Appearing last month at the TED Conference, jazz pianist Eric Lewis presented a quite amazing version of Evanescence’s hit Going Under. As you’ll see from the very outset, the piece has some rather unconventional elements (some won’t like it), but stay with it. It all hangs together in a strangely beautiful way.
Legendary Canadian musician Leonard Cohen is now touring the United States for the first time in 15 years (get all of the details here). Fans who can’t catch a show will be pleased to know that NPR’s All Songs Considered provides free access to Cohen’s recent show at the Beacon Theatre in NYC. (It was recorded on or around February 19th.) The set should run about 1:14 and includes 12 songs. You can get it here: Stream — RSS Feed — iTunes.
It was time to do something new. So I bought an acoustic guitar and decided to see what I could learn on my own. And this, then, led me to look for free resources on the web. Not shockingly, YouTube has a fair amount to offer. A number of different video providers have posted lessons that can get you going. How to buy an acoustic guitar, how to tune it by ear, how to strum, how to finger pick (a video viewed close to 1 million times), how to play various chord progressions (above), etc. It’s all there — although it’s also kind of jumbled together, and you’ll need to do some sifting to find what you need. Some of the major YouTube channels featuring free guitar lessons can be found here, here, and here.
As a last note, you’ll notice that these videos are generally produced by vendors looking to upsell more complete video packages. This means that you’ll have to suffer through a little bit of marketing. But, it’s hardly unbearable and the lessons are otherwise quite helpful.
Apparently, in April, Bob Dylan plans to release a new album. Let’s hope that he continues to defy gravity. Get more details here.
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U2’s next album, No Line on the Horizon, will be released internationally in early March. But not terribly surprisingly the album is already being circulated (not legally) on BitTorrent. And this has motivated the band to give fans free access to a streamed version on MySpace. To listen, just click here, scroll down to the music player, and toggle the “Feature Playlist” to No Line on the Horizon. You should be able to access the album in its entirety.
Somewhere back in the 1970s, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez teamed up again to sing Blowin’ in the Wind. Quite the duet, which we’ve added to our YouTube Favorites. As mentioned a few weeks back, Dylan recently agreed to lend this classic song to a TV commercial for an ethical banking and retail group in the UK. You can now see this rare commercialization of a Dylan song over at the Guardian. Thanks Stephen for flagging that.
In 1907, executives from the Gramophone Company headed to the basement of the Paris Opera and sealed up some wax recordings of famous opera singers. Now, a century later, these recordings have been opened, dusted off, and (yes) even commercialized. Later this month, EMI will release the recordings under the title, “Treasures From the Paris Opera Vaults.” If you click on this NYTimes article and scroll down a little to the Multimedia section, you can sample these century old recordings. The Times collection features outtakes from Verdi’s Aida, Otello and Rigoletto. Find them here.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of “the day the music died.” That’s Don McLean’s way of talking about the 1959 airplane crash that cut short the budding lives and careers of Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson. In ’59, Buddy Holly’s musical career was just getting started, but his influence was already being felt far and wide. Case in point, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and The Beach Boys all covered Holly songs during their early careers. Here you can watch the Stones sing Not Fade Away in 1964. And, above, you can watch rare footage of John Lennon moving from a Lead Belly tune (“Rock Island Line”) to a little Buddy Holly medley that includes “Maybe Baby” and “Peggy Sue.” (The Beatles’ take on “Words of Love” can be listened to here as well.) Enjoy.
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