Come on you raver, you seer of visions
Come on you painter, you piper, you pris­on­er, and shine

“It’s a gift I sup­pose,” David Gilmour respond­ed humbly when a 2015 inter­view­er asked the ques­tion he’s always asked about his leg­endary gui­tar tone. “It’s some­thing that just arrives nat­u­ral­ly at this point.” Gilmour seemed gen­uine­ly mys­ti­fied. “I think there’s some kind of strange pecu­liar­i­ty or my lack of coor­di­na­tion between hands that gives it some­thing rather off and thus dis­tinct.” Maybe there’s more than he real­izes to his answer: the qual­i­ties that make an artist unique can be those that seem like deficits or defects in oth­er lights.

There are hints of this wis­dom in “Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond,” Gilmour and Roger Waters’ trib­ute to Syd Bar­rett, the child­hood friend whom Gilmour replaced as the band’s gui­tarist. What­ev­er it was that drove Barrett’s bril­liant mind also seems to have dri­ven him to excess and mad­ness under the spotlights—”You were caught on the cross­fire of child­hood and star­dom… Threat­ened by shad­ows at night, and exposed in the light.” Yet with­out Barrett’s “crazi­ness,” or Gilmour’s lack of coor­di­na­tion, there would be no Pink Floyd.

“Shine on You Crazy Dia­mond” is a trag­ic song—made more so when we learn that an unrec­og­niz­able Bar­rett arrived at the stu­dio the moment they began record­ing it, sev­en years after he left the band with men­tal health strug­gles. With typ­i­cal bit­ter­ness, Waters described him in an inter­view that year as “a sym­bol for all the extremes of absence some peo­ple have to indulge in because it’s the only way they can cope with how f—ing sad it is—modern life.”

The band lost not only a found­ing mem­ber but also a friend when they lost Bar­rett. These sad per­son­al asso­ci­a­tions notwith­stand­ing, the song can also be an uniron­ic call to those who may be hold­ing back or hid­ing because they think there’s some­thing wrong with them. And it’s a song fea­tur­ing some of the most impres­sive gui­tar work of Gilmour’s record­ing career. On “the epic 13-minute open­ing track to Wish You Were Here, he lays down more awe­some tones than most gui­tarists achieve in a life­time,” writes Chris Gill at Gui­tar World.

Play­ing onstage above with Richard Wright at Roy­al Albert Hall in 2006, just months before Bar­ret­t’s death, Gilmour casu­al­ly blows the audi­ence away with awe­some tones. Then he is joined by David Cros­by and Gra­ham Nash in a live ren­di­tion that sounds like both an ele­gy and an anthem, a fit­ting trib­ute to an artist who “reached for the secret too soon”—or what­ev­er com­bi­na­tion of drugs and men­tal health crises caused Bar­rett to retreat into him­self in the last decades of his life—but who also, by shin­ing for a brief moment, left a cre­ative lega­cy in Pink Floyd that few artists can hope to equal.

via Laugh­ing Squid 

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch David Gilmour Play the Songs of Syd Bar­rett, with the Help of David Bowie & Richard Wright

Under­stand­ing Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Their Trib­ute to Depart­ed Band­mate Syd Bar­rett

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

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

Direc­tor Hayao Miyazaki’s work­ing rela­tion­ship with com­pos­er Joe Hisaishi is up there with the oth­er great film pair­ings: Ser­gio Leone with Ennio Mor­ri­cone, Alfred Hitch­cock with Bernard Her­rmann, David Lynch with Ange­lo Badala­men­ti. Work­ing togeth­er they attain a sym­bio­sis of sound and vision, one of the rea­sons their work has become part of film his­to­ry. But it’s also rare that a film com­pos­er gets to cel­e­brate that rela­tion­ship with a stun­ner of a ret­ro­spec­tive con­cert like the one above.

In 2008, Hisaishi con­duct­ed and per­formed at a two-hour ret­ro­spec­tive of 25 years work­ing with Miyaza­ki at Stu­dio Ghi­b­li. This mam­moth per­for­mance at the 14,000-seat Tokyo Budokan was big in every way: six fea­tured vocal­ists, the 200-mem­ber New Japan Phil­har­mon­ic World Dream Orches­tra, the 800 com­bined voic­es of the Ippan Koubo, Rit­suyuukai and Lit­tle Singers of Tokyo choirs, along with a 160-piece march­ing band made up of mem­bers from four high schools.

The con­cert fea­tures selec­tions from Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of Wind, Princess Mononoke, My Neigh­bor Totoro, Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice, Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle, Spir­it­ed Away, Por­co Rosso, and what would have been his most recent score at the time, Ponyo. For those won­der­ing when the march­ing band and col­or guard turn up, it’s 50 min­utes in, play­ing selec­tions from Lapu­ta, Cas­tle in the Sky.

Hayao Miyaza­ki met Joe Hisaishi in 1983, when his record com­pa­ny rec­om­mend­ed him to score Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind. They became true friends and col­lab­o­ra­tors, and the direc­tor him­self appears just after an hour in to speak to the audi­ence.

“After [our first] meet­ing,” Miyaza­ki says (accord­ing to a trans­la­tion in the com­ments) “he sent me some piano sketch­es, which are used in many scenes in Nau­si­caä any­way, and those were so amaz­ing that I played tapes of them on my desk over and over again while I was working…I have been work­ing thanks to so many pieces of luck, and meet­ing him is def­i­nite­ly one of them. I guess I couldn’t wish for bet­ter luck than that.”

For some­one whose music is often roman­tic, beau­ti­ful, and relaxed, the com­pos­er says the work doesn’t come easy.

“The most painful ele­ment of my life is com­pos­ing because some­times noth­ing comes to mind,” he told the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post. “It is very hard and very dif­fi­cult. Some­times the result is zero, but I go to bed and I feel some­thing and some idea is born. So in the end there might be a com­po­si­tion, but the expe­ri­ence is often most painful.” For those who have recent­ly seen sim­i­lar memes of Miyaza­ki being super hard on him­self, it’s no won­der the two are friends.

A few in the YouTube com­ment sec­tion actu­al­ly attend­ed the con­cert, and this quote from “Love W” sums up what was an emo­tion­al con­cert for Ghi­b­li and Hisaishi fans:

“It was also qui­et after­wards. No one was talk­ing very loud­ly, even with hun­dreds of peo­ple stream­ing out of the build­ing. I think every­one were just too touched and want­ed to reflect over what they had seen.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Makes 1,178 Images Free to Down­load from My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & Oth­er Beloved Ani­mat­ed Films

Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Pro­duc­er Toshio Suzu­ki Teach­es You How to Draw Totoro in Two Min­utes

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

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.

House, trance, techno—any DJ play­ing a four-on-the-floor groove can drop Don­na Sum­mer and Gior­gio Moroder’s “I Feel Love” into a set and instant­ly mes­mer­ize the crowd. It has been hap­pen­ing since 1977. The dis­co hit doesn’t just hold up as a clas­sic moment of nos­tal­gia: it’s still one of the great­est dance tracks ever pro­duced. “‘I Feel Love’ was and remains an aston­ish­ing achieve­ment,” Jon Sav­age writes at The Guardian. “A futur­is­tic record that still sounds fan­tas­tic 35 years on. With­in its mod­u­la­tions and puls­es, it achieves the per­fect state of grace that is the ambi­tion of every dance record: it oblit­er­ates the tyran­ny of the clock.”

DJ Jim Stan­ton puts it this way: “It is safe to say [‘I Feel Love’] was the blue­print for all elec­tron­ic dance music today. It still has a mas­sive impact every time I play it.”

The song was not only a “rad­i­cal break­through” at the time but it was explic­it­ly meant to be one, an exper­i­men­tal stu­dio col­lab­o­ra­tion between Moroder, Pete Bel­lotte, drum­mer Kei­th Forsey, and engi­neer Rob­by Wedel, who was clas­si­cal com­pos­er Eber­hard Schoener’s assis­tant and was hired because he was the only one who knew how to work Schoener’s bor­rowed Moog Mod­u­lar 3P. Wedel cooked up the bassline and Moroder and Bel­lotte pieced the track togeth­er from twen­ty to thir­ty-sec­ond snip­pets, since the Moog “would go out of tune every few min­utes,” Moroder remem­bered. “It was quite a job.”

Bel­lotte and Sum­mer wrote the lyrics and Sum­mer, fresh off an impor­tant call with her astrologer about her love life, “turned up to the stu­dio,” Bill Brew­ster writes at Mix­mag, “and deliv­ered the song in one take.” Upon hear­ing “I Feel Love” on its release, dur­ing the Berlin ses­sions for David Bowie’s Low, no less a shaper of the future than Bri­an Eno imme­di­ate­ly real­ized its poten­tial, run­ning into the stu­dio to pro­claim, “I have heard the sound of the future. This is it, look no fur­ther. This sin­gle is going to change the sound of club music for the next fif­teen years.” He was not wrong.

“Until ‘I Feel Love,’” Brew­ster writes, “syn­the­siz­ers had either been the province of seri­ous musi­cians like Kei­th Emer­son, Jean-Michel Jarre or Tan­ger­ine Dream or used as a nov­el­ty prop in throw­away songs.” They had gained respect in the clas­si­cal world, thanks to Wendy Car­los’ Switched on Bach, and by the late sev­en­ties they popped up in the mix of rock and funk often. Moroder’s cre­ation, how­ev­er, put the instru­ment at the cen­ter of a dance track for the first time. “‘I Feel Love’ was a rejec­tion of the intel­lec­tu­al­iza­tion of the syn­the­siz­er in favour of pure plea­sure.”

The song killed on Soul Train and “went to No 1 in the UK dur­ing the high sum­mer of 1977, and stayed there for four weeks—filling dance floors every­where,” writes Sav­age. “Like David Bowie’s Low and Heroes, and Kraftwerk’s Trans-Europe Express, it was also the secret vice of those punks who were already tir­ing of sped-up pub rock, and it sowed the seeds for the next gen­er­a­tion of UK elec­tron­i­ca.” It didn’t chart in the U.S. but became “an all-time gay clas­sic,” and hence a sta­ple of the pre‑A.I.D.S. house music era. Remix­es appeared imme­di­ate­ly, includ­ing Patrick Cowley’s psy­che­del­ic 15-minute ver­sion, “which real­ly does go on for ever and ever with­out trashing—even enhancing—the con­cept of the orig­i­nal.”

Indeed, “I Feel Love” is as near a pure arche­type of the dance track as we’re ever going to find, so time­less it oblit­er­ates time, stretch­ing out to 30 min­utes in the “Dis­co Purr­fec­tion” ver­sion below, the first song to “ful­ly uti­lize the poten­tial of elec­tron­ics, replac­ing lush dis­co orches­tra­tion with the hyp­not­ic pre­ci­sion of machines,” and ush­er­ing in the age of New Order, Depeche Mode, and count­less clas­sic house and tech­no records from Chica­go, New York, and Detroit, none of which hold up as well Moroder and Summer’s slick, sul­try “I Feel Love.”

via Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Ishkur’s Guide to Elec­tron­ic Music: An Inter­ac­tive, Ency­clo­pe­dic Data Visu­al­iza­tion of 120 Years of Elec­tron­ic Music

The His­to­ry of Elec­tron­ic Music Visu­al­ized on a Cir­cuit Dia­gram of a 1950s Theremin: 200 Inven­tors, Com­posers & Musi­cians

A Soul Train-Style Detroit Dance Show Gets Down to Kraftwerk’s “Num­bers” in the Late 80s

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

As an Eng­lish­man of a cer­tain age, George Mar­tin could, real­is­ti­cal­ly, choose only one means of con­veyance in Los Ange­les: a red Coupe de Ville con­vert­ible, and a gen­uine 1950s mod­el at that. But what­ev­er that era’s glo­ries of auto­mo­bile design, its music was still in the dark ages — at least accord­ing to the mil­lions upon mil­lions of Bea­t­les fans around the world today. The pop-cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion that band ignit­ed in the ear­ly 1960s owes, by some reck­on­ings, as much to Mar­t­in’s work as it does to that of the Fab Four them­selves. In his capac­i­ty as a pro­duc­er and arranger — not to men­tion as the man who signed them to Par­lophone records — Mar­tin arguably led the Bea­t­les to dis­cov­er their own musi­cal poten­tial. And once they’d become a phe­nom­e­non, they also felt pres­sure to sur­pass them­selves from oth­er sources.

One was a young Amer­i­can singing group called the Beach Boys, who in less than five years had gone from putting out sim­ple, repet­i­tive tunes about surf­ing and root beer to craft­ing the teenage-sym­phon­ic mas­ter­piece Pet Sounds. That album, so pop-music his­to­ry tells it, picked up the gaunt­let thrown down by the Bea­t­les’ Rub­ber Soul, and in response to it came Sgt. Pep­per’s Lone­ly Hearts Club Band, an era-defin­ing release since pop­u­lar­ly thought to have won the bands’ friend­ly com­pe­ti­tion.

But with his ear for com­po­si­tion, Mar­tin sure­ly knew that Pet Sounds would nev­er tru­ly be defeat­ed, thanks in large part to “God Only Knows,” which Mar­tin describes as “one of my favorite Beach Boys songs.” He does so in the clip at the top of the post, of a 1997 vis­it to Los Ange­les in which he pilots his Cadil­lac to the home of the group’s musi­cal mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son.

The two then enter the stu­dio and pull out the orig­i­nal mas­ter tapes of “Got Only Knows” to lis­ten to its com­po­nents one by one. You can see and hear more of what went into its record­ing ses­sions through this two-part video from Behind the Sounds that presents raw tracks from the stu­dio with notes on the var­i­ous tech­niques and play­ers (includ­ing the famous “Wreck­ing Crew,” with bassist Car­ol Kaye) involved. “What Bri­an had done was to write a beau­ti­ful song full of unusu­al changes,” says Mar­tin, “and then devise a tapes­try of sounds to enhance it.” As Mar­tin rebuilds the tracks on the con­sole, Wil­son says he’s “mak­ing a bet­ter mix of this than I did in the mas­ter.” It’s quite a com­pli­ment, con­sid­er­ing the source — but then so is the dec­la­ra­tion of “God Only Knows “as “the great­est song ever writ­ten,” issued as it was by a cer­tain Paul McCart­ney.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How the Beach Boys Cre­at­ed Their Pop Mas­ter­pieces: “Good Vibra­tions,” Pet Sounds, and More

Hear the Beach Boys’ Angel­ic Vocal Har­monies in Four Iso­lat­ed Tracks from Pet Sounds: “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” “Sloop John B” & “Good Vibra­tions”

The Mak­ing (and Remak­ing) of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, Arguably the Great­est Rock Album of All Time

Hear the Unique, Orig­i­nal Com­po­si­tions of George Mar­tin, Beloved Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er (RIP)

George Mar­tin, Leg­endary Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er, Shows How to Mix the Per­fect Song Dry Mar­ti­ni

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, 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.

I was pos­sessed with a won­der­ful exam­ple of my Ital­ian Amer­i­can fam­i­ly. They would come over and join us every Sun­day, all my aunts and uncles and nephews and nieces, and I would sing for them. I was 10 years old, and I was just say­ing, “Who am I? What am I sup­posed to do?” And they told me that they love the way I sang. It cre­at­ed a pas­sion in my life that exists to this moment as I speak to you, that is stronger now at 89 than in my whole life. I still feel that I can get bet­ter some­how. And I search for it all of the time. —Tony Ben­nett, Week­end Edi­tion inter­view, Octo­ber 10, 2015

Tony Ben­nett “is not just an artist for the ages, but an artist for all ages,” the Library of Con­gress wrote in its announce­ment of the icon­ic singer as the 2017 Gersh­win Prize Win­ner. Bennett’s life and career have tru­ly been extra­or­di­nary. The gold­en-voiced croon­er from Queens “has been on the front lines of his­to­ry” as a World War II vet­er­an who “fought in the Bat­tle of the Bulge and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the lib­er­a­tion of a con­cen­tra­tion camp.” He “marched with Mar­tin Luther King in Sel­ma to sup­port civ­il rights,” then went on to win 19 Gram­mys, sell 10 mil­lion records, per­form “for 11 U.S. pres­i­dents,” and become a pro­lif­ic visu­al artist who “con­tin­ues to paint every day, even as he tours inter­na­tion­al­ly.”

When he received the Gersh­win hon­or, Ben­nett had already been diag­nosed with Alzhiemers dis­ease, a diag­no­sis just revealed to the pub­lic by Bennett’s wife, Susan Benedet­to. He had been show­ing signs all the way back in 2014 when he released Cheek to Cheek, an album of jazz stan­dards record­ed with Lady Gaga. When AARP’s John Colap­in­to vis­it­ed him at his New York City apart­ment recent­ly, “there was lit­tle doubt that the dis­ease had pro­gressed.”

But Bennett’s gold­en voice and insa­tiable desire to get bet­ter remain. He still paints every day and rehears­es twice a week, and even as his symp­toms wors­ened over the past few years, he per­formed and record­ed with younger artists, deter­mined to pass on the tra­di­tion of the “Great Amer­i­can Song­book” in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

Bennett’s advo­ca­cy for jazz singing through his duets with singers like Lady Gaga and Amy Wine­house may turn out to be his most endur­ing lega­cy. 2011’s Duets II began the col­lab­o­ra­tions with Lady Gaga. Dur­ing the record­ing of Cheek to Cheek, Ben­net enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly told NPR that “It’s the first time that young peo­ple that love [her] so much will fall in love with George Gersh­win, with Cole Porter, with Irv­ing Berlin.” She added, “Tony’s real­ly open­ing up a whole new gen­er­a­tion.” The two then got togeth­er again four years lat­er, going into the stu­dio between 2018 and 2020. “Tony was a con­sid­er­ably more mut­ed pres­ence dur­ing the record­ing of the new album,” writes Colap­in­to. “In raw doc­u­men­tary footage of the ses­sions, he speaks rarely, and when he does his words are halt­ing; at times he seems lost and bewil­dered.” It may “very well be the last Tony Ben­nett record.”

This sense of final­i­ty is why Benedet­to and their son Dan­ny “have joint­ly decid­ed to break the silence around his con­di­tion, a deci­sion they have, nec­es­sar­i­ly, had to make with­out Tony’s input, since he is, Susan said, inca­pable of under­stand­ing the dis­ease.” Nonethe­less, the new album of duets, due out this spring, promis­es to show Ben­nett in the fine form he has main­tained through­out the pro­gres­sion of his dis­ease, exer­cis­ing his voice to keep the worst symp­toms at bay. “He is doing so many things, at 94, that many peo­ple with­out demen­tia can­not do,” says Bennett’s neu­rol­o­gist Gay­a­tri Devi. “He real­ly is the sym­bol of hope for some­one with a cog­ni­tive dis­or­der.” Benedet­to is open about what’s been lost. “There’s a lot about him that I miss,” she says. “Because he’s not the old Tony any­more. … But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”

See Ben­nett in clas­sic duets with Amy Wine­house and Lady Gaga above, includ­ing the stun­ning live ver­sion of “Any­thing Goes” with Gaga, just above, from 2014. “I feel very val­i­dat­ed by this,” she said that year. “You know, he’s giv­en my fans a gift by say­ing to them that he likes the way I sing jazz.” See those fans look on with rapt atten­tion, absorb­ing the songs Ben­nett loved so much through a new gen­er­a­tion of singers inspired by his incred­i­ble lega­cy. Just below, see sev­er­al more career-cap­ping duets from Duets II, and even more at the YouTube playlist here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

How Music Can Awak­en Patients with Alzheimer’s and Demen­tia

Demen­tia Patients Find Some Eter­nal Youth in the Sounds of AC/DC

Christo­pher Walken Reads Lady Gaga

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

In a 1992 jour­nal arti­cle “Erup­tions: heavy met­al appro­pri­a­tions of clas­si­cal vir­tu­os­i­ty,” musi­col­o­gist Robert Walser explored the link between heavy met­al and clas­si­cal music–the way in which met­al gui­tarists stud­ied clas­si­cal music and cre­at­ed “a new kind of gui­tar vir­tu­os­i­ty.” Pub­lished by Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty Press, Walser’s essay comes to focus on Eddie Van Halen’s “Erup­tion,” the “solo that trans­formed rock gui­tar.” He writes: “Released in 1978 on Van Halen’s first album, ‘Erup­tion’ [see an extend­ed live ver­sion below] is one minute and twen­ty-sev­en sec­onds of exu­ber­ant and play­ful vir­tu­os­i­ty, a vio­lin­ist’s pre­cise and showy tech­nique inflect­ed by the vocal rhetoric of the blues and rock ’n’ roll irrev­er­ence.” The solo fea­tures rhyth­mic pat­terns rem­i­nis­cent of J. S. Bach’s famous ‘Pre­lude in C major’, while “the har­mon­ic pro­gres­sions of ‘Erup­tion’ lead the lis­ten­er along an aur­al adven­ture,” much like you’d find in the music of Vival­di. None of this was an acci­dent. As a young­ster, Eddie Van Halen was raised on a diet of Mozart and Beethoven.

Above, you can watch “Jill,” a mem­ber of the Japan­ese met­al band Unlucky Mor­pheus, per­form a vio­lin-dri­ven ver­sion of “Erup­tion.” It’s clas­si­cal meets met­al once again, except this time a clas­si­cal instru­ment takes the lead. Enjoy.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

14-Year-Old Girl’s Blis­ter­ing Heavy Met­al Per­for­mance of Vival­di

Watch Some of Eddie Van Halen’s (RIP) Great­est Per­for­mances: “Shred­ding Was Eddie’s Very Essence”

The Great Illus­tra­tion That Accom­pa­nied Eddie Van Halen’s Appli­ca­tion to the U.S. Patent and Trade­mark Office (1987)

15-Year-Old French Gui­tar Prodi­gy Flaw­less­ly Rips Through Solos by Eddie Van Halen, David Gilmour, Yng­wie Malm­steen & Steve Vai

Musi­cal Come­di­an Reg­gie Watts Rein­vents Van Halen’s Clas­sic, “Pana­ma”