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

Awe­some way to give the Mon­day blues a swift kick in the ass. Last Thurs­day, in Lon­don’s Trafal­gar Square, a big crowd of 13,500 got togeth­er and sang “Hey Jude.” The project (arranged some­what spon­ta­neous­ly by T‑Mobile) gets bet­ter as things move along — kind of like the song itself.

All cred­it for find­ing this one goes to @courosa over on Twit­ter.

Pret­ty intrigu­ing footage high­light­ed by Metafil­ter today: “John King, like­ly the world’s only clas­si­cal ukulele vir­tu­oso, died last month at the age of 55. Here he is per­form­ing a Bach pre­lude (above), play­ing more Bach, and play­ing Chop­sticks.” You can find more clips of King’s work on this YouTube chan­nel.

And while you’re at it, check out our list of Intel­li­gent YouTube Video Col­lec­tions.

Pete Seeger, the great Amer­i­can folk singer who turns 90 next week, sits down here with biog­ra­ph­er Alec Wilkin­son, and talks about Turn! Turn! Turn!. It’s a song that Seeger wrote in 1959, using lyrics tak­en from the Book of Eccle­si­astes in the Bible. And it was then famous­ly cov­ered by The Byrds in 1965 (watch a per­for­mance here) and that ver­sion lives on today. To see Seeger per­form­ing this tune, click here. This one is for you Bob!

via Knopf’s Twit­ter feed (Get our Twit­ter feed here)