Bri­an Wil­son was the dri­ving force behind The Beach Boys, the band who gave us Pet Sounds (1966), the LP ranked 2nd on Rolling Stone’s list of “The 500 Great­est Albums of All Time.” Now, almost 50 years after form­ing the band, Wil­son will release a new solo album next Tues­day. Bri­an Wil­son Reimag­ines Gersh­win fea­tures cov­ers – imag­i­na­tive re-inter­pre­ta­tions, if you will – of clas­sic songs writ­ten by the icon­ic Gersh­win Broth­ers. The video above spells out the back­sto­ry behind the album. But if you want a real taste of the project, then get this. This Sun­day, the album will be streamed live on Bri­an Wilson’s web site at 12:00 noon Pacif­ic Time. And there­after Wil­son him­self will take ques­tions on his Face­book page for one hour (12:45pm — 1:45pm). Get the details here. And also check out this good find: Gersh­win plays Gersh­win: Rhap­sody in Blue.

Last month, Pres­i­dent Oba­ma award­ed Paul McCart­ney the Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song. And then the con­cert (aired last night on PBS) began. Among the high­lights was Elvis Costel­lo singing “Pen­ny Lane” with a mem­ber of the Pres­i­den­t’s Unit­ed States Marine band play­ing the pic­co­lo trum­pet. It’s a down­right won­der­ful ver­sion. You can watch the entire pro­gram online here.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mal­colm Glad­well on Why Genius Takes Time: A Look at the Mak­ing of Elvis Costello’s “Depor­tee” & Leonard Cohen’s “Hal­lelu­jah”

Hear a Playlist of 300 Songs That Influ­enced Elvis Costel­lo, Drawn From His New Mem­oir, Unfaith­ful Music & Dis­ap­pear­ing Ink

In 1971, The Rolling Stones went into vol­un­tary exile. They left Britain and its 93% tax­es (applied to the super wealthy) and head­ed to a big vil­la on the French Riv­iera, where they hun­kered down with fam­i­ly, friends and intox­i­cants and began record­ing their 10th stu­dio album, Exile on Main Street. (Kei­th Richards talks more about that stint here.) Crit­ics were ini­tial­ly cool to the album. But, with 40 years’ hind­sight, it’s now wide­ly con­sid­ered their mas­ter­piece.

This past spring, the band issued a remas­tered ver­sion of Exile on Main Street (CD — MP3), and, along with it, came a new doc­u­men­tary Stones in Exile, which uses archival mate­r­i­al and inter­views with band mem­bers to revis­it the band’s sojourn in France and the mak­ing of their land­mark album. Stones in Exile is now avail­able on DVD, and hap­pi­ly I have one review copy to give away. It will go to the first read­er who sends us a piece of open/intelligent media that we post on the site. If you spot some great audio or video (they type of thing we usu­al­ly post here) send it our way with this form. We’ll announce the win­ner when we share your great find.

(Note: this DVD prob­a­bly does­n’t work on DVD play­ers out­side of North Amer­i­ca.)

Today, the BBC has unveiled a new archive of world music, allow­ing you to sam­ple the musi­cal tra­di­tions of more than 40 coun­tries. India, Cor­si­ca, Chi­na, Cuba, Iran, Brazil, Mozam­bique, Turkey – they’re all rep­re­sent­ed in this eclec­tic col­lec­tion of indige­nous music. Often assum­ing a fair amount of risk, BBC 3 trav­eled to each coun­try (includ­ing sev­er­al con­flict zones) to record the music. But it pays off when you get to hear the lit­tle known music com­ing out of North Korea, for exam­ple. Fea­tur­ing 100s of hours of free record­ings, this archive is now avail­able to a glob­al audi­ence. You can start explor­ing right here, right now.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Intro­duc­ing the Free Music Archive

via NZHer­ald and @freemusicarchiv

Imi­ta­tion is the sin­cer­est form of flat­tery…

(The Bowie clip is from 1973.)