Many of today’s thir­teen-year-olds sure­ly have the Bea­t­les on their iPods (or their iPhones or Androids, or what­ev­er now ranks as the cut­ting-edge ado­les­cen­t’s lis­ten­ing device of choice). Yet they would have been born in 2000, forty years after the dis­so­lu­tion of the Bea­t­les them­selves. Their par­ents would prob­a­bly have been born in the six­ties, already the height of the band’s cre­ativ­i­ty. The star­tling impli­ca­tion: these kids rock out to some of the very same songs their grand­par­ents may well have loved. As P.J. O’Rourke once wrote upon spot­ting an aged hip­pie with a walk­er and a hear­ing aid at an Iraq War protest, sic tran­sit gen­er­a­tion gap. But back in 1967, when that gap yawned so chas­mi­cal­ly wide as to ren­der any com­mu­ni­ca­tion across it seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble, the young Baby Boomers and their own Great Depres­sion, Sec­ond World War-forged par­ents used the musi­cal land­scape to draw their bat­tle lines. Who could bro­ker a peace? Enter com­pos­er, pianist, and New York Phil­har­mon­ic direc­tor Leonard Bern­stein. Born in 1918 and hailed as one of the most accom­plished and astute musi­cal minds in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, he could not only appre­ci­ate the tech­niques and inno­va­tions of the youth-dri­ven pop-rock explo­sion of the six­ties, he could get the ear of his mid­dle-aged peers and explain to them just what they were miss­ing.

The tele­vi­sion broad­cast Inside Pop: The Rock Rev­o­lu­tion gave Bern­stein a mass-com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form on which per­form this analy­sis, ask­ing aloud the ques­tions of (a) why this music so infu­ri­ates Amer­i­cans over a cer­tain age and (b) why he him­self likes it so much. Decked out in a square-friend­ly suit and tie and appear­ing on the even square-friend­lier CBS net­work, Bern­stein plays clips of songs by the Bea­t­les, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Byrds, and the Asso­ci­a­tion, break­ing down the gen­uine musi­co­log­i­cal mer­its of each: their vocal expres­sions, their unex­pect­ed key changes, their count­less son­ic lay­ers, their stripped-down melod­ic sense, and their lyrics’ adept­ness of impli­ca­tion (“one of our teenager’s strongest weapons”). Bern­stein also calls upon “Soci­ety’s Child” singer-song­writer Janis Ian and Beach Boys mas­ter­mind Bri­an Wil­son to per­form live. Quite a few crew-cut, cardi­gan-clad, mar­ti­ni-sip­ping adults must have come away from Inside Pop with a new, if grudg­ing, appre­ci­a­tion for the craft of these long-haired young­sters. But now, to address the con­cerns of the 21st cen­tu­ry’s bewil­dered grown-ups, who will go on tele­vi­sion and explain dub­step?

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via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed con­tent:

Leonard Bernstein’s Mas­ter­ful Lec­tures on Music (11+ Hours of Video Record­ed in 1973)

Leonard Bernstein’s First “Young People’s Con­cert” at Carnegie Hall Asks, “What Does Music Mean?”

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Jeff Slat­nick has been the “guy in the store” over at Music Inn World Instru­ments for over 40 years, a land­mark music store in the West Vil­lage of NYC. When you step into the Music Inn, you’re step­ping into “a muse­um, rich with music his­to­ry from around the world.” You’ll encounter instru­ments from far-flung coun­tries, instru­ments that died out cen­turies ago, and new-fan­gled instru­ments designed for the hus­tle and bus­tle of today’s New York City. The short pro­file film above comes from NYork­ers, a series of shorts ded­i­cat­ed to fea­tur­ing “New York­ers that you don’t read about in head­lines…”

via The Atlantic

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recy­cled Orches­tra: Paraguayan Youth Play Mozart with Instru­ments Clev­er­ly Made Out of Trash

The Joy of Mak­ing Artis­tic Home­made Gui­tars

The 2013 base­ball sea­son starts next week, and it’s a time when hope springs eter­nal — unless you root for the Cubs, the injury-laden Yan­kees, or the Pirates, Indi­ans, or var­i­ous oth­er small mar­ket teams. But let’s not get side­tracked by all of that. Today, we’re head­ing into the past, 20 years deep, and we’re think­ing about Base­ball, Apple Pie and the Grate­ful Dead. You heard me right, the Grate­ful Dead. On April 12, 1993, Jer­ry Gar­cia, Bob Weir, and Vince Wel­nick (then a key­boardist with the band) did the hon­ors on open­ing day at Can­dle­stick Park, singing the nation­al anthem before the San Fran­cis­co Giants — Flori­da Mar­lins game. If you thought the Dead could nev­er car­ry a tune, you’re in for a lit­tle sur­prise.

A few key things to remem­ber about this 1993 moment. 1) It was the first sea­son of base­ball for the new Mar­lins expan­sion team. 2) Bar­ry Bonds was still skin­ny and lean and home­red in his first at bat. And 3) it was the only time that Jer­ry sang the anthem at a ball game. Bob Weir and Phil Lesh made a return vis­it last fall.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

8,976 Free Grate­ful Dead Con­cert Record­ings in the Inter­net Archive

NASA & Grate­ful Dead Drum­mer Mick­ey Hart Record Cos­mic Sounds of the Uni­verse on New Album

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

A Year of Grate­ful Dead Tunes Up in a Mashup