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.

Paul McCartney Live @ Coachella

Paul McCart­ney played a long 35 song set at Coachel­la this past week­end. And now we’re get­ting a lit­tle peek at his per­for­mance. Here, in homage to George Har­ri­son, Paul plays “Some­thing” and a lit­tle ukulele.

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John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things (1961)

Rewind the video­tape to 1961. John Coltrane, Eric Dol­phy, Reg­gie Work­man, and Elvin Jones hit the stage in Baden Baden, Ger­many and give you a very smooth ver­sion of “My Favorite Things.” A jazz clas­sic, no doubt. And cer­tain­ly a bril­liant bit of archival footage.

Find us on Twit­ter: twitter.com/openculture

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The Talking Heads at CBGB’s (and a Virtual Tour of the Joint)

CBG­B’s was a long­time mec­ca of the New York music scene, a venue that helped launch the Ramones, Pat­ti Smith, Blondie, and the Talk­ing Heads onto the nation­al stage. And then it closed in 2006. If you nev­er vis­it­ed the club on Bow­ery and Bleeck­er Streets, you can still take a pret­ty vivid vir­tu­al tour. It starts in the bath­room and you then can wind your way through the rest of the joint. Above, we’ve post­ed some vin­tage footage of the Talk­ing Heads per­form­ing “Psy­cho Killer” at CBG­B’s, some­where back in the mid-70s.

via Metafil­ter

More New Dylan

Last week, Bob Dylan released for a lim­it­ed time a free mp3  (“Beyond Here Lies Noth­in”) from his upcom­ing album, Togeth­er Through Life. Over at Newsweek, you’ll now find anoth­er cut being streamed —  â€śFeel A Change Comin’ On.” Head on over and have a lis­ten.

via Stere­ogum

The Mobile Phone Orchestra (Does It Beat the Big Piece of Broccoli?)

At Stan­ford, stu­dents have found a way to get mobile phones to make music. As you’ll see, the iPhone can now repro­duce the sounds of the oca­ri­na, a twelve thou­sand year old flute-like instru­ment. That’s the hi-tech way of doing it. There’s also the low-tech way of get­ting the same result. In this clas­sic bit of YouTube good­ness, you’ll see a big piece of broc­coli dou­bling as an oca­ri­na. Nev­er can get enough of this one.

You can learn more about the Stan­ford Mobile Phone Orches­tra here.

Stevie Wonder Performs “Sketches of a Life”

“Ste­vie Won­der, the awardee of the sec­ond Library of Con­gress Gersh­win Prize for Pop­u­lar Song, pre­mieres “Sketch­es of a Life,” a sprawl­ing, hybrid pop-clas­si­cal con­cer­to, writ­ten between 1976 and 1994. The work was unveiled through a com­mis­sion for the Library of Con­gress in the Coolidge Audi­to­ri­um.” The per­for­mance was record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 23, and it runs 55 min­utes. You can watch it here.

Via The Library of Con­gress Twit­ter Feed (Get ours here)

Sean Penn Reads Bob Dylan’s Memoir

A quick find worth pass­ing along… 

Although some­what uncon­ven­tion­al as far as mem­oirs go, Chron­i­cles: Vol­ume One recap­tures Bob Dylan’s “first stir­rings of cre­ativ­i­ty with amaz­ing urgency” (as Janet Maslin once put it) , and brings you to places that the nor­mal Dylan biog­ra­phy won’t. It brings you back to the small moments that shaped Dylan’s ear­ly days as a musi­cian in New York, and to the intel­lec­tu­al and musi­cal influ­ences that framed his way of see­ing things: Thu­cidy­des, Hank Williams, Dos­to­evsky, Woody Guthrie, John Locke and Jean Genet. I down­loaded the audio book ver­sion of Chron­i­cles over the week­end and was per­haps most cap­ti­vat­ed by the nar­ra­tion record­ed by Sean Penn, the new­ly-mint­ed Acad­e­my Award win­ner. Penn is not play­ing a role here. But, at points, you think you’re lis­ten­ing to Dylan him­self, which makes it a rather unique audio expe­ri­ence. You can down­load the audio book for $13.65. But, you could also poten­tial­ly get it for free.  Audi­ble runs a reg­u­lar pro­mo­tion that lets you down­load two books for free if you sign up for a 14 day free tri­al. Get the details here.

For many free audio books, check out our col­lec­tion here.

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