In 1975, John Lennon released Rock N Roll, where, work­ing with Phil Spec­tor, he revis­it­ed and cov­ered songs from the ear­ly days of rock. Chuck Berry and Bud­dy Hol­ly songs made their way onto the album, as did Ben E. King’s 1961 clas­sic “Stand By Me” (watch above.) Lennon was 35 years old at the time, and today (if you haven’t heard) he would have turned 70. Imag­ine if the sec­ond half of his life, so abrupt­ly stolen from him, could have been as fruit­ful as the first half. Just imag­ine…

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

In a bit of his­tor­i­cal irony, the British Inva­sion hit Ger­many before it reached the UK or any­where else. From 1960 — 1962, the Bea­t­les played the grit­ty night­clubs of Ham­burg and real­ly learned to play togeth­er as a band. There, they final­ized the cast: John, Paul, George and then Ringo. And there they refined their live act, play­ing 281 con­certs, some last­ing as long as 12 hours. Need­less to say, The Bea­t­les built up a fan­base in Ger­many, and they lat­er nur­tured it by re-record­ing some ear­ly hits in Ger­man. Above, we have “She Loves You” reworked as “Sie Liebt Dich” (Jan­u­ary 1964). Oth­er Ger­man record­ings includ­ed “Komm, gib mir deine Hand” (“I Want to Hold Your Hand”) and the rather amus­ing Geh raus (“Get Back”).

PS Look­ing to learn some Ger­man? Don’t for­get about our col­lec­tion of Free For­eign Lan­guage Lessons.

via Metafil­ter

This week, OK Go released a new video sup­port­ing its lat­est sin­gle “White Knuck­les.” It’s the first since they released two viral videos (here and here) accom­pa­ny­ing “This Too Shall Pass.” Give the video a watch (above) and take into account these stats.

• The video gen­er­at­ed more than 1 mil­lion views on Mon­day alone (its first day on the web),
• It appar­ent­ly took 124 takes to make the video, and the video you see is actu­al­ly the 72nd take,
• 4 lbs of dog treats were used each day dur­ing the mak­ing of the video,
• There were 3–4 cof­fee runs per day for the humans involved, and
• The video will gen­er­ate dona­tions for the ASPCA.

Now this very relat­ed plug: Ok Go’s lead singer, Dami­an Kulash, will be a head­line speak­er at the Open Video Con­fer­ence tak­ing place in New York City on Octo­ber 1st & 2nd. He’s just one of 100 speak­ers tak­ing part in the con­fer­ence, and tick­ets start at $35. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it the Open Video Con­fer­ence web site.

Mark this on your cal­en­dar. This com­ing Sat­ur­day, at 7:30 a.m. Cal­i­for­nia time, Gus­ta­vo Dudamel (soon to open the 2010-11 sea­son of the Los Ange­les Phil­har­mon­ic) will con­duct a con­cert with the Vien­na Phil­har­mon­ic at the Lucerne Fes­ti­val in Switzer­land. As the LA Times reports, the con­cert will be web­cast live for free at www.medici.tv. It will also be avail­able for 90 days on demand. Pieces will include Rossini’s over­ture to “La gaz­za ladra,” Orbón’s “Tres ver­siones sin­fóni­cas,” Bern­stein’s “Diver­ti­men­to for Orches­tra” and Rav­el’s “Pavane pour une infante défunte” and “Boléro.”

via Cul­ture Mon­ster