The Making of “Bohemian Rhapsody”: Take a Deep Dive Into the Iconic Song with Queen’s 2002 Mini Documentary

in Music | November 22nd, 2018

Despite being fraught with pro­duc­tion dif­fi­cul­ties, an absent direc­tor, and a crit­i­cal quib­bling over its sex­u­al­i­ty pol­i­tics, Bohemi­an Rhap­sody, the biopic of Fred­die Mer­cury and Queen, has been doing very well at the box office. And though it has thrust Queen’s music back into the spot­light, has it even real­ly gone away?

The song itself, the 6 minute epic “Bohemi­an Rhap­sody,” was the top of the UK sin­gles charts for nine weeks upon its release and hasn’t been for­got­ten since. It’s part of our col­lec­tive DNA, but with a cer­tain caveat…it’s noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult to cov­er. It is so fine­ly con­struct­ed that it can’t be decon­struct­ed, leav­ing artists to stand in the shad­ow of Mercury’s deliv­ery. Bri­an May, in the above video, gives cred­it to Axl Rose for get­ting close to the pow­er­ful high reg­is­ters of Mer­cury, but even that was a kind of karaoke. And let’s not even talk about Kanye West’s stab at it.

So it’s a good time to check in with this 45 minute-long mini-doc on the mak­ing of the song, which took the band into the stratos­phere. Pro­duced in 2002 for the band’s Great­est Hits DVD, it fea­tures gui­tarist Bri­an May and drum­mer Roger Tay­lor. The first part is on the writ­ing of the song, the sec­ond part on the mak­ing of the music video, and the third, the bulk of the doc, on the pro­duc­tion.

Don’t expect any expla­na­tion of the sub­ject mat­ter of the song–as May says, Mer­cury would have shrugged off any inter­pre­ta­tion and dis­missed any search for depth. And while Mer­cury always took care over his lyrics, the pow­er is all there in the music.

As for the video, that came about from neces­si­ty, as the band want­ed to be on Top of the Pops and tour at the same time. By using their rehearsal stage at Elstree stu­dios for the per­for­mance footage and a side area for the choral/­close-up seg­ments, they made a strange­ly icon­ic video. (Who doesn’t think of Queen’s four mem­bers arranged in a dia­mond when those vocals start up?). The two main effects were a prism lens on the cam­era and video feed­back, all done live.

The last part is fas­ci­nat­ing and a deep dive into the mix. Bri­an May, along­side stu­dio engi­neer Justin Shirley Smith, play just the piano, bass, and drums from the song at first. Mer­cury was a self-taught pianist who played “like a drum­mer,” with a metronome in his head, says May.

The gui­tarist also iso­lates his var­i­ous gui­tar parts, includ­ing the har­mon­ics dur­ing the open­ing bal­lad por­tion, the “shiv­ers down my spine” sound made by scrap­ing the strings, and the famous solo, which he wrote as a coun­ter­point to Mercury’s melody. It’s geek­ery of the high­est order, but it’s for a song that deserves such atten­tion.

Inside The Rhap­sody will be added to our col­lec­tion of Free Doc­u­men­taries, a sub­set of our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay
Hear Fred­die Mer­cury & Queen’s Iso­lat­ed Vocals on Their Endur­ing Clas­sic Song, “We Are The Cham­pi­ons”

Fred­die Mercury’s Final Days: Watch a Poignant Mon­tage That Doc­u­ments the Last Chap­ter of the Singer’s Life

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.

Free Guided Imagery Recordings Help Kids Cope with Pain, Stress & Anxiety

in Health, Psychology | October 23rd, 2018

I don’t have to tell you mod­ern life is full of stres­sors that exac­er­bate hyper­ten­sion, depres­sion, and every­thing in-between. Ther­a­peu­tic stress reduc­tion tech­niques based in mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion, trau­ma research, and a num­ber of oth­er fields have pro­lif­er­at­ed in our dai­ly lives and every­day con­ver­sa­tion, help­ing peo­ple cope with chron­ic pain, career anx­i­ety, and the tox­ic mias­ma of our geopol­i­tics.

These meth­ods have been very suc­cess­ful among adult populations—of monks, vet­er­ans, clin­i­cal sub­jects, etc.—but adults process infor­ma­tion very dif­fer­ent­ly than chil­dren. And as every par­ent knows, kids get major­ly stressed out too, whether they’re absorb­ing our anx­i­eties sec­ond-hand or feel­ing the pres­sures of their own social and edu­ca­tion­al envi­ron­ments.

We can’t expect young chil­dren to sit still and pay atten­tion to their breath for thir­ty min­utes, or to change their men­tal scripts with cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­py. It’s far eas­i­er for kids to process things through their imag­i­na­tion, chan­nel­ing anx­i­ety through play, or art, or—as pedi­atric psy­chol­o­gists at the Children’s Hos­pi­tal of Orange Coun­ty (CHOC) explain—guided men­tal visu­al­iza­tion, or “guid­ed imagery,” as they call it. How does it work?

Guid­ed imagery involves envi­sion­ing a cer­tain goal to help cope with health prob­lems or the task or skill a child is try­ing to learn or mas­ter. Guid­ed imagery is most often used as a relax­ation tech­nique that involves sit­ting or lying qui­et­ly and imag­in­ing a favorite, peace­ful set­ting like a beach, mead­ow or for­est.

The ther­a­pists at CHOC “teach patients to imag­ine sights, sounds, smells, tastes or oth­er sen­sa­tions to cre­ate a kind of day­dream that ‘removes’ them from or gives them con­trol over their present sit­u­a­tion.” In the video at the top, Dr. Cindy Kim describes the tech­nique as “akin to biofeed­back,” and it has been espe­cial­ly help­ful for chil­dren fac­ing a scary med­ical pro­ce­dure.

While all of us might need to go to our hap­py place once in a while, most kids find it hard to relax with­out some form of cre­ative redi­rec­tion, like the guid­ed imagery pro­gram above from Johns Hop­kins All Children’s Hos­pi­tal. At the CHOC web­site, you’ll find over a dozen oth­er audio pro­grams tai­lored for pain and stress man­age­ment and relax­ation, for both young chil­dren and ado­les­cents. Lifehacker’s par­ent­ing edi­tor Michelle Woo describes a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­pling of the pro­grams:

• For pain man­age­ment for young kids, lis­ten to “The Spe­cial Cake.” Sam­ple line: “With your next deep breath in, notice the sweet smell of the yum­my frost­ing.”
• For pain man­age­ment for teens, lis­ten to “Climb­ing a Lad­der.” Sam­ple line: “Let’s have a look at the first step. As you put your foot on it, you begin to remem­ber a time when you real­ize that you can have con­trol over your body.”
• For anx­i­ety, lis­ten to “The Mag­ic Kite.” Sam­ple line: “All of the uncom­fort­able feel­ings or sad­ness or anger or pain or wor­ry are all on the ground and you are fly­ing away from it.”

As kids lis­ten to audio, Woo writes, “have them notice how their body feels—their breath­ing may slow and their mus­cles might relax.” And hey, there’s no rea­son guid­ed imagery can’t work for grown-ups too. Try it if you’re feel­ing stressed and let us know how it works for you.

via Life­hack­er

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Moby Lets You Down­load 4 Hours of Ambi­ent Music to Help You Sleep, Med­i­tate, Do Yoga & Not Pan­ic

Dai­ly Med­i­ta­tion Boosts & Revi­tal­izes the Brain and Reduces Stress, Har­vard Study Finds

How Stress Can Change Your Brain: An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion

Med­i­ta­tion 101: A Short, Ani­mat­ed Beginner’s Guide

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

The History of Philosophy Visualized in an Interactive Timeline

in Design, Philosophy | October 10th, 2018

The con­nec­tions we make between var­i­ous philoso­phers and philo­soph­i­cal schools are often con­nec­tions that have already been made for us by teach­ers and schol­ars on our paths through high­er edu­ca­tion. Many of us who have tak­en a phi­los­o­phy class or two leave it at that, con­tent we’ve got the gist of things and that spe­cial­ists can parse the details per­fect­ly well with­out us. But there are those curi­ous peo­ple who con­tin­ue to read abstruse and dif­fi­cult phi­los­o­phy after their intro class­es are over, for the sheer, per­verse joy of it, or from a burn­ing desire to under­stand truth, beau­ty, jus­tice, or what­ev­er.

And then there are those who embark on a thor­ough self-guid­ed tour of West­ern philo­soph­i­cal his­to­ry, attempt­ing, with­out the aid of uni­ver­si­ty depart­ments and fad­dish inter­pre­tive schemes, to weave the dis­parate strains of thought togeth­er. One such auto­di­dact and aca­d­e­m­ic out­sider, design­er Deniz Cem Önduygu of Istan­bul, has com­bined an ency­clo­pe­dic mind with a tal­ent for rig­or­ous out­line orga­ni­za­tion to pro­duce an inter­ac­tive time­line of the his­to­ry of philo­soph­i­cal ideas. It is “a pure­ly per­son­al project,” he writes, “that I’m doing in my own time, with my lim­it­ed knowl­edge, for myself.”

Önduygu shares the project not to show off his learn­ing but, more humbly, to “get feed­back and to make it acces­si­ble to those who are inter­est­ed.” It may be pre­cious few peo­ple who have both the time and incli­na­tion to teach them­selves the his­to­ry of phi­los­o­phy, but if you are one of them, this incred­i­bly dense info­graph­ic is as good a place to start as any, and while it may appear intim­i­dat­ing at first glance, its menu in the upper right cor­ner allows users to zero in on spe­cif­ic thinkers and schools, and to con­fine them­selves to small­er, more man­age­able areas of the whole.

As for the time­line itself, “view­ers can zoom in and out,” notes Dai­ly Nous, “and see philoso­phers list­ed in chrono­log­i­cal order, with ideas they’re asso­ci­at­ed with list­ed beneath them. These ideas, in turn, are con­nect­ed by green lines to sim­i­lar or sup­port­ing ideas else­where on the time­line, and con­nect­ed by red lines to oppos­ing or refut­ing ideas else­where on the time­line. If you hov­er your mouse cur­sor over a sin­gle idea, all but it and its con­nect­ed ideas fade. You can then click on the idea to bring those con­nect­ed ideas clos­er for ease of view­ing.”

The design­er admits this is a “nev­er-end­ing work in progress” and main­ly a source for remind­ing him­self of the main argu­ments of the philoso­phers he’s sur­veyed. The major sources for his time­line are “Bryan Magee’s The Sto­ry of Phi­los­o­phy and Thomas Baldwin’s Con­tem­po­rary Phi­los­o­phy, along with oth­er works for spe­cif­ic philoso­phers and ideas.” But many of the con­nec­tions Önduygu draws in this exten­sive web of green and red are his own.

He explains his ratio­nale here, not­ing, “The lines here do not always depict a direct trans­fer between two peo­ple; I think of them as trac­ing the devel­op­ment of an idea through­out time with­in our col­lec­tive con­cep­tion.” Spend some more time with this impres­sive project at the His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Sum­ma­rized & Visu­al­ized (the site works best in Chrome), and feel free to get in touch with its cre­ator with con­struc­tive crit­i­cism. He wel­comes feed­back and is open to oppos­ing ideas, as every life­long learn­er should be.

via Dai­ly Nous

Relat­ed Con­tent:

150+ Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

A His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy in 81 Video Lec­tures: From Ancient Greece to Mod­ern Times 

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy … With­out Any Gaps

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

The Deeply Meditative Electronic Music of Avant-Garde Composer Eliane Radigue

in Music | October 2nd, 2018

Among a num­ber of influ­en­tial women in elec­tron­ic music whom we’ve pro­filed here before, French avant-garde com­pos­er Eliane Radigue stands out for her sin­gle-mind­ed ded­i­ca­tion to “a cer­tain music that I wished to make,” as she says in the video por­trait above, “this par­tic­u­lar music and no oth­er.” Her com­po­si­tions are haunt­ing and med­i­ta­tive, “pre­fig­ur­ing the con­cept of ‘deep lis­ten­ing,’ expressed by Pauline Oliv­eros some years lat­er,” as Red Bull Acad­e­my notes in an exten­sive pro­file of Radigue.

Using feed­back, tape loops, field record­ings, and, begin­ning in the 70s, the ARP 2500 mod­u­lar syn­the­siz­er, Radigue “devel­oped sound­scapes… an inter­weav­ing of elec­tron­ic drones, sub­se­quent­ly assim­i­lat­ed to what would lat­er be called drone music.” But she has reject­ed the term as too sta­t­ic, stress­ing the vari­a­tions and con­stant change in her music:

In Radigue’s work, sounds inter­act with each oth­er like the cells of an organ­ism, pro­gress­ing in glis­san­do in an extreme­ly slow and sub­tle way. “I had found my own vocab­u­lary. For me, main­tain­ing the sound did not inter­est me as such; it was pri­mar­i­ly a means to bring out the over­tones, har­mon­ics and sub­har­mon­ics. This is what made it pos­si­ble to devel­op this inner rich­ness of sound.”

Radigue seems par­tic­u­lar­ly self-assured, pos­sessed of an intu­itive sense of her work’s direc­tions from the begin­ning. “I can­not start a piece if I don’t have an idea of what it would become, but what I would call the spir­it,” she says in an inter­view with Elec­tron­ic Beats.

“The spir­it of what I want­ed to do should be there… And I keep that spir­it, that theme in mind, quite often sev­er­al months before I start to do some­thing. So, when I come to make the sounds it’s already there.”

But her career took many turns on a path through the com­po­si­tion­al cen­ters of mid-cen­tu­ry avant-garde music. After study­ing tra­di­tion­al music the­o­ry as a child, she left her home in Nice at 19 and mar­ried the artist Arman. She was swept into an “excit­ing bohemi­an life” that would soon take her, in 1955, into the orbit of musique con­crete pio­neers Pierre Scha­ef­fer and Pierre Hen­ry.

While work­ing as an intern for the com­posers (“If I claimed to be more, I don’t think they would have accept­ed me, because they were both the damn­d­est machos!”), Radigue learned their meth­ods and col­lab­o­rat­ed on their com­po­si­tions. In 1967, she worked with Hen­ry on L’Apocalypse de Jean, a piece designed to last for 24 hours. She end­ed her (unpaid) appren­tice­ship that year and began focus­ing on her own work, like Vice Ver­sa (1970, excerpt­ed fur­ther up) and Geerl­rian­dre (1972, above) and Trip­tych (1978, below).

You can hear more of Radigue’s work at Ubuweb, includ­ing a more recent syn­the­siz­er piece record­ed in 1992, as well as a 1980 inter­view for pro­gram The Morn­ing Con­cert with Charles Amirkhan­ian. That same year, she became a con­vert to Tibetan Bud­dhism, and her work—like the Adnos series, below—was inspired by the religion’s his­to­ry, her own med­i­ta­tion prac­tice, and texts like the Bar­do Thodol.

As the puls­ing, dron­ing, hum­ming com­po­si­tions she cre­at­ed through­out the late 20th cen­tu­ry have become inte­gral to the sound of the 21st, Radique has moved on, since 2001, to writ­ing work for acoustic instru­ments. She made her last elec­tron­ic piece, I’lle-Re-sonante, in 2000. The move came in part from requests she received from musi­cians, but it also rep­re­sents a delib­er­ate turn away from mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy. “There’s always some­thing miss­ing with dig­i­tal,” she says, even if it is some­how clean­er and clear­er.”

Radigue has always favored the absorp­tion of ana­logue sound, intent on tam­ing its unpre­dictabil­i­ty as a med­i­ta­tor tames the dart­ing, leap­ing, busy mind. “My music is always chang­ing,” she says, “It comes from the first access I had to elec­tron­ic sounds which was the wild sounds com­ing from feed­back,” the noise of a micro­phone and a speak­er get­ting too close to each oth­er. “If you find the right place, which is very nar­row, then you can move it very slow­ly and it changes but that requires a lot of patience.”

The word could define her entire approach, one rad­i­cal­ly opposed to instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and quick fix­es, focused sin­gu­lar­ly on out­comes while also ful­ly present for the process.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

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

Brian Eno Reveals His Favorite Film Soundtracks

in Music | September 27th, 2018

Think of “inter­view­ing Bri­an Eno” (lis­ten to it here) like a piece of his gen­er­a­tive music. Yes, the man has no prob­lems talk­ing and actu­al­ly encour­ages it. But input the same old ques­tions about those same four albums (you know them, right?) and you get the same old answers as out­put. Feed in a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent subject–like his favorite film soundtracks–and lo and behold, a very intrigu­ing 80 min­utes fol­lows.

That’s what hap­pened when Hugh Corn­well (lead vocal­ist of The Stran­glers) inter­viewed Mr. Peter George St John le Bap­tiste de la Salle Eno–that’s Bri­an to you–in 2013 for his short-lived inter­net radio show on film.

Eno has always had an inter­est in film. As he men­tions in the sec­ond half of the show, he pro­duced his 1976/78 album Music for Films not for any spe­cif­ic film, but in the hopes that they would be used for sound­tracks in the future. Also, he hoped that the descrip­tive titles–“Alternative 3,” “Patrolling Wire Borders”–and the evoca­tive music would lead lis­ten­ers to cre­ate films in their heads. Since then every track has been used at least once, and doc­u­men­tar­i­ans like Adam Cur­tis have used Eno to great effect.

The only track, he reveals, on that album to be writ­ten for a film was clos­er “Final Sun­set” put to great, tran­scen­dent use in Derek Jarman’s 1976 film Sebas­tiane.

But if you think Eno might choose sim­i­lar ambi­ent tracks or instru­men­tals dur­ing the rest of the inter­view, you’re in for a sur­prise.

As he grew up, Eno had no expo­sure to what was “cool” and what was not. And that led to an ear that heard things stripped of cul­tur­al con­text. When he plays a track from the musi­cal Okla­homa called “The Farmer and the Cow­boy,” we might just be able to put aside our mem­o­ries of high school pro­duc­tions and hear the weird, humor­ous and very excit­ing vocal arrange­ment under­neath. Sim­i­lar­ly, despite not being the biggest fan of Elvis Pres­ley at the time (“I was a snob,” Eno says), he selects this jaun­ty pop num­ber “Did­ja Ever” from G.I. Blues. “One of the wit­ti­est, clever­est bits of writ­ing,” as he calls it, writ­ten by Sid Wayne and Sher­man Edwards, who wrote at least one song in every sub­se­quent Pres­ley movie.

Eno also has space for the jazz of Miles Davis and the evoca­tive score for Louis Malle’s 1961 film Ele­va­tor to the Gal­lows, in par­tic­u­lar how it was record­ed: impro­vised live while watch­ing the screen. (Not men­tioned: its huge influ­ence on Ange­lo Badalamenti’s Twin Peaks sound­track.)

There’s much more in the inter­view to check out, includ­ing the source of a sam­ple used in My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and one of David Bowie’s best but most under­rat­ed songs. Lis­ten here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Bri­an Eno’s Advice for Those Who Want to Do Their Best Cre­ative Work: Don’t Get a Job

The “True” Sto­ry Of How Bri­an Eno Invent­ed Ambi­ent Music

Bri­an Eno Lists 20 Books for Rebuild­ing Civ­i­liza­tion & 59 Books For Build­ing Your Intel­lec­tu­al World

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.

A Brief History of Guitar Distortion: From Early Experiments to Happy Accidents to Classic Effects Pedals

in Music, Technology | September 25th, 2018

The sound of rock and roll is the sound of a dis­tort­ed gui­tar, but the his­to­ry of that sound pre­dates the genre by a few years. It start­ed out with blues and West­ern swing gui­tarists, search­ing “for a dirt­i­er sound,” writes Noisey in a brief his­to­ry, “a sound that reflect­ed the grit­ti­ness of their music.” That sound was pio­neered by a gui­tarist named Junior Barnard, who played with Bob Wills and his Texas Play­boys and designed his own hum­buck­ing pick­ups to pro­duce a fat­ter, loud­er tone and push his small amp into over­drive. As the Poly­phon­ic video above notes, Barnard was an aggres­sive play­er who need­ed aggres­sive tones, and so, as gui­tarists have always done, he invent­ed the means him­self.

Oth­er fore­run­ners achieved dis­tort­ed tones by crank­ing ear­ly amps like the 18-watt Fend­er Super, first intro­duced in 1947, all the way up, until the vac­u­um tubes clipped the sig­nal to keep from break­ing. Goree Carter, some­times cred­it­ed with record­ing the first rock and roll song, “Rock A While,” pushed the over­driv­en sound in a heav­ier direc­tion than Barnard, play­ing dirty Chuck Berry-like licks in 1949 before Chuck Berry’s first hit. Dis­tor­tion, a sound audio engi­neers strug­gled might­i­ly to avoid in live sound and record­ing, gave blues-based gui­tarists exact­ly what they need­ed for the loud, lewd post­war sounds of rock.

The dis­tort­ed tones of the 40s came from a delib­er­ate desire for grit. Lat­er, even dirt­i­er, gui­tar tones were the result of hap­py acci­dents. Anoth­er con­tender for the first rock and roll recording—Ike Turn­er & His Kings of Rhythm’s 1951 “Rock­et 88”—con­tains some very dis­tort­ed rhythms from gui­tarist Willie Kizart, who, leg­end has it, dropped his tweed Fend­er amp before the ses­sion. Sam Phillips “leaned into” the sound, notes Poly­phon­ic, imme­di­ate­ly hear­ing its serendip­i­tous poten­tial.

Sev­en years lat­er, the evil over­drive of Link Wray’s instru­men­tal “Rum­ble”—so sin­is­ter it was once banned from radio—came from an inten­tion­al equip­ment fail­ure. Wray repeat­ed­ly stabbed the speak­er cone of his amp with a pen­cil.

Do-it-your­self dis­tor­tion con­tin­ued into the six­ties. Fol­low­ing Wray’s lead, the Kinks’ Dave Davies slashed his amp’s speak­er with a razor blade for the fuzzed-out attack of “You Real­ly Got Me” in 1965. But a few years ear­li­er, “fuzz” had already been cod­i­fied in an effects ped­al: Gibson’s 1962 Mae­stro FZ‑1 Fuzz-Tone, part­ly inspired by anoth­er acci­dent, a faulty mix­ing board con­nec­tion that dis­tort­ed Grady Martin’s bass solo in the Mar­ty Rob­bins’ 1961 coun­try tune “Don’t Wor­ry” (below, at 1:25). The Fuzz-Tone most famous­ly drove Kei­th Richards’ riff in “Sat­is­fac­tion,” but it did­n’t sell well. Oth­er, more pop­u­lar fuzz box­es fol­lowed, like the Arbiter Fuzz Face, Jimi Hendrix’s choice for his dis­tort­ed tones.

Hen­drix bril­liant­ly inno­vat­ed new gui­tar effects, and the pow­er­ful Mar­shall amps he played through also drove the dis­tort­ed sounds of Clap­ton, Town­shend, Page, Black­more, etc., who com­pet­ed for grit­ti­er and heav­ier tones and in the process more or less invent­ed met­al gui­tar. In the sev­en­ties and eight­ies, dis­tort­ed tones took on some stan­dard­ized forms, thanks to tran­sis­tors and clas­sic effects ped­als like the Ibanez Tube Scream­er, Pro­Co Rat, and Boss DS‑1. Dis­tinc­tions between over­drive, dis­tor­tion, and fuzz effects can get tech­ni­cal, but in the ear­ly days of rock and roll, dis­tort­ed gui­tar tones came from what­ev­er worked, and it’s that wild ear­ly sound of gear pushed to its lim­its and beyond that every mod­ern dis­tor­tion effect attempts to repli­cate.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Only Instru­men­tal Ever Banned from the Radio: Link Wray’s Seduc­tive, Raunchy Song, “Rum­ble” (1958)

Two Gui­tar Effects That Rev­o­lu­tion­ized Rock: The Inven­tion of the Wah-Wah & Fuzz Ped­als

How a Record­ing Stu­dio Mishap Cre­at­ed the Famous Drum Sound That Defined 80s Music & Beyond

Hear the Only Instru­men­tal Ever Banned from the Radio: Link Wray’s Seduc­tive, Raunchy Song, “Rum­ble” (1958)

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

How the Grateful Dead’s “Wall of Sound”–a Monster, 600-Speaker Sound System–Changed Rock Concerts & Live Music Forever

in Music, Technology | September 17th, 2018

There is a scene in Return of the Jedi when Luke Sky­walk­er defeats the mon­strous, man-eat­ing Ran­cor, crush­ing its skull with a por­tullis, and we see the beast’s keep­er, a port­ly shirt­less gen­tle­man in leather breech­es and head­gear, weep­ing over the loss of his beloved friend. I think of this scene when I read about a night in 1974 at San Francisco’s Win­ter­land Ball­room when Grate­ful Dead drum­mer Mick­ey Hart walked on the stage and found the band’s sound engi­neer Owsley “Bear” Stan­ley stand­ing in front of “a sol­id wall of over 600 speak­ers.”

As Enmore Audio tells it:

Tears streamed down his face and he whis­pered to the mass of wood, met­al, and wiring, with the ten­der­ness of any par­ent wit­ness­ing their child’s first recital, “I love you and you love me—how could you fail me?”

The sto­ry sums up Owsley’s total ded­i­ca­tion to what became known as “The Wall of Sound,” a feat of tech­ni­cal engi­neer­ing that “changed the way tech­ni­cians thought about live engi­neer­ing.” The “three-sto­ry behe­moth… was free of all dis­tor­tion… served as its own mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem and solved many, if not all of the tech­ni­cal prob­lems that sound engi­neers faced at that time.” But, while it had required much tri­al and error and many refine­ments, it did not fail, as you’ll learn in the Poly­phon­ic video above.

Live sound prob­lems not only bedev­iled engi­neers but bands and audi­ences as well. Through­out the six­ties, rock con­certs grew in size and scope, audi­ences grew larg­er and loud­er, yet ampli­fi­ca­tion did not. Low-wattage gui­tar amps could hard­ly be heard over the sound of scream­ing fans. With­out mon­i­tor­ing sys­tems, bands could bare­ly hear them­selves play. This “noise cri­sis,” writes Moth­er­board, “con­front­ed musi­cians who went elec­tric at the height of the war in Viet­nam,” but it has been “rou­tine­ly snuffed from the annals of mod­ern music.”

In dra­mat­ic recre­ations of the peri­od, drums and gui­tars boom and wail over the noise of sta­di­um and fes­ti­val crowds. For ears accus­tomed to the pow­er of mod­ern sound sys­tems, the actu­al expe­ri­ence, by con­trast, would have been under­whelm­ing. Most Bea­t­les fans know the band quit tour­ing in 1966 because they couldn’t hear them­selves over the audi­ence. Things improved some­what, but the Dead, “obsessed with their sound to com­pul­sive degrees,” could not abide the noisy, feed­back-laden, under­pow­ered sit­u­a­tion. Still, they weren’t about to give up play­ing live, and cer­tain­ly not with Owsley on board.

“A Ken­tucky-born crafts­man and for­mer bal­let dancer”—and a man­u­fac­tur­er and dis­trib­uter of “mass quan­ti­ties of high-grade LSD,” whose prof­its financed the Dead for a time—Owsley applied his obses­sion with “sound as both a con­cept and a phys­i­cal thing.” To solve the noise cri­sis for the Dead, he first built an inno­v­a­tive sound sys­tem in 1973 (after serv­ing a cou­ple stints in prison for sell­ing acid). The fol­low­ing year, he sug­gest­ed putting the PA sys­tem behind the band, “a crazy idea at the time.”

His exper­i­ments in ‘74 evolved to include line arrays—“columns of speak­ers… designed to con­trol the dis­per­sion of sound across the fre­quen­cy range”—noise-canceling micro­phones to clear up mud­dy vocals, six sep­a­rate sound sys­tems that could iso­late eleven chan­nels, and a quadra­phon­ic encoder for the bass, “which took a sig­nal,” Enmore notes, “from each string and pro­ject­ed it through its own set of speak­ers.” The mas­sive Wall of Sound could not last long. It had to be stream­lined into a far more man­age­able and cost-effec­tive tour­ing rig. All the same, Owsley and the band’s will­ing­ness take ideas and exe­cu­tion to extreme lengths changed live sound for­ev­er for the bet­ter.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

11,215 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

Jer­ry Gar­cia Talks About the Birth of the Grate­ful Dead & Play­ing Kesey’s Acid Tests in New Ani­mat­ed Video

The Grate­ful Dead’s Final Farewell Con­certs Now Stream­ing Online

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

Hunter S. Thompson Hated Getting Caricatured as “Uncle Duke” in Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury: ‘If I Ever Catch That Little Bastard, I’ll Tear His Lungs Out’

in Comics/Cartoons | September 11th, 2018

Gar­ry Trudeau’s Doones­bury is hard­ly the cul­tur­al touch­stone it once was, but then again, nei­ther are com­ic strips in gen­er­al, and polit­i­cal strips in par­tic­u­lar. No amount of urbane wit­ti­cism and sequen­tial nar­ra­tive humor can com­pete with the crazed jum­ble of arcane memes in the 21st cen­tu­ry. Hunter S. Thomp­son may have writ­ten about the late-20th cen­tu­ry polit­i­cal scene as a hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry night­mare, but per­haps even he would be sur­prised at how close real­i­ty has come to his hyper­bole.

In its hey­day, Trudeau’s top­i­cal, lib­er­al-lean­ing satire of politi­cians, polit­i­cal jour­nal­ists, clue­less hip­pies, and cyn­i­cal cor­po­rate and aca­d­e­m­ic elites hit the tar­get more often than it missed. For many fans, one of Trudeau’s most beloved char­ac­ters, Uncle Duke—a car­i­ca­ture of Thomp­son intro­duced in 1974—was a per­fect bulls­eye. Writer Wal­ter Isaac­son paid tongue-in-cheek trib­ute to the char­ac­ter as his “hero” on the strip’s 40th anniver­sary. Duke even made an ani­mat­ed appear­ance on Lar­ry King Live in 2000 (below), announc­ing his can­di­da­cy for pres­i­dent after serv­ing as Gov­er­nor of Amer­i­can Samoa and Ambas­sador to Chi­na.

It would be a tremen­dous under­state­ment to say that Thomp­son him­self was not flat­tered by the por­tray­al. The amoral Duke—a “self-obsessed, utter­ly unscrupu­lous epit­o­me of evil who has sent a chill down read­ers’ spines,” writes The Guardian’s Ed Pilk­ing­ton, sent Thomp­son into a parox­ysm of rage. The gonzo writer saw the char­ac­ter “as a form of copy­right infringe­ment.” He “sent an enve­lope of used toi­let paper to Trudeau and once mem­o­rably said: ‘If I ever catch that lit­tle bas­tard, I’ll tear his lungs out.’” The threats got even more spe­cif­ic and grue­some.

“Hunter despised Trudeau,” writes Thomp­son biog­ra­ph­er William McK­een in his book Out­law Jour­nal­ist. “’He’s going to be sur­prised some­day,’ Hunter said. ‘I’m going to set him on fire first, then crush every one of his ribs, one by one, start­ing from the bot­tom.’” He had been turned into a joke. Jan Wen­ner, “when he couldn’t get Hunter to write for him… put him on the cov­er of Rolling Stone any­way, as Uncle Duke in a Trudeau-drawn cov­er.” Thomp­son pon­dered a $20 mil­lion libel suit. “All over Amer­i­ca,” he rant­ed, “kids grow up want­i­ng to be fire­men and cops, pres­i­dents and lawyers, but nobody wants to grow up to be a car­toon char­ac­ter.”

The mock­ery began imme­di­ate­ly after Uncle Duke first appeared in the strip in 1974. In a High Times inter­view, Thomp­son describes the day he first learned of the char­ac­ter:

It was a hot, near­ly blaz­ing day in Wash­ing­ton, and I was com­ing down the steps of the Supreme Court look­ing for some­body, Carl Wag­n­er or some­body like that. I’d been inside the press sec­tion, and then all of a sud­den I saw a crowd of peo­ple and I heard them say­ing, “Uncle Duke,” I heard the words Duke, Uncle; it didn’t seem to make any sense. I looked around, and I rec­og­nized peo­ple who were total strangers point­ing at me and laugh­ing. I had no idea what the fuck they were talk­ing about. I had got­ten out of the habit of read­ing fun­nies when I start­ed read­ing the Times. I had no idea what this out­burst meant…It was a weird expe­ri­ence, and as it hap­pened I was sort of by myself up there on the stairs, and I thought: “What in the fuck mad­ness is going on? Why am I being mocked by a gang of strangers and friends on the steps of the Supreme Court? Then I must have asked some­one, and they told me that Uncle Duke had appeared in the Post that morn­ing.

While Trudeau seems to have tak­en the phys­i­cal threats seri­ous­ly, he didn’t back down from his relent­less satir­i­cal take­downs of Thompson’s vio­lent ten­den­cies, para­noia, and com­i­cal­ly exag­ger­at­ed sub­stance abuse. As Dan­ger­ous Minds describes, in 1992, Trudeau pub­lished a book called Action Fig­ure!: The Life and Times of Doonesbury’s Uncle Duke “that chron­i­cled the mis­ad­ven­tures of Uncle Duke.” It also “came with a five-inch action fig­ure of the dear Uncle Duke along with a mar­ti­ni glass, an Uzi, cig­a­rette hold­er, a bot­tle of booze, and a chain­saw.”

See the Uncle Duke action fig­ure at the top—one of a half-dozen images Dan­ger­ous Minds pulled from eBay (his t‑shirt reads “Death Before Uncon­scious­ness.”) As much as Thomp­son despised Uncle Duke, and Trudeau for cre­at­ing him, he him­self helped feed the caricature—with his alter ego Raoul Duke and his chron­i­cles of his own bizarre behav­ior. Trudeau’s admi­ra­tion, of a sort, for Thompson’s excess­es was a con­tin­u­ing dri­ver of the writer’s fame, for good or ill. “Uncle Duke was who fans craved,” writes Sharon Eber­son at the Pitts­burgh Post-Gazette, “and Thomp­son often felt oblig­ed” to live up to his car­toon image.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thompson’s Deca­dent Dai­ly Break­fast: The “Psy­chic Anchor” of His Fre­net­ic Cre­ative Life

How Hunter S. Thomp­son Gave Birth to Gonzo Jour­nal­ism: Short Film Revis­its Thompson’s Sem­i­nal 1970 Piece on the Ken­tucky Der­by

Read 11 Free Arti­cles by Hunter S. Thomp­son That Span His Gonzo Jour­nal­ist Career (1965–2005)

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

Discover “Journey of the Universe,” a Multimedia Project That Explores Humanity’s Place in the Epic History of the Cosmos

in Astronomy, Books, History | September 5th, 2018

Today we know what no pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion knew: the his­to­ry of the uni­verse and of the unfold­ing of life on Earth. Through the aston­ish­ing achieve­ments of nat­ur­al sci­en­tists world­wide, we now have a detailed account of how galax­ies and stars, plan­ets and liv­ing organ­isms, human beings and human con­scious­ness came to be.

With this knowl­edge, the ques­tion of what role we play in the 14-bil­lion-year his­to­ry of the uni­verse impos­es itself with greater poignan­cy than ever before. In ask­ing our­selves how we will tell the sto­ry of Earth to our chil­dren, we must inevitably con­sid­er the role of human­i­ty in its his­to­ry, and how we con­nect with the intri­cate web of life on Earth.

In Jour­ney of the Uni­verse–a mul­ti­me­dia edu­ca­tion­al project that fea­tures a book, film and free online courses–evolutionary philoso­pher Bri­an Thomas Swimme and his­to­ri­an of reli­gions Mary Eve­lyn Tuck­er pro­vide an ele­gant, sci­ence-based nar­ra­tive to tell this epic sto­ry, lead­ing up to the chal­lenges of our present moment. The authors describe the ori­gins of humans on Earth, how we devel­oped a sym­bol­ic con­scious­ness, and how our abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate using sym­bols make humans a “plan­e­tary pres­ence.”

We are now faced with a new dynamic—one where the sur­vival of the species and entire ecosys­tems depend pri­mar­i­ly on human activ­i­ty, and the choic­es humans make.

Weav­ing togeth­er the find­ings of mod­ern sci­ence togeth­er with endur­ing wis­dom found in the human­is­tic tra­di­tions of the West, Asia, and indige­nous peo­ples, the authors explore cos­mic evo­lu­tion as a pro­found­ly won­drous process based on cre­ativ­i­ty, con­nec­tion, and inter­de­pen­dence, and they envi­sion an unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for the world’s peo­ple to address the daunt­ing eco­log­i­cal and social chal­lenges of our times.

Devel­oped over sev­er­al decades, and inspired by the authors’ long col­lab­o­ra­tion with Thomas Berry, Jour­ney of the Uni­verse boasts an impres­sive ros­ter of sci­ence advi­sors includ­ing Ursu­la Good­e­nough, Craig Kochel, and Ter­ry Dea­con.

Jour­ney of the Uni­verse is a mul­ti­me­dia edu­ca­tion­al project that includes:

1.) The Jour­ney of the Uni­verse: A Sto­ry for Our Time Spe­cial­iza­tion avail­able on Cours­era, cre­at­ed by Yale.  This is a col­lec­tion of three Mas­sive Online Open Cours­es that take stu­dents through the sci­en­tif­ic and cul­tur­al cos­mol­o­gy found through­out Jour­ney of the Uni­verse, as well as deep into its lin­eage with cul­tur­al his­to­ri­an and cos­mol­o­gist Thomas Berry:

Course 1: Jour­ney of the Uni­verse: The Unfold­ing of Life

Course 2: Jour­ney of the Uni­verse: Weav­ing Knowl­edge and Action

Course 3: The World­view of Thomas Berry: The Flour­ish­ing of the Earth Com­mu­ni­ty

2) The Jour­ney of the Uni­verse Film, win­ner of the 2012 San Francisco/Northern Cal­i­for­nia Emmy® Award for best doc­u­men­tary. You can watch the trail­er for the film above

3) The Jour­ney of the Uni­verse Book, pub­lished by Yale Uni­ver­si­ty Press. Trans­lat­ed into French, Ital­ian, Span­ish, Ger­man, Turk­ish, Chi­nese, Kore­an, Indone­sian.

4) The Jour­ney of the Uni­verse Con­ver­sa­tion Series, a twen­ty-part edu­ca­tion­al series inte­grates the per­spec­tives of the sci­ences and the human­i­ties into a retelling of our 13.7 bil­lion year sto­ry. In a series of one-on-one inter­views, sci­en­tists, his­to­ri­ans, and envi­ron­men­tal­ists explore the unfold­ing sto­ry of the uni­verse and Earth and the role of the human in respond­ing to our present chal­lenges.

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emotionally-Charged Songs: “Losing My Religion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

in Music | September 3rd, 2018

Peo­ple lose their reli­gion all the time. It hap­pens in all sorts of ways. And R.E.M.’s 1991 song “Los­ing My Reli­gion” has spo­ken to so many in the midst of these expe­ri­ences that we might won­der if singer/songwriter Michael Stipe had a sim­i­lar life change when he wrote those lyrics. Not so much, he says above in an inter­view with Dutch sta­tion Top 2000 a gogo. “What the song is about has noth­ing to with reli­gion,” he says.

The lyric comes from an old South­ern col­lo­qui­al­ism mean­ing that some­thing so upset­ting has hap­pened “that you might lose your reli­gion.” Stipe used that old-time notion as a metaphor for unre­quit­ed love, a dif­fer­ent kind of faith, one he describes in painful­ly ten­ta­tive terms: “hold­ing back, then reach­ing for­ward, then pulling back again, then reach­ing for­ward again.”

He explains anoth­er of the song’s ambi­gu­i­ties hid­den with­in the ellip­ti­cal lyrics: “You don’t ever real­ly know if the per­son that I’m reach­ing out for is aware of me, if they even know that I exist.” It’s the heady tur­moil of a roman­tic crush raised to the heights of saint­ly suf­fer­ing. A brood­ing, alt-rock ver­sion of love songs like “Earth Angel.” Giv­en the role of devo­tion in so much reli­gious prac­tice, there’s no rea­son the song can’t still be about los­ing one’s reli­gion for lis­ten­ers, but now we know what Stipe him­self had in mind.

Some oth­er fun facts we learn about this huge hit: Stipe record­ed the song almost naked and kind of pissed-off—he had pushed to deliv­er his vocals in one emo­tion­al take, but the stu­dio engi­neer seemed half-asleep. And his awk­ward, angu­lar dance in the oh-so-90s video direct­ed by Tarsem Singh, above? He pulled his inspi­ra­tion from Sinead O’Connor’s St. Vitus dance in 1990s’ “The Emperor’s New Clothes” video and—no surprise—from David Byrne’s “riv­et­ing” herky-jerky moves.

While the record com­pa­ny saw the song’s mass appeal, bassist Mike Mills express­es his ini­tial sur­prise at their choice of “Los­ing My Reli­gion” as Out of Time’s first sin­gle: “That’s a great idea. It makes no sense at all, it’s 5 min­utes long, it has no cho­rus, and a man­dolin is the lead instru­ment. It’s per­fect for R.E.M. because it flouts all the rules.” This peri­od saw the band fur­ther devel­op­ing its moody down­beat folk side, yet the album that pro­duced this song also gave us “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple,” the pop­pi­est, most upbeat song R.E.M.—and maybe any band—had ever record­ed, a true tes­ta­ment to their emo­tion­al range.

The fol­low­ing year, Auto­mat­ic for the Peo­ple came out, draw­ing on mate­r­i­al writ­ten dur­ing the Out of Time ses­sions and again fea­tur­ing two sin­gles that vast­ly con­trast­ed in tone, maudlin tear­jerk­er “Every­body Hurts” and the cel­e­bra­to­ry Andy Kauf­man trib­ute “Man on the Moon.” Anoth­er song from that album that didn’t get as much atten­tion, “Try Not to Breath,” hear­kens back to a much ear­li­er R.E.M. folk song, the Civ­il War-themed “Swan Swan H” from Life’s Rich Pageant.

As we hear the band explain above in an episode of Song Exploder, the song began its life on a Civ­il War-era instru­ment, the dul­cimer. Then its son­ic influ­ences expand­ed to include two of Peter Buck­’s favorite musi­cal gen­res, surf rock and spaghet­ti west­ern. The episode con­tains many more fas­ci­nat­ing insid­er insights from R.E.M. about “Try Not to Breathe,” which may be one of the sad­dest songs they’ve ever writ­ten, a song about choos­ing to die rather than suf­fer.

Hear the song’s orig­i­nal demo and ref­er­ences to Blade Run­ner, get a glimpse into Stipe’s visu­al song­writ­ing process, and learn the very per­son­al inspi­ra­tion from his fam­i­ly his­to­ry for lyrics like “baby don’t shiv­er now, why do you shiv­er now?” Unlike “Los­ing My Reli­gion,” this song does, in some ways, pull musi­cal­ly and emo­tion­al­ly from Stipe’s reli­gious back­ground.

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

R.E.M.’s “Los­ing My Reli­gion” Reworked from Minor to Major Scale

Why R.E.M.’s 1991 Out of Time May Be the “Most Polit­i­cal­ly Impor­tant Album” Ever

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

Two Very Ear­ly Con­cert Films of R.E.M., Live in ‘81 and ‘82

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