Vin­tage video…

A quick fyi: The Free Music Archive now offers up over 10,000 free, high qual­i­ty (and legal) mp3s. The archive is run by WFMU, the renowned freeform radio sta­tion that also runs the excel­lent “Beware of the Blog.” All of the audio has been hand-picked by music cura­tors, and you can use the audio pret­ty much how­ev­er you want. That’s because the archive hous­es songs that are either in the pub­lic domain, or released with a Cre­ative Com­mons license. Nice­ly, WFMU has also devel­oped a Twit­ter stream where they announce new addi­tions to the archive. You can learn more about the archive here.

From The New York­er’s Goings On Blog:

The Bea­t­les’ “offi­cial Web site is fea­tur­ing short doc­u­men­taries, host­ed by George Mar­tin, on the mak­ing of the band’s orig­i­nal albums. The first one, about “Revolver,” is up now, though the site seems to be hob­bling along, pos­si­bly due to high serv­er load.”

Also, a lit­tle some­thing for U2 fans… Get MP3s of the Achtung Baby record­ing ses­sions. Find them here.

Bril­liant­ly done. If only we could all respond to cor­po­rate shenani­gans this art­ful­ly…

(PS It turns out that, once this video went viral, Unit­ed had some sec­ond thoughts. More here.)

via Andrew Sul­li­van

“In 2009 Ben Folds released a great­est hits record, of sorts, sung entire­ly in a cap­pel­la. The album, Ben Folds Presents: Uni­ver­si­ty A Cap­pel­la! fea­tures two tracks per­formed by Ben him­self, but the bulk of the mate­r­i­al was per­formed by var­i­ous uni­ver­si­ty a cap­pel­la groups.” You can catch a doc­u­men­tary ver­sion above.

From Stan­ford’s Face­book Page:

Thanks so much for becom­ing a Fan of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty on Face­book! As a small token of our appre­ci­a­tion, we’ve teamed up with the iTunes team to bring you a spe­cial sum­mer mix with 30 free songs. Down­load at http://bit.ly/stanford-summer-mix (US res­i­dents only).

While we’re talk­ing Face­book, you can become an Open Cul­ture Fan on FB here and also find us on Twit­ter (@openculture)

Back in March 1970, Miles Davis was the open­ing act for Neil Young at the Fill­more East in NYC. Not exact­ly the most like­ly com­bo. But that’s what con­cert pro­mot­er Bill Gra­ham put togeth­er. 

You can lis­ten to mp3s of Miles’ live per­for­mance. (Make sure you scroll down.) What you get here is not bebop Miles Davis, or cool jazz Miles Davis. It’s elec­tric Miles Davis all the way, post Bitch­es Brew. 

For more jazz, check out our Music Pod­cast Col­lec­tion. Also check out one of our pre­vi­ous pieces: Miles and Coltrane on YouTube: The Jazz Greats

via Large­heart­ed Boy on Twit­ter. Find our Twit­ter stream here.

The last sen­tence is the clinch­er…

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bea­t­les: Pod­casts From Yes­ter­day

What New York­ers Heard on the Radio the Night John Lennon was Shot

John Lennon and The Rolling Stones Sing Bud­dy Hol­ly

The Grey Video: Mix­ing The Bea­t­les with Jay‑Z