In his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Chron­i­cles, Vol­ume 1, Bob Dylan remem­bered the day, back in the ear­ly 1960s, when he first encoun­tered the music of the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta blues­man Robert John­son. His mem­o­ry went some­thing like this:

I had the thick acetate of the Robert John­son record in my hands and I asked Van Ronk if he ever heard of him. Dave said, nope, he hadn’t, and I put it on the record play­er so we could lis­ten to it. From the first note the vibra­tions from the loud­speak­er made my hair stand up. The stab­bing sounds from the gui­tar could almost break a win­dow. When John­son start­ed singing, he seemed like a guy who could have sprung from the head of Zeus in full armor. I imme­di­ate­ly dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed between him and any­one else I had ever heard.

Dylan was­n’t alone in this thought. Ask Eric Clap­ton and he’ll tell you that John­son is “the most impor­tant blues singer that ever lived.” And one Kei­th Richards summed things up rather nice­ly, say­ing, “You want to know how good the blues can get? Well, this is it.” With this kind of praise, you’d think that Robert John­son had lived a long life, record­ing a long list of albums. But the oppo­site is true. John­son died in 1938,  when he was only 27 years old (which puts him, of course, in the 27 Club). And he left for pos­ter­i­ty a mere 29 tracks, all record­ed between 1936 and 1937. The details of John­son’s life are sketchy at best. And the visu­al traces of his exis­tence have almost entire­ly dis­ap­peared. In the clos­ing pages of Chron­i­cles, Bob Dylan makes ref­er­ence to a video that briefly cap­tures the image of John­son:

More than thir­ty years lat­er, I would see John­son for myself in eight sec­onds’ worth of 8‑millimeter film shot in Ruleville, Mis­sis­sip­pi, on a bright­ly lit after­noon street by some Ger­mans in the late ’30s. Some peo­ple ques­tioned whether it was real­ly him, but slow­ing the eight sec­onds down so it was more like eighty sec­onds, you can see that it real­ly is Robert John­son, has to be—couldn’t be any­one else.

It’s a tan­ta­liz­ing prospect. But, when pro­fes­sion­als took a close look at the video, they fig­ured out it was a fake (see below). So we’re left with this — two pho­tographs of the musi­cian. Two sim­ple pho­tos, which now thanks to West­side Media, have been manip­u­lat­ed to bring John­son back to life, at least long enough to sing two songs: “Hell Hound on My Trail” and “Preach­ing Blues.” Watch above.

Yes­ter­day we post­ed about the Talk­ing Heads’ days play­ing at CBGB, the Low­er East Side night­club rock his­to­ri­ans now dis­cuss in hushed, rev­er­ent tones. (Full name: CBGB OMFUG, or “Coun­try, Blue­grass, Blues, and Oth­er Music for Uplift­ing Gor­man­diz­ers.”) Though the place final­ly closed its doors in a rent dis­pute six years ago, you can still vis­it it on the inter­net through this vir­tu­al tour. You’ll have to guide your­self, but much of the fun comes in the free­dom to explore. Begin­ning your jour­ney in the wom­en’s restroom, you can then pro­ceed how­ev­er you like, click­ing from room to room and exam­in­ing the leg­en­dar­i­ly grit­ty sur­round­ings in all 360 degrees. If you once played or fre­quent­ed CBGB, the expe­ri­ence may well take you back, albeit with much brighter light­ing than you remem­ber. Or if, like me, you once played a lot of graph­ic adven­ture games on the com­put­er, the tour’s inter­face will cer­tain­ly take you back to that as well.

Purists will have objec­tions to a vir­tu­al tour of a place of such raw phys­i­cal­i­ty as CBGB: you can’t feel the stick­i­ness of the floors, you can’t smell the mix­ture of aggres­sive odors, you can’t trip over that one irreg­u­lar step on the stairs, and you espe­cial­ly can’t hear the awe-inspir­ing ampli­fi­ca­tion sys­tem. But you can look close and long at the club’s cul­tur­al palimpsest of stick­ers, graf­fi­ti, fliers, and hard-knocked cement. Con­ver­sa­tions sprout­ed up on MetaFil­ter both when CBGB closed and when this vir­tu­al tour debuted: some com­menters loved the place, while oth­ers could­n’t bear it; some com­menters regret­ted its pass­ing, while oth­ers thought it had long since become a shad­ow of itself. Some seemed to feel all of this at once. As one MeFite said, “Those bath­rooms are just as dis­gust­ing as I remem­ber them being. I miss the hell out of that place.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

High on the list of his­tor­i­cal peri­ods I regret hav­ing missed, I would place Man­hat­tan’s Low­er East Side in the sev­en­ties. Despite being some­thing less than a shin­ing time for major cities, espe­cial­ly Amer­i­can major cities, and espe­cial­ly New York City, that era’s seem­ing­ly hol­lowed-out down­towns offered cra­dles to many a cul­tur­al move­ment. David Byrne’s band the Talk­ing Heads count as a major one unto them­selves. Gen­er­a­tion X author Dou­glas Cou­p­land mem­o­rably asked only one ques­tion to deter­mine whether one belongs to that par­tic­u­lar cohort: do you like the Talk­ing Heads? In an entire book he wrote about the band’s 1979 album Fear of Music, nov­el­ist Jonatham Lethem remem­bers this of his own enthu­si­asm: “At the peak, in 1980 or 81, my iden­ti­fi­ca­tion was so com­plete that I might have wished to wear the album Fear of Music in place of my head so as to be more clear­ly seen by those around me.”

Talk­ing about the ori­gin of the Talk­ing Heads, we must talk about CBGB, the Bow­ery night­club that host­ed for­ma­tive shows for such punk, new wave, and cul­tur­al­ly prox­i­mate but dif­fi­cult to cat­e­go­rize acts like Tele­vi­sion, the Cramps, Blondie, the Pat­ti Smith Group, and the B‑52s. Byrne and com­pa­ny began play­ing there in the mid-sev­en­ties, and would even­tu­al­ly drop the place’s name in the track “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” (“This ain’t no Mudd Club or CBGB…”) At the top of this post, you’ll see their 1975 per­for­mance of “Psy­cho Killer” at CBGB, along with “Ten­ta­tive Deci­sions” and “With Our Love.” Though CBGB shut down in 2006, its essence lives on in the influ­en­tial music it shaped. “It is the venue that makes the music scene hap­pen just as much as the cre­ativ­i­ty of the musi­cians,” wrote Byrne him­self in CBGB and OMFUG: Thir­ty Years from the Home of Under­ground Rock. “There is con­tin­u­al­ly and for­ev­er a pool of tal­ent, ener­gy, and expres­sion wait­ing to be tapped—it sim­ply needs the right place in which to express itself.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

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

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.