It was 40 years ago today — August 15 to August 18, 1969.

One month you’re the gov­er­nor of Illi­nois; the next you’re indict­ed and kicked out of office for try­ing to sell Pres­i­dent Oba­ma’s Sen­ate seat; and sev­er­al months lat­er, you wind up imi­tat­ing Elvis at block par­ties. Oh how the mighty have fall­en. The mon­ey moment comes 50 sec­onds in. Have a good week­end. Back to seri­ous stuff next week.

Les Paul, the gui­tar mas­ter and inven­tor, passed away today at the age of 94. The clip above shows Paul at 90, just a few years ago, liv­ing a still vig­or­ous life. He’ll be missed.

In hon­or of the 40th anniver­sary of the Wood­stock Fes­ti­val, we have Jimi Hen­drix play­ing the U.S. nation­al anthem. It’s not your usu­al anthem. Nope, this is the anthem played dis­so­nant­ly in a new counter-cul­ture style, the anthem turned into a blis­ter­ing com­men­tary on the Viet­nam War. No doubt, con­ser­v­a­tives and the silent major­i­ty did­n’t like it. But, like it or not, it remains one of the mem­o­rable rock state­ments of the 60s. For more Hen­drix at Wood­stock, check out here, here, and here.

Oliv­er Sacks, the famous neu­rol­o­gist and author of Musi­cophil­ia, a study that looks at the human brain and music, speaks in Harpers about the land­scape alter­ing iPod:

As Daniel Lev­itin has point­ed out, pas­sive lis­ten­ing has large­ly replaced active music-mak­ing. Now that we can lis­ten to any­thing we like on our iPods, we have less moti­va­tion to go to con­certs or church­es or syn­a­gogues, less occa­sion to sing togeth­er. This is unfor­tu­nate, because music-mak­ing engages much more of our brains than sim­ply lis­ten­ing. Part­ly for this rea­son, to cel­e­brate my 75th birth­day last year, I start­ed tak­ing piano lessons (after a gap of more than six­ty years). I still have my iPod (it con­tains the com­plete works of Bach), but I also need to make music.

via The Dai­ly Dish

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.