Ben Folds Presents: University A Cappella

“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.

Stanford and iTunes Offer 30 Free Songs

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)

When Miles Davis Opened for Neil Young

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.

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Malcolm Gladwell on the Beatles — Prodigies or Not?

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

 

 

13,500 Sing “Hey Jude” in Trafalgar Square

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.

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Bach on Ukulele

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 on “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

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)

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Who Says Music Doesn’t Make a Difference?

Out in remix cul­ture, one is nev­er sure what one will find. Take this video for exam­ple. If you watched Amer­i­can TV dur­ing the 1980s, you’re like­ly to remem­ber Dif­f’rent Strokes, a sit­com that had a kind of far-fetched premise: a rich white wid­ow­er adopts two African-Amer­i­can chil­dren from Harlem, and they live hap­pi­ly togeth­er in a pent­house with the wid­ow­er’s bio­log­i­cal daugh­ter and maid. The show’s open­ing cred­its were accom­pa­nied by an upbeat lit­tle jin­gle (watch it here). Now watch what hap­pens above when some­one lay­ers Hitch­cock style music over the orig­i­nal. How we inter­pret the video sud­den­ly does a com­plete 180. The mes­sage that leaps out is not one that we’re mak­ing light of. Not at all. We’re sim­ply fea­tur­ing the clip because it demon­strates so well how music shades the mean­ing we give to images.

PS Read­ers have added some oth­er intrigu­ing exam­ples in the com­ments below.

Peter Kauf­man comes to us from Intel­li­gent Tele­vi­sion.

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