80s, Brubeck con­tin­ued to per­form across the US  (we have him play­ing Take Five at the Mon­tre­al Jazz Fes­ti­val just last year) and onward he plans to go — although his tour­ing was recent­ly halt­ed by pace­mak­er surgery. To com­mem­o­rate his birth­day, Turn­er Clas­sic Movies will pre­miere tonight In His Own Sweet Way, a doc­u­men­tary revis­it­ing Brubeck­’s life and music. And NPR’s Fresh Air has re-aired a 1999 inter­view where (in addi­tion to his music) Brubeck talks about his ear­ly days on a Cal­i­for­nia cat­tle ranch, and his first love: rodeo rop­ing. The con­ver­sa­tion runs 34 min­utes. You can lis­ten right here.

Queen front­man Fred­die Mer­cury died 19 years ago today. So a quick remem­brance seems in order. We bring you Mer­cury and Bri­an May (now astro­physi­cist and uni­ver­si­ty chan­cel­lor) dri­ving along the crowd at Live Aid, the mega con­cert staged in Lon­don and Philly, back in 1985. Get the remain­ing parts of the vir­tu­oso rock per­for­mance here, here, and here. And keep an eye out for the upcom­ing film that will fea­ture Sacha Baron Cohen in the Mer­cury role.