Watch 11-Year-Old Billy Preston Duet with Nat King Cole: A Star is Born (1957)

in Music, Television, Video - Arts & Culture | December 13th, 2021

The Bea­t­les aren’t the only fab tal­ents caus­ing a stir in the recent­ly released Bea­t­les doc­u­men­tary, Get Back.

As has been wide­ly not­ed, soul singer Bil­ly Pre­ston lights up every scene he’s in.

One of the 60’s finest ses­sion key­boardists, Pre­ston con­tributed to the Bea­t­les’ Let It Be and Abbey Road albums, and joined them for their famous final gig on the roof of Apple Records.

He also served as a lev­el­ing influ­ence when ten­sions with­in the band fre­quent­ly explod­ed into fits of tem­per.

“It’s inter­est­ing to see how nice­ly peo­ple behave when you bring a guest in,” George Har­ri­son observed.

In addi­tion to his suc­cess­ful solo career, with a num­ber of funk and R&B hits, Pre­ston gigged for a host of all time greats: Ray Charles, Lit­tle Richard, Sam Cooke, Miles Davis, Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones…the list goes on.

A child­hood prodi­gy who nev­er took a music les­son, by 10, he was back­ing gospel lumi­nar­ies like Mahalia Jack­son, James Cleve­land, and Andraé Crouch.

A year lat­er, he entered America’s liv­ing rooms, when he appeared on The Nat King Cole Show, above, to duet with TV’s first nation­al Black vari­ety show host on “Blue­ber­ry Hill,” a 40s tune Fats Domi­no had pop­u­lar­ized ear­li­er in the decade.

“You have a very excel­lent career ahead of you,” Cole pre­dicts, fol­low­ing their per­for­mance.

Daugh­ter Natal­ie Cole lat­er enthused that the cel­e­brat­ed croon­er “lets this kid have all the glo­ry,” though the self-pos­sessed pre-teen holds his own ably, alter­nat­ing between organ and his own impres­sive pipes.

With­in the year, Cole and Pre­ston shared the big screen, and a mem­o­rable part, when they were cast as “The Father Of The Blues” W.C. Handy, as a child and adult, in the 1958 movie St Louis Blues.

As an adult, Pre­ston’s star was tar­nished by addic­tion, arrests and self-sab­o­tag­ing behav­ior that his man­ag­er, Joyce Moore, and half-sis­ter Let­tie, said was most deeply root­ed in his mother’s refusal to believe that he was being sex­u­al­ly abused by the pianist of a sum­mer tour­ing com­pa­ny, and lat­er a local pas­tor.

It’s part of a lurid, longer tale, call­ing to mind oth­er promis­ing, oft-prodi­gious young tal­ents who nev­er man­aged to get out from under dam­age inflict­ed by adults when they were chil­dren.

He was 9.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

The Bea­t­les’ 8 Pio­neer­ing Inno­va­tions: A Video Essay Explor­ing How the Fab Four Changed Pop Music

Is “Rain” the Per­fect Bea­t­les Song?: A New Video Explores the Rad­i­cal Inno­va­tions of the 1966 B‑Side

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is the Chief Pri­maol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine and author, most recent­ly, of Cre­ative, Not Famous: The Small Pota­to Man­i­festo.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 2 ) |

Breaking Down the Beatles’ Get Back Documentary: Stream Episode #111 of the Pretty Much Pop Podcast

in Music, Podcasts, Pretty Much Pop | December 13th, 2021

Your host Mark Lin­sen­may­er is joined by musi­cian David Brook­ings, Gig Gab pod­cast host Dave Hamil­ton, and Open­Cul­ture writer Col­in Mar­shall to dis­cuss Peter Jack­son’s doc­u­men­tary Get Back and the endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty of The Bea­t­les.

This was record­ed on 12/8, the anniver­sary of John Lennon’s death. We con­sid­er the arc of their career, the var­i­ous post-mortem releas­es that keep our inter­est, why Bea­t­les solo work remains a cult inter­est, and much more.

Fol­low @davidbrookings. Hear him sing every Bea­t­les song. Hear him talk­ing about his own tunes with Mark on Naked­ly Exam­ined Music.

Fol­low @DaveHamilton. Hear him on PMP talk­ing about Live Music.

Fol­low @colinmarshall. Hear him on PMP talk­ing about Scors­ese films.

This episode includes bonus dis­cus­sion you can access by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop or by choos­ing a paid sub­scrip­tion through Apple Pod­casts. This pod­cast is part of the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life pod­cast net­work.

Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is the first pod­cast curat­ed by Open Cul­ture. Browse all Pret­ty Much Pop posts.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Watch Frank Zappa Play Michael Nesmith (RIP) on The Monkees–and Vice Versa (1967)

in Music | December 10th, 2021

In Decem­ber 1967, The Mon­kees blew their audi­ence’s minds by host­ing Frank Zap­pa, “par­tic­i­pant in and per­haps even leader of” the Moth­ers Of Inven­tion.

Or did they?

The tidal wave of affec­tion that com­pris­es twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry Mon­kees mania makes us for­get that chil­dren were the pri­ma­ry audi­ence for The Mon­kees’ tit­u­lar sit­com. (One might also say that The Mon­kees were the sitcom’s tit­u­lar band.)

But even if the kids at home weren’t suf­fi­cient­ly con­ver­sant in the musi­cal under­ground to iden­ti­fy the spe­cial guest star of the episode, “The Mon­kees Blow Their Minds,” we are.

It’s a joy to see Zap­pa and The Mon­kees’ supreme­ly laid back Michael Nesmith (RIP) imper­son­at­ing each oth­er.

Zappa’s idea, appar­ent­ly. He’s in com­plete con­trol of the gim­mick from the get go, where­as Nesmith strug­gles to keep their names straight and his pros­thet­ic nose in place before get­ting up to speed.

It’s impor­tant to remem­ber that it’s not Frank, but Nesmith play­ing Frank who accus­es The Mon­kees’ music of being banal and insipid.

Zap­pa him­self was a great sup­port­er of The Mon­kees. “When peo­ple hat­ed us more than any­thing, he said kind things about us,” Nesmith recalled in Bar­ry Miles’ Zap­pa biog­ra­phy. Zap­pa attempt­ed to teach Nesmith how to play lead gui­tar, and offered drum­mer Micky Dolenz a post-Mon­kees gig with The Moth­ers of Inven­tion.

Their mutu­al warmth makes lines like “You’re the pop­u­lar musi­cian! I’m dirty gross and ugly” palat­able. It put me in mind of come­di­an Zach Gal­i­fi­anakis’ Between Two Ferns, and count­less oth­er loose­ly rehearsed web series.

After a cou­ple of min­utes, Nesmith gets his hat back to con­duct as Zap­pa smash­es up a car to the tune of the Moth­er’s Of Inven­tion’s “Moth­er Peo­ple.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Turns the Bicy­cle into a Musi­cal Instru­ment on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Jimi Hen­drix Opens for The Mon­kees on a 1967 Tour; Then After 8 Shows, Flips Off the Crowd and Quits

Watch the Last Time Peter Tork (RIP) & The Mon­kees Played Togeth­er Dur­ing Their 1960s Hey­day: It’s a Psy­che­del­ic Freak­out

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, home­school­er, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

 

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 4 ) |

Edvard Munch’s Famous Painting “The Scream” Animated to Pink Floyd’s Primal Music

in Art, Music | December 9th, 2021

In this short video, Roman­ian ani­ma­tor Sebas­t­ian Cosor brings togeth­er two haunt­ing works from dif­fer­ent times and dif­fer­ent media: The Scream, by Nor­we­gian Expres­sion­ist painter Edvard Munch (1863–1944), and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” by the British rock band Pink Floyd.

Munch paint­ed the first of four ver­sions of The Scream in 1893. He lat­er wrote a poem describ­ing the apoc­a­lyp­tic vision behind it:

I was walk­ing along the road with two Friends
the Sun was set­ting — the Sky turned a bloody red
And I felt a whiff of Melan­choly — I stood
Still, death­ly tired — over the blue-black
Fjord and City hung Blood and Tongues of Fire
My Friends walked on — I remained behind
– shiv­er­ing with anx­i­ety — I felt the Great Scream in Nature

Munch’s hor­rif­ic Great Scream in Nature is com­bined in the video with Floy­d’s oth­er­world­ly “The Great Gig in the Sky,” one of the sig­na­ture pieces from the band’s 1973 mas­ter­piece, Dark Side of the Moon. The vocals on “The Great Gig” were per­formed by an unknown young song­writer and ses­sion singer named Clare Tor­ry.

Tor­ry had been invit­ed by pro­duc­er Alan Par­sons to come to Abbey Road Stu­dios and impro­vise over a haunt­ing piano chord pro­gres­sion by Richard Wright, on a track that was ten­ta­tive­ly called “The Mor­tal­i­ty Sequence.”  The 25-year-old singer was giv­en very lit­tle direc­tion from the band. “Clare came into the stu­dio one day,” said bassist Roger Waters in a 2003 Rolling Stone inter­view, “and we said, ‘There’s no lyrics. It’s about dying — have a bit of a sing on that, girl.’ ”

Forty-two years lat­er, that “bit of a sing” can still send a shiv­er down any­one’s spine. For more on the mak­ing of “The Great Gig in the Sky,” and Tor­ry’s amaz­ing con­tri­bu­tion, see the clip below to hear Tor­ry’s sto­ry in her own words.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Explore 7,600 Works of Art by Edvard Munch: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free Online

Hear How Clare Torry’s Vocals on Pink Floyd’s “The Great Gig in the Sky” Made the Song Go from Pret­ty Good to Stun­ning

Hear Lost Record­ing of Pink Floyd Play­ing with Jazz Vio­lin­ist Stéphane Grap­pel­li on “Wish You Were Here”

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

The Night Frank Zap­pa Jammed With Pink Floyd … and Cap­tain Beef­heart Too (Bel­gium, 1969) 

Three Pink Floyd Songs Played on the Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Gayageum: “Com­fort­ably Numb,” “Anoth­er Brick in the Wall” & “Great Gig in the Sky”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

Punks, Goths, and Mods on TV (1983)

in Fashion, Music, Television | December 8th, 2021

The Riv­et­head pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with fash­ion is inescapably relat­ed to their anx­i­ety over being con­fused for sub­cul­tures they pro­fess to hate: Goths, Punks, Met­al­heads, Death Rock­ers… The fact that so many sub­cul­tures claim black as their col­or of choice con­tributes to the con­fu­sion.

There are two points upon which the­o­rists of post-indus­tri­al British sub­cul­tures gen­er­al­ly agree: 1) No mat­ter the music or the fash­ion, the bound­aries between one sub­cul­ture and anoth­er were rig­or­ous­ly, even vio­lent­ly, enforced (hence the wars between the mods and rock­ers), and; 2) The music and fash­ions of every sub­cul­ture were sub­ject to coop­ta­tion by the machin­ery of cap­i­tal­ism, to be mass pro­duced, pack­aged, and sold as off-the-rack com­mod­i­ty, a phe­nom­e­non that occurred almost as soon as punks, mods, rock­ers, goths, ted­dy boys, skin­heads, New Roman­tics, etc. began appear­ing on tele­vi­sion — as in the post-Grundy Irish TV appear­ance of four young indi­vid­u­als above from 1983.

The inter­view­er intro­duces these punks, goths, and mods by refer­ring first to their employ­ment — or lack of employ­ment — sta­tus, and then to the num­ber of chil­dren in their fam­i­ly. Com­ments drip­ping with class dis­dain sit along­side a char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of var­i­ous sub­cul­tures as “gangs” — the Hell’s Angels thrown in among them just to dri­ve the point home. Of course, there’s more to say about the denizens of ear­ly-80s UK sub­cul­tur­al street cor­ners — more than these four rep­re­sen­ta­tives have to say them­selves. It is com­mu­ni­cat­ed through per­for­mance rather than ver­bal expo­si­tion, through the affil­i­a­tions of cloth­ing, music, and pose — as in the mini-his­tor­i­cal slideshow of late-20th cen­tu­ry British sub­cul­tures below, from the 50s to the 80s.

In 1979, British the­o­rist Dick Heb­di­ge pub­lished what many con­sid­ered the defin­i­tive analy­sis of these work­ing-class scenes, which fre­quent­ly cen­tered around forms of racial and cul­tur­al exchange — as with mods who loved jazz or punks who loved ska and dub reg­gae; or racial and cul­tur­al exclu­sion — as with fas­cist skin­heads and chau­vin­ist ted­dy boys who glo­ri­fied the past, while oth­er sub­cul­tur­al ide­olo­gies looked to the future (or, as the case may be, no future).

Hebdige’s Sub­cul­ture: the Mean­ing of Style begins with a sto­ry about French writer Jean Genet, humil­i­at­ed in prison by homo­pho­bic guards over his pos­ses­sion of a tube of Vase­line:

Like Genet, we are inter­est­ed in sub­cul­ture – in the expres­sive forms and rit­u­als of those sub­or­di­nate groups – the ted­dy boys and mods and rock­ers, the skin­heads and the punks – who are alter­nate­ly dis­missed, denounced and can­on­ized; treat­ed at dif­fer­ent times as threats to pub­lic order and as harm­less buf­foons.

The irony of sub­cul­tures is that they iden­ti­fy with social out­siders, while re-enforc­ing bound­aries that cre­ate exclu­siv­i­ty (cf. the quote at the top, from Heb­di­ge-inspired Sub­cul­tures List). When the nov­el­ty and shock recedes, they become ripe fod­der for com­mer­cial coop­ta­tion, even lux­u­ry brand­ing.

What we usu­al­ly don’t get from tame ret­ro­spec­tives, or from patron­iz­ing mass media of the time, are deviant out­siders like Genet who can­not be reab­sorbed into the sys­tem because their very exis­tence pos­es a threat to the social order as so con­strued. So much of the fash­ion and music of post-war Britain was direct­ly cre­at­ed or inspired by West Indi­an migrants of the Win­drush gen­er­a­tion, for exam­ple. In too many pop­u­lar rep­re­sen­ta­tions of post­war British sub­cul­tures, that essen­tial part of the work­ing class UK sub­cul­ture sto­ry has been entire­ly left out.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

A His­to­ry of Punk from 1976–78: A Free Online Course from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Read­ing

The Sex Pis­tols Make a Scan­dalous Appear­ance on the Bill Grundy Show & Intro­duce Punk Rock to the Star­tled Mass­es (1976)

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 300 Tracks: A 13-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to Present

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

Pink Floyd’s Entire Studio Discography is Now on YouTube: Stream the Studio & Live Albums

in Music | December 6th, 2021

Approached with lit­tle pri­or knowl­edge, Pink Floyd is an enig­ma. A sta­di­um rock band renowned for mas­sive laser light shows and a pio­neer­ing use of quadra­phon­ic and holo­phon­ic sound, they are also best appre­ci­at­ed at home — alone or with a few true fans — on a pair of high fideli­ty stereo speak­ers or head­phones, under the hazy pur­plish-green­ish glow of a black­light poster. The expe­ri­ence of their clas­sic albums is para­dox­i­cal­ly one of “shared soli­tary con­tem­pla­tion”; their live shows are an expan­sion of the home lis­ten­ing envi­ron­ment, where fans first received an “edu­ca­tion from cousins and old­er broth­ers of friends as to the seri­ous­ness (and ston­er sacra­ment) of The Dark Side of the Moon,” as Mar­tin Popoff writes in Pink Floyd: Album by Album. Both enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar and dar­ing­ly exper­i­men­tal, it’s hard to place them com­fort­ably in one camp or anoth­er.

Lis­ten­ers who came to the band dur­ing their 1970s hey­day, “in the years between The Dark Side of the Moon and The Final Cut,” Bill Kopp writes, “were large­ly unaware of what the band had done before the peri­od….. The fact high­lights a remark­able fea­ture of Pink Floyd’s pop­u­lar­i­ty: casu­al fans knew of the band’s work from The Dark Side of the Moon onward; more seri­ous stu­dents of the group were famil­iar with the band’s 1967 debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, made when Pink Floyd was led by its founder, Roger Kei­th ‘Syd’ Bar­rett.”

The split is curi­ous because the 70s space rock ver­sion of the band who made the third best-sell­ing album of all time owed so much to its psy­che­del­ic founder, who slipped com­plete­ly from view as he slipped away from the music indus­try.

As Andy Mab­bett writes in his book Pink Floyd: The Music and the Mys­tery:

Barrett’s with­draw­al from music had long ago become a source of intrigue, one of the most mys­ti­fy­ing sagas in rock, but his con­tri­bu­tion to the group as their first singer, gui­tarist and song­writer was cru­cial to there ever being a Pink Floyd in the first place. Syd might not have played much of a role in the clas­sic record­ings Pink Floyd pro­duced in the Sev­en­ties, but every­one — not least the group them­selves — long ago real­ized that all this might nev­er have hap­pened were it not for Syd’s ini­tial inspi­ra­tion.

At their best, dur­ing the gold­en years of Dark Side and Wish You Were Here, the band remem­bered their his­to­ry while expand­ing their ear­ly avant-blues rock into the out­er reach­es of space. Dark Side con­tained their first hit sin­gles since their 1967 debut and intro­duced new fans to Bar­rett indi­rect­ly via the lyrics of “Brain Dam­age” (orig­i­nal­ly called “Lunatic”) and the “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” suite. The cyn­i­cism and sense of doom that seemed to take over as Roger Waters became the band’s pri­ma­ry song­writer found its foil in Bar­ret­t’s con­tin­ued influ­ence — in his absence — on the band dur­ing the ear­ly 70s.

But in the 70s one had to work par­tic­u­lar­ly hard to get caught up on the ear­ly mythos of Pink Floyd, track­ing down LPs of albums like Med­dle, Atom Heart Moth­er, and Ummagum­ma. As ear­ly albums were reis­sued on tape and CD, it became a lit­tle eas­i­er to famil­iar­ize one­self with Pink Floy­d’s many his­tor­i­cal phas­es — from exper­i­men­tal psych-rock pio­neers to sta­di­um-fill­ing prog-rock super­stars. These days, that expe­ri­ence can be had in an after­noon on YouTube. The band has put their stu­dio discog­ra­phy and three live per­for­mances online and you can find links below (with a few choice cuts above).

Stu­dio

The Piper at the Gates of Dawn

A Saucer­ful of Secrets

More

Ummagum­ma

Atom Heart Moth­er

Med­dle

Obscured by Clouds

The Dark Side of the Moon

Wish You Were Here

Ani­mals

The Wall

The Final Cut

A Momen­tary Lapse of Rea­son

The Divi­sion Bell

The End­less Riv­er

Live

Del­i­cate Sound of Thun­der

Pulse

Is There Any­body Out There? The Wall Live 1980–81 

Does the ridicu­lous ease of find­ing this music now clear up the enig­ma of Pink Floyd? Maybe. Or maybe no amount of stream­ing con­ve­nience will dis­pel “the mys­tery,” Mab­bett writes, “that grew around their reluc­tance to be pho­tographed or inter­viewed for much of the Sev­en­ties, the lack of sin­gles dur­ing the same cru­cial peri­od, the imag­i­na­tive album pack­ag­ing, the crisp live sound, the spec­tac­u­lar the­atri­cal shows — and, of course, a spe­cial mag­ic that can­not be copied no mat­ter how much mon­ey or equip­ment is avail­able.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

“The Dark Side of the Moon” and Oth­er Pink Floyd Songs Glo­ri­ous­ly Per­formed by Irish & Ger­man Orches­tras

Pink Floyd’s First Mas­ter­piece: An Audio/Video Explo­ration of the 23-Minute Track, “Echoes” (1971)

A Live Stu­dio Cov­er of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, Played from Start to Fin­ish

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

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

How Peter Jackson Used Artificial Intelligence to Restore the Video & Audio Featured in The Beatles: Get Back

in Artificial Intelligence, Film, Music, Technology | December 6th, 2021

Much has been made in recent years of the “de-aging” process­es that allow actors to cred­i­bly play char­ac­ters far younger than them­selves. But it has also become pos­si­ble to de-age film itself, as demon­strat­ed by Peter Jack­son’s cel­e­brat­ed new docu-series The Bea­t­les: Get Back. The vast major­i­ty of the mate­r­i­al that com­pris­es its near­ly eight-hour run­time was orig­i­nal­ly shot in 1969, under the direc­tion of Michael Lind­say-Hogg for the doc­u­men­tary that became Let It Be.

Those who have seen both Lin­day-Hog­g’s and Jack­son’s doc­u­men­taries will notice how much sharp­er, smoother, and more vivid the very same footage looks in the lat­ter, despite the six­teen-mil­lime­ter film hav­ing lan­guished for half a cen­tu­ry. The kind of visu­al restora­tion and enhance­ment seen in Get Back was made pos­si­ble by tech­nolo­gies that have only emerged in the past few decades — and pre­vi­ous­ly seen in Jack­son’s They Shall Not Grow Old, a doc­u­men­tary acclaimed for its restora­tion of cen­tu­ry-old World War I footage to a time-trav­el-like degree of verisimil­i­tude.

“You can’t actu­al­ly just do it with off-the-shelf soft­ware,” Jack­son explained in an inter­view about the restora­tion process­es involved in They Shall Not Grow Old. This neces­si­tat­ed mar­shal­ing, at his New Zealand com­pa­ny Park Road Post Pro­duc­tion, “a depart­ment of code writ­ers who write com­put­er code in soft­ware.” In oth­er words, a suf­fi­cient­ly ambi­tious project of visu­al revi­tal­iza­tion — mak­ing media from bygone times even more life­like than it was to begin with — becomes as much a job of tra­di­tion­al film-restora­tion or visu­al-effects as of com­put­er pro­gram­ming.

This also goes for the less obvi­ous but no-less-impres­sive treat­ment giv­en by Jack­son and his team to the audio that came with the Let It Be footage. Record­ed in large part monau­ral­ly, these tapes pre­sent­ed a for­mi­da­ble pro­duc­tion chal­lenge. John, Paul, George, and Ringo’s instru­ments share a sin­gle track with their voic­es — and not just their singing voic­es, but their speak­ing ones as well. On first lis­ten, this ren­ders many of their con­ver­sa­tions inaudi­ble, and prob­a­bly by design: “If they were in a con­ver­sa­tion,” said Jack­son, they would turn their amps up loud and they’d strum the gui­tar.”

This means of keep­ing their words from Lind­say-Hogg and his crew worked well enough in the whol­ly ana­log late 1960s, but it has proven no match for the arti­fi­cial intelligence/machine learn­ing of the 2020s. “We devised a tech­nol­o­gy that is called demix­ing,” said Jack­son. “You teach the com­put­er what a gui­tar sounds like, you teach them what a human voice sounds like, you teach it what a drum sounds like, you teach it what a bass sounds like.” Sup­plied with enough son­ic data, the sys­tem even­tu­al­ly learned to dis­tin­guish from one anoth­er not just the sounds of the Bea­t­les’ instru­ments but of their voic­es as well.

Hence, in addi­tion to Get Back’s rev­e­la­to­ry musi­cal moments, its many once-pri­vate but now crisply audi­ble exchanges between the Fab Four. “Oh, you’re record­ing our con­ver­sa­tion?” George Har­ri­son at one point asks Lind­say-Hogg in a char­ac­ter­is­tic tone of faux sur­prise. But if he could hear the record­ings today, his sur­prise would sure­ly be real.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Paul McCart­ney Com­pose The Bea­t­les Clas­sic “Get Back” Out of Thin Air (1969)

Peter Jack­son Gives Us an Entic­ing Glimpse of His Upcom­ing Bea­t­les Doc­u­men­tary The Bea­t­les: Get Back

Lennon or McCart­ney? Sci­en­tists Use Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence to Fig­ure Out Who Wrote Icon­ic Bea­t­les Songs

Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Pro­gram Tries to Write a Bea­t­les Song: Lis­ten to “Daddy’s Car”

Watch The Bea­t­les Per­form Their Famous Rooftop Con­cert: It Hap­pened 50 Years Ago Today (Jan­u­ary 30, 1969)

How Peter Jack­son Made His State-of-the-Art World War I Doc­u­men­tary They Shall Not Grow Old: An Inside Look

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 5 ) |

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cover The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” to Celebrate Hannukah: Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

in Music | December 4th, 2021

As men­tioned ear­li­er this week, Foo Fight­ers front­man Dave Grohl and pro­duc­er Greg Kurstin have launched The Hanukkah Ses­sions, a fes­tive music series where they cov­er a song–one for each night of Hanukkah–originally cre­at­ed by a Jew­ish musi­cian. Above, watch them pay trib­ute to two nice Jew­ish boys from Queens named Jef­fery Hyman and Thomas Erde­lyi, aka the great Joey and Tom­my Ramone. Hey! Oy! Let’s Goy!

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent

Dave Grohl & Greg Kurstin Cov­er Van Halen’s “Jump,” Cel­e­brat­ing David Lee Roth, One of the Hard­est Rock­ing Jews, on the Fourth Night of Han­nukah

Talk­ing Heads Per­form The Ramones’ “I Wan­na Be Your Boyfriend” Live in 1977 (and How the Bands Got Their Start Togeth­er)

The Ramones, a New Punk Band, Play One of Their Very First Shows at CBGB (1974)

The Ramones Play New Year’s Eve Con­cert in Lon­don, 1977

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( None ) |

« Go Back — More in this category... »
Quantcast