“The last peo­ple any­one expect­ed to come out of that gig as being the mem­o­rable ones was Queen,” said Bob Geld­of in an inter­view, look­ing back at the band’s stun­ning 24 minute set at Live Aid on July 13, 1985. In front of 72,000 peo­ple in Wem­b­ley Sta­di­um and mil­lions watch­ing world­wide, Queen resus­ci­tat­ed their career with a selec­tion of hits and new mate­r­i­al.

The band, as Roger Tay­lor says in the mini doc here, was “bored” and “in a bit of a trough.” They also had been crit­i­cized for play­ing Sun City in South Africa dur­ing the reign of Apartheid.

Going into Live Aid, a lot of the artists didn’t know what to expect of the entire event. Many, includ­ing Bob Geld­of him­self, won­dered if the event would flop. But Queen more than any of them seemed to intu­it right from the start the impor­tance of the day, though they were very ner­vous back­stage. But once onstage they com­plete­ly own it, even more so Fred­die Mer­cury who ris­es to the occa­sion as a front man and as a singer, giv­ing one of his best per­for­mances.

In that short set, Queen gives a full con­cert worth of ener­gy and the audi­ence responds. Not all were Queen fans, but by the end every­body had become one, singing along to “We Are the Cham­pi­ons” and “We Will Rock You.” Across the Atlantic, the 90,000 strong Philadel­phia audi­ence fol­lowed suit, watch­ing the jum­botron simul­cast.

“Do you know how hard it is to get someone’s atten­tion who’s on the oth­er side of the room?” asks Dave Grohl of Foo Fight­ers in this oth­er short doc on the set. “Imag­ine a sta­di­um and mak­ing them sing along with you.”

This hot sum­mer con­cert would turn out to be the zenith of Queen’s career. There would be more albums and sin­gles, but Fred­die Mer­cury would slow­ly suc­cumb to AIDS, and dis­ap­pear from pub­lic view, until pass­ing in 1991. The Live Aid set stands as one of the band’s final, icon­ic, and major achieve­ments. Watch it, in all of its glo­ry, above.

You can watch the full Live Aid broad­cast on Inter­net Archive. You can also watch 10+ hours of the best per­for­mances here on the Live Aid YouTube chan­nel. Videos will be added to the playlist below through­out the day.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch 16 Hours of His­toric Live Aid Per­for­mances: Queen, Led Zep­pelin, Neil Young & Much More

Watch Queen Rehearse & Metic­u­lous­ly Pre­pare for Their Leg­endary 1985 Live Aid Per­for­mance

Bob Geld­of Talks About the Great­est Day of His Life, Step­ping on the Stage of Live Aid, in a Short Doc by Errol Mor­ris

Sci­en­tif­ic Study Reveals What Made Fred­die Mercury’s Voice One of a Kind; Hear It in All of Its A Cap­pel­la Splen­dor

Lis­ten to Fred­die Mer­cury and David Bowie on the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Track for the Queen Hit ‘Under Pres­sure,’ 1981

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue changed jazz. It changed music, peri­od. So I take it very seri­ous­ly. But when I see the ani­mat­ed sheet music of the first cut, “So What,” I can’t help but think of Charles Schulz’s Peanuts car­toons, and their Vince Guaral­di com­po­si­tions. I mean no offense to Miles. His modal jazz swings, and it’s fun, as fun to lis­ten to as it is to watch in ris­ing and falling arpeg­gios. The YouTube uploader, Dan Cohen, gives us this on his chan­nel Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music, with apolo­gies to Jim­my Cobb for the lack of drum nota­tion.

Also from Cohen’s chan­nel, we have Char­lie Parker’s music ani­mat­ed. Nev­er one to keep up with his admin, Park­er left his estate unable to recu­per­ate roy­al­ties from com­po­si­tions like “Con­fir­ma­tion” (above).

Nonethe­less, every­one knows it’s Bird’s tune, and to see it ani­mat­ed above is to see Park­er dance a very dif­fer­ent step than Miles’ post-bop cool, one filled with com­plex melod­ic para­graphs instead of chordal phras­es.

And above, we have John Coltrane’s mas­sive “Giant Steps,” with its rapid-fire bursts of quar­ter notes, inter­rupt­ed by half-note asides. Coltrane’s icon­ic 1960 com­po­si­tion dis­plays what Ira Gitler called in a 1958 Down­beat piece, “sheets of sound.” Gitler has said the image he had in his head was of “bolts of cloth undu­lat­ing as they unfurled,” but he might just as well have thought of sheets of rain, so mul­ti­tudi­nous and heavy is Coltrane’s melod­ic attack.

See Cohen’s Ani­mat­ed Sheet Music chan­nel for two more Char­lie Park­er pieces, “Au Pri­vave” and “Bloom­di­do.”

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!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in the Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Behold John Coltrane’s Hand­writ­ten Out­line for His Mas­ter­piece A Love Supreme

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in the Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

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

In 1939, Igor Stravin­sky emi­grat­ed to the Unit­ed States, first arriv­ing in New York City, before set­tling in Cam­bridge, Mass­a­chu­setts, where he deliv­ered the Charles Eliot Nor­ton lec­tures at Har­vard dur­ing the 1939–40 aca­d­e­m­ic year. While liv­ing in Boston, the com­pos­er con­duct­ed the Boston Sym­pho­ny and, on one famous occa­sion, he decid­ed to con­duct his own arrange­ment of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner,” which he made out of a “desire to do my bit in these griev­ous times toward fos­ter­ing and pre­serv­ing the spir­it of patri­o­tism in this coun­try.” The date was Jan­u­ary 1944. And he was, of course, refer­ring to Amer­i­ca’s role in World War II.

As you might expect, Stravin­sky’s ver­sion of “The Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” was­n’t entire­ly con­ven­tion­al, see­ing that it added a dom­i­nant sev­enth chord to the arrange­ment. And the Boston police, not exact­ly an orga­ni­za­tion with avant-garde sen­si­bil­i­ties, issued Stravin­sky a warn­ing, claim­ing there was a law against tam­per­ing with the nation­al anthem. (They were mis­read­ing the statute.) Grudg­ing­ly, Stravin­sky pulled it from the bill.

You can hear Stravin­sky’s “Star-Span­gled Ban­ner” above, appar­ent­ly per­formed by the Lon­don Sym­pho­ny Orches­tra, and con­duct­ed by Michael Tilson Thomas. The YouTube video fea­tures an apoc­ryphal mugshot of Stravin­sky. Despite the mythol­o­gy cre­at­ed around this event, Stravin­sky was nev­er arrest­ed.

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:

Hear The Rite of Spring Con­duct­ed by Igor Stravin­sky Him­self: A Vin­tage Record­ing from 1929

How Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring Incit­ed a Riot? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Igor Stravin­sky Appears on Amer­i­can Net­work TV & Tells Sto­ries About His Uncon­ven­tion­al Musi­cal Life (1957)

Watch 82-Year-Old Igor Stravin­sky Con­duct The Fire­bird, the Bal­let Mas­ter­piece That First Made Him Famous (1965)

If asked to name our favorite French com­pos­er of the late nine­teenth or ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, most of us would reach straight for Erik Satie, being able to bring to mind only his most famous pieces, the Gymnopédies and per­haps the Gnossi­ennes. We may not know that those works all date from the same few years of his career between the late eigh­teen-eight­ies and the ear­ly nineties. They also rep­re­sent only a small por­tion indeed of his artis­tic out­put, which includes a great deal of instru­men­tal and vocal music as well as com­po­si­tions for dra­mat­ic works, writ­ten between 1886 and his death in 1925 — the com­ing hun­dredth anniver­sary of which is being cel­e­brat­ed with the record­ing of new­ly dis­cov­ered pieces.

As the Guardian’s Dalya Alberge writes, these “twen­ty-sev­en pre­vi­ous­ly unheard works by Erik Satie, from play­ful cabaret songs to min­i­mal­ist noc­turnes” have been “painstak­ing­ly pieced togeth­er from hun­dreds of small note­books,” most of them writ­ten “in the bohemi­an bistros of Mont­martre in Paris where Satie worked as a pianist.”

Their redis­cov­ery owes to the efforts of two com­posers, James Nye and Sato Mat­sui, who “tracked down the lost mate­r­i­al in var­i­ous archival col­lec­tions, includ­ing the Bib­lio­thèque Nationale de France.” They’ve now been record­ed by pianist Alexan­dre Tha­raud, and you can hear the result­ing album, Satie: Dis­cov­er­ies, in the Youtube playlist at the top of the post.

Famous in his native France and else­where, Tha­raud’s pro­fes­sion­al involve­ment with the work of his esteemed pre­de­ces­sor and coun­try­man goes back to at least 2009, when he orga­nized a Satie Day at Paris’ Cité de la Musique. That same year, he record­ed Satie’s 1915 com­po­si­tions Avant-dernières Pen­sées, or “Penul­ti­mate Thoughts. Once dis­missed as minor, even by the com­poser’s enthu­si­asts, the Avant-dernières Pen­sées have since risen in sta­tus to become some of his most often per­formed lat­er works. With the 27 short pieces that con­sti­tute Dis­cov­er­ies, Tha­raud’s chal­lenge was­n’t to come up with a fresh rein­ter­pre­ta­tion, but the very first inter­pre­ta­tion any of us will ever have heard, leav­ing it to the next cen­tu­ry of pianists to put their own spins on them.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch Ani­mat­ed Scores of Eric Satie’s Most Famous Pieces: “Gymno­pe­die No. 1” and “Gnossi­enne No. 1”

How Erik Satie’s ‘Fur­ni­ture Music’ Was Designed to Be Ignored and Paved the Way for Ambi­ent Music

Watch the 1917 Bal­let “Parade”: Cre­at­ed by Erik Satie, Pablo Picas­so & Jean Cocteau, It Pro­voked a Riot and Inspired the Word “Sur­re­al­ism”

The Vel­vet Underground’s John Cale Plays Erik Satie’s Vex­a­tions on I’ve Got a Secret (1963)

A Son­ic Intro­duc­tion to Avant-Garde Music: Stream 145 Min­utes of 20th Cen­tu­ry Art Music, Includ­ing Mod­ernism, Futur­ism, Dadaism & Beyond

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Pho­to of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen by Kathin­ka Pasveer via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

You may hear the phrase “elec­tron­ic music” and think of super­star dub­step DJs in fun­ny hel­mets at beach­side celebri­ty par­ties. Alter­na­tive­ly, you may think of the mer­cu­r­ial com­po­si­tions of Karl­heinz Stock­hausen, the musique con­crete of Pierre Hen­ry, or the oth­er­world­ly exper­i­men­tal­ism of François Bayle. If you’re in that lat­ter camp of music nerd, then this post may bring you very glad tid­ings indeed. Ubuweb—that stal­wart repos­i­to­ry of all things 20th-cen­tu­ry avant-garde—now hosts an extra­or­di­nary com­pi­la­tion: the 476-song His­to­ry of Electronic/Electroacoustic Music, orig­i­nal­ly a 62 CD set. (Hear below Stockhausen’s “Kon­tact,” Henry’s “Astrolo­gie,” and Bayle’s spare “The­atre d’Ombres” fur­ther down.)

Span­ning the years 1937–2001, the col­lec­tion should espe­cial­ly appeal to those with an avant-garde or musi­co­log­i­cal bent. In fact, the orig­i­nal uploader of this archive of exper­i­men­tal sound, Caio Bar­ros, put these tracks online in 2009 while a stu­dent of com­po­si­tion at Brazil’s State Uni­ver­si­ty of São Paulo. Bar­ros’ “ini­tia­tive,” as he writes at Ubuweb, “became some sort of leg­end” among musi­cophiles in the know.

And yet, Ubuweb reposts this phe­nom­e­nal col­lec­tion with a dis­claimer: “It’s a clear­ly flawed selec­tion,” they write:

There’s few women and almost no one work­ing out­side of the West­ern tra­di­tion (where are the Japan­ese? Chi­nese? etc.). How­ev­er, as an effort, it’s admirable and con­tains a ton of great stuff.

Take it with a grain of salt, or per­haps use it as a provo­ca­tion to curate a more intel­li­gent, inclu­sive, and com­pre­hen­sive selec­tion

It’s a fair cri­tique, though Bar­ros points out that the exclu­sions most­ly have to do with “the way our soci­ety and the tra­di­tion this music rep­re­sent works” (sic). And yet, as dis­ci­pli­nary bound­aries expand all the time, and his­to­ries broad­en along with them, that descrip­tion no longer holds. It would be a fas­ci­nat­ing exer­cise, for exam­ple, to lis­ten to these tracks along­side the his­to­ry of women in elec­tron­ic music, 1938–2014 that we post­ed recent­ly.

Also, there’s clear­ly much more to elec­tron­ic music than either celebri­ty DJs or obscure avant-garde com­posers. Many hun­dreds of pop­u­lar elec­tron­ic com­posers and musicians—like Bri­an Eno, Kraftwerk, Bruce Haack, or Clara Rock­more—fall some­where in-between the worlds of pop/dance/performance and seri­ous com­po­si­tion, and their con­tri­bu­tions deserve rep­re­sen­ta­tion along­side more exper­i­men­tal or clas­si­cal artists.

All that said, how­ev­er, there’s no rea­son you can’t curate your own playlist of the his­to­ry of elec­tron­ic music as you see it—drawing from the astound­ing wealth of music avail­able free at The His­to­ry of Elec­troa­coustic Music. Or con­sid­er this col­lec­tion a ful­ly immer­sive course in “tra­di­tion­al, west­ern avant-garde elec­tron­ic music” from “the area of Europe-Amer­i­ca,” as Bar­ros puts it. As that, it suc­ceeds admirably.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Clara Rock­more, the Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Who First Rocked the Theremin in the Ear­ly 1920s

What is Elec­tron­ic Music?: Pio­neer­ing Elec­tron­ic Musi­cian Daphne Oram Explains (1969)

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music, 1800–2015: Free Web Project Cat­a­logues the Theremin, Fairlight & Oth­er Instru­ments That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Music

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