Howard Cosell Breaks the News: John Lennon is Dead (1980)

On Decem­ber 8, 1980, the New Eng­land Patri­ots-Mia­mi Dol­phins game was wind­ing down, the end of anoth­er Mon­day Night Foot­ball game. Then, Howard Cosell, Amer­i­ca’s leg­endary sports­cast­er, broke the news to unsus­pect­ing view­ers: “An unspeak­able tragedy con­firmed to us by ABC News in New York City: John Lennon, out­side of his apart­ment build­ing on the West Side of New York City, the most famous, per­haps, of all of The Bea­t­les, shot twice in the back, rushed to Roo­sevelt Hos­pi­tal, dead on arrival.” Soon enough, more for­mal news reports fol­lowed on the BBC and ABC’s Night­line, and you can still hear what New York­ers heard on the radio the night the music died. Howard Cosell inter­viewed John Lennon on Mon­day Night Foot­ball back in 1974. Revis­it the short con­ver­sa­tion right here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Lennon Sings Bud­dy Hol­ly

John Lennon (and Yoko Ono) on the Dick Cavett Show

I Met the Wal­rus: An Ani­mat­ed Short Film with John Lennon

Jazz Legend Dave Brubeck Celebrates His 90th Today

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.

Freddie Mercury, Live Aid (1985)

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.

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A Big Bach Download: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

bach2

A quick fyi for Bach lovers: You can down­load for free the com­plete organ works of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach. They were record­ed by Dr. James Kib­bie (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) on orig­i­nal baroque organs in Leipzig, Ger­many. Start with a col­lec­tion of Favorite Mas­ter­works, or get the com­plete works that have been divid­ed into 13 groups for easy down­load. Once you down­load these zip files, you will need to unzip them and import them into iTunes or a sim­i­lar appli­ca­tion. Thanks for @Pdarche (Peter Darche) for flag­ging this for us.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Bach Canon Works

A Young Glenn Gould Plays Bach

All of Bach Is Putting Videos of 1,080 Bach Per­for­mances Online:

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NPR Hip Hop

You nev­er saw this com­ing, right? A lit­tle hip hop for NPR lis­ten­ers. Adam Cole, a Stan­ford stu­dent, raps it out with Jen­na Sul­li­van. Get the lyrics for “Good Radi­a­tion” below the jump…
(more…)

3 Year Old Kid & Herbert von Karajan Conduct Beethoven’s 5th: Dueling Videos

Going viral right now: 3 year old Jonathan con­duct­ing the 4th move­ment of Beethoven’s 5th, and doing a pret­ty good job of chan­nel­ing the spir­it of Her­bert von Kara­jan. What you hear in the back­ground is a record­ing of Kara­jan and the Berlin­er Phil­har­moniker. And below we give you this: The real Kara­jan lead­ing the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic through the same move­ment of Beethoven’s mas­ter­piece cir­ca 1966.

via @neatorama

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OK Go & Kutiman: Live from the Guggenheim

On Thurs­day night, the Guggen­heim Muse­um and YouTube unveiled the win­ners of a high­ly pub­li­cized video con­test, YouTube Play: A Bien­ni­al of Cre­ative Video. The con­test orig­i­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed 23,000 sub­mis­sions from 91 coun­tries, and, from there, Guggen­heim cura­tors culled a short­list of 125 videos. Then the big moment: 20 win­ners were select­ed dur­ing an awards cer­e­mo­ny held last night at the muse­um.

The cer­e­mo­ny itself fea­tured per­for­mances by artists who have made YouTube inte­gral to their art – above we have Kuti­man, the Israeli artist known for his moth­er of all funk remix, giv­ing the audi­ence some­thing rather dif­fer­ent: a live mashup of Brahms’ “Hun­gar­i­an Dance,” accom­pa­nied by the Non­ame ensem­ble from the Jul­liard School and YouTube Sym­pho­ny Orcher­stra play­ers. And to wrap things up OK Go, the unof­fi­cial kings of YouTube, per­formed ‘White Knuck­les’ and ‘This too Shall Pass.’ Keep a close eye on the YouTube chan­nel ded­i­cat­ed to the Bien­ni­al of Cre­ative Video. The win­ning videos will almost cer­tain­ly be com­ing online soon.

David Lynch Talks Meditation with Paul McCartney

David Lynch has been prac­tic­ing Tran­scen­den­tal Med­i­ta­tion for decades, and, last year, he inter­viewed anoth­er long­time TM prac­ti­tion­er – Sir Paul McCart­ney. The inter­view (find Part 1 above and Part 2 here) turned quick­ly to The Bea­t­les, their involve­ment with the Mahar­ishi Mahesh Yogi (guru of the TM move­ment), and their famous trip to his ashram in Rishikesh (India) in Feb­ru­ary 1968. There, among oth­er things, they wrote 48 songs – many of which con­tributed to The White Album – before hav­ing a falling out with the guru and leav­ing town.

The film­mak­er sat down with McCart­ney before a ben­e­fit con­cert staged by The David Lynch Foun­da­tion in April 2009. Lynch’s orga­ni­za­tion pro­vides schol­ar­ships to schools so that stu­dents can learn TM. Both Paul and Ringo per­formed at ben­e­fit that night

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