It’s near­ly impos­si­ble to com­mu­ni­cate musi­cian­ship in words, though there are rare, suc­cess­ful lit­er­ary attempts by greats like James Bald­win, Jack Ker­ouac, and jazz crit­ic Ira Gitler, whose phrase “sheets of sound” so well cap­tured the expe­ri­ence of Coltrane’s impro­vi­sa­tion­al style in the late 50s. Maybe the free move­ments of jazz are eas­i­er to write about than oth­er forms.…

When it comes to recent­ly depart­ed funk/pop/rock/R&B great Prince, it feels like there’s enough writ­ten about his prodi­gious tal­ent that it begins to sound like over­praise. The most inter­est­ing trib­utes come from fel­low musi­cians. Yet even their com­ments seem exag­ger­at­ed.

Prince “played every­thing,” said Ste­vie Won­der soon after the Pur­ple One’s sud­den death – every style, every instru­ment – which seems like an impos­si­ble feat until you read the notes for his debut album and real­ize that, yes, he did play every­thing, before he hit 20… and lis­ten to the full range of his out­put to see that, yes, he “could play clas­si­cal music if he want­ed to,” as Won­der said. “He could play jazz if he want­ed to….”

Prince’s drum­mer Han­nah Wel­ton, who joined him in 2012, had sim­i­lar­ly overblow-sound­ing praise, say­ing in a recent drum instruc­tion video, “I don’t know that I ever heard an off note.” Every­one has an off day some­time, right? Too lit­tle sleep, a head cold, too much to drink… or what­ev­er…. No musi­cian could always be a hun­dred per­cent on, could they?

Lis­ten­ing to the funk/jazz jam ses­sions above record­ed in 1977, when Prince was only 19 and on the thresh­old of releas­ing his first stu­dio album, I’m inclined to cast off any remain­ing doubt that he was as untouch­ably dis­ci­plined and tal­ent­ed a musi­cian as they say all of the time, even in behind-the-scenes rehearsals and jam ses­sions when, as Wel­ton jokes, he seemed more inter­est­ed in play­ing ping pong. If any­one embod­ied genius…

But there is a prob­lem with that word (a word leg­endary music teacher Nadia Boulanger and one­time Quin­cy Jones men­tor dis­liked). Prince might agree. Musi­cal greats come out of great musi­cal com­mu­ni­ties. Prince may have been the most pro­fi­cient mul­ti-instru­men­tal­ist of his time, but he con­sis­tent­ly played with those who had no trou­ble keep­ing up with him, includ­ing ear­ly bass play­er André Cymone and long­time Rev­o­lu­tion drum­mer Bob­by Z.

Cymone and Z joined Prince in the Lor­ing Park rehearsal room of Owen Hus­ney, Prince’s first man­ag­er, to record these impromp­tu ses­sions. They are indeed “a must-lis­ten for any fan!,” as Live for Live Music writes, and any­one else. “These eight instru­men­tal tracks sound more like well-craft­ed com­po­si­tions rather than the impro­vised jams that they are.” Prince, of course, switch­es up instru­ments, play­ing keys, gui­tar and bass and drums at times.

That it’s hard to tell when he’s play­ing what speaks not only to his own prowess but to that of his fel­low musi­cians. As Bob­by Z says in an inter­view for the Gram­mys, the biggest mis­un­der­stand­ing about Prince is “that he wasn’t human. That he was this myth­i­cal, immor­tal char­ac­ter. In the ear­ly days, he was a band mem­ber. He was the leader, of course, but he had to be in a band.” He was vocal in inter­views about how play­ing with the hottest musi­cians in Min­neapo­lis as a teenag­er gave him his ear­ly train­ing.

Prince learned as much from oth­ers as they learned from him, says Z, soak­ing up every­thing he heard. “He was a fan. He loved being impressed by songs. He loved music. He loved oth­er people’s tal­ent.” But at the same time, he was still Prince, a rare tal­ent with­out real equal. The Lor­ing Park ses­sions may fea­ture “instru­men­tals only,” notes Okay­play­er, glanc­ing at Prince’s com­po­si­tion­al bril­liance and show­ing off none of his vocal chops. Nonethe­less, “it’s an inti­mate and ter­ri­bly funky lens into P’s pro­fi­cien­cy on damn-near every instru­ment,” before he’d even begun “his path to bonafide star­dom.”

via Live for Live Music

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch a New Director’s Cut of Prince’s Blis­ter­ing “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps” Gui­tar Solo (2004)

The Lit­tle Prince: Footage Gets Unearthed Of the Pop Star at Age 11

What’s It Like Drum­ming For Prince?: Drum­mer Han­nah Wel­ton Describes the Genius of His Musi­cian­ship

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ambi­ent Music must be able to accom­mo­date many lev­els of lis­ten­ing atten­tion with­out enforc­ing one in par­tic­u­lar; it must be as ignor­able as it is inter­est­ing.

In the orig­i­nal lin­er notes to Bri­an Eno’s found­ing doc­u­ment of Ambi­ent music — 1978’s Ambi­ent 1: Music for Air­ports — the artist explains that he named his genre after “an atmos­phere, or a sur­round­ing influ­ence: a tint. My inten­tion is to pro­duce orig­i­nal pieces osten­si­bly (but not exclu­sive­ly) for par­tic­u­lar times and sit­u­a­tions with a view to build­ing up a small but ver­sa­tile cat­a­logue of envi­ron­men­tal music suit­ed to a wide vari­ety of moods and atmos­pheres.”

In defin­ing “envi­ron­men­tal music,” Eno takes great pains to dis­tin­guish his new work from the mak­ers of Muzak. Rather than recre­at­ing the famil­iar with instru­men­tal schmaltz, and “strip­ping away all sense of doubt and uncer­tain­ty,” Ambi­ent should stim­u­late lis­ten­ers’ minds with­out dis­turb­ing or dis­tract­ing them, induc­ing “calm and a space to think.” Rolling Stone at the time coined the deri­sive, but not whol­ly inac­cu­rate, phrase “aes­thet­ic white noise.”

Reverb Machine painstak­ing­ly shows in a decon­struc­tion how Eno him­self intro­duced as much uncer­tain­ty into the com­po­si­tion­al process as pos­si­ble. Music for Air­ports is not, that is to say, a com­po­si­tion, but lay­ers of tape loops with snip­pets of record­ed music. These loops he set run­ning and “let them con­fig­ure in whichev­er way they want­ed to.” Act­ing as ini­tial selec­tor of sounds and engi­neer, Eno’s role as com­pos­er and play­er of the piece involved “hard­ly inter­fer­ing at all,” he’s said.

How could such a com­po­si­tion trans­late to a tra­di­tion­al per­for­mance set­ting, in which musi­cians, ele­vat­ed on a stage, play instru­ments for audi­ence mem­bers who face them, lis­ten­ing intent­ly? The sit­u­a­tion seems anti­thet­i­cal to Eno’s design. And yet, some­how, the musi­cians who make up the Bang on a Can All Stars ensem­ble have made it work beau­ti­ful­ly, per­form­ing Music for Air­ports’s first track, the non­de­script­ly named “1/1,” in an arrange­ment by the group’s Michael Gor­don, above, for an appre­cia­tive audi­ence at the San Diego Air­port Ter­mi­nal.

Bang on a Can is a group com­mit­ted, like Eno, to “mak­ing music new.” Since 1987, they have (unlike Eno) done so in a live per­for­mance-based way, hold­ing 12-hour marathon con­certs, for exam­ple. These per­for­mances have includ­ed their ren­di­tion of Music for Air­ports in full. The Vil­lage Voice described a 2007 per­for­mance in New York City for hun­dreds of atten­tive fans as “beau­ti­ful,” a word that often gets applied to Eno’s mas­ter­work of ran­dom­ness. Eno him­self described the results as “very, very nice,” and he’s maybe the last per­son to be sur­prised that a live per­for­mance of the first so-called Ambi­ent record works so well.

“The inter­est­ing thing is that it does­n’t sound at all mechan­i­cal as you would imag­ine,” he wrote of these ear­ly tape loop exper­i­ments. “It sounds like some guy is sit­ting there play­ing the piano with quite intense feel­ing. The spac­ing and dynam­ics of ‘his’ play­ing sound very well orga­nized.” See a quin­tet of “guys” just above — on cel­lo, bass, key­board, per­cus­sion, and gui­tar — recre­ate the mild­ly dis­joint­ed mood of stand­ing around in the lim­i­nal space of an air­port, for a crowd of peo­ple who, pre­sum­ably, came there for the express pur­pose of hear­ing back­ground music.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bri­an Eno Explains the Ori­gins of Ambi­ent Music

A Six-Hour Time-Stretched Ver­sion of Bri­an Eno’s Music For Air­ports: Med­i­tate, Relax, Study

The Ther­a­peu­tic Ben­e­fits of Ambi­ent Music: Sci­ence Shows How It Eas­es Chron­ic Anx­i­ety, Phys­i­cal Pain, and ICU-Relat­ed Trau­ma

Dis­cov­er the Ambi­ent Music of Hiroshi Yoshimu­ra, the Pio­neer­ing Japan­ese Com­pos­er

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

The last we checked in with teenage girl pow­er-punk band The Lin­da Lin­das, they were tear­ing up the Los Ange­les Pub­lic Library (Cypress Park branch) with their lock­down-hit “Racist, Sex­ist Boy.” After eleven-year-old drum­mer Mila de Garza recount­ed the xeno­pho­bic encounter that led to the song, the band unleashed some true noisy angst befit­ting a group twice their age. It was the song of rage we need­ed at the time, the clip went viral, and they soon got a record deal. Along the way, they’ve appeared in Amy Poehler’s doc­u­men­tary, con­tributed to a track by Best Coast, opened for Biki­ni Kill, played Jim­my Kim­mel Live, and received acco­lades from Thurston Moore and Tom Morel­lo of Rage Against the Machine.

Just over a year lat­er, and The Lin­da Lin­das are back in the library as part of NPR’s Tiny Desk con­cert series. Usu­al­ly Tiny Desk gigs fea­tures an artist play­ing in the very cramped offices of the radio sta­tion, but as things are still not 100% safe, The Lin­da Lin­das opt­ed for the place they know well, this time play­ing at the Los Ange­les Cen­tral Library branch.

This band is no one-off. The de Garza sis­ters, along with their cousin Eloise Wong and friend Bela Salazar, formed in 2018 and have been play­ing ever since. Com­pare the step up in con­fi­dence and band inter­play on this new­er ver­sion of “Racist, Sex­ist Boy,” with which they close the set.

Before that The Lin­da Lin­das per­form songs from their new album Grow­ing Up, includ­ing the pop­py Span­ish bal­lad “Cuán­tas Veces”, the pop-punk “Talk­ing to Myself,” and the title track. The band’s lyrics are hon­est, absent pre­ten­sion, and while many of the con­cerns are uni­ver­sal, the album is def­i­nite­ly born out of COVID-era anx­i­ety. If you’re won­der­ing how these years are affect­ing those com­ing of age at this time, the album is essen­tial.

And, hey kids, there’s still avail­able (not on the live playlist but as a sin­gle on band­camp) “Nino,” a har­mo­ny-filled ode to their pet cat.

By the way, there aren’t many oth­er rock bands play­ing in libraries, but we did find one while search­ing the inter­tubes: it’s The Clash’s Mick Jones play­ing a solo elec­tric set of his hits. It’s just one more reminder to sup­port your local library—you nev­er know who might turn up.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Riot Grrrl Move­ment Cre­at­ed a Rev­o­lu­tion in Rock & Punk

Fear of a Female Plan­et: Kim Gor­don (Son­ic Youth) on Why Rus­sia and the US Need a Pussy Riot

Judy!: 1993 Judith But­ler Fanzine Gives Us An Irrev­er­ent Punk-Rock Take on the Post-Struc­tural­ist Gen­der The­o­rist

Watch 450 NPR Tiny Desk Con­certs: Inti­mate Per­for­mances from The Pix­ies, Adele, Wilco, Yo-Yo Ma & Many More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

In 1965, Lou Reed was a 23-year-old grad­u­ate stalled in a music and art career he wasn’t sure would take off. A few years ear­li­er a doo-wop sin­gle record­ed with high school friends had been released to no avail. More recent­ly, a par­o­dy of dance-craze sin­gles “Do the Ostrich”, cre­at­ed by Reed and per­formed by a pick-up band of musi­cians, had also made its way onto wax and then right out of people’s mem­o­ries. How­ev­er, John Cale was in that pick-up band, and soon the two were fast friends. It was Cale who helped record Reed’s demo tape of songs that year. And it was Reed who took the tape and mailed it back to him­self as a “poor man’s copy­right.”

That demo tape has now been unsealed and these nev­er-before heard record­ings are head­ing to LP and CD and stream­ing. Above you can hear a very ear­ly ver­sion of “I’m Wait­ing for the Man,” that would get rad­i­cal­ly reworked for the Vel­vet Underground’s debut album.

Over rudi­men­ta­ry gui­tar pluck­ing, Reed’s demo is slow­er, has har­monies, and a more decid­ed folk bent. Reed acts out the var­i­ous parts, includ­ing the “Par­don me sir, it’s the fur­thest from my mind” line in a faux-Brit accent. There’s even a Dylan-esque har­mon­i­ca solo.

The demo tape con­tains oth­er future Vel­vet Under­ground clas­sics like “Hero­in” and “Pale Blue Eyes,” but also songs that would turn up on Berlin (“Men of Good For­tune”) and a favorite cov­er “Wrap Your Trou­bles in Dreams” that would pop up in Vel­vets sets. But there’s also songs that were nev­er released in any for­mat: “Stock­pile,” “Buzz Buzz Buzz,” and “But­ter­cup Song.”

Reed had been influ­enced by poet Del­more Schwartz, who he’d stud­ied under at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty. Schwartz had instilled in Reed the idea that the sim­plest words could have the max­i­mum effect in the right hands. Reed’s style of street doc­u­men­tary and rep­e­ti­tion came out of his rela­tion­ship with Schwartz, whom Reed paid trib­ute to on the first Vel­vets album with “Euro­pean Son.”

The album, all nice­ly remas­tered, will be avail­able in the usu­al for­mats on August 26, includ­ing a bonus ep of ear­li­er demos, includ­ing 1963 home record­ings and a 1958 rehearsal. For now enjoy this glimpse into the mind of an artist about to find his place in the world, and he doesn’t even know it yet.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Teenage Lou Reed Sings Doo-Wop Music (1958–1962)

Watch The Vel­vet Under­ground Per­form in Rare Col­or Footage: Scenes from a Viet­nam War Protest Con­cert (1969)

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

How Drum­mer Moe Tuck­er Defined the Sound of the Vel­vet Under­ground

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.