Last year, Josh Jones took a good look at what hap­pens when Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” gets shift­ed from minor to major key, and Radiohead’s “Creep” moves in the oppo­site direc­tion. Sud­den­ly, two songs you know so well sound so dif­fer­ent.

Over the week­end, “Sleep Good,” a psy­che­del­ic pop band from Austin, TX,  took their own whack at shift­ing Nir­vana’s 1991 song into major key. And the result will catch you a bit off-guard. A grunge anthem abrupt­ly turns into a cheery pop song, and the bop­ping cheer­lead­ers in the orig­i­nal music video strange­ly fit into the mood of the adapt­ed song.

You can find a ver­sion of “Teen Sprite,” as the song has been dubbed, over on Sound­cloud.

via Uncrate

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Relat­ed Con­tent

Watch Nir­vana Per­form “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Just Two Days After the Release of Nev­er­mind (Sep­tem­ber 26, 1991)

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Shift­ed from Minor to Major Key, and Radiohead’s “Creep” Moved from Major to Minor

1,000 Musi­cians Play Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Live, at the Same Time

A rock enig­ma wrapped around an R&B quandary, wear­ing plat­form shoes and pur­ple velour. The cheek­bones of an angel, dance moves and lyrics from an infer­nal­ly sexy place, and more musi­cal tal­ent than it seems pos­si­ble for a sin­gle per­son to pos­sess in one life­time…. These are some of the ways we remem­ber Prince Rogers Nel­son.

We do not typ­i­cal­ly remem­ber him as a jazz pianist. But his facil­i­ty with jazz earned him the admi­ra­tion of Miles Davis, who made sev­er­al efforts to col­lab­o­rate with the extreme­ly busy pop star. (They per­formed togeth­er only once, it seems, on New Year’s Eve, 1987 at Pais­ley Park.) Prince’s style, stage show, song­writ­ing, and arrang­ing drew from jazz of all kinds—from zoot suit-era big band to the fre­net­ic move­ment of hard bop to the clas­si­cal­ly-inflect­ed show tunes of George Gersh­win. Just above see him “casu­al­ly own” Gersh­win’s “Sum­mer­time” dur­ing a 1990 sound­check in Osa­ka, Japan.

For the first minute, it’s a Prince show­case, but once he coach­es the band through the changes, he lets them take it, set­tling back while the gui­tarist rides out a solo. The can­did moment does much more than demon­strate his chops on the piano and appre­ci­a­tion for Gersh­win. It offers yet anoth­er con­trast to the pop­u­lar image of Prince as a charis­mat­ic, self-suf­fi­cient solo artist who just hap­pened to work with a reg­u­lar crew of stel­lar musi­cians and not-so-stel­lar actress­es.

It’s true Prince played most or all of the instru­ments on many of his albums, wrote near­ly all his own songs, direct­ed or pro­duced near­ly every aspect of his music, career, and per­sona.… As solo artists go, no one comes close to defin­ing full cre­ative con­trol. The Pur­ple One ruled over a musi­cal empire; most of the time, it seems, he got what he want­ed, even if he some­times had to fight like hell for it. We might expect such an artist to be a pet­ty tyrant, hog­ging the spot­light and throw­ing his weight around at every oppor­tu­ni­ty. What we hear and see behind the scenes paints a much rich­er pic­ture.

The footage here was shot by Steve Pur­cell, who direct­ed sev­er­al videos for Prince and, as he remarked, “spent six years of my life work­ing for, cre­at­ing with and lay­ing the foun­da­tion for the rest of my career with Prince.” In his intro­duc­tion to the video, he writes, “This may not be the Prince you think of but it is the Prince I knew.” A band­leader who was also an ensem­ble play­er, and who con­stant­ly paid trib­ute to the music that inspired him in live per­for­mance.

We might have known Prince as a gen­er­ous hit­mak­er, who gave song after song to artists like Sheena Eas­t­on, Cha­ka Khan, Sinead O’Connor, and the Ban­gles, and launched the careers of a good many of his col­lab­o­ra­tors, musi­cal and oth­er­wise. Since his death, we’ve also learned much more about both his tremen­dous finan­cial and emo­tion­al good­will, and the time he took with oth­er musi­cians to help them devel­op and learn.

The impos­si­bly cool aloof­ness with which he glid­ed through pop star­dom did not extend to his rela­tion­ships with the peo­ple clos­est to him. Prince was so beloved that his two ex-wives worked togeth­er to orga­nize a star-stud­ded memo­r­i­al ser­vice for him. Sto­ries of his kind­ness, good humor, com­pas­sion, and loy­al­ty pour out at the same rate as the music he had locked up in his Pais­ley Park vault. We’ll like­ly see more can­did videos like this one emerge as well, from those who, like Pur­cell, found their time doc­u­ment­ing the artist a total­ly life-chang­ing expe­ri­ence.

via Clas­si­cal FM

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Read Prince’s First Inter­view, Print­ed in His High School News­pa­per (1976)

Prince Plays Unplugged and Wraps the Crowd Around His Lit­tle Fin­ger (2004)

Hear Prince’s Per­son­al Playlist of Par­ty Music: 22 Tracks That Will Bring Any Par­ty to Life

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

Image by Jim Pietry­ga, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“Would you let your daugh­ter mar­ry a Rolling Stone?”

From the start, the Rolling Stones were pro­mot­ed as the more debauched, dan­ger­ous alter­na­tive to the Bea­t­les, prompt­ing the above rather-famous tabloid head­line from their first years of fame. The Spo­ti­fy playlist below col­lects a whop­ping 613 tracks from this sem­i­nal rock band, all placed for the most part in chrono­log­i­cal order. (At 44 hours, there’s still whole albums–not major one mind you–missing, due to Spo­ti­fy). The Stones may have been more com­plex than their bad boy image, but they’ve nev­er shrugged it off over their five decades in music, and it’s prob­a­bly too late to stop now.

But it was rough going at the start, wasn’t it? Their first sin­gle was a cov­er of a Chuck Berry song on the A‑side, and a Willie Dixon song on the flip. Their debut album con­tained only three orig­i­nals, with only “Tell Me” stand­ing out from the pack as some­thing oth­er than a car­bon copy. Their sec­ond sin­gle was a song the Bea­t­les gave to them–and even then the Fab Four record­ed a ver­sion of it, unlike the hits they gave to Cil­la Black and oth­ers. Andrew Loog Old­ham was their man­ag­er first and a pro­duc­er sec­ond, not used to the stu­dio at all, and instead of the state-of-the-art Abbey Road stu­dios to play in, the band had Regent Sound stu­dios, with egg car­tons taped to the ceil­ing to baf­fle noise. If this was com­pe­ti­tion against the Bea­t­les, it cer­tain­ly didn’t look good at first.

But despite–or due to–those chal­lenges, the band gained suc­cess and earned respect, start­ing with “(I Can’t Get no) Sat­is­fac­tion” and appear­ances on Ed Sul­li­van and the T.A.M.I. Show, where they actu­al­ly fol­lowed James Brown and weren’t for­got­ten by his­to­ry.

The Stones spent those first years fol­low­ing fash­ion, always one step behind the Bea­t­les, going so far as to offer their own “Satan­ic” ver­sion of the psy­che­del­ic Sgt. Pepper’s. But then, instead of play­ing dev­il­ish dress-up, in May of 1968 they dropped “Jumpin Jack Flash,” which for the first time embod­ies a very real, dan­ger­ous ener­gy. It wasn’t planned. But 1968 was when the Stones took the rock man­tle from their friend­ly rivals. If any band was ready to be the bridge from the hope­ful ‘60s to the grimy ‘70s, it was the Stones.

Their ear­li­er mim­ic­ry of blues and rock’n’roll was one thing, but their amal­gam of rock, blues, and Amer­i­cana on albums like Sticky Fin­gers and Exile on Main Street was some­thing else entire­ly, a spe­cial kind of alche­my that also seemed to tax the entire band–which even­tu­al­ly lost one found­ing mem­ber and shuf­fled through gui­tarists to find Ron Wood.

The late ‘70s and ear­ly ‘80s were an odd time for the band, as their biggest hits then were most unlike their pre­vi­ous hits, dal­ly­ing with dis­co, chan­nel­ing Lou Reed, and set­ting them­selves up for a very con­fused decade. But still! All along the way the Stones kept releas­ing sin­gles that oth­er bands would give their eye teeth for.

The playlist ends with the release of 2016’s Blue and Lone­some, which found them right back where they start­ed: a col­lec­tion of well loved blues cov­ers from Howl­in’ Wolf, Lit­tle Wal­ter, and Willie Dixon. In the end, they brought it all back home.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Rolling Stones Intro­duce Blues­man Howl­in’ Wolf on US TV, One of the “Great­est Cul­tur­al Moments of the 20th Cen­tu­ry” (1965)

Mick Jag­ger Tells the Sto­ry Behind ‘Gimme Shel­ter’ and Mer­ry Clayton’s Haunt­ing Back­ground Vocals

The Rolling Stones Release a Soul­ful, Nev­er-Heard Acoustic Ver­sion of “Wild Hors­es”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.