It was sup­pos­ed­ly “the album that final­ly oblit­er­ates the thin line sep­a­rat­ing arty white pop music and deep black funk,” as David Fricke wrote on the release of Talk­ing Heads’ Speak­ing in Tongues. The praise maybe over­sells music that is more arty white pop than “deep black funk.” But there’s nev­er been any deny­ing the funk­i­ness of Talk­ing Heads, either, just as there’s nev­er been any deny­ing the soul­ful­ness of Tom Jones. Not that they’re musi­cal­ly com­pa­ra­ble artists, but both have incor­po­rat­ed Black musi­cal styles into their own idioms, win­ning respect on either side of the indus­try’s seg­re­gat­ed line for self-aware re-inter­pre­ta­tions of the blues, funk, soul, and R&B, as well as Ghan­ian high life and Niger­ian Afrobeat.

Jones’ late-career rein­ven­tion involved show­ing up on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air, cov­er­ing Prince, work­ing with Wyclef Jean, and mak­ing music one might char­ac­ter­ize as gen­er­al­ly good-humored pop that show­cased his still-got-it vocal abil­i­ties. In 1999, he took on Speak­ing in Tongues’ P‑Funk-inspired sin­gle “Burn­ing Down the House” in a cov­er that can be called a slick dance-pop inter­pre­ta­tion of an art-rock re-inter­pre­ta­tion of funk music.

Joined by the Cardi­gans, Jones belts it out with his typ­i­cal swag­ger, while Cardi­gans’ singer Nina Pers­son acts as the “foil” writes Patrick Garvin at Pop Cul­ture Exper­i­ment in a roundup of the song’s many cov­ers: “She sound­ed as monot­o­ne as he sound­ed mani­a­cal. And he sound­ed pret­ty damn mani­a­cal.”

But Jones doesn’t sound mani­a­cal like David Byrne sounds mani­a­cal. The orig­i­nal track came togeth­er from a jam ses­sion, with lyrics impro­vised by Byrne, who shout­ed ran­dom phras­es until he found those that best fit the song, chang­ing the Par­lia­ment-Funkadel­ic audi­ence chant “burn down the house!” into “burn­ing down the house,” a line which could mean any­thing at all. (At one point, he tells NPR, it changed to “Foam Rub­ber, U.S.A.”) Is it a threat? A pan­icked out­cry? A cel­e­bra­tion? A man­ic lamen­ta­tion? In Byrne’s anguished yelps one can nev­er tell.

Jones makes “burn­ing down the house” sound like a come-on, set against the ici­est of tight­ly syn­co­pat­ed arrange­ments, in the most 90s of music videos ever. (Con­trast it with the live ver­sion above, with P‑Funk’s own Bernie Wor­rell on key­boards, from Jonathan Demme’s Stop Mak­ing Sense.) Every cov­er of the song, and there are many, does its own thing. “The one con­sis­tent aspect,” Garvin writes, “is Byrne’s weird lyrics… because they don’t tell a sto­ry in a lin­ear sense, they can take on any vari­ety of mean­ings.”

Accord­ing to Byrne him­self, the song did take on added res­o­nance for him, per­fect­ly in keep­ing with the 90s rebirth of Tom Jones. “I didn’t real­ly know at the time,” he said in 1984, “but to me… it implies ecsta­t­ic rebirth or tran­scend­ing one’s own self…. In clas­sic psy­chol­o­gy, the house is the self. And burn­ing it down is destroy­ing your­self… And the assump­tion is you get reborn, like a Phoenix from the ash­es. See? It’s all there.” Indeed.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Jones Per­forms “Long Time Gone” with Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young–and Blows the Band & Audi­ence Away (1969)

Janis Joplin & Tom Jones Bring the House Down in an Unlike­ly Duet of “Raise Your Hand” (1969)

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

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

When Joni Mitchell released Blue in 1971, she revealed her­self to the world as a poet with a hard-boiled inte­ri­or life. The album, writes Rolling Stone, chal­lenged the image many had of her as an inno­cent flower child. “The West Coast fem­i­nine ide­al” was a role “Mitchell hadn’t asked for and did not want.” Of her writ­ing of the album, she said in a 2013 inter­view, “They bet­ter find out who they’re wor­ship­ping. Let’s see if they can take it. Let’s get real.”

Get real she did, shock­ing the men around her, some of whom she’d writ­ten about can­did­ly, includ­ing Gra­ham Nash, Leonard Cohen, and James Tay­lor, who played on sev­er­al tracks. She wrote about the heart­break of leav­ing her daugh­ter and rewrote the breakup song as a con­fes­sion­al on “Riv­er.” The album’s cul­tur­al impact, 50 years after its release, has much to do with Mitchell as a lone female pro­tag­o­nist in a male-dom­i­nat­ed indus­try. “Along with its roman­tic melan­choly,” Rolling Stone writes, “Blue was the sound of a woman avail­ing her­self of the roman­tic and sex­u­al free­dom that was, until then, an exclu­sive­ly male province in rock.”

We lis­ten to Blue now and hear the voic­es of lat­er gen­er­a­tions of singer-song­writ­ers, from Tra­cy Chap­man and Tori Amos to Phoebe Bridgers, who seized their own pow­er. By the time of Blue’s release, Mitchell had become a pow­er­ful voice of her gen­er­a­tion, pen­ning “Wood­stock” just the year before. “Blue is Mitchell’s first song cycle where­by all the songs inter­re­late in their themes of loss and trans­for­ma­tion,” writes Clas­sic Album Sun­days. “The album reflects the dis­il­lu­sion­ment and dis­en­chant­ment felt by a gen­er­a­tion dur­ing the clos­ing of The Six­ties.”

“It’s a descrip­tion of the times,” Mitchell attests. “There were so many sink­ing but I had to keep think­ing I could make it through the waves. You watched that high of the hip­pie thing descend into drug depres­sion. Right after Wood­stock, then we went through a decade of basic apa­thy where my gen­er­a­tion sucked it’s thumb and then just decid­ed to be greedy and porno­graph­ic.”

As if cap­tur­ing the feel­ings of her own per­son­al loss­es and those of mil­lions of oth­ers weren’t enough, Mitchell’s song­writ­ing and musi­cian­ship on the album are con­sis­tent­ly aston­ish­ing, each word mar­ried to a sus­pend­ed note, an unex­pect­ed chord voic­ing, a preg­nant breath. “My words and music are locked togeth­er,” she says. She proved on Blue that she was a tal­ent to be reck­oned with and nev­er under­es­ti­mat­ed. On the 50th anniver­sary of Blue’s release, Mitchell is releas­ing a five song EP, Blue 50 (Demos & Out­takes), which you can hear above (see track­list below).

1. A Case Of You (Demo) 0:00:00
2. Cal­i­for­nia (Demo) 0:04:00
3. Hunter (Out­take) 0:07:30
4. Riv­er (Out­take with French Horns) 0:10:25
5. Urge For Going (Out­take with Strings) 0:14:27

It’s a doc­u­ment of a dif­fer­ent album, one that might have includ­ed “Hunter” — a coun­try-like strum­mer  — and might have had french horns on “Riv­er,” per­haps the album’s best-known song and one of the most beloved Christ­mas songs of the past 50 years. Look for the next release cel­e­brat­ing a half-cen­tu­ry of Blue on Octo­ber 29th. Joni Mitchell Archives Vol. 2: The Reprise Years (1968–1971) “will explore the peri­od lead­ing up to Blue,” notes her offi­cial YouTube, “through near­ly six hours of unre­leased home, stu­dio, and live record­ings.” Or, you could just lis­ten to Blue over and over. It seems to reveal some­thing dif­fer­ent every time.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Joni Mitchell’s Song of Heart­break, “Riv­er,” Became a Christ­mas Clas­sic

How Joni Mitchell Wrote “Wood­stock,” the Song that Defined the Leg­endary Music Fes­ti­val, Even Though She Wasn’t There (1969)

Watch Joni Mitchell Sing an Immac­u­late Ver­sion of Her Song “Coy­ote,” with Bob Dylan, Roger McGuinn & Gor­don Light­foot (1975)

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

Men­tion the Mar­tin D‑28 and you need say no more to fans of folk, coun­try, rock and roll, coun­try-rock, folk-rock, coun­try-folk, etc. Elvis, Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John­ny Cash, Hank Williams, Neil Young… all played one. (Neil, in fact, owns Hank’s gui­tar, and calls it “Hank.”) It is the stan­dard against which all “Dreadnought”-style gui­tars are mea­sured, because it was the first, and is still, arguably, the best. Named after the Roy­al British Navy’s HMS Dread­nought, a famous ves­sel that “spawned a new class of bat­tle­ships around the world,” writes Daryl Nerl, the larg­er-bod­ied D‑28 (D for “Dread­nought”), first arrived in 1917, at a time when small par­lor gui­tar and ukule­les were the norm.

The D‑28 has lived up to its name, says Jason Ahn­er, C.F. Mar­tin & Co.’s archivist. “If you were on that ship, you wouldn’t fear any­thing else and if you were play­ing that gui­tar you wouldn’t fear not being heard over a ban­jo or anoth­er instru­ment.” Built like bat­tle­ships, D‑28s don’t only take up space in an ensem­ble, they fill a room per­fect­ly well on their own, with del­i­cate fin­ger­picked fig­ures or big boom­ing strums. The D‑28 flopped on arrival but explod­ed in pop­u­lar­i­ty after it was adver­tised in 1935 as a “bass gui­tar,” before such things as bass gui­tars exist­ed.

As more and more folk and coun­try play­ers fell for the D‑28’s square shoul­ders, broad waist, and rich, almost sym­phon­ic, tonal range, the gui­tar became an object no play­er, once they got their  hands on one, would part with eas­i­ly, or ever. Repair­ing and main­tain­ing vin­tage Mar­tins, how­ev­er, is a del­i­cate busi­ness that requires an inti­mate under­stand­ing of the guitar’s con­struc­tion. Not every luthi­er is up to the task, but as you can see in the video above, Nor­we­gian gui­tar­mak­er Lars Dalin has the expe­ri­ence, patience, and know-how to dis­as­sem­ble and restore one head (and neck) to tail.

Dalin’s D‑28 restora­tion video should not only inter­est stu­dents of gui­tar repair. In it, we learn about the spe­cial fea­tures of Martin’s build that give the instru­ment its spe­cial tonal qual­i­ties, those we’ve been danc­ing and cry­ing to for over a cen­tu­ry. For those more inter­est­ed in elec­tric gui­tars, Dalin presents a refret and restora­tion of anoth­er Amer­i­can clas­sic — one that also didn’t get its due at first, but has since become an icon: the Fend­er Jazzmas­ter. Intro­duced in 1958, the gui­tars did­n’t catch on until the 1970s when they could be picked up cheap­ly at pawn shops by punk and new wave pio­neers like Tele­vi­sion and Elvis Costel­lo. The 1960 mod­el above is a joy to behold, and a les­son in gui­tar build­ing, repair, engi­neer­ing, like no oth­er. See more of Dal­in’s gui­tar restora­tion projects on his Insta­gram.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch a Luthi­er Birth a Cel­lo in This Hyp­not­ic Doc­u­men­tary

How to Build a Cus­tom Hand­craft­ed Acoustic Gui­tar from Start to Fin­ish: The Process Revealed in a Fas­ci­nat­ing Doc­u­men­tary

Repair­ing Willie Nelson’s Trig­ger: A Good Look at How a Luthi­er Gets America’s Most Icon­ic Gui­tar on the Road Again

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